The following was excerpted from an article highlighted in ASCD’s education news brief today.  My question is after the article.

Most Ky. juniors aren’t ready for college, ACT says

TEST SAYS: NOT MAKING THE GRADE

By Jim Warren and Cheryl Truman – jwarren@herald-leader.com

Kentucky is one of only a handful of states requiring the test, which assesses English, reading, mathematics and science skills. Each subject is scored on a scale of 1 to 36. The test is administered statewide on the same day…

State education officials said that, based on the 2009 ACT scores, 46 percent of Kentucky’s juniors are ready for college-level English courses, 21 percent are ready for college-level algebra, 30 percent are ready for college-level social science courses, and 16 percent are ready for college-level biology classes. Those numbers essentially are unchanged from last year.

OK, here is my question.  We give high schools four years to prepare kids for college and these numbers are from a test taken in the third year.

So, (as tempting as it is to take cheap shots at Kentucky’s educational system! LOL), is the REAL problem that only this percentage of kids are ready by their Junior year?

Or is the real problem that the percentage who DO SHOW that they are ready for college have to put up with another year of high school before being allowed to move on?  I know what my youngest daughter would answer!

peace,

Greg

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The kids did great.  They took the math test with confidence in spite of teachers all over the place saying that the material covered is too hard.  Just took their time and answered everything they knew.  I hate doing tests when we could be learning so much instead, especially since we already know who can do what. But, the kids took it right in stride.

Near the end of the second session today, I looked over at one of the girls.  She was frustrated, but working until she was sure she had done all she knew, then switched to reading a library book.  At the beginning of the year, she froze up completely when confronted with tests or difficult assignments.  Now she competes with the identified gifted kids.  Forget the fact that others have more than she does, she is becoming resilient.  I know what I need to know.  She is going to be fine.

We finished up, had lunch, discussed serious issues of the Vietnam War (and Sam’s book), then started playing with Newton’s laws of motion.  My little charges were engaged, interested, and shifted into full gear on each part of the day.  What a gift to hang out with kids!

peace

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The second major fallacy of the current testing  movement is that all children learn, grow, and are ready for the exact same tests at the same rate and time.  This is just as absurd as claiming that we could standardize the clothing industry and expect all children of the same age to fit into the same size clothes and shoes.  We are different genetically and develop along individual patterns of readiness and ability across wide ranges of skills.  We are also different environmentally with some living in learning rich environs and others trying to survive.  There is no logical reason or published evidence to support the assumption that we should all be learning at the same rate and all in the same material.  Those who use the old nationally normed tests, can fall into the same trap if they are improperly used and interpreted.  Every child is NOT ready for the same topics or levels of abstraction and complexity at the same time.

To put it rudely and way outside of political correctness, some children in each setting are smarter than others.  Critics of IQ tests have very correctly pointed out that the tests themselves have contained racial and cultural biases.  However, no valid research, or even well presented pseudo-science, has ever claimed to disprove IQ theory.  We learn at different rates.  We have different capacities for total learning.  There are tests which measure the growth over time of each student as an individual learner, but the movement rejects those and insists that every child is ready for the same material based on chronological age, or grade level in school.

I do recognize failures in our past which led us to be vulnerable to these charlatans.  Too many schools and teachers in city neighborhoods functioned (and still function) as if their children are identically unable to learn instead of helping them to develop resilience and believing that the same range of natural ability is present in each of those classes.  Too many times we measured IQ and then labeled children, and limited what they could learn by what we offered rather than what they could do if given appropriate opportunities and hard working teachers who believe in them.  And, what effort have we made since LBJ to do anything about the broader social context in which they live?  But, the current obscene educational movement does not fix those, it treats all children that way.  You are bright, too bad, dumb down and be like everybody else.  You have to work harder and take longer to grasp the same content and are not ready for the same assessments as everyone else your age?  Too bad, we don’t believe that, so we will add lazy and unmotivated to your list of problems.

This produces amazing results in materials and instruction.  The reading series we have adopted locally claims to teach all children the same vocabulary and skills by providing easy, on-level, and advanced workbooks for the same content.  Well, if they cannot read the words that normally surround the selected vocabulary, they cannot use it meaningfully.  And the state exam will give no such options.  Many of them cannot even read the directions or questions.  In math my fourth graders are moving rapidly into algebra, a topic many many people are not ready for until adulthood, while many of them are unable to do basic math functions of single digit multiplication or addition and subtraction.  Some in the room are flying through it, love it, and need to be taken even higher.  But they are all to learn the same standards and take the exact same test because if we keep measuring them on the same scale they will eventually weigh the same!?!?

For those unfamiliar with the system, even a non-English speaking student who has been in the US for one year is expected to be able to test at the same level, in English, as all other students on all subjects and is expected to be able to score the same as them on English skills.  If that is possible, there is nothing to learn.  We just all can, because the government says we can.  It is an absurdity that should have educators, parents, and employers screaming.  But, that would put one outside the current realm of correctness and acceptable answers.

Students who do not know the basic facts of science or history are not prepared to do meaningful higher level thinking in those subjects.  Testing their opinions and saying they score well if their answer appears to match the picture or graph used as a question prompt is to deny the very nature of the academic disciplines.  Students who cannot grasp basic math concepts are not ready for algebraic applications and problem solving. We are knowingly engaging daily in meaningless activity and going along because it is career threatening not to do so.

To put it in the terms I use to provoke my grad students; if IQ theory is still true and a school teaches every child to reach their true potential, the gap between the top and bottom will grow larger every year.  The current accountability movement claims just the opposite.  Do an excellent job of teaching and everybody will be at the same level every year.

If what we want is drones to do the garbage jobs we have not shipped over seas and accept whatever level of pay and benefits we choose to give or not give, this movement is perfect.  Time to look again at who brought it to us and how they marketed it.  They are the same people who have made the anti-abortion movement the only social issue that matters, by calling it pro-life while they trash the planet, ignore the lives of children in our cities, refuse to pay living wages or give health benefits to full time workers, and support every war because we are right no matter what.  Pro-life indeed.  Educational excellence indeed.  We have been lied to.

Children are individual and unique.  Their proper nurture and support requires recognizing and honoring their differences and helping each one to become more than they or we imagine.  You cannot do that with a system based on cookie cutters for humans.

peace

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The false supposition at the base of the entire accountability and testing movement is that you can force improvements in teaching and learning by testing.

To get a little too Dr. Phil about it, you cannot increase the weight of a hog by repeatedly weighing it.  You must feed it!  Children learn by engaging in meaningful learning opportunities.  Tests do not teach.  They take time, money, and teacher attention away from helping children experience those opportunities.  Now we are doing constant ongoing (and purchased) assessments in order to track progress in raising the test scores.  Note that repeated emphasis on test scores, may raise test scores.  But, it is a giant leap of faith to assume that those scores represent anything more than focusing on the specifics of the test rather than real learning opportunities.  The current movement requires blind acceptance of the assumption that numbers going up on what the test company produces and sells means children are learning.  Any quick survey of their writing or conversations will show you the opposite.

Of course there is the contention that because the teacher knows the children will be tested, the teacher will be more devoted, harder working, more professional and accountable, and will better prepare the children.  The first problem with this assumption is that no valid research ever established that properly trained and supported teachers were the problem in the first place.  The horror stories of educational failure are overwhelmingly from places where the children come to school from and in environments of poverty and violence.  The teachers do not create those conditions.  They pour heart and soul into helping children rise above them.  And to assume that subjecting the child of that world to a high stakes exam and threats of failure will eliminate the harm from neighborhoods we should never have allowed to exist is comparable to an educational war crime.

What the tests cause teachers to focus on is the tests.  The trainers and bosses come around to make sure you do not miss the message that you are to focus on what is on the test, and only what is on the test.  This is not educational accountability.  It is idolatry at the temple of the testing industry.  To say that the area of knowledge the student discovered on TV, in a book, on the computer, or in their travels is insignificant and must be kept out of the classroom is lunacy.  But, that is exactly what the current movement is saying if the child selected topic is not on their current standard list and frequently translated to questions on the test of them!

I said before that I support the use of nationally normed tests to provide the teacher with valuable information on local strengths and weaknesses.  I also support deciding what you will assess students on and making sure you provide meaningful learning opportunities that will prepare them to do well on those assessments.  That is basic ethics, and it is the core idea of my Masters program’s design model (Understanding by Design).  But, those assumptions should allow freedom to deviate to pursue the interests of a child, to “differentiate” content and approach to match the areas that give energy to the child’s efforts to learn and grow.  I do not want to focus on the minimum children can do, I went into this profession to help them fly.

One example for non educators would be the testing of writing skills.  Indiana’s test uses the six trait writing model for the basis of its grading rubrics.  This makes grammar one sixth of the score.  So, schools under the gun to raise scores on the test found that teaching other traits of writing, even if the children cannot produce grammatically correct sentences, raises scores.  The result is that teachers are directed to stop teaching grammar and focus on the other aspects of writing.  I now have teachers in Master’s classes who have come through that system and cannot write a simple sentence with noun-verb agreement, or maintain parallel tense or person.  They beg for help to edit and correct their work, and to learn how to produce written materials which will not be an embarrassment when sent home to parents taught under the old “un-accountable” system.  But, they could score points on the test by having a beginning, middle, and end; by showing creativity and voice, etc.  Problem that is they and the students they now teach are and will be illiterate in the basic conventions of our language.

Keep weighing those hogs, train better hog weighers, insist on nothing but better hog weighing, and the hogs will starve when it was their basic nature to eat all along.

peace

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The current emperor of American education goes by the aliases of Standards, High Stakes Testing, and Accountability.  He struts across the nation proclaiming how he is saving all the children while locking all educators from pre-K through grad school into lock step content, procedures, and tests.  Widely promoted by the same president who took us to Iraq to get rid of non-existent weapons of mass destruction while continuing Reagan’s trickle-down economics right into the current financial abyss, this movement enriches test companies and consultants and is destroying the last expressions of anything resembling education in America’s schools.

This week’s faculty meeting was to inform us that we will now “map our curriculum” and do our lesson plans online courtesy of a “wonderful” company that not only gives us unlimited web storage but allows all users worldwide to view the lessons of all other users.  This way the state can hold us accountable for meeting its “standards.”  If anything is not in the standards, we were reminded again, then it is not worth teaching and must be put aside and no longer taught.  So, one more company gets rich, teachers lesson plans become more homogenized, and teachers spend more time focusing on tasks and lists instead of children.

I have so many objections sputtering through my head that this may become several posts.  So, let me start with what I agree with!  Teachers should have standards and work to help all children achieve.  Standardized tests are valuable tools for making sure what is done locally is keeping pace with what other children are achieving nationally.  Test data should be disaggregated to ensure that all sub-groups present in the classroom are being served successfully.  I have been doing all of those things since long before the current movement began.  But, my standards, testing, and research have always been focused on the real children sharing my room for the year, and my methods and behavior have always been expressions of living out the Gospel.

What I disagree with:  This movement has nothing to do with any of that.  We have stopped using nationally normed tests.  We have stopped focusing on children as the center of what we do (or adult learners in grad ed, or of Jesus in Christian ed).  We focus on the accrediting agency’s latest pronouncements of what every classroom must look like, and the latest list of what standards and methods will raise the number of kids who score high on the minimum competency exams based on the narrow standards lists in use until the next revision.  We do not aspire to inspire children to excellence in either academic pursuits, expressions of humanity, or lives of grace.  Those are not on the test even if they are given lip service in the standards.

I have watched the real ability of students, from elementary school through practicing teachers pursuing graduate degrees decrease as each year of this movement goes by.  But the test companies are doing great!  The bureaucrats who have left the classroom to pursue careers of personal ego and influence have incredible power. The consultants are rolling in money.  The accountability industry is funneling obscene amounts of education dollars into the pockets of people who never spend a single moment with children in a classroom.  And the students’ reading ability is lower, their writing ability is becoming non-existent, and their sense that learning matters for anything beyond the test is almost gone.

American education has been sold invisible clothes.  Our leaders know it, but dance down the street singing the tailors’ praises anyway because that is the current path to successful careers.  Veteran child-centered teachers are leaving the profession in ever increasing numbers.  Rich people are getting richer.  Schools are doing a worse job, not better.  And what the children are exposed to is as obscene as an emperor exposing himself in full knowledge of his sin.

peace

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Things are going amazingly well considering I still do not have teacher’s editions or student books for half of my kids.  The new principal has the year starting off with a very positive climate in spite of unavoidable bumps in the road for a grade school with 700+ students.

I have most of my students all day.  There are a few pull-outs for Special Education or gifted services.  But, they are kids who need it going to good teachers.  And, compared to last year’s constant let’s get started — bell — oh well good bye treadmill, its wonderful.  We even had time today to do assignments, get most homework done in class so I could help them, AND start The Magician’s Nephew.

I knew things were on the right track when one little girl told me how much fun she had and how happy she was to be in this classroom at the end of the first horrible day of explaining rules, procedures, forms and fees!  If THAT day was good, wait til we get into really learning things!

Now if we were not doing three different administrations of the State testing program plus two administrations of a locally chosen computer based test within the 180 days I get to serve them, I might be really excited! Ha!

peace

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