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English 100: Paper #4
Initial Evaluation of Sources
Directions: Look over the following six annotated citations. Notice the author, the title of the article, the date of
publication, the source/publisher, and the summary of the article that follows. Based on the information provided,
which articles do you think would be most appropriate to consider for a paper inquiring whether American schools are
failing or succeeding? On your own, rank the articles in order from most to least appropriate (most appropriate = 1,
second most appropriate = 2, etc.)
___Abbott, Jan, Les Chisholm, and Warren Rose. "Shifting The Paradigm: Labor-Management Relations Change In
Public School Districts." Public Administration Quarterly 18.1 (1994): 19-34. Business Source Elite. Web. 14
Nov. 2013. This article explores the shift of industrial relations in U.S. public school districts. The U.S. public
school system is under siege. Poor academic results, high drop-out rates, a rapidly changing demographic mix,
and budget shortfalls and widespread layoffs have affected a system which was for long a symbol of national
pride. The plan of U.S. George Bush's administration for school reform responded to a barrage of criticism that
the public school system is failing to meet the educational, social, and cultural needs of its students,
communities, and the nation at large. Teacher morale in the public school system is reported to be low…
pressures on the public school system are likely to increase, not abate, for the foreseeable future. Every state
faces its own problems.
___Bruce, Michael G. "The Standards Debate Across The Atlantic." Education Digest 56.9 (1991): 14. MasterFILE
Premier. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. This article discusses the differences between the European and U.S. educational
standards. Despite differences between British and French practices of high school graduation assessment, their
similarities are most striking when compared with U.S. procedures. Both British and French procedures are
based on terminal assessment, with little or no weighting for grades accumulated in previous years of study.
Both place heavy reliance on formal written answers to questions that are classified and seen by neither the
candidates nor their teachers until the examination. Both use open-ended questions and attach considerable
importance to the students' ability to develop arguments in extended prose. Candidates' answers are dispatched
to national agencies, where they are graded. The British use elaborate moderating procedures to ensure
comparability of standards among individual exam graders and the French have similar mechanisms to ensure
objectivity. Since European universities are selective in different ways from their U.S. counterparts, this
achievement is important for the individual student. Success on formal school examinations is the normal
qualification for entry to university and, in much of Europe, universities are obliged to accept all successful
candidates.
___Chambers, Cara, and Erika Palmer. "Educational Stability For Children In Foster Care." Touro Law Review 26.1
(2010): 1103-1130. Academic Search Premier. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. The article offers information on the
educational experiences of children who live in foster homes in the U.S. It discusses the negative effects on the
educational achievement and emotions of these children once they are forced to transfer foster homes and
schools. Moreover, it suggests that states should use the opportunities given by the Fostering Connections Act
so that child welfare agencies and school districts can work together for the education stability of these children.
___Edelman, Marian Wright. "Cuts in Education: a Failing Choice." Washington Informer 24 Nov. 2011: 22+.
Newspaper Source Plus. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. The article presents author's views on the cuts in per student
funding made by several U.S. states. As stated, seventeen states in the U.S. have cut per student funding more
than 10 percent from pre-recession levels and states including South Carolina, Arizona, and California have
reduced per student funding for K-12 schools more than 20 percent. She states that these cuts have major
effects on critical learning opportunities.
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___Hanushek, Eric A., et al. "Achievement Growth: International And U.S. State Trends In Student Performance. PEPG
Report No.: 12-03." Program On Education Policy And Governance, Harvard University (2012): ERIC. Web. 14
Nov. 2013. The United States' failure to educate its students leaves them unprepared to compete and threatens
the country's ability to thrive in a global economy." Such was the dire warning recently issued by a task force
sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations. Chaired by former New York City schools chancellor Joel I. Klein
and former U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, the task force said that the country "will not be able to
keep pace--much less lead--globally unless it moves to fix the problems it has allowed to fester for too long. The
report's views are well supported by the available evidence. In a 2010 report, only 6 percent of U.S. students
were found to be performing at the advanced level in mathematics, a percentage lower than those attained by
30 other countries. Nor is the problem limited to top-performing students…
___Ripley, Amanda. The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way. Simon & Schuster, 2013. In a
handful of nations, virtually all children are learning to make complex arguments and solve problems they’ve
never seen before. They are learning to think, in other words, and to thrive in the modern economy. What is it
like to be a child in the world’s new education superpowers? In a global quest to find answers for our own
children, author and Time magazine journalist Amanda Ripley follows three Americans embedded in these
countries for one year. Kim, fifteen, raises $10,000 so she can move from Oklahoma to Finland; Eric, eighteen,
exchanges a high-achieving Minnesota suburb for a booming city in South Korea; and Tom, seventeen, leaves a
historic Pennsylvania village for Poland. Through these young informants, Ripley meets battle-scarred reformers,
sleep-deprived zombie students, and a teacher who earns $4 million a year. Their stories, along with
groundbreaking research into learning in other cultures, reveal a pattern of startling transformation: none of
these countries had many “smart” kids a few decades ago. Things had changed. Teaching had become more
rigorous; parents had focused on things that mattered; and children had bought into the promise of education.
A journalistic tour de force, The Smartest Kids in the World is a book about building resilience in a new world—as
told by the young Americans who have the most at stake.
___Sykes, Charles J.. Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good about Themselves But Can't Read,
Write, or Add. St. Martins Press: 1995. Sykes, a journalist who specializes in education issues (A Nation of
Victims), weighs into the current school wars with this polemic. A particular target is the school reform
movement, epitomized by educators who, as Sykes characterizes them, emphasize students' feelings rather then
their learning. In Sykes's view, the usual scapegoats for the decline of American education--parents, society,
money--are not the cause of low scores in reading and mathematics; instead, he points the finger at "the schools
themselves and the values that dominate American education in the 1990s." He compiles here a sobering
catalogue of failed approaches, "self-esteem" programs, political correctness and other trends that militate
against the learning of basic skills. He forcefully offers proposals that could work (open up teaching to noneducationists) and others that would initiate a sea change (eliminate tenure). Baltimore's famed private Calvert
School is a suggested model.
Hint for later: These citations are all done in MLA style. For Paper #4, use this format for your annotated Works Cited
list, but 1) limit your annotations t o2-sentence summaries of each text, and 2) double-space the document. 