Deep Curriculum Alignment

11 Pages 2802 Words

Chapter one discusses the reasons why assessment and accountability have become increasingly prevalent over the last 50 years. Interestingly, English blames most of the problems with assessment and accountability on politics. The chapter discusses in depth the rhetoric associated with the defects of public education today. Six culprits including the monopolistic and inefficient nature of public education, the genetic incapacity of minority children and children of color to do well in school, the intransigence of teacher unions to educational reform, the lack of intellectual rigor in colleges of education, the good ‘ole boy coaches who dominate school leadership positions, and the lack of “quality” in schools which must be forcefully inserted by ratcheting up the consequences of not doing well on state tests were all investigated in the chapter. I can very easily relate to all six of these “culprits.” At different times in my education career, I have heard reference to all six. I particularly enjoyed the discussion centered on the last culprit since this high-stakes testing practice is used in the state of Alabama. What is most thought provoking about this is that I had actually bought into the belief that some of these “culprits” were actually legitimate. English points out that these aspects have little or nothing to do with poor tests score and fixing them will not improve tests scores since test scores are not caused by any of them.
This chapter also explores four popular myths about tests. Among these myths are tests are neutral and objective, tests are meritocratic tools, tests take the politics out of education, and one can test (inspect) quality in education. I found of particular interest the section dealing with tests and politics. English refers many times to the politics involved in high stakes testing in this chapter. To be perfectly honest, I did not realize to what extent testing was political...