ConnCAN's Education News Roundup

Editorials and Op-eds

High Stakes Flim Flam
By Bob Herbert, The New York Times, October 9, 2007

Not only has high-stakes testing largely failed to magically swing open the gates to successful learning, it is questionable in many cases whether the tests themselves are anything more than a shell game.

If teachers, administrators, politicians and others have a stake in raising the test scores of students — as opposed to improving student learning, which is not the same thing — there are all kinds of incentives to raise those scores by any means necessary.

One aspect of the No Child Left Behind law that doesn’t get enough attention is that while it requires states to make progress toward student proficiency in reading and math, it leaves it up to the states themselves to define “proficiency” and to create the tests that determine what constitutes progress.

That’s absurd. With no guiding standard, the states’ tests are measurements without meaning.

Dumbing Education Down
By, Chester E. Finn Jr., The Wall Street Journal, October 5, 2007

So far, so good. But while NCLB circa 2001 is rigidly prescriptive about the "improvement" part, it's vague about where to set the bar. As a result, a fourth grader living in Hamtramck or Pueblo may be judged "proficient" according to Michigan's or Colorado's low standards, yet fail by a mile to match the attainments of his or her peers in Worcester, Mass., or Columbia, S.C., places with far loftier notions of proficiency.

Yet official Washington seemingly lacks the stomach to take this on. The conventional wisdom is that "national standards and tests" are politically taboo because conservatives don't like "national" and liberals don't like standards and testing. The Gates and Broad foundations are spending tens of millions to overturn that taboo during the upcoming election, but few in the 110th Congress seem to be listening.

Nor is anybody ready to tackle the other part of NCLB's core problem: the quest for universal proficiency. No educator in America believes this can be achieved anytime soon, not with 100% of the kids and by any reasonable standard of proficiency. The truth is that boosting our students' proficiency from today's 35% to 70% or 80% would be a transformative accomplishment. But no politician dares say that, lest he instantly be skewered with "which 20% of the kids don't you care about?"

News Articles

Board member will propose 'achievement gap task force' to address learning disparity
By, Christine McCluskey, Journal Inquirer, October 9, 2007

MANCHESTER - After a recent report on this year's Connecticut Mastery Test scores showed racial achievement gaps persisting in Manchester, Board of Education member Geoffrey R. Luxenberg developed a plan he says he will propose at Wednesday night's board meeting.

Luxenberg wants to create a bipartisan "achievement gap task force" that would meet twice a month for a year, receiving testimony from people from around the state who have been successful in narrowing achievement gaps.

The task force would look for proven ways to address the gaps in all subject areas but with a special emphasis on reading, where the gaps widened at some grade levels

Balancing Act for schools: Stamford to use nonracial factors to ensure diversity
By Chris Gosler, The Stamford Advocate, October 11, 2007

The Board of Education has come up with a new plan for assigning students to schools in response to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling limiting districts' consideration of race in the process.

Administrators will look at three nonracial factors: Whether a student receives free or reduced-price lunches, lives in income-restricted housing or is learning English.

Racial balance plan OK'd for McKinley
By, Andrew Brophy, The Connecticut Post, October 8, 2007

FAIRFIELD — The state Board of Education has approved a plan designed to reduce the percentage of minority students at McKinley School.

McKinley's minority percentage was 41.25 percent in 2006-07, while the districtwide average for elementary schools was 12.51 percent.

The local Board of Education's plan to reduce McKinley's minority percentage gave parents of all McKinley students the option of sending their children to Stratfield, Dwight or Jennings elementary schools, beginning this school year.

Next fall, the plan allows parents of McKinley students who are not doing well academically to send their children to another elementary school, and it also allows parents of students in other elementary schools who are doing well academically to send their children to McKinley.

Puzzling Racial Gap
By, Robert A. Frahm, The Hartford Courant, October 7, 2007

Most educators agree that poverty is a powerful underlying cause of the achievement gap. But as experts look at places like Bloomfield, some say that race and culture - apart from income - appear to influence achievement in ways that are not always easily understood.

But the achievement gap also occurs among minority students in middle-class and wealthy suburbs.

On a 2005 nationwide reading test, the gap between black and white high school seniors whose parents were college graduates actually was larger than the gap between blacks and whites whose parents had not finished high school.

Why?