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Ohanian Comment: I would post this under "Good News"--because it made me laugh. But probably that would be confusing to most folks. I learned early on that if you're going to write controversial things, if you're going to climb out on limbs, then you'd better learn fast not to be thin-skinned about peoples' comments.

Ruenzel says I "come across like a hectoring right-wing radio host." I fear he may be half-right there. . . or right 38.6% of the time.

He particularly hates the term "Standardisto." I make no apologies there. I coined the word "Standardisto" in 1999, in the book under attack here, ONE SIZE FITS FEW: The Folly Of Educational Standards. I continue to think it is a very descriptive term which requires no explanation. On impulse today, I was scrolling the Internet to see where the word appears--quite a few places, I might add. In my scrolls, I stumbled across this ugly little review which I'd forgotten about. Maybe Reunzel was stung by the pages I devoted to Education Week's corrupt rating of state standards?

In matters of Education Week bedfellows and corporate politicos, crazy, kid-oppressive Standards, One Size Fits Few is distressingly current. It was true then, and it's hyper-true today. And, if I do say so myself, I doubt you can read it without laughing out loud.

You can't cry all the time: You have to laugh.

Here are reviews that appeared at the time of publication:



Here, in one smart, funny, loving book, is everything you need to know about the dangers of educational standards. Read it before it's too late. -- Jon Scieszka, Author of Squids Will Be Squids

Let's save everyone a lot of trouble, money, and effort: Make Susan Ohanian the Secretary of Education. -- Jim Trelease, Author of The Read-Aloud Handbook

Ohanian asks us to consider a sane, powerful alternative to the insanity of streamlined, sanitized, standard Standards for all: listen to and trust teachers and kids! -- Stephen Krashen, Author of Every Person a Reader

Ohanian's brilliant polemic [is] sure to make you howl with laughter, scowl with anger, and rethink everything you ever thought you believed about Standards. -- Jim Hightower, Author of There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos

We're lucky to have someone like Susan Ohanian who is willing to take on all the pious nonsense about Standards. -- Alfie Kohn, Author of Punished by Rewards and No Contest

“Ohanian's work is a refreshing call to action. . . . This will hit a responsive note with many school leaders.”–The School Administrator






by David Ruenzel

ONE SIZE FITS FEW: The Folly Of Educational Standards, by Susan Ohanian. (Heinemann, $16.95.) In this diatribe, longtime teacher and fervent progressive Ohanian comes across like a hectoring right-wing radio host. In a mere 150 pages, she lambastes--and this is a partial list--USA Today, Education Week, corporate greed, the California Department of Education, and everything and anything having to do with the movement to set curriculum standards.

In earlier books such as Who's in Charge?, Ohanian emerged as an astute critic of educational folly. But One Size, with its self-righteous, sarcastic tone--particularly grating is her insistence on calling standards advocates "Standardistos"--is less analysis than an ad hominem riff, portraying standards as the dark machinations of Fortune 500 executives and conservative think tanks.

Of course, this generalization isn't even halfway true. The standards movement was launched not by a cabal of elites but by popularly elected governors responding to public demand for greater school accountability. Much of this demand came from activist inner-city parents who wanted a better education for their children. But Ohanian doesn't acknowledge anything that would dilute her argument that standards are the work of know-nothing elites, contemptuous of teachers and students alike. Standardistos, she tells us in no uncertain terms, are people with "a scope and sequence chart mentality" who say, "Let them eat cake; let them take calculus."

It's unfortunate that Ohanian takes such a dismissive approach because it undermines her legitimate, if often overstated, points. Ohanian smartly challenges, for example, the "let's see how world class we can be" aspect of the standards movement, which in California has produced standards like this one: "Seventh graders will analyze St. Thomas Aquinas' synthesis of classical philosophy with Christian theology." Sure they will. Ohanian is also right to ask why students should feel motivated to meet rigorous standards when many will end up in low-paying jobs that require only a minimal education.

But Ohanian loses credibility when she accuses advocates and policymakers of promoting standards as a "guarantee of educational equity." Even the leaders of the California standards movement that Ohanian so ridicules--a whole chapter of her book is devoted to the insidious trend of "Californication"--make no such claims. And with all the ink she gives California, she fails to mention that test scores in the state have been steadily rising over the past few years, a development that more than a few observers attribute to standards and a strengthened core curriculum.

At the heart of Ohanian's anti-standards progressivism is a belief that "teachers are the curriculum," and she argues here that teachers can only be effective when they control what goes on in their classrooms, free from onerous outside directives. Though this view has been embraced by certain private schools, it's fantasy to think it will ever hold sway in taxpayer-supported schools.

Ohanian writes that her experience teaching kids of all ages and abilities has demonstrated the ruse of standards. Few would deny that one person's experiences and insights can have powerful societal and political implications. But sometimes, as in the case of this too-often spiteful work, the personal just seems all too personal.




— David Ruenzel with Ohanian Comment
Teacher Magazine/Education Week
2010-06-09
http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/1999/11/01/03rev.h11.html

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