Chicago-- Gary Orfield, one of the nation's
top researchers on civil rights issues, visits Chicago on Saturday, April
29,
to take issue with education policies
that make a single test score the determining factor in whether students
pass or fail.
Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights
Project at Harvard University, will speak on the
"Issues of High Stakes Testing"
at 9 a.m. Saturday, April 29, during
a Chicago Area Writing Project conference for teachers entitled,"Race,
Culture and Equity," being held at Roosevelt University,
430 S. Michigan Ave.
The four-hour conference, sponsored by
the Chicago Area Writing Project and Roosevelt University will be held
from 8 a.m. to noon, and will include workshops and roundtable discussions
on "Race, Culture and Equity."
To register, call Chicago Area Writing
Project Director, Betty Jane Wagner at 847-475-1345. Orfield is a well
known researcher who has written extensively on race and culture. His most
recent books include The Closing Door: Conservative Policies and
Black Opportunity, Dismantling Desecration: The Quiet Repeal of Brown vs.
Board of Education and Who Chooses? Who Loses?, a book he wrote
and edited with others on the school-choice controversy. Orfield's central
research focus has been centered on the effect of policy on equal opportunity
for success in America.
"We have too many tests of the wrong sort
being used in the wrong way." said Orfield, who is expected to assail the
Chicago Public Schools for letting a single test score be the over ridding
factor that determines whether a student passes or flunks a grade.
Overemphasis of test scores violates the
code of ethics of the testing profession and the advice of the National
Academy of Sciences, Orfield said.
Orfield, formerly a professor at the University
of Chicago and the University of Illinois, is expected to point to new
national research done by the Civil Rights Project which has found that
high-stakes testing resulted in no increase in learning, higher drop out
rates and de-emphasis of classroom subjects that aren't part of achievement
tests.
The topic is expected to be relevant, particularly
at a time when the Chicago Public School system has made the decision to
let a student's progression through the system turn on a single test score.
"It's not a good reform. This system tends
to produce perverse reactions inside schools. There is no net increase
in learning and testing drives out of the curriculum those subjects that
aren't tested," Orfield said. "At its worst, test preparation materials
replace books." he added.
The lecture, which is expected to attract
several hundred teachers from all over the region, including the Chicago
Public Schools, is a precursor to a book on the topic by Orfield which
will be coming out later this year.
Orfield, a professor of Education and Social
Policy at Harvard, believes assessment testing should not be the end-all
of a student's performance. Instead, Orfield advocates using assessment
testing as a means for providing appropriate intervention when a student
is having trouble.
While reliance on testing has become popular,
results can be "superficial and destructive" to the student, according
to Orfield.
"We're all for testing," said Wagner, whose
Chicago Area Writing Project annually trains about 400 teachers, mainly
from the Chicago Public Schools. "But testing shouldn't be the whole basis
for everything."
Founded in 1979, the Chicago Area Writing
Project has reached more than 5,000 teachers in Chicago, training them
in intensive summer institutes. One of 160 Writing Projects in the nation,
the Chicago Writing Project is based at Roosevelt University since 1996.
It is dedicated to improving instruction of reading and writing at all
grade levels.