[ale] Going OT: Cobb Laptop Deal

[Jim Popovitch]

Who the heck started this thread?  :-)

I'm surprised this hasn't morphed into Intelligent Design vs Evolution
yet?  :-)

-Jim P.

On Tue, 2005-08-16 at 10:23 -0400, Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> My wife and I found an article online that blew holes into AR; one of
> the points it made was that because the test questions were multiple
> choice, it changed *how* the kids read the book, i.e., it's more
> important that you knew that Johnny's eyes were green than why Johnny
> did what he did (that's not an exact example but I'm just trying to
> illustrate).
> 
> On Tue, 2005-08-16 at 09:24 -0400, Mark Wright wrote:
> > On Aug 15, 2005, at 11:15 PM, Pete Hardie wrote:
> > 
> > > On 8/15/05, Jeff Hubbs <hbbs at comcast.net> wrote:
> > >
> > >> I grew to hate Accelerated Reader with a passion.  It basically wrung
> > >> all the desire out daughter had to read out of her when she was in a
> > >> Gwinnett County school.  The books were classified crazily, with  
> > >> widely
> > >> varying books put in the same classification, only a fraction of the
> > >> books the AR instance knew about were actually available in the  
> > >> library,
> > >> and, what really got our goat was that the competition between  
> > >> teachers
> > >> for AR points resulted in good readers getting their backs broken by
> > >> unethical teachers who were setting individual kids' goals.
> > >>
> > >> The school staff had nothing to say about any of this; in fact, they
> > >> told us that the only reason they had AR was because a long-gone
> > >> librarian refused to believe that some of the kids were actually  
> > >> reading
> > >> the books they said they were reading.  And, no telling how much this
> > >> all cost, but it had to be thousands.
> > >>
> > >
> > > What ever happend to the SRA reading tool?  I remember it from my
> > > youth, and it seemed quite easy to manage without computers.
> > 
> > I think they still have it but it does not grade the students for you  
> > and it requires more input from the teacher to use.  AR is the  
> > perfect example of the deception of politics.  As I mentioned  
> > earlier, I was hired to among other things install the networked  
> > version of AR at a private school.  I had to prioritize some of the  
> > other things so I asked the teachers what they needed most.  AR was  
> > at the top of the list.  They would regale me with stories of how it  
> > helped the kids learn and how the parents that put their kids here  
> > wanted to see this school do it because the gov school did it.   One  
> > teacher of preschool children said she had to have it because she had  
> > kids that needed reading material above the picture books that she  
> > had.  That really got me to wondering what this incredible program  
> > was and I was worried it might be a nightmare to install.  Again,  I  
> > was amazed to see all it does is ask questions and tally grades.  The  
> > kids get a book from the library, read it and take the AR test on the  
> > book.  At this school the student printed the test page and put it in  
> > their "show to mommy" book.  It is sold as "learning through  
> > computers" but it is just grading through computers.
> > 
> > Mark
> > >
> > > -- 
> > > Better Living Through Bitmaps
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> > >
> > 
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