Diversity, Funding, and Standardized Testing in American Education

José Martinez

Description

In Diversity, Funding, and Standardized Testing in American Education, noted education expert Jose Martinez's examines current aspects of inequality in American education, examining the complex nexus of funding, diversity, and the increasingly contentious role of standardized testing. A readable narrative format assesses the extensive documentation, which demonstrates that inequality is becoming entrenched throughout the education system, in no small measure due to biases in standardized testing systems. Students from kindergarten through university face the arising challenges while their environments are becoming more diverse. Funding levels in education are also posited as causes of inequality. This complements the view that standardized testing at all levels of education mirrors and exacerbates entrenched economic inequality. Education funding and standardized testing at all levels have thus become basic mechanisms that purposefully reproduce and maintain a two-tiered society. The solutions are not difficult to discern, as other societies can attest, but Martinez's thought-provoking new book moves toward engaging them.

Sujets

• Pruebas de software
• América
• Inequality
• Study
• Education
• American
• Testing

Informations

• Publié par: Academica Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781680539820
• Langue: English

Extrait

Diversity, Funding, and Standardized Testing in American Education: Causes of Inequality
Jose Martinez, Ph.D.
Diversity, Funding, and Standardized Testing in American Education: Causes of Inequality
Jose Martinez, Ph.D.
Academica Press
Washington - London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Martinez, Jose, 1950 - author.
Title: Diversity, funding, and standardized testing in American education : causes of inequality / Jose Martinez.
Description: Washington : Academica Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: In Diversity, Funding, and Standardized Testing in American Education, noted education expert Jose Martinez s examines current aspects of inequality in American education, examining the complex nexus of funding, diversity, and the increasingly contentious role of standardized testing. A readable narrative format assesses the extensive documentation, which demonstrates that inequality is becoming entrenched throughout the education system, in no small measure due to biases in standardized testing systems. Students from kindergarten through university face the arising challenges while their environments are becoming more diverse -- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019042046 | ISBN 9781680531909 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781680539820 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Educational equalization--United States. | Education--Social aspects--United States. | Multicultural education--United States. | Education--United States--Finance. | Achievement tests--United States. | Educational tests and measurements--United States.
Classification: LCC LC213.2 .M378 2019 | DDC 379.2/6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019042046
Copyright 2019 Jose Martinez
Dedicated to Elizabeth, Cristina, and Sara
Contents
Introduction
Theoretical Aspects
Some Concepts
Chapter 1 The Increase in Diversity
Chapter 2 Funding
Chapter 3 Standardized Tests and the Common Core
Chapter 4 Socioeconomic Diversity: Higher Education
Conclusion
References
Index
Introduction
Inequality in education is structured basically in two tiers, as society is also. One is along lines of those better off, particularly the white upper class, and those not better off, especially the poor, black and Hispanic. This is basically and primarily so, though not entirely would that be the case in absolute terms. That is important because many point out they are the exception and that it isn t always so, and so forth.
The above is the situation in regard to K-12 as well as in higher education. There is segregation, tracking, charter schools, online education, etc., which pertain to K-12 and to higher education, or simply K-16. This book is focused on other overarching factors in education. Some of the most important things in all levels of education are covered, namely diversity, funding, and standardized testing among others.
Even though the discussion is empirically based, a narrative format and approach facilitates the reading, particularly when certain statistics are emphasized, rather than numerous stops and starts with charts and graphs which slow down the reading. The point is to emphasize the conceptual aspects while gleaning the more salient aspects. Most important are the coherent patterns which a narrative format facilitates.
The overarching patterns will be highlighted with numerous examples though again with the focus still on the overall, coherent aspects. The many examples given are to illustrate the larger picture. Another way of saying this is that society basically structures much of what happens in education. Everyone is born into a societal structure and not the other way around. Some of the various aforementioned social categories do very significantly what they do in relation to their own self-same categories in reference to others. Namely the upper class and/or whites do for each other substantively and too often against others. Gender to an extent plays into this in that it is clear that women of color are not entirely of one with white women, nor will men of color be much allowed at the table (which means figuratively as well as literally at the dinner table at one s home) too often with white men, particularly when it comes to poor men of color in relation to upper class white men.
Moreover it should be clear that since people are born into a society that is racist, etc., no one person is born racist, but in the process of a particular society s socialization may become so. In fact no one is born a criminal or anything else but categorical circumstances are more likely or less likely to lead to crime, etc. Thus when white men are more racist, it is not a matter simply of whites or whoever being inherently evil. Remember that a category, as a category, is more likely to do for itself and against others when the benefit is there of his or her doing that. Conceptual terms regarding some of this will be explicated.
As a matter of fact along positive aspects, the old adage of women/girls comprised of sugar and spice and everything nice has no inherent basis. Society makes them so or not.
Of course different societies and history make a difference. Without going into much detail, racism is much more extensive in the U.S. than, say, in Mexico. People in Mexico are mostly brown due to extensive intermarriage among racial categories, which is not the case in the U.S. and not for the foreseeable future, though there is some trend in that direction for particular reasons and not simply because Americans are becoming sweeter.
All of this factors into the structure of education, again in this case in the U.S. Other studies find different circumstances in other nations, or in certain time frames in the U.S. itself.
Theoretical Aspects
Certain recent theories have contributed to the solidification of inequality in education, and in fact of inequality overall in American society. A paramount one is postmodernism since about the late 1970s onto the 1990s with its aftereffects lingering quite significantly into contemporary times because of what pomo, for short, emphasizes.
Specifically postmodernism refers to theories which followed modernism. The latter accentuated linear thinking, the rational, the scientific, and so on. Clearly racism, classism, sexism, ableism, etc., have not only not disappeared, they are becoming entrenched in society. But pomo does not focus on this and thus the postmodernist theoretical approach is a problem in itself since modernist problems are not post but still there.
The focus of pomo, though, is on the bits and pieces, on language games, on the playful, etc., and is anathema to coherence, to structure, to the overall. However, even when pomo claims there is no grand narrative (Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of Britain in the 1980s, said there is no society, only individuals), what pomo focuses on is itself a grand narrative about society, their own grand narrative though pomo theorists do not admit that.
The impact of it all is substantial and so are the still reverberating shockwaves. While a theorist today may say that pomo does not have much currency today, that is beside the point. Society in general is not aware of theoretical nuances and technicalities and updates.
A similarity to this is when someone states that there is no such thing as race, which is correct. Still that is beside the point because most in society believe there is race and thus it is a social reality, regardless that it is not a physical reality. Society thus acts on it as a full-blown reality and concretizes it, albeit without scientific basis, and again, not many in society are going to bother to look at race from a scientific lens that says there is no such physical reality. Simply, society creates racial categories and acts on them to the benefit of some and the detriment of others.
When, as examples, the emphasis is on one s own responsibility in life and the poor are admonished for being poor but the wealthy are not admonished for how they may have gotten wealthy; when poorer college students are paternalistically told that loans, work study and such are the opportunity costs of attending college, the wealthy sons and daughters are not told that; when applicants for college are told they are admitted on merit yet the wealthy buy their way directly into college through influential people or indirectly through higher SAT scores which are determined by family wealth, these and many more are efforts to blame the lower tier for their troubles and circumstances while obfuscating through control of the media the reality of inequality. Thus it is that Oprah, for voicing similar rationales, became popular and was foisted onto the pedestal of a billionaire and her spawn, such as Dr. Phil, as well are prominent on TV for emphasizing that the viewers (who are not the wealthy) own up to their travails. The guests hosted by these, previously or currently, focus on their individual experience, and almost never on the structural, the macro, the overriding, more totalizing coherence.
Then again this pomo type of thing is not entirely new. Before that there were Norman Vincent Peale, Napoleon Hill, and many others along the same lines. Their contemporaries are influential and those in economic power smile approvingly. As long as those on the lower tier see each other and their own selves as the problem and not look upstairs, nothing much will change.
Likewise, those who study theory will say that, well now we have other posts : the postracial, postfeminist, postcolonial and so on. Obama s presidency of eight years shows clearly we are not beyond racism, and similarly the death-bed of feminism was called early as a distraction. There are still