Will Standards Save Public Education? - Review - book review

Progressive, The, August, 2000 by Barbara Miner

Some of the most compelling sections of McNeil's book are those that show how test-based reform has dumbed-down learning, especially for students of color. As every teacher knows, if you and your students are going to be evaluated on the basis of a single state test, the tendency will be to teach to that test. Because a principal's pay is determined, in part, by the school's performance on the TAAS test, some principals have blatantly turned their schools into test-prep centers. Publishers of test-prep materials will send consultants into schools, for a hefty price, "to help plan pep rallies, to `train' teachers to use the TAAS-prep kits, and to ease the substitution of their TAAS-prep materials for the curriculum in classrooms where teachers stubbornly resist."

One teacher told how she had spent considerable time and money assembling books of importance to Latino culture, and her students responded enthusiastically to her initiative. "She was dismayed to see, upon returning one day from lunch, that the books for her week's lessons had been set aside. In the center of her desk was a stack of test-prep booklets with a teacher's guide, and a note saying, `Use these instead of your regular curriculum until after the TAAS.' The TAAS test date was three months away."

Another teacher related that students were sent to test-taking pep rallies where they learned to chant, "Three in a row? No, No, No." Apparently, the purpose was to heighten student awareness that test-makers rarely allow three "B" answers in a row.

And this is what is passing for education reform in Texas. Next time someone starts spouting about the Texas educational miracle, give that person a copy of McNeil's book.

The final book under review, Will Standards Save Public Education?, is the briefest. It consists of a short essay by progressive educator Deborah Meier, principal of Mission Hill School in Boston, with responses from a variety of educators and policymakers (not all of whom agree with Meier).

The book's value is that it zeroes in on the connection between public education and democracy--a connection too often lost when schools are expected to merely churn out workers with the skills and attitudes desired by business.

In one of my favorite passages, Meier cuts through the rhetoric of the education crisis and points to a much more fundamental problem in society: the crisis in human relationships and the lack of any real sense of community and mutual responsibility. Schools, she argues, need to pay far more attention to this crisis.

Much of the book stays at the level of theory and ideology. And it may not be the best place to start if you're new to the debate on test-based reform. But it's a welcome affirmation that public schools are about more than teaching kids their letters and numbers. We must also develop the whole child and help students to be active citizens.

Barbara Miner is Managing Editor of Rethinking Schools (www.rethinking schools.org), an education rearm journal based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.