Contradictions of School Reform : Educational Costs of Standardized Testing (Critical Social Thought)

Rating:
Summary: At What Cost?
Review: Like most teachers, I want to see kids engaged in building skills, figuring out a new concept, questioning each other, me, the text, their own assumptions. Like most teachers, I want my classroom to be vibrantly alive. Why then would I allow waking intellects to be numbed and a spirit of inquiry suffocated by repeated preparation for a state-mandated test? In Contradictions of School Reform, Linda McNeil raises this question and others that arise when a student-centered curriculum gives way to a standardized test-based curriculum.

From her classroom observation come examples that illuminate the frustration and loss occurring when teachers try to maintain enriched instruction while also serving the higher authorities that give credence to only one form of assessment-a multiple choice test of minimum skills.

Many teachers and parents see a more complex picture of the ways children learn and can demonstrate that development. Why have their insights been ignored? Addressing this issue, McNeil returns to the beginnings of the Perot movement for school reform, showing how its original intent was perverted by powerful political players who used standardized assessment to create a closed hierarchical system, with teachers, of course, occupying the lowest level. She shows that this "de-democratization" of public schools marginalizes anyone who does not speak the language of authority, the language of the standardized test.

McNeil provides in-depth social and political perspective, but she also captures the salient moments in schools-- like the teacher of eighth graders who had failed at least two years being told he could no longer do the oral reading they loved because "they are too busy preparing for their TAAS test" or the students in a daily pep rally on test-taking strategies for TAAS chanting "Three in a row? No,No, No! [Three answers 'b' in a row? No, No, No!]"

Public schools could be helping young people acquire the deep understandings of concepts and the habits of rigorous analysis that will allow them to take active part in an age of technology and information. Instead many kids are learning that the classroom has nothing to do with real life or real learning or real engagement. It is instead a place where they have no voice but are at the mercy of the routine and mundane. And who can blame their cynicism when they once came to school so eager to learn?

When the stakes are so high, the discussion cannot be limited. McNeil does us a great service with her penetrating analysis of the damage being done to children, particularly those in most need of constructing a new future. Her clear language allows us to see what we had only glimpsed in part. With this articulation comes the realization that the present problems are not inevitable.

Her study of specific classrooms suggests what teachers and students, allowed to focus on full, deep learning, could accomplish.

It is this faith in kids and hope for their future that seems to drive McNeil's writing, urging us to think more clearly about the limits imposed by a system that could be expanding the possibilities.

Rating:
Summary: Contradictions of School Reform: Educational Costs of
Review: This book is excellent. It provides a very thought provoking argument against standardized testing. Mrs. McNeil's careful research shows the terrible cost that Texas students are paying as a result of standardized testing. This book needs to be read by every State Legislature, Teacher, Principal, Superintendent, School Board Member and Parent in Texas.

Rating:
Summary: Another Houston Reader
Review: This is an outstanding book that has much to say to everyone interested in public education. First of all, McNeil presents an encouraging description of what can happen when teachers and students are given permission and opportunity to excel. The public schools observed by McNeil had little in terms of resources, funds, or equipment, in spite of limited outside support. Yet, the schools had the magnet name and committed teachers and students who created havens of intellectual excitement, inquiry, probing, and rich learning. These classrooms were in stark contrast to the more typical classrooms described previously by McNeil in Contradictions of Control, and in opposition to the students' home schools where "success" meant merely passing the state test and graduating. McNeil offers compelling insights into classroom dynamics and why these schools were able to be so intellectually powerful based on concrete examples from many hours of classroom observation.

The second major impact of Contradictions of School Reform is what it has to offer to the national discussion on school accountability. Her longitudinal studies on the same schools before and after the institution of various state and local reform measures provide clear evidence on the impact of these reforms and the costs to the students. It appears that tests, which originally had a useful purpose, have now been misapplied and misused to everyone's detriment. Furthermore, her evidence shows that the high stakes tests are creating a false sense of accountability in addition to being harmful to children's learning.

Deborah Meier says on the cover of the book, "It's a story that everyone needs to read from start to finish." As a teacher and a mother, I heartily agree.