Your Homework

Doing the homework required to select an appropriate provider is an excellent opportunity for parents to get involved in improving their child's education. The steps, fortunately, are not complicated:

1. Secure the list of approved providers from your state's web site (see "Resources" below). Your school may also have a copy of this list.


2. Ask your child's teacher to give you specific information about the areas in which your child is struggling.


3. Interview providers about their success teaching those skills. Encourage the PTA or other community organizations like the Chamber of Commerce or Rotary Club to provide forums for providers to meet with parents to present their programs and for parents to exchange information about their experience with any of the programs. In the absence of such a forum don't hesitate to go it alone -- contact information for all providers should be on the approved state list.

Demand Proven Results

1. Make the provider show you proof of their success at improving student performance.


2. Find out in which academic areas the provider specializes.


3. Ask how the provider will determine which academic intervention is best for each student. Next, ask if after several weeks there is little improvement in the child's performance, what will be the provider's next steps.


4. Determine if your child will receive tutoring one-on-one or in a class setting. If the latter, ask if classes will consist of students in need of remediation in the same content area. You must feel assured that the class instruction will be focused on your child's specific needs.


5. Finally, request a list of parent references you can contact whose children have benefited from a provider's service.

The Answers You Want

1. The law requires providers to have a track record of success; if a provider is on the state list, they had better have some results to demonstrate their effectiveness. Even with results, however, parents should be wary. In the future the US Department of Education will try to help parents select providers by establishing a "What Works Clearinghouse" listing programs and methods that are scientifically-proven to be effective in raising student performance. Until that time comes, though, you've got to ask, and be prepared to evaluate for yourself the accuracy of the information they provide.
   
   Also, be aware that in some states school districts themselves are being approved as providers. While this may be appropriate in certain instances (like in rural communities where other providers are scarce), parents should carefully scrutinize districts approved as providers; asking officials what track they record their program has of raising student performance. Ideally, a district will demonstrate its success just like a private provider; by showing you gains in test scores that their students have made since beginning the specific tutoring they are offering.


2. State lists will indicate the districts for which a particular provider is approved. When dealing with non-local providers, make sure they intend to customize their instruction for your particular district. Ask providers how they have modified their program to address the district's specific standards and curricular objectives.


3. Since the goal is to find an academic match between a provider and your child, you will want to select an organization with a proven track record of remediating the learning difficulties your child is experiencing, and which will require occasional feedback between your child's teacher and the tutor. Ask the provider about their plans for continuing communication with your child's teacher or school.


4. Talking to other parents who have had children in the provider's program is always a good idea. Naturally, you'll want to find out whether the parent generally had a good impression of the provider. It's also extremely important to confirm, with parents who have experienced the program first hand, that the information the provider has told you about its success.

Conclusion

Arranging for tutoring by an approved supplemental service provider can be a fine alternative for parents whose children are in "needing improvement" schools but who don't want to exercise their right - for whatever reason - to transfer out of the school. Parents should be encouraged that such tutoring can result in some real gains in student achievement. But, to get those results, they must also be diligent in selecting the right provider for their child and monitoring their progress closely.

It seems unlikely that any parent would knowingly put their child in such a chamber, at least not for more than a few moments. Certainly not for their entire childhood. Yet the educational equivalent of this is exactly what's happening in schools every day, across the country, in most cases with parents powerless to stop it.

The Language Police, a new book from prolific education historian Diane Ravitch, examines in depth how and why special interest groups want to lock our children away in the educational equivalent of a sensory deprivation chamber. "If they can stop people from ever hearing or seeing offensive words and ideas, they can prevent them from having the thought or committing the act that the words signify," Ravitch explains. "If they never read a story about suicide or divorce, then they will never even think about killing themselves or ending their marriage. If they abolish words that have man as a prefix or suffix, then women will achieve equality. If children read and hear only language that has been cleansed of any mean or hurtful words, they will never have a mean or hurtful thought."

Ravitch's book demonstrates that in efforts to insulate children from anything that might make them uncomfortable, or expose them to ideas deemed dangerous, lobbies from both the left and the right have pressured publishers to bleach out content to which, in many cases, only the most hyper-sensitive could object. In a reflection on the experience that opened her eyes to this, Ravitch discusses a number of reading comprehension passages she and a committee of educational experts selected for use on a national test that were deemed unacceptable by the publishing company's "bias and sensitivity review" panel. Among them:

• A passage about the history and use of peanuts, which was eliminated because some test-takers might be allergic to peanuts and thus disturbed to the point of compromising their test scores by reading about them. Even worse, a second peanut history mentioned that the Spanish introduced peanuts to Europe after conquering tribes who planted them in what is now Brazil. Censors concluded that the excerpt might adversely affect students of various ethnic backgrounds.


• A story about growing up in ancient Egypt was removed because it examined differences in lifestyles associated with varying levels of wealth and status. It was eliminated by the publisher for having an "elitist" tone.


• An African-American authored story depicting two African-American girls helping one another do what each one does best - one jumping rope, the other doing math - was eliminated because it depicted one of the girls as a poor math student, supposedly perpetuating a bad-at-math stereotype of African-Americans.


• Perhaps most illustrative of the twisted logic that animates publishing censors was the removal of a true story depicting a blind man's successful climb up Mount MicKinley, the highest peak in North America. Intended to serve as an inspirational story, it was removed because it implied that a blind person faces greater obstacles conquering an icy mountain than a person with all his senses.

After recounting the event that opened her eyes to the rampant sanitization of texts and tests, Ravitch looks in-depth at how and why the phenomenon has become so dominant. What she finds is that activists of the religious right have succeeded in coercing publishing companies to eliminate content ranging from discussions of dinosaurs (which hint at evolutionary science), to fantasy stories that feature witchcraft and the occult. Similarly, pressure groups on the left have succeeded in purging language or imagery that might suggest a stereotype such as a mother preparing dinner for her children and husband, or an African American family living in a city.

But how did the pressures exerted by such contrasting constituencies render the entire educational tests and texts so uniformly milquetoast? According to Ravitch the answer, at least in large part, is the politicization of textbook adoption. She writes:

"Unlike general trade books which are sold to millions of consumers, or college textbooks, which are sold to thousands of individual professors, textbooks prepared for the schools are not sold in an open competitive marketplace. Publishers must invest millions of dollars to 'develop' a new textbook series, and their eventual success or failure depends on decisions made by a few large states. The buying and selling of textbooks is more akin to a government procurement process than it is to a real marketplace with consumer choices. The best insurance policy for stability in this highly political environment, these publishers have found, is to live within the confines of a prescriptive set of guidelines to protect them from trouble."

When textbook are selected in the political arena, the concerns of vocal minorities have disproportionate influence; most parents have neither the time nor the necessary information to apply pressure for particular books. Special-interest activists, however, do. Magnifying the problem is that the two most populous states in the nation, Texas and California, have statewide textbook adoptions. When states of that size have single adoption systems publishers are forced to tailor their books to the demands of those states. Smaller publishing companies, and books not adopted by the big states, are doomed, freezing out all but the books that appeal to - or, more accurately, do not offend - the largest number of special interest groups.

At the end of her book Ravitch suggests ways the language police can be overcome. Foremost among the three prongs of her strategy: dismantling the statewide adoption processes is California and Texas. She calls for freeing districts, schools and teachers to decide what texts to use. In conjunction with this, she calls for casting more "sunshine" on how publishers decide what does or does not get included in their tests and textbooks. Finally, she advocates improved teacher training, training that will make teachers masters of their subjects, giving them the tools and stature needed to select good books and reject those that are bad.

Parents have an instinctive desire to protect their children from harm. At the same time, though, they know that life is fraught with difficulties and dangers, and that teaching one's child to cope with life is far more beneficial to them than shutting them off from it. Locking a child away in a deprivation chamber only temporarily keeps him from perceiving what's around him; sooner or later he will have to leave the chamber. The Language Police shines a light on those who don't want our children to leave the chamber.