After reading the Kozol article last night, I felt even more discouraged. The book Savage Inequalities was published in 1991, and I kept telling myself, "Times have changed." Boy, was I ever wrong and naive. On page three of the article a 16 yr.old student was asked by Kozol how the people of NY would react if the African-American population simply "died or left for somewhere else." The girl replied that, "I think they'd be relieved." I was appalled at this response! Is this how other ethnic groups feel? Is this what's happening in Charlotte with the "school choice plan?" Is this just a facade for "segregation?"

This article makes me re-evaluate my attitude and teaching style. I don't want any student to ever feel unwanted or underappreciated simply due to their socioeconomic status (is this ascribed or achieved by the way?)

If the statistics and discrepancies in teacher salary in the urban vs.
suburbs wasn't bad enough, these "drill based literacy methods" like Success For All to help improve test scores are having the opposite effect to me. One size does not fit all... What about teaching the child? Reading straight from a text is not teaching. If that's the case what are any of doing? Is this eventaully going to make it to the rural areas? Does this bother anyone but me??

I started thinking about the part where it said some children graduate and go on to a college, but they come back to the town because they aren't used to "thinking". They were only prepared to regurgitate the test info. I feel so much that I'm not preparing my students to "think". There's so much math testing that they miss the basics and just end up telling you what you want to hear. Luckily, there are 6 hours in a day where I can get away from some testing prep and get them to think in other ways.
When I took my masters class in assessment, I remember the teacher saying, "the more standardized we become with our testing, the more we find children don't fit the mold."
To me, it is a sad waste of so much creativity to think of children as a score. At the same time, people need to be held accountable. It would be good if there were realistic ways to assess them and they could use thier creativity to meet the standards.

Standardized testing promotes inequalities.
Elaine