Chapter 5 --  School Wars: Resolving our Conflicts over Religion and Values
The State of Public Education

The Basics of School Reform

The Conventional wisdom of the 1990s has been that American education is in a state of serious disrepair.

The Case Against Public Education

A Nation at Risk, issued by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, was considered by many as final proof that education had indeed devolved to a state of disrepair.

This was seen as a mandate to make sweeping changes in public education or to eliminate the entire system

Studies, known as The Sandia Report were conducted by the Sandia National Laboratories that concluded that many of the charges against American public education are unfounded.  Three of these charges follow:

  1. Today's students are not as intelligent as students of the past.
    Since 1932 the mean IQ of white Americans aged two to seventy-five has risen about three-tenths of a point per year.
  2. The Scholastic Aptitude Test has shown a marked decrease over the last twenty-five years as a result of the failure of American education.
    Much greater numbers of students in the bottom sixty percent of their class have been taking the test since the 1960s.
    Average SAT scores are declining because a more diverse, lower performing group of test takers is being added to the traditional pool of test takers.
  3. American students simply do not know as much as students from past generations.
    Standardized tests are re-normed about every seven years.
    Today's youth is scoring about one standard deviation higher than their parents did when they took the test.

Our National Educational Goals

One of the most obvious reform efforts public education can benefit from is to set clear national goals.

Goals are being established in virtually every content area.  The reform movement in education is driven by these goals.

Advances in Learning Theory

This approach to the study of human learning is referred to as behaviorism.

With the advent of cognitive psychology, psychologists began to study the underlying processes in learning.

Five learning principles from cognitive psychology that are integral to the school reform movement:

Enhancing students' self-perceptions-  Students attitudes and perceptions play a key role in the learning process
Deep processing as an aid to internalization-  To learn, information or skills must be internalized.  Deep processing as one of making elaborative connections.
The whole language approach to reading-  Two approaches have been proposed for reading instruction:  skills approach and whole language approach. Smith and Goodman believe reading and writing should be taught in a holistic manner, as opposed to teaching specific skills in a linear fashion.
Applying knowledge-  Applying knowledge creates a deep type of learning.  Thinking Skill programs are those that require the students to apply their knowledge.
Preparing for success in a diverse world-  Research and theory indicates that aptitude and intelligence were situational.  Because a real person exhibits aptitude or intelligence in one setting does not necessarily mean that he or she will do so in another.

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Personal notes on reading from :

Grady, B., Hall, T. & Marzano, R. (1996). School Wars: Resolving our Conflicts over Religion and Values. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.