Via The Globe and Mail, an excellent article by Konrad Yakabuski: A teachable moment for American schools. Excerpt:
Income inequality is the elephant in the room of U.S. education policy. It goes almost entirely unmentioned as a causal factor in the low test scores of black and Hispanic students, though the efforts to single-mindedly “lift” math and reading scores are focused squarely on minorities.
In Washington, where blacks and Hispanics make up more than 90 per cent of the student body, fully 56 per cent of fourth-graders lack “basic” reading skills as defined by NAEP.
Minorities are no better served than any other group by a system that privileges narrow testing in math and reading to the detriment of literature, art, music, science and geography.
How does a mechanistic emphasis on teaching to the tests inspire them to learn, much less equip them to be productive 21st-century citizens, workers and human beings? If it doesn't, what is public education for anyway?
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