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The Dentist Analogy
      This is an analogy being widely 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 OPT-OSRC. 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 OPT performance supports what the analogy implies. On the contrary, the Hoover Study shows clearly that all children can learn regardless of social-economic position. Further, the study found that OPT is invalid across ALL social economic levels, including high OPT performing districts.
      The Dentist Analogy works ONLY if you accept that OPT is a valid assessment of student learning. But, OPT it is not valid; it 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 of OPT. I beg all of you to educate those who are innocently perpetuating a dangerously wrong-headed and highly misleading view of the OPT-OSRC problem. (rlh)

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