Betty Sternberg Gets It

Though she is not telling regular readers of this blog anything that we aren't already onboard for, the commentary in this Sunday's Courant is a breath of fresh air.

We need to direct our efforts toward policies that foster a fundamental shift in the way teachers and students interact, the way teachers and teachers interact and the way teachers and administrators interact. We need to fund mentors/teachers who signal to each youngster that they honor, value and profoundly support them. We need to fund programs that create school leaders (students, teachers and administrators) who collaborate and are, as Pink says, "animated by a different form of thinking ... (who have) the capacity to detect patterns and opportunities, to create artistic and emotional beauty, to craft a satisfying narrative and to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into something new."

We don't need more seat time and more tests. We need a fundamentally different structure to foster a different way of thinking.

In this context, I applaud the recommendation that seniors do a yearlong independent study with a teacher or mentor. I just think it isn't enough. Give students four years to do unique, independent work — increasing the amount and complexity each year — to ensure a new kind of interaction with a teacher/mentor and that "different form of thinking" in every high school grade.

Do require at least two years of world languages. But only after first requiring that world language instruction begin in the lower elementary grades when children are "wired" to learn it more easily.

I don't criticize the bulk of these proposals (increasing credits and adding five end-of-course tests) because they might be costly in terms of dollars or dropouts. It may very well be that what I envision — not a harder high school, but a better one — will be more expensive, with its emphasis on more one-on-one interaction between teachers and students and more creativity required of everyone. And I don't believe that students will drop out when much is expected of them that connects with their souls; they will expect much of themselves, and they will succeed.

I once interviewed one of Hartford's success stories, a young man who graduated from the Classical Magnet School and Connecticut College. He recounted with anger his lack of preparation compared with other college students who came from private schools. He told the story of a high school teacher who cared so little for his students that he asked them to fill out old, frayed work sheets as he read the newspaper. When I asked this young man what was the most important thing that could be done to address all the inequities he described, he said, "Hire teachers who care."

Erin Gruwell cared, and her students basked in that care. We should use her example as we transform our high schools into better places for learning.

Betty Sternberg on pointless NCLB testing

In an editorial called, More Required Tests Won't Solve Education Problems - March 24, 2006 by Betty J. Sternberg much of the growing criticism we read about everywhere is confirmed.

In Connecticut this month, more than 300,000 students are wrestling with about 12.6 million test pages and roughly 63 million questions.

What will this massive testing tell us that we don't already know? Nothing.

In general, wealthier students do better than poorer students, non-minority students do better than minority students, students without disabilities do better than students with disabilities, and there are significant gaps among urban, suburban and rural students.

This is precisely the point. These tests do nothing but confirm what we already know about test results - they are perfectly predictable. Yet every year the newspapers run test comparisons as though the results will somehow change.

"Gee, maybe Hartford scored higher than Greenwich this year." Somehow pigs are more likely to sprout wings and fly. Nobody is remotely surprised by the results and it is pure buffoonery to think this stuff has educational meaning.

The pretense of fairness, the very idea that America is the Land of Opportunity is mocked by such "tests". More foolishly (if it's possible), the idiot bureaucrats in Washington would have us believe that the summary of results somehow makes schools "accountable" just because "We Test therefore, um, We Pass and Fail, and, uh, if you fail....". This mind-numbing stupidity is how our schools are judged.

Sternberg is right of course, rich schools always pass, poor schools always fail so why do we punish the brave souls who do their best teaching or administrating in poor districts? To be shocked by this well-worn reality would indicate mental-illness on the observer's part - WE KNOW THIS ALREADY. And these tests are not for the good of the kids or the school. This is the Bush administration's way of destroying the public school system.

Why is anyone playing this game?

Sternberg continues...

Less, but better testing - testing that works to improve student achievement, not just record it - would allow us to focus on closing the unacceptably large differences in skills among subgroups of children.

NCLB, with its heavy emphasis on academic achievement measured by annual tests alone, will have our nation's children meeting minimal targets and busily answering those 5.8 billion multiple-choice questions.

This law does little to create an academically astute, responsible, caring, compassionate and wise citizenry.

Wow, I'm proud of this woman. Yes, that's what concerned citizens everywhere think.

Nobody is against testing as a tool to measure individual progress - that makes sense assuming the results are used to help the student learn and grow as an individual. NCLB, on the other hand, uses the results to enforce conformity, guarantee mediocrity, and brutally and unfairly beat up well-intentioned school districts.

The State needs to continue to fight NCLB. Parents need to pressure Congress to repeal it. Lawyers need to fight its Constitutionality.