Word: walkerism
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Lashawnda Walker is an industrious, C-average eighth-grader with an impeccable attendance record at Doolittle East middle school in Chicago. But a little over a year ago she faltered at crunch time, and she has paid a stinging price ever since. In the spring of 1998 Walker scored well below her grade level on the reading section of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. Chicago's widely hailed policy aimed at ending social promotion--the practice of automatically passing students to the next grade--required her to attend summer school. At the end of it she fell short again...
This spring, Walker, 15, the oldest of eight children, got another chance. But she failed again, by four-tenths of a point, on the Iowa test's reading section. She is headed to summer school for one final shot at getting into high school in the fall. If she doesn't make it, she will go to one of the city's "transition centers"--an educational way station for kids who haven't qualified for high school but are too old to remain in a regular eighth-grade classroom...
...self-esteem damaged and her determination waning, Walker is close to becoming a casualty in the war on social promotion in America's public schools. The idea driving the assault--that the performance of students can be improved if schools establish standards and insist that kids meet them before moving on to the next grade--has a simple, sound-bite toughness. It appeals to parents and teachers at a time when frustration with student underachievement is boiling over. Distressing test results released this spring in states like Louisiana (where 40% of eighth-graders flunked the state's exam in math...
This February she stepped down from her job to work full-time on a biography of her great-great-grandmother, Madam C.J. Walker, a civil rights activist and pioneer in the hair care industry. An expert on Walker, Bundles successfully lobbied the U.S. Postal Service to feature her ancestor on a stamp last year...
...number of other black women are among past recipients of the Radcliffe Medal, including Marian Wright Edelman, the head of the Children's Defense Fund; singer Jessye Norman and author Alice Walker...