Tuesday's Teaser (also a bit of a snoozer) - Life and Death, or Death and Life?
The Death and Life of the Great American School System. by Diane Ravitch.I'm always out there, trolling for the next good read. Would venture to say that my picks end up being half fiction, half non-fiction. There is currently a stack about eighteen inches high on my nightstand, but that doesn't mean I can't keep acquiring. It's definitely a documented illness, and it's called Lottabookalitis.

Anyway, this one hit the bookshelves two weeks ago, and I think it deserves mention for several reasons. Having raised our kids overseas until two years ago, the 'overhaul' of public education in the last twenty years has given Bill and I plenty of pause since we've been back. The demise, if you will, of public education is without a doubt on my top five list of biggest concerns in the universe at the moment, far more worrysome than the threat of nuclear war or global warming. The boys just wrapped up the nightmare which is the FCAT (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test) this week. In my opinion, the FCAT is a waste of time, and serves only those kids who may not survive in the public school system otherwise (i.e. who may slip through the cracks for whatever reason). I would much rather see my kids working on real-life projects, being exposed to think-outside-the-box dilemmas and situations, and memorizing the work of famous American poets. Fat chance.

The author, Diane Ravitch, is a historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and former United States Assistant Secretary of Education. This, her latest book, seeks to examine the current direction of reform within public education. As a parent, as an American, it's another one of those please-don't-make-me-read-it things that I need to read. Is it going to sit at the bottom of my stack? Probably, but it will make 'counting sheep' that much easier, and even if I only plod through one chapter a month, I will have a better understanding of what's happening around me. It's much easier, and much more pleasant, to put your kids on the bus every day and not think about it. I can't do that - I am truly terrified when I think about how my kids are going to compete in the global market after eight (or ten) years of high school and college in the US.

The FCAT was implemented in 1998 and is part of Florida’s overall plan to increase student achievement by raising standards. The FCAT, administered to students in Grades 3-11, consists of criterion-referenced tests measuring selected benchmarks in mathematics, reading, science, and writing. The purpose of the FCAT is to improve teaching standards, to make schools accountable for individual achievements, and to measure annual progress for students, schools, districts, and the state. Sounds fantastic, in theory.

What I have discovered, in talking to educators, administrators, and parents in our school district, is what I can imagine school districts all over the country are experiencing. First and foremost, the overall curriculum is suffering because our teachers are doing nothing more than teaching to these standardized tests. How else are we going to get all these kids through the process with decent scores. Second, and I have heard this straight from the teachers' mouths, the incentive to get those scores and therefore education standards up has absolutely nothing to do with giving our kids a better education. It has everything to do with tying the teacher's performance review, subsequently his/her compensation package, and ultimately job security to these frigging tests. What a way to improve education.

In 2001, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was passed, requiring states to participate in biennial State NAEP testing in reading and mathematics at Grades 4 and 8. Unlike the FCAT, The primary purpose of the Natl. Association of Educational Progress (NAEP) is to enable states to monitor their progress over time and to compare results of their students with students in other states across the nation. Obviously, there has to be a way to benchmark the performance on a state-by-state basis, but this voluntary testing adds yet another layer to standardized testing, and diverts more of the teachers' time/energy they could be using to actually teach our kids.

We had the boys in a private school for seven years before coming back to the US. Financially, it just doesn't make sense to fork out $12k per year, per child, for three kids, knowing that we have all the college expenses coming down the pike. That being said, I'm not sure that the public high school is going to give them what they need to prepare for college. Guess we shall cross that bridge when we get to it.