Education Trust President Kati Haycock weighed in Thursday on the debate over whether annual tests serve the interests of the civil rights community, saying National Center on Education and the Economy President and CEO Marc Tucker’s recent thoughts [http://bit.ly/1HAn4rL] on the subject were “breathtaking in their arrogance.”
Kati Haycock
Tucker argued, among other things, that the current accountability system dumbs down the curriculum and leads to excessive test prep especially for poor and minority students. And he thinks civil rights groups like the NAACP and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights should reconsider their strong pro-accountability position.
Haycock disagrees with Tucker’s stance — and his tone. “We work with — and have learned from — [civil rights] leaders and organizations on many issues over many years. And while they may or may not decide to call him out on his accusations, I will. Because even a white girl can recognize that this is yet another example of the patronizing attitudes displayed by so many white education ‘leaders’ when anybody from the black, brown or Native communities that have been shortchanged in education for so long DARES to disagree,” Haycock wrote in a blog post: http://bit.ly/1H5z6xl.
Marc Tucker
Tucker told Morning Education that Haycock is “just plain wrong.” The civil rights community is not as united on testing as many think it is, he said, citing a recent op-ed [http://bit.ly/1BKzpI3]. “I actually laughed when I saw it, to tell you the truth,” Tucker said. “What’s important to me here is not overriding the civil rights community, but persuading people in it that they have misread the situation.”
Friday, June 05, 2015
Reformy Testing Rift Intensifies
This from Morning Education:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Not to sound mean but having worked a little with Tucker, he could read his grocery list and most folks would think he sounded arrogant.
He makes some good points but he draws most of his principles from comparisons with other nations that often have primarily homogenious populations and centralized federal control of most educational aspects. For example he always notes the high status which teachers often enjoy in other cultures. To be honest, I am not completely sure if simply increasing the admission expectations for teacher ed programs and magically finding enough money to double teachers' salaries is going to necessarily change how folks feel about teachers or validate their efforts any more. Equally, I don't think departmentalized elementary schools are necessarily going to make kids learn better as content knowledge doesn't seem to be a significant problem in the profession.
Post a Comment