Send reply to:  	fair-diversity@egroups.com
From:           	"Gerald W. Bracey" 
Date sent:      	Tue, 2 Nov 1999 20:13:45 -0500


I acknowledge earlier critiques of "Risk" , even though i didn't have
a chance to read them then.  I was Director of Research, Evaluation
and Testing for the Virginia Department of Education when "A Nation
At Risk" appeared and though I doubted it, didn't have time to really
dig into the data.  W hatever else state bureaucrats do, my
experience is that they are very busy.  I only started analyzing the
data after a 1990 column by Washington Post columnist, Richard Cohen,
called, "Johnny's Miserable SAT's."  I did an analysis taking into
account the changing demographics of who had been tak ing the SAT and
found only a small decline in verbal, none at all in math.  Education
Week published my analysis as "SATs: Miserable or Miraculous."  After
that people all over the country started sending me material showing
US schools doing better than critics claimed.  That led to my first
article 


I should point out, though, that Stedman and Smith have changed a
lot.  Stedman critiqued the Sandia Report and critiqued my critique
of his critique.  He also critiqued my analysis of international
comparisons.  Marshall Smith, of course, is currently Deputy
Secretary of Education and fully acce pting of the lousy TIMSS
cliches and other myths that Clinton insists on (e.g., only 40% of
American third graders can read independently; these are, of course,
the same third graders that finished 2nd in the most recent
comparison of reading skills among kids in 27 countries.