{"id":516,"date":"2006-04-25T22:15:02","date_gmt":"2006-04-26T02:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=516"},"modified":"2006-04-25T22:15:02","modified_gmt":"2006-04-26T02:15:02","slug":"test-prep-as-steroids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=516","title":{"rendered":"Test-prep as steroids"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NY Times reporter Samuel Freedman <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/04\/26\/education\/26education.html\">now suspects<\/a> what I <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shermandorn.com\/mt\/archives\/000442.html\">wrote just three weeks ago<\/a>.<br \/>\nMe: &#8220;I&#8217;m afraid that test-prep <em>works<\/em>, if only in the sense that steroids <em>work<\/em> in sports, with the short-term results.&#8221;<br \/>\nFreedman: &#8220;Under the pretense of fair competition, tens of thousands of high school students and their families employ the scholastic equivalent of steroids&#151;test-prep courses, private consultants, Internet mills for massaging if not entirely creating their essays, exaggerated or cynical accounts of their community service.&#8221;<br \/>\nI&#8217;m afraid that I can&#8217;t claim incredible soothsaying powers or the ability to mind-control NY Times reporters. This analogy has been floating around in the ether, and some reporter was bound to latch onto it. FairTest guy-in-Florida and publicist Bob Schaeffer used it last year <a href=\"http:\/\/www.medill.northwestern.edu\/studentwork\/backtoschool\/Newtests\/index.html\">when interviewed<\/a> by Northwestern journalist students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NY Times reporter Samuel Freedman now suspects what I wrote just three weeks ago. Me: &#8220;I&#8217;m afraid that test-prep works, if only in the sense that steroids work in sports, with the short-term results.&#8221; Freedman: &#8220;Under the pretense of fair competition, tens of thousands of high school students and their families employ the scholastic equivalent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-policy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-8k","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}