Customer Reviews

Contradictions of School Reform: Educational Costs of Standardized Testing (Critical Social Thought)

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Like most teachers, I want to see kids engaged in building skills, figuring out a new concept, questioning each other, me, the text, their own assumptions. Like most teachers, I want my classroom to be vibrantly alive. Why then would I allow waking intellects to be numbed and a spirit of inquiry suffocated by repeated preparation for a state-mandated test? In Contradictions of School Reform, Linda McNeil raises this question and others that arise when a student-centered curriculum gives way to a standardized test-based curriculum.

From her classroom observation come examples that illuminate the frustration and loss occurring when teachers try to maintain enriched instruction while also serving the higher authorities that give credence to only one form of assessment-a multiple choice test of minimum skills.

Many teachers and parents see a more complex picture of the ways children learn and can demonstrate that development. Why have their insights been ignored? Addressing this issue, McNeil returns to the beginnings of the Perot movement for school reform, showing how its original intent was perverted by powerful political players who used standardized assessment to create a closed hierarchical system, with teachers, of course, occupying the lowest level. She shows that this "de-democratization" of public schools marginalizes anyone who does not speak the language of authority, the language of the standardized test.

McNeil provides in-depth social and political perspective, but she also captures the salient moments in schools-- like the teacher of eighth graders who had failed at least two years being told he could no longer do the oral reading they loved because "they are too busy preparing for their TAAS test" or the students in a daily pep rally on test-taking strategies for TAAS chanting "Three in a row? No,No, No! [Three answers `b' in a row? No, No, No!]"

Public schools could be helping young people acquire the deep understandings of concepts and the habits of rigorous analysis that will allow them to take active part in an age of technology and information. Instead many kids are learning that the classroom has nothing to do with real life or real learning or real engagement. It is instead a place where they have no voice but are at the mercy of the routine and mundane. And who can blame their cynicism when they once came to school so eager to learn?

When the stakes are so high, the discussion cannot be limited. McNeil does us a great service with her penetrating analysis of the damage being done to children, particularly those in most need of constructing a new future. Her clear language allows us to see what we had only glimpsed in part. With this articulation comes the realization that the present problems are not inevitable.

Her study of specific classrooms suggests what teachers and students, allowed to focus on full, deep learning, could accomplish.

It is this faith in kids and hope for their future that seems to drive McNeil's writing, urging us to think more clearly about the limits imposed by a system that could be expanding the possibilities.

This is an outstanding book that has much to say to everyone interested in public education. First of all, McNeil presents an encouraging description of what can happen when teachers and students are given permission and opportunity to excel. The public schools observed by McNeil had little in terms of resources, funds, or equipment, in spite of limited outside support. Yet, the schools had the magnet name and committed teachers and students who created havens of intellectual excitement, inquiry, probing, and rich learning. These classrooms were in stark contrast to the more typical classrooms described previously by McNeil in Contradictions of Control, and in opposition to the students' home schools where "success" meant merely passing the state test and graduating. McNeil offers compelling insights into classroom dynamics and why these schools were able to be so intellectually powerful based on concrete examples from many hours of classroom observation.

The second major impact of Contradictions of School Reform is what it has to offer to the national discussion on school accountability. Her longitudinal studies on the same schools before and after the institution of various state and local reform measures provide clear evidence on the impact of these reforms and the costs to the students. It appears that tests, which originally had a useful purpose, have now been misapplied and misused to everyone's detriment. Furthermore, her evidence shows that the high stakes tests are creating a false sense of accountability in addition to being harmful to children's learning.

Deborah Meier says on the cover of the book, "It's a story that everyone needs to read from start to finish." As a teacher and a mother, I heartily agree.

This book is excellent. It provides a very thought provoking argument against standardized testing. Mrs. McNeil's careful research shows the terrible cost that Texas students are paying as a result of standardized testing. This book needs to be read by every State Legislature, Teacher, Principal, Superintendent, School Board Member and Parent in Texas.

Linda McNeil creates a powerful picture in the minds of readers as she describes the effects of standardized testing on the education of the children in our classrooms. Her book is one that delves deeply into the magnet schools, schools that display all the qualities that teachers would want to create in their classrooms. These classrooms give teachers decisions on how and what is taught. Students are critical thinkers and builders of knowledge. Assessment is done in many forms, over time. McNeil takes the reader back to a time when the reform began, time decided by non-educators to "nuke the educational system." McNeil vividly describes examples of how the reformists took the learning out of the classroom. How they listened least to the professionals on these matters, the educators actually sitting in the classrooms. She gives chilling examples that make readers stare in disbelief at the words on the page. One teacher was actually told that her observation would be continued when she was actually teaching, not when students were working cooperatively. McNeil makes her opinion crystal clear about these reforms and reforms that have followed the Texas school reforms, for example, No Child Left Behind. She is adamant in her views that this reform is strongly impeding the education of those that it is intended to be helping, poor and minority students. McNeil's book is one that causes teachers, both new and seasoned, to reflect upon the teaching that occurs in their classroom daily. Are the reforms implemented by your state and nation affecting the teaching and learning in your classroom? McNeil's book, Contradictions of School Reform will certainly help you assess yourself!

Linda McNeil does a good job of providing a history of the Texas school system's move toward standardized testing. This book makes educators aware that teaching to the standardized test is only widening the gap between successful students and those students who need the most help. In Houston, like all urban school districts, the students who are impacted the most by teaching to the test are are Hispanic and Black students. McNeil provides an outsider's perspective on what is required to educate the poor and minority youth of Houston, ie magnet schools. The three magnet schools that McNeil focuses on in her study attract the best minds in the inner city. These exemplary schools serve the good to top students who would have normally attended poor non-examplary high schools. However McNeil fails to acknowledge that these same students would have succeeded in their home school. McNeil fails to adddress that the real challenge in Houston public schools is getting the average poor or mainority student to succeed academically. The three magnet schools in her study are not typical Houston magnet schools. These particular magnet schools in her study attract Anglo student scholars, receive financial support from the private business community, are validated by the anglo community. McNeil does not answer the issue as to why segregated magnet schools in black and hispanic areas do not have lines of anglo students waiting to ride the bus town to attend a black or hispanic neighborhood magnet school. Although hispanics make up at least 50% of the student population in Houston Independent School District (HISD), they are the least represented in the schools involved in the McNeil study. McNeil claims that her study group was involved in real teaching of students. She does not explain who's real education these students are learning. Magnet schools, in particular, Specialized Schools have provided a private school enviroment subsidized by public school dollars. She also does not address why certain groups are cleary not represented adequately in these priviledged schools. This book misleads the public to believe that these 3 magnet schools are reflective of all magnet schools in the HISD. When in reality, these three magnet schools are for the select students who would have succeeded in their home school. McNeil also leads the reader to believe that these three magnet school programs are not teaching traditional education. However she does not go far enough to explain these school's vision of critical pedagogy in the classrooms. These is still much work to be done in all school districts across the United States teaching poor and minority students. I recommend reading McNeil's book only for a historical analysis on the history and politics of standardized testing in Texas.

It is quite a compelling story Ms. McNeil tells, one of how education can be perfected, then brought to its knees by ignorant bureaucrats. Most are familiar with the costs of standardization, but hearing it on such a personal level is a reminder that these are real people, educators and students with a passion to teach and learn, that are affected by them. I grew up with the TAAS test, so standardization is synonymous with school for me, and I fear that too many students like myself have this truncated view; accounts like these remind us that there is another way.

That being said, McNeil isn't the most talented writer in the world; her storytelling certainly flows, and I feel that this is a book that anyone could pick up and easily read, but at times there is something to be desired. It just doesn't seem refined, with numerous type-os, grammatical mistakes (like spelling 'whites' and 'blacks' with capital first letters), clunky sentences and words repeated too soon one after the other (For example, on page 267: "...the symbolic language of democracy seems to be much less necessary, even at a symbolic level." While this may seem like a nitpicking complaint, it occurs too frequently for me to easily forgive, and you will probably find yourself frustrated as well).

Despite these minor complaints, the book is worth reading, as the story is one that especially new students and educators need to hear lest we forget that reform is even possible. We remember taking standardized tests as children and hating the teachers for it, forgetting the knowledge immediately after the test ended, and we see kids completely uninterested in furthering their education today and are prone to attribute it to laziness or ignorance; stories like these are important in that they remind us that these educators and students have potential, it's simply the stifling system of education that we have let become institutionalized that causes these unfortunate consequences.