[CSPS] NCLB caste

[Jonathan Coopersmith]

One disturbing view from the trenches.

         Jonathan


Classroom Caste System


By David Keyes
Washington Post
Monday, April 9, 2007; Page A13

Written five years ago to reduce the "achievement gap," the No Child 
Left Behind Act has in fact created a gap in American education. Its 
pressure to raise test scores has caused many schools to give poor 
and minority students an impoverished education that focuses 
primarily on basic skills.

As it comes up for reauthorization, members of Congress should 
consider the unintended consequence of the act: a new gap between 
poor and minority students, who are being taught to seek simple 
answers, and largely wealthy and white students, who are learning to 
ask complex questions. In my work as an elementary school teacher, I 
have seen this new gap and I worry about its impact on my students' 
future prospects.

Although supporters and critics of No Child Left Behind agree on 
little, both would acknowledge that testing lies at the heart of the 
law. Schools approach the act's testing requirements differently, 
depending on the students they serve.

Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, American schools 
remain largely segregated. Schools serving mostly wealthy and white 
students have a distinct advantage when it comes to testing. Their 
students are far more likely to be raised in an environment that 
gives them the necessary tools to succeed on tests. They grow up with 
the intellectual abundance their wealth provides: books, educational 
videos and Baby Einstein games, to name a few. Having these resources 
may not make children smarter, but it does educate them in many of 
the skills -- such as letter sounds and addition facts -- that are 
covered on standardized tests. Knowing their students are likely to 
succeed on tests gives these schools freedom to teach higher-level 
thinking skills.

Poor and minority children also come to school with rich backgrounds. 
They speak foreign languages, make music, tell vivid stories and have 
other skills not typical of their peers. Their backgrounds, however, 
often do not provide them with the academic skills needed to succeed 
on standardized tests. Fearful of poor test scores that can bring 
punitive measures, schools spend an inordinate amount of time 
preparing their students for the tests.

Schools often use test-prep programs to try to raise test scores. The 
problem with these programs is that they teach the skills covered on 
tests, and only these skills. Poor and minority students spend hours 
repeating "B buh ball" and two plus two equals four. Every hour spent 
drilling basic skills is an hour not spent developing the 
higher-level thinking skills that are emphasized in wealthier school districts.

I have worked in both types of schools. Currently, I teach in an 
almost exclusively minority, high-poverty elementary school. 
Administrators require teachers to strictly adhere to a months-long 
test-prep program. My students recoil at the sight of their test-prep 
books. Last year, some of my students cried, wracked with anxiety 
over the tests.

My students are 7 and 8 years old.

I did my student teaching in an almost exclusively white and wealthy 
school. There, the students studied the role of quilts on the 
Underground Railroad, brainstormed plans to save wolves from 
extinction and performed dances based on retellings of Cinderella. 
The children learned to think and they loved it.

At the end of the year, test results will come out for these two 
schools. Educators and politicians will trumpet any reduction of the 
so-called achievement gap. This misses the point. Students will leave 
these two schools and schools like them with a widely varying set of 
skills. As the achievement gap is being reduced, another gap is being 
created. Students in largely wealthy and white schools are learning 
to ask larger questions; students in poor and minority schools are 
only being taught to answer smaller ones.

The effect of this gap will be long-lasting. Students taught 
higher-level thinking skills will be able to compete for jobs at the 
upper echelon of the 21st-century economy. Students who receive an 
impoverished education focused on basic skills will be stuck at the bottom.

The No Child Left Behind Act is creating a caste-like system in which 
students' future prospects are likely to be similar to those of their 
parents. This undemocratic development is at odds with a society that 
prides itself on being a meritocracy. As Congress debates the renewal 
of the law, members should consider not only whether the act is 
reducing the achievement gap but also the skills gap it is creating.

The writer is a second-grade teacher at Bel Pre Elementary School in 
Silver Spring.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/08/AR2007040800925.html?referrer=email&referrer=email&referrer=email

Jonathan Coopersmith
Associate Professor
Dept. of History
MS 4236
Texas A&M University
College Station, Texas  77843-4236
979.845.8584
979.862.4314 fax

Secretary
History & Philosophy of Science Section (L)
American Association for the Advancement of Science
www.aaas.org 
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