Stephen Krashen on federal education testing plan: “This is a nightmare.”
Atlanta educator Cindy Lutenbacher sent me this link to a commencement speech delivered by linguist and educational researcher Stephen Krashen at the Lewis & Clark College Graduate School of Education and Counseling earlier this month. (Krashen has spent a lot of time studying literacy and the importance of access to books to transforming educational outcomes for poor kids.)
I like to listen to commencement speeches so I tracked down a video of Krashen’s performance. The written version is a much milder version of what Krashen actually said at the commencement, which you can watch here. (He comes on at 34:34) His presentation to the graduates is much more passionate and conversational. (And it’s funnier.)
He advocates that we reduce testing and invest the money in anti-poverty measures — books, school nurses and expanded free lunch and breakfast programs. He argues that American teachers are among the best in the world, if we judge them on middle-class learners.
It is quite a speech:
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63 comments Add your comment
catlady
June 12th, 2011
9:03 am
We jumped on the Accelerated Reader bandwagon. The first year, when we were allowed to do it pretty correctly, we had great gains. However, it got pushed aside in favor of Reading First, 2 hours plus of making kids hate reading. AR became a “time filler” for 10 minutes here or there, and of course it didn’t “work.” See, it was built on the idea of practicing reading using things the child is interested in, instead of TELLing the kid what they should know and clicking a darned dog clicker at them so they would parrot back the “answers.” Our kids are the very kids Krashen was talking about–75% free lunch, etc.
Teacherandmom; ; )
ScienceTeacher671
June 12th, 2011
9:28 am
I teach in one of those systems that places MID students in “college prep” classes. My problem with “those students” is not that they cause problems in the classroom; usually they are so overwhelmed that they sit very quietly and hope not to draw attention to themselves.
My problem is that they are so overwhelmed, and it’s just cruel to expect students who are functioning on a 1st or 2nd grade level intellectually to master 9th grade college prep content. Someone at the county or state level hasn’t quite gotten that “appropriate education” thing down yet.
And yes, I realize that there have been cases where students were labeled inappropriately, “warehoused” instead of educated, and otherwise mistreated at the opposite end of the spectrum. Probably there are no easy answers, but I suspect that, as in most educational issues, the answer lies closer to the middle than to either end of the pendulum’s swing.
ScienceTeacher671
June 12th, 2011
9:30 am
Hey, catlady, I wasn’t here yesterday, but I would have also guessed you were referring to Georgia’s own Mini-Rhee!
Cindy Lutenbacher
June 12th, 2011
1:16 pm
@ catlady,
My younger daughter’s schools have all been classified between 95 and 98 percent qualified for free meals, and we had Reading First crammed down our throats. It was a nightmare. My stock phrase became: “I don’t know if Reading First can teach children to read, but I do know it will teach children to HATE to read.”
catlady
June 12th, 2011
2:00 pm
Cindy, yep, it did that and MORE, all for several millions of dollars in my small county. A whole generation of kids(8 years I think) RUINED. We will see the effects for many years, as kids are convinced they can read because they can say words fast. NO comprehension! But they can DIBEL like h3ll! Unfortunately, except for a few game shows, decoding words fast doesn’t really help much in the real world, if you don’t understand what you have decoded. I asked for proof (you know, this is all research based hahahhaha) that RF tactics were appropriate for ELLs. Know what i was told? No research focusing on that. You see, I can decode Spanish pretty fast–it is much easier than English–and yet not have much of a clue what it is about. I kept pointing out that for our ELLs as well as most of our low-vocabulary Appalachian kids, saying words fast DOESN’T mean they understand it! Millions of dollars, plus all these kids lost! Had to laugh when the national evaluation of RF found that, other than that teachers got more staff development time (required to get the grant), with the billions spent nationally, the only positive effect for kids was that first graders tended to be more proficient in phonics. We could have done that a lot cheaper just by…systematically teaching phonics for a half hour each day. Ah, well, we are finally, slowly, getting out from under the thumb of RF. In another 10 years or so, maybe, it will be “washed” out.
ST671: Ah, the candidates are numerous, aren’t they, with our clueless “leaders.”
catlady
June 12th, 2011
2:03 pm
ST671, re the MI kids, don’t you know they just haven’t been challenged enough yet, with teachers willing to accomodate their needs.
teacher&mom
June 12th, 2011
5:56 pm
This is a good read:
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2011/06/jim_owens_school_is_out_let_yo.html
I’d like an answer from the AJC. It’s been asked many times on this blog by more than one person… Can you research how much money GA spends on testing? How much for the actual tests? How much for test-prep materials?
Are you willing to follow the money?
ScienceTeacher671
June 12th, 2011
10:46 pm
teacher&mom, excellent read! Thanks for sharing!
I’d like to know the answer to your question about testing, and I’d also like to know how much the state and districts send to Pearson for software, etc. in addition to testing materials.
teacher&mom
June 13th, 2011
7:19 am
@ST671: I’m beginning to wonder if this is why we never get an answer regarding testing $$$
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXoNE14U_zM
Philomena Marinaccio-Eckel
June 13th, 2011
7:25 am
Krashen’s message to administrators, parents, teachers and concerned citizens is simple… like the moral of The Emperor’s New Clothes…Think for yourself! Don’t be pressured or scared into going along with things that you know aren’t right.
catlady
June 13th, 2011
1:50 pm
teacher&mom; And why are there so many blank pages in the test booklet? is the P.O or Fedex getting a special deal because of all the unnecessary pages? I know one test I gave had 6 blank pages (with a note saying they were blank on purpose). A makeup I gave had 5! Do the math on this one! Shipping them out, shipping them back, how many thousands of kids taking the test? 2 questions on each page, sometimes 3? $$$$$$$
Cindy Lutenbacher
June 13th, 2011
7:39 pm
Using per student stats from California, I did a rough analysis a few months ago, and I found that the cost of NCLB’s required testing in Georgia is more than the grant that GA received from Race to the Top.
TimeOut
June 14th, 2011
2:17 pm
Personal responsibility continues to be the key missing ingredient. It is much harder to starve to death in this country than elsewhere in this world. An individual can resist education, rob others of the same through disruption, refuse to prepare for the world of work, and then qualify for medical benefits and welfare. (Many of them benefit from the enabling behaviors of both parents and the larger community.) This country will then take money out of the pockets of 75IQ -140+ IQ individuals who are gainfully employed, law abiding citizens, so as to assist the aforementioned parasites with employability skills development, etc. When we no longer provide a safety net for the willfully parasitic, we will have fewer parasites. NEED is the only absolute requirement for all intellectually able citizens to achieve sufficiently to self-support.