an incredible piece...and perfect for Thanksgiving....

Paul Beare / Kremen School of Education and Human Development, California State
University, Fresno
(Updated Saturday, November 19, 2005, 6:05 AM)

Teachers have been under continual assault from federal and state government. A
refreshing and learned response came from David Berliner in his presidential
address to the American Educational Research Association (AERA).

Berliner's research has done an excellent job of debunking the value of
high-stakes standardized testing and demonstrating that testing does not result
in improved achievement for students based on any of our traditional measures but
does lead to dramatically increased dropout rates and drastically lowered
graduation rates.

His address meticulously verified that school achievement problems, while not the
result of "too little accountability" are also not the result of a teaching force
that is poorly trained or insufficiently motivated. The true culprit is poverty.
According to the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF),
of the 26 richest nations in the world, the United States is 25th in the
percentage of children living in poverty with 21.9% so classified.

Sticking point

This is a disgrace. This figure stands in comparison with 2.4% in Denmark, 7.5%
in France, 8.8% in Hungary and 13.3% in Spain. These figures apparently do little
to either upset or motivate the policy makers in control in Washington. The
UNICEF report also points out that there is a charter about the rights of
children to which 192 of the 194 U.N. members have agreed, all but Somalia and
the United States. The sticking point is that our current administration does not
"recognize the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for the
child's physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development."

Data successfully demonstrate that our teachers can teach effectively. When you
rate children's achievement across countries, our children are near the top in
reading, math and science, when you consider only children above the poverty
level. Our teachers know how to teach, but they cannot be expected to overcome
the devastating effects of childhood poverty, a lack of nutrition, medical care
or even shelter.

Pork projects

Instead of addressing poverty, policy makers blame teachers, give enormous
contracts to political contributors such as McGraw-Hill, or fund pork barrel
projects such as the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence ($40
million) to develop an alternative test to credential teachers without training
them in pedagogy.

Instead of addressing poverty, the administration proposed cutting food stamps by
$86 a month. Cutting food for hungry children while further enriching the
super-rich has the same logic as most federal education policies. It is time for
policy makers to address the real problems instead of blaming the group trying
most to help children.

The Smithsonian American History Museum currently has a display celebrating the
50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Topeka Supreme Court desegregation decision.
This is ironic, for as Jonathan Kozol aptly demonstrates and describes in his new
book, "The Shame of the Nation," absolute apartheid now prevails in thousands of
our schools. The segregation of black children has reverted to a level that the
nation has not seen since the 1960s. Instead of a rounded education, children in
public schools receive a regimen of test preparation in reading and math,
followed by testing, followed by more test preparation. The result is a lack of a
real education.

Health problems

Poverty's foremost effect is on children's health and environment. Directly
related to poverty are rates of asthma, lead and mercury poisoning, birth weight
and brain volume, hearing and vision problems and lack of resultant treatment or
remediation. Poor children live in poor neighborhoods. Research data has
demonstrated that neighborhood deprivation has serious effects on educational
attainment. Gang membership, street crime, negative role models and a lack of
mentors for impoverished youth depress achievement, while exposure to higher
expectations, expanded educational/career options and the positive peer culture
found in more affluent neighborhoods accelerates learning.

Schools alone cannot do what is needed to help all children achieve at high
levels. Instead of finger-pointing and blaming those who try the hardest to help,
business must provide employment and communities must fight the concentration of
poverty in a single area.

Fresno, according to the Brookings Institute, is the single worst city in the
nation on this measure. Policy makers must be sure no child is hungry or without
health care. Teachers should be allowed to teach as they have been trained and as
they know best, not forced to teach meaningless standardized tests. We will not
achieve the ideal, currently given only lip service by Washington, unless
everyone takes responsibility for children and their learning.

Paul Beare is dean of the Kremen School of Education and Human Development,
California State University, Fresno.