No Child's Behind Left: The Test- From Gaura Sakti

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Letter PAMHO:10951164 (134 lines)

Internet: "G Carlson" <gaurasells >

11-Jan-06 16:02 (08:02 -0800)

"Vinod Bihari das" <vbd75 (AT) mail (DOT) ru>

Bcc: Ananda Vrindavana (dd) (Vrindavana Gurukula - IN) [15145]

No Child's Behind Left: The Test- From Gaura Sakti

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Greg Palast <palast (AT) gregpalast (DOT) com> wrote: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 15:45:40

-0500 (EST)

Greg Palast <palast (AT) gregpalast (DOT) com>

gaurasells

No Child's Behind Left: The Test

 

NO CHILD'S BEHIND LEFT: THE TEST

By Greg Palast

 

New York -- Today and tomorrow every 8-year-old in the state of New York

will

take a test. It's part of George Bush's No Child Left Behind program. The

losers will be left behind to repeat the third grade.

 

Try it yourself. This is from the state's actual practice test. Ready,

class?

 

"The year 1999 was a big one for the Williams sisters. In February, Serena

won

her first pro singles championship. In March, the sisters met for the first

time in a tournament final. Venus won. And at doubles tennis, the Williams

girls could not seem to lose that year."

 

And here's one of the four questions:

 

"The story says that in 1999, the sisters could not seem to lose at doubles

tennis. This probably means when they played

 

"A two matches in one day

"B against each other

"C with two balls at once

"D as partners"

 

OK, class, do you know the answer? (By the way, I didn't cheat: there's

nothing

else about "doubles" in the text.)

 

 

My kids go to a New York City school in which more than half the students

live

below the poverty line. There is no tennis court.

 

There are no tennis courts in the elementary schools of Bed-Stuy or East

Harlem. But out in the Hamptons, every school has a tennis court. In Forest

Hills, Westchester and Long Island's North Shore, the schools have nearly as

many tennis courts as the school kids have live-in maids.

 

Now, you tell me, class, which kids are best prepared to answer the question

about "doubles tennis"? The 8-year-olds in Harlem who've never played a set

of

doubles or the kids whose mommies disappear for two hours every Wednesday

with

Enrique the tennis pro?

 

Is this test a measure of "reading comprehension" -- or a measure of wealth

accumulation?

 

If you have any doubts about what the test is measuring, look at the next

question, based on another part of the text, which reads (and I could not

make

this up):

 

"Most young tennis stars learn the game from coaches at private clubs. In

this

sentence, a club is probably a

 

"F baseball bat

"G tennis racquet

"H tennis court

"J country club"

 

Helpfully, for the kids in our 'hood, it explains that a "country club" is

a,

"place where people meet." Yes, but WHICH people?

 

President Bush told us, "By passing the No Child Left Behind Act, we are

regularly testing every child and making sure they have better options when

schools are not performing."

 

But there are no "better options." In the delicious double-speak of class

war,

when the tests have winnowed out the chaff and kids stamped failed, No Child

Left results in that child being left behind in the same grade to repeat the

failure another year.

 

I can't say that Mr. Bush doesn't offer better options to the kids

stamped

failed. Under No Child Left, if enough kids flunk the tests, their school

is

marked a failure and its students win the right, under the law, to transfer

to

any successful school in their district. You can't provide more

opportunity

than that. But they don't provide it, the law promises it, without a

single

penny to make it happen. In New York in 2004, a third of a million students

earned the right to transfer to better schools -- in which there were only

8,000 places open.

 

New York is typical. Nationwide, only one out of two-hundred students

eligible

to transfer manage to do it. Well, there's always the Army. (That option

did not go unnoticed: No Child has a special provision requiring schools to

open their doors to military recruiters.)

 

Hint: When de-coding politicians' babble, to get to the real agenda, don't

read their lips, read their budgets. And in his last budget, our President

couldn't spare one thin dime for education, not ten cents. Mr. Big Spender

provided for a derisory 8.4 cents on the dollar of the cost of primary and

secondary schools. Congress appropriated a half penny of the nation's income

--

just one-half of one-percent of America's twelve trillion dollar GDP -- for

primary and secondary education.

 

President Bush actually requested less. While Congress succeeded in prying

out

an itty-bitty increase in voted funding, that doesn't mean the extra cash

actually gets to the students. Fifteen states have sued the federal

government

on the grounds that the cost of new testing imposed on schools, $3.9

billion,

eats up the entire new funding budgeted for No Child Left.

 

There are no "better options" for failing children, but there are better

uses

for them. The President ordered testing and more testing to hunt down,

identify and target millions of children too expensive, too heavy a burden,

to

educate.

 

No Child Left offers no options for those with the test-score mark of Cain

--

no opportunities, no hope, no plan, no funding. Rather, it is the new

social

Darwinism, educational eugenics: identify the nation's loser-class early on.

Trap them then train them cheap.

 

Someone has to care for the privileged. No society can have winners without

lots and lots of losers. And so we have No Child Left Behind -- to produce

the

new worker drones that will clean the toilets at the Yale Alumni Club, punch

the cash registers color-coded for illiterates, and pamper the winner-class

on

the higher floors of the new economic order.

 

Class war dismissed.

 

 

**********

See a clip of the actual practice test at www.GregPalast.com

**********

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best

Democracy

Money Can Buy. Read his investigative reports at www.GregPalast.com

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