N E T w o r k
t h e n a t i o n a l e d u c a t i o n t a s k f o r c e
catching the children left behind

january 2008	volume 2 number 1
NETwork archives	NET home

Three resolutions for the new year

Resolution 1.

January 1, 2008, is the 200^th anniversary of the United States’ prohibition of the importation of slaves. In the December 30 New York Times Eric Foner describes the contention the slave trade caused at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. By threatening disunion, South Carolina pushed through what is known as the three-fifths clause: Slave states could count three fifths of their slave populations toward representation in Congress.
     South Carolina also managed to postpone the prohibition of slave importation until 1808, so in 1807 Congress prohibited slave importation, to take effect the next New Year’s Day: January 1, 1808. Many African-Americans began to celebrate January 1 as an alternative to July 4.
     What if the African slave trade had not been prohibited? Plausibly, hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of Africans would have been imported. This greater number would have lowered their prices and “democratized” slavery as more and more whites became able to afford them. Likewise, thanks to the three-fifths clause, the political power of slave states would have increased. This was South Carolina's hope when it tried, unsuccessfully, to reopen the African slave trade in the 1850s. Had the importation of slaves continued, the United States would likely have become the slave-based empire of the Western hemisphere.
     What does this have to do with standardized testing? Slavery has ended but racial discrimination continues, sometimes inadvertently. Unwittingly, NCLB’s authors have exacerbated one of the problems they intended to resolve ― race-based bias in our schools. For at least two years informed educators have been tireless in offering legislators research-based proposals for improving NCLB. The result? Band-aid changes. “Improving NCLB” looks like a dead end. Perhaps the most effective strategy, as some are beginning to suggest, is to create a fully developed alternative to NCLB. This would be a work-intensive job, done almost entirely by advocacy groups such as the NET, but the upcoming elections give us at least a year. If groups such as ours align to form a consortium, we could resolve to write the bill in 2008. Many hands make light work.

Resolution 2.

Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in December is a victory of the benighted over the informed, a triumph of religious fundamentalism over principles of freedom. Criticism of her flaws as a leader, however accurate, seem off-point when one considers her life in its entirety:

· She was elected prime minister of Pakistan twice, and she died on the verge of being elected a third time―by landslide. The fact that a woman accomplished this in an Islamic state is, well, mind-boggling.

· She spent roughly half of her 53 years either in exile or in prison because she was too successful at promoting democracy.

· Her opponents exploited her gender with photographs doctored to show her wearing bikinis.

· Her father was executed and both of her brothers were assassinated.

· Despite this she fulfilled the traditional female roles of Islam: Within the strictures of an arranged marriage she raised three children and took care of an ailing mother.

Benazir Bhutto was one of the world’s greatest ambassadors of Islam. She died at the hands of some of its worst. What insights does this tragedy offer U.S. educators? One of our most effective shapers of children's beliefs is our national teaching force, the majority of whom are women. Paulo Freire identified something called the hidden curriculum―content taught alongside the official academic curriculum. Teachers, female and male, have daily opportunities to teach our children to respect women―and no need to hide anything. Let us resolve to do so in 2008.

Resolution 3.

A century ago H. H. Goddard suggested that intelligence could be determined by a single measure (Goddard also coined the term ‘moron’). The efficiency of his idea seduced many to embrace standardized intelligence tests. Today proponents of No Child Left Behind, uninformed by history, are seduced by the notion that student knowledge can be measured with similar efficiency.
     Malcolm Gladwell, in the December 17 New Yorker magazine, offers a critique connecting I.Q. scores to racism that is particularly relevant in this climate of testing zealotry. He cites the work of James Flynn, who discovered the Flynn Effect: I.Q. scores worldwide have risen by an average of three points per decade, beginning from their inception. If an American born in the 1930s scored an I.Q. of 100, according to the Flynn Effect, her or his children will score about 108, and the grandchildren will score close to 120, a span greater than a standard deviation.
     Calculating in the opposite direction, school children at the beginning of the last century would score around 70, which today is considered mentally retarded. Clearly I.Q. scores reflect something other than genetic predisposition. So what is going on?
     Flynn explains the score gap between blacks and whites in part as a function of age. Tests used to measure cognitive function in black and white infants yield comparable scores. Four-year-old black children average 4.5 points less than four-year-old whites. By age 24 blacks score 16.6 points less than whites. Flynn points out that this does not follow a pattern of genetic influence. It is what one can expect given the disparate environments that Whites and Blacks encounter as they grow up. Black children are more likely to be raised in single-parent homes, which are less cognitively complex than two-parent homes. Black children are less likely to be given opportunities in school to develop abstract thought, a key requirement for a high I.Q. score. A large percentage of young black men are incarcerated, further diminishing opportunities for cognitive growth. Studies of adopted and mixed-race children further discredit genetic models.
     When students of color, not to mention non-English-speaking or special education students, are “assessed” under NCLB, their scores sometimes reflect not what they know, but rather, a flawed and biased test. Let's resolve to catch these left-behind children in 2008.