John Taylor Gatto is my New Hero
I read Dumbing Us Down over the Labor Day weekend. Now this article from Fast Company. Yup, John Taylor Gatto is my new hero.
Want a clue about what we’re building at EduRev? Read his stuff. He describes it perfectly. 
September 7th, 2007 at 3:22 am
In the past few days my daughter (5th grade, public school) has come home with 2 1-inch 3-ring binders (one for math, one for reading, provided by the school at who knows what expense) in which she will be tracking her MSA (Maryland State Assessment) data. According to the cover sheet inside, this:
“will be an interactive tool that allows children to set goals and monitor their progress. It will also offer an opportunity for you to work with your child on possible areas of needed improvement. Each quarter, we will be sending home the data notebook. included will be a parent and student reflection page where you may give valuable feedback to what you’ve seen in the data. Your feedback is greatly appreciated.. We encourage you to take time with your child to review the data notebook and discuss your child’s personal goals. We also hope that you will use this notebook as a means for communicating your ideas, questions and concerns so we can work together in making sure your child continues to grow academically throughout the school year….we hope that the data notebooks will provide you with the information you need as we work together….You will get an opportunity to review the notebook quarterly.”
She was asked to choose two “Reading Goals,” (3 out of the 10 choices are scoring X on a BCR (Brief Constructed Response aka paragraph)), sign off on them and then there is a space for the parent to sign off. Behind it are sheets with grids for the 4 academic quarters, and 7 columns for assessment scores, reading selected response data, Mock Reading MSA selected response data, etc.
I’m sorry, but this is sending me completely over the edge. After our 1st PTA meeting presentation on Monday, with all its talk of testing, I came away likening school to sausage-making, but now I’m convinced of it. The whole system strikes me as so removed from the meaning of learning, the pleasure of learning — so wrong on a gut level — that it leaves me kind of speechless. But evidently while I wasn’t paying attention MCPS made a huge investment in this model: http://www.mcps.k12.md.us/info/baldrige/ It’s the educational-industrial complex writ large. What does this do to motivation and love of learning? What is the impact on bright kids who are already at “advanced?”–is the system going to track and promote their growth in a meaningful way? How much time and money is being devoted to this record keeping?
Maybe I am overreacting and need something else to obsess about, but the image of these little 3rd, 4th and 5th grade worker bees-in-training maintaining these binders is just awful to me.
September 16th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
Anonymous, thanks for sharing. Your description of The System is a big reason why I want to homeschool my kids. The organization isn’t customer-focused, and thus the emphasis isn’t on learning, but on things that the organization thinks it should be measuring as a proxy for learning.
Blech.
Kareem