Fighting the White Knight

Saving Education from Misguided Testing, Inappropriate Standards, and Other Good Intentions

Jocelyn Turner

• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781638859208
• eBook ISBN: 9781638859215
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In her final year of teaching, Jocelyn Turner spent over one-fifth of each week administering mandatory tests and quizzes. She spent the remaining time preparing students to take those specific exams, regardless of the background knowledge and preparedness of individual students. While she was testing, she could not teach. Teachers were expected to present the same Common Core-based, grade-specific material to all their students at the same time-- whether Jake was reading at a first-grade level or Taylor at a ninth-grade level. It was a rare and lucky child who fit the profile of the year's onslaught of tests.

Since No Child Left Behind, US schools have been burying students in tests and then drawing often misguided conclusions--when sometimes the only conclusion anyone ought to draw is that student X obviously spent hours staring at a set of questions he or she did not understand and maybe could not even read.

We have been told that US education is in crisis. Ms. Turner agrees. In Fighting the White Knight, she argues that government mandates created and are now perpetuating this crisis, depriving children of remedial learning, instruction time, and personal attention.

Fighting the White Knight also looks at the $1.6 trillion student debt crisis, a consequence of today's single-minded, college-bound pipeline; vocabulary deficits left to fester due to narrowly targeted curricula; and the sneaky gutting of elective, vocational/technical, and gifted education.

Ms. Turner concludes by advocating for changes she believes can rescue American education--guiding children back to the safe, inspirational learning experiences of a more student-focused time.

Table of contents

• Title
• Copyright
• Chapter 1 Data Collection: A Numbers Game
• Chapter 2 Testing Special Education, Bilingual, and Other Outliers
• Chapter 3 True, False, and Weird Numbers: Looking for Truths
• Chapter 4 Truths, Lies, More Damned Lies, and Statistics
• Chapter 5 Manufactured Crisis?
• Chapter 6 RtI: How Government Mandates Go Awry
• Chapter 7 Curricula: One Size Does Not Fit All
• Chapter 8 Inclusion: Interchangeable Parts Aren’t
• Chapter 9 The Dilemma of Tracking versus Inclusion
• Chapter 10 The Sneaky Gutting of Electives, Vocational, and Technical Education
• Chapter 11 Fall Down Seven Times, Stand Up at Your Own Risk: Using Mindset to Manage Group Work
• Chapter 12 The Power of Words: Tackling Vocabulary Deficits
• Chapter 13 Twisted Self-Images: Demystifying Hope
• Chapter 14 Testing and Cheating: Lines We Should Not Cross
• Chapter 15 Rip’s Future Student Loan Debt
• Chapter 16 The Emperor’s New Clothes
• Chapter 17 How Many Years until Spring Break?
• Chapter 18 If You Can’t Get There from Here
• Chapter 19 Opting Out of What’s Not Working
• Chapter 20 Missing Pilot Programs and Unfinished Autopsies
• Chapter 21 Our Own Worst Enemies
• References
• About the Author