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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: January 2, 2007
Latest Update: January 2, 2007
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu
Assessment and AdversarialismReading skills have moved into preschool areas. Now we have something called reading readiness. Most of us haven't the slightest idea what that is. But if we want our children to have a chance in school, it means we have to start doing things with them in their first three or four years that help them focus and listen carefully, and develop a reason to learn. That means we have to figure out ways to show them how much fun learning in when lots of us didn't have any fun doing it at all.
I don't know about you, but I hated school. I spent the whole first grade standing or sitting in the corner. They had some of the most unreasonable and destructive rules I had ever run into. They'd start reading a book in the Blue Bird circle, and one of the children would stumble over a word. I got put in the corner when I helped her. Now, isn't that stupid. If someone needs help, you're supposed to help them. Why should these weird people fuss at you for that and put you in the corner? Oh, it's about the DIBELS assessment. They're going to measure us each individually (NO HELP ALLOWED) and then pay the private company that tests us a lot of money to come in and help the ones who need help. Adults! Honestly. You'd think they could think things through a little better than that. I could have helped her for free. No one ever told me that late capitalism means that you have to PROFIT from everything you do.
Discussion Questions
- What am I complaining about when I tell the story of my experiences in the first grade?
Consider that schools are set up so that the teacher helps the students who need help, and students compete against each other. Learning, real education, with all its joys, is a cooperative venture in which we learn to appreciate each other's skills, to balance our strengths against the strengths of others. If we each bring our strengths to any project, we are far from the hierarchical pattern of today's corporate structure, with CEOs earning incomprehensible sums and workers barely able to survive.
Those who have garnered so much wealth are able to use that wealth to protect their position in the hierarchical structure that binds the very rich together. The teacher is higher in status than the student. Even in the first grade, I could see the dysfunction in that. Since the teacher preferred a distribution of grades, she didn't help the child who stumbled - she just gave her a lower grade, but that fit the bell curve. Few As lots of Cs, and some Ds and Fs. And it made each of us see the other as an adversary. (Fellman, Rambo and the Dalai Lama, adversarialism vs. mutuality.)
Please be aware that the conservative position on this is that competition is good. Conservatives rarely see competition as adversarial, with all that suggests about our value system. The liberal position is that we are social creatures who can only produce great wealth by the mutual cooperation of all of us. That's on the opposite end of the spectrum from the conservative adversarialism. Liberals see the importance of mutuality. Rambo and the Dalai Lama. Who's right? There are no right answers. But as we go out into the community to share the learning that we all need to build our community, and to talk seriously about the economic, political, and social issues we face, it's important that we bring an awareness of this spectrum from conservative to liberal value systems, so that each of us can choose as individuals and as a community the value system by which we want to live.
- What in the report says that the competitive corporate system underlies this model?
Consider "the documentation of positive and consistent progress for at-risk children can be used to validate and justify the school’s allocation of resources for prevention. For example, in order to meet the kindergarten early literacy goals, one school provided an additional 40 minutes in an extended day program for children who were not making adequate progress in the regular classroom program (i.e., K Plus). Institutionalizing the model required allocation of instructional, transportation, and space resources in the district. DIBELS documentation of the effectiveness of the K Plus program not only provided a justification to central administration for the use of the resources, the school-based reports also prompted use of the model by other schools in the district to meet the needs of children with intensive instructional needs (Baker & Smith, 1999)". (About half an inch down the pdf file. Accessed on January 2, 2007.
References:
- List of Articles on Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS)
- Good, R. H., Kaminski, R. A., Smith, S., Simmons, D., Kame'enui, E., & Wallin, J. (In press). Reviewing outcomes: Using DIBELS to evaluate a school's core curriculum and system of additional intervention in kindergarten. In S. R. Vaughn & K. L. Briggs (Eds.), Reading in the classroom: Systems for observing teaching and learning. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.
Draft: 11/15/02, 9:40 AM
