IMPACT OF HIGH SCHOOL PREPARATION
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Edith Kurzweil:
Thank you very much. Who wants to start the discus–
sion? Michael Meyers.
Michael Meyers:
Chester
Finn, I
was intrigued by your presentation, and
agree with 98 percent of it. But about your point that people give legal rea–
sons and civil rights reasons for not doing the right thing. My experience is
the exact opposite. They give legal reasons and civil rights reasons to do the
wrong thing. I want to ask you about the intersection of standards of acad–
emic achievement with self-esteem. You have, for example, the secretary of
education, Richard Riley, in the context of single-sex public schools, say–
ing that, if it works, he's for experimentation. Despite legal reasons. Even
your colleague and friend, Diane Ravitch, supports single-sex schools
notwithstanding questions about legality and civil rights. Black Muslim
schools, Afrocentric schools, African-American immersion schools, black
male schools, all that is put out in an effort to raise achievement for people
who have low self-esteem. Therefore we want to create-when I say "we"
I'm giving the argument of people who want to create such schools–
schools based around race, around sex, in order to boost self-esteem, and
measure this by academic achievement. If race-based schools or single-sex
schools "work" in terms of raising academic achievement and standards,
they are willing to throwaway civil rights concerns, moral concerns, and
legal concerns. I want your views about that movement and how that inter–
sects with what you said about the legal reasons for doing the right thing.
Chester
Finn: What I was talking about with regard to legal and civil rights
reasons on the part of employers had to do with provisions in federal law
that make it nearly impossible to use test scores or other achievement scores
as criteria for hiring. I was referring to the employment world.
But
I'll
talk
about what you brought up. I don't think many of the schools you
described are set up primarily to bolster self-esteem, but to boost academic
achievement. Be that as it may, I've become a lot more accepting of single–
sex, single-race, and single this-and-that schools than I once was, because
they work. They attract people for a reason, to a place that has a purpose, a
focus, unity, and integrity. Sometimes they're a little distasteful, a little
flaky
even in terms of their curriculum, or they're teaching kids things I wouldn't
want my kids to be taught, but usually they're also teaching reading and
writing in a safe environment, with caring teachers. Maybe I expect too lit–
tle, but I'm pretty pumped up when I see reading and writing and
arithmetic being taught by caring teachers, even
if
some of what else is
going on in the school is not something I would generally think highly of.
These are typically schools that reach out to draw in kids and families
for a particular reason. My main antidote to their hyper-specialization in
