Education Week - November 14, 2012 - 27

EDUCATION WEEK

NOVEMBER 14, 2012

www.edweek.org

educators are advocates for highquality programs open to all income groups. Rebecca Wheat
Berkeley, Calif.

Schools Need to Teach Respect for All Creatures
To the Editor: Given that schools are rightfully cracking down on bullying, they should be at the forefront of encouraging students to be respectful to each other and all those around them—and that means everyone (“Inside the Mind of a Bully,” Transforming Learning blog, edweek.org, Oct. 16, 2012). Over the last few years, there’s been a troubling trend in schools to hold events involving animals, such as “kiss a pig” contests and donkey basketball games. These promotions are ostensibly designed to reward students for reading or to motivate them to do fundraising. But what they teach students is that animals are theirs to laugh at, ridicule, and use as they please. The lessons kids are unintentionally taught can hold just as much weight as those in the formal curriculum. It’s cruel to haul animals into school gymnasiums and subject them to the frightening and confusing environment of hundreds of screaming kids. Schools should recognize that encouraging students to kiss pigs, eat bugs, and shoot baskets off donkeys fosters derision and disrespect toward both animals and educators. It is important for students to understand that animals are thinking, feeling beings who deserve kindness and respect. Good teachers know that, as the saying goes, “Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar.” With so many innovative and humane ways to get students involved, schools are failing themselves and their students by promoting animal exploitation for cheap laughs. Jennifer O’Connor
Staff Writer People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Foundation Norfolk, Va.

The writer is a former director of early education in the Berkeley, Calif., school district.

Schools Should Develop Students’ Civic Identities
To the Editor: While it is unclear how many times a teenager can be forced to recite the checks and balances between the three branches of government before becoming comatose, it is crystal clear that such “lessons” still constitute the bulk of civics education in American classrooms. Also obvious is that such lessons produce the type of testable data that the education industry prefers for its data-driven assessment tools and matrices. Co-optation by the attendant “not tested, not taught” mind-set haunts civics advocates pushing for meaningful civics curricula in the new Common Core State Standards landscape. Your article “Student Mastery of Civics Ed. Goes Untested” (Oct. 17, 2012) highlighted the lack of consensus about what civics content should be taught. The new Civics for All Initiative in Seattle, which is asking the school board to adopt a policy of civics instruction across our district’s entire K-12 curriculum, might offer some perspectives. The initiative calls for one civics classroom-based assessment, or cba, for grades K-5 and two civics cbas for grades 6-12, in addition to other requirements. The approach depends on a vertically integrated, spiral curriculum wherein essential questions and civics principles are revisited in a scaffolded K-12 plan that kindles each student’s civic identity. The academic development of a students’ credo, or civic code, is best fostered through a political science lens because it is relevant to all civic issues, current events, and, crucially, to already-required social studies topics. As Aristotle suggested, civics is politics and politics is civics. Web Hutchins
Civics, Social Studies, and Language Arts Teacher South Lake High School Seattle, Wash.

The writer has worked as a substitute teacher in California and Texas.

‘Value Added’ Evaluations Raise Complex Issues
To the Editor: Regarding the article “Caution Urged on ‘Value Added’ Reviews” (Oct. 31, 2012): The notion of measuring human beings—their

teaching performance, their compassion, their aptitude, or their ability—using test scores derived from computerized or paper-and-pencil tests given to children with different lives, backgrounds, language dominance, economic, or emotional circumstances (who are also human beings) is ludicrous. Among the infinitely complex questions arising with regard to “value added” evaluations are the following: •Will physical-fitness tests be used to evaluate gym teachers? •Will English-proficiency scores be used to evaluate English-asa-second-language teachers? Or will students’ standardized-test scores be used? Who will be held accountable, the classroom teacher, or the esl teacher? •How will K-2 teachers be evaluated? Will the teacher be judged by the percentage of children reaching benchmarks? Which benchmarks? Which assessments? •How will art, music, and social studies teachers be evaluated? What about library media specialists and high school teachers in nontested subjects or grades? Will these teachers escape scrutiny, or will new tests be hastily invented? •What about science? In some states, standardized tests are only administered in grades 5 and 8. Will pretest data gathered from tests given to students in grade 5 be used to rate grade 8 science teachers? Who will be held accountable? Such tests measure cumulative knowledge gained over several years. What about student mobility? •How will special education teachers be evaluated? Will the special education or the general education teacher be held accountable for growth when students receive a major portion of their instruction through inclusion or resource services? Will attainment of individualized-education-program goals be used, or standardizedtest scores? What about those who teach children whose disabilities mean their academic growth cannot be measured on existing standardized instruments? It is time for Americans to rise up and shout in unison, “The emperor has no clothes!” Ann Evans de Bernard
Principal Waltersville School Bridgeport Public Schools Bridgeport, Conn.

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The writer is the founder of the Civics for All Initiative.

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Education Week - November 14, 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - November 14, 2012