False Honors and Grade Inflation Catch up to Minority and Low Income Students

During a visit in March to an honors sophomore English class in an impoverished area of Connecticut, Robyn R. Jackson heard the teacher declare proudly that her students were reading difficult texts. But Jackson noticed that their only review of those books was a set of work sheets that required little thought or analysis.

Washington post article, "In Many Classrooms, 'Honors' in Name Only" recounts a growing suspicion of the titles "Honors," "Advanced," and even "AP" when referring to high school courses. Colleges are disappointed with the content that is taught in classes that are supposed to be "college prep."

While universities and other public school critics point fingers at incompetent high school teachers, the teachers point fingers at the fact that they simply cannot teach advanced material when mastery of basic material is not yet achieved. The courses have to be offered however, regardless of whether or not students are able to handle the content that should be included, because of college expectations of course names on students transcripts.

How do students end up falling so far behind, that administrators and teachers feel that they have to set up pretend advanced courses of sorts in order to give the students a chance before college acceptance boards? The article states that the problem is clearly more prevalent in minority and low income school districts. What is going on in these "have not schools?"

The article offers several answers, many of which call for more outside government implemented bench marks to make sure that students are achieving high enough competency in these public schools.

Without such benchmarks, said Andrew Rotherham, a former White House education adviser and a member of the Virginia Board of Education, "there is too much variance, and that ultimately disadvantages students, in particular poor and minority students. It sounds very romantic to say, 'Leave it all to the schools or the teacher,' but it just doesn't work in a system as heterogeneous, in every way, as ours is."

It seems like these issues all come down to a lot of finger pointing. What I want to know is, what curricula are available to these schools? Do the teachers feel they can use them effectively or that they are working? Something isn't working.

Maybe educators and politicians at all levels need to think about luring young people to technology, literacy and knowledge through their own culture and interests, and Henry Louis Gates recently implied in his Q&A time at Grand Valley State University, and as my professor has been showing us with YA literature. It seems that for whatever reason, these students just aren't being reached.

The article offers one success story of Narciso Chavez, who attends a low income school that has received aid from the College Board for preparing large numbers of low-income and minority students for AP courses. The program takes the stance that taking challenging courses needs to be encouraged early, and that standard needs to continue though high school. Apparently, the summer, after school and other accelerated AP programs that Chavez participated in have worked in his case, raising his bench mark scores in spite of being low income, a minority, and at one time being diagnosed with a learning disability.

Chavez received high scores on the state tests in geometry and algebra 2.
This year, he is taking AP Spanish, AP English language and AP chemistry. He also has a special AP seminar that gives him extra time at school to confer with teachers and do homework. He does four more hours of homework a night, with an hour-long break at 9 p.m., when he reads the Bible and prays with his family. "I decided I wanted to be successful," said Chavez, who is thinking of a career in engineering, law or chemistry.

In Many Classrooms, 'Honors' in Name Only
As High Schools Offer More Advanced Courses, Educators Fear Content Doesn't Always Earn the Label
By Jay Mathews Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 19, 2006; Page A10
Complete Article

Maddening Futurist...

I just found an extremely troubling article through 2 Cents Worth . In The Practical Futurist, by columnist, Micheal Rogers, the article bears the title, "What is the worth of words? Will it matter if people can't read in the future?"

I just finished reading Feed by M.T. Anderson for class, and I found the picture that Rogers painted in his article of a headline in 2025, strikingly similar to the horror that Anderson describes. Rogers quotes an article from today's Washington post,

“’It's appalling -- it's really astounding,’ said Michael Gorman, president of the American Library Association and a librarian at California State University at Fresno. ‘Only 31 percent of college graduates can read a complex book and extrapolate from it. That's not saying much for the remainder.’”

Rogers used today's article as a prompt for a futuristic article set in 2025 wherein only 5 percent of college graduates could perform the same measure. The futuristic article claims that these "Educational doomsayers" are claiming that education is on the decline based on a measurement that is somewhat ancient- the ability to read "long-form literacy." Rogers' fictional article explains that, "today’s young people are not able to read and understand long stretches of text simply because in most cases they won’t ever need to do so."

The rest is not necessarily an argument against literacy all together, as Rogers gives feigned condolence to the aprehensive reader by explaining that,

"young people today ... have plenty of literacy for everyday activities such as reading signs and package labels, and writing brief e-mails and text messages that don’t require accurate spelling or grammar."

The fictional artical goes on to explain how most media is so advanced, that one does not need to read since most things are communicated in pictures and audio. It then talks about the old days when technology was still under privaledged and everyone needed to be able to read articles and long books in order to get by in their personal and professional lives. The article established reading as liesurly, but unnecessary, and often times undesireable.

The predictive article sets up two forms of offence in my mind. The first is to education, the second to society as a whole. While the fictional article explains that many people still enjoy reading, it sets a lowered expectation of the next generation of students and educators explaining that,

"just as every citizen is not forcibly trained to enjoy classical music, neither should they be coerced into believing that reading is necessarily pleasurable. For the majority of students, reading and writing are difficult enterprises with limited payoffs in the modern world." "We have made at least two generations of American children miserable trying to teach them a skill that only a small percentage of them really need. And we have wasted billions of dollars that might well have gone for more practical education and training."

In this way, students become victims of literature and teachers become vocational instructers. Is this really what schools will turn to in 2025? Of course it's an exageration, or is it? Perhaps this demonstrates more than ever that technology is a tool for teachers as much as students to try to bridge the communication and cultural barrier between the generations, just as teaching YA lit may help to bridge the gap between a child's love to read and a college student's ability to "extrapolate from complex texts."

So who cares if people no longer read in the future? Shouldn't we just accept it as a new cultural norm if people no longer need to read because of technological advances? Could it be true that, "reading is an artificial construct that is of high value for a very limited set human activities — but by no means all activities"? Of course not! But what are the consequences of a generation who may grow to think so?

"Some positions in society do require significant literacy skills: senior managers, screenwriters, scientists and others need a highly efficient way to absorb and communicate abstract thought. A broad written vocabulary and strong compositional skills are also powerful ways to organize and plan large enterprises, whether that means launching a new product, making a movie or creating legislation. But for the vast number of the workers who actually carry out those plans, the same skills are far less crucial. The nation’s leaders must be able to read; for those who follow, the ability should be strictly optional."

Almost unimaginable, a society wherein reading is "strictly optional" would merely promote the dicotomy already existing between the haves and the have-nots. Illiteracy or the abcense of an ablility to think abstract thoughts would serve quite nicely to ensure that the working class could never rise to the success of the "nation's leaders." Truely this is the purpose of education: to empower youth to think abstractly and to cling to literacy as a means of freedom and power. Teaching all ninth graders how to use the screw gun that will carry out the plans of the literate will by no means serve to empower the way that teaching an awe for reading can.

So What are We Going to Do about This?
September 23, 2006 at 6:31 am
by David Warlick
Complete Article

What is the worth of words?
Will it matter if people can’t read in the future?
by Michael Rogers
Columnist Special to MSNBC
Updated: 9:52 p.m. ET Sept 21, 2006
Complete Article

Out of my comfort zone:

My use of technology has not necessarily advanced or changed for the last few years. My computers in education course was somewhat interesting, pretty fun, but over all, I didn't find what I learned there very compelling. I didn't get a sense that, "wow, technology is a vital part of education," or that technology could somehow enhance the learning process. I saw tech in ed as more of an obligation. Like, "everyone uses computers... they are a pain in the butt. I should probably incorporate them in a few assignments to encourage use of technology, because students will need to know how to use technology... " Is anyone out there snoring yet?

I joined this teaching Lit for adolecents class, and the very first day I felt like I had been hit with a ton of bricks. I wrote my first post on this blog, having no idea what I wanted to talk about in all actuality. I subscribed to the Grand Rapids Press, and the education sections of the New York Times and the Washington Post. I also subscribed to learning.com from PBS's websight, and a book review provider called Powell's Books. As I started reading articles through my RSS feed, I was surprised and a little irritated that the articles I found most interesting were about technology in education. I was fighting the tech in ed blog with all my might, but it just was not happening. Then as my class was under way, my professor started giving suggestions for using technology to spike student's interests in literacy and in literature. At first I had my psychology of education teacher in the back of my head nagging, "educators get so excited about technology being the golden ticket to better education, but when we look at the research, it just doesn't actually help anything."

In spite of the nagging voice in my head, I was approached by continuous examples of technology in literature classes simply being a way to reach this generation. Class lectures, activities and the news articles I was reading combined to help me realize that technology is not something I am obligated to associate with education in order to prepare youth to use computers. Youth are already using computers. Some of them don't really open up in any other way. I am the one with the huge obligation to wake up, catch up, and adapt myself to who students are today, and what they need education to be in order to relate to them.

I've started changing some of my subscriptions. I dropped the Grand Rapids Press for instance, and I've subscribed to more tech in ed specific blogs. I'm really ecited about a blog I found today called 2 cents worth. The author, david warlick has a lot of interesting entries regarding tech in ed, and aparently is quite an advocate and guest speaker.

The purpose of this blog, now more clearly stated, will be to explore uses of technology that are written up in the news as being helpful, maybe even some that are not so helpful. I'm interested in articles about how teachers are using tech in ed to reach their students, how tech in ed is causing controversy, being abused, not used enough etc. Consider this blog a very exploritory cite of tech in ed, seeing how this is not my usual territory, but I have a curriosity about it and I realize it is something we all need.