http://edge.ascd.org/service/getFeed.kickAction?quantity=25 New blogs from Yong_Zhao on ASCD EDge Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:46:58 GMT Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:46:58 GMT website@ascd.org (ascdAdmin) website@ascd.org (ascdAdmin) KickApps Feed Builder 2011-07-26T12:46:58Z 7 http://edge.ascd.org/service/searchEverything.kickAction?as=127586&sortType=recent&tags=null 0 http://edge.ascd.org/_Ditch-Testing-Lessons-from-the-Atlanta-Cheating-Scandal-Part-2-Not-An-Anomaly/blog/4959551/127586.html Not an Anomaly: Systemic Ills Caused by Test-based Accountability Policies Secretary Duncan is not the only who tries to minimize the scale of the problem and reduce it to a technical issue. Chester E. Finn, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He is a former assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Education under President Ronald Reagan, tries to do same. In his essay entitled Don’t ditch testing after Atlanta cheating, boost test security and published as a CNN special on July 13, argues that cheating is: A problem, indeed, and one worth solving, but not an argument against testing as a key element in learning about how students are doing and holding educators and schools accountable. Finn attempts to make cheating in schools an issue of human nature and minimize its scale to a few isolated cases saying that: “Regrettably, this is about human nature, not about the immediate example of test-score cheating in a few hundred of our nearly 100,000 schools.” He likens cheating on tests to “tax cheating, Medicare fraud, pleading innocent when one is guilty; professors plagiarizing and medical researchers falsifying their data; and on and on.” Essentially, testing proponents would do anything but acknowledge the fact that the testing-driven education policy is the root cause of cheating and its consequent damages to children. They try to make it an anomaly, a small problem caused by a few unethical individuals, and a technical issue that can be addressed with simple solutions. However, evidence suggests just opposite. Evidence of Blatant Cheating Practices We may never know exactly how many schools or educators cheat on standardized tests simply because we cannot afford to audit all schools and those that cheat are unlikely to report or confess. But publically available reports unambiguously reveal that cheating is not an anomaly in our schools—it is not isolated to Atlanta and it is not only “a few hundred of our nearly 100,000 schools.” Just recent media reports of test-score cheating by adults make the number of schools way more than a few hundred. In a March, 2011 post entitled Testing Anomalies Found in Many States on the U.S. News and World Report website by Jason Koebler reports that hundreds of schools in Washington DC, Georgia, Arizona, Detroit, Baltimore, and several other states under investigation for testing irregularities. Also in March, 2011, a USA Today investigation found “1,610 examples of anomalies in which public school classes — a school’s entire fifth grade, for example — boasted what analysts regard as statistically rare, perhaps suspect, gains on state tests” in DC and each of the six states they looked at– Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan and Ohio. Last week, the Notebook reported that 225 schools were flagged in the 2009 for “erasure analysis” in Pennsylvania. In their 2007 book Collateral Damage: How High-stakes testing Corrupts America’s Schools, Sharon Nichols and David Berliner report that 9% of teachers survey in Tennessee said they had witnessed test impropriety on the state’s tests and nationally, a survey found: 10% of teachers admitted to providing answers during tests 10% of teachers pointed out mismarked items by students 15% of teachers gave students more time to finish the test than allowed 5% gave instructions during the test The New York Times reported in May, 2011 that “an unusually large number of students have obtained exactly the minimum score needed to pass the exams, which are required for graduation and are often graded by students’ own teachers.” An investigation by the New York Times found that students attending New York City’s public high schools “had been roughly five times as likely to score 65, the passing grade, or slightly above it, than to score just below it… But even on the algebra exam, in which there are no essays, 8,451 students got grades of exactly 65, while a combined 7,145 students ended up with a score of 61, 62, 63 or 64. Statisticians say that such a difference is out of line with the smooth scoring curve that should normally result.” I don’t know what percentage would make cheating not an anomaly in the minds of testing proponents, but “it seems readily obvious that teachers and administrators are often engaged in test-related impropriety,” write Nichols and Berliner in their book. Evidence of Softer, More Acceptable Forms of Cheating While telling students the correct answers, changing student test scores, and directly changing student answers are forms of blatant, direct, hardcore cheating practices that are considered unethical and illegal, there are other forms of practices that may not be viewed as cheating on the surface but in reality they are. They cheat students out of a real valuable education and cause as much damage, if not more, to our children as the behaviors we label cheating. Teaching to the tests and test preparation Many schools in the U.S. have turned into test preparation institutions. They only teach what is on the high-stakes tests. A study by the Center on Education Policy (CEP) published in 2007 found that five years after the implementation of NCLB, over 60% of school districts reported that they have increased instructional time for math and English language arts, while 44% reported that they have reduced time for other subjects or activities such as social studies, science, art and music, physical education, lunch and or recess.  The study also found that most school districts have narrowed their English language arts and math curricula to what is covered on the state tests. The study found that 84% of districts reported that they have changed their curriculum “somewhat” or “to a great extent” to put greater emphasis on tested content in elementary level reading; 79% in middle school, and 76% in high school. A similar pattern was found in math: 81% of districts have changed their curriculum at the elementary and middle school level to emphasize tested content and skills, and 78% in high school math. Classroom instruction has also been transformed into test preparation. Linda Valli and her colleagues found that since the implementation of NCLB, teachers have lost curriculum and pedagogical autonomy to standards and testing. “Teachers felt compelled to match closely what they taught to what would be tested and worried about how well aligned the district curriculum was with state test’s content, language, and format” (Valli & Buese, 2007, p. 531). A more recent study by CEP of the impact of federal and state accountability polices on curriculum and instruction in three states, Rhode Island, Illinois, and Washington, found classroom instruction to be focused on test preparation and that teachers generally focus their instruction on test-related content. Cheating by Schools and States It is well known that schools and states manipulate student performance data in a number of ways. For schools, excluding certain students from testing or even discouraging certain students from attending the school have been reported in various places. A 2005 article by Lisa Snell reports that in 2004, a high school in Florida boosted its test scores from an F to a D after “purging” 126 low-performing students from its attendance rolls. In the same year, “some 160 Florida schools assigned students to new schools just before standardized testing in a shell game to raise school grades.” In a third of Houston’s 30 high schools, scores on standardized exams have risen as enrollment has shrunk. In 2011, a school principal in DeKalb County, GA sent a letter to the parents of 13 students advising “that they would be withdrawn due to poor attendance, which would cause the school not to make AYP.” A 2007 Time magazine article recounts how one top-performing school, i.e. a school with high standardized test scores, forced or discouraged disadvantaged students to leave the school in order to close the achievement gap. In this story, an African-American student was pushed out after multiple “disciplinary suspensions” but the story tells that was perhaps merely a way to push certain group of students out to help the school retain its top-performing reputation without being labeled “failing” under NCLB. At the state level, the manipulation of test results has happened frequently since the implementation of NCLB. One of the activities can be adjusting the “cut-scores” on standardized tests used to define different proficiency levels. Because NCLB holds schools and states accountable for increasing the percentage of students achieving a level of proficiency, states have been found to change their cut scores and lower their standards. A federal study in 2009 found that “nearly a third of the states lowered their academic proficiency standards in recent years, a step that helps schools stay ahead of sanctions under” NCLB. Discrepancy in Achievements—Collateral Evidence Since NCLB, test scores on state high-stake tests have been reported to rise, sometimes, dramatically, but such gains have not been generalized to other assessments, according to a recent report by the nation’s education experts commissioned by the National Research Council. The panel of the nation’s leading experts found that “When the [test-based accountability] systems are evaluated—not using the high-stakes tests subject to inflation, but using instead outside comparison tests, such as the NAEP—student achievement gains dwindle to about .08 of a standard deviation on average, mostly clustered in elementary-grade mathematics.”  This discrepancy suggests high-stakes test scores are inflated and do not indicate true education gains. Such inflation can come from multiple sources, most of which are not sound, honest, and valuable education practices that help improve the children’s learning. To summarize, cheating in American schools is not isolated as testing proponents suggest. We cannot simply blame it on a few unethical educators. Instead, we must acknowledge the fact that it is widespread, in multiple forms, in the nation’s schools and it is a direct result of the test-based accountability policies so we can begin to change course and ditch testing. In the next post, I will discuss why cheating is not a simple issue that can be fixed with technical measures, but rather it is a cultural and psychological issue that can only be fixed by removing test-based accountability from our schools to extinguish the motivation for cheating or the “trigger” of the “cheating gene.” Part 1 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5   Not an Anomaly: Systemic Ills Caused by Test-based Accountability Policies Secretary Duncan is not the only who tries to minimize the scale of the problem and reduce it to a technical issue. Chester E. Finn, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He is a former assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Education under President Ronald Reagan, tries to do same. In his essay entitled Don’t ditch testing after Atlanta cheating, boost test security and published as a CNN special on July 13, argues that cheating is: A problem, indeed, and one worth solving, but not an argument against testing as a key element in learning about how students are doing and holding educators and schools accountable. Finn attempts to make cheating in schools an issue of human nature and minimize its scale to a few isolated cases saying that: “Regrettably, this is about human nature, not about the immediate example of test-score cheating in a few hundred of our nearly 100,000 schools.” He likens cheating on tests to “tax cheating, Medicare fraud, pleading innocent when one is guilty; professors plagiarizing and medical researchers falsifying their data; and on and on.” Essentially, testing proponents would do anything but acknowledge the fact that the testing-driven education policy is the root cause of cheating and its consequent damages to children. They try to make it an anomaly, a small problem caused by a few unethical individuals, and a technical issue that can be addressed with simple solutions. However, evidence suggests just opposite. Evidence of Blatant Cheating Practices We may never know exactly how many schools or educators cheat on standardized tests simply because we cannot afford to audit all schools and those that cheat are unlikely to report or confess. But publically available reports unambiguously reveal that cheating is not an anomaly in our schools—it is not isolated to Atlanta and it is not only “a few hundred of our nearly 100,000 schools.” Just recent media reports of test-score cheating by adults make the number of schools way more than a few hundred. In a March, 2011 post entitled Testing Anomalies Found in Many States on the U.S. News and World Report website by Jason Koebler reports that hundreds of schools in Washington DC, Georgia, Arizona, Detroit, Baltimore, and several other states under investigation for testing irregularities. Also in March, 2011, a USA Today investigation found “1,610 examples of anomalies in which public school classes — a school’s entire fifth grade, for example — boasted what analysts regard as statistically rare, perhaps suspect, gains on state tests” in DC and each of the six states they looked at– Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan and Ohio. Last week, the Notebook reported that 225 schools were flagged in the 2009 for “erasure analysis” in Pennsylvania. In their 2007 book Collateral Damage: How High-stakes testing Corrupts America’s Schools, Sharon Nichols and David Berliner report that 9% of teachers survey in Tennessee said they had witnessed test impropriety on the state’s tests and nationally, a survey found: 10% of teachers admitted to providing answers during tests 10% of teachers pointed out mismarked items by students 15% of teachers gave students more time to finish the test than allowed 5% gave instructions during the test The New York Times reported in May, 2011 that “an unusually large number of students have obtained exactly the minimum score needed to pass the exams, which are required for graduation and are often graded by students’ own teachers.” An investigation by the New York Times found that students attending New York City’s public high schools “had been roughly five times as likely to score 65, the passing grade, or slightly above it, than to score just below it… But even on the algebra exam, in which there are no essays, 8,451 students got grades of exactly 65, while a combined 7,145 students ended up with a score of 61, 62, 63 or 64. Statisticians say that such a difference is out of line with the smooth scoring curve that should normally result.” I don’t know what percentage would make cheating not an anomaly in the minds of testing proponents, but “it seems readily obvious that teachers and administrators are often engaged in test-related impropriety,” write Nichols and Berliner in their book. Evidence of Softer, More Acceptable Forms of Cheating While telling students the correct answers, changing student test scores, and directly changing student answers are forms of blatant, direct, hardcore cheating practices that are considered unethical and illegal, there are other forms of practices that may not be viewed as cheating on the surface but in reality they are. They cheat students out of a real valuable education and cause as much damage, if not more, to our children as the behaviors we label cheating. Teaching to the tests and test preparation Many schools in the U.S. have turned into test preparation institutions. They only teach what is on the high-stakes tests. A study by the Center on Education Policy (CEP) published in 2007 found that five years after the implementation of NCLB, over 60% of school districts reported that they have increased instructional time for math and English language arts, while 44% reported that they have reduced time for other subjects or activities such as social studies, science, art and music, physical education, lunch and or recess.  The study also found that most school districts have narrowed their English language arts and math curricula to what is covered on the state tests. The study found that 84% of districts reported that they have changed their curriculum “somewhat” or “to a great extent” to put greater emphasis on tested content in elementary level reading; 79% in middle school, and 76% in high school. A similar pattern was found in math: 81% of districts have changed their curriculum at the elementary and middle school level to emphasize tested content and skills, and 78% in high school math. Classroom instruction has also been transformed into test preparation. Linda Valli and her colleagues found that since the implementation of NCLB, teachers have lost curriculum and pedagogical autonomy to standards and testing. “Teachers felt compelled to match closely what they taught to what would be tested and worried about how well aligned the district curriculum was with state test’s content, language, and format” (Valli & Buese, 2007, p. 531). A more recent study by CEP of the impact of federal and state accountability polices on curriculum and instruction in three states, Rhode Island, Illinois, and Washington, found classroom instruction to be focused on test preparation and that teachers generally focus their instruction on test-related content. Cheating by Schools and States It is well known that schools and states manipulate student performance data in a number of ways. For schools, excluding certain students from testing or even discouraging certain students from attending the school have been reported in various places. A 2005 article by Lisa Snell reports that in 2004, a high school in Florida boosted its test scores from an F to a D after “purging” 126 low-performing students from its attendance rolls. In the same year, “some 160 Florida schools assigned students to new schools just before standardized testing in a shell game to raise school grades.” In a third of Houston’s 30 high schools, scores on standardized exams have risen as enrollment has shrunk. In 2011, a school principal in DeKalb County, GA sent a letter to the parents of 13 students advising “that they would be withdrawn due to poor attendance, which would cause the school not to make AYP.” A 2007 Time magazine article recounts how one top-performing school, i.e. a school with high standardized test scores, forced or discouraged disadvantaged students to leave the school in order to close the achievement gap. In this story, an African-American student was pushed out after multiple “disciplinary suspensions” but the story tells that was perhaps merely a way to push certain group of students out to help the school retain its top-performing reputation without being labeled “failing” under NCLB. At the state level, the manipulation of test results has happened frequently since the implementation of NCLB. One of the activities can be adjusting the “cut-scores” on standardized tests used to define different proficiency levels. Because NCLB holds schools and states accountable for increasing the percentage of students achieving a level of proficiency, states have been found to change their cut scores and lower their standards. A federal study in 2009 found that “nearly a third of the states lowered their academic proficiency standards in recent years, a step that helps schools stay ahead of sanctions under” NCLB. Discrepancy in Achievements—Collateral Evidence Since NCLB, test scores on state high-stake tests have been reported to rise, sometimes, dramatically, but such gains have not been generalized to other assessments, according to a recent report by the nation’s education experts commissioned by the National Research Council. The panel of the nation’s leading experts found that “When the [test-based accountability] systems are evaluated—not using the high-stakes tests subject to inflation, but using instead outside comparison tests, such as the NAEP—student achievement gains dwindle to about .08 of a standard deviation on average, mostly clustered in elementary-grade mathematics.”  This discrepancy suggests high-stakes test scores are inflated and do not indicate true education gains. Such inflation can come from multiple sources, most of which are not sound, honest, and valuable education practices that help improve the children’s learning. To summarize, cheating in American schools is not isolated as testing proponents suggest. We cannot simply blame it on a few unethical educators. Instead, we must acknowledge the fact that it is widespread, in multiple forms, in the nation’s schools and it is a direct result of the test-based accountability policies so we can begin to change course and ditch testing. In the next post, I will discuss why cheating is not a simple issue that can be fixed with technical measures, but rather it is a cultural and psychological issue that can only be fixed by removing test-based accountability from our schools to extinguish the motivation for cheating or the “trigger” of the “cheating gene.” Part 1 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5   Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:46:58 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_Ditch-Testing-Lessons-from-the-Atlanta-Cheating-Scandal-Part-2-Not-An-Anomaly/blog/4959551/127586.html Yong_Zhao 2011-07-26T12:46:58Z ASCD EDge Not an Anomaly: Systemic Ills Caused by Test-based Accountability Policies Secretary Duncan is not the only who tries to minimize the scale of the problem and reduce it to a technical issue. Chester E. Finn, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He is a former assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Education under President Ronald Reagan, tries to do same. In his essay entitled Don’t ditch testing after Atlanta cheating, boost test security and published as a CNN special on July 13, argues that cheating is: A problem, indeed, and one worth solving, but not an argument against testing as a key element in learning about how students are doing and holding educators and schools accountable. Finn attempts to make cheating in schools an issue of human nature and minimize its scale to a few isolated cases saying that: “Regrettably, this is about human nature, not about the immediate example of test-score cheating in a few hundred of our nearly 100,000 schools.” He likens cheating on tests to “tax cheating, Medicare fraud, pleading innocent when one is guilty; professors plagiarizing and medical researchers falsifying their data; and on and on.” Essentially, testing proponents would do anything but acknowledge the fact that the testing-driven education policy is the root cause of cheating and its consequent damages to children. They try to make it an anomaly, a small problem caused by a few unethical individuals, and a technical issue that can be addressed with simple solutions. However, evidence suggests just opposite. Evidence of Blatant Cheating Practices We may never know exactly how many schools or educators cheat on standardized tests simply because we cannot afford to audit all schools and those that cheat are unlikely to report or confess. But publically available reports unambiguously reveal that cheating is not an anomaly in our schools—it is not isolated to Atlanta and it is not only “a few hundred of our nearly 100,000 schools.” Just recent media reports of test-score cheating by adults make the number of schools way more than a few hundred. In a March, 2011 post entitled Testing Anomalies Found in Many States on the U.S. News and World Report website by Jason Koebler reports that hundreds of schools in Washington DC, Georgia, Arizona, Detroit, Baltimore, and several other states under investigation for testing irregularities. Also in March, 2011, a USA Today investigation found “1,610 examples of anomalies in which public school classes — a school’s entire fifth grade, for example — boasted what analysts regard as statistically rare, perhaps suspect, gains on state tests” in DC and each of the six states they looked at– Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan and Ohio. Last week, the Notebook reported that 225 schools were flagged in the 2009 for “erasure analysis” in Pennsylvania. In their 2007 book Collateral Damage: How High-stakes testing Corrupts America’s Schools, Sharon Nichols and David Berliner report that 9% of teachers survey in Tennessee said they had witnessed test impropriety on the state’s tests and nationally, a survey found: 10% of teachers admitted to providing answers during tests 10% of teachers pointed out mismarked items by students 15% of teachers gave students more time to finish the test than allowed 5% gave instructions during the test The New York Times reported in May, 2011 that “an unusually large number of students have obtained exactly the minimum score needed to pass the exams, which are required for graduation and are often graded by students’ own teachers.” An investigation by the New York Times found that students attending New York City’s public high schools “had been roughly five times as likely to score 65, the passing grade, or slightly above it, than to score just below it… But even on the algebra exam, in which there are no essays, 8,451 students got grades of exactly 65, while a combined 7,145 students ended up with a score of 61, 62, 63 or 64. Statisticians say that such a difference is out of line with the smooth scoring curve that should normally result.” I don’t know what percentage would make cheating not an anomaly in the minds of testing proponents, but “it seems readily obvious that teachers and administrators are often engaged in test-related impropriety,” write Nichols and Berliner in their book. Evidence of Softer, More Acceptable Forms of Cheating While telling students the correct answers, changing student test scores, and directly changing student answers are forms of blatant, direct, hardcore cheating practices that are considered unethical and illegal, there are other forms of practices that may not be viewed as cheating on the surface but in reality they are. They cheat students out of a real valuable education and cause as much damage, if not more, to our children as the behaviors we label cheating. Teaching to the tests and test preparation Many schools in the U.S. have turned into test preparation institutions. They only teach what is on the high-stakes tests. A study by the Center on Education Policy (CEP) published in 2007 found that five years after the implementation of NCLB, over 60% of school districts reported that they have increased instructional time for math and English language arts, while 44% reported that they have reduced time for other subjects or activities such as social studies, science, art and music, physical education, lunch and or recess.  The study also found that most school districts have narrowed their English language arts and math curricula to what is covered on the state tests. The study found that 84% of districts reported that they have changed their curriculum “somewhat” or “to a great extent” to put greater emphasis on tested content in elementary level reading; 79% in middle school, and 76% in high school. A similar pattern was found in math: 81% of districts have changed their curriculum at the elementary and middle school level to emphasize tested content and skills, and 78% in high school math. Classroom instruction has also been transformed into test preparation. Linda Valli and her colleagues found that since the implementation of NCLB, teachers have lost curriculum and pedagogical autonomy to standards and testing. “Teachers felt compelled to match closely what they taught to what would be tested and worried about how well aligned the district curriculum was with state test’s content, language, and format” (Valli & Buese, 2007, p. 531). A more recent study by CEP of the impact of federal and state accountability polices on curriculum and instruction in three states, Rhode Island, Illinois, and Washington, found classroom instruction to be focused on test preparation and that teachers generally focus their instruction on test-related content. Cheating by Schools and States It is well known that schools and states manipulate student performance data in a number of ways. For schools, excluding certain students from testing or even discouraging certain students from attending the school have been reported in various places. A 2005 article by Lisa Snell reports that in 2004, a high school in Florida boosted its test scores from an F to a D after “purging” 126 low-performing students from its attendance rolls. In the same year, “some 160 Florida schools assigned students to new schools just before standardized testing in a shell game to raise school grades.” In a third of Houston’s 30 high schools, scores on standardized exams have risen as enrollment has shrunk. In 2011, a school principal in DeKalb County, GA sent a letter to the parents of 13 students advising “that they would be withdrawn due to poor attendance, which would cause the school not to make AYP.” A 2007 Time magazine article recounts how one top-performing school, i.e. a school with high standardized test scores, forced or discouraged disadvantaged students to leave the school in order to close the achievement gap. In this story, an African-American student was pushed out after multiple “disciplinary suspensions” but the story tells that was perhaps merely a way to push certain group of students out to help the school retain its top-performing reputation without being labeled “failing” under NCLB. At the state level, the manipulation of test results has happened frequently since the implementation of NCLB. One of the activities can be adjusting the “cut-scores” on standardized tests used to define different proficiency levels. Because NCLB holds schools and states accountable for increasing the percentage of students achieving a level of proficiency, states have been found to change their cut scores and lower their standards. A federal study in 2009 found that “nearly a third of the states lowered their academic proficiency standards in recent years, a step that helps schools stay ahead of sanctions under” NCLB. Discrepancy in Achievements—Collateral Evidence Since NCLB, test scores on state high-stake tests have been reported to rise, sometimes, dramatically, but such gains have not been generalized to other assessments, according to a recent report by the nation’s education experts commissioned by the National Research Council. The panel of the nation’s leading experts found that “When the [test-based accountability] systems are evaluated—not using the high-stakes tests subject to inflation, but using instead outside comparison tests, such as the NAEP—student achievement gains dwindle to about .08 of a standard deviation on average, mostly clustered in elementary-grade mathematics.”  This discrepancy suggests high-stakes test scores are inflated and do not indicate true education gains. Such inflation can come from multiple sources, most of which are not sound, honest, and valuable education practices that help improve the children’s learning. To summarize, cheating in American schools is not isolated as testing proponents suggest. We cannot simply blame it on a few unethical educators. Instead, we must acknowledge the fact that it is widespread, in multiple forms, in the nation’s schools and it is a direct result of the test-based accountability policies so we can begin to change course and ditch testing. In the next post, I will discuss why cheating is not a simple issue that can be fixed with technical measures, but rather it is a cultural and psychological issue that can only be fixed by removing test-based accountability from our schools to extinguish the motivation for cheating or the “trigger” of the “cheating gene.” Part 1 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5   nonadult false Ditch Testing: Lessons from the Atlanta Cheating Scandal (Part 2): Not An Anomaly text blog 614 10 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=20918099&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_13304969_127586_20918099_ap_160X120.jpg false United States OR Eugene 0 0 4959551 20918099 ASCD EDge Member 445 http://edge.ascd.org/_Ditch-Testing-Lessons-from-the-Cheating-Scandal-in-Atlanta-Part-1/blog/4951036/127586.html Ditch Testing: Lessons from the Cheating Scandal in Atlanta (Part 1) Originally published at http://zhaolearning.com Last week a state investigation in Georgia confirmed massive cheating in Atlanta Public Schools. A total of 178 educators in 44 elementary and middle schools in the district were named in the report as participants in cheating on the state’s standardized test mandated by NCLB. This is not the first and certainly won’t be the last case of corruption in the nation’s schools. There are ongoing investigations in many other locales, most recently, Philadelphia. While laying blame on these educators, we must understand the root cause of cheating is not the bad nature of these “cheaters.” But rather it is the unreasonable policy, its unrealistic expectations, and blind faith in test scores as an indicator of education quality. This scandal should serve as a wake-up call to proponents of test-driven reform policies: it’s time to abandon high stakes testing in our schools. Decades of high-stakes testing has not brought improvement but has corrupted our schools. The cost is too high.  However, the proponents are not reflecting. They try to minimize the problem and reduce cheating to a technical instead of policy issue, suggesting technical fixes. I am writing a series of posts on this issue. Here you have the first: What was Secretary Duncan’s true feeling about the cheating scandal in Atlanta? U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said he was “stunned” by the cheating scandal in Atlanta Public Schools revealed last week. Given that English is my second language and I wanted to make sure I do not misunderstand the Secretary’s feelings about one of the largest scandals in U.S. education, I went todictionary.com and found the following definitions of “stun:” 1. to deprive of consciousness or strength by or as if by a blow, fall, etc. 2. to astonish; astound; amaze. 3. to shock; overwhelm So what was Mr. Duncan’s feeling? In the spirit of test-based education, this makes a great item on the next standardized test for our children: What was Secretary Duncan’s true feeling about cheating in Atlanta? A. He was deprived of consciousness or strength B. He was astonished, astounded, and amazed C. He was shocked and overwhelmed D. All of the above Using my well-honed testing taking skill developed in China, I went at the task and eliminated “B” and “C” first because both contain the element of “surprise” in that he was surprised to find out there were such massive cheating going on in schools. This cannot be true or I refuse to believe it is true because as Secretary of Education, Mr. Duncan must have read the numerous reports of suspected and confirmed cheating incidents in the nation’s schools, including but not limited to places such as Boston, Baltimore, Houston, Los Angeles,Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Chicago, where he served as its education chief. He must have read thisUSA Today report that investigated possible cheating in DC and 6 states and found: 1,610 examples of anomalies in which public school classes — a school’s entire fifth grade, for example — boasted what analysts regard as statistically rare, perhaps suspect, gains on state tests. Such anomalies surfaced in Washington, D.C., and each of the states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan and Ohio. He must have also read Sharon Nichols and David Berliner’s book Collateral Damage: How High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America’s Schools, which documents numerous cases and forms of cheating in schools as a result of high stakes testing by teachers, students, and state education officials. And thus he should know “Campbell’s Law” the authors illustrated in the book: The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it was intended to monitor. Moreover, days before the news broke out, he sent out a letter to all chief state school officers reminding them of the importance of data integrity and reminded them that “even the hint of testing irregularities and misconduct in the test administration process could call into question school reform efforts and undermine the State accountability systems that you have painstakingly built over the past decade.” Hence, Mr. Duncan cannot and should not be surprised. “A” is the correct answer, I think, because judging from what said in the interview, he certainly appears that he had no idea what he was talking about. He first said this was an isolated case, and then said it was systemic. He first suggested this is a problem that is easy to fix with better test security and then called it a culture issue, which is much more difficult to fix. He ignores numerous reports of widespread cheating in the nation’s schools and insists that testing equals good measures of education. Apparently he was deprived of consciousness. Or maybe it is D, “all of the above.” Mr. Duncan could or could choose to be ignorant of the reality of education in the U.S., the damages of testing-driven reform policies, sound research that shows the ineffectiveness of testing in improving education, and the real reasons behind the achievement gap so he can be genuinely surprised. If so, I hope he the APS case will help him understand that his love for high-stakes testing will not improve education but to cause more damages (by the way, Race to the Top and the proposed ESEA blueprint by the current administration just made the stakes even higher by linking test scores with teacher evaluation and thus their income). Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case. In the aftermath of the APS cheating scandal, Secretary Duncan showed no hint of reflection and refuted any suggestion that the cheating may be caused by the tremendous pressure placed on educators by high stakes testing. Instead, he suggested: There are clear, not expensive security measures that you take to make sure things have integrity. Look at our guidance. Should Atlanta do those things? They should have done them yesterday. And they should do them today. It’s pretty easy. The technical fix is easy. I actually went to the U.S. Department of Education’s website to look for the guidance Mr. Duncan mentioned. After some search I located a document called Standards and Assessments Peer Review Guidance: Information and Examples for Meeting Requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which is listed in another document called Significant Guidance Documents dated June 27, 2011. I was unable to find any other “guidance” document about assessment security. This 77-page document aims to “provide States with information to prepare for the Department’s peer review of compliance with the State assessment systems requirements under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended, and implementing regulations.”  “Test security measures” was mentioned, but only in relation to requirement of state to develop them. I was unable to find “clear, not expensive security measures” as suggested by Mr. Duncan. Perhaps I was looking at the wrong place. What the Secretary is trying to do is to minimize the scale of the problem and reduce a policy and cultural problem to a technical one that he wants to believe can be solved easily and cheaply. But unfortunately, that is not true. Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5   Ditch Testing: Lessons from the Cheating Scandal in Atlanta (Part 1) Originally published at http://zhaolearning.com Last week a state investigation in Georgia confirmed massive cheating in Atlanta Public Schools. A total of 178 educators in 44 elementary and middle schools in the district were named in the report as participants in cheating on the state’s standardized test mandated by NCLB. This is not the first and certainly won’t be the last case of corruption in the nation’s schools. There are ongoing investigations in many other locales, most recently, Philadelphia. While laying blame on these educators, we must understand the root cause of cheating is not the bad nature of these “cheaters.” But rather it is the unreasonable policy, its unrealistic expectations, and blind faith in test scores as an indicator of education quality. This scandal should serve as a wake-up call to proponents of test-driven reform policies: it’s time to abandon high stakes testing in our schools. Decades of high-stakes testing has not brought improvement but has corrupted our schools. The cost is too high.  However, the proponents are not reflecting. They try to minimize the problem and reduce cheating to a technical instead of policy issue, suggesting technical fixes. I am writing a series of posts on this issue. Here you have the first: What was Secretary Duncan’s true feeling about the cheating scandal in Atlanta? U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said he was “stunned” by the cheating scandal in Atlanta Public Schools revealed last week. Given that English is my second language and I wanted to make sure I do not misunderstand the Secretary’s feelings about one of the largest scandals in U.S. education, I went todictionary.com and found the following definitions of “stun:” 1. to deprive of consciousness or strength by or as if by a blow, fall, etc. 2. to astonish; astound; amaze. 3. to shock; overwhelm So what was Mr. Duncan’s feeling? In the spirit of test-based education, this makes a great item on the next standardized test for our children: What was Secretary Duncan’s true feeling about cheating in Atlanta? A. He was deprived of consciousness or strength B. He was astonished, astounded, and amazed C. He was shocked and overwhelmed D. All of the above Using my well-honed testing taking skill developed in China, I went at the task and eliminated “B” and “C” first because both contain the element of “surprise” in that he was surprised to find out there were such massive cheating going on in schools. This cannot be true or I refuse to believe it is true because as Secretary of Education, Mr. Duncan must have read the numerous reports of suspected and confirmed cheating incidents in the nation’s schools, including but not limited to places such as Boston, Baltimore, Houston, Los Angeles,Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Chicago, where he served as its education chief. He must have read thisUSA Today report that investigated possible cheating in DC and 6 states and found: 1,610 examples of anomalies in which public school classes — a school’s entire fifth grade, for example — boasted what analysts regard as statistically rare, perhaps suspect, gains on state tests. Such anomalies surfaced in Washington, D.C., and each of the states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan and Ohio. He must have also read Sharon Nichols and David Berliner’s book Collateral Damage: How High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America’s Schools, which documents numerous cases and forms of cheating in schools as a result of high stakes testing by teachers, students, and state education officials. And thus he should know “Campbell’s Law” the authors illustrated in the book: The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it was intended to monitor. Moreover, days before the news broke out, he sent out a letter to all chief state school officers reminding them of the importance of data integrity and reminded them that “even the hint of testing irregularities and misconduct in the test administration process could call into question school reform efforts and undermine the State accountability systems that you have painstakingly built over the past decade.” Hence, Mr. Duncan cannot and should not be surprised. “A” is the correct answer, I think, because judging from what said in the interview, he certainly appears that he had no idea what he was talking about. He first said this was an isolated case, and then said it was systemic. He first suggested this is a problem that is easy to fix with better test security and then called it a culture issue, which is much more difficult to fix. He ignores numerous reports of widespread cheating in the nation’s schools and insists that testing equals good measures of education. Apparently he was deprived of consciousness. Or maybe it is D, “all of the above.” Mr. Duncan could or could choose to be ignorant of the reality of education in the U.S., the damages of testing-driven reform policies, sound research that shows the ineffectiveness of testing in improving education, and the real reasons behind the achievement gap so he can be genuinely surprised. If so, I hope he the APS case will help him understand that his love for high-stakes testing will not improve education but to cause more damages (by the way, Race to the Top and the proposed ESEA blueprint by the current administration just made the stakes even higher by linking test scores with teacher evaluation and thus their income). Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case. In the aftermath of the APS cheating scandal, Secretary Duncan showed no hint of reflection and refuted any suggestion that the cheating may be caused by the tremendous pressure placed on educators by high stakes testing. Instead, he suggested: There are clear, not expensive security measures that you take to make sure things have integrity. Look at our guidance. Should Atlanta do those things? They should have done them yesterday. And they should do them today. It’s pretty easy. The technical fix is easy. I actually went to the U.S. Department of Education’s website to look for the guidance Mr. Duncan mentioned. After some search I located a document called Standards and Assessments Peer Review Guidance: Information and Examples for Meeting Requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which is listed in another document called Significant Guidance Documents dated June 27, 2011. I was unable to find any other “guidance” document about assessment security. This 77-page document aims to “provide States with information to prepare for the Department’s peer review of compliance with the State assessment systems requirements under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended, and implementing regulations.”  “Test security measures” was mentioned, but only in relation to requirement of state to develop them. I was unable to find “clear, not expensive security measures” as suggested by Mr. Duncan. Perhaps I was looking at the wrong place. What the Secretary is trying to do is to minimize the scale of the problem and reduce a policy and cultural problem to a technical one that he wants to believe can be solved easily and cheaply. But unfortunately, that is not true. Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5   Sat, 23 Jul 2011 11:52:52 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_Ditch-Testing-Lessons-from-the-Cheating-Scandal-in-Atlanta-Part-1/blog/4951036/127586.html Yong_Zhao 2011-07-23T11:52:52Z Blogs ASCD EDge Ditch Testing: Lessons from the Cheating Scandal in Atlanta (Part 1) Originally published at http://zhaolearning.com Last week a state investigation in Georgia confirmed massive cheating in Atlanta Public Schools. A total of 178 educators in 44 elementary and middle schools in the district were named in the report as participants in cheating on the state’s standardized test mandated by NCLB. This is not the first and certainly won’t be the last case of corruption in the nation’s schools. There are ongoing investigations in many other locales, most recently, Philadelphia. While laying blame on these educators, we must understand the root cause of cheating is not the bad nature of these “cheaters.” But rather it is the unreasonable policy, its unrealistic expectations, and blind faith in test scores as an indicator of education quality. This scandal should serve as a wake-up call to proponents of test-driven reform policies: it’s time to abandon high stakes testing in our schools. Decades of high-stakes testing has not brought improvement but has corrupted our schools. The cost is too high.  However, the proponents are not reflecting. They try to minimize the problem and reduce cheating to a technical instead of policy issue, suggesting technical fixes. I am writing a series of posts on this issue. Here you have the first: What was Secretary Duncan’s true feeling about the cheating scandal in Atlanta? U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said he was “stunned” by the cheating scandal in Atlanta Public Schools revealed last week. Given that English is my second language and I wanted to make sure I do not misunderstand the Secretary’s feelings about one of the largest scandals in U.S. education, I went todictionary.com and found the following definitions of “stun:” 1. to deprive of consciousness or strength by or as if by a blow, fall, etc. 2. to astonish; astound; amaze. 3. to shock; overwhelm So what was Mr. Duncan’s feeling? In the spirit of test-based education, this makes a great item on the next standardized test for our children: What was Secretary Duncan’s true feeling about cheating in Atlanta? A. He was deprived of consciousness or strength B. He was astonished, astounded, and amazed C. He was shocked and overwhelmed D. All of the above Using my well-honed testing taking skill developed in China, I went at the task and eliminated “B” and “C” first because both contain the element of “surprise” in that he was surprised to find out there were such massive cheating going on in schools. This cannot be true or I refuse to believe it is true because as Secretary of Education, Mr. Duncan must have read the numerous reports of suspected and confirmed cheating incidents in the nation’s schools, including but not limited to places such as Boston, Baltimore, Houston, Los Angeles,Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Chicago, where he served as its education chief. He must have read thisUSA Today report that investigated possible cheating in DC and 6 states and found: 1,610 examples of anomalies in which public school classes — a school’s entire fifth grade, for example — boasted what analysts regard as statistically rare, perhaps suspect, gains on state tests. Such anomalies surfaced in Washington, D.C., and each of the states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan and Ohio. He must have also read Sharon Nichols and David Berliner’s book Collateral Damage: How High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America’s Schools, which documents numerous cases and forms of cheating in schools as a result of high stakes testing by teachers, students, and state education officials. And thus he should know “Campbell’s Law” the authors illustrated in the book: The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it was intended to monitor. Moreover, days before the news broke out, he sent out a letter to all chief state school officers reminding them of the importance of data integrity and reminded them that “even the hint of testing irregularities and misconduct in the test administration process could call into question school reform efforts and undermine the State accountability systems that you have painstakingly built over the past decade.” Hence, Mr. Duncan cannot and should not be surprised. “A” is the correct answer, I think, because judging from what said in the interview, he certainly appears that he had no idea what he was talking about. He first said this was an isolated case, and then said it was systemic. He first suggested this is a problem that is easy to fix with better test security and then called it a culture issue, which is much more difficult to fix. He ignores numerous reports of widespread cheating in the nation’s schools and insists that testing equals good measures of education. Apparently he was deprived of consciousness. Or maybe it is D, “all of the above.” Mr. Duncan could or could choose to be ignorant of the reality of education in the U.S., the damages of testing-driven reform policies, sound research that shows the ineffectiveness of testing in improving education, and the real reasons behind the achievement gap so he can be genuinely surprised. If so, I hope he the APS case will help him understand that his love for high-stakes testing will not improve education but to cause more damages (by the way, Race to the Top and the proposed ESEA blueprint by the current administration just made the stakes even higher by linking test scores with teacher evaluation and thus their income). Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case. In the aftermath of the APS cheating scandal, Secretary Duncan showed no hint of reflection and refuted any suggestion that the cheating may be caused by the tremendous pressure placed on educators by high stakes testing. Instead, he suggested: There are clear, not expensive security measures that you take to make sure things have integrity. Look at our guidance. Should Atlanta do those things? They should have done them yesterday. And they should do them today. It’s pretty easy. The technical fix is easy. I actually went to the U.S. Department of Education’s website to look for the guidance Mr. Duncan mentioned. After some search I located a document called Standards and Assessments Peer Review Guidance: Information and Examples for Meeting Requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which is listed in another document called Significant Guidance Documents dated June 27, 2011. I was unable to find any other “guidance” document about assessment security. This 77-page document aims to “provide States with information to prepare for the Department’s peer review of compliance with the State assessment systems requirements under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended, and implementing regulations.”  “Test security measures” was mentioned, but only in relation to requirement of state to develop them. I was unable to find “clear, not expensive security measures” as suggested by Mr. Duncan. Perhaps I was looking at the wrong place. What the Secretary is trying to do is to minimize the scale of the problem and reduce a policy and cultural problem to a technical one that he wants to believe can be solved easily and cheaply. But unfortunately, that is not true. Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5   blogs nonadult false Ditch Testing: Lessons from the Cheating Scandal in Atlanta (Part 1) text blog blogs 1624 10 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=20918099&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_13304969_127586_20918099_ap_160X120.jpg false United States MI Okemos 1 Blogs 0 4951036 20918099 ASCD EDge Member 445 http://edge.ascd.org/_Race-to-Self-Destruction-Easter-Island39s-Statues-and-America39s-Test-Scores/blog/3416333/127586.html Race to Self-Destruction: Easter Island's Statues and America's Test Scores Race to the Top, Obama Administration’s $4.35 billion education initiative, has been touted many times by the President and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as the most meaningful education reform in a generation. It is also been proposed as the blueprint for the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently bearing the more notorious title No Child Left Behind (NCLB). I have always found Race to the Top amusingly sad and educationally harmful and written about it in different places including an op-ed piece in Education Week and a couple of posts on my blog. Today when I was re-reading Jared Diamond’s brilliant book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, I found his story of how the Easter Islanders’ race to build the most magnificent statues eventually led to their collapse chillingly similar to what is happening to American education. The hundreds of stone statues on Easter Island have been one of the greatest mysteries on earth. Located in the southern Pacific Ocean, Easter Island is over 2,000 miles away from the closest land, Chile, and 1,400 miles away from the nearest island, which is uninhabited. It is also a very small island, only 15 miles long and 10 miles wide. Yet, on this remote and small island are over 800 giant statues carved out of stone. They are large and heavy—ranging from 15 feet to 70 feet and from 10 to 270 tons. The largest ever erected weighed over 80 tons. Some of them have a separate headpiece, a cylinder of red scoria that weigh up to 12 tons. When the first European explorer discovered it in 1722, the island was almost uninhabited, with just a few thousand people living in poor conditions without any advanced technology. The explorers did not find any large animals or trees that could be used to help move and lift the statues. How could the islanders have carved, transported, and erected the statues because “organizing the carving, transport, and erection of the statues required a complex populous society living in an environment rich enough to support it” (Diamond, 2005, p.81) and such a society was apparently nonexistent when Easter Island was discovered? Many theories have been proposed. “Many Europeans were incredulous that Polynesians, ‘mere savages,” could have created the statues or the beautifully constructed stone platforms” (Diamond, 2005, p. 82). They attributed these grand works to other civilizations and even intelligent space aliens. But Jared Diamond, a professor of Geography and Physiology of UCLA and a Pulitzer Prize winner for his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, presents a more compelling theory. Equipped with a large cumulative body of knowledge generated by archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, and other scientists, Diamond uncovers a history of tragic self-destruction on Easter Island. The giant statues were indeed created by the Polynesians who began to occupy Easter Island about 1,000 years ago, when it was covered with forests of big and tall trees, some of which reached to about 100 feet in height and seven feet in diameter. These trees could be used to make seafaring canoes that enabled more productive fishing. Easter Island provided habitats for many species of seabirds. Coupled with a rather sophisticated agriculture, Easter Islanders developed a civilization that once had an estimated population of 15,000. Such a population provided sufficient labor force to carve, transport, and raise the statues. The tall trees provided the necessary tools and materials to transport and raise the statues. The giant statues were also one of the primary causes of the collapse of the Easter Island civilization. The island was divided into about a dozen territories and each belonged to one clan. Diamond suggests the statues were raised to represent their ancestors and there was a competition going on between rival clans. Each chief was trying to outdo their rivals by erecting larger and taller statues, and later adding the heavy headpiece on the statues. The statues became a symbol of status, power, and prestige to impress and intimidate rivals. And because of Easter Island’s particular situation, building bigger statues became virtually the only race among the clans. As a result, the statues got bigger, taller, and fancier. The race was costly. It took tremendous resources to carve, transport, and erect these statues. It needed surplus food to feed the people working on the statues and thus required more farming land. Trees were cut down to build vehicles for transporting and supporting the erection. Ropes used to pull the statues were made from barks of the tall trees. As more, bigger, and taller statues were built, more trees were cut down. Slowly, the whole forest on Easter Island disappeared, so were all tree species. “Immediate consequences for the islanders were losses of raw materials, losses of wild-caught foods, and decreased crop yields…The further consequences start with starvation, a population crash, and a descent into cannibalism” (Diamond, 2005, p.107, 109) Eventually, the Easter Island civilization collapsed, leaving hundreds of broken, fallen, and unfinished stone statues littered on a barren island. Although there are competing theories pointing out that human activities may not be the only cause of deforestation and ecosystem collapse on Easter Island (e.g., some scientists suggest rats as another contributing factor), Diamond provides a convincing “example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its resources.” A significant driving force behind the overexploitation was the race to erect bigger statues. I can’t help making the connection between Easter Islanders’ race to erect the statues and Obama’s Race to the Top initiative and proposed plan for reauthorization of NCLB, which has already set American education on a race of test scores for a decade. Some may object to this metaphorical connection by arguing that test scores represent the quality of education a school provides, the performance of a teacher, and students’ ability to succeed in the future. But the chiefs and priests on Easter Island also believed that the statues represented the health and power of their clans, the performance of their members, and promise for a more prosperous future. Test scores have no doubt become American’s stone statue in education. America wants to outscore other countries on international tests such as PISA and TIMSS, just like the Easter Island’s rival clans wanted to out build each other. NCLB and Race to the Top force states, schools, and teachers to outscore each other with either a club or carrots or both.  Whether it is the complex AYP calculation formula or the proposed even more complex value-added-measures, the ultimate measure remains scores on standardized tests. Whether it is the prescribed punitive measures of NCLB or the proposed “reward for excellence” by Obama, the criteria are the same: test scores and the intention no different: outscore others. In their race to build bigger statues, Easter Islanders put increasingly more resources into carving, transporting, and erecting statues. Likewise, in America’s race to obtain higher test scores, American schools have invested more resources in raising test scores. A large proportion of schools have spent significantly more time on the tested subjects (math and reading) and reduced time for other subjects and activities. Teachers have spent more time preparing students for standardized tests and focused more time on tested content. Millions of hours are spent each year for students to take the standardized tests. Billions of dollars are spent each year on testing or simply measuring whose statue is larger.  Just like the Easter Islanders’ obsession with building statues damaged their ecosystem, America’s obsession with test scores have already begun and will continue to damage its education ecosystem. The high stakes attached to test scores have already forced states, schools, and teachers to improve test scores at any cost—manipulating standards, cheating, teaching to the tests, and only focusing on those students who can bring the most gains in scores. Students who are talented and interested in things that do not contribute to improving scores are considered at risk and put in special sessions to improve their scores. Teachers’ professional autonomy is taken away so they can more easily forced to raise test scores. Local democratically elected school boards are rendered assistants of the federal government to raise test scores. American’s traditional educational strengths—tolerance of diversity, respect for individual difference, and celebration for creativity—are replaced with standardization so as to raise test scores. A broad and balanced curriculum is narrowed to what can be easily scripted and measured so as to raise test scores. What is more dangerous is that the Easter Islanders perhaps did not realize their collapse before it was too late. Blinded by the short-term glory of their magnificent statues, they were preoccupied with creating even more magnificent ones while the last palm tree was cut down. Equally blinded by the potential of common standards and testing programs to improve test scores, the current administration is ignoring the real civil rights issues facing our children: poverty, unsafe neighborhoods, and unequal access to educational resources. Basking in the victorious sunshine of forcing some 40 states to change laws and policies and trade their constitutional rights to education for promised federal dollars, the Obama Administration may be getting closer to cut down the last palm tree in American education land. And ultimately, just like Easter Island ended up a barren island filled with big statues, America may succeed in raising test scores but it will likely end up as a nation of great test takers in an intellectually barren land. Actually, this has happened before. China’s imperial testing system, keju, enticed generations of Chinese to study for the test so as to earn a position in government and bring glory to the family. But it has been blamed as a cause of China’s failure to develop modern science, technology, and enterprises as well as China’s repeated failures in wars with foreign powers because good test takers are just that: good at taking tests and nothing else. Until today, China is still working hard to move away from a test-oriented education in order to have the talents to build a knowledge-based economy (See Chapter 4 of my book Catching Up or Leading the Way). References: Diamond, J. (2005). Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Penguin.   Race to Self-Destruction: Easter Island's Statues and America's Test Scores Race to the Top, Obama Administration’s $4.35 billion education initiative, has been touted many times by the President and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as the most meaningful education reform in a generation. It is also been proposed as the blueprint for the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently bearing the more notorious title No Child Left Behind (NCLB). I have always found Race to the Top amusingly sad and educationally harmful and written about it in different places including an op-ed piece in Education Week and a couple of posts on my blog. Today when I was re-reading Jared Diamond’s brilliant book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, I found his story of how the Easter Islanders’ race to build the most magnificent statues eventually led to their collapse chillingly similar to what is happening to American education. The hundreds of stone statues on Easter Island have been one of the greatest mysteries on earth. Located in the southern Pacific Ocean, Easter Island is over 2,000 miles away from the closest land, Chile, and 1,400 miles away from the nearest island, which is uninhabited. It is also a very small island, only 15 miles long and 10 miles wide. Yet, on this remote and small island are over 800 giant statues carved out of stone. They are large and heavy—ranging from 15 feet to 70 feet and from 10 to 270 tons. The largest ever erected weighed over 80 tons. Some of them have a separate headpiece, a cylinder of red scoria that weigh up to 12 tons. When the first European explorer discovered it in 1722, the island was almost uninhabited, with just a few thousand people living in poor conditions without any advanced technology. The explorers did not find any large animals or trees that could be used to help move and lift the statues. How could the islanders have carved, transported, and erected the statues because “organizing the carving, transport, and erection of the statues required a complex populous society living in an environment rich enough to support it” (Diamond, 2005, p.81) and such a society was apparently nonexistent when Easter Island was discovered? Many theories have been proposed. “Many Europeans were incredulous that Polynesians, ‘mere savages,” could have created the statues or the beautifully constructed stone platforms” (Diamond, 2005, p. 82). They attributed these grand works to other civilizations and even intelligent space aliens. But Jared Diamond, a professor of Geography and Physiology of UCLA and a Pulitzer Prize winner for his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, presents a more compelling theory. Equipped with a large cumulative body of knowledge generated by archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, and other scientists, Diamond uncovers a history of tragic self-destruction on Easter Island. The giant statues were indeed created by the Polynesians who began to occupy Easter Island about 1,000 years ago, when it was covered with forests of big and tall trees, some of which reached to about 100 feet in height and seven feet in diameter. These trees could be used to make seafaring canoes that enabled more productive fishing. Easter Island provided habitats for many species of seabirds. Coupled with a rather sophisticated agriculture, Easter Islanders developed a civilization that once had an estimated population of 15,000. Such a population provided sufficient labor force to carve, transport, and raise the statues. The tall trees provided the necessary tools and materials to transport and raise the statues. The giant statues were also one of the primary causes of the collapse of the Easter Island civilization. The island was divided into about a dozen territories and each belonged to one clan. Diamond suggests the statues were raised to represent their ancestors and there was a competition going on between rival clans. Each chief was trying to outdo their rivals by erecting larger and taller statues, and later adding the heavy headpiece on the statues. The statues became a symbol of status, power, and prestige to impress and intimidate rivals. And because of Easter Island’s particular situation, building bigger statues became virtually the only race among the clans. As a result, the statues got bigger, taller, and fancier. The race was costly. It took tremendous resources to carve, transport, and erect these statues. It needed surplus food to feed the people working on the statues and thus required more farming land. Trees were cut down to build vehicles for transporting and supporting the erection. Ropes used to pull the statues were made from barks of the tall trees. As more, bigger, and taller statues were built, more trees were cut down. Slowly, the whole forest on Easter Island disappeared, so were all tree species. “Immediate consequences for the islanders were losses of raw materials, losses of wild-caught foods, and decreased crop yields…The further consequences start with starvation, a population crash, and a descent into cannibalism” (Diamond, 2005, p.107, 109) Eventually, the Easter Island civilization collapsed, leaving hundreds of broken, fallen, and unfinished stone statues littered on a barren island. Although there are competing theories pointing out that human activities may not be the only cause of deforestation and ecosystem collapse on Easter Island (e.g., some scientists suggest rats as another contributing factor), Diamond provides a convincing “example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its resources.” A significant driving force behind the overexploitation was the race to erect bigger statues. I can’t help making the connection between Easter Islanders’ race to erect the statues and Obama’s Race to the Top initiative and proposed plan for reauthorization of NCLB, which has already set American education on a race of test scores for a decade. Some may object to this metaphorical connection by arguing that test scores represent the quality of education a school provides, the performance of a teacher, and students’ ability to succeed in the future. But the chiefs and priests on Easter Island also believed that the statues represented the health and power of their clans, the performance of their members, and promise for a more prosperous future. Test scores have no doubt become American’s stone statue in education. America wants to outscore other countries on international tests such as PISA and TIMSS, just like the Easter Island’s rival clans wanted to out build each other. NCLB and Race to the Top force states, schools, and teachers to outscore each other with either a club or carrots or both.  Whether it is the complex AYP calculation formula or the proposed even more complex value-added-measures, the ultimate measure remains scores on standardized tests. Whether it is the prescribed punitive measures of NCLB or the proposed “reward for excellence” by Obama, the criteria are the same: test scores and the intention no different: outscore others. In their race to build bigger statues, Easter Islanders put increasingly more resources into carving, transporting, and erecting statues. Likewise, in America’s race to obtain higher test scores, American schools have invested more resources in raising test scores. A large proportion of schools have spent significantly more time on the tested subjects (math and reading) and reduced time for other subjects and activities. Teachers have spent more time preparing students for standardized tests and focused more time on tested content. Millions of hours are spent each year for students to take the standardized tests. Billions of dollars are spent each year on testing or simply measuring whose statue is larger.  Just like the Easter Islanders’ obsession with building statues damaged their ecosystem, America’s obsession with test scores have already begun and will continue to damage its education ecosystem. The high stakes attached to test scores have already forced states, schools, and teachers to improve test scores at any cost—manipulating standards, cheating, teaching to the tests, and only focusing on those students who can bring the most gains in scores. Students who are talented and interested in things that do not contribute to improving scores are considered at risk and put in special sessions to improve their scores. Teachers’ professional autonomy is taken away so they can more easily forced to raise test scores. Local democratically elected school boards are rendered assistants of the federal government to raise test scores. American’s traditional educational strengths—tolerance of diversity, respect for individual difference, and celebration for creativity—are replaced with standardization so as to raise test scores. A broad and balanced curriculum is narrowed to what can be easily scripted and measured so as to raise test scores. What is more dangerous is that the Easter Islanders perhaps did not realize their collapse before it was too late. Blinded by the short-term glory of their magnificent statues, they were preoccupied with creating even more magnificent ones while the last palm tree was cut down. Equally blinded by the potential of common standards and testing programs to improve test scores, the current administration is ignoring the real civil rights issues facing our children: poverty, unsafe neighborhoods, and unequal access to educational resources. Basking in the victorious sunshine of forcing some 40 states to change laws and policies and trade their constitutional rights to education for promised federal dollars, the Obama Administration may be getting closer to cut down the last palm tree in American education land. And ultimately, just like Easter Island ended up a barren island filled with big statues, America may succeed in raising test scores but it will likely end up as a nation of great test takers in an intellectually barren land. Actually, this has happened before. China’s imperial testing system, keju, enticed generations of Chinese to study for the test so as to earn a position in government and bring glory to the family. But it has been blamed as a cause of China’s failure to develop modern science, technology, and enterprises as well as China’s repeated failures in wars with foreign powers because good test takers are just that: good at taking tests and nothing else. Until today, China is still working hard to move away from a test-oriented education in order to have the talents to build a knowledge-based economy (See Chapter 4 of my book Catching Up or Leading the Way). References: Diamond, J. (2005). Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Penguin.   Mon, 28 Mar 2011 06:52:26 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_Race-to-Self-Destruction-Easter-Island39s-Statues-and-America39s-Test-Scores/blog/3416333/127586.html Yong_Zhao 2011-03-28T06:52:26Z Blogs ASCD EDge Race to Self-Destruction: Easter Island's Statues and America's Test Scores Race to the Top, Obama Administration’s $4.35 billion education initiative, has been touted many times by the President and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as the most meaningful education reform in a generation. It is also been proposed as the blueprint for the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently bearing the more notorious title No Child Left Behind (NCLB). I have always found Race to the Top amusingly sad and educationally harmful and written about it in different places including an op-ed piece in Education Week and a couple of posts on my blog. Today when I was re-reading Jared Diamond’s brilliant book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, I found his story of how the Easter Islanders’ race to build the most magnificent statues eventually led to their collapse chillingly similar to what is happening to American education. The hundreds of stone statues on Easter Island have been one of the greatest mysteries on earth. Located in the southern Pacific Ocean, Easter Island is over 2,000 miles away from the closest land, Chile, and 1,400 miles away from the nearest island, which is uninhabited. It is also a very small island, only 15 miles long and 10 miles wide. Yet, on this remote and small island are over 800 giant statues carved out of stone. They are large and heavy—ranging from 15 feet to 70 feet and from 10 to 270 tons. The largest ever erected weighed over 80 tons. Some of them have a separate headpiece, a cylinder of red scoria that weigh up to 12 tons. When the first European explorer discovered it in 1722, the island was almost uninhabited, with just a few thousand people living in poor conditions without any advanced technology. The explorers did not find any large animals or trees that could be used to help move and lift the statues. How could the islanders have carved, transported, and erected the statues because “organizing the carving, transport, and erection of the statues required a complex populous society living in an environment rich enough to support it” (Diamond, 2005, p.81) and such a society was apparently nonexistent when Easter Island was discovered? Many theories have been proposed. “Many Europeans were incredulous that Polynesians, ‘mere savages,” could have created the statues or the beautifully constructed stone platforms” (Diamond, 2005, p. 82). They attributed these grand works to other civilizations and even intelligent space aliens. But Jared Diamond, a professor of Geography and Physiology of UCLA and a Pulitzer Prize winner for his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, presents a more compelling theory. Equipped with a large cumulative body of knowledge generated by archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, and other scientists, Diamond uncovers a history of tragic self-destruction on Easter Island. The giant statues were indeed created by the Polynesians who began to occupy Easter Island about 1,000 years ago, when it was covered with forests of big and tall trees, some of which reached to about 100 feet in height and seven feet in diameter. These trees could be used to make seafaring canoes that enabled more productive fishing. Easter Island provided habitats for many species of seabirds. Coupled with a rather sophisticated agriculture, Easter Islanders developed a civilization that once had an estimated population of 15,000. Such a population provided sufficient labor force to carve, transport, and raise the statues. The tall trees provided the necessary tools and materials to transport and raise the statues. The giant statues were also one of the primary causes of the collapse of the Easter Island civilization. The island was divided into about a dozen territories and each belonged to one clan. Diamond suggests the statues were raised to represent their ancestors and there was a competition going on between rival clans. Each chief was trying to outdo their rivals by erecting larger and taller statues, and later adding the heavy headpiece on the statues. The statues became a symbol of status, power, and prestige to impress and intimidate rivals. And because of Easter Island’s particular situation, building bigger statues became virtually the only race among the clans. As a result, the statues got bigger, taller, and fancier. The race was costly. It took tremendous resources to carve, transport, and erect these statues. It needed surplus food to feed the people working on the statues and thus required more farming land. Trees were cut down to build vehicles for transporting and supporting the erection. Ropes used to pull the statues were made from barks of the tall trees. As more, bigger, and taller statues were built, more trees were cut down. Slowly, the whole forest on Easter Island disappeared, so were all tree species. “Immediate consequences for the islanders were losses of raw materials, losses of wild-caught foods, and decreased crop yields…The further consequences start with starvation, a population crash, and a descent into cannibalism” (Diamond, 2005, p.107, 109) Eventually, the Easter Island civilization collapsed, leaving hundreds of broken, fallen, and unfinished stone statues littered on a barren island. Although there are competing theories pointing out that human activities may not be the only cause of deforestation and ecosystem collapse on Easter Island (e.g., some scientists suggest rats as another contributing factor), Diamond provides a convincing “example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its resources.” A significant driving force behind the overexploitation was the race to erect bigger statues. I can’t help making the connection between Easter Islanders’ race to erect the statues and Obama’s Race to the Top initiative and proposed plan for reauthorization of NCLB, which has already set American education on a race of test scores for a decade. Some may object to this metaphorical connection by arguing that test scores represent the quality of education a school provides, the performance of a teacher, and students’ ability to succeed in the future. But the chiefs and priests on Easter Island also believed that the statues represented the health and power of their clans, the performance of their members, and promise for a more prosperous future. Test scores have no doubt become American’s stone statue in education. America wants to outscore other countries on international tests such as PISA and TIMSS, just like the Easter Island’s rival clans wanted to out build each other. NCLB and Race to the Top force states, schools, and teachers to outscore each other with either a club or carrots or both.  Whether it is the complex AYP calculation formula or the proposed even more complex value-added-measures, the ultimate measure remains scores on standardized tests. Whether it is the prescribed punitive measures of NCLB or the proposed “reward for excellence” by Obama, the criteria are the same: test scores and the intention no different: outscore others. In their race to build bigger statues, Easter Islanders put increasingly more resources into carving, transporting, and erecting statues. Likewise, in America’s race to obtain higher test scores, American schools have invested more resources in raising test scores. A large proportion of schools have spent significantly more time on the tested subjects (math and reading) and reduced time for other subjects and activities. Teachers have spent more time preparing students for standardized tests and focused more time on tested content. Millions of hours are spent each year for students to take the standardized tests. Billions of dollars are spent each year on testing or simply measuring whose statue is larger.  Just like the Easter Islanders’ obsession with building statues damaged their ecosystem, America’s obsession with test scores have already begun and will continue to damage its education ecosystem. The high stakes attached to test scores have already forced states, schools, and teachers to improve test scores at any cost—manipulating standards, cheating, teaching to the tests, and only focusing on those students who can bring the most gains in scores. Students who are talented and interested in things that do not contribute to improving scores are considered at risk and put in special sessions to improve their scores. Teachers’ professional autonomy is taken away so they can more easily forced to raise test scores. Local democratically elected school boards are rendered assistants of the federal government to raise test scores. American’s traditional educational strengths—tolerance of diversity, respect for individual difference, and celebration for creativity—are replaced with standardization so as to raise test scores. A broad and balanced curriculum is narrowed to what can be easily scripted and measured so as to raise test scores. What is more dangerous is that the Easter Islanders perhaps did not realize their collapse before it was too late. Blinded by the short-term glory of their magnificent statues, they were preoccupied with creating even more magnificent ones while the last palm tree was cut down. Equally blinded by the potential of common standards and testing programs to improve test scores, the current administration is ignoring the real civil rights issues facing our children: poverty, unsafe neighborhoods, and unequal access to educational resources. Basking in the victorious sunshine of forcing some 40 states to change laws and policies and trade their constitutional rights to education for promised federal dollars, the Obama Administration may be getting closer to cut down the last palm tree in American education land. And ultimately, just like Easter Island ended up a barren island filled with big statues, America may succeed in raising test scores but it will likely end up as a nation of great test takers in an intellectually barren land. Actually, this has happened before. China’s imperial testing system, keju, enticed generations of Chinese to study for the test so as to earn a position in government and bring glory to the family. But it has been blamed as a cause of China’s failure to develop modern science, technology, and enterprises as well as China’s repeated failures in wars with foreign powers because good test takers are just that: good at taking tests and nothing else. Until today, China is still working hard to move away from a test-oriented education in order to have the talents to build a knowledge-based economy (See Chapter 4 of my book Catching Up or Leading the Way). References: Diamond, J. (2005). Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Penguin.   blogs nonadult false Race to Self Destruction: Easter Island's Statues and America's Test Scores text blog blogs 1716 1 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=20918099&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_13304969_127586_20918099_ap_160X120.jpg false United States OR Eugene 0 Blogs 1 3416333 20918099 ASCD EDge Member 445 http://edge.ascd.org/_A-Nation-at-Risk-Edited-by-Yong-Zhao/blog/3388262/127586.html A Nation At Risk - April 1983 Edited by Yong Zhao, March, 2011 Next month marks the 28th anniversary of the publication of A Nation At Risk, one of the most influential education documents in the US history. As an English language learner, I have always been impressed with the prose and composition of this document, although I have raised questions about its content in my book. The title of the document captures the present condition of American education very well. The goals and aspirations are well stated and I agree with them. But what I don’t agree is the indicators of risk, i.e. student test scores by and large, which after almost 30 years, have been proven to be irrelevant, as I have argued in my book. The real risk America faces is the insane policies and scapegoating practices in education. So I decided to edit the document. I have replaced what I think misleading and misconceived phrases, sentences, and paragraphs with what I believe to be correct. The italics are what I added. If you are interested in what I deleted, read the PDF version.I have only done this for the first part. I may continue to edit the rest. Theoriginal version of the document is here—YZ, 10-03-11   All, regardless of race or class or economic status, are entitled to a fair chance and to the tools for developing their individual powers of mind and spirit to the utmost. This promise means that all children by virtue of their own efforts, competently guided, can hope to attain the mature and informed judgement needed to secure gainful employment, and to manage their own lives, thereby serving not only their own interests but also the progress of society itself. Our Nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world. This report is concerned with only one of the many causes and dimensions of the problem, but it is the one that undergirds American prosperity, security, and civility. We report to the American people that while we can take justifiable pride in what our schools and colleges have historically accomplished and contributed to the United States and the well-being of its people, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of insanity and scapegoating that threaten our very future as a Nation and a people. What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur--others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments. If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the insane policies that threaten democracy, turn American children into robotic test takers, narrow and homogenize our children’s education, reward grant writing skills instead of helping the needy children and stimulate innovation (e.g., Race to the Top), value testing over teaching, and scapegoat teachers that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament. Our government and business leaders seem to have lost sight of the basic purposes of schooling, and of the high expectations and disciplined effort needed to attain them. This report, the result of 18 months of study, seeks to generate reform of our educational system in fundamental ways and to renew the Nation's commitment to schools and colleges of high quality throughout the length and breadth of our land. That we have compromised this commitment is, upon reflection, hardly surprising, given the multitude of often conflicting demands we have placed on our Nation's schools and colleges. They are routinely called on to provide solutions to personal, social, and political problems that the home and other institutions either will not or cannot resolve. We must understand that these demands on our schools and colleges often exact an educational cost as well as a financial one. In his 2011 State of the Union speech, President Obama said ““We need to out-innovate, outeducate and outbuild the rest of the world,” This report, therefore, is as much an open letter to the American people as it is a report to the Secretary of Education. We are confident that the American people, properly informed, will do what is right for their children and for the generations to come. The Risk History is not kind to idlers. The time is long past when American's destiny was assured simply by an abundance of natural resources and inexhaustible human enthusiasm, and by our relative isolation from the malignant problems of older civilizations. The world is indeed one global village. We live among determined, well-educated, and strongly motivated competitors. We compete with them for international standing and markets, not only with products but also with the ideas of our laboratories and neighborhood workshops. America's position in the world may once have been reasonably secure with only a few exceptionally well-trained men and women. It is no longer. The risk is not only that the Chinese make faster computers, cheaper toys, and more electronics than Americans and have government subsidies for development and export. It is not just that the Indians recently built the world's cheapest cars, or that American strawberries and apples, once the pride of the world, are being picked by Mexicans. It is also that these developments signify a redistribution of trained capability throughout the globe. Knowledge, learning, information, and skilled intelligence are the new raw materials of international commerce and are today spreading throughout the world as vigorously as miracle drugs, synthetic fertilizers, and blue jeans did earlier. If only to keep and improve on the slim competitive edge we still retain in world markets, we must dedicate ourselves to the reform of our educational system for the benefit of all--old and young alike, affluent and poor, majority and minority. Learning is the indispensable investment required for success in the "information age" we are entering. Our concern, however, goes well beyond matters such as industry and commerce. It also includes the intellectual, moral, and spiritual strengths of our people which knit together the very fabric of our society. The people of the United States need to know that individuals in our society who do not possess the creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, global competence essential to this new era will be effectively disenfranchised, not simply from the material rewards that accompany competent performance, but also from the chance to participate fully in our national life. A high level of shared education is essential to a free, democratic society and to the fostering of a common culture, especially in a country that prides itself on pluralism and individual freedom. For our country to function, citizens must be able to reach some common understandings on complex issues, often on short notice and on the basis of conflicting or incomplete evidence. Education helps form these common understandings, a point Thomas Jefferson made long ago in his justly famous dictum: I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion. Part of what is at risk is the promise first made on this continent: All, regardless of race or class or economic status, are entitled to a fair chance and to the tools for developing their individual powers of mind and spirit to the utmost. This promise means that all children by virtue of their own efforts, competently guided, can hope to attain the mature and informed judgment needed to secure gainful employment, and to manage their own lives, thereby serving not only their own interests but also the progress of society itself. Indicators of the Risk The educational dimensions of the risk before us have been amply documented inmaterials read by this editor. For example: For the first time, research shows American creativity is declining. Since 1990, Americans’ creativity scores have been on the decline significantly and most seriously among young children (from kindergarten through sixth grade). As a result of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), a significant number of schools in America have narrowed their curriculum by cutting arts, music, physical education, social studies, science, recess, or lunch. “Forty-four percent of all districts nationwide have added time for English language arts and/or math, at the expense of social studies, science, art and music, physical education, recess, or lunch.” Meanwhile, our competitors such as China and Singapore have been decreasing their instructional time for math and increasing time for creativity, critical thinking, arts, physical education. For example, since 1999 China has decreased total instructional hours by 380 for grades 1 through 6, reduced math instruction by 140 hours and added 156 instructional hours for physical education. Unethical and dishonest behaviors have become rampant in American education. Teachers, school administrators, and students have been forced to engage in all sorts of cheating to raise test scores and state governments lower standards to avoid penalties. America spends $1.1 billion dollars per year testing their children under NCLB while many schools have to cut short instructional hours and or lay off teachers due to budget cuts. In 2004–2005, Wisconsin students spent a total of about 1.4 million hours taking state tests; with full implementation of NCLB testing, that number will more than double, to 2.9 million. These figures do not include the time spent distributing and collecting materials, taking practice tests, giving instructions, and addressing other logistics of testing. American teachers’ morale has reached a crisis level. Over a quarter of teachers leave the profession within the first three years and nearly half leave within the first five. Teacher unions, the last organized line of defense for public education, are being threatened across the nation. Yet, the governments continue to impose policies that connect teacher evaluation with student test scores although research has clearly shown that such policies do not improve student learning, even measured by test scores. American education has become a nationalized standardized education system. Locally democratically elected school boards have been rendered bureaucratic assistants of the state and federal government to enforce implementation of state and federal mandates rather than guarding the education of their children. Less than 20% of American students are enrolled in a foreign language course while all Chinese students are required to study a foreign language beginning from third grade at the latest. Only 11 percent of twelfth graders nationwide demonstrated proficiency in U.S. history. More than 80 percent of New York City eighth graders did not meet the state standards in social studies in 2004.  Moreover, the number of students meeting the social studies standards has decreased by almost 20 percentage points since 2002. 25 percent of college-bound high school students could not name the ocean between California and Asia. 80 percent of young Americans (ages 18 to 24) did not know that India is the world’s largest democracy; 37 percent could not locate China on a map of Asia and the Middle East. The average number of languages spoken by American business executives is 1.5, compared with an average of 3.9 languages spoken by business executives in the Netherlands. Business and military leaders complain about the lack of international and cross cultural skills of American graduates. “A 2002 survey of large U.S. corporations found that nearly 30 percent of the companies believed they had failed to exploit fully their international business opportunities due to insufficient personnel with international skills. The consequences of insufficient culturally competent workers, as identified by the firms, included: missed marketing or business opportunities; failure to recognize important shifts in host country policies toward foreign-owned corporations; failure to anticipate the needs of international customers; and failure to take full advantage of expertise available or technological advances occurring abroad. Almost 80 percent of the business leaders surveyed expected their overall business to increase notably if they had more internationally competent employees on staff." These deficiencies come at a time when the demand for creative and globally competent workers in new fields is accelerating rapidly. For example: A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future. Yet it’s not just about sustaining our nation’s economic growth. All around us are matters of national and international importance that are crying out for creative solutions, from saving the Gulf of Mexico to bringing peace to Afghanistan to delivering health care. Such solutions emerge from a healthy marketplace of ideas, sustained by a populace constantly contributing original ideas and receptive to the ideas of others. Creative class jobs will make up roughly half of all projected U.S. employment growth - adding 6.8 million new jobs by 2018.  More than 35 million people are currently employed in creative class work in fields like science, technology, and engineering; business, finance, and management; law, health care, and education; and arts, culture, media, and entertainment. American companies lose an estimated $2 billion a year due to inadequate cross-cultural guidance for their employees in multicultural situations. U.S.-based multinational corporations employed 21.8 million workers in the United States in 2003, accounting for one-fifth of total U.S. non-government employment. Analysts examining these indicators of student performance and the demands for new skills have made some chilling observations. Educational researcher Paul Hurd concluded at the end of a thorough national survey of student achievement that within the context of the modern scientific revolution, "We are raising a new generation of Americans that is scientifically and technologically illiterate." In a similar vein, John Slaughter, a former Director of the National Science Foundation, warned of "a growing chasm between a small scientific and technological elite and a citizenry ill-informed, indeed uninformed, on issues with a science component." But the problem does not stop there, nor do all observers see it the same way. Some worry that schools may emphasize such rudiments as reading and computation at the expense of other essential skills such as comprehension, analysis, solving problems, and drawing conclusions. Still others are concerned that an over-emphasis on technical and occupational skills will leave little time for studying the arts and humanities that so enrich daily life, help maintain civility, and develop a sense of community. Knowledge of the humanities, they maintain, must be harnessed to science and technology if the latter are to remain creative and humane, just as the humanities need to be informed by science and technology if they are to remain relevant to the human condition. Another analyst, Paul Copperman, has drawn a sobering conclusion. Until now, he has noted: Each generation of Americans has outstripped its parents in education, in literacy, and in economic attainment. For the first time in the history of our country, the educational skills of one generation will not surpass, will not equal, will not even approach, those of their parents. It is important, of course, to recognize that the average citizen today is better educated and more knowledgeable than the average citizen of a generation ago--more literate, and exposed to more mathematics, literature, and science. The positive impact of this fact on the well-being of our country and the lives of our people cannot be overstated. Nevertheless, the average graduate of our schools and colleges today is not as well-educated as the average graduate of 25 or 35 years ago, when a much smaller proportion of our population completed high school and college. The negative impact of this fact likewise cannot be overstated. Hope and Frustration Statistics and their interpretation by experts show only the surface dimension of the difficulties we face. Beneath them lies a tension between hope and frustration that characterizes current attitudes about education at every level. We have heard the voices of high school and college students, school board members, and teachers; of leaders of industry, minority groups, and higher education; of parents and State officials. We could hear the hope evident in their commitment to quality education and in their descriptions of outstanding programs and schools. We could also hear the intensity of their frustration, a growing impatience with shoddiness in many walks of American life, and the complaint that this shoddiness is too often reflected in our schools and colleges. Their frustration threatens to overwhelm their hope. What lies behind this emerging national sense of frustration can be described as both a dimming of personal expectations and the fear of losing a shared vision for America. On the personal level the student, the parent, and the caring teacher all perceive that a basic promise is not being kept. More and more young people emerge from high school ready neither for college nor for work. This predicament becomes more acute as the knowledge base continues its rapid expansion, the number of traditional jobs shrinks, and new jobs demand greater sophistication and preparation. On a broader scale, we sense that this undertone of frustration has significant political implications, for it cuts across ages, generations, races, and political and economic groups. We have come to understand that the public will demand that educational and political leaders act forcefully and effectively on these issues. Indeed, such demands have already appeared and could well become a unifying national preoccupation. This unity, however, can be achieved only if we avoid the unproductive tendency of some to search for scapegoats among the victims, such as the beleaguered teachers. On the positive side is the significant movement by political and educational leaders to search for solutions--so far centering largely on the nearly desperate need for increased support for the teaching of mathematics and science. This movement is but a start on what we believe is a larger and more educationally encompassing need to improve teaching and learning in fields such as English, history, geography, economics, and foreign languages. We believe this movement must be broadened and directed toward reform and excellence throughout education. Excellence in Education We define "excellence" to mean several related things. At the level of the individual learner, it means performing on the boundary of individual ability in ways that test and push back personal limits, in school and in the workplace. Excellence characterizes a school or college that sets high expectations and goals for all learners, then tries in every way possible to help students reach them. Excellence characterizes a society that has adopted these policies, for it will then be prepared through the education and skill of its people to respond to the challenges of a rapidly changing world. Our Nation's people and its schools and colleges must be committed to achieving excellence in all these senses. We do not believe that a public commitment to excellence and educational reform must be made at the expense of a strong public commitment to the equitable treatment of our diverse population. The twin goals of equity and high-quality schooling have profound and practical meaning for our economy and society, and we cannot permit one to yield to the other either in principle or in practice. To do so would deny young people their chance to learn and live according to their aspirations and abilities. It also would lead to a generalized accommodation to mediocrity in our society on the one hand or the creation of an undemocratic elitism on the other. Our goal must be to develop the talents of all to their fullest. Attaining that goal requires that we expect and assist all students to work to the limits of their capabilities. We should expect schools to have genuinely high standards rather than minimum ones, and parents to support and encourage their children to make the most of their talents and abilities. The search for solutions to our educational problems must also include a commitment to life-long learning. The task of rebuilding our system of learning is enormous and must be properly understood and taken seriously: Although a million and a half new workers enter the economy each year from our schools and colleges, the adults working today will still make up about 75 percent of the workforce in the year 2000. These workers, and new entrants into the workforce, will need further education and retraining if they--and we as a Nation--are to thrive and prosper. The Learning Society In a world of ever-accelerating competition and change in the conditions of the workplace, of ever-greater danger, and of ever-larger opportunities for those prepared to meet them, educational reform should focus on the goal of creating a Learning Society. At the heart of such a society is the commitment to a set of values and to a system of education that affords all members the opportunity to stretch their minds to full capacity, from early childhood through adulthood, learning more as the world itself changes. Such a society has as a basic foundation the idea that education is important not only because of what it contributes to one's career goals but also because of the value it adds to the general quality of one's life. Also at the heart of the Learning Society are educational opportunities extending far beyond the traditional institutions of learning, our schools and colleges. They extend into homes and workplaces; into libraries, art galleries, museums, and science centers; indeed, into every place where the individual can develop and mature in work and life. In our view, formal schooling in youth is the essential foundation for learning throughout one's life. But without life-long learning, one's skills will become rapidly dated. In contrast to the ideal of the Learning Society, however, we find that for too many people education means doing the minimum work necessary for the moment, then coasting through life on what may have been learned in its first quarter. But this should not surprise us because we tend to express our educational standards and expectations largely in terms of "minimum requirements." And where there should be a coherent continuum of learning, we have none, but instead an often incoherent, outdated patchwork quilt. Many individual, sometimes heroic, examples of schools and colleges of great merit do exist. Our findings and testimony confirm the vitality of a number of notable schools and programs, but their very distinction stands out against a vast mass shaped by tensions and pressures that inhibit systematic academic and vocational achievement for the majority of students. In some metropolitan areas basic literacy has become the goal rather than the starting point. In some colleges maintaining enrollments is of greater day-to-day concern than maintaining rigorous academic standards. And the ideal of academic excellence as the primary goal of schooling seems to be fading across the board in American education. Thus, we issue this call to all who care about America and its future: to parents and students; to teachers, administrators, and school board members; to colleges and industry; to union members and military leaders; to governors and State legislators; to the President; to members of Congress and other public officials; to members of learned and scientific societies; to the print and electronic media; to concerned citizens everywhere. America is at risk. We are confident that America can address this risk. If the tasks we set forth are initiated now and our recommendations are fully realized over the next several years, we can expect reform of our Nation's schools, colleges, and universities. This would also reverse the current declining trend--a trend that stems more from weakness of purpose, confusion of vision, underuse of talent, and lack of leadership, than from conditions beyond our control. The Tools at Hand It is our conviction that the essential raw materials needed to reform our educational system are waiting to be mobilized through effective leadership: the natural abilities of the young that cry out to be developed and the undiminished concern of parents for the well-being of their children; the commitment of the Nation to high retention rates in schools and colleges and to full access to education for all; the persistent and authentic American dream that superior performance can raise one's state in life and shape one's own future; the dedication, against all odds, that keeps teachers serving in schools and colleges, even as the rewards diminish; our better understanding of learning and teaching and the implications of this knowledge for school practice, and the numerous examples of local success as a result of superior effort and effective dissemination; the ingenuity of our policymakers, scientists, State and local educators, and scholars in formulating solutions once problems are better understood; the traditional belief that paying for education is an investment in ever-renewable human resources that are more durable and flexible than capital plant and equipment, and the availability in this country of sufficient financial means to invest in education; the equally sound tradition, from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 until today, that the Federal Government should supplement State, local, and other resources to foster key national educational goals; and the voluntary efforts of individuals, businesses, and parent and civic groups to cooperate in strengthening educational programs. These raw materials, combined with the unparalleled array of educational organizations in America, offer us the possibility to create a Learning Society, in which public, private, and parochial schools; colleges and universities; vocational and technical schools and institutes; libraries; science centers, museums, and other cultural institutions; and corporate training and retraining programs offer opportunities and choices for all to learn throughout life. The Public's Commitment Of all the tools at hand, the public's support for education is the most powerful. In a message to a National Academy of Sciences meeting in May 1982, President Reagan commented on this fact when he said: This public awareness--and I hope public action--is long overdue.... This country was built on American respect for education. . . Our challenge now is to create a resurgence of that thirst for education that typifies our Nation's history. The most recent (1982) Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools strongly supported a theme heard during our hearings: People are steadfast in their belief that education is the major foundation for the future strength of this country. They even considered education more important than developing the best industrial system or the strongest military force, perhaps because they understood education as the cornerstone of both. They also held that education is "extremely important" to one's future success, and that public education should be the top priority for additional Federal funds. Education occupied first place among 12 funding categories considered in the survey--above health care, welfare, and military defense, with 55 percent selecting public education as one of their first three choices. Very clearly, the public understands the primary importance of education as the foundation for a satisfying life, an enlightened and civil society, a strong economy, and a secure Nation. At the same time, the public has no patience with undemanding and superfluous high school offerings. In another survey, more than 75 percent of all those questioned believed every student planning to go to college should take 4 years of mathematics, English, history/U.S. government, and science, with more than 50 percent adding 2 years each of a foreign language and economics or business. The public even supports requiring much of this curriculum for students who do not plan to go to college. These standards far exceed the strictest high school graduation requirements of any State today, and they also exceed the admission standards of all but a handful of our most selective colleges and universities. Another dimension of the public's support offers the prospect of constructive reform. The best term to characterize it may simply be the honorable word "patriotism." Citizens know intuitively what some of the best economists have shown in their research, that education is one of the chief engines of a society's material well-being. They know, too, that education is the common bond of a pluralistic society and helps tie us to other cultures around the globe. Citizens also know in their bones that the safety of the United States depends principally on the wit, skill, and spirit of a self-confident people, today and tomorrow. It is, therefore, essential--especially in a period of long-term decline in educational achievement--for government at all levels to affirm its responsibility for nurturing the Nation's intellectual capital. And perhaps most important, citizens know and believe that the meaning of America to the rest of the world must be something better than it seems to many today. Americans like to think of this Nation as the preeminent country for generating the great ideas and material benefits for all mankind. The citizen is dismayed at a steady 15-year decline in industrial productivity, as one great American industry after another falls to world competition. The citizen wants the country to act on the belief, expressed in our hearings and by the large majority in the Gallup Poll, that education should be at the top of the Nation's agenda. ?-###- [Introduction] [Findings]   A Nation At Risk - April 1983 Edited by Yong Zhao, March, 2011 Next month marks the 28th anniversary of the publication of A Nation At Risk, one of the most influential education documents in the US history. As an English language learner, I have always been impressed with the prose and composition of this document, although I have raised questions about its content in my book. The title of the document captures the present condition of American education very well. The goals and aspirations are well stated and I agree with them. But what I don’t agree is the indicators of risk, i.e. student test scores by and large, which after almost 30 years, have been proven to be irrelevant, as I have argued in my book. The real risk America faces is the insane policies and scapegoating practices in education. So I decided to edit the document. I have replaced what I think misleading and misconceived phrases, sentences, and paragraphs with what I believe to be correct. The italics are what I added. If you are interested in what I deleted, read the PDF version.I have only done this for the first part. I may continue to edit the rest. Theoriginal version of the document is here—YZ, 10-03-11   All, regardless of race or class or economic status, are entitled to a fair chance and to the tools for developing their individual powers of mind and spirit to the utmost. This promise means that all children by virtue of their own efforts, competently guided, can hope to attain the mature and informed judgement needed to secure gainful employment, and to manage their own lives, thereby serving not only their own interests but also the progress of society itself. Our Nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world. This report is concerned with only one of the many causes and dimensions of the problem, but it is the one that undergirds American prosperity, security, and civility. We report to the American people that while we can take justifiable pride in what our schools and colleges have historically accomplished and contributed to the United States and the well-being of its people, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of insanity and scapegoating that threaten our very future as a Nation and a people. What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur--others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments. If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the insane policies that threaten democracy, turn American children into robotic test takers, narrow and homogenize our children’s education, reward grant writing skills instead of helping the needy children and stimulate innovation (e.g., Race to the Top), value testing over teaching, and scapegoat teachers that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament. Our government and business leaders seem to have lost sight of the basic purposes of schooling, and of the high expectations and disciplined effort needed to attain them. This report, the result of 18 months of study, seeks to generate reform of our educational system in fundamental ways and to renew the Nation's commitment to schools and colleges of high quality throughout the length and breadth of our land. That we have compromised this commitment is, upon reflection, hardly surprising, given the multitude of often conflicting demands we have placed on our Nation's schools and colleges. They are routinely called on to provide solutions to personal, social, and political problems that the home and other institutions either will not or cannot resolve. We must understand that these demands on our schools and colleges often exact an educational cost as well as a financial one. In his 2011 State of the Union speech, President Obama said ““We need to out-innovate, outeducate and outbuild the rest of the world,” This report, therefore, is as much an open letter to the American people as it is a report to the Secretary of Education. We are confident that the American people, properly informed, will do what is right for their children and for the generations to come. The Risk History is not kind to idlers. The time is long past when American's destiny was assured simply by an abundance of natural resources and inexhaustible human enthusiasm, and by our relative isolation from the malignant problems of older civilizations. The world is indeed one global village. We live among determined, well-educated, and strongly motivated competitors. We compete with them for international standing and markets, not only with products but also with the ideas of our laboratories and neighborhood workshops. America's position in the world may once have been reasonably secure with only a few exceptionally well-trained men and women. It is no longer. The risk is not only that the Chinese make faster computers, cheaper toys, and more electronics than Americans and have government subsidies for development and export. It is not just that the Indians recently built the world's cheapest cars, or that American strawberries and apples, once the pride of the world, are being picked by Mexicans. It is also that these developments signify a redistribution of trained capability throughout the globe. Knowledge, learning, information, and skilled intelligence are the new raw materials of international commerce and are today spreading throughout the world as vigorously as miracle drugs, synthetic fertilizers, and blue jeans did earlier. If only to keep and improve on the slim competitive edge we still retain in world markets, we must dedicate ourselves to the reform of our educational system for the benefit of all--old and young alike, affluent and poor, majority and minority. Learning is the indispensable investment required for success in the "information age" we are entering. Our concern, however, goes well beyond matters such as industry and commerce. It also includes the intellectual, moral, and spiritual strengths of our people which knit together the very fabric of our society. The people of the United States need to know that individuals in our society who do not possess the creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, global competence essential to this new era will be effectively disenfranchised, not simply from the material rewards that accompany competent performance, but also from the chance to participate fully in our national life. A high level of shared education is essential to a free, democratic society and to the fostering of a common culture, especially in a country that prides itself on pluralism and individual freedom. For our country to function, citizens must be able to reach some common understandings on complex issues, often on short notice and on the basis of conflicting or incomplete evidence. Education helps form these common understandings, a point Thomas Jefferson made long ago in his justly famous dictum: I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion. Part of what is at risk is the promise first made on this continent: All, regardless of race or class or economic status, are entitled to a fair chance and to the tools for developing their individual powers of mind and spirit to the utmost. This promise means that all children by virtue of their own efforts, competently guided, can hope to attain the mature and informed judgment needed to secure gainful employment, and to manage their own lives, thereby serving not only their own interests but also the progress of society itself. Indicators of the Risk The educational dimensions of the risk before us have been amply documented inmaterials read by this editor. For example: For the first time, research shows American creativity is declining. Since 1990, Americans’ creativity scores have been on the decline significantly and most seriously among young children (from kindergarten through sixth grade). As a result of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), a significant number of schools in America have narrowed their curriculum by cutting arts, music, physical education, social studies, science, recess, or lunch. “Forty-four percent of all districts nationwide have added time for English language arts and/or math, at the expense of social studies, science, art and music, physical education, recess, or lunch.” Meanwhile, our competitors such as China and Singapore have been decreasing their instructional time for math and increasing time for creativity, critical thinking, arts, physical education. For example, since 1999 China has decreased total instructional hours by 380 for grades 1 through 6, reduced math instruction by 140 hours and added 156 instructional hours for physical education. Unethical and dishonest behaviors have become rampant in American education. Teachers, school administrators, and students have been forced to engage in all sorts of cheating to raise test scores and state governments lower standards to avoid penalties. America spends $1.1 billion dollars per year testing their children under NCLB while many schools have to cut short instructional hours and or lay off teachers due to budget cuts. In 2004–2005, Wisconsin students spent a total of about 1.4 million hours taking state tests; with full implementation of NCLB testing, that number will more than double, to 2.9 million. These figures do not include the time spent distributing and collecting materials, taking practice tests, giving instructions, and addressing other logistics of testing. American teachers’ morale has reached a crisis level. Over a quarter of teachers leave the profession within the first three years and nearly half leave within the first five. Teacher unions, the last organized line of defense for public education, are being threatened across the nation. Yet, the governments continue to impose policies that connect teacher evaluation with student test scores although research has clearly shown that such policies do not improve student learning, even measured by test scores. American education has become a nationalized standardized education system. Locally democratically elected school boards have been rendered bureaucratic assistants of the state and federal government to enforce implementation of state and federal mandates rather than guarding the education of their children. Less than 20% of American students are enrolled in a foreign language course while all Chinese students are required to study a foreign language beginning from third grade at the latest. Only 11 percent of twelfth graders nationwide demonstrated proficiency in U.S. history. More than 80 percent of New York City eighth graders did not meet the state standards in social studies in 2004.  Moreover, the number of students meeting the social studies standards has decreased by almost 20 percentage points since 2002. 25 percent of college-bound high school students could not name the ocean between California and Asia. 80 percent of young Americans (ages 18 to 24) did not know that India is the world’s largest democracy; 37 percent could not locate China on a map of Asia and the Middle East. The average number of languages spoken by American business executives is 1.5, compared with an average of 3.9 languages spoken by business executives in the Netherlands. Business and military leaders complain about the lack of international and cross cultural skills of American graduates. “A 2002 survey of large U.S. corporations found that nearly 30 percent of the companies believed they had failed to exploit fully their international business opportunities due to insufficient personnel with international skills. The consequences of insufficient culturally competent workers, as identified by the firms, included: missed marketing or business opportunities; failure to recognize important shifts in host country policies toward foreign-owned corporations; failure to anticipate the needs of international customers; and failure to take full advantage of expertise available or technological advances occurring abroad. Almost 80 percent of the business leaders surveyed expected their overall business to increase notably if they had more internationally competent employees on staff." These deficiencies come at a time when the demand for creative and globally competent workers in new fields is accelerating rapidly. For example: A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future. Yet it’s not just about sustaining our nation’s economic growth. All around us are matters of national and international importance that are crying out for creative solutions, from saving the Gulf of Mexico to bringing peace to Afghanistan to delivering health care. Such solutions emerge from a healthy marketplace of ideas, sustained by a populace constantly contributing original ideas and receptive to the ideas of others. Creative class jobs will make up roughly half of all projected U.S. employment growth - adding 6.8 million new jobs by 2018.  More than 35 million people are currently employed in creative class work in fields like science, technology, and engineering; business, finance, and management; law, health care, and education; and arts, culture, media, and entertainment. American companies lose an estimated $2 billion a year due to inadequate cross-cultural guidance for their employees in multicultural situations. U.S.-based multinational corporations employed 21.8 million workers in the United States in 2003, accounting for one-fifth of total U.S. non-government employment. Analysts examining these indicators of student performance and the demands for new skills have made some chilling observations. Educational researcher Paul Hurd concluded at the end of a thorough national survey of student achievement that within the context of the modern scientific revolution, "We are raising a new generation of Americans that is scientifically and technologically illiterate." In a similar vein, John Slaughter, a former Director of the National Science Foundation, warned of "a growing chasm between a small scientific and technological elite and a citizenry ill-informed, indeed uninformed, on issues with a science component." But the problem does not stop there, nor do all observers see it the same way. Some worry that schools may emphasize such rudiments as reading and computation at the expense of other essential skills such as comprehension, analysis, solving problems, and drawing conclusions. Still others are concerned that an over-emphasis on technical and occupational skills will leave little time for studying the arts and humanities that so enrich daily life, help maintain civility, and develop a sense of community. Knowledge of the humanities, they maintain, must be harnessed to science and technology if the latter are to remain creative and humane, just as the humanities need to be informed by science and technology if they are to remain relevant to the human condition. Another analyst, Paul Copperman, has drawn a sobering conclusion. Until now, he has noted: Each generation of Americans has outstripped its parents in education, in literacy, and in economic attainment. For the first time in the history of our country, the educational skills of one generation will not surpass, will not equal, will not even approach, those of their parents. It is important, of course, to recognize that the average citizen today is better educated and more knowledgeable than the average citizen of a generation ago--more literate, and exposed to more mathematics, literature, and science. The positive impact of this fact on the well-being of our country and the lives of our people cannot be overstated. Nevertheless, the average graduate of our schools and colleges today is not as well-educated as the average graduate of 25 or 35 years ago, when a much smaller proportion of our population completed high school and college. The negative impact of this fact likewise cannot be overstated. Hope and Frustration Statistics and their interpretation by experts show only the surface dimension of the difficulties we face. Beneath them lies a tension between hope and frustration that characterizes current attitudes about education at every level. We have heard the voices of high school and college students, school board members, and teachers; of leaders of industry, minority groups, and higher education; of parents and State officials. We could hear the hope evident in their commitment to quality education and in their descriptions of outstanding programs and schools. We could also hear the intensity of their frustration, a growing impatience with shoddiness in many walks of American life, and the complaint that this shoddiness is too often reflected in our schools and colleges. Their frustration threatens to overwhelm their hope. What lies behind this emerging national sense of frustration can be described as both a dimming of personal expectations and the fear of losing a shared vision for America. On the personal level the student, the parent, and the caring teacher all perceive that a basic promise is not being kept. More and more young people emerge from high school ready neither for college nor for work. This predicament becomes more acute as the knowledge base continues its rapid expansion, the number of traditional jobs shrinks, and new jobs demand greater sophistication and preparation. On a broader scale, we sense that this undertone of frustration has significant political implications, for it cuts across ages, generations, races, and political and economic groups. We have come to understand that the public will demand that educational and political leaders act forcefully and effectively on these issues. Indeed, such demands have already appeared and could well become a unifying national preoccupation. This unity, however, can be achieved only if we avoid the unproductive tendency of some to search for scapegoats among the victims, such as the beleaguered teachers. On the positive side is the significant movement by political and educational leaders to search for solutions--so far centering largely on the nearly desperate need for increased support for the teaching of mathematics and science. This movement is but a start on what we believe is a larger and more educationally encompassing need to improve teaching and learning in fields such as English, history, geography, economics, and foreign languages. We believe this movement must be broadened and directed toward reform and excellence throughout education. Excellence in Education We define "excellence" to mean several related things. At the level of the individual learner, it means performing on the boundary of individual ability in ways that test and push back personal limits, in school and in the workplace. Excellence characterizes a school or college that sets high expectations and goals for all learners, then tries in every way possible to help students reach them. Excellence characterizes a society that has adopted these policies, for it will then be prepared through the education and skill of its people to respond to the challenges of a rapidly changing world. Our Nation's people and its schools and colleges must be committed to achieving excellence in all these senses. We do not believe that a public commitment to excellence and educational reform must be made at the expense of a strong public commitment to the equitable treatment of our diverse population. The twin goals of equity and high-quality schooling have profound and practical meaning for our economy and society, and we cannot permit one to yield to the other either in principle or in practice. To do so would deny young people their chance to learn and live according to their aspirations and abilities. It also would lead to a generalized accommodation to mediocrity in our society on the one hand or the creation of an undemocratic elitism on the other. Our goal must be to develop the talents of all to their fullest. Attaining that goal requires that we expect and assist all students to work to the limits of their capabilities. We should expect schools to have genuinely high standards rather than minimum ones, and parents to support and encourage their children to make the most of their talents and abilities. The search for solutions to our educational problems must also include a commitment to life-long learning. The task of rebuilding our system of learning is enormous and must be properly understood and taken seriously: Although a million and a half new workers enter the economy each year from our schools and colleges, the adults working today will still make up about 75 percent of the workforce in the year 2000. These workers, and new entrants into the workforce, will need further education and retraining if they--and we as a Nation--are to thrive and prosper. The Learning Society In a world of ever-accelerating competition and change in the conditions of the workplace, of ever-greater danger, and of ever-larger opportunities for those prepared to meet them, educational reform should focus on the goal of creating a Learning Society. At the heart of such a society is the commitment to a set of values and to a system of education that affords all members the opportunity to stretch their minds to full capacity, from early childhood through adulthood, learning more as the world itself changes. Such a society has as a basic foundation the idea that education is important not only because of what it contributes to one's career goals but also because of the value it adds to the general quality of one's life. Also at the heart of the Learning Society are educational opportunities extending far beyond the traditional institutions of learning, our schools and colleges. They extend into homes and workplaces; into libraries, art galleries, museums, and science centers; indeed, into every place where the individual can develop and mature in work and life. In our view, formal schooling in youth is the essential foundation for learning throughout one's life. But without life-long learning, one's skills will become rapidly dated. In contrast to the ideal of the Learning Society, however, we find that for too many people education means doing the minimum work necessary for the moment, then coasting through life on what may have been learned in its first quarter. But this should not surprise us because we tend to express our educational standards and expectations largely in terms of "minimum requirements." And where there should be a coherent continuum of learning, we have none, but instead an often incoherent, outdated patchwork quilt. Many individual, sometimes heroic, examples of schools and colleges of great merit do exist. Our findings and testimony confirm the vitality of a number of notable schools and programs, but their very distinction stands out against a vast mass shaped by tensions and pressures that inhibit systematic academic and vocational achievement for the majority of students. In some metropolitan areas basic literacy has become the goal rather than the starting point. In some colleges maintaining enrollments is of greater day-to-day concern than maintaining rigorous academic standards. And the ideal of academic excellence as the primary goal of schooling seems to be fading across the board in American education. Thus, we issue this call to all who care about America and its future: to parents and students; to teachers, administrators, and school board members; to colleges and industry; to union members and military leaders; to governors and State legislators; to the President; to members of Congress and other public officials; to members of learned and scientific societies; to the print and electronic media; to concerned citizens everywhere. America is at risk. We are confident that America can address this risk. If the tasks we set forth are initiated now and our recommendations are fully realized over the next several years, we can expect reform of our Nation's schools, colleges, and universities. This would also reverse the current declining trend--a trend that stems more from weakness of purpose, confusion of vision, underuse of talent, and lack of leadership, than from conditions beyond our control. The Tools at Hand It is our conviction that the essential raw materials needed to reform our educational system are waiting to be mobilized through effective leadership: the natural abilities of the young that cry out to be developed and the undiminished concern of parents for the well-being of their children; the commitment of the Nation to high retention rates in schools and colleges and to full access to education for all; the persistent and authentic American dream that superior performance can raise one's state in life and shape one's own future; the dedication, against all odds, that keeps teachers serving in schools and colleges, even as the rewards diminish; our better understanding of learning and teaching and the implications of this knowledge for school practice, and the numerous examples of local success as a result of superior effort and effective dissemination; the ingenuity of our policymakers, scientists, State and local educators, and scholars in formulating solutions once problems are better understood; the traditional belief that paying for education is an investment in ever-renewable human resources that are more durable and flexible than capital plant and equipment, and the availability in this country of sufficient financial means to invest in education; the equally sound tradition, from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 until today, that the Federal Government should supplement State, local, and other resources to foster key national educational goals; and the voluntary efforts of individuals, businesses, and parent and civic groups to cooperate in strengthening educational programs. These raw materials, combined with the unparalleled array of educational organizations in America, offer us the possibility to create a Learning Society, in which public, private, and parochial schools; colleges and universities; vocational and technical schools and institutes; libraries; science centers, museums, and other cultural institutions; and corporate training and retraining programs offer opportunities and choices for all to learn throughout life. The Public's Commitment Of all the tools at hand, the public's support for education is the most powerful. In a message to a National Academy of Sciences meeting in May 1982, President Reagan commented on this fact when he said: This public awareness--and I hope public action--is long overdue.... This country was built on American respect for education. . . Our challenge now is to create a resurgence of that thirst for education that typifies our Nation's history. The most recent (1982) Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools strongly supported a theme heard during our hearings: People are steadfast in their belief that education is the major foundation for the future strength of this country. They even considered education more important than developing the best industrial system or the strongest military force, perhaps because they understood education as the cornerstone of both. They also held that education is "extremely important" to one's future success, and that public education should be the top priority for additional Federal funds. Education occupied first place among 12 funding categories considered in the survey--above health care, welfare, and military defense, with 55 percent selecting public education as one of their first three choices. Very clearly, the public understands the primary importance of education as the foundation for a satisfying life, an enlightened and civil society, a strong economy, and a secure Nation. At the same time, the public has no patience with undemanding and superfluous high school offerings. In another survey, more than 75 percent of all those questioned believed every student planning to go to college should take 4 years of mathematics, English, history/U.S. government, and science, with more than 50 percent adding 2 years each of a foreign language and economics or business. The public even supports requiring much of this curriculum for students who do not plan to go to college. These standards far exceed the strictest high school graduation requirements of any State today, and they also exceed the admission standards of all but a handful of our most selective colleges and universities. Another dimension of the public's support offers the prospect of constructive reform. The best term to characterize it may simply be the honorable word "patriotism." Citizens know intuitively what some of the best economists have shown in their research, that education is one of the chief engines of a society's material well-being. They know, too, that education is the common bond of a pluralistic society and helps tie us to other cultures around the globe. Citizens also know in their bones that the safety of the United States depends principally on the wit, skill, and spirit of a self-confident people, today and tomorrow. It is, therefore, essential--especially in a period of long-term decline in educational achievement--for government at all levels to affirm its responsibility for nurturing the Nation's intellectual capital. And perhaps most important, citizens know and believe that the meaning of America to the rest of the world must be something better than it seems to many today. Americans like to think of this Nation as the preeminent country for generating the great ideas and material benefits for all mankind. The citizen is dismayed at a steady 15-year decline in industrial productivity, as one great American industry after another falls to world competition. The citizen wants the country to act on the belief, expressed in our hearings and by the large majority in the Gallup Poll, that education should be at the top of the Nation's agenda. ?-###- [Introduction] [Findings]   Tue, 15 Mar 2011 09:10:33 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_A-Nation-at-Risk-Edited-by-Yong-Zhao/blog/3388262/127586.html Yong_Zhao 2011-03-15T09:10:33Z My Blog Banner ASCD EDge A Nation At Risk - April 1983 Edited by Yong Zhao, March, 2011 Next month marks the 28th anniversary of the publication of A Nation At Risk, one of the most influential education documents in the US history. As an English language learner, I have always been impressed with the prose and composition of this document, although I have raised questions about its content in my book. The title of the document captures the present condition of American education very well. The goals and aspirations are well stated and I agree with them. But what I don’t agree is the indicators of risk, i.e. student test scores by and large, which after almost 30 years, have been proven to be irrelevant, as I have argued in my book. The real risk America faces is the insane policies and scapegoating practices in education. So I decided to edit the document. I have replaced what I think misleading and misconceived phrases, sentences, and paragraphs with what I believe to be correct. The italics are what I added. If you are interested in what I deleted, read the PDF version.I have only done this for the first part. I may continue to edit the rest. Theoriginal version of the document is here—YZ, 10-03-11   All, regardless of race or class or economic status, are entitled to a fair chance and to the tools for developing their individual powers of mind and spirit to the utmost. This promise means that all children by virtue of their own efforts, competently guided, can hope to attain the mature and informed judgement needed to secure gainful employment, and to manage their own lives, thereby serving not only their own interests but also the progress of society itself. Our Nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world. This report is concerned with only one of the many causes and dimensions of the problem, but it is the one that undergirds American prosperity, security, and civility. We report to the American people that while we can take justifiable pride in what our schools and colleges have historically accomplished and contributed to the United States and the well-being of its people, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of insanity and scapegoating that threaten our very future as a Nation and a people. What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur--others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments. If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the insane policies that threaten democracy, turn American children into robotic test takers, narrow and homogenize our children’s education, reward grant writing skills instead of helping the needy children and stimulate innovation (e.g., Race to the Top), value testing over teaching, and scapegoat teachers that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament. Our government and business leaders seem to have lost sight of the basic purposes of schooling, and of the high expectations and disciplined effort needed to attain them. This report, the result of 18 months of study, seeks to generate reform of our educational system in fundamental ways and to renew the Nation's commitment to schools and colleges of high quality throughout the length and breadth of our land. That we have compromised this commitment is, upon reflection, hardly surprising, given the multitude of often conflicting demands we have placed on our Nation's schools and colleges. They are routinely called on to provide solutions to personal, social, and political problems that the home and other institutions either will not or cannot resolve. We must understand that these demands on our schools and colleges often exact an educational cost as well as a financial one. In his 2011 State of the Union speech, President Obama said ““We need to out-innovate, outeducate and outbuild the rest of the world,” This report, therefore, is as much an open letter to the American people as it is a report to the Secretary of Education. We are confident that the American people, properly informed, will do what is right for their children and for the generations to come. The Risk History is not kind to idlers. The time is long past when American's destiny was assured simply by an abundance of natural resources and inexhaustible human enthusiasm, and by our relative isolation from the malignant problems of older civilizations. The world is indeed one global village. We live among determined, well-educated, and strongly motivated competitors. We compete with them for international standing and markets, not only with products but also with the ideas of our laboratories and neighborhood workshops. America's position in the world may once have been reasonably secure with only a few exceptionally well-trained men and women. It is no longer. The risk is not only that the Chinese make faster computers, cheaper toys, and more electronics than Americans and have government subsidies for development and export. It is not just that the Indians recently built the world's cheapest cars, or that American strawberries and apples, once the pride of the world, are being picked by Mexicans. It is also that these developments signify a redistribution of trained capability throughout the globe. Knowledge, learning, information, and skilled intelligence are the new raw materials of international commerce and are today spreading throughout the world as vigorously as miracle drugs, synthetic fertilizers, and blue jeans did earlier. If only to keep and improve on the slim competitive edge we still retain in world markets, we must dedicate ourselves to the reform of our educational system for the benefit of all--old and young alike, affluent and poor, majority and minority. Learning is the indispensable investment required for success in the "information age" we are entering. Our concern, however, goes well beyond matters such as industry and commerce. It also includes the intellectual, moral, and spiritual strengths of our people which knit together the very fabric of our society. The people of the United States need to know that individuals in our society who do not possess the creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, global competence essential to this new era will be effectively disenfranchised, not simply from the material rewards that accompany competent performance, but also from the chance to participate fully in our national life. A high level of shared education is essential to a free, democratic society and to the fostering of a common culture, especially in a country that prides itself on pluralism and individual freedom. For our country to function, citizens must be able to reach some common understandings on complex issues, often on short notice and on the basis of conflicting or incomplete evidence. Education helps form these common understandings, a point Thomas Jefferson made long ago in his justly famous dictum: I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion. Part of what is at risk is the promise first made on this continent: All, regardless of race or class or economic status, are entitled to a fair chance and to the tools for developing their individual powers of mind and spirit to the utmost. This promise means that all children by virtue of their own efforts, competently guided, can hope to attain the mature and informed judgment needed to secure gainful employment, and to manage their own lives, thereby serving not only their own interests but also the progress of society itself. Indicators of the Risk The educational dimensions of the risk before us have been amply documented inmaterials read by this editor. For example: For the first time, research shows American creativity is declining. Since 1990, Americans’ creativity scores have been on the decline significantly and most seriously among young children (from kindergarten through sixth grade). As a result of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), a significant number of schools in America have narrowed their curriculum by cutting arts, music, physical education, social studies, science, recess, or lunch. “Forty-four percent of all districts nationwide have added time for English language arts and/or math, at the expense of social studies, science, art and music, physical education, recess, or lunch.” Meanwhile, our competitors such as China and Singapore have been decreasing their instructional time for math and increasing time for creativity, critical thinking, arts, physical education. For example, since 1999 China has decreased total instructional hours by 380 for grades 1 through 6, reduced math instruction by 140 hours and added 156 instructional hours for physical education. Unethical and dishonest behaviors have become rampant in American education. Teachers, school administrators, and students have been forced to engage in all sorts of cheating to raise test scores and state governments lower standards to avoid penalties. America spends $1.1 billion dollars per year testing their children under NCLB while many schools have to cut short instructional hours and or lay off teachers due to budget cuts. In 2004–2005, Wisconsin students spent a total of about 1.4 million hours taking state tests; with full implementation of NCLB testing, that number will more than double, to 2.9 million. These figures do not include the time spent distributing and collecting materials, taking practice tests, giving instructions, and addressing other logistics of testing. American teachers’ morale has reached a crisis level. Over a quarter of teachers leave the profession within the first three years and nearly half leave within the first five. Teacher unions, the last organized line of defense for public education, are being threatened across the nation. Yet, the governments continue to impose policies that connect teacher evaluation with student test scores although research has clearly shown that such policies do not improve student learning, even measured by test scores. American education has become a nationalized standardized education system. Locally democratically elected school boards have been rendered bureaucratic assistants of the state and federal government to enforce implementation of state and federal mandates rather than guarding the education of their children. Less than 20% of American students are enrolled in a foreign language course while all Chinese students are required to study a foreign language beginning from third grade at the latest. Only 11 percent of twelfth graders nationwide demonstrated proficiency in U.S. history. More than 80 percent of New York City eighth graders did not meet the state standards in social studies in 2004.  Moreover, the number of students meeting the social studies standards has decreased by almost 20 percentage points since 2002. 25 percent of college-bound high school students could not name the ocean between California and Asia. 80 percent of young Americans (ages 18 to 24) did not know that India is the world’s largest democracy; 37 percent could not locate China on a map of Asia and the Middle East. The average number of languages spoken by American business executives is 1.5, compared with an average of 3.9 languages spoken by business executives in the Netherlands. Business and military leaders complain about the lack of international and cross cultural skills of American graduates. “A 2002 survey of large U.S. corporations found that nearly 30 percent of the companies believed they had failed to exploit fully their international business opportunities due to insufficient personnel with international skills. The consequences of insufficient culturally competent workers, as identified by the firms, included: missed marketing or business opportunities; failure to recognize important shifts in host country policies toward foreign-owned corporations; failure to anticipate the needs of international customers; and failure to take full advantage of expertise available or technological advances occurring abroad. Almost 80 percent of the business leaders surveyed expected their overall business to increase notably if they had more internationally competent employees on staff." These deficiencies come at a time when the demand for creative and globally competent workers in new fields is accelerating rapidly. For example: A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future. Yet it’s not just about sustaining our nation’s economic growth. All around us are matters of national and international importance that are crying out for creative solutions, from saving the Gulf of Mexico to bringing peace to Afghanistan to delivering health care. Such solutions emerge from a healthy marketplace of ideas, sustained by a populace constantly contributing original ideas and receptive to the ideas of others. Creative class jobs will make up roughly half of all projected U.S. employment growth - adding 6.8 million new jobs by 2018.  More than 35 million people are currently employed in creative class work in fields like science, technology, and engineering; business, finance, and management; law, health care, and education; and arts, culture, media, and entertainment. American companies lose an estimated $2 billion a year due to inadequate cross-cultural guidance for their employees in multicultural situations. U.S.-based multinational corporations employed 21.8 million workers in the United States in 2003, accounting for one-fifth of total U.S. non-government employment. Analysts examining these indicators of student performance and the demands for new skills have made some chilling observations. Educational researcher Paul Hurd concluded at the end of a thorough national survey of student achievement that within the context of the modern scientific revolution, "We are raising a new generation of Americans that is scientifically and technologically illiterate." In a similar vein, John Slaughter, a former Director of the National Science Foundation, warned of "a growing chasm between a small scientific and technological elite and a citizenry ill-informed, indeed uninformed, on issues with a science component." But the problem does not stop there, nor do all observers see it the same way. Some worry that schools may emphasize such rudiments as reading and computation at the expense of other essential skills such as comprehension, analysis, solving problems, and drawing conclusions. Still others are concerned that an over-emphasis on technical and occupational skills will leave little time for studying the arts and humanities that so enrich daily life, help maintain civility, and develop a sense of community. Knowledge of the humanities, they maintain, must be harnessed to science and technology if the latter are to remain creative and humane, just as the humanities need to be informed by science and technology if they are to remain relevant to the human condition. Another analyst, Paul Copperman, has drawn a sobering conclusion. Until now, he has noted: Each generation of Americans has outstripped its parents in education, in literacy, and in economic attainment. For the first time in the history of our country, the educational skills of one generation will not surpass, will not equal, will not even approach, those of their parents. It is important, of course, to recognize that the average citizen today is better educated and more knowledgeable than the average citizen of a generation ago--more literate, and exposed to more mathematics, literature, and science. The positive impact of this fact on the well-being of our country and the lives of our people cannot be overstated. Nevertheless, the average graduate of our schools and colleges today is not as well-educated as the average graduate of 25 or 35 years ago, when a much smaller proportion of our population completed high school and college. The negative impact of this fact likewise cannot be overstated. Hope and Frustration Statistics and their interpretation by experts show only the surface dimension of the difficulties we face. Beneath them lies a tension between hope and frustration that characterizes current attitudes about education at every level. We have heard the voices of high school and college students, school board members, and teachers; of leaders of industry, minority groups, and higher education; of parents and State officials. We could hear the hope evident in their commitment to quality education and in their descriptions of outstanding programs and schools. We could also hear the intensity of their frustration, a growing impatience with shoddiness in many walks of American life, and the complaint that this shoddiness is too often reflected in our schools and colleges. Their frustration threatens to overwhelm their hope. What lies behind this emerging national sense of frustration can be described as both a dimming of personal expectations and the fear of losing a shared vision for America. On the personal level the student, the parent, and the caring teacher all perceive that a basic promise is not being kept. More and more young people emerge from high school ready neither for college nor for work. This predicament becomes more acute as the knowledge base continues its rapid expansion, the number of traditional jobs shrinks, and new jobs demand greater sophistication and preparation. On a broader scale, we sense that this undertone of frustration has significant political implications, for it cuts across ages, generations, races, and political and economic groups. We have come to understand that the public will demand that educational and political leaders act forcefully and effectively on these issues. Indeed, such demands have already appeared and could well become a unifying national preoccupation. This unity, however, can be achieved only if we avoid the unproductive tendency of some to search for scapegoats among the victims, such as the beleaguered teachers. On the positive side is the significant movement by political and educational leaders to search for solutions--so far centering largely on the nearly desperate need for increased support for the teaching of mathematics and science. This movement is but a start on what we believe is a larger and more educationally encompassing need to improve teaching and learning in fields such as English, history, geography, economics, and foreign languages. We believe this movement must be broadened and directed toward reform and excellence throughout education. Excellence in Education We define "excellence" to mean several related things. At the level of the individual learner, it means performing on the boundary of individual ability in ways that test and push back personal limits, in school and in the workplace. Excellence characterizes a school or college that sets high expectations and goals for all learners, then tries in every way possible to help students reach them. Excellence characterizes a society that has adopted these policies, for it will then be prepared through the education and skill of its people to respond to the challenges of a rapidly changing world. Our Nation's people and its schools and colleges must be committed to achieving excellence in all these senses. We do not believe that a public commitment to excellence and educational reform must be made at the expense of a strong public commitment to the equitable treatment of our diverse population. The twin goals of equity and high-quality schooling have profound and practical meaning for our economy and society, and we cannot permit one to yield to the other either in principle or in practice. To do so would deny young people their chance to learn and live according to their aspirations and abilities. It also would lead to a generalized accommodation to mediocrity in our society on the one hand or the creation of an undemocratic elitism on the other. Our goal must be to develop the talents of all to their fullest. Attaining that goal requires that we expect and assist all students to work to the limits of their capabilities. We should expect schools to have genuinely high standards rather than minimum ones, and parents to support and encourage their children to make the most of their talents and abilities. The search for solutions to our educational problems must also include a commitment to life-long learning. The task of rebuilding our system of learning is enormous and must be properly understood and taken seriously: Although a million and a half new workers enter the economy each year from our schools and colleges, the adults working today will still make up about 75 percent of the workforce in the year 2000. These workers, and new entrants into the workforce, will need further education and retraining if they--and we as a Nation--are to thrive and prosper. The Learning Society In a world of ever-accelerating competition and change in the conditions of the workplace, of ever-greater danger, and of ever-larger opportunities for those prepared to meet them, educational reform should focus on the goal of creating a Learning Society. At the heart of such a society is the commitment to a set of values and to a system of education that affords all members the opportunity to stretch their minds to full capacity, from early childhood through adulthood, learning more as the world itself changes. Such a society has as a basic foundation the idea that education is important not only because of what it contributes to one's career goals but also because of the value it adds to the general quality of one's life. Also at the heart of the Learning Society are educational opportunities extending far beyond the traditional institutions of learning, our schools and colleges. They extend into homes and workplaces; into libraries, art galleries, museums, and science centers; indeed, into every place where the individual can develop and mature in work and life. In our view, formal schooling in youth is the essential foundation for learning throughout one's life. But without life-long learning, one's skills will become rapidly dated. In contrast to the ideal of the Learning Society, however, we find that for too many people education means doing the minimum work necessary for the moment, then coasting through life on what may have been learned in its first quarter. But this should not surprise us because we tend to express our educational standards and expectations largely in terms of "minimum requirements." And where there should be a coherent continuum of learning, we have none, but instead an often incoherent, outdated patchwork quilt. Many individual, sometimes heroic, examples of schools and colleges of great merit do exist. Our findings and testimony confirm the vitality of a number of notable schools and programs, but their very distinction stands out against a vast mass shaped by tensions and pressures that inhibit systematic academic and vocational achievement for the majority of students. In some metropolitan areas basic literacy has become the goal rather than the starting point. In some colleges maintaining enrollments is of greater day-to-day concern than maintaining rigorous academic standards. And the ideal of academic excellence as the primary goal of schooling seems to be fading across the board in American education. Thus, we issue this call to all who care about America and its future: to parents and students; to teachers, administrators, and school board members; to colleges and industry; to union members and military leaders; to governors and State legislators; to the President; to members of Congress and other public officials; to members of learned and scientific societies; to the print and electronic media; to concerned citizens everywhere. America is at risk. We are confident that America can address this risk. If the tasks we set forth are initiated now and our recommendations are fully realized over the next several years, we can expect reform of our Nation's schools, colleges, and universities. This would also reverse the current declining trend--a trend that stems more from weakness of purpose, confusion of vision, underuse of talent, and lack of leadership, than from conditions beyond our control. The Tools at Hand It is our conviction that the essential raw materials needed to reform our educational system are waiting to be mobilized through effective leadership: the natural abilities of the young that cry out to be developed and the undiminished concern of parents for the well-being of their children; the commitment of the Nation to high retention rates in schools and colleges and to full access to education for all; the persistent and authentic American dream that superior performance can raise one's state in life and shape one's own future; the dedication, against all odds, that keeps teachers serving in schools and colleges, even as the rewards diminish; our better understanding of learning and teaching and the implications of this knowledge for school practice, and the numerous examples of local success as a result of superior effort and effective dissemination; the ingenuity of our policymakers, scientists, State and local educators, and scholars in formulating solutions once problems are better understood; the traditional belief that paying for education is an investment in ever-renewable human resources that are more durable and flexible than capital plant and equipment, and the availability in this country of sufficient financial means to invest in education; the equally sound tradition, from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 until today, that the Federal Government should supplement State, local, and other resources to foster key national educational goals; and the voluntary efforts of individuals, businesses, and parent and civic groups to cooperate in strengthening educational programs. These raw materials, combined with the unparalleled array of educational organizations in America, offer us the possibility to create a Learning Society, in which public, private, and parochial schools; colleges and universities; vocational and technical schools and institutes; libraries; science centers, museums, and other cultural institutions; and corporate training and retraining programs offer opportunities and choices for all to learn throughout life. The Public's Commitment Of all the tools at hand, the public's support for education is the most powerful. In a message to a National Academy of Sciences meeting in May 1982, President Reagan commented on this fact when he said: This public awareness--and I hope public action--is long overdue.... This country was built on American respect for education. . . Our challenge now is to create a resurgence of that thirst for education that typifies our Nation's history. The most recent (1982) Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools strongly supported a theme heard during our hearings: People are steadfast in their belief that education is the major foundation for the future strength of this country. They even considered education more important than developing the best industrial system or the strongest military force, perhaps because they understood education as the cornerstone of both. They also held that education is "extremely important" to one's future success, and that public education should be the top priority for additional Federal funds. Education occupied first place among 12 funding categories considered in the survey--above health care, welfare, and military defense, with 55 percent selecting public education as one of their first three choices. Very clearly, the public understands the primary importance of education as the foundation for a satisfying life, an enlightened and civil society, a strong economy, and a secure Nation. At the same time, the public has no patience with undemanding and superfluous high school offerings. In another survey, more than 75 percent of all those questioned believed every student planning to go to college should take 4 years of mathematics, English, history/U.S. government, and science, with more than 50 percent adding 2 years each of a foreign language and economics or business. The public even supports requiring much of this curriculum for students who do not plan to go to college. These standards far exceed the strictest high school graduation requirements of any State today, and they also exceed the admission standards of all but a handful of our most selective colleges and universities. Another dimension of the public's support offers the prospect of constructive reform. The best term to characterize it may simply be the honorable word "patriotism." Citizens know intuitively what some of the best economists have shown in their research, that education is one of the chief engines of a society's material well-being. They know, too, that education is the common bond of a pluralistic society and helps tie us to other cultures around the globe. Citizens also know in their bones that the safety of the United States depends principally on the wit, skill, and spirit of a self-confident people, today and tomorrow. It is, therefore, essential--especially in a period of long-term decline in educational achievement--for government at all levels to affirm its responsibility for nurturing the Nation's intellectual capital. And perhaps most important, citizens know and believe that the meaning of America to the rest of the world must be something better than it seems to many today. Americans like to think of this Nation as the preeminent country for generating the great ideas and material benefits for all mankind. The citizen is dismayed at a steady 15-year decline in industrial productivity, as one great American industry after another falls to world competition. The citizen wants the country to act on the belief, expressed in our hearings and by the large majority in the Gallup Poll, that education should be at the top of the Nation's agenda. ?-###- [Introduction] [Findings]   my blog banner nonadult false A Nation at Risk: Edited by Yong Zhao text blog my blog banner 4329 10 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=20918099&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_13304969_127586_20918099_ap_160X120.jpg false United States MO Eugene 3 My Blog Banner 3 3388262 20918099 ASCD EDge Member 445 http://edge.ascd.org/_You-must-be-joking-Professor-Chua-An-open-letter-to-the-Chinese-Tiger-Mom/blog/3242392/127586.html You must be joking, Professor Chua: An open letter to the Chinese Tiger Mom Dear Professor Chua, By now, your Wall Street Journal article Why Chinese Mothers are Superior has circled around the globe and you have appeared on many media outlets. Undoubtedly you are aware of the firestorm the article has created everywhere. Frankly I was at first appalled by your article because I have read your book Days of Empire, in which you suggest that tolerance is the force that helped build great empires. But in this article, you seem to suggest otherwise—that a totalitarian, authoritarian, and dictatorial approach will produce a successful person. This contradiction helped to realize that you must be joking, just like this YouTube video by Eric Liang that makes fun of how “crazy Asian moms” react when their children get a B. I am sure, as a well-educated Professor of Yale, you must know that even in China only “garbage parents” call their children garbage. And those who call their children garbage or similar things are generally looked down upon and considered uncivilized by their neighbors and colleagues. I grew up in China and came to the US when I was 27. In all those 27 years, I don’t remember being called garbage by my parents nor have I ever called my children garbage. I am also sure that you are aware that your strict method, while quite commonly practiced in Chinese families, does not always (and quite often do not) lead to a virtuous cycle or produce successful people. There is this running joke that supports your argument. Surprised by the fact that an uneducated peasant family were able to have all three of their children achieve high test scores to be admitted to college in China, reporters asked the father for his parenting secret that produced this miracle. The father went inside the house and took out a huge club behind the door. But this club did not do any wonders in my village. When I was growing up, my father was among the few who did not have such a club hanging on the wall. But I became the only one in the village who graduated from high school and went on to college. Furthermore, I am sure you, as a Chinese American who seems to be familiar with China, are aware of the psychological damages your method has caused in China. As I have documented in my book, Catching Up or Leading the Way, the high suicide rates, wide-spread depression, and rebellious behaviors due to parent and school pressure in China have already caused the government and society to take drastic actions to reform its education system. The Asian students in the U.S., the so-called “model minority,” have also been found to have more psychological issues due to family pressure by researchers because their academic excellence is “forced” rather than chosen (read the book by a number of Asian American researchers Model Minority Myth Revisited: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Demystify Asian American Education Experience). Moreover, I am sure you are aware that what you were doing to your children is simply serving as a taskmaster whose only job is to ensure that they do what the authority or the “successful” sector of the society values. In other words, you externalize the value of individual human beings as what others think important. You do not have an independent view of human value so you just rent the view of the society. When you force your children to get As in school, without necessarily even know what lies behind the As, you are no different from carrying out an order of an agency without ever questioning why. This, by the way, is the reason behind the misperception that somehow Chinese parents care more about their children’s education than Americans because they put a lot more pressure on their children to do school work and judge their children by school grades. I believe American parents care as much but they have different definitions of education—sports, music, art, independence, creativity, passion, a well-rounded education, or simply a happy childhood! Lastly, I am sure you know that your children’s success—Carnegie Hall performance and other kudos and trophies—may have more to do with you as a Yale professor, the community you live in, the friends and colleagues you have, the schools they attend, the friends they have (oh, I forgot, they are not allowed to have friends, well in this case, the classmates they have), than your parenting style. There are at least 100 million Chinese parents who practiced your way of parenting but were unable to send their children to Carnegie Hall. So I think you are joking. You are not really saying that your Chinese tiger mom approach is a great way to educating our children. Or at least, I hope! And to conclude, I want to share a quote by Paulo Freire:The struggle for humanization, breaking the cycles of injustice, exploitation and oppression lies in the perpetuation of oppressor versus oppressed. In these roles, those who commit the injustice, the oppressors, do not only deny freedom to those they oppress, they also risk their own humanity, because oppressor consciousness "tends to transform everything surrounding it into an object of its domination.” Please tell me, Professor Chua, that you are joking. You must be joking, Professor Chua: An open letter to the Chinese Tiger Mom Dear Professor Chua, By now, your Wall Street Journal article Why Chinese Mothers are Superior has circled around the globe and you have appeared on many media outlets. Undoubtedly you are aware of the firestorm the article has created everywhere. Frankly I was at first appalled by your article because I have read your book Days of Empire, in which you suggest that tolerance is the force that helped build great empires. But in this article, you seem to suggest otherwise—that a totalitarian, authoritarian, and dictatorial approach will produce a successful person. This contradiction helped to realize that you must be joking, just like this YouTube video by Eric Liang that makes fun of how “crazy Asian moms” react when their children get a B. I am sure, as a well-educated Professor of Yale, you must know that even in China only “garbage parents” call their children garbage. And those who call their children garbage or similar things are generally looked down upon and considered uncivilized by their neighbors and colleagues. I grew up in China and came to the US when I was 27. In all those 27 years, I don’t remember being called garbage by my parents nor have I ever called my children garbage. I am also sure that you are aware that your strict method, while quite commonly practiced in Chinese families, does not always (and quite often do not) lead to a virtuous cycle or produce successful people. There is this running joke that supports your argument. Surprised by the fact that an uneducated peasant family were able to have all three of their children achieve high test scores to be admitted to college in China, reporters asked the father for his parenting secret that produced this miracle. The father went inside the house and took out a huge club behind the door. But this club did not do any wonders in my village. When I was growing up, my father was among the few who did not have such a club hanging on the wall. But I became the only one in the village who graduated from high school and went on to college. Furthermore, I am sure you, as a Chinese American who seems to be familiar with China, are aware of the psychological damages your method has caused in China. As I have documented in my book, Catching Up or Leading the Way, the high suicide rates, wide-spread depression, and rebellious behaviors due to parent and school pressure in China have already caused the government and society to take drastic actions to reform its education system. The Asian students in the U.S., the so-called “model minority,” have also been found to have more psychological issues due to family pressure by researchers because their academic excellence is “forced” rather than chosen (read the book by a number of Asian American researchers Model Minority Myth Revisited: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Demystify Asian American Education Experience). Moreover, I am sure you are aware that what you were doing to your children is simply serving as a taskmaster whose only job is to ensure that they do what the authority or the “successful” sector of the society values. In other words, you externalize the value of individual human beings as what others think important. You do not have an independent view of human value so you just rent the view of the society. When you force your children to get As in school, without necessarily even know what lies behind the As, you are no different from carrying out an order of an agency without ever questioning why. This, by the way, is the reason behind the misperception that somehow Chinese parents care more about their children’s education than Americans because they put a lot more pressure on their children to do school work and judge their children by school grades. I believe American parents care as much but they have different definitions of education—sports, music, art, independence, creativity, passion, a well-rounded education, or simply a happy childhood! Lastly, I am sure you know that your children’s success—Carnegie Hall performance and other kudos and trophies—may have more to do with you as a Yale professor, the community you live in, the friends and colleagues you have, the schools they attend, the friends they have (oh, I forgot, they are not allowed to have friends, well in this case, the classmates they have), than your parenting style. There are at least 100 million Chinese parents who practiced your way of parenting but were unable to send their children to Carnegie Hall. So I think you are joking. You are not really saying that your Chinese tiger mom approach is a great way to educating our children. Or at least, I hope! And to conclude, I want to share a quote by Paulo Freire:The struggle for humanization, breaking the cycles of injustice, exploitation and oppression lies in the perpetuation of oppressor versus oppressed. In these roles, those who commit the injustice, the oppressors, do not only deny freedom to those they oppress, they also risk their own humanity, because oppressor consciousness "tends to transform everything surrounding it into an object of its domination.” Please tell me, Professor Chua, that you are joking. Mon, 17 Jan 2011 01:17:49 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_You-must-be-joking-Professor-Chua-An-open-letter-to-the-Chinese-Tiger-Mom/blog/3242392/127586.html Yong_Zhao 2011-01-17T01:17:49Z ASCD EDge You must be joking, Professor Chua: An open letter to the Chinese Tiger Mom Dear Professor Chua, By now, your Wall Street Journal article Why Chinese Mothers are Superior has circled around the globe and you have appeared on many media outlets. Undoubtedly you are aware of the firestorm the article has created everywhere. Frankly I was at first appalled by your article because I have read your book Days of Empire, in which you suggest that tolerance is the force that helped build great empires. But in this article, you seem to suggest otherwise—that a totalitarian, authoritarian, and dictatorial approach will produce a successful person. This contradiction helped to realize that you must be joking, just like this YouTube video by Eric Liang that makes fun of how “crazy Asian moms” react when their children get a B. I am sure, as a well-educated Professor of Yale, you must know that even in China only “garbage parents” call their children garbage. And those who call their children garbage or similar things are generally looked down upon and considered uncivilized by their neighbors and colleagues. I grew up in China and came to the US when I was 27. In all those 27 years, I don’t remember being called garbage by my parents nor have I ever called my children garbage. I am also sure that you are aware that your strict method, while quite commonly practiced in Chinese families, does not always (and quite often do not) lead to a virtuous cycle or produce successful people. There is this running joke that supports your argument. Surprised by the fact that an uneducated peasant family were able to have all three of their children achieve high test scores to be admitted to college in China, reporters asked the father for his parenting secret that produced this miracle. The father went inside the house and took out a huge club behind the door. But this club did not do any wonders in my village. When I was growing up, my father was among the few who did not have such a club hanging on the wall. But I became the only one in the village who graduated from high school and went on to college. Furthermore, I am sure you, as a Chinese American who seems to be familiar with China, are aware of the psychological damages your method has caused in China. As I have documented in my book, Catching Up or Leading the Way, the high suicide rates, wide-spread depression, and rebellious behaviors due to parent and school pressure in China have already caused the government and society to take drastic actions to reform its education system. The Asian students in the U.S., the so-called “model minority,” have also been found to have more psychological issues due to family pressure by researchers because their academic excellence is “forced” rather than chosen (read the book by a number of Asian American researchers Model Minority Myth Revisited: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Demystify Asian American Education Experience). Moreover, I am sure you are aware that what you were doing to your children is simply serving as a taskmaster whose only job is to ensure that they do what the authority or the “successful” sector of the society values. In other words, you externalize the value of individual human beings as what others think important. You do not have an independent view of human value so you just rent the view of the society. When you force your children to get As in school, without necessarily even know what lies behind the As, you are no different from carrying out an order of an agency without ever questioning why. This, by the way, is the reason behind the misperception that somehow Chinese parents care more about their children’s education than Americans because they put a lot more pressure on their children to do school work and judge their children by school grades. I believe American parents care as much but they have different definitions of education—sports, music, art, independence, creativity, passion, a well-rounded education, or simply a happy childhood! Lastly, I am sure you know that your children’s success—Carnegie Hall performance and other kudos and trophies—may have more to do with you as a Yale professor, the community you live in, the friends and colleagues you have, the schools they attend, the friends they have (oh, I forgot, they are not allowed to have friends, well in this case, the classmates they have), than your parenting style. There are at least 100 million Chinese parents who practiced your way of parenting but were unable to send their children to Carnegie Hall. So I think you are joking. You are not really saying that your Chinese tiger mom approach is a great way to educating our children. Or at least, I hope! And to conclude, I want to share a quote by Paulo Freire:The struggle for humanization, breaking the cycles of injustice, exploitation and oppression lies in the perpetuation of oppressor versus oppressed. In these roles, those who commit the injustice, the oppressors, do not only deny freedom to those they oppress, they also risk their own humanity, because oppressor consciousness "tends to transform everything surrounding it into an object of its domination.” Please tell me, Professor Chua, that you are joking. nonadult false You must be joking, Professor Chua: An open letter to the Chinese Tiger Mom text blog 2114 16 4.75 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=20918099&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_13304969_127586_20918099_ap_160X120.jpg false United States MI East Lansing 3 0 3242392 20918099 ASCD EDge Member 445 http://edge.ascd.org/_Spring-is-Here-National-Educational-Technology-Plan/blog/2014679/127586.html I have been reading the new National Educational Technology Plan released (NETP)on March 5, 2010. The plan lays out such a revolutionary model of learning that I wonder if it has gone through the sanctions of the U.S. Department of Education or perhaps this signals a change in the directions of the Department, I wish. The model of 21st century learning described in this plan calls for engaging and empowering learning experiences for all learners. The model asks that we focus what and how we teach to match what people need to know, how they learn, where and when they will learn, and who needs to learn. It brings state-of-the art technology into learning to enable, motivate, and inspire all students, regardless of background, languages, or disabilities, to achieve. It leverages the power of technology to provide personalized learning instead of a one-size- fits-all curriculum, pace of teaching, and instructional practices. (NETP, p. vi). “Personalized learning instead of a one-size-fits-all curriculum, pace of teaching, and instructional practices.” What a vision! The group that worked for the plan must be congratulated for what they have done and the Department praised for releasing the report. The Plan contains a list of goals and recommendations in five areas: learning, assessment, teaching, infrastructure, and productivity. In each of these goal statements, I have been able to find some key words that I like: Learning: All learners will have engaging and empowering learning experiences both in and outside of school that prepare them to be active, creative, knowledgeable, and ethical participants in our globally networked society. Keywords: all learners, engaging and empowering, in and outside school, active, creative, knowledgeable, ethical, and globally networked. Assessment: Our education system at all levels will leverage the power of technology to measure what matters and use assessment data for continuous improvement. Keywords: measure what matters and use data for improvement Teaching: Professional educators will be supported individually and in teams by technology that connects them to data, content, resources, expertise, and learning experiences that enable and inspire more effective teaching for all learners. Keywords: supported, enable and inspire Infrastructure: All students and educators will have access to a comprehensive infrastructure for learning when and where they need it. Keywords: all students and educators, comprehensive, and when and where they need it. Productivity: Our education system at all levels will redesign processes and structures to take advantage of the power of technology to improve learning outcomes while making more efficient use of time, money, and staff. Keywords: redesign processes and structures, making more efficient use of time, money, and staff. These keywords project a different vision of education from what is reflected in the Administration’s Race to the Top initiative and certainly NCLB: Learners as individual human beings, learning takes place in different places and forms, learners must be engaged and empowered, and they will be participants of a globally connected society rather than test takers, standards bearers, or empty vessels waiting to be filled with bits of knowledge; Assessment should be done to improve learning and measure what really matters in life rather than labeling students, scare educators, and enforce government mandates; Teachers are professionals who need to be respected and supported, enabled and inspired rather than lazy, incompetent, and unethical workers who must be closely watched, constantly monitored, and baited with carrots or scared with clubs. I hope the recommendations of this plan will be taken seriously by the Department. Moreover I hope the same philosophy will be driving the reauthorization of the ESEA (now under the name of NCLB). I have been reading the new National Educational Technology Plan released (NETP)on March 5, 2010. The plan lays out such a revolutionary model of learning that I wonder if it has gone through the sanctions of the U.S. Department of Education or perhaps this signals a change in the directions of the Department, I wish. The model of 21st century learning described in this plan calls for engaging and empowering learning experiences for all learners. The model asks that we focus what and how we teach to match what people need to know, how they learn, where and when they will learn, and who needs to learn. It brings state-of-the art technology into learning to enable, motivate, and inspire all students, regardless of background, languages, or disabilities, to achieve. It leverages the power of technology to provide personalized learning instead of a one-size- fits-all curriculum, pace of teaching, and instructional practices. (NETP, p. vi). “Personalized learning instead of a one-size-fits-all curriculum, pace of teaching, and instructional practices.” What a vision! The group that worked for the plan must be congratulated for what they have done and the Department praised for releasing the report. The Plan contains a list of goals and recommendations in five areas: learning, assessment, teaching, infrastructure, and productivity. In each of these goal statements, I have been able to find some key words that I like: Learning: All learners will have engaging and empowering learning experiences both in and outside of school that prepare them to be active, creative, knowledgeable, and ethical participants in our globally networked society. Keywords: all learners, engaging and empowering, in and outside school, active, creative, knowledgeable, ethical, and globally networked. Assessment: Our education system at all levels will leverage the power of technology to measure what matters and use assessment data for continuous improvement. Keywords: measure what matters and use data for improvement Teaching: Professional educators will be supported individually and in teams by technology that connects them to data, content, resources, expertise, and learning experiences that enable and inspire more effective teaching for all learners. Keywords: supported, enable and inspire Infrastructure: All students and educators will have access to a comprehensive infrastructure for learning when and where they need it. Keywords: all students and educators, comprehensive, and when and where they need it. Productivity: Our education system at all levels will redesign processes and structures to take advantage of the power of technology to improve learning outcomes while making more efficient use of time, money, and staff. Keywords: redesign processes and structures, making more efficient use of time, money, and staff. These keywords project a different vision of education from what is reflected in the Administration’s Race to the Top initiative and certainly NCLB: Learners as individual human beings, learning takes place in different places and forms, learners must be engaged and empowered, and they will be participants of a globally connected society rather than test takers, standards bearers, or empty vessels waiting to be filled with bits of knowledge; Assessment should be done to improve learning and measure what really matters in life rather than labeling students, scare educators, and enforce government mandates; Teachers are professionals who need to be respected and supported, enabled and inspired rather than lazy, incompetent, and unethical workers who must be closely watched, constantly monitored, and baited with carrots or scared with clubs. I hope the recommendations of this plan will be taken seriously by the Department. Moreover I hope the same philosophy will be driving the reauthorization of the ESEA (now under the name of NCLB). Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:19:03 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_Spring-is-Here-National-Educational-Technology-Plan/blog/2014679/127586.html Yong_Zhao 2010-03-11T01:19:03Z ASCD EDge I have been reading the new National Educational Technology Plan released (NETP)on March 5, 2010. The plan lays out such a revolutionary model of learning that I wonder if it has gone through the sanctions of the U.S. Department of Education or perhaps this signals a change in the directions of the Department, I wish. The model of 21st century learning described in this plan calls for engaging and empowering learning experiences for all learners. The model asks that we focus what and how we teach to match what people need to know, how they learn, where and when they will learn, and who needs to learn. It brings state-of-the art technology into learning to enable, motivate, and inspire all students, regardless of background, languages, or disabilities, to achieve. It leverages the power of technology to provide personalized learning instead of a one-size- fits-all curriculum, pace of teaching, and instructional practices. (NETP, p. vi). “Personalized learning instead of a one-size-fits-all curriculum, pace of teaching, and instructional practices.” What a vision! The group that worked for the plan must be congratulated for what they have done and the Department praised for releasing the report. The Plan contains a list of goals and recommendations in five areas: learning, assessment, teaching, infrastructure, and productivity. In each of these goal statements, I have been able to find some key words that I like: Learning: All learners will have engaging and empowering learning experiences both in and outside of school that prepare them to be active, creative, knowledgeable, and ethical participants in our globally networked society. Keywords: all learners, engaging and empowering, in and outside school, active, creative, knowledgeable, ethical, and globally networked. Assessment: Our education system at all levels will leverage the power of technology to measure what matters and use assessment data for continuous improvement. Keywords: measure what matters and use data for improvement Teaching: Professional educators will be supported individually and in teams by technology that connects them to data, content, resources, expertise, and learning experiences that enable and inspire more effective teaching for all learners. Keywords: supported, enable and inspire Infrastructure: All students and educators will have access to a comprehensive infrastructure for learning when and where they need it. Keywords: all students and educators, comprehensive, and when and where they need it. Productivity: Our education system at all levels will redesign processes and structures to take advantage of the power of technology to improve learning outcomes while making more efficient use of time, money, and staff. Keywords: redesign processes and structures, making more efficient use of time, money, and staff. These keywords project a different vision of education from what is reflected in the Administration’s Race to the Top initiative and certainly NCLB: Learners as individual human beings, learning takes place in different places and forms, learners must be engaged and empowered, and they will be participants of a globally connected society rather than test takers, standards bearers, or empty vessels waiting to be filled with bits of knowledge; Assessment should be done to improve learning and measure what really matters in life rather than labeling students, scare educators, and enforce government mandates; Teachers are professionals who need to be respected and supported, enabled and inspired rather than lazy, incompetent, and unethical workers who must be closely watched, constantly monitored, and baited with carrots or scared with clubs. I hope the recommendations of this plan will be taken seriously by the Department. Moreover I hope the same philosophy will be driving the reauthorization of the ESEA (now under the name of NCLB). nonadult false Spring is Here(?): National Educational Technology Plan text blog 711 0 0.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=20918099&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_13304969_127586_20918099_ap_160X120.jpg false United States MI East Lansing 0 0 2014679 20918099 ASCD EDge Member 445 http://edge.ascd.org/_Education-Interfering-with-Instruction/blog/1930691/127586.html I was in Cape Town, South Africa to attend the 6th iNET (International Networking for Educational Transformation) conference last week. The conference theme this year is Equity and Excellence for All, a topic that has global appeal because every society is struggling to provide an excellent education for all students. South Africa is a particularly fitting place for this discussion as it works hard to bridge the huge gap between the few advantaged excellent schools with the many disadvantaged schools. The history of South Africa, specifically the Apartheid, has resulted in massive inequalities and injustice in educational opportunities along racial lines. Over 100 educators from six countries (Australia, Mauritius, Singapore, South Africa, UK (England and Wales), and the US) participated in the conference.  As usual, part of the iNET gatherings is to have international delegates interact with educators and students in the host country. But this became quite difficult at this conference. First, the new Western Cape Province government made a policy that no educator can leave the school when it is session for professional development, conferences, or any other reasons, which drastically reduced the number of local participants. Second, the Superintendent-General in her speech to the conference in no uncertain terms made it clear that partnerships and school visits are not encouraged because they may interfere with learning. In the end, a small number of South Africa school leaders and teachers defied the policy and came to the conference and the school visits were cut short, though still went on. Upon hearing this, I was quite surprised, to say the least. Why are partnerships with schools from other countries a bad thing? And why cannot school leaders participate in PD and conferences? As I understand it, one consequence of poverty is isolation from the outside world. I remember the excitement I had when I heard my teacher coming back from visiting the township school and when I and my classmates got to go visit the township school (which is only 2 miles away from my village school) when I was attending a village school. So I did some research. I went on the web and talked with the few South African educators who attended the conference. I found out that apparently the intention of the policy and discouraging message about partnerships and school visits is to ensure a razor-sharp focus on numeracy and literacy. It also seems that absenteeism is a big issue. Earlier at the conference, the Premier and Minister of Education of Western Cape spoke at the conference and talked about the dire situation of education in Western Cape and how the government is working on improving it. The core policy strategy is to make sure schools have five Ts: Time on task Teacher preparedness and knowledge Textbooks Technology Testing The actions taken by the Western Cape mimic those taken by many governments—an excusive focus on the basics (3Rs). That is unless children can read, write and calculate, they do not deserve to do anything else. Likewise, unless a school has made sure that all their students mastered the basics, it cannot provide any other activities. Coincidentally I received an email from a teacher from Des Moines, Iowa informing me of the district's decision to cut arts, music, and P.E.  to preserve core classes. Such policy is apparently well intentioned. But the negative consequences may be much worse than the intended outcomes. First, the basic skills do not have to come at the cost of other education opportunities and participating in other educational activities interferes with the development of basic skills.  Second, an exclusive focus on only the basic skills may not actually result in improvement in these skills. The low achievement of students in impoverished schools and communities is the result of a multitude of factors and need a much more comprehensive solution than simply cutting out educational activities. Third, one-size-fits-all policies across an educational system seldom work as different schools, students, and communities face different challenges. What is needed instead is support and autonomy for local innovations and local solutions. Finally, for many children who live in poverty and educators who teach in disadvantaged schools, a sense of hope is essential and that hope can easily be driven out by outside impositions and doubts. Policies like this can do exactly that. A highlight of the conference for me is learning about “the Chicken Project,” which shows how international partnerships between schools can be tremendously valuable. The project is the result of a partnership between The Cherwell School in Oxford, England and Gcato School in the Eastern Cape area, South Africa. Students of Gcato School mostly come from three local very poor villages. In addition to having Cherwell students, their family, and school staff teaching classes in Gcato and donations of needed resources such as computers and materials, the partnership led to a very innovative project. Students from Cherwell and Gcato have developed a business plan and started action to build a chicken enterprise in Gcato. They plan to raise chickens and sell the eggs to the local community in the beginning and gradually expand to a large chicken farm. Funds will be used for food to feed hungry students and improve the school. They have already convinced some local residents to donate the land and raised funds in Cherwell to get the project started. Three students from Cherwell (Charlie, Sam, and Verity) presented their plan at the conference. I found their plan so attractive that I put down some investment and they made me their honorary president. I have also invited them to write a blog post about this project. I was in Cape Town, South Africa to attend the 6th iNET (International Networking for Educational Transformation) conference last week. The conference theme this year is Equity and Excellence for All, a topic that has global appeal because every society is struggling to provide an excellent education for all students. South Africa is a particularly fitting place for this discussion as it works hard to bridge the huge gap between the few advantaged excellent schools with the many disadvantaged schools. The history of South Africa, specifically the Apartheid, has resulted in massive inequalities and injustice in educational opportunities along racial lines. Over 100 educators from six countries (Australia, Mauritius, Singapore, South Africa, UK (England and Wales), and the US) participated in the conference.  As usual, part of the iNET gatherings is to have international delegates interact with educators and students in the host country. But this became quite difficult at this conference. First, the new Western Cape Province government made a policy that no educator can leave the school when it is session for professional development, conferences, or any other reasons, which drastically reduced the number of local participants. Second, the Superintendent-General in her speech to the conference in no uncertain terms made it clear that partnerships and school visits are not encouraged because they may interfere with learning. In the end, a small number of South Africa school leaders and teachers defied the policy and came to the conference and the school visits were cut short, though still went on. Upon hearing this, I was quite surprised, to say the least. Why are partnerships with schools from other countries a bad thing? And why cannot school leaders participate in PD and conferences? As I understand it, one consequence of poverty is isolation from the outside world. I remember the excitement I had when I heard my teacher coming back from visiting the township school and when I and my classmates got to go visit the township school (which is only 2 miles away from my village school) when I was attending a village school. So I did some research. I went on the web and talked with the few South African educators who attended the conference. I found out that apparently the intention of the policy and discouraging message about partnerships and school visits is to ensure a razor-sharp focus on numeracy and literacy. It also seems that absenteeism is a big issue. Earlier at the conference, the Premier and Minister of Education of Western Cape spoke at the conference and talked about the dire situation of education in Western Cape and how the government is working on improving it. The core policy strategy is to make sure schools have five Ts: Time on task Teacher preparedness and knowledge Textbooks Technology Testing The actions taken by the Western Cape mimic those taken by many governments—an excusive focus on the basics (3Rs). That is unless children can read, write and calculate, they do not deserve to do anything else. Likewise, unless a school has made sure that all their students mastered the basics, it cannot provide any other activities. Coincidentally I received an email from a teacher from Des Moines, Iowa informing me of the district's decision to cut arts, music, and P.E.  to preserve core classes. Such policy is apparently well intentioned. But the negative consequences may be much worse than the intended outcomes. First, the basic skills do not have to come at the cost of other education opportunities and participating in other educational activities interferes with the development of basic skills.  Second, an exclusive focus on only the basic skills may not actually result in improvement in these skills. The low achievement of students in impoverished schools and communities is the result of a multitude of factors and need a much more comprehensive solution than simply cutting out educational activities. Third, one-size-fits-all policies across an educational system seldom work as different schools, students, and communities face different challenges. What is needed instead is support and autonomy for local innovations and local solutions. Finally, for many children who live in poverty and educators who teach in disadvantaged schools, a sense of hope is essential and that hope can easily be driven out by outside impositions and doubts. Policies like this can do exactly that. A highlight of the conference for me is learning about “the Chicken Project,” which shows how international partnerships between schools can be tremendously valuable. The project is the result of a partnership between The Cherwell School in Oxford, England and Gcato School in the Eastern Cape area, South Africa. Students of Gcato School mostly come from three local very poor villages. In addition to having Cherwell students, their family, and school staff teaching classes in Gcato and donations of needed resources such as computers and materials, the partnership led to a very innovative project. Students from Cherwell and Gcato have developed a business plan and started action to build a chicken enterprise in Gcato. They plan to raise chickens and sell the eggs to the local community in the beginning and gradually expand to a large chicken farm. Funds will be used for food to feed hungry students and improve the school. They have already convinced some local residents to donate the land and raised funds in Cherwell to get the project started. Three students from Cherwell (Charlie, Sam, and Verity) presented their plan at the conference. I found their plan so attractive that I put down some investment and they made me their honorary president. I have also invited them to write a blog post about this project. Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:32:22 GMT http://edge.ascd.org/_Education-Interfering-with-Instruction/blog/1930691/127586.html Yong_Zhao 2010-03-04T14:32:22Z ASCD EDge I was in Cape Town, South Africa to attend the 6th iNET (International Networking for Educational Transformation) conference last week. The conference theme this year is Equity and Excellence for All, a topic that has global appeal because every society is struggling to provide an excellent education for all students. South Africa is a particularly fitting place for this discussion as it works hard to bridge the huge gap between the few advantaged excellent schools with the many disadvantaged schools. The history of South Africa, specifically the Apartheid, has resulted in massive inequalities and injustice in educational opportunities along racial lines. Over 100 educators from six countries (Australia, Mauritius, Singapore, South Africa, UK (England and Wales), and the US) participated in the conference.  As usual, part of the iNET gatherings is to have international delegates interact with educators and students in the host country. But this became quite difficult at this conference. First, the new Western Cape Province government made a policy that no educator can leave the school when it is session for professional development, conferences, or any other reasons, which drastically reduced the number of local participants. Second, the Superintendent-General in her speech to the conference in no uncertain terms made it clear that partnerships and school visits are not encouraged because they may interfere with learning. In the end, a small number of South Africa school leaders and teachers defied the policy and came to the conference and the school visits were cut short, though still went on. Upon hearing this, I was quite surprised, to say the least. Why are partnerships with schools from other countries a bad thing? And why cannot school leaders participate in PD and conferences? As I understand it, one consequence of poverty is isolation from the outside world. I remember the excitement I had when I heard my teacher coming back from visiting the township school and when I and my classmates got to go visit the township school (which is only 2 miles away from my village school) when I was attending a village school. So I did some research. I went on the web and talked with the few South African educators who attended the conference. I found out that apparently the intention of the policy and discouraging message about partnerships and school visits is to ensure a razor-sharp focus on numeracy and literacy. It also seems that absenteeism is a big issue. Earlier at the conference, the Premier and Minister of Education of Western Cape spoke at the conference and talked about the dire situation of education in Western Cape and how the government is working on improving it. The core policy strategy is to make sure schools have five Ts: Time on task Teacher preparedness and knowledge Textbooks Technology Testing The actions taken by the Western Cape mimic those taken by many governments—an excusive focus on the basics (3Rs). That is unless children can read, write and calculate, they do not deserve to do anything else. Likewise, unless a school has made sure that all their students mastered the basics, it cannot provide any other activities. Coincidentally I received an email from a teacher from Des Moines, Iowa informing me of the district's decision to cut arts, music, and P.E.  to preserve core classes. Such policy is apparently well intentioned. But the negative consequences may be much worse than the intended outcomes. First, the basic skills do not have to come at the cost of other education opportunities and participating in other educational activities interferes with the development of basic skills.  Second, an exclusive focus on only the basic skills may not actually result in improvement in these skills. The low achievement of students in impoverished schools and communities is the result of a multitude of factors and need a much more comprehensive solution than simply cutting out educational activities. Third, one-size-fits-all policies across an educational system seldom work as different schools, students, and communities face different challenges. What is needed instead is support and autonomy for local innovations and local solutions. Finally, for many children who live in poverty and educators who teach in disadvantaged schools, a sense of hope is essential and that hope can easily be driven out by outside impositions and doubts. Policies like this can do exactly that. A highlight of the conference for me is learning about “the Chicken Project,” which shows how international partnerships between schools can be tremendously valuable. The project is the result of a partnership between The Cherwell School in Oxford, England and Gcato School in the Eastern Cape area, South Africa. Students of Gcato School mostly come from three local very poor villages. In addition to having Cherwell students, their family, and school staff teaching classes in Gcato and donations of needed resources such as computers and materials, the partnership led to a very innovative project. Students from Cherwell and Gcato have developed a business plan and started action to build a chicken enterprise in Gcato. They plan to raise chickens and sell the eggs to the local community in the beginning and gradually expand to a large chicken farm. Funds will be used for food to feed hungry students and improve the school. They have already convinced some local residents to donate the land and raised funds in Cherwell to get the project started. Three students from Cherwell (Charlie, Sam, and Verity) presented their plan at the conference. I found their plan so attractive that I put down some investment and they made me their honorary president. I have also invited them to write a blog post about this project. nonadult false Education Interfering with Instruction? text blog 563 10 5.0 http://edge.ascd.org/service/displayKickPlace.kickAction?u=20918099&as=127586 http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/127586/photos/PHOTO_13304969_127586_20918099_ap_160X120.jpg false United States MI East Lansing 1 0 1930691 20918099 ASCD EDge Member 445