I'm not sure what to make of this news article from Seattle. It seems that the Seattle School District gave the Cognitive Abilities Test to every first-grader in the district, ostensibly for the purpose of selecting students for the district's advanced learning programs. But the district didn't really want to identify the smartest students; it wanted to identify the smartest students who are racial minorities.
The test, on the other hand, identified the best-performing group as being 91% white or Asian, and now the school district is blaming the test for failing to "diversify" the potential advanced-learning group:
Most top scorers on the Cognitive Abilities Test were either whites or Asians, already the two predominant groups in the district's advanced-learning programs. The results mean the district will now consider other criteria to try to boost enrollment of underrepresented groups in those programs.
Students in the district's APP program generally work two grade levels above their grade, while students in the Spectrum program work one grade level above.
"We hoped the universal screening would increase the number of underrepresented groups. That just wasn't true," said Herb Packer, the district's director of advanced-learning programs.
Because the testing didn't yield the results the district had hoped, administrators said the universal screening probably won't be administered next school year. Chief Academic Officer June Rimmer said the district instead will propose a plan next month that probably would include other admission criteria for Spectrum.
In other words, the school district doesn't want to use an intellectual benchmark as admission for an intellectually-advanced program. We're not talking about an enriched program here; we're talking about classwork that is one or two grade levels ahead. That sort of challenge isn't going to be helpful for a student who isn't ready for it, and the students who are ready will likely be impatient with other kids in the class who slow them down.
Rather than educating every child to the best of their ability, what seems to be more important to the Seattle school district is placing more minority children into advanced programs, regardless of whether they're truly ready for it. The proposed alternative admission criteria are relatively subjective, so much so that one member of the district's Advanced Learning Steering Committee has already noted that this leaves the district open to criticism from parents who wonder why their children did not get admitted to the program.
Why isn't the school district using these results to focus on those kids who didn't make the cut, and admit that those kids aren't ready to be skipped one or two grades ahead? If a kid is working at grade level, focus the education there. Don't be a quota-driven bean counter who thinks that the school system is a failure if the advanced programs don't acheive some perfect, mystical racial balance. It's not about that.
Posted by kswygert at June 23, 2003 10:41 AM