Of course your correct, there are many reformers out there who do not
support testing or standards. The question I ask is what are standards and
testing aiming to fix and where did the need that something needed to be
fixed come from? It is in this sense the failure of our teachers, schools,
and institutions have a common language. Enough of those actors can get
around the notion of standards and testing to form a coalition that appears
it can address the diversity of concerns.
The larger point was not that everyone supports standards and testing, but
it goes deeper than the manipulation of the right. SOE have been big
players not only in the construction of the need schools are sites of
failure, but in the standards and tests themselves. Maybe that's the way
it will always be, the progressive, left, critic creating this need that
schools are totalizing insitutions and need to be reformed, yet while we
form our arguments, the powers that be gather support for simplictic
solutions.
TIMSS is a case in point, it put forth a notion of "teacher failure" in
that teachers relied excessively on "teacher dominated" interaction. As we
know all to well it became an artifact that was a rallying cry for "teacher
failure" not less teacher dominated interactions. Maybe this goes back to
the notion of a fractured left, while we come up with and defend our
theories, critiques, or projects, the powers that be put forth a vision of
public education that's anything but promising.
nate
----- Original Message -----
From: Eugene Matusov <ematusov who-is-at UDel.Edu>
To: <xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 27, 1999 7:46 PM
Subject: RE: social promotion, several unrelated comments
> Hi Nate and everybody--
>
> Nate wrote,
> >Standards and testing being the reform that
> >get most if not all of the various interest groups on board. I do think
> >even Heath and McDermott has provided a degree of capital to the general
> >sense of failure that standards and tests are responding to.
>
> I respectful disagree that testing and standards unite "most if not all"
> critics and reformers of schooling. Jean Lave called school testing as
> "parasitic practice" (see Lave and Wenger, 1991). I doubt that Ray
> McDermott, Shirley Brice Heath, Barbara Rogoff will be the group of
> supporters of using standards and testing in schools. By the way, you do
not
> need to have standards and testing to know that many kids are failing in
> school (even among so called high academic achievers). It is enough to
> observe kid losing their motivation to many academic activities like
> reading, writing, and math.
>
> Today in my undergraduate class on cultural diversity in teaching, we
> discuss how to make "fair" math test. Students came to the idea that
"fair"
> test has to fail 50% of the students in the class. In this case, the test
is
> not too easy and not too difficult. So, failure of ones is success of
> others.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Eugene
>