Oregon profs wield influence with Bush

[Rose Siding]

Along with their counterparts at schools like the University of Illinois and the University of Texas, Oregon professors have been the driving forces behind the push for letting "scientifically based research" inform classroom practices.

The professors are promoting teaching techniques that they say have been tested extensively in classrooms and have produced good results on standardized exams.

Some of their concepts have been scooped up by the Education Department for use in the No Child Left Behind act, the Bush administration's centerpiece education bill. That law says that all children, regardless of their background, must be at grade level in reading and math by 2014, or else their schools could face sanctions.

Critics say the Oregon professors have helped usher in an age of rigidity in education, with classrooms full of teachers who "teach to the test," and students whose creativity is stifled because so much time is devoted to preparing for testing.
...
Year after year, Oregon's school of education consistently beats out powerhouses like Harvard, Stanford and Columbia universities when it comes to research dollars per faculty member. According to the most recent rankings compiled by U.S. News and World Report, University of Oregon education professors were bringing in $1.46 million per faculty member, the most in the nation, with some of that money also coming from state and foundation grants.
...
Their method, called Direct Instruction, requires teachers to follow a script word-for-word when working with young readers. The approach is used at schools nationwide, and several independent reports have singled it out as a way to help meet the goals set out in No Child Left Behind.
...
No Child Left Behind has emerged as an issue in the November elections, with Democrats charging that the law is underfunded and unrealistic. But even if John Kerry is elected in November, the Oregon researchers said their ideas -- standards, testing, public accountability of schools and "scientifically based research" -- will not soon be swept aside.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/07/20/oregon.education.ap/index.html

Wasn't excellence once the goal of teaching?

[MichiganVote]

1. Direct teaching is a technique

that is typically used with hard to reach or Special Education students. It is very tiresome for students who function at or near grade level. What people can't seem to get through their heads is that working at grade level is not and should not be the only criteria for judging student progress. If you think of the Bell Curve, divide it by 3rds and you will see that some students in a given class will fall in the middle or average range and others will fall to either side. Teachers must teach to the whole class, not just those who fall in the low average range.

[JDPriestly]

2. Maybe I don't understand the technique,

wouldn't robots use the technique better than humans?

[salin]

3. yes

that is the point. Making the teaching "teacher-less."

[Rose Siding]

4. This article made me run for the tin foil

What better 'grassroot' way to decontruct the middle class than to have teachers that have only to read from a script? No one learns anything that isn't sanctioned. Teachers wouldn't even need higher education. BRrrrr! (I'm taking it to the extreme, but it is Bush, after all)

When I combine this with Bush's TX with the lowest grad rates, seeing that federal money is flowing to these guys, and the economic programs he's set upon us, my imagination takes a long walk. :scared:

[MichiganVote]

9. Nothing teaches better than another human

[Thor_MN]

5. Teach to the lowest common denominator

as it were and you will get a class of low perfroming kids. Perfect for working at the local McDonalds, that is if the counter help isn't outsourced to to another third world country.

If * can't stay on script for his rare press conferences, how are teachers supposed to stay on script daily? Is this the crap that they were doing which dumbshit sat there with glazed eyes while the country was under attack? I was home that morning and watched live while the idiot just sat there. I wanted to reach through the TV and slap him around a bit, but I also wanted to backhand the teacher that was shout at the the kids to "get ready to do it the fast way. Ready? Go!!"

[TahitiNut]

6. It sounds like the Madrassa approach.

:shrug: It leaves no room for curiosity, or the stimulation thereof.

What else is there to expect from Incurious George? :eyes:

[Malikshah]

7. You've lost me there

The madrasa approach?

Are you referring to the Islamic university system dating back to the 11th century?

[TahitiNut]

8. No, I'm referring to the schools run by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Cant and rote approach, like a liturgy. :shrug:

[yellowcanine]

10. Following a script - word for word - how is that progress? I am no

reading expert, but it doesn't take one to know that not every child learns to read the same way - what if the damn kid is dyslexic for example? This isn't progress. This will set us back 50 years or more if this type of thinking prevails. The whole world must be laughing at us.

On edit: I guess what really pisses me off about this is that I sat in first and second grade and had to listen to some of my classmates struggle to read out loud and the teachers were too ignorant to recognize that all they were doing was embarrassing the kid and making them hate reading. Same thing with one of my good friends growing up - who was not stupid by any stretch of the imagination - he just struggled with reading - and no one seemed to know how to teach him. I am sure these kids had some type of reading disability that just went undiagnosed because teachers in the 50's didn't know how to spot these problems - they just figured the kid was "slow" and next thing you knew he was stuck in "special ed" and spent the day making potholders.

[struggle4progress]

11. Follow a script word-for-word? How dehumanizing! eom

[Moderator]

12. party_line

Per DU copyright rules
please post only four
paragraphs from the
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Thank you

DU Moderator

[PATRICK]

13. regardless of

intention or ideology, it is becoming intuitively clear the devastating effects that Right Wing approaches will have on education, class(not classroom), and society. Pyramids, just like the infamous pyramid scam, are imposing elitist driven and unsustainable for organic structures.

In other words brick schools are the only thing that can be built with their rationale, brick minds, brick society- in layers, mortared into immobility in oder to house the real beneficiaries- the rich classes who alone will be guaranteed higher education and gateways to controlling positions in society and business.

Your worst imaginings, justified by quick historical checks on the "good old days" underestimate how bad such things would be if carried to their dynamic extreme. As soon as I noticed how much education interested the no-nothing right wing, the more horror knotted my stomach. And no one in the education system quite gets the full peril of this "reform" interest.

America- where vision and reason has been skewed so we cannot veer from the fast approaching cliff.