American Ways Book Review

Final Exam

When I was in Seattle Central Community College, I studied the book American Ways: An introduction to American Culture where I found out many interesting facts about the American society. This book gives thorough details about the values that are extremely appreciated by the American culture, which are freedom and self-reliance, equality of opportunity and competition, the American dream and hard work. These values have a strong impact on many fields, such as education. Generally, educators are divided between two educational reforms which are equity and free market. The first refers to fairness in measuring achievement, whereas the latter puts an emphasis on competition, testing, and accountability. Teacher evaluation, testing

Furthermore, she insists that (educators) ignore the fact that children learning abilities are different as a reply to their saying “ every child can learn” (P.99). She goes on to maintain that test scores cannot be used to prove if students learn anything. According to Ravitch, social scientists report that families’ incomes affect students’ educational lives more than their teachers do. In her book, she supports her claim by mentioning that economists observe that 60% of the test score variation is responsible for family. On the other hand, 20-25% is accounted for school while 15% of test score variation is teachers’ responsibility. Moreover, Ravitch emphasizes the importance of evaluating teachers based on their way of instruction, not their students’ performance in tests. She finally concludes by wondering what reformers exactly mean by “great” teachers. She presents two types of teachers who can be described as “great”. The first one is teachers who motivate and inspire their students to learn and those can only be identified by students and supervisors. They cannot be recognized by test scores. The second type is teachers who are great, in the performers’ terms, for raising students’ test scores, but they are not relevant based on Ravitch’s information. According to her, no school has teachers in which everyone of them raises his or her

In her book Reign of Error, Ravitch offers detailed information about how academic performance is measured in the United States. According to her, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAPE) is a representative of the U.S. Department of Education and its major goal is designing tests that measure how students do in core subjects, like reading and mathematics. Teachers, administrators, state legislatures, governors, business people, and members of general public participate in this governing board. It is independently governed by the National Assessment Governing Board. Additionally, there are two different methods NAPE uses when it is time to report its assessments’ results. The first method is measuring students’ academic performance by scale scores, which shows students’ knowledge and abilities. The second one is achievement levels, which tell students whether they are doing properly or poorly in their academic performance. Its levels varied between advanced which is the highest level, proficient, basic, and below basic which is the lowest