Word: grades
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Teaching seemed a natural, uncomplicated career choice for Stacey Moskowitz. "I like children," she says. "I enjoy watching them learn the things you need to do to succeed in life." In 1990, in her mid-20s, she began teaching third grade at Community Elementary School 90 in the Bronx, N.Y., where she learned how to succeed on the school's terms. She says the principal's underlings gave her a list of students along with the order "to make sure they passed" standardized reading exams. On the mornings of such exams, she was given...
...with bad apples. A schoolteacher in Atlanta was caught distributing advance copies of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, and another in northern Georgia was cited when seven of his special-ed students scored a perfect 600 on the language portion of the test. Dan Erling, a respected sixth-grade math instructor in Atlanta, left the profession in disgust over what he felt was rampant cheating. He estimates that as many as 15% of his incoming students had inflated test scores because of improper help from teachers, such as telling students to "sit next to the smart kid" during testing...
...originally from Chicago, but I spent my high school years at West Catholic High School in rural Michigan. In seventh grade my family moved to a farm. We lived on a family farm that was farmed by other people. We were almost landlords for sharecroppers. I've ridden my fair share of tractors. I appreciate the scenic beauty of farms, but not the actual farming...
...wanted to be an archaeologist since I was in first grade when I read a book on Cleopatra and the pharaoh's tombs in Egypt and just thought it was the coolest thing. I only looked at schools that had a lot of archaeology classes. I love being outside. It's sort of like a blue-collar job that you have to be educated for. It combines both worlds--like a construction worker with a degree. It's a hard day's labor, but at the same time learning about people who lived a long time ago and recreating stories...
...advance on merit. Zacarias wanted to spend $140 million in the first year alone to help these kids. Why so much? Because a mountain of research shows that ending social promotion doesn't work if it just means more Fs. Kids who are simply forced to repeat grades over and over usually don't improve academically and often drop out. Zacarias wanted more tutoring, summer school and intensive-learning classes. Unqualified students wouldn't rise to the next grade; nor would they be doomed to redo work they already failed...