Thinking in Education

John Dewey, “Thinking in Education,”

1- What are the benefits of teaching thinking skills in schools? What kinds of

handicaps do students face who have not been taught critical thinking? skill

obtained apart from thinking is not connected with any sense of the purposes for

which it is to be used. It consequently leaves a man at the mercy of his routine habits

and of the authoritative control of others, who know what they are about and who

are not especially scrupulous as to their means of achievement. And information

severed from thoughtful action is dead, a mind- crushing load. Since it simulates

knowledge and thereby develops the poison of conceit, it is a most powerful obstacle

to further growth in the grace of intelligence.

2- Why is experience the first stage in the development of thinking skills? The

immediate crude handling of the familiar material of experience, and to introduce

pupils at once to material which expresses the intellectual distinctions which adults

have made. But the first stage of contact with any new material at whatever age of

maturity, must inevitably be of the trial and error sort. An individual must actually try,

in play or work, to do something with material in carrying out his own impulsive

activity, and then note the interaction of his energy and that of the material

employed.

3- What is the advantage of a direct, hands-on approach over a theoretical

approach in developing thinking skills? Direct observation is naturally more vivid and

vital. But it has its limitations; and in any case it is a necessary part of education that

one should acquire the ability to supplement the narrowness of his immediately

personal experiences by utilizing the experiences of others. Excessive reliance upon

others for data (whether got from reading or listening) is to be depreciated. Most

objectionable of all is the probability that others, the book or the teacher, will supply

solutions ready- made, instead of giving material that the student has to adapt and

apply to the question in hand for himself.

6- What are the four principles in teaching thinking that Dewey lists in his

summary? They are first that the pupil have a genuine situation of experience — that

there be a continuous activity in which he is interested for its own sake; secondly,

that a genuine problem develop within this situation as a stimulus to thought; third,

that he possess the information and make the observations needed to deal with it;

fourth, that suggested solutions occur to him which he shall be responsible for

developing in an orderly way; fifth, that he have opportunity and occasion to test his

ideas by application, to make their meaning clear and to discover for himself their

validity.

Carl G. Woodson, “The Mis-Education of the Negro,”

3- Why, according to Woodson, was the kind of education offered to black people

at that time “the worst sort of lynching?” As another has well said, to handicap a

student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change

his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching. It kills one’s aspirations and

dooms him to vagabondage and crime.

4- How was education in fields such as mathematics different in the black schools

and the white schools in Mississippi? the teaching of arithmetic in the fifth grade in

a< backward county in Mississippi should mean one thing in the Negro school and a

decidedly different thing in the white school. The Negro children, as a rule, come

from the homes of tenants and peons who have to migrate annually from plantation

to plantation, looking for light which they have never seen. The children from the

homes of white planters and merchants live permanently in the midst of calculations,

family budgets, and the like, which enable them sometimes to learn more by contact

than the Negro can acquire in school. Instead of teaching such Negro children less

arithmetic, they should be taught much more of it than the white children, for the

latter attend a graded school consolidated by free transportation when the Negroes

go to one-room rented hovels to be taught without equipment and by incompetent

teachers educated scarcely beyond the eighth grade.

6- Why was a black student of that time who had been well educated in higher

education not well equipped for success? For the arduous task of serving a race thus

handicapped, however, the Negro graduate has had little or no training at all. The

people whom he has been ordered to serve have been belittled by his teachers to the

extent that he can hardly find delight in undertaking what his education has led him

to think is impossible. Considering his race as blank in achievement, then, he sets out

to stimulate their imitation of others. The performance is kept up a while; but, like

any other effort at meaningless imitation, it results in failure

8- How did education in industrial classes differ for black students and white

students? Negroes attended industrial schools, took such training as was prescribed,

and received their diplomas; but few of them developed adequate efficiency to be

able to do what they were supposedly trained to do. The schools in which they were

educated could not provide for all the experience with machinery which white

apprentices trained in factories had. Such industrial education as these Negroes

received, then, was merely to master a technique already discarded in progressive

centers; and even in less complicated operations of industry these schools had no

such facilities as to parallel the numerous processes of factories conducted on the

plan of the division of labor. Except what value such training might have in the

development of the mind by making practical applications of mathematics and

science, then, it was a failure.

Andrew Carnegie, “The Gospel of Wealth,”

1. What kinds of benefits derive from the greater disparities of wealth found in

industrial societies than the equality of more primitive societies?

2. How has the manufacture of products changed over time? How has this change

led to differences in work between employer and employee?

3. How is the change in manufacturing been beneficial to the poor and working

classes? How has this led to distrust between the classes?

4. What, according to Carnegie, is wrong with the kind of equality that communism

attempts to establish?

Song of Solomon,

Chapters 1-3,

2. The residents of the area call the hospital No Mercy. Why? It is on Mains Avenue,

which the people call Not Doctor Street. How did the street get this name? People

call the Mercy hospital “no mercy hospital” because it does not admit any African-

American patients. The hospital was located on Main Avenue, which was called Not

Doctor Street by locals. The street got its nickname because the only black doctor of

the city used to live on this street and the street used to be called the Doctor Street.

Then, some of the city legislators gave out a notice to say it had been always and

would always be known as Main Avenue and Not Doctor Street. So, the locals

continued calling the street “Not Doctor Street”.

7. How does Milkman get his nickname? Who knows and who doesn’t know how he

got the nickname? Milkman aka Macon Dead got his name because Freddie the

janitor found Ruth breast-feeding him. Ruth’s neighborhood and Southside where

Macon Dead owned rent houses. Freddie sees Ruth giving milk Macon III, Even

though he is old enough to walk, and gives the child a nickname “Milkman”. Macon II

doesn’t know how his son got the nickname, however, he has guessed that the

nickname is in regard to relation between Ruth and Milkman. Freddie, since he put

the nickname, knows as well as Ruth, her 2 daughters, and also Macon II’s sister,

Pilate. In other words, whole community knows the story behind the nickname.

8. How did Milkman’s grandfather, Macon Dead I, get his name? How did his aunt,

Pilate, get her name?

A. How did Milkman's grandfather get his name? It was a accident by a drunken

Yankee when he went to register. the man asked him where he was born he told him

"mascon" and when he asked him who his father was he said "dead" the drunken

Yankee doing the form wrote it down wrong and his name became" Macon Dead",

which he decided to keep.

B. Where did Pilate get her name,? Her father Macon 1 , Milkman's Grandfather went

thumbing threw a Bible (looking for a name) and put his finger down in a certain area,

after choosing a group of letters on a picture he liked , he wrote them down( that

became her name, because he couldn't read..

20. At the age of twenty-two, Milkman hits his father. Why does he do this?

Milkman hits his father because he is defending his mother, Ruth.

22.Milkman’s father explains to Milkman why he hit his mother, which involves her

relationship with her father, Dr. Foster. What was Dr. Foster’s attitude toward his

black patients? What was his attitude toward Milkman’s sisters when they were

born? Dr Foster was reluctant to treating Black patients, he only cared about the

most respected ones. When Milkman’s sisters were born, he was mostly worried

about the color of their skin. Dr. Foster is an arrogant, self-hating racist so his attitude

toward his black patients is impolite and rude as much as he calls African-Americans

“Cannibals” and when Milkman’s sisters were born, Dr. Foster checked that how

light-skinned his granddaughters.

23.What habit did Dr. Foster have before he died? What did Ruth do with Dr. Foster

after he died? Dr. Foster is a self-hate racist. He calls African-American "cannibals”

while he himself is an African-American. He checks his granddaughter’s skin to see

hoe "white" they are. After his death, Ruth laid naked next to him with his fingers in

her mouth.

Chapters 4-7, questions

5. Milkman stays at Guitar’s place, and they discuss how someone is planning to kill

Milkman. Who is trying to kill him? Why? Hagar is trying to kill Milkman, since

Milkman broke up with her and after that,she saw him with another girl. It seems the

love hagar had for Milkman was so much, that she was ready to kill him in order to

prove her love.

7. Later that night, Milkman follows his mother. Where does she end up going?

Why does she go there? . Milkman follows his mother and ends up at the cemetery

where her father, Dr. Foster was burried. She visited his grave site frequently to talk

to him. Shortly after Ruth explained to Milkman her relationship with her father.

8. Why was Dr. Foster buried in the cemetery in Fairfield? Dr. Foster was buried in

the cemetery in Fairfield because Ruth wanted to bury her father someplace other

than where Negroes were all laid in one area. She was able to bury her father in the

cemetery in Fairfield because when the doctor was buried forty years ago, Fairfield

was farm country with a county cemetery that was too tiny for anybody to care

whether its dead were white or black.

11. What happens when Milkman’s intended killer breaks into his room to murder

him? Milkman closes his eyes and wishes Hagar to die when he hears her

approaching. Hagar enters and stabs Milkman in the collarbone with a knife but does

not really harm him. Hagar could not stab him again and so Milkman opens his eyes

and turns away.

13. Pilate tells Ruth her story. After her father died, she went to find some

members of her family. She lived for a time among a group of pickers until they

forced her to leave. Why did they want her to leave? They found out that she didn’t

have a navel. And in their eyes she was not normal, she was not born normal and

therefore they wanted here to leave. She has no navel and it's a bad omen and bad

for business. So two groups kick here out. She says that men will make love to

anything but they won't make love to a woman with a belly button. Causes her fear

and hides from most people.

14. Pilate’s father came to “visit” her after her daughter, Reba, was born. What did

he tell her to do? Pilate’s ghost of her father visits her and tells her to sing (this is

why she sings all the time and "you just can’t fly off and leave a body." So she goes

back to Pennsylvania, to a cave where Macon killed the white man, gets his bones,

and brings them back.

16. Guitar tells Milkman that he belongs to a group known as the Seven Days. What

does this group do? This group is to revenge white people for every black’s death by

murder them in the ways same as the original murder happen to those black victim.

18. Milkman tells his father that Pilate has a green sack hanging in her house. What

does Macon believe is in the sack? How did Pilate get it? Macon believes the sack is

full of dead man’s treasure. She took it when Macon was outside of the cave tried to

hide from hunters.


1. What does Guitar, as a member of the Seven Days, have to do? Why does this

make him willing to help Milkman steal Pilate’s gold? Guitar has Sunday as his day;

this means that if a killing of some Negroes happens on a Sunday. It is his duty to kill

some white people the same way the Negroes got killed the Sunday after. Guitar

helps Milkman steal Pilate’s gold because he needs money, and he sees it as a golden

opportunity to get some. The killing that he is required to do is starting to be more

and more complicated and he needs for example explosives for his next murder. All

that costs a lot more than he thought, so he is in need for money.

2. What does Guitar tell Milkman when he asks Guitar why a peacock can’t fly any

better than a chicken? All the jewelry on its tail weighs it down. Nobody can fly with

all that, if you want to fly you have to get rid of all the materials.

16. Who does Milkman meet when he goes into the Butlers’ house? What does she

tell him happened to the body of his grandfather? Milkman meets an ancient

woman, his father’s midwife named Circe. She is “colorless” with age, on the top of

the staircase and hugs Milkman. She tells him that after his grandfather was killed

and a month after his burial, the murdered Macon Dead I’s body floated out of its

grave during the first rain and was deposited by hunters in the same cave where

Macon Jr. and Pilate stayed.

20. One of the men in Solomon’s General Store tells Milkman that someone has

been looking for him. Who has been looking for him? Guitar. and his message was

“your day is here” which is the executioner’s call of the Seven Days

24. The day after the hunt, Milkman asks the men about his grandmother. What

was her name? Where do they tell him to go in order to find out about her? His

grandmother’s name is Sing and she is a daughter of a woman name Heddy. They told

him to go to the place of Susan Byrd, another of Heddy’s descendants.


3. Back in town, Milkman sees Guitar and Guitar tells Milkman why he has tried to

kill him. Why is Guitar trying to kill Milkman? Guitar is trying to kill Milkman because

he thinks that he has taken all the gold for himself. Guitar saw him at the station

when he was helping a man to lift a box that was being shipped to Virginia. So Guitar

assumes that the box is filled with gold; and then he when he finds Milkman in

Virginia it is even clearer according to him. Guitar thinks that Milkman found the gold

and decided to keep it to himself. That is why he thinks he has to kill Milkman.

5. Milkman listens to the song the children sing and tries to figure out what it

means. What does he decide the song means? Milkman realizes that the song is

about his own people. Soloman was Jake’s father, Milkman’s great grandfather, and

he recognized the name Heddy,Susan Bryd’s grandmother on her father’s side. He

also realizes that Susan Byrd had not told him everything she knows.

7. When Milkman goes back to Susan Byrd’s house, she tells him the truth about his

grandmother. What does she tell him? Why didn’t she tell him this sooner? Susan

tells Milkman that Sing had never ended up going to the school she was supposed to

in Boston, but instead had left in a wagon with Jake and a whole lot of slaves toward

the North. She didn’t told him this sooner because Grace was present and she didn’t

wanted her to know since she has a reputation of gossiping.

8. Susan Byrd also tells Milkman about Solomon. Who was Solomon? What did he

do? Susan Bryd called Solomon a flying African. She tells milkman some Africans as

slaves could fly and Solomon is one of them. Solomon is the origin and a pioneer of

the idea that Africans can fly. It is his store that leads Milkman to the long way of

finding his ancestry to some extent. He flew away toward freedom leaving his wife

and his babies while they were all working in the fields.

11. Milkman tells Pilate what the bones in her sack really are. Whose bones are

they? What do they decide to do with the bones? Milkman tells Pilate that the bones

belong to her father and that she should bury them. Pilate lets Milkman go and

sends him home with a box of hair belonging to Hagar.

13. What happens to Pilate after she buries the bones? Guitar shoots her by

accident and she dies in Milkman’s arms.

15. What do the birds that have been circling Milkman do? What does this

symbolize? One dive into the new grave and scooped something shiny in its beak

before it flew away. Birds are a symbol of life which means death is not the end of

Pilate’s existence.

16. What does Milkman do at the end of the story? Why does he do this? He had a

short conversation with Guitar and then fought him. Maybe for the revenge for

Pilate.

The Death and Life of the Great American School System,

Chapter 1, questions

3. What idea has she consistently warned against?

Taking “ The royal road to learning,” the notion that some savant or organization has found

an easy solution to the problems of American education.

9. What did Ravitch include in the history curriculum that she developed for California’s

schools in 1985?

She worked closely with teachers and scholars to draft a curriculum framework that

integrated history with literature, geograpgy, the arts, social sciences, and humanities.

14. Why are market reforms appealing to policymakers in education? The lure of the

market is the idea that freedom from government regulation is a solution all by itself. There

is something comforting about the belief that the invisible hand of the market, as Adam

Smith called it, will bring improvements through some unknown forces. It appealing because

depending on market forces to optimize learning is easier than having to figure out the in’s-

and-out’s of a new education reform.


1. “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB), President George W. Bush’s education policy passed in

2002, relies on accountability as a means of improving schools. What is accountability, and

how does NCLB use standardized tests as a tool for assessing accountability? The definition

of accountability is taking or being assigned responsibility for something that you have done

or something you are supposed to do. NCLB use standarized tests to measure school quality.

2. What areas did tests developed to satisfy NCLB requirements cover? What areas did they

not cover? The tests that covered the requirements were math and reading. The ones that

did not cover were areas such as the arts, science, history, geography and literature.

7. Ravitch states “NCLB was all sticks and no carrots.” What does this mean? It means that

the country’s educational focus were only on tests. And there were none deeper thought

about what education should be or how you could improve schools.

14. What did A Nation at Risk recommend about the school day and the school year? What did

it recommend about teacher salaries? How did it recommend that teacher salaries be

determined? The ANAR recommended that a normal school day should be lengthen to

seven hours and the school year to 200-220 days (it was normally 180). About teachers’

salaries it recommended that they should be raised since those who would teach would

have to meet the high educational standards. The salaries should be professionally

competitive, market-sensitive, and performance-based. Teachers’ salaries should be

determined by peer review.

16. This chapter is titled “Hijacked.” In what way were the warnings included in A Nation at

Risk hijacked by the kinds of policies advanced by NCLB? When the report on ANAR was

released, the critic to the educational system was used when creating the policies by NCLB.

It warned about how the focus on basic academic courses was disappearing, and NCLB took

focus on accountability and choice because of it.


2. What is “systemic school reform?” What obstacles were faced by schools that

attempted systemic reform? The “systemic school reform” is a central improvement for

the education system in the student’s performance to support higher achievements. This

involved establishing a curriculum, setting standards for proficiency in those subjects, basing

tests on the curriculum, and expecting teachers to teach it. The greatest obstacles to the

reform were the requirement for numerous stakeholders – textbook publishers, test

publishers, and schools of education.

6. What changes in employment of principals and teachers did District 2 undergo

while Tony Alvarado was superintendent? While Tony Alvarado was superintendent he

made sure that all of his principals and teachers were trained in Balanced Literacy and only

used the new methods and those who did not abide by that were quietly encouraged to

transfer to other districts. At the end of his term, Alvarado replaced two-thirds of his

district’s principals and about half of the teachers.

9. How might changes in demographics in some schools in District 2 have

contributed to the district’s successes? The changes in demographics in some schools of

District 2 contributed to the district’s success because the highest performing schools were

those with a majority of white and/or Asian students, while the lowest-performing schools

were highly segregated. Also the students that were relatively affluent were more likely to

receive a higher test score. Five schools that were recorded as “problematic” were assumed

to have some schools that were more than 75 percent African American or Hispanic

particularly those where fewer than 10 percent of students reached the top quartile of

achievements on reading tests.

12. What differences were there among achievements of fourth graders of different

ethnic backgrounds in District 2? What differences in achievements were there

among eighth graders? The differences in achievements among the fourth graders of

different ethnic backgrounds in District 2 were that there was a large achievement gap

among students with different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Among the fourth grade

students, 82 percent of white students, 61 percent of Asian students, 45.7 percent of African

American students, and 37.8 percent of Hispanic students met the state standards (Level 3

and 4) for reading. Among eighth graders, the differences were just as large or larger. 80

percent of white students, 61 percent of Asian students, 53 percent of African American

students, and 40 percent of Hispanic students achieved that state standard on the reading

test. Although the minority students achieved higher testing scores than those in other

districts, District 2 did not close the Achievement gap among different racial and ethnic

backgrounds.


6. What was the strategy Bersin used in implementing his reforms? Bersin’s strategy

to implement his reforms was to have Alvarado turn to Elaine Fink, and have her run

the new Educational Leadership Development Academy to train principals for the San

Diego public school. Alvarado also used consultants to lead professional development

sessions for principals and teachers on Balanced Literacy.

7. What effect did these reforms have on the retention of teachers and principals?

During the reform, there was a poor retention rate of principals and teachers due to

the reform; 90% of district’s principals were replaced, thousands of teachers resigned

each year, and many took the early retirement offer.

11. What did Sheila Byrd tell Ravitch about the curriculum and standards in place in

the San Diego schools? When it came to curriculum, Shiela Byrd wrote that they did

not go by the state’s academic framework and chose to focus on “professional

development” for the teachers and principals. There was an emphasis on how the

teachers should be teaching their students rather than a curriculum to follow to

improve the San Diego education.

12. What did a retired principal tell Ravitch about the school she had founded and

what was done to her school during Bersin’s tenure? A retired principal and founder

of an elementary school had everything she built her school on stripped away; they

had to remove the activities that were mostly run by the children. When the reform

was implicated, she completely disagreed with everything the superintendent was

doing, there was a negative attitude with the instructional leaders, and they did more

damage than anything else. Once the principal retired, the entire staff left the school,

leaving it to close down and the principal’s dream dead.

13. What were the results of a 2001 survey administered by the San Diego teachers’

union, the SDEA? The results of the survey administered by the SDEA all showed that

the teachers did not believe that the reform was going to improve the quality of

education, there was a poor teaching morale, there was no confidence in the

Superintendent and his administration, and they frequently described his attitude

towards the teachers and parents as a dictator, or dictatorship, arrogant,

disrespectful, and condescending.


3. How did Joel Klein’s plans for reform in New York’s schools resemble those of

Alan Bersin in San Diego? It required balanced literacy, the same method pioneered

in District 2 and later implemented in San Diego.

5. How did the program reduce rather than increase parental involvement? With

the elimination of local school boards and the central boards parents had troubles

reaching anyone in authority

11. What was the Monday Night Massacre? In March 2004 when some members of

the panel disagreed with the mayor over the issue of social promotion. The day of the

vote the mayor fired two of his appointees to guarantee the pass of his proposal.

12. How were the New York schools able to drastically reduce the number of

students scoring at the lowest level in reading and math? By lowering the scoring

bar and made it easier for students to pass.

13. How many charter schools were established under Klein? How did these charter

schools disadvantage homeless children? Fifty charter schools, and it was because

homeless people had difficulty meeting the deadlines and following through with the

application process.


2. What four principles were at the heart of NCLB?

First, that every child should be tested every year in grades three through eight (using state

tests, not national tests).

Second, that decisions about how to reform schools would be made by the states.

Third, low-preforming schools would get help to improve.

Fourth, that students stuck in persistently dangerous or failing schools would be able to

transfer to other schools.

5. Under NCLB, what would happen to schools that did not achieve their

Adequate Yearly Progress goals toward 100 percent proficiency in testing areas by

2013-2014? The schools that did not achieve it would be labeled as a school in need

of improvement.

The first year of failure, the school would be put on notice

In the second year, it would be required to offer all its students the right to transfer to a

successful school. And the transfer should be paid from the district’s federal funds.

The third year, the school would be required to offer free tutoring to low-income students,

paid from the district’s federal funds.

The fourth year, the school would need to make big changes, such as in curriculum, staff, or

by having a longer school day or year.

After five years, the school would need to restructure.

9. Why was choice not a successful strategy under NCLB? Because there were

only a very few students that asked to be transferred to a better school. Scholars

discussed whether or not this could be because the information of the transfer-

opportunity were sent out to late in the school year, or because parents did not want

to send their children on a bus travelling alone a long way. Many schools did also not

have enough seats for eligible students. And many students and parents did not want

to leave their neighborhood school.

13. What is the most toxic flaw of NCLB? What makes it such a bad flaw? The most

toxic flaw was the command that all students in every schoo must be proficient in

reading and mathematics by 2014. This meant that all students had to be proficient,

even students with special needs, or whose first language is not English, or students

that are homeless and lacks in social advantage. All these were condemned under the

same requirements, and if not all students accomplished the goals, the entire school

would suffer the consequences.


2. How did the school choice movement develop out of reactions to school

desegregation? When the U.S Supreme Court issued its decision against school

segregation in 1954, some political leaders refused to employ the policy. Some school

districts, instead, adopted the “freedom of choice” policy, which meant that students

could enroll in any public school they wanted. So, black students could stay in all-

black schools and white students could stay in all-white schools. When the federal

government began to force students to attend integrated schools, some public

officials encouraged the creation of private schools so white students weren’t forced

to attend an integrated school.

3. What argument did Milton Friedman advance in favor of tuition vouchers in his

1955 essay, "The Role of Government in Education?" Milton Friedman believed that

governments should fund schooling but not run the schools. He proposed that

government should supply vouchers to every family so every student could attend a

school of choice. He predicted that a wide variety of schools would spring up to meet

the demand. He believed that vouchers would improve the schools’ quality and also

the salary of the teachers.

11. Why did Albert Shanker change his position on charter schools? As Shanker

watched the charter movement evolve, as he saw new businesses jump into the

“education industry”, he realized that his idea was being taken over by corporations,

entrepreneurs, and practitioners of “do your own thing”. He came to see charter

schools as dangerous to public education.

13. How many charter schools had opened and how many students were attending

charters by 2009? By 2009, the Center for Education Reform reported that there

were about 4600 charter schools with 1.4 million students.

15. What did studies in 2009 conclude about the success of voucher programs in

Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Washington, D. C.? Studies showed that there were

relatively small achievement gains for students offered educational vouchers, most of

which are not statistically different from zero.

17. Why are traditional public schools at a disadvantage against charter schools? It

is not only because charter schools may attract the most motivated students but also

because the charters often get additional financial resources from their corporate

sponsors to do extracurriculum activities. Many charters enforce discipline codes that

would be challenged in court if they were adopted in regular public schools.


6. What factors, according to Robert Linn, could result in variations in test results

other than student or teacher performance? Higher achieving students, number of

English-language learners, number of students with disabilities, and student body.

7. What ways have some schools cheated in order to produce higher test scores?

First type is plain old-fashioned cheating where teachers correct students’ answers or

leak the questions in advance. Second type is to restrict the admission of low

performing students, English-language learners, or unmotivated students.

8. What are "skimming" techniques that some schools use? How do these

techniques improve test scores? Schools weed out the lowest performing students

and still be able to boast the most or all of its students are African American,

Hispanic, or low-income. They may transfer the disruptive students to other schools.

12. What is Campbell's Law, and how does it apply to testing in schools? Campbell’s

law: the more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision making, the

more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort

and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor. As Koretz shows, the

changes induced by accountability pressures corrupt the very purpose of schooling by

causing practitioners to focus on the measure rather than on the goals of education.

15. What is the difference between "positive accountability" and "punitive

accountability" Why does Ravitch think that the former is more effective? Good

accountability is when low scores trigger an effort to help the school, but punitive

accountability is when low scores provide a reason to fire the staff and close the

school.


6. Why was Mrs. Ratliff not a member of a teachers’ union? How might a union

have benefitted a teacher like Mrs. Ratliff? Because in Texas is a “right to work”

state, and there were no teachers union. It could’ve helped protect their academic

freedom, since she was frequently harassed by an ultraconservative group called the

Minute Women.

7. What do the relative performance of students in schools in Southern states, in

Massachusetts, and in Finland indicate about the relationships of teachers’ unions

and student performance? Massachusetts, the state with the highest academic

performance, has long had strong teacher unions. Where there are affluent

communities student performance tends to be higher, whether or not their teachers

belong to unions.

9. What are the advantages of tenure to unionized teachers? Tenure is not a

guarantee of lifetime employment but a protection against being terminated without

due process.

14. What inherent limitations are there in using value-added assessments as the

sole method for measuring teacher performance? Test scores are not a reliable in

the measurement of student and teacher’s achievement quality. Also, VAA applies

only to those teachers for whom yearly test scores are available, possibly a minority

of a school’s staff. There is not enough long-term test scores data.


4. What are the major foundations involved in education since 2002? How do their

efforts differ from those of earlier foundations?

The top two philantrophies by 2002 were the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the

Walton Family Foundation, and the newly concieved Eli and Edythe Broad

Foundation. Gates, Walton, and Broad differed from earlier foundations because

there investments were targeted. They were to be called “venture philantropies”

because they borrowed concepts from venture capital finance and business

managment. The venture philanthrophies treated their gifts as an investment that

was expected to produce measurable results, or the business mindset of “return of

investment”.

5. In what ways are these new foundations not accountable?

Since these new foundations are private agencies, they are not subject to public

oversight or review. They take it upon themselves to reform public education in ways

that would never survive the scrutiny of voters. They are not accountable because if

their plans fail, no sanctions can be levied against them. The have heeps of

unaccountable power.

6. What is anti-democratic about the influence of foundations on education?

There is something fundamentally antidemocratic about relinquishing control of the

public education policy agenda to private foundations run by society’s wealthiest

people; when the wealthiest of these foundations are joined in common purpose,

they represent an unsually powerful force that is beyond the reach of democratic

institutions.

11. What happened to the Manual High School in Denver after it was restructured

following receipt of a Gates Foundation grant? What happened at the Mountlake

High School near Seattle?

In 2001, the Gates foundation awarded more than $1 million to restructure Manual

High School into three small, autonomous high schools, each on its own floor of the

building. It was a complete failure. The three schools competed for resources,

cafeteria, textbooks, and the library. When they were suppose to collaborate, they

were instead competing, which eventually led to its shutdown in February 2006.

17. What does Ravitch think is the benefit of traditional neighborhood public

schools?

The neighborhood school is the place where parents meet to share concerns about

their children and the place where they learn the practice of democracy. They create

a sense of community among strangers. As we lose neighborhood public schools, we

lose the one local institution where people congregate and mobilize to solve local

problems, where individuals learn to speak u and debate and engage in democratic

give-and-take with their neighbors.


1. What is the most durable way to improve schools? its to improve curriculum and

instruction and to improve the conditions in which teachers work and children learn,

rather than endlessly squabbling over how school systems should be organized,

managed and controlled.

3. Why are neighborhood schools the anchors of their communities? Because they

are places with a history laden with traditions and memories that help individuals

resist fragmentation in their lives they have a steady presence that helps to cement

the bonds of communities among neighbors.

5. What are some examples of appropriate use of competition in schools? In science

fairs, essay contests, debates, and athletic events.

6. What kinds of resources do children living in poor areas need for their schools?

Preschool medical care, small classes and extra learning time.

8. What obstacles are there to effective teaching of the sciences in public schools?

There are not enough science teachers to teach science in each grade and because of

the theological and political debate about evolution.

Epilogue, questions

2. What happened at Central Falls, Rhode Island, High School in 2010? This school

was in the state’s smallest and poorest district. The school superintendent

announced her intention to fire every staff member of the city’s only high school

because of its low-test scores. She had support for this by the state Education

Commissioner. None of the teachers had been individually evaluated. Parents took

the teachers side but with no effect. It happened anyway.

6. What accounts for one-third of the increase in costs of public education over the

past forty years?

10. What will be the next great movement in education reform? What does Ravitch

think will be wrong with this movement?

Documents

Thinking in Education