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The Dentist Analogy
      This is an analogy often circulated that is an attempt to explain educational accountability using dentists with patients of differing social economic levels. While it does exemplify a failed accountability system, the analogy is not at all appropriate to the context and the reality of standardized testing.. The analogy of dentists working with children of different social-economic levels, while well intended, is extemely wrong in its portrayal of underclass children as defective and upper class children as ideal. Neither my philosophy of education nor my study of test performance in Ohio supports what the analogy implies. On the contrary, the two studies show clearly that all children can learn regardless of social-economic position. Further, the studies find that the tests are invalid across ALL social economic levels, including high performing districts.
      The Dentist Analogy works ONLY if you accept that the tests are valid assessments of student learning. But, they are not. They assesses what is learned in the lived experiences outside of school. Under-class children, middle-class children, and upper-class children do not differ in the quantity or quality of what they learn outside of school, they differ only in the nature of what they learn. . . the cultural capital upon which the tests are normed. I beg all of you to educate those who are innocently perpetuating a dangerously wrong-headed and highly misleading view of the testing problem. (rlh)