z41\doc\web\2000\05\sizbook.txt
Re what the book is about..  The book is a debate.  Thernstrom is attacking
my arguments.  Yes Yes.   Sizer and I are both advocates of high standards,
and reform and in favor of most of the items on Hu's "no-no" list of

innovative practices (which on the whole were the practices of the schools
I attended as a child--in independent schools).  What I'm after is the kind
of education/pedagogy/structure for all kids that a favored few have long
received. An education that took kids minds seriously even when they were
in kindergarten (I started my career as a Kindergarten teacher).  The
basics of a 5 year olds education includes lively and high order thinking.
The schools I organized in East Harlem graduated kids on the basis of
publicly announced high standards, in keeping with the principles of the
Coalition of Essential Schools which Ted Sizer is the chair of (and I'm the
vice-chair).  We are proudly "reformers"--maybe even revolutionaries!


There's a battle over the heart and mind of "reform".   There always has
been.  The meaning of progressivism has always had these two opposite
sides--the efficiency side and the messy democratic side.    But folks like
me are for major and radical "re-form"--changes in our accustomed school
practices.   The status quo has not done well for the education of kids for
democracy--rich kids and poor kids-- and it has been injurious to the
education of the vast majority of kids at the bottom of the heap.  It
matters more today because school credentialing plays a more powerful role
and kids spend more time inside our schools.  So if the schools teach bad
intellectual, social and moral habits it is more serious.   I'm for
re-forming it along the  lines you can read about in Sizer's books--e.g.
Horace's Compromise or mine--The Power of Their Ideas--plus plus plus.


Deborah


>what's the main thesis/es?
>
>Thernstroms are backing high stakes testing
>I understand Sizer is against it, but that Sizer is a
>major player in the education movement that has promoted
>high stakes testing even if Sizer doesn't like that particular
>direction.
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Deborah Meier [mailto:dmeier@ESSENTIALSCHOOLS.ORG]
>Sent: Saturday, April 29, 2000 1:52 PM
>To: ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU
>Subject: Re: Authentic tests
>
>
>A book with a lead essay by me--Will Standards Save Public Education--is
>now out, pubished by Beacon, with articles by Sizer, Linda Nathan, Bill
>Ayers, Gary Nash, Murname andThernstom and a foreword by Kozol.  Red cover!
>It sells I notice for $12 (paperback only).  The lead-off essay is entitled
>Educating a Democracy.   It's fairly short--under 90 pages.
>
>Deborah
>




Hold the "amen".


But your (Hu's) conclusion only holds if you accept the claim that some of
these new standardized tests are "performance/authentic assessment".    I
don't accept that claim.  They are merely new versions of the same old bad
standardized tests. They've merely changed the way they score them to make
them more politically useful, and added some
"constructed"--open-ended--responses that are scored by people acting like
machines.   We shouldn't be making important (or unimportant) decisions
about individual children or individual schools on the basis of any of
these kinds of tests.


Performance-based assessment is assessment in which real live people
perform things to real live audiences who make real live judgments..   They
are far more authentic and no more biased--accept that the biases are

confronted openly.


In addition, serious assessment should always be based on a variety of
efforts, audiences and tools.  Thus accounting for the fact that we don't
all shine under the same circumstances--we compensate for our "weaknesses"
in different ways, and we all have weaknesses (or at least almost all of us
do).


Deborah




>AMEN! LET'S ALL AGREE ON THIS! THERE IS NOTHING "AUTHENTIC" OR
>"LESS BIASED" ABOUT "PERFORMANCE/AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT".
>
>1.  Maybe we agree that under the present circumstances, the traditional
>multiple-choie standardized test are amazingly enough less misleading, less
>dangerous and more reliable than the current politically normed tests
>parading as more authentic or curriculum-alligned tests.
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>To unsubscribe from the ARN-L list, send command SIGNOFF ARN-L
>to LISTSERV@LISTS.CUA.EDU.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the ARN-L list, send command SIGNOFF ARN-L
to LISTSERV@LISTS.CUA.EDU.