Comments on: Selling Our Children

by: The Mahablog » Knowing Not What They Do

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 17:25:38 +0000

[…] I acknowledge that the Bushies came into power with a plan, and they’ve put a large part of that plan into place. The Supreme Court now will more reliably protect the prerogatives of the privileged over the rights of citizens. The nation’s tax burden has been shifted almost entirely onto wage earners. The famous No Child Left Behind education “reform” has turned out to be a means by which public schools will be taken over by private corporations (all the better to prepare our nation’s youth for the McJobs they can expect in the future). Unions busted, public lands and resources exploited, federal agencies turned into Republican party machines. Spotlight […]

by: s h a r o n

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 22:58:52 +0000

odave,

I’m sorry that maha doesn’t seem to “get” what you’re saying. I am spring-loaded to agree with you; but I’m desperately searching for documentation/evidence on exactly the issues you bring up…

sharon

by: The Mahablog » Why Is the Right Afraid of Universal Health Care?

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 01:55:50 +0000

[…] Actually, much of the Right wants to dismantle public education also — for our own good, of course. But let’s stick to health care. […]

by: conleym

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 01:35:17 +0000

It is not that poor and minority schools are graded differently. The whole testing system is a set-up. Cut scores are set arbitrarily so that “politically acceptable failure rates” are enforced throughout the system. This means that the failure rates are high enough to justify the expense of the tests, but not so high as to invite marches on state capitals from the suburbs. It also means that scores are set to reinforce “desirable” district profiles so that the Detroits look low enough in comparison with the Gross Pointes. Only a few state tests are standardized, which means that all of the others are home made with arbitrary cut points. It also means that comparisons from non-standardized tests from year to year (AYP) and from district to district are thoroughly inappropriate from a psychometric perspective. The whole thing is a wasteful high stakes game with real human costs.

by: maha

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 20:24:50 +0000

I’m not not sure what your point is. Yes, poor and minority schools are set up to fail, but are you saying that you have data showing that poor and minority schools are graded differently from other schools?

by: ohdave

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 20:15:34 +0000

My point is that setting the passage rates for what constitutes “failing” helps determine the perception of success/failure in the public’s mind. It usually seems that poor/minority schools are the ones that receive that distinction… The effect of testing is to label poor minority schools as failing so that, as Kozol says, they are ripe for the plucking by privatization advocates.

Often there seems to be very little transparency in how these passing rates are determined, and they seem arbitrary at best.

by: maha

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 11:51:53 +0000

ohdave — do you have a point?

by: ohdave

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 11:08:44 +0000

See if you can find out, in your state, how the “failure” standard is set. What score constitutes a failing score on a high stakes test? How was that score arrived at?

You’ll find that the scores are set so that a certain percentage will be “passing”. Check it out.

by: jerri

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 19:37:26 +0000

NCLB is a program/policy with no postive goals. NCLB is a program used to show failure. For example it does not address drop out rates or something basic as how to improve the reading skills of any child.