Mike McKeown just doesn't care that I have a job to do - no, make that two jobs, which take up a full 60 hours of my week. No sir, he just doesn't care that I'm so swamped with work that I forgot my dad's birthday this week, AND I'd like to unhook from the computer and go home sometime and try to have, you know, a real life, where I can go see my friends and drink coffee and chat, and maybe even ride my bike or do some aerobics and, in the immortal words of Billy Crystal in Monsters Inc., "work off some that FLAB that's HANGING OVER THE BED".
No, Mike just doesn't care about these things, or he wouldn't keep filling up my inbox with fascinating reports on testing and standards.
First up, a WaPo article by our old friend Jay Mathews, about the sliding scale for National Merit finalists in various states. For those of you unaware of the National Merit competition, students are selected each year for college scholarships on the basis of their scores on the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (affectionately known as the PSAT-nimsquat). The PSAT is on a scale of 20 to 80 for each of the three section (Verbal, Math, Writing), and the test is essentially SAT practice - adding a 0 to your PSAT score is a pretty good predictor of your ultimate SAT score. Plus, you get bucks for college if you do well enough. I myself was a National Merit Scholar, back the day (which means, before there was a writing section added to it).
I've noticed the PSAT/NMSQT in the news recently, because merit-based scholarships, especially those that hinge solely on test scores, are under attack by testing critics who claim that scholarships tend to go to people who traditionally do well on standardized tests, and that this constitutes some form of bias. In fact, the writing section was added because the previous form of the test allegedly produced sex-biased results.
So what does Jay Mathews have to say? It seems that, while students are selected each year based on their scores on the PSAT/NMSQT, the number of winners in each state is based on that state's percentage of the national population of graduating high school seniors. The upshot? Students in low-achieving states, which presumably make up a smaller percentage of the national population, become semifinalists (and thus eligible for scholarship money) with much lower scores than students in high-achieving states that make up a larger percentage of the national population. In other words, the PSAT/NMSQT hurdle you have to pass depends on how many students in your state tend to graduate from high school. If you come from a high-achieving state, the bar is set pretty high:
In 2001...Mississippi students who scored 200 points were designated semifinalists, while Virginia students had to score 218, Maryland students 220 and D.C. students 221. [Educational consultant Ms.] Rice-Thurston said the current system hurts states such as Mississippi by denying them an incentive to improve their education system.
I don't know, I can see this from both sides. It's hard to believe that Mississipi would really hold back on educational improvements just to give a few extra students a shot at the National Merit money. But I can also see the unfairness inherent in the different score standards for kids from different communities. If a score of 220 on the PSAT is supposed to mean the same thing for every student in the country, seems like it should be the same standard for every student in the country. Changing the standards by state is another way of saying, "You kids in Mississippi don't do as well as a group as other states, so each of you individually will be held to a lower standard.". This seems....condescending, at best.
Next up, Mike sent an article from the Chicago Sun-Times, entitled "Teachers face firing in cheating scandal," by Rosalind Rossi and Annie Sweeney. Unfortunately, it's no longer online, so I'll just quote what Mike sent:
Chicago teachers caught helping students cheat on state tests - In the most elaborate cheating scandal in the history of Chicago's public schools, teachers were caught giving tips, erasing incorrect answers, pointing to correct answers, and filling in the answers to questions left blank on students' Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, which were administered in May to students in grades 3 through 8. The teachers's who face possible dismissal were nabbed with the help of a method for detecting unusual answer patterns developed by a University of Chicago economics professor. See "Teachers face firing in cheating scandal," by Rosalind Rossi and Annie Sweeney, Chicago Sun Times, October 2, 2002
Hmmm. Wonder if this wholesale lack of dishonesty and respect for the tests could be related to dismal passing scores of Chicago's teachers on basic skills exams? Those who cannot pass tests, teach, and help their students to cheat. A scandal it is.
Finally, another critical eye is turned on the teaching profession by editorialist Chester Finn, who reports on the results of the Manhattan Institutes' survey, "What Do Teachers Teach? A Survey of America's Fourth and Eighth Grade Teachers" (Christopher Barnes, Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan Institute, September 2002). Mr. Finn found some alarming results:
First, a majority of teachers in both 4th and 8th grade opt for "student-directed learning" rather than "teacher-directed learning." No more than two in five affirm a philosophy of education in which the adult in the classroom sets the agenda, decides what youngsters will learn and ushers her pupils toward that destination...it's nearly impossible to imagine standards-based reform succeeding in places where students decide what will be
learned, or even how it is learned...Plenty of research shows that teacher-led instruction matters most for disadvantaged kids.
In other words, the so-called progressive teaching attitude of letting the child direct the lessons turns not only to be the antithesis of standards-based reform, but also punishes the disadvantaged kids - the ones who most clearly need a strong agenda and guidance. Why am I not surprised?
Second, three quarters of teachers have embraced the college-of-education dogma that the purpose of schooling is to help youngsters "learn how to learn" rather than to acquire specific information and skills. Barely one in seven believes that educators' core responsibility is ěto teach students specific information and skills.
Why is it so hard for teachers to grasp that "learning how to learn" is only useful if solid information and skills are then presented for the kids to learn? What's the point in learning how to learn if your teacher doesn't give you anything to learn?
Third, not even two-fifths of 4th grade teachers base the pupils' grades primarily on a "single, class-wide standard"; most place heavier emphasis on individual youngsters' abilities. In other words, they opt for a relativistic mode of evaluating achievement instead of an unchanging, objective standard.
....which prepares those youngsters for the National Merit scholarships and subjective college admissions where it doesn't matter how much you've actually learned, but how much you've learned compared to how much you were expected to learn. As education reform is moving towards standards, it seems that teachers are stubbornly deciding to create many different shades of "A"'s, and if you worked really hard to learn the material and earn an "A", you end up at the same place as someone who accomplished much less.
Fourth, teachers do not have terribly high expectations for their pupils. Despite the endlessly repeated mantra that "all children can learn"...teachers do not quite buy that. Fewer than half of those teaching 4th grade expect their students always to spell correctly. Less than half of 8th grade math teachers expect all their students, by year's end, to be able to show why the angles of a triangle add to 180 degrees...Only 70 percent of 8th grade history teachers expect that, by the time they enter high school, most students in their classes will know when the Civil War was fought. "
But of course. This survey result could have been predicted from the other results. If there are no objective standards, and teachers don't feel it's their duty to impart knowledge, then why would they place the "unfair" expectation on students to actually have a solid grasp on things like rules of spelling and important U.S. history dates? It's much more conducive to "self-esteem" to let a child discover on up through the 4th-grade that his spelling is atrocious.
Fifth and most bluntly, one third of 4th grade teachers and 30 percent of 8th grade teachers do not agree that "a teacher's role is primarily to help students learn the things that your state or community has decided students should know."
This one's the clincher, folks. Although the teacher is an employee of the state and community, explicitly charged with educating the children of that community, it's just not their job to help students learn the standards of the community. I'd read Mr. Finn's version of this in the New York Post earlier this week ("Teachers Vs. Better Schools"), and I agree that it's completely alarming.