Essay #5 Due Date: 12-12-18: 260 points
You need 5 credible sources for the MLA Works Cited page in your final capstone essay.
Option One. In context of Alfie Kohn’s “From Degrading to De-Grading,” support, refute, or complicate Alfie Kohn’s assertion that grading is an inferior education tool that all conscientious teachers should abandon. In other words, will students benefit from an accountability-free education? Why? Explain.
Option Two. Read Bell Hooks’ “Learning in the Shadow of Race and her essay “keeping close to home.” In the context of those essays, support, refute, or complicate the inferred lesson from bell hooks’ essay, “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” that upward mobility requires a betrayal of one’s economic class and even family. To rub shoulders with the privileged, do we have to "sell out," to conform to their snobbish ways, and in doing so, are we betraying our core values and turning our backs on our roots?
Option Three. Read Bryan Caplan’s “The World Might be Better Off Without College for Everyone” and write an essay that analyzes the validity of his claim. You should see this critical review in The Washington Post of Caplan’s ideas.
Option Four. Watch John Oliver’s video about standardized testing and support, refute, or complicate Oliver’s claim that standardized education is a fiasco in every sense of the word.
Option Five. Read “Choosing School for My Daughter in a Segregated City” and develop an argument over what the best moral choice is for Nikole Hannah-Jones as she decides on what kind of school is best for her daughter (vs. the interests of society at large?)
Option Six. Read “Are Private Schools Immoral?” and write an argument about the moral implications of sending one’s children to private schools.
Option Seven. Read Will Stancil’s “School Segregation Is Not a Myth” and develop a thesis about the inequality of education in America.
Option Eight. Watch Hasan Minhaj defend affirmative action in the context of Asian Americans suing Harvard (Netflix Patriotic Act, first episode), and write a research paper that defends, refutes, or complicates Hasan's argument. Consult "The 'Whitening' of Asian Americans" in The Atlantic; "The Rise and Fall of Affirmative Action" in The New Yorker; "The Uncomfortable Truth About Affirmative Action and Asian-Americans" in The New Yorker, and a source from a book.
Option Nine. Watch Hasan Minhaj criticize United States energy policy as it pertains to oil on Netflix's Patriot Act. Then support, defend, or complicate Minhaj's assertion that the United States should change its oil emphasis for a more "conservation-focused solution" to America's energy needs. You can consult Slate article, Minhaj's video, and three other credible sources.
Your guidelines for your Final Research Paper are as follows:
This research paper should present a thesis that is specific, manageable, provable, and contestable—in other words, the thesis should offer a clear position, stand, or opinion that will be proven with research.
You should analyze and prove your thesis using examples and quotes from a variety of sources.
You need to research and cite from at least five sources. You must use at least 3 different types of sources.
At least one source must be from an ECC library database.
At least one source must be a book, anthology or textbook.
At least one source must be from a credible website, appropriate for academic use.
The paper should not over-rely on one main source for most of the information. Rather, it should use multiple sources and synthesize the information found in them.
This paper will be approximately 5-7 pages in length, not including the Works Cited page, which is also required. This means at least 5 full pages of text. The Works Cited page does NOT count towards length requirement.
You must use MLA format for the document, in-text citations, and Works Cited page.
You must integrate quotations and paraphrases using signal phrases and analysis or commentary.
You must sustain your argument, use transitions effectively, and use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Your paper must be logically organized and focused.
11-12 Holiday
11-14 Essay # 4 due; look at Essay 5 options; read Alfie Kohn’s “From Degrading to De-Grading.”
11-19 Homework #14: Read Bell Hooks’ “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” and write a 3-paragraph essay that explains the conflict Bell Hooks has about how her education gave her privilege on one hand and challenged her not be a sellout on the other. Also look at Bell Hooks’ “keeping close to home.”
11-21 Homework #15: Read Bryan Caplan’s “The World Might be Better Off Without College for Everyone” and write a 3-paragraph essay that analyzes the validity of his claim.
11-26 Watch John Oliver’s video about standardized testing and pursue the arguments against it with appropriate counterarguments. Also see this Daily Beast update. And this YouTube video update.
11-28 Homework #16: Read “Choosing School for My Daughter in a Segregated City” and in a 3-paragraph analyze the crisis of race,class, and structural inequality. See John Oliver video.
12-3 Homework #17: Read “Are Private Schools Immoral?” and write a 3-paragraph essay that analyzes the validity of the author’s claim.
12-5 Homework #18: Read Will Stancil’s “School Segregation Is Not a Myth” and write a 3-paragraph essay that evaluates the validity of the author’s claim.
12-10 Peer Edit
12-12 Essay 5 Due and Portfolio Check Part 2 up to Homework #18
Essay Outline
Paragraph 1: Summarize John Oliver video or the essay "Why Poor Schools Can't Win at Standardized Testing." 250 words.
Paragraph 2: Thesis: Defend or refute the above assertion. 150 words.
Paragraphs: 3-7 Supporting paragraphs, 150 each, 750 and 400 is 1,150 subtotal.
Paragraph 8: Counterargument-rebuttal. 150 for 1,300 subtotal.
Paragraph 9: Conclusion 100-200 words for 1,400-1,500 total.
Major Points to Consider
One. Segregation makes testing unfair.
Two. No Child Left Behind has resulted in worse education.
Three. Tests are profit-driven.
Four. Tests have no accountability.
Five. Tests take up too much time.
Six. Tests are a Band-Aid to systemic inequality.
Seven. Tests present race and class bias.
"Sorry, I'm Not Taking the Test"
In the past three years, I interviewed hundreds of students across the nation while reporting my book, Mission High. In schools both urban and suburban, affluent and struggling, students told me that preparing for such tests cut into things that advanced their education—projects, field trips, and electives like music or computer classes.
“Testing felt like such a waste,” Alexia Garcia, a 2013 graduate of Lincoln High in Portland, Oregon, told me. “It felt really irrelevant and disconnected from what we were doing in classes.” As a senior, Garcia became a lead organizer with the Portland Student Union, a coalition with members in 12 area high schools that has been one of the most visible student groups in the national student opt-out movement. Garcia, who is now at Vassar College, told me that this year—thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement—students are also increasingly talking about how standardized testing contributes to inequality and ultimately the “school-to-prison pipeline.”
Joshua Katz, Kiana Hernandez’s math teacher, says he tests his students using a variety of challenges and quizzes, but the only ones that officially count are the fill-in-the-bubble variety. “They tell me I must have data, and they don’t consider tests data unless it comes from multiple-choice,” Katz told me.
Every nine weeks, Katz has to stop whatever his students are doing and make time for the district’s benchmark tests measuring student progress toward the big Common Core exam in the spring. (Proponents of the Common Core standards, now in place in 43 states, promised fewer tests and less of a focus on multiple-choice. But most of the teachers told me there had been no change in the number of standardized assessments. “This year was a circus—16 weeks of testing scheduled at the high school level,” Katz said.)
And University High, whose neighborhood and student population is largely middle class, didn’t bear as heavy a load of tests and drills as its poorer counterparts: One recent study found that urban high school students spend 266 percent more time taking district-level exams than their suburban counterparts. That’s in part because the stakes for these schools are so high: Test scores determine not just how much funding a school will get, but whether it will be allowed to stay open at all. In response, some administrators have been taking desperate measures, including pushing the lowest-performing students out entirely. Suspensions have been growing across the country, especially among African American and Latino students, and many researchers correlate this with pressure to raise scores. And in the 2011-12 school year, the Government Accountability Office reported that officials in 33 states confirmed at least one instance of school staff flat-out cheating.
When it comes to standardized testing, this means that schools that educate low-income students start out at a disadvantage: They are much more likely to have lower-paid and less-qualified teachers; lack college preparatory classes, books, and supplies; and offer fewer arts and sports programs. When their students don’t make it to the same “proficiency” benchmarks on yearly tests as their wealthier counterparts, politicians label them and their teachers as “failing.” And that begins a vicious cycle: Struggling students are pushed into remedial classes that zero in on what’s measured on the tests, further limiting their opportunities to learn the advanced skills they’ll need in college or the workplace.
“What I observed was egregious,” Ceresta Smith, a 26-year veteran teacher in Miami and a cofounder of United Opt Out National, told me about a predominantly African American, low-income school where she worked from 2008 to 2010. Some teachers tried to incorporate writing and intellectually engaging readings, she said, but most resorted to remediation of basic skills. “Students are reading random passages and practice picking the correct multiple-choice. It was very separate and unequal.”
The proponents of testing-based reform like to argue that—while imperfect—the current approach has been working better than any other, leading to rising graduation rates and standardized test scores. But as Stanford researcher Linda Darling-Hammond has pointed out, there’s a bit of circular logic at work here: A system singularly focused on producing better test scores leads to…better test scores. Meanwhile, though, American students’ performance compared to other nations—on tests that measure skills and knowledge more broadly—remained flat or declined between 2000 and 2012.
Most importantly, test-based accountability is failing on its most important mandate—eliminating the achievement gap between different groups of students. While racial gaps have narrowed slightly since 2001, they remain stubbornly large. The gaps in math and reading for African American and Latino students shrank far more dramatically before No Child Left Behind—when policies focused on equalizing funding and school integration, rather than on test scores. In the 1970s and ’80s, the achievement gap between black and white 13-year-olds was cut roughly in half nationwide. In the mid-’70s, the rates at which white, black, and Latino graduates attended college reached parity for the first and only time.
In the decades since, the encouraging news is that the black-white achievement gap has kept slowly shrinking. But at the same time, the gap between students from poor and affluent families has widened into a chasm, growing by 40 percent between 1985 and 2001. Sean Reardon, a Stanford professor who focuses on poverty and inequality in education, says this is not surprising—affluent families can spend more than ever on enrichment activities. He argues it’s up to government to level the playing field, by making sure low-income students get the opportunity to succeed. But in many places, government is instead pulling back from the civil rights era’s focus on educational inequality.
Today, many students of color are once again going to segregated, high-poverty schools that struggle to offer advanced classes and attract teachers and counselors. Some 40 percent of black and Latino students now are in schools at which 90 to 100 percent of the student body are kids of color.
"How Much Testing Is Too Much"
It’s not hard to find a teacher willing to bend your ear about the volume of standardized testing in schools today, and the pressure for “test prep.” But how widespread are such concerns among educators? And what’s the on-the-ground reality they experience?
New survey data suggest these impressions about over-testing and test prep are more than just anecdotal: They are the norm for the majority of public-school teachers.
Eighty-one percent believe their students spend too much time taking tests mandated by their state or district, according to the study by the Center on Education Policy, based at George Washington University.
How much time is too much? On average, students spend 10 days taking district-mandated tests during the school year and nine days taking state-mandated tests, the teachers estimate. But underneath these averages are wide variations, from less than a week (the most popular response in both cases) to more than a month, the survey finds.
When it comes to test prep, 62 percent of teachers say they spend too much time readying students for state-mandated exams. And 51 percent feel that way about district-mandated tests, according to the nationally representative survey conducted in late 2015.
On average, teachers estimate spending 14 days preparing students for state-mandated exams, and 12 days for district-mandated exams.
Of course, not all test prep is created equal. It can mean many things, some good, some not so good. The CEP report defines it as “drilling students on specific content and skills covered on the tests, using practice tests, and/or teaching test-taking skills like time-management and pacing.”
Test prep is especially prevalent in high-poverty and medium-poverty schools, according to the survey. Thirty-six percent of teachers spend at least a month on test prep for state-mandated exams, for example. By contrast, the figure is 23 percent in low-poverty schools.
The report cautions that its line of questioning was not meant to imply that “all test prep activities are an ineffective use of time — if the activities are helping students master the knowledge and skills in the standards they can be useful.”
Meanwhile, this spring the teacher-advocacy group Teach Plus issued a report on test prep, drawing on survey data from educators in the Teach Plus network. It even created a “typology” of 17 common test-prep activities, based on information gathered through focus groups with teachers. Some activities are valued by educators, some not, according to the report.
Among the “highly valued” activities: developing students’ computer skills; workshops to improve students’ writing with evidence; and helping them use dictionaries, calculators, and other tools on assessments.
Activities not finding favor included test-taking strategies, taking students to motivational pep rallies, and administering predictive tests.
As with the CEP report, the Teach Plus survey finds an overall negative tilt toward the amount of time for test prep. Fifty-seven percent of teachers surveyed say they spend “too much” time on test prep, compared with 43 percent who say it is “about right” or “too little.” (The survey is not nationally representative of educators.)
But it also finds that the attitude of teachers is influenced by the conditions they face. For example, teachers are more favorable toward test prep when they have leeway to select the kinds of activities they believe would be most “appropriate and valuable,” and when the tests align with the curriculum.
“Most people think of test prep as one monolithic iceberg of time, not valued by teachers and detrimental to instruction,” the report says. “But teachers use ‘test prep’ to refer to lots of different things.”
"Race and the Standardized Testing Wars"
Many educators and parents say the tests have forced schools with low scores to focus all their attention on basic reading and math skills, to the detriment of subjects like science and social studies, let alone art. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, schools were rated based on their test scores and those that did not improve could eventually be closed. (The reauthorized law passed last year gives states more leeway in rating schools and handling those that do not meet targets.)
Some also say the tests have led to excessive use of discipline.
“There are schools where you don’t get a class trip until after the test,” said José Luis Vilson, a middle schoolteacher in New York City and the author of “This Is Not a Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education.”
“There are places where students just feel like it’s a jail,” he added. “Testing often exacerbates that, to the point that it doesn’t feel like you’re going to school to learn — you’re just going to take a test.”
In a rap video produced by the Baltimore Algebra Project, the youth advocacy group that organized the student protest this month, one singer lamented: “They really using this test to tell what I’m-a be/They probably want me in jail or probably in the streets.”
Pro-testing educators say they are listening closely to the calls by black and Hispanic parents and students for a richer educational experience, although some point out that the era before standardized testing was hardly better.
“Everything You’ve Heard about Failing Schools Is Wrong” by Kristina Rizga (252)
One. How is Maria denigrated at school?
Classmates call her derogatory names and stigmatize her because of her lack of English skills.
I have a Turkish friend who complained that Americans thought he was stupid because of his accent, as if an accent, or not, is a sign of intelligence.
The real issue isn't intelligence. An accent presses the buttons of the close-minded tribalist who's afraid of Los Otros.
Therefore, a lack of English speaking and writing makes student in the essay an outsider, La Otra. She's not a member of the tribe. The tribalists (people who only accept their "own kind") won't accept her because her lack of English skills suggest she's not a member of the privileged club.
Her math teacher addresses Maria and the other students as dummies.
Nothing like having a teacher who has contempt for her students. This creates a stigma or a permanent dark cloud over the person.
We could argue it is criminal for a math teacher to stigmatize Maria and others because lowered expectations have harmful (deleterious) effects on students.
Patronization
In the administrative office a middle-aged woman who thinks she’s being sympathetic tells Maria that she shouldn’t worry about struggling in high school since “Latinas usually don’t finish high school. . . . They go to work or raise kids.”
Nothing like having a counselor or an administrative official rely on stereotypes for an "analysis" of the student.
We have lowered expectations and racism ushering a girl into the lower economic and social classes, and this degradation is reinforced by standardized tests that cater to the upper classes.
Two. What is the source of Maria’s academic frustration?
She begins to do well in high school; however, her state exams for going to college are too low. These are standardized tests mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act.
NCLB was based on good intentions: to raise expectations for all students, especially disadvantaged ones, but it actually punishes them.
Each state spends over a billion dollars on standardized testing, which comes to about $65 a student. This is a huge money grab for companies who want to be part of the test.
NCLB was supposed to be the savior, offering concrete metrics to measure student performance in the face of wishy-washy bureaucrats, and it was championed in a movie Waiting for Superman. Many have dismissed this film as propaganda for charter schools as we read in The Washington Post.
Three. What is Rizga’s thesis?
Rizga’s thesis or purpose is to criticize NCLB by showing the many ways it has changed instruction for the worse.
Students might know bullet points for NCLB but be ignorant of everything else; in other words, NCLB is too narrow in its instruction objectives.
The overemphasis on test performance has resulted in cheating.
There is class bias in the standardized tests so that the tests are more understood by middle and upper classes than lower classes.
There is a tendency to make the standardized test the be all and end all of education. We’ve turned it into a panacea or a cure-all when in fact its godfather Robert Glaser warns that it’s incomplete and imperfect (260).
In a school where English is the second language, NCLB scores will be lower and this will give an inaccurate metric of the school’s quality.
We should also consider the profit motive of standardized testing.
Eight Strikes Against Standardized Tests
No Profit Left Behind in Politico
Developing PEEL Paragraphs (PEEL equals Point, Evidence, Explanation, and Links)
When writing a research paper, it’s very important in the evidence or example section to use a quote from the text.
Paragraph Example
The essay "Green Guilt" makes a powerful argument that we must accept the afflictions of guilt and sin, whether that guilt is caused by religious or secular forces, in order that we survive and thrive in a cooperative society. As we read in Asma’s essay, “All this internalized self-loathing is the cost we pay for being civilized. In a very well organized society that protects the interests of many, we have to refrain from our natural instincts.” Indeed, our natural instincts, if left unchecked, would create a barbaric world where no kind of viable or even pleasing society could flourish. The second curse of selfish desires unbridled by a sense of guilt and sin would be the moral dissolution that would ensue as hordes of people would become numb to pleasures resulting in frustration and increased violence. We see evidence of such mayhem and grand displays of nihilism in hedonistic societies right before they crumble such as the Fall of Rome. Let us not neglect to point out that a sense of sin can prompt us to be more disciplined so that we maximize the success of our personal goals rather than squandering our life on the foolish errands prompted by our unharnessed desires. To conclude, Asma convincingly shows us that it is in our best interests to repress our base passions by swallowing the Sin Pill, feeling religious or secular guilt, in order to fulfill our potential as individuals and as a society.
Example of an Essay That Never Uses First, Second, Third, Fourth, Etc., for Transitions, But Relies on "Paragraph Links"
Stupid Reasons for Getting Married
People should get married because they are ready to do so, meaning they're mature and truly love one another, and most importantly are prepared to make the compromises and sacrifices a healthy marriage entails. However, most people get married for the wrong reasons, that is, for stupid, lame, and asinine reasons.
Alas, needy narcissists, hardly candidates for successful marriage, glom onto the most disastrous reasons for getting married and those reasons make it certain that their marriage will quickly terminate or waddle precariously along in an interminable domestic hell.
A common and compelling reason that fuels the needy into a misguided marriage is when these fragmented souls see that everyone their age has already married—their friends, brothers, sisters, and, yes, even their enemies. Overcome by what is known today as "FOMO," they feel compelled to “get with the program" so that they may not miss out on the lavish gifts bestowed upon bride and groom. Thus, the needy are rankled by envy and greed and allow their base impulses to be the driving motivation behind their marriage.
When greed is not impelling them to tie the knot, they are also chafed by a sense of being short-changed when they see their recently-married dunce of a co-worker promoted above them for presumably the added credibility that marriage afforded them. As singles, they know they will never be taken seriously at work.
If it's not a lame stab at credibility that's motivating them to get married, it's the fear that they as the years tick by they are becoming less and less attractive and their looks will no longer obscure their woeful character deficiencies as age scrunches them up into little pinch-faced, leathery imps.
A more egregious reason for marrying is to end the tormented, off-on again-off-on again relationship, which needs the official imprimatur of marriage, followed by divorce, to officially terminate the relationship. I spoke to a marriage counselor once who told me that some couples were so desperate to break-up for good that they actually got married, then divorced, for this purpose.
Other pathological reasons to marry are to find a loathsome spouse in order to spite one’s parents or to set a wedding date in order to hire a personal trainer and finally lose those thirty pounds one has been carrying for too long.
Envy, avarice, spite, and vanity fuel both needy men and women alike. However, there is a certain type of needy man, whom we'll call the Man-Child, who finds that it is easier to marry his girlfriend than it is to have to listen to her constant nagging about their need to get married. His girlfriend’s constant harping about the fact their relationship hasn’t taken the “next logical step” presents a burden so great that marriage in comparison seems benign. Even if the Man-Child has not developed the maturity to marry, even if he isn’t sure if he’s truly in love, even if he is still inextricably linked to some former girlfriend that his current girlfriend does not know about, even if he knows in his heart of hearts that he is not hard-wired for marriage, even if he harbors a secret defect that renders him a liability to any woman, he will dismiss all of these factors and rush into a marriage in order to alleviate his current source of anxiety and suffering, which is the incessant barrage of his girlfriend’s grievances about them not being married.
Indeed, some of needy man’s worst decisions have been made in order to quell a discontented woman. The Man-Child's eagerness to quiet a woman’s discontent points to a larger defect, namely, his spinelessness, which, if left unchecked, turns him into the Go-With-the-Flow-Guy. As the name suggests, this type of man offers no resistance, even in large-scale decisions that affect his destiny. Put this man in a situation where his girlfriend, his friends, and his family are all telling him that “it’s time to get married,” and he will, as his name suggests, simply “go with the flow.” He will allow everyone else to make the wedding plans, he’ll let someone fit him for a wedding suit, he’ll allow his mother to pick out the ring, he’ll allow his fiancé to pick out the look and flavor of the wedding cake and then on the day of the wedding, he simply “shows up” with all the passion of a turnip.
The Man-Child's turnip-like passivity and his aversion to argument ensure marital longevity. However, there are drawbacks. Most notably, he will over time become so silent that his wife won’t even be able to get a word out of him. Over the course of their fifty-year marriage, he’ll go with her to restaurants with a newspaper and read it, ignoring her. His impassivity is so great that she could tell him about the “other man” she is seeing and he wouldn’t blink an eye. At home he is equally reticent, watching TV or reading with an inexpressive, dull-eyed demeanor suggestive of a half-dead lizard.
Whatever this reptilian man lacks as a social animal is made up by the fact that he is docile and is therefore non-threatening, a condition that everyone, including his wife, prefers to the passionate male beast whose strong, irreverent opinions will invariably rock the boat and deem that individual a troublemaker. The Go-With-the-Flow-Guy, on the other hand, is reliably safe and as such makes for controlling women a very good catch in spite of his tendency to be as charismatic and flavorful as a cardboard wafer.
A desperate marriage motivation exclusively owned by needy, immature men is the belief that since they have pissed off just about every other woman on the planet, they need to find refuge by marrying the only woman whom they haven’t yet thoroughly alienated—their current girlfriend. According to sportswriter Rick Reilly, baseball slugger Barry Bonds’ short-lived reality show was a disgrace in part because for Reilly the reality show is “the last bastion of the scoundrel.” Likewise, for many men who have offended over 99% of the female race with their pestilent existence, marriage is the last sanctuary for the despised male who has stepped on so many women’s toes that he is, understandably, a marked man.
Therefore, these men aren’t so much getting married as much as they are enlisting in a “witness protection program.” They are after all despised and targeted by their past female enemies for all their lies and betrayals and running out of allies they see that marriage makes a good cover as they try to blend in with mainstream society and take on a role that is antithetical to their single days as lying, predatory scoundrels.
The analogy between marriage and a witness protection program is further developed when we see that for many men marriage is their final stab at earning public respectability because they are, as married men, proclaiming to the world that they have voluntarily shackled themselves with the chains of domesticity in order that they may be spared greater punishments, the bulk of which will be exacted upon by the women whom they used and manipulated for so many years.
Because it is assumed that their wives will keep them in check, their wives become, in a way, equivalent to the ankle bracelet transmitters worn by parolees who are only allowed to travel within certain parameters. Marriage anchors man close to the home and, combined with the wife’s reliable issuing of house chores and other domestic duties, the shackled man is rendered safely tethered to his “home base” where his wife can observe him sharply to make sure he doesn’t backslide into the abhorrent behavior of his past single life.
Many men will see the above analysis of marriage as proof that their fear of marriage as a prison was right all along, but what they should learn from the analogy between marriage and prison is that they are more productive, more socialized, more softened around his hard edges, and more protected, both from the outside world and from themselves by being shackled to their domestic duties. With these improvements in their lives, they have actually, within limits, attained a freedom they could never find in single life.
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