Joanne Jacobs points out that our students may not be dumb - they just might not care:
You could conclude from these exams that American high-schoolers are ill-taught and ill-prepared for the competitive global economy. But what if you look at these tests like a capitalist rather than an educator? Nothing is at stake for kids when they take the international exams and the NAEP. Students don't even learn how they scored. And that probably affects their performance. American teenagers, in other words, may not be stupid. It could be that when they have nothing to gain (or lose), they're lazy...The dubiousness of these test results becomes clear when you compare them to the results of tests that actually do matter for teenagers: high-school exit exams and college boards...
Alexander Russo, for one, is suspicious of such a neat-and-easy conclusion:
if things are better now in secondary education than they were before, shouldn't kids today still outscore kids from 30 years ago? They were unmotivated to perform on the NAEP then. They're unmotivated now. They know more now, according to Starr. But the scores aren't much different.And what about elementary school NAEP scores, which are on the rise? If motivation is all, then shouldn't they stay flat?
Now I'm no economist or behavior expert, but it seems to me that if high school kids were actually learning more in school than they had before, the NAEP scores would show at least part of that change.
I'll play Devil's Advocate - could it be possible that kids know more, but care even less? After all, we're constantly told that kids are over-tested and are sick of exams, and perhaps there's truth to that. Could it be that years ago, even though kids knew the NAEP didn't count, they were more motivated, or less burnt-out?
I have no doubt motivation plays some part in test scores, which is one reason that I keep griping at states to stand behind the stakes for their exit exams. But I don't think the explanation is as easy as saying that our kids don't really care. Presumably, they care when they get to college, and yet the rise in remedial coursework and grade inflation belies the notion that today's students, as a group, have what it takes.
Update: Chris Correa notes:
...some research suggests high school students don’t perform significantly better on these tests when they feel more concerned in their own performance. For example, when researchers offered up to $10 per correct question on the TIMSS test, the paid participants did not perform significantly better than the control group. Students did report increased motivation when they were earning an average of $100 for their performance, but this did not make them any smarter.High school students seem to do about as well as they can on the test, even when they don’t have anything to gain from it.
Excellent point, Chris.
Posted by kswygert at August 9, 2005 04:17 PM