Definitions+for+Standards+Era



Standards Based / High Stakes Testing Era Social Studies

6. Diane Ravitch - Diane Ravitch is a historian, author, and research professor. She served as the Assistant Secretary of Education under President George W. Bush and she served with President Clinton’s Secretary of Education. Ravitch originally supported NCLB and charter schools but she later changed her views because she felt that high stakes testing was not the sole indicator of academic performance, especially with issues such as poverty. She also criticizes testing reform and NCLB for destroying public education.

7. Chester Finn - He is an expert in educational policy and educational reform. He holds positions in several educational organizations including - Hoover’s Koret Task Force on K–12 Education, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, and Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Finn is the former Assistant Secretary for Research and Improvement at the U.S. Department of Education under Ronald Reagan from 1985 to 1988. His main focus is the reform of primary and secondary schooling. He wants to change the school system to allow reforms to be able to take place instead of being lost in the "Blob" that he refers to as the current school structure.

8. What do 17 year olds know?

9. //Charting a Course: Social Studies for the 21st Century// In 1989 the National Commission on Social Studies in the Schools provided a report titled, “Charting a Course: Social Studies for the 21st Century.” This report recommended a K through 12 social studies curriculum centered on history and geography, with content from other social studies courses intertwined throughout. This report’s recommendations and research findings further fueled the Standards Based Educational Reform movement of the 1990s.

10. //Closing of the American Mind// A book published by conservative author/philosopher, Allan Bloom, in 1987. There are several main ideas espoused in this work. First, Bloom attacks the post-modern philosophy of moral relativism, which he sees as permeating university and college humanities departments in Europe and America. By extension he argues that the “open-mindedness” purportedly engendered by modern college professors is – in reality – synonymous with new types of prejudices. These new prejudices lead to student attitudes which have long-term harmful effects. These include 1) impeding student self-discovery by making all endeavors of equal value; 2) making students incapable of interpreting the clear meaning of a text due to an “it depends upon” attitude; 3) impeding self-discovery by making students seek the opinion of others; and 4) causing them to doubt so many things that truly progressive ideas are ignored. The book argued for a return to the classical “Great Books” in order to build upon the foundation of learning created by the “Western philosophical tradition.”