Standardizing people doesn't work

Ms. Feldman makes some excellent points in her column about standards and testing (Where We Stand, September 2001). However, she doesn't raise what I consider to be the most critical issue of the standards movement. While I agree that higher standards are a good thing, I am increasingly concerned about the tendency to standardize the student in order to reach the higher standards. In spite of what we know about multiple intelligences, learning styles and the effect of environmental factors on the ability to learn, the application of higher standards and standards-based testing is, instead, reinforcing the Industrial Revolution, factory assembly-line model of education.

Indeed, in New York even students with significant handicapping conditions are increasingly being forced into academic situations way beyond their abilities instead of concentrating on realistic achievement and preparing them for a productive life in the community.

In the long run, unless higher standards are measured by college enrollment or meaningful, post-graduate employment--instead of group averages on test scores--the standards movement will go the way of every other politically inspired educational reform, because standardizing people just doesn't work.

Michael Lambert
--Greenfield, NY
 

Pay college athletes?

College should be, first and foremost, a place of education ("Should college athletes be paid?" Speak Out, September 2001). Awarding athletes scholarships that cover tuition, room and board is one thing. If a school has the funds to go beyond that, I would much rather see it give more scholarships to other deserving students or reduce tuition for all so that one does not have to sell one's soul to receive a degree.

Gloria Melnick
--Brooklyn, NY

Mr. Lyon makes some great points in his "Yes" response to the Speak Out question: Should college athletes be paid? "Were he an accounting major, a banker could have bought him a wardrobe, and no one would have looked twice," he writes. Why does the NCAA have rules prohibiting boosters to assist student athletes?

Mr. Lyon is again right when he says, "In fact, it is big-time, big-money entertainment, with professional trappings, financed by a plantation mentality and slave labor."

Mr. Zimbalist makes some points too, but they're weak ones. He says the star athlete can receive $35,000 in value while he plays and that these student athletes should be allowed to borrow money to buy career-ending injury insurance. He does not say why these athletes should have to "borrow" the money to buy insurance when it's the schools that benefit from [athletes'] participation on sports teams.

Mr. Zimbalist also does not address the non-star athletes who don't get the "full-ride" scholarships with the $35,000 value. Colleges and universities should carry insurance on all athletes (not just stars) for career-ending injuries. The schools should have a policy that players who receive career-ending injuries can stay in school to finish their bachelor's degree on scholarship (even if they were not on scholarship prior to the injury).

Mr. Zimbalist says colleges cannot afford to pay huge sums to athletes. Then allow the boosters to pay them. Athletes dedicate a huge portion of their lives to the sports they play. The colleges and universities exploit them and don't even protect them in the event of injury.

Nick Rath
--Pacific Palisades, CA