LANGUAGE ARTS-NEW MEXICO

FairTest in Financial Trouble

As testing season bears down upon us, we should look with alarm on the financial difficulties facing FairTest, one of the few entities that considers it their mission to hold the testing industry's feet to the fire on regular basis:

Watchdog of Test Industry Faces Economic Extinction
By MICHAEL WINERIP Published: February 22, 2006 CAMBRIDGE, Mass.

— For more than 20 years, FairTest, a small nonprofit group headquartered on the second floor of an old house here, has been the No. 1 critic of America's big testing companies and their standardized tests.

In 1987, when FairTest began publishing its list of colleges that did not require applicants to submit SAT's, there were 51; today there are 730, including Holy Cross, Bowdoin, Bates, Mount Holyoke and Muhlenberg.

"The FairTest list provides an enormously valuable service for students looking at colleges who have proved themselves to everyone but the test agencies," said William Hiss, a Bates vice president.

A generation of education journalists, like Thomas Toch, who reported for Education Week and U.S. News & World Report, were schooled on the complexities and limitations of standardized testing by FairTest.

"They've helped me a lot," said Mr. Toch, who is now a director of Education Sector, a nonpartisan Washington policy research group.

On a slow day, like last Friday, Robert Schaeffer of FairTest handled calls from The Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Lakeland Ledger, Associated Press and Hartford Courant and Bloomberg News.

On busy days, like July 13, 2004, reporters call by the dozens. That was the day FairTest helped reveal that scoring mistakes by the Educational Testing Service on its teacher licensing test had caused 4,100 men and women in 18 states to fail when they had actually passed the exam.

A few years ago, California officials were considering ending their support of the National Merit Scholarship program because it relied exclusively on a single score on the College Board's PSAT test to pick semifinalists.

"We contacted the College Board about validity and fairness studies of the PSAT, but they didn't give us information that addressed our concerns," said Michael Brown, chairman of a state committee that makes recommendations on admissions policy for California's public colleges. "So I asked FairTest, which got back with significant information on the limited reliability of a single PSAT score."

Last year, the University of California system ended its financial support of the National Merit program.

But for all FairTest's impact, its days may be numbered. Never before has standardized testing so dominated American public education, thanks to the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind Law. Every child from grade 3 to high school must now take state tests. And the Bush administration is considering extending those tests to colleges.

Read the rest here (free registration required).

American Life in Poetry, February 20, 2006

American Life in Poetry is a weekly column featuring a poem by a contemporary American poet, introduced by U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser.  Consider sharing Kooser's selections with your students.

American Life in Poetry
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

The poet, novelist and biographer, Robert Morgan, who was raised in North Carolina, has written many intriguing poems that teach his readers about southern folklore. Here's just one example.

Holy Cussing

When the most intense revivals swept
the mountains just a century ago,
participants described the shouts and barks
in unknown tongues, the jerks of those who tried
to climb the walls, the holy dance and laugh.
But strangest are reports of what was called
the holy cuss. Sometimes a man who spoke
in tongues and leapt for joy would break into
an avalanche of cursing that would stun
with brilliance and duration. Those that heard
would say the holy spirit spoke as from
a whirlwind. Words burned on the air like chains
of dynamite. The listeners felt transfigured,
and felt true contact and true presence then,
as if the shock of unfamiliar
and blasphemous profanity broke through
beyond the reach of prayer and song and hallo
to answer heaven's anger with its echo.

Reprinted from Southern Poetry Review, Vol. 43, No. 1, 2004 by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2004, by Robert Morgan, whose most recent book is "The Strange Attractor: New and Selected Poems," Louisiana State University Press, 2004. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

Authors in Albuquerque

February is Authors Month at the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Libraries.  If you live in central New Mexico, you and your students will want to take advantage of the opportunities to hear renowned (as well as lesser known) writers at various venues around town.  Highlights include three writing workshops on February 18 at the South Broadway Cultural Center (including one on writing fantasy and science fiction with Walter Jon Williams and another on writing mysteries with Tony Hillerman);  Pari Noskin Taichert, author of "The Clovis Incident" at the Wyoming Branch on February 21, and a big event at the Kimo on February 23 with Rudolfo Anaya, Ana Baca, Max Evans, E A Mares, N Scott Momaday, Loida Perez, and Sharon Oard Warner.  You can see the complete schedule here.

Listen to the Classics for Free

According a recent story on National Public Radio, you can now download audio versions of many works of literature for free.  Sites such as LibriVox allow amateur readers to contribute versions of everything from Pride and Prejudice to Call of the Wild to Frankenstein.  These readings can then be downloaded as MP3 files or podcasts.  With just a little bit of technological know-how, you can build an audio library for yourself or your students.  The entire NPR story is available here.

American Life in Poetry, February 10, 2006

American Life in Poetry is a weekly column featuring a poem by a contemporary American poet, introduced by U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser.  Consider sharing Kooser's selections with your students.

American Life in Poetry
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

We constantly compare one thing with another, or attempt to, saying, "Well, you know, love is like...it's like...well, YOU know what it's like." Here Bob King, who lives in Colorado, takes an original approach and compares love to the formation of rocks.

Geology

I know the origin of rocks, settling
out of water, hatching crystals
from fire, put under pressure
in various designs I gathered
pretty, picnic after picnic.

And I know about love, a little,
igneous lust, the slow affections
of the sedimentary, the pressure
on earth out of sight to rise up
into material, something solid
you can hold, a whole mountain,
for example, or a loose collection
of pebbles you forgot you were keeping.

Reprinted from the Marlboro Review, Issue 16, 2005, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2005 by Robert King, whose prose book, "Stepping Twice Into the River: Following Dakota Waters," appeared in 2005 from The University Press of Colorado. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

The Orbis Pictus Awards

The Orbis Pictus Awards are given by the National Council of Teachers of English for the best in nonfiction for children.  But don't let the word "children" fool you.  Many books chosen for this award are eminently appropriate for middle school and high school students.  The 2006 winners include Russell Freedman's book Children of the Great Depression,  Marfe Ferguson Delano's biography of Albert Einstein, and Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow by Susan Campbell Bartoletti.  You can see the complete list of winners here.

Graphic Organizers and Headless Ghosts

Here are two sites worth exploring:

Tools for Reading, Writing, and Thinking is an outstanding collection of graphic organizers for students to use while they are reading and writing.  Whether you are teaching cause and effect, how to make inferences, or how to distinguish between fact and opinion, there's something for you here.  And they're all ready to print (in PDF format).  The site is owned and operated by a school district in New York. 

The second one is an intriguing poetry assignment by the British poet Esther Morgan.  She asks students to write in the voice of a ghost and gives lots of helpful prompts such as

Think about how you manifest yourself. Are you invisible, silent, noticeable only as a change of temperature, or a creak on the staircase? Or are you able to communicate in some way, through words or noises or dreams? If you have a visible appearance, what is it? Think of some of the cliches of ghostliness and either avoid them, or try to explore them from the inside: how does it feel to walk through a wall, or carry your head under your arm?

Morgans' article is part of a regular series of poetry workshops published in the The Guardian.

American Life in Poetry, February 3, 2006

American Life in Poetry
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Poets are experts at holding mirrors to the world. Here Anne Caston, from Alaska, shows us a commonplace scene. Haven't we all been in this restaurant for the Sunday buffet? Caston overlays the picture with language that, too, is ordinary, even sloganistic, and overworn. But by zooming in on the joint of meat and the belly-up fishes floating in butter, she compels us to look more deeply into what is before us, and a room that at first seemed humdrum becomes rich with inference.

Sunday Brunch at the Old Country Buffet          
Madison, Wisconsin, 1996

Here is a genial congregation,
well fed and rosy with health and appetite,
robust children in tow. They have come
and all the generations of them, to be fed,
their old ones too who are eligible now
for a small discount, having lived to a ripe age.
Over the heaped and steaming plates, one by one,
heads bow, eyes close; the blessings are said.

Here there is good will; here peace
on earth, among the leafy greens, among the fruits
of the gardens of America's heartland. Here is abundance,
here is the promised
land of milk and honey, out of which
a flank of the fatted calf, thick still
on its socket and bone, rises like a benediction
over the loaves of bread and the little fishes, belly-up in butter.

Reprinted from "Flying Out with the Wounded," New York University Press, 1997. Copyright (c) 1997 by Anne Caston. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

Essay Contests X 3

Here are three essay contests for middle school and/or high school students:

The "Listen to Life" essay contest asks students ages 8-18 to interview grandparents or "grandfriends" about their hopes, goals, achievements, and the obstacles they have overcome.  The contest is part of the National Legacy Project, and free activity kits with interview ideas and curriculum connections are available.  Grand prize is a Think-Centre computer and a $500 gift certificate from Books are Fun.  The deadline is March 13.  For more information, visit www.legacyproject.org.

The Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum is holding a national essay contest for students in grades 5-12.  The contest is divided into four grade levels and asks students to write no more than 500 words on themes such as social activism and the pursuit of peace.  Winning essays will become part of the museum exhibit and cash prizes will awarded to the top three essayists in each group.  The deadline is March 1.  For more information, visit www.oklahomacitynationalmemorial.org.

Finally, The Nation is looking for original, thoughtful, provocative student voices to discuss what issue is of most concern to their generation. Essays should not exceed 800 words and should be original, unpublished work that demonstrates fresh, clear thinking and superior quality of expression and craftsmanship. The winner will be awarded a $500 cash prize and a Nation subscription. The winning essay will be published in the magazine and featured on their website. The contest is open to students at American high schools and to undergraduates at American colleges and universities. Entries (only one per student) will be accepted through March 31.  For more information, click here.

Happy Birthday, Langston

Today is the beginning of Black History Month as well as the birthday of Langston Hughes.  Born in 1902, Hughes wrote in a wide range of forms, from poetry to fiction to memoir to drama.  His most well-known poem is probably "Harlem: A Dream Deferred," but if that's the only one you're familiar with, you're missing out.  His 1932 collection for young readers, The Dream Keeper and Other Poems, is a great place to start.  You can also visit the Langston Hughes page at poets.org.