Contributed Commentary on
Volume 4 Number 1: Stedman The Achievement Crisis is Real:
A Review of The Manufactured Crisis
11 April 1996
Eugene Bartoo
ebartoo@CECASUN.UTC.EDU
On April 10, 1996 Andrew Coulson wrote:
Like Berliner's 1993 EPAA paper, The Manufactured Crisis is a
fanciful
and selective romp through the data on public schooling. Anyone who is
currently relying on or quoting this material will do themselves a
great favor by reading Larry Stedman's recent detailed critique of
their treatment of the academic achievement data (also published in the
Education Policy Analysis Archives).
OK, I haven't read B & B's book, but read Stedman I, B & B reply, and
Stedman II. And Andrew's post. Some impressions:
(1) I suspect that many foreign students study more languages for
longer
periods than our students do, but I also think, as has been said by others
here, that many foreign students get to use those languages more often and
hence the language study takes. There are vast numbers of american
students that have studied French for years and find themselves speechless
when confronted with a French waiter. The opportunity and need to converse
in another language is just not there and thus has an effect, I think, on
the force of insisting on more rigor and time in learning languages. The
argument that it broadens one's horizons may have been lost years ago.
(2) I am engaged in a project in a local private girls school. I
sit in on
a precalculus class of junior girls; very bright, quick, high achievers.
They will do very well later; most will go to good schools; get good jobs;
have good lives. This morning I asked them if any of them knew where the
Pyrennes were [I read Stedman II last night; I mulled over the data on
geography from the NAEP]. Only three girls knew where it was. I'm not
sure I knew where it was when I was sixteen. They had geography as seventh
graders - I imagine that that experience was more like "this is where
Africa is". Is this a sobering finding?
At my university we have one faculty member whose specialty is geography;
one! In the teacher ed. program which I helped design some few years ago,
we have a geography concentration for social science ed. folks. It has few
majors; has had fewer graduates. They have trouble getting the courses;
most are taught by adjuncts. For most people in the US, the closest thing
they have ever gotten to geography was that yellow-bordered magazine that
is popular at garage sales. I was not surprised at the findings of the
NAEP. I don't know if that is something with which to be concerned.
(3) I think Stedman is basically right. We do have poor
achievement. The
achievement levels in this country have been poor forever. Most of our
fellow citizens do not have a large store of knowledge as measured by the
NAEP studies [or others like them]. Our children's achievement patterns
are about what their parents' achievement patterns are. Perhaps the school
is culpable, but I didn't get the sense that Stedman took that view.
(4) The SAT issue is basically not controversial anymore. There
seems to
be general agreement that those data have been stable for twenty some
years; that earlier declines were due to a variety of factors, the largest
percentage of variance being SES changes in test takers. And who cares?
(5) There has just been another summit on educational matters and the
reaffirmations of the need for rigorous standards and assessment were
given. Shanker concurred in his latest column, stating that it was time to
take control of the content of the curriculum out of local hands. In some
areas around here those are fightin' words.
And so our dream is to raise ourselves by the bootstraps of our children so
that, for example, those bright girls would know where the Pyrennes were
[and I might know how to spell it]?
Just some thoughts. Thanks for your indulgence.