To the editor:
I completely concur with Checker Finn's assessment of the Stanford New School in last week's The Education Gadfly (“Avoid fruit salad,” April 22, 2010).
Only 19 percent of this school’s third graders are proficient or above in math. Yet, numerous other similarly situated schools serving low income students in California have proficiency rates at or above the statewide average of 64 percent. As to the supposedly ok high school, the near-zero proficiency of Hispanic students in key high school courses, leaving them unprepared for postsecondary work, is abysmal as well.
The issue is whether the school fails to teach to California's standards or whether the teaching is ineffective, or both. If it is the former, I wonder at the appropriateness of Linda Darling-Hammond's taking a leadership role in the current movement to set, teach to, and assess learning to high, common standards.
If it is the latter, I wonder at the appropriateness of all the attacks over the years on such fine programs as Teach For America and the high performing charters that rely on alternatively prepared, yet highly effective teachers.
For the sake of the students, one hopes lessons are learned.
Sandy Kress
Senior Counsel
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP