The Injurious School Culture Enforced by High-Stakes Testing

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “The Injurious School Culture Enforced by High-Stakes Testing” [Hake (2012)]. The abstract reads:

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Abstract: Richard Flarend of the Physoc list relayed an AP press release “Fourth-graders who flunk reading have faces marked” at http://usat.ly/QTRkd8 and concluded that an injurious school culture led to this mistake. More generally, an injurious culture with consequences more serious than face marking is currently being forced upon most U.S. schools by the high-stakes testing mandated by NCLB.

In “Public Defender: Diane Ravitch takes on a movement," David Denby at http://nyr.kr/RPfOkF wrote (paraphrasing; supplemented by references to Ravitch's critiques in The New York Review of Books; bracketed by lines "#####. . . . "):

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Diane Ravitch has emerged as one of the leading opponents of the education-reform movement. She has:

1. Written a series of scathing rebuttals of reform measures in The New York Review of Books:
a. "The Myth of Charter Schools" http://bit.ly/h0Lx8Q;
b. "School 'Reform': A Failing Grade" http://bit.ly/TclFCY;
c. "Schools We Can Envy" http://bit.ly/QqtdTi;
d. "How, and How Not, to Improve the Schools" http://bit.ly/RPBDAO;
e. "Do Our Public Schools Threaten National Security?" http://bit.ly/10hxmth;
f. "In Mitt Romney's Schoolroom" http://bit.ly/TcmHxS; and
g. "Two Visions for Chicago's Schools" http://bit.ly/SKjkeA.

2. Written some two thousand posts on a blog http://dianeravitch.net/ she started in April, which has received almost a million and a half page views.

3. Published The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education [Ravitch (2010a)] at http://amzn.to/pAjeZU.

4. Barnstormed across the country giving speeches berating the reform movement, which, in addition to test-based “accountability,” also supports school choice and charter schools (public institutions that often receive substantial private funding and are free from many regulations, such as hiring union teachers in states that require it), and which she calls a “privatization” movement. The reform movement has the support of President Obama and his Education Secretary, Arne Duncan; it is also championed by the Republican Party; by many governors, mayors, and schools chancellors; and by a variety of wealthy entrepreneurs and fund managers, including Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Whitney Tilson. It has changed educational thinking in states such as Florida, Wisconsin, and Louisiana, and in cities such as Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

5. Argued that the reform movement is driven by an exaggerated negative critique of the schools, and that it is mistakenly imposing a free-market ethos of competition on an institution that, if it is to function well, requires cooperation, sharing, and mentoring.
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To access the complete 10 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/SaQB3W.


Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
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REFERENCES [URL shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 19 Nov 2012.]
Hake, R.R. 2012. “The Injurious School Culture Enforced by High-Stakes Testing,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/SaQB3W. Post of 19 Nov 2012 17:25:15-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists.