ABSTRACT
For those readers who find it curious that an educator can apparently argue against school effectiveness, against ‘raising standards’ and ‘back-to-basics’ slogans, I would urge that they eschew the reductionism concealed within the populist noise of these slogans which distracts us from more fundamental questions about schooling and its beneficiaries (Ball, 1988). This chapter also warns against hasty generalizing across cultural contexts (Fukuyama, 1996). I am nervous about the mass appeal of comparative test scores as a guarantee of improved outcomes for all children, and mindful of what Tony Booth refers to as the ‘positivists’ fallacy’—‘that a generalization abstracted from individual cases has validity for each case’ (Booth, 1995, p. 101).
