9486 in the collection
Education Commissioner Trashes Middle Schools
Ohanian comment: Note that the reporter doesn't give its full title: The War Against Excellence: The Rising Tide of Mediocrity in America's Middle Schools.
Someone is pumping money into buying copies. The book is not yet released but it's Amazon number is already in the 7,000 range. Here's how the publisher blurbs it on Amazon:
Radical activists do not see the American middle school as an organization to impart academic knowledge, but as an instrument through which they can force social change. Yecke, an experienced teacher and administrator, shows how these activists have implemented their plans and endangered the education of all middle school children--especially those who are gifted.
Here are the endorsers--listed on the publisher's website:
Endorsement From Chester E. Finn Jr. President, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation:
This lucid and passionate book does two great services for today's education policy debates. It shows--and explains--the extent to which American education has shamelessly turned 'giftedness' from a blessing and asset into an embarrassing mark of 'elitism.' And it begins the overdue task of unmasking the 'middle school' for what it has all too often become: not an educational institution where children learn important skills and knowledge but a social engineering vehicle that attends endlessly to dogma and dreamy notions while teaching very little.
Endorsement From Lisa Graham Keegan CEO, Education Leaders Council:
Cheri Yecke is one of the nation's most principled and effective education advocates. Her observations clearly explain and rightfully condemn the minimal expectation philosophy which has robbed so many children--regardless of their gifts--of their potential.
Endorsement From Michael Poliakoff President, National Council on Teacher Quality:
Cheri Yecke has made a profoundly important contribution to education policy research. Her meticulously documented study exposes the ongoing threat to the academic achievement of middle school students. She chronicles the destructive agenda of social hygienists and educational theorists to put a glass ceiling on student achievement in the name of an equity of mediocrity. And it shows what parents and policymakers can do to protect the integrity of this nation's public education.
Endorsement From Dr. John E. Stone President, Education Consumers ClearingHouse & Consultants Network:
Cheri Yecke's War Against Gifted Children illustrates a vital but poorly understood aspect of education policy making: educational improvement campaigns are often infused with social engineering motives. Dr. Yecke does an extraordinary job of documenting how the American Middle School Movement has become just such a campaign.
Endorsement From Jeanne Allen President, Center for Education Reform:
Cheri Yecke offers a chilling yet accurate account of how an army of elite educators can successfully manufacture an adolescent crisis that resulted in the flawed middle school concept. That concept, by every measure, has failed our students and shortchanged their abilities.
Publisher's Description:
Radical activists do not see the American middle school as an organization to impart academic knowledge, but as an instrument through which they can force social change. Yecke, an experienced teacher and administrator, shows how these activists have implemented their plans and endangered the education of all middle school children--especially those who are gifted. In 1983 A Nation at Risk declared, "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war." How did American educators respond? In their quest to establish a more egalitarian society, middle school activists and social reformers made it clear that the middle school was not just a new educational organization, but a means promoting social egalitarianism by coercing gifted students to be like everyone else. This was nothing less than a declaration of war against gifted children.
Yecke shows that the inadequacies of our systems of research and education pose a greater threat to U.S. national security over the next quarter century than any potential conventional war that we might imagine. The achievement of students in other nations now regularly surpasses that of American students, and it will be impossible to reverse this trend within the confines of the contemporary middle school concept. Yecke asserts that it is time for the American public to reject the radical middle school movement before too much damage is done.
She freely acknowledges it won't make anybody's best-seller list, find its way into neighborhood bookstores or be of great interest to many people outside of academia.
But Minnesota Education Commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke is out with a new book sure to rub some people the wrong way. It faults America's middle schools for feeding a "rising tide of mediocrity" by not doing enough to challenge gifted and talented students.
Seven years in the works, Yecke argues in "The War Against Excellence" that high-ability children in public schools are slipping compared to their international peers. Yecke blames it on a philosophy she calls "coerced egalitarianism," which she contends has discouraged academic competition and emphasized teaching that keeps all students on the same pace.
While much of the education focus lately has been on lifting the achievement of struggling students, Yecke makes the argument that upper-tier students lack the attention they need.
"If high ability students are not being adequately challenged they are being left behind," Yecke said Monday. She released a book summary, but not advance copies, to reporters.
Yecke isn't the first scholar to express these views. The conservative Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and former U.S. Education Secretary William Bennett, who wrote the foreword to Yecke's book, also have seized on the theme.
She said the book wasn't intended to bash public school education; instead, she said it was aimed at highlighting and addressing a problem she considers a threat to the integrity of public schools.
The book speaks broadly about the nation's middle schools and isn't specific to Minnesota, Yecke said. But her sentiments are reflected in a new report card her department is releasing annually on every school in the state. One section evaluates schools based on gifted-and-talented program offerings.
Yecke's two daughters, both of whom are now adults, were considered gifted while in public school, and she taught classes for high-achieving children years ago.
Yecke, who formerly worked at the federal education department and was secretary of education in Virginia, wrote the book before taking the job as Minnesota's education chief in January, but she has spent her weekends since going through final edits.
The commissioner said she doesn't plan a promotional tour and she expects her primary buyers to be college professors and parents of gifted students. It sells for $50.
Yecke's contract didn't include an advance, but she will get royalties.
On Monday, the online bookstore Amazon.com was taking orders for the book, published by Praeger Publishers of Westport, Conn., a publisher of general interest titles in the social sciences and humanities.
She said she won't talk about the book while on the state's clock, and she has barred her staff from discussing it.
— Brian Bakst
Yecke pens a criticism of middle schools
Pioneer Press
2003-11-18
http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/living/education/7287724.htm
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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