Comments

You know, I was checking the Gadfly, and I saw that there was to be an interview with Sara Mead on the Gadfly Show. So I listened, but it was disappointing. As though she must be pretty hot-looking, and all Mike and Rick were doing was vying to ask her out on a date. Nothing substantive at all.

-- BeckyC - 03 Jul 2006

good grief

-- CatherineJohnson - 03 Jul 2006

double good grief

this will come back to bite her on the bottom

I predict

-- CatherineJohnson - 03 Jul 2006

The only boys who aren't — the boys who skew the scores because they're doing really, really badly — are Hispanic and black boys and those from low-income homes.

Oh so it's only Hispanic and black boys and boys from low-income homes who are failing, so there isn't a crisis as it's only a problem for those other people.

So what Warner is saying is that "only the rich and the white matter - the poor can be doing as badly as anything but that doesn't mean there's a crisis". My god, I never expected to read something so racist/incomist in an article in the Times.

-- TracyW - 03 Jul 2006

As though she must be pretty hot-looking, and all Mike and Rick were doing was vying to ask her out on a date.

I should clarify: all Mike and Rick did was vie to ask her out on a date. They did a very poor job handling the interview. She was quite cool-headed; the two "boys" demanded no answers to substantive questions.

-- BeckyC - 03 Jul 2006

If the blurb on the Washington consensus describes it accurately, then it pretty closely match my own opinions, and don't seem to contradict anything you've written about here. Catherine, exactly what do you object to about it?

-- IndependentGeorge - 05 Jul 2006

Oh so it's only Hispanic and black boys and boys from low-income homes who are failing, so there isn't a crisis as it's only a problem for those other people.

wow

I didn't even see that

and this happens constantly

-- CatherineJohnson - 05 Jul 2006

Hi, Independent George!

well, I'm wishing Ken were around to explain what I mean (he'd probably know!).....

I'm not quite able to pull it together yet, but there are a couple of probably unintended consequences that flow from the consensus:

• a lack of interest in curriculum and pedagogy: eduwonk has pretty much a formal policy against writing posts about curriculum (I asked him once in an email) - and EDUCATION NEXT, which I read religiously, spends very little time talking about the math wars or the reading wars or even the ed schools

• an incentive to schools & states to dumb down curriculum and tests, to close the achievement gap by lowering white kids' achievement - parents of brainy kids complain about this all the time: "No child will be left behind, but no child will get ahead, either"

• a blindness to what may be a critical issue of a "hostile climate" for boys in schools (i.e., having spent 2 years listening to Christian's stories of Yonkers schools, I'm seeing huge continuities & so is he) - I think white boys, coming often from intact homes, are a lot more bulletproof than black boys, so many of whom don't have dads around to stick up for them - but it's the same problem - the Washington consensus seems to carry on with the idea that racism, or "dysfunctional" black family culture, are the problem - but what if public school culture is the problem? where do you see inner city black boys thrive? in Catholic Schools with powerful traditional values & leadership, and in schools led by strong men, etc. [I just have no idea whether "school culture" is bad for girls.....bad curricula are bad for everyone, but I don't know enough girls to be able to tell whether all the zero-tolerance/character education programs are affecting them negatively]