by David Safier
Kudos to Rhonda Bodfield for the series of investigative articles she wrote in the Star awhile back about social promotion. It's a topic worth looking into.
But in today's article, which slams local school districts for not taking action on her findings, she gets a little carried away with herself. Actually, she gets a lot carried away with herself. The clear implication of the article is: Social promotion is bad. You should end it now. You haven't. Shame on you!
Bodfield is falling prey to the conservative standards-and-accountability argument that believes we can fix what ails our schools if we give lots of high stakes tests, analyze the results, then exercise a little tough love on students and staff.
Conservatives love this kind of simplistic, formulaic answer. Things are good or bad, right or wrong. People are patriots or traitors. Either you support invading Iraq or you love Saddam Hussein.
Either students are ready to be promoted, or you hold them back.
It would be so much easier if the world were so black and white. But it isn't. And Bodfield, who does not strike me as a conservative in her political or educational leanings, is accepting the Arizona Department of Education "wisdom" that the way to make our schools better is to hammer away at the basics and test students until they're blind.
Either that or she's fallen in love with her investigation and is writing a pat-myself-on-the-back follow-up.
[Note: I know I'm being unfair. As usual, Bodfield has written a long, nuanced article that presents the issue from many sides. But the touches of nuance come in the second half. The article is front-loaded with get-rid-of-social-promotion dogma. Only professional educators will get far enough to read the caveats in the second half.]
This sentence set my teeth on edge:
Experts say the solution rests in more rigid promotion policies, better use of standardized tests, early intervention and more accountability for teachers and administrators.
Experts say? How about, "Some experts say." In fact, the word "expert" shouldn't be used at all when it comes to education. There are no experts in education any more than there are in economics. What you have is a bunch of well informed, highly educated people who use data and theory to come up with very different conclusions. Anyone who uses phrases like "experts say" and "studies show" is suspect in my book.
Bodfield allows Arizona Ed Supe Tom Horne to pontificate on social promotion, like he has some credibility in the field of educational theory — which he doesn't. She cites "Jay Greene, an expert . . ." I'd never heard of him before, so I googled him. He wrote a book saying that studies show we don't need more money in education, and lowering class sizes isn't important. Uh huh. That's pure conservative educational theory, not objective "expertise."
Wanna bet Horne was the one who suggested Greene to Bodfield?
Tucson's new Supe, Elizabeth Celania-Fagen, doesn't buy into Bodfield's thesis. Good for her. I'm still giving the new Supe the benefit of the doubt. She seems to have her priorities straight.
Meanwhile, Ms. Bodfield, a reminder. We live in a conservative-run state, with a half-crazed conservative State Superintendent of Education backed by a more-than-half-crazed group of Republican legislators. Just because they're very powerful doesn't make them right.
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