An excellent read. Buy it as a Christmas gift for someone.
Gerald W. Bracey, one of the most erudite, prolific, and acidic critics of national education policy, died unexpectedly Oct. 20 at his home in Port Townsend, Wash. He was 69.
Showing posts with label Bracey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bracey. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
NCLB: The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves
This is the title of Chapter 4 of Education Hell: Rhetoric vs. Reality, Transforming the Fire Consuming America's Schools. By Gerald W. Bracey. 2009,
An excellent read. Buy it as a Christmas gift for someone.
Gerald W. Bracey, one of the most erudite, prolific, and acidic critics of national education policy, died unexpectedly Oct. 20 at his home in Port Townsend, Wash. He was 69.
Are America's schools in crisis? Are they broken beyond repair? In Education Hell: Rhetoric vs. Reality, Dr. Bracey makes a convincing argument while there is certainly room for improvement, public schools are as good as or better than they've ever been. By too easily accepting a credo of "what can be measured matters," many have accepted misconceptions about our students' progress as well as their standing among the world's children. Educators will find this book uplifting and convincing. Critics will be forced to pause and reconsider.
An excellent read. Buy it as a Christmas gift for someone.
Gerald W. Bracey, one of the most erudite, prolific, and acidic critics of national education policy, died unexpectedly Oct. 20 at his home in Port Townsend, Wash. He was 69.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Gerald Bracey on Testing:
The President of the United States and his Secretary of Education are
violating one of the most fundamental principles concerning test use: Tests
should be used only for the purpose for which they were developed. If they
are to be used for some other purpose, then careful attention must be paid
to whether or not this purpose is appropriate. This position was developed
jointly by the American Educational Research Association, the American
Psychological Association, and the National Council on Measurement in
Education in their document “The Standards for Educational and Psychological
Testing.”
The President and his Secretary want to use existing tests, willy-nilly to
evaluate teachers. They should both be ashamed. The President should be
chastised and Secretary Duncan should be fired on the simple grounds of
incompetence.
From the American Psychological Association’s “Appropriate Use of
High-Stakes Testing in Our Nation’s Schools:” “It is important to remember
that no test is valid for all purposes. Indeed, tests vary in their intended
uses and in their ability to provide meaningful assessments of student
learning.” www.apa.org/[pubinfo/testing.HTML.
It is not the case that a test is a test is a test. Research into the use
of existing tests to evaluate teachers has called that use into question (I
summarized other people’s research on these issues in my May and December
2004 Research columns in Phi Delta Kappan). More recent studies, summarized
in the July 15 issue of Education Week by Debra Viadero, cast further doubt
on the whole enterprise.
States are rolling over and playing dead on this issue because a) they are
desperate for money and b) it is unlikely that people like Bloomberg or the
Governator—or Duncan-- have a clue about the abuse they are permitting.
Duncan’s enthusiastic championing of a “reform” that has been shown not to
work very well—charter schools—can only be taken as an instrument for union
busting. If the NEA and AFT won’t stand up to this abuse of testing, they
deserve to be busted.
www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-bracey
Bracey is a nationally recognized authority on educational assessment
violating one of the most fundamental principles concerning test use: Tests
should be used only for the purpose for which they were developed. If they
are to be used for some other purpose, then careful attention must be paid
to whether or not this purpose is appropriate. This position was developed
jointly by the American Educational Research Association, the American
Psychological Association, and the National Council on Measurement in
Education in their document “The Standards for Educational and Psychological
Testing.”
The President and his Secretary want to use existing tests, willy-nilly to
evaluate teachers. They should both be ashamed. The President should be
chastised and Secretary Duncan should be fired on the simple grounds of
incompetence.
From the American Psychological Association’s “Appropriate Use of
High-Stakes Testing in Our Nation’s Schools:” “It is important to remember
that no test is valid for all purposes. Indeed, tests vary in their intended
uses and in their ability to provide meaningful assessments of student
learning.” www.apa.org/[pubinfo/testing.HTML.
It is not the case that a test is a test is a test. Research into the use
of existing tests to evaluate teachers has called that use into question (I
summarized other people’s research on these issues in my May and December
2004 Research columns in Phi Delta Kappan). More recent studies, summarized
in the July 15 issue of Education Week by Debra Viadero, cast further doubt
on the whole enterprise.
States are rolling over and playing dead on this issue because a) they are
desperate for money and b) it is unlikely that people like Bloomberg or the
Governator—or Duncan-- have a clue about the abuse they are permitting.
Duncan’s enthusiastic championing of a “reform” that has been shown not to
work very well—charter schools—can only be taken as an instrument for union
busting. If the NEA and AFT won’t stand up to this abuse of testing, they
deserve to be busted.
www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-bracey
Bracey is a nationally recognized authority on educational assessment
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Gerald Bracey on NCLB
Nothing Will Happen with NCLB
By Gerald Bracey
An August 7 Washington Post editorial called a speech by California Rep. George Miller as "refreshing:" "So it was refreshing to here a leading liberal Democrat speak passionately about his commitment to this landmark law." The law is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, known in its current incarnation as "No Child Left Behind." It is up for re-authorization this year.
Mr. Miller, realizing he couldn't get the reauthorization before everyone skedaddled home for summer recess, spoke July 30 at the National Press Club, outlining what he wants to see in the bill he will bring forth in September.
I'm not sure the Post understood what Mr. Miller said and I'm not sure Mr. Miller understood what Mr. Miller said. Mr. Miller said that the law "is not fair. It is not flexible and it is not funded. I can tell you that there are no votes in the U. S. House of Representatives for continuing the No Child Left Behind Act without making serious changes to it." That's clear. So far, so good.
But then he dropped a pair of doozies: "I have always said that I am proud to be one of the original coauthors of the No Child Left Behind Act. But what I really want is to be the proud coauthor of a law that works." Well I reckon that gives the game away.
Miller proposed that under the new law "states will be allowed to develop better tests that more accurately measure what all students have learned." Read: not all kids will take the same tests. Read: states will be permitted to use performance tests and other alternatives to multiple-choice tests. Tacked onto this, Miller acknowledged the criticism that NCLB's emphasis only on math and science has inappropriately narrowed the curriculum (and, if he gets completely honest about this, he'll acknowledge that the narrowing has afflicted kids who can least afford to let it happen to them). Read: We'll test in more curriculum areas.
More tests! Underlying this rhetoric is a complexity of both psychometrics and information technology that I don't think Mr. Miller grasps. As Tom Toch of the Education Sector recently pointed out, the testing industry infrastructure has imploded already under weight of the existing law. States added 11 million tests in 2005-2006 and will add another 11 million next year when the NCLB science requirement kicks in. The errors made by the testing companies have soared and even when they get it right they often don't get it right in time for schools to use the results properly under the law.
And yet, in a follow-up that came across the wire services August 8, Miller added even more tests: the tests must test "21st century skills:" "These measures (tests) can no longer reflect just basic skills and memorization. Rather, they must reflect critical-thinking skills and the ability to apply knowledge to new and challenging contexts. These are the skills that today's students need to meet the complex demands of the American economy and society in a globalized world." This last, of course, is rather dubious but it is today's mantra.
Finally, "The legislation I will introduce will contain a growth model that gives credit to states and schools for the progress that their students make over time." Everybody loves growth models these days. Me included. Schools whose students make good progress ought not to be punished if they started from such a low level that they didn't make the magical "proficient" level. Right now, "growth" is measured by looking at how this year's third graders compare to last year's. Of course, these are two different groups of children and they could differ for reasons other than those having to do with the quality of instruction they are receiving. But I don't think most states are in a position to use growth models.
I also don't think Mr. Miller has a good grasp on the state of student-tracking technology. And what about the 20% of those students who change schools every year -- 50-60% in many urban areas? Who's going to be held accountable for the performance of these kids (the kids who move usually suffer, sometimes so do those in the receiving school when teachers backtrack to re-cover material to accommodate the newcomers)?
Predicting what will happen to NCLB in the next few months is iffy, very iffy, but here goes: Nothing will happen. Congress will pass a one-year automatic extension. And that means that it will be 2009 before we get a full-fledged revision because ain't nobody gonna touch it during a presidential election year.
So we'll be stuck with a law that's all stick and no carrot for another two years.
What a tragedy.
Gerald Bracey is an astute scholar of testing. He may or may not be an astute predictor of political power.
By Gerald Bracey
An August 7 Washington Post editorial called a speech by California Rep. George Miller as "refreshing:" "So it was refreshing to here a leading liberal Democrat speak passionately about his commitment to this landmark law." The law is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, known in its current incarnation as "No Child Left Behind." It is up for re-authorization this year.
Mr. Miller, realizing he couldn't get the reauthorization before everyone skedaddled home for summer recess, spoke July 30 at the National Press Club, outlining what he wants to see in the bill he will bring forth in September.
I'm not sure the Post understood what Mr. Miller said and I'm not sure Mr. Miller understood what Mr. Miller said. Mr. Miller said that the law "is not fair. It is not flexible and it is not funded. I can tell you that there are no votes in the U. S. House of Representatives for continuing the No Child Left Behind Act without making serious changes to it." That's clear. So far, so good.
But then he dropped a pair of doozies: "I have always said that I am proud to be one of the original coauthors of the No Child Left Behind Act. But what I really want is to be the proud coauthor of a law that works." Well I reckon that gives the game away.
Miller proposed that under the new law "states will be allowed to develop better tests that more accurately measure what all students have learned." Read: not all kids will take the same tests. Read: states will be permitted to use performance tests and other alternatives to multiple-choice tests. Tacked onto this, Miller acknowledged the criticism that NCLB's emphasis only on math and science has inappropriately narrowed the curriculum (and, if he gets completely honest about this, he'll acknowledge that the narrowing has afflicted kids who can least afford to let it happen to them). Read: We'll test in more curriculum areas.
More tests! Underlying this rhetoric is a complexity of both psychometrics and information technology that I don't think Mr. Miller grasps. As Tom Toch of the Education Sector recently pointed out, the testing industry infrastructure has imploded already under weight of the existing law. States added 11 million tests in 2005-2006 and will add another 11 million next year when the NCLB science requirement kicks in. The errors made by the testing companies have soared and even when they get it right they often don't get it right in time for schools to use the results properly under the law.
And yet, in a follow-up that came across the wire services August 8, Miller added even more tests: the tests must test "21st century skills:" "These measures (tests) can no longer reflect just basic skills and memorization. Rather, they must reflect critical-thinking skills and the ability to apply knowledge to new and challenging contexts. These are the skills that today's students need to meet the complex demands of the American economy and society in a globalized world." This last, of course, is rather dubious but it is today's mantra.
Finally, "The legislation I will introduce will contain a growth model that gives credit to states and schools for the progress that their students make over time." Everybody loves growth models these days. Me included. Schools whose students make good progress ought not to be punished if they started from such a low level that they didn't make the magical "proficient" level. Right now, "growth" is measured by looking at how this year's third graders compare to last year's. Of course, these are two different groups of children and they could differ for reasons other than those having to do with the quality of instruction they are receiving. But I don't think most states are in a position to use growth models.
I also don't think Mr. Miller has a good grasp on the state of student-tracking technology. And what about the 20% of those students who change schools every year -- 50-60% in many urban areas? Who's going to be held accountable for the performance of these kids (the kids who move usually suffer, sometimes so do those in the receiving school when teachers backtrack to re-cover material to accommodate the newcomers)?
Predicting what will happen to NCLB in the next few months is iffy, very iffy, but here goes: Nothing will happen. Congress will pass a one-year automatic extension. And that means that it will be 2009 before we get a full-fledged revision because ain't nobody gonna touch it during a presidential election year.
So we'll be stuck with a law that's all stick and no carrot for another two years.
What a tragedy.
Gerald Bracey is an astute scholar of testing. He may or may not be an astute predictor of political power.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Who needs fact checkers ? We're writing about education
THE WHO NEEDS FACT CHECKERS ANYWAY
AWARD, II: FORTUNE MAGAZINE AND THE
NATIONAL ACADEMIES1
The cover of the July 25, 2005 issue of Fortune featured a takeoff on the old Charles
Atlas body-building ads from the comic books of my youth. On the beach, a brawny
China (in a bathing suit made from the Chinese flag) bullies a scrawny Uncle Sam. The
text on the cover asks “America: the 97-pound weakling?”
In The Fifteenth Bracey report, I made note of the cover and one of the statements from
reporter Geoffrey Colvin: “Our primary and secondary schools are falling behind the rest
of the world’s.” About this statistic I commented, “No evidence was offered, no doubt
because none exists.” Well, that’s true, but it turned out that I had overlooked the
statement and the statistics that would cause so much mischief.
Those came in a section where Colvin wrote about the increasingly well-educated globe
saying, “In engineering, China’s graduates will number over 600,000, India’s 350,000
and America’s only about 70,000.” Colvin’s timing was impeccable—his article arrived
just as a group of fear mongers at the National Academies were putting the final touches
on Rising Above the Gathering Storm, pretty much an echo of the Colvin article that
included his figures for engineers. “The Gathering Storm” carried a particularly ominous
tone--Winston Churchill had used that phrase as the title of his book on the coming of
World War II.
Colvin’s numbers had already caused Carl Bialik’s broad eyebrows to arch. Bialik’s
Wall Street Journal column, “The Numbers Guy” tracks down various statistics,
repudiating some, elevating others. Unlike most things at the uber-capitalist WSJ,
Bialik’s worthwhile column is free, www.wsj.com/NumbersGuy.
Bialik could not locate the original source, but he did find a number of skeptics and wrote
about their doubts in an August column. Ron Hira of the Rochester Institute of
Technology pointed out that CEO’s have nothing to lose by crying wolf: “There’s only
an upside for them. It deflects attention from the fact that they’re offshoring more work.
And there’s no cost to them—the government is going to foot the bill [by subsidizing
engineering schools]. The increase in supply of engineers is going to keep wages down.”
When Rising Above the Gathering Storm appeared in early October, Bialik returned to
the stats. “Now that the National Academies has lent its imprimatur to the numbers,
they’re likely to be circulated more widely in an industry effort to boost government
investment in engineering education that might not be in the best interest of American
technical workers.” Good guess.
1
The National Academies are formed by the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of
Engineering, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council.
15
Richard Freeman at Harvard told Bialik that his studies showed that many of the Chinese
“engineers” would come out of two- and three-year programs and that the number of real
engineers graduating from Chinese universities would be more like 350,000.
When Bialik approached Deborah Stine, who had led the National Academies team, she
told him “we assumed Fortune did fact-checking on their numbers” (!!). She also said,
“We appreciate your bringing it up.” She pointed Bialik towards a study from the
McKinsey Global Institute which had used a figure of 550,000. As Bialik noted, though,
the McKinsey study focused on how nine out of ten Chinese “engineers” would lack the
skills to qualify for employment at a multinational corporation.
The matter appeared to have been put to rest with the publication of an in-depth study by
Gary Gereffi, Vivek Wadhwa and a team of researchers at Duke University. They
confirmed Freeman’s numbers coming up with 351,537 for China, 112,000 for India and
137,437 for the U. S. A lot of what China and India called engineers, America would call
technicians.
The matter was not put to rest. The Duke report appeared in December. Calling the
original numbers “mangoes to litchis” comparisons, Wadhwa gave his figures some
visibility in a December column in Business Week Online. In April, 2006, I dedicated
part of a Kappan Research column to debunking the original numbers and in May I
published “Heard the One About the 600,000 Chinese Engineers?” in the Sunday
Outlook section of the Washington Post.
The Washington Post piece popped up on hundreds of Web sites in North America, Asia
and Europe. Not that that did much good. The National Academies imprimatur stuck.
Not only did it stick outside of the National Academies, it stuck inside as well. Asked by
Christian Science Monitor reporter, Mark Clayton, what the new figures meant, Stine
replied “I don’t think we believe that all these new numbers change the ultimate
recommendations we have. The U. S. is well behind other countries.” Jeez, why bother
with numbers at all?
In the meantime the larger figures prevailed in speeches by Secretary of Education
Spellings, Secretary of Commerce, Carlos Gutierrez, Senator John Warner, Rochester
Institute of Technology President, Alan Simone, and, in a variation on the theme, Bill
Gates. They turned up in columns by journalists Hedrick Smith and Fareed Zakariya.
Some few people did speak of the “engineering gap” in the same skeptical voice we now
use to refer to the earlier “missile gap,” but I imagine the vision of hordes of Chinese
engineers will live on statistically for many years. Indeed, the experience allowed me to
formulate Bracey’s Law of Statistical Longevity: Any statistic, no matter how bogus,
that appears to reflect badly on the education system and raises fears about the future is
guaranteed a long life.
Bialik, Carl. (2006, 26 August). “Outsourcing fears help inflate some numbers.”
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB112488992778121801.html.
Bialik, Carl. (2006, 27 October). “Sounding the alarm with a fuzzy stat.”
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113028407921479379.html.
Bracey, Gerald. (2006, 21 May). “Heard the one about the 600,000 Chinese engineers?”
Washington Post, p. C3.
Clayton, Mark. (2005, 20 December). “Does the US face an engineering gap?”
Christian Science Monitor, www.csmonitor.com/2005/1220/p01s01-ussc.htm
Colvin, Geoffrey. (2005, 25 July). “America isn’t ready: here’s what to do about it.”
Fortune, pp. 70-82.
Farrell, Diana and Andrew J. Grant. (2005). “China’s looming talent shortage.”
McKinsey Quarterly,
www.mckinseyquarterly.com/article_page.aspx?ar=1685&L2=18&L3=31.
Gereffi, Gary and Vivek Wadhwa. (2005, December). Framing the engineering
outsourcing debate: Placing the United States on a level playing field with China and
India. Durham, NC: Duke University.
Wadhwa, Vivek. (2005, 13 December). “About that engineering gap...”
www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/dec2005/sb20051212_623922.htm.
Read the entire Rotten Apples in Education Awards, 2006. By researcher Gerald W. Bracey. Here
http://www.america-tomorrow.com/bracey/EDDRA/rottenapples2006-final.pdf
AWARD, II: FORTUNE MAGAZINE AND THE
NATIONAL ACADEMIES1
The cover of the July 25, 2005 issue of Fortune featured a takeoff on the old Charles
Atlas body-building ads from the comic books of my youth. On the beach, a brawny
China (in a bathing suit made from the Chinese flag) bullies a scrawny Uncle Sam. The
text on the cover asks “America: the 97-pound weakling?”
In The Fifteenth Bracey report, I made note of the cover and one of the statements from
reporter Geoffrey Colvin: “Our primary and secondary schools are falling behind the rest
of the world’s.” About this statistic I commented, “No evidence was offered, no doubt
because none exists.” Well, that’s true, but it turned out that I had overlooked the
statement and the statistics that would cause so much mischief.
Those came in a section where Colvin wrote about the increasingly well-educated globe
saying, “In engineering, China’s graduates will number over 600,000, India’s 350,000
and America’s only about 70,000.” Colvin’s timing was impeccable—his article arrived
just as a group of fear mongers at the National Academies were putting the final touches
on Rising Above the Gathering Storm, pretty much an echo of the Colvin article that
included his figures for engineers. “The Gathering Storm” carried a particularly ominous
tone--Winston Churchill had used that phrase as the title of his book on the coming of
World War II.
Colvin’s numbers had already caused Carl Bialik’s broad eyebrows to arch. Bialik’s
Wall Street Journal column, “The Numbers Guy” tracks down various statistics,
repudiating some, elevating others. Unlike most things at the uber-capitalist WSJ,
Bialik’s worthwhile column is free, www.wsj.com/NumbersGuy.
Bialik could not locate the original source, but he did find a number of skeptics and wrote
about their doubts in an August column. Ron Hira of the Rochester Institute of
Technology pointed out that CEO’s have nothing to lose by crying wolf: “There’s only
an upside for them. It deflects attention from the fact that they’re offshoring more work.
And there’s no cost to them—the government is going to foot the bill [by subsidizing
engineering schools]. The increase in supply of engineers is going to keep wages down.”
When Rising Above the Gathering Storm appeared in early October, Bialik returned to
the stats. “Now that the National Academies has lent its imprimatur to the numbers,
they’re likely to be circulated more widely in an industry effort to boost government
investment in engineering education that might not be in the best interest of American
technical workers.” Good guess.
1
The National Academies are formed by the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of
Engineering, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council.
15
Richard Freeman at Harvard told Bialik that his studies showed that many of the Chinese
“engineers” would come out of two- and three-year programs and that the number of real
engineers graduating from Chinese universities would be more like 350,000.
When Bialik approached Deborah Stine, who had led the National Academies team, she
told him “we assumed Fortune did fact-checking on their numbers” (!!). She also said,
“We appreciate your bringing it up.” She pointed Bialik towards a study from the
McKinsey Global Institute which had used a figure of 550,000. As Bialik noted, though,
the McKinsey study focused on how nine out of ten Chinese “engineers” would lack the
skills to qualify for employment at a multinational corporation.
The matter appeared to have been put to rest with the publication of an in-depth study by
Gary Gereffi, Vivek Wadhwa and a team of researchers at Duke University. They
confirmed Freeman’s numbers coming up with 351,537 for China, 112,000 for India and
137,437 for the U. S. A lot of what China and India called engineers, America would call
technicians.
The matter was not put to rest. The Duke report appeared in December. Calling the
original numbers “mangoes to litchis” comparisons, Wadhwa gave his figures some
visibility in a December column in Business Week Online. In April, 2006, I dedicated
part of a Kappan Research column to debunking the original numbers and in May I
published “Heard the One About the 600,000 Chinese Engineers?” in the Sunday
Outlook section of the Washington Post.
The Washington Post piece popped up on hundreds of Web sites in North America, Asia
and Europe. Not that that did much good. The National Academies imprimatur stuck.
Not only did it stick outside of the National Academies, it stuck inside as well. Asked by
Christian Science Monitor reporter, Mark Clayton, what the new figures meant, Stine
replied “I don’t think we believe that all these new numbers change the ultimate
recommendations we have. The U. S. is well behind other countries.” Jeez, why bother
with numbers at all?
In the meantime the larger figures prevailed in speeches by Secretary of Education
Spellings, Secretary of Commerce, Carlos Gutierrez, Senator John Warner, Rochester
Institute of Technology President, Alan Simone, and, in a variation on the theme, Bill
Gates. They turned up in columns by journalists Hedrick Smith and Fareed Zakariya.
Some few people did speak of the “engineering gap” in the same skeptical voice we now
use to refer to the earlier “missile gap,” but I imagine the vision of hordes of Chinese
engineers will live on statistically for many years. Indeed, the experience allowed me to
formulate Bracey’s Law of Statistical Longevity: Any statistic, no matter how bogus,
that appears to reflect badly on the education system and raises fears about the future is
guaranteed a long life.
Bialik, Carl. (2006, 26 August). “Outsourcing fears help inflate some numbers.”
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB112488992778121801.html.
Bialik, Carl. (2006, 27 October). “Sounding the alarm with a fuzzy stat.”
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113028407921479379.html.
Bracey, Gerald. (2006, 21 May). “Heard the one about the 600,000 Chinese engineers?”
Washington Post, p. C3.
Clayton, Mark. (2005, 20 December). “Does the US face an engineering gap?”
Christian Science Monitor, www.csmonitor.com/2005/1220/p01s01-ussc.htm
Colvin, Geoffrey. (2005, 25 July). “America isn’t ready: here’s what to do about it.”
Fortune, pp. 70-82.
Farrell, Diana and Andrew J. Grant. (2005). “China’s looming talent shortage.”
McKinsey Quarterly,
www.mckinseyquarterly.com/article_page.aspx?ar=1685&L2=18&L3=31.
Gereffi, Gary and Vivek Wadhwa. (2005, December). Framing the engineering
outsourcing debate: Placing the United States on a level playing field with China and
India. Durham, NC: Duke University.
Wadhwa, Vivek. (2005, 13 December). “About that engineering gap...”
www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/dec2005/sb20051212_623922.htm.
Read the entire Rotten Apples in Education Awards, 2006. By researcher Gerald W. Bracey. Here
http://www.america-tomorrow.com/bracey/EDDRA/rottenapples2006-final.pdf
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Bush regime incompetence in education
3
THE 99 AND 44/100ths PURE CRAP AWARD:
SECRETARY OF EDUCATION
MARGARET SPELLINGS
In “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell wrote, “When one watches some
tired hack on the platform repeating the familiar phrases...one often has a curious feeling
that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy....” George Orwell
was lucky. He never had to listen to Margaret Spellings. Our Lady of the Busted
Metaphor can bring you down in a hurry with the inanities of what she says but even
more in the realization that those inanities, emitted in mangled English, reflect how her
brain works (“speaker sometimes deviates from text” it says at the beginning of some
speeches). Herewith an annotated sampling.
“I talk about No Child Left Behind like Ivory Soap: It’s 99.9 percent pure. There’s not
much needed in the way of change.” Teacher/author Debra Craig decided that Spellings
was “99.9% delusional” while Education Week founder, Ron Wolk called the statement
“99.9% bunk.” They’re both right.
If Spellings had said nothing else during the entire year, this comment and her trouncing
on Celebrity Jeopardy would have secured her place in infamy (“I was shocked to
discover that US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings is a moron,” wrote DC
gossip blogger, Wonkette. What took you so long? Wonkette’s post elicited many very
funny comments. My favorite: “She attempted to defend herself by explaining that she
simply doesn’t test well. The value of providing ‘exact answers’ rather than
‘approximate possibilities in a conceptually acceptable range’ is highly overrated. She
had still hoped to be socially promoted to co-champion”).
Alas, there is more, much more. Speaking at the NCLB “Summit” in Philadelphia,
Spellings declared, “This law is helping us learn about what works in our schools. And
clearly high standards and accountability are working. Over the last 5 years, our 9-year-
olds have made more progress in reading than in the previous 28 combined.”
Except that those “last 5 years” are from NAEP trend data collected in 1999 and 2004,
not in the Bush years of 2001 and 2006. So for three of those five years NCLB didn’t
even exist. Maybe Bill Clinton deserves all the credit. Many state plans had not been
approved by fall of the 2002-2003 so NCLB would have had only a few months in the
2003-2004 school year to work its wonders. I don’t think so.
“With this law,” Spellings said in the same speech, “we set a historic goal for our
country: every child learning on grade level by 2014.” Nope. No matter how many times
Spellings mutters “grade level” the law says “proficient.” The only meaningful, existing
4
definition of “grade level” is the score of the average child at a given grade. If the scores
are distributed normally, and the tests from which the concept of grade was developed
insured that they would be, then, by definition, at any given time, nationally, 50% of all
students are below grade level. Some small, affluent districts might attain Lake
Wobegon status, but nationally, half of all students are always below grade level. By
definition.
There are other conceivable ways of defining grade level, but none of them would claim
that all students could be there or better (unless grade level were defined by a number
three standard deviations below the average (median)).
At the end of this speech—it was a doozy—Spellings described a visit she made with
Bush to a middle school and reported that in science “The class was full of students
asking “what if” questions. They had high expectations” (manifested by what?) and a lot
of confidence and they knew they could make a difference” (as sixth graders???).
She wound up with this: “There are certain things you can’t teach in a classroom that our
students already have—qualities like creativity, diversity, and entrepreneurship. Our job
is to give them the knowledge and skills to compete.” This might likely be the first and
only time that “diversity” has been described as a personal quality.
But if Spellings asserts that you can’t teach creativity or entrepreneurship, what does that
say about how Spellings defines teaching? And how on earth did the kids “already have”
these qualities? Is it something in the water?
In a June speech, Spellings said “I had a meeting with Thomas Friedman from the New
York Times last week. And he told me the number one skill our children will need to
survive in the flat world is learning to learn.” So the question is, Does she disregard what
Friedman told her or does she actually think that NCLB will contribute to kids’ learning
to learn? How dumb can you get?
Under Spellings, the U. S. Department of Education announced a proposed program to
send students to private schools with publicly funded vouchers four days after her
department released a study showing that private schools have an advantage on public
schools only because of how they select students—more rich kids, fewer poor kids, fewer
minorities, fewer special education kids, and fewer English Language Learners.
Similarly attempts to shore up charters were undercut by another department study
indicating that public schools outperform them. New regulations favoring single-sex
schools appeared not long after her department issued a huge report saying there was no
evidence that single sex schools improve anything.
It is depressing to think that the stewardship of the federal department of education is in
the hands of an idiot.
Read the entire Rotten Apples in Education Awards, 2006. By researcher Gerald W. Bracey. Here
http://www.america-tomorrow.com/bracey/EDDRA/rottenapples2006-final.pdf
THE 99 AND 44/100ths PURE CRAP AWARD:
SECRETARY OF EDUCATION
MARGARET SPELLINGS
In “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell wrote, “When one watches some
tired hack on the platform repeating the familiar phrases...one often has a curious feeling
that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy....” George Orwell
was lucky. He never had to listen to Margaret Spellings. Our Lady of the Busted
Metaphor can bring you down in a hurry with the inanities of what she says but even
more in the realization that those inanities, emitted in mangled English, reflect how her
brain works (“speaker sometimes deviates from text” it says at the beginning of some
speeches). Herewith an annotated sampling.
“I talk about No Child Left Behind like Ivory Soap: It’s 99.9 percent pure. There’s not
much needed in the way of change.” Teacher/author Debra Craig decided that Spellings
was “99.9% delusional” while Education Week founder, Ron Wolk called the statement
“99.9% bunk.” They’re both right.
If Spellings had said nothing else during the entire year, this comment and her trouncing
on Celebrity Jeopardy would have secured her place in infamy (“I was shocked to
discover that US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings is a moron,” wrote DC
gossip blogger, Wonkette. What took you so long? Wonkette’s post elicited many very
funny comments. My favorite: “She attempted to defend herself by explaining that she
simply doesn’t test well. The value of providing ‘exact answers’ rather than
‘approximate possibilities in a conceptually acceptable range’ is highly overrated. She
had still hoped to be socially promoted to co-champion”).
Alas, there is more, much more. Speaking at the NCLB “Summit” in Philadelphia,
Spellings declared, “This law is helping us learn about what works in our schools. And
clearly high standards and accountability are working. Over the last 5 years, our 9-year-
olds have made more progress in reading than in the previous 28 combined.”
Except that those “last 5 years” are from NAEP trend data collected in 1999 and 2004,
not in the Bush years of 2001 and 2006. So for three of those five years NCLB didn’t
even exist. Maybe Bill Clinton deserves all the credit. Many state plans had not been
approved by fall of the 2002-2003 so NCLB would have had only a few months in the
2003-2004 school year to work its wonders. I don’t think so.
“With this law,” Spellings said in the same speech, “we set a historic goal for our
country: every child learning on grade level by 2014.” Nope. No matter how many times
Spellings mutters “grade level” the law says “proficient.” The only meaningful, existing
4
definition of “grade level” is the score of the average child at a given grade. If the scores
are distributed normally, and the tests from which the concept of grade was developed
insured that they would be, then, by definition, at any given time, nationally, 50% of all
students are below grade level. Some small, affluent districts might attain Lake
Wobegon status, but nationally, half of all students are always below grade level. By
definition.
There are other conceivable ways of defining grade level, but none of them would claim
that all students could be there or better (unless grade level were defined by a number
three standard deviations below the average (median)).
At the end of this speech—it was a doozy—Spellings described a visit she made with
Bush to a middle school and reported that in science “The class was full of students
asking “what if” questions. They had high expectations” (manifested by what?) and a lot
of confidence and they knew they could make a difference” (as sixth graders???).
She wound up with this: “There are certain things you can’t teach in a classroom that our
students already have—qualities like creativity, diversity, and entrepreneurship. Our job
is to give them the knowledge and skills to compete.” This might likely be the first and
only time that “diversity” has been described as a personal quality.
But if Spellings asserts that you can’t teach creativity or entrepreneurship, what does that
say about how Spellings defines teaching? And how on earth did the kids “already have”
these qualities? Is it something in the water?
In a June speech, Spellings said “I had a meeting with Thomas Friedman from the New
York Times last week. And he told me the number one skill our children will need to
survive in the flat world is learning to learn.” So the question is, Does she disregard what
Friedman told her or does she actually think that NCLB will contribute to kids’ learning
to learn? How dumb can you get?
Under Spellings, the U. S. Department of Education announced a proposed program to
send students to private schools with publicly funded vouchers four days after her
department released a study showing that private schools have an advantage on public
schools only because of how they select students—more rich kids, fewer poor kids, fewer
minorities, fewer special education kids, and fewer English Language Learners.
Similarly attempts to shore up charters were undercut by another department study
indicating that public schools outperform them. New regulations favoring single-sex
schools appeared not long after her department issued a huge report saying there was no
evidence that single sex schools improve anything.
It is depressing to think that the stewardship of the federal department of education is in
the hands of an idiot.
Read the entire Rotten Apples in Education Awards, 2006. By researcher Gerald W. Bracey. Here
http://www.america-tomorrow.com/bracey/EDDRA/rottenapples2006-final.pdf
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