{"id":502,"date":"2011-09-28T15:27:59","date_gmt":"2011-09-28T22:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/?p=502"},"modified":"2011-09-28T16:10:13","modified_gmt":"2011-09-28T23:10:13","slug":"finding-the-intersection-of-%e2%80%9cbe-nice%e2%80%9d-and-%e2%80%9cknow-a-lot%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/?p=502","title":{"rendered":"Finding the Intersection of \u201cBe Nice\u201d and \u201cKnow a Lot\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

No Child Left Behind is apparently disappearing with a whimper, or at least a waiver. \u00a0The originally bipartisan law has become a bad brand.<\/p>\n

The pragmatics of the law\u2019s demise rest in its rather silly calculation of test scores, and the backloading of expectations so that in the final years of the law the majority of schools in the United States would be labeled as failures, something that no state, \u00a0governor, or education secretary could stand politically.<\/p>\n

But the problem with the whimpering exit is that we haven\u2019t gotten to the root of the matter or had the political debate about what we want from the schools.<\/p>\n

In a recent column Jeff Camp <\/a>raises the question of the content of student character: whether and how it should be taught and evaluated.\u00a0 \u201cA simple \u2018character score\u2019 would be of little use,\u201d he writes, \u201cthe true point of this kind of evaluation would be to drive conversations and self-reflection about things that actually matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even reflecting on things that matter or engaging in \u201cperformance character,\u201d does not take place without context.\u00a0 One needs to know how to connect personal niceness with the nation\u2019s history and struggles.\u00a0 We are not doing such a good job at that.<\/p>\n

A recent Southern Poverty Law Center study<\/a><\/strong> written by Kate Shuster with a forward by Julian Bond found that academic standards virtually ignore our civil rights history.\u00a0 Or when taught it turns into a fable: there used to be segregation, then Dr. King came along, and now everything is alright.<\/p>\n

The ability to make sense of history, and thus to \u2018act nice\u2019 in a social sense, rests, on knowledge coupled with schooled training in public action.\u00a0 Action without knowledge is simply gut-level response and no-nothing politics.\u00a0 Knowledge without action is a waste: test scores without a purposeful anchor.\u00a0 (Shuster, whose doctoral research at Claremont Graduate University finds a lack of efficacy in state minimum competency tests, illustrates that point in her dissertation.)<\/p>\n

As California looks hard at how it assesses schools and students, it needs to look at the intersection of nice and knowledgeable.<\/p>\n

(As to my own education in context, read below.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No Child Left Behind is apparently disappearing with a whimper, or at least a waiver. \u00a0The originally bipartisan law has become a bad brand. The pragmatics of the law\u2019s demise rest in its rather silly calculation of test scores, and the backloading of expectations so that in the final years of the law the majority […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,6,38],"tags":[69,71,70],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=502"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":504,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions\/504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}