What, me worry?
March 6, 2007 04:44 PM
Sherman Dorn, always even-handed, refuses to ramp up the rhetoric. He writes:
Both Eduwonk and This Week in Education are minimizing the concerns over test-prep that are illustrated by the Washington Post "bubble kids" story over the weekend. Eduwonk (aka Andy Rotherham) calls it "hand-wringing and whining," [and] TWiE (aka Alexander Russo) says it's essentially revisiting the issue "whose scope and depth and negative impact remain not entirely clear or documented in this story."
Okay. It's true that the rhetoric surrounding NCLB matters much less than the reality of it, but maybe we need to level the rhetorical playing field a bit. But saying that someone is "minimizing the concerns" doesn't have the rhetorical force of charging them with hand-wringing and whining.
So, let's take a vote. When it comes to NCLB, those those who "minimize the concerns" about test-prep and NCLB are:
A. In denial.
B. Taking a "See No Evil" approach
C. Following the teachings of educational guru Alfred E. Neuman
D. Too much Paula, not enough Simon
Comments
I vote for more Simon.
Posted by: Anonymous | March 6, 2007 05:01 PM
Extensive test prep is no doubt a waste of instructional time, but so is teaching reading as a pyscholinguistic guessing game (i.e., balanced literacy) or allowing novices to discover mathematics principles like an expert.
NCLB gives schools autonomy and unfortunately that includes the autonomy to do stupid things.
Posted by: KDeRosa | March 6, 2007 05:51 PM
Without a doubt...D, too much Paula. These folks need to show a little "tough love" towards NCLB and its bias towards overtesting...i.e., we need Simon.
Posted by: Dan at AFT | March 7, 2007 10:47 AM
I vote for C.
Posted by: Anonymous | March 7, 2007 10:51 AM
Not enough Simon!!
Posted by: Anonymous | March 7, 2007 10:58 AM
Ken, I agree with that a lot more than I disagree.
As for my vote, I'm going with Alfed E.
Posted by: Ed at AFT | March 7, 2007 11:00 AM
B. See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil
Posted by: Leslie | March 7, 2007 11:23 AM
I'll go with D (my write-in vote would go to "Ivory Soft-soapers.")
Posted by: Anonymous | March 7, 2007 04:33 PM