Number 2 Pencil

Happy Birthday to me

Okay, well, it's not quite my birthday yet. My birthday isn't until tomorrow, October 1st - but I'm swamped with work, and will be in a research seminar all day tomorrow, with two presentations that I've yet to polish. So I probably won't be posting any more today, and I'm definitely not going to be posting tomorrow. All my spare time will be used to boil, scrape, and scour clean in the inside of my house, because my parents are arriving for a visit on Thursday. Oh, sure, my mom said don't bother to clean - like I really believe that.

Anyway, after the hell week I've had last week, I've had virtually no time to reflect on turning 35. In fact, now that I'm driving around with a still-smashed-up car and drinking ulcer medicine four times a week, it's tempting to whine and complain that 35 already sucks. But I should be grateful and count my many blessings, and appreciate my health while it's still in a condition that repair is possible. The car, I'm not so sure about.

Now that I think about it, I feel much, much older than when I started this blog, but in a good way. Perhaps "wiser", or "more accomplished", is the more appropriate term than just plain "older." In February of last year, I was convinced of several things:

1. I'd never be able to afford to settle down and buy a house
2. I'd never find a job in Philly that I liked; if I did, I wouldn't be qualified for it
3. I'd never find the perfect guy for me; the only guy I thought was perfect wasn't interested in me and never had been
4. I'd have a hard time finding new friends in the area

and

5. No one other than my friends would ever read this blog

Happily, I can reassure my turning-older self that in the past 19 months, I've been proven wrong on each and every one of these. So, if you feel like sending birthday wishes my way *coughAmazonwishlistcough* feel free to drop me a line *coughAmazonwishlistcough* or send me an eCard *coughAmazonwishlistcough* or express your birthday wishes in any way you see fit *coughAmazonwishlistcough*. Not that I'm fishing for anything.

Zero tolerance for untucked shirts

A school in Dallas, TX, is over-the-top in the zero tolerance department. The new dress code is being strictly enforced, to the point where an untucked shirt guarantees a student a suspension:

Teresa Montgomery said she was enraged when her straight-A student called her in tears telling her she was going to be suspended. "She is not a problem child; she's never been in trouble," Montgomery said.

Administrators say dress code violations are more routine at the beginning of the school year, as students test the limits.

Or, as students slowly start to realize that utterly unintentional, innocuous acts are going to be punished severely. Over 700 students have been suspended in two months thanks to this draconian punishment system. And this improves the atmosphere of the high school how?

Of more than a dozen districts contacted by The Dallas Morning News, none suspend students for dress code violations unless they become disciplinary problems.

Terry Barnard, a Duncanville school board member, said the board asked administrators over the summer to tighten dress code enforcement after years of complaints that students were breaking the rules with no consequences.

Oookay. So they go all the way over into serious consequences for an untucked shirt. This is as absurd as no consequences. There's an argument to be made for dress codes; there's no argument to be made for scaring 13-year-olds into compliance with a set of standards so rigorous that teachers would not necessarily be able to comply with them.

It boggles the mind to think that the school is comfortable with giving teachers authority to suspend a student over an unintentional dress code violation, but doesn't trust those same teachers to simply tell students to tuck in their shirts, and make it stick. If the kid says no, or talks back, then the teacher can start to consider discliplinary options. Until then, just help the kids correct their clothing errors (are they going to start suspending girls for runs in their stockings too?) and get them to class on time.

Toys for iraqi children.

Bloggers Dean Esmay, Donald Sensing, and Chief Wiggles have organized an Iraqi Toy Drive for the youth of Iraq. The details are here. Be sure to read the comments for lots of good suggestions about inexpensive toys that will be suitable for Iraq's kids, and make sure you use the most recent mailing address for them (you're shipping the goods to Chief Wiggles at an APO address, so you're not paying for postage to Iraq).

I think I'll be hitting my local dollar store today to stock up on crayons and drawing paper, and I urge the rest of you to do the same. Or, there's always the option of visiting the Oriental Trading Company, which has loads of great stuff, and they will ship to an APO box. And don't miss the heartfelt review of the toy drive (and the condemnation of those who would oppose it) over at A Small Victory.

The lawsuit rodeo in dallas, texas

An education activist in Dallas is suing his local school district in an attempt to force them to release the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) results, among others, at the classroom level. Activist Russell Fish believes these results will show the public how well - or how poorly - certain instructors are teaching. The school district, which vehemently opposes releasing scores, claims that to do so would violate student privacy. Interestingly, Mr. Fish has the NAACP on his side:

Legal experts say that if Mr. Fish's suit is successful, it could be used as a precedent to open up performance data on teachers all over the state.

Mr. Fish, 50, is a retired electrical engineer and volunteer tutor. He also calls himself an "education activist." He says he has been using school district computer records to track public education in Texas for more than a decade...

Mr. Fish claims that the school district fears public knowledge of teacher quality. He also claims that the district's charge that students can be identified from the data is bunkum (and I have a tendency to agree, if the data are released with identifiers rather than names). Teachers, on the other hand, are legally able to be put in the spotlight, according to Mr. Fish's counsel.

What data are we talking about here? The Value-Added Teacher Assessment (usually called VAT), in which teachers are linked with test-score gains made by their students over some time period, usually a couple of years. The theory behind VAT is the opposite of what our hapless Mr. Alford claimed yesterday; VAT states that teacher quality is the critical variable in student educational gains, with race, SES, gender, and so on falling a distant second in the amount of impact.

The article gives a good description of VAT, so I won't go into all of it here. Suffice it to say that schools intended the data to be seen only by administrators and the teachers involved, for the purpose of "internal discussions." Texas releases a lot of other state-, district-, and school-level data, but has traditionally drawn the line at teacher-level data:

The thought of holding teachers publicly accountable for their own classroom test scores summons up a variety of fears among critics who say public schools already place too much emphasis on high-stakes testing. They argue that many variables other than "teacher quality" intrude on test scores and that it's unfair to focus so much attention on the instructor.

"If you are going to publish teacher rankings, then also publish the heroics and beautiful things that teachers do to ennoble our youngsters," said Dr. Erika Karres, an education consultant and former teacher in New York. "You can't consider teachers and students as machines that you can gauge by an input-output industrial model."

Dr. Karres doth protest too much. We know that teachers are more than their test scores; on the other hand, a teacher whose "heroics" leaves students lagging behind when it comes to performance on objective measures is not doing his or her students any favors, no matter how "beautifully" they may be doing it.

The district and Mr. Fish wholeheartedly agree that a couple of years of ineffective teaching can have devastating effects on a child's school performance. Where they part ways is in the decision to hold that knowledge confidential, or release it to the public. Be interesting to see how this turns out.

Mr. Fish has a theory. He says public education used to be "a sacred trust" run by very smart women whose career opportunities were limited to teaching, nursing and a few other professions. "They firmly believed in their bones that they had been placed on earth to impart knowledge to boys and girls," he says.

Clayton Trotter, Mr. Fish's attorney...argues that even-handed public policy should require teachers to be treated the same as police officers, firefighters and other publicly funded professionals whose personnel records are mostly classified as open records. In Texas, state law specifically prohibits public disclosure of a teacher's annual performance review.

Homeschoolers shine at National Merit time

More and more homeschooling kids are making into the elite group known as National Merit Scholars each year, and even those who were once skeptics about homeschooling are starting to be convinced:

The number [of homeschooled students] awarded National Merit Scholarships, the top prize, has jumped by more than 500 percent since 1995, from 21 to 129.

Many parents in this unconventional group embrace convention, when it comes to standardized tests -- to prove to doubting relatives, neighbors and friends they haven't gone off the deep end.

It's a shame that homeschooling parents feel the need to convince others that they haven't gone off the deep end - but I'm glad the tests are there to help them convince others of the power of home-based instruction.

A success story at a challenging school

Van Esselt Elementary School in Washington State has become a NCLB "success story," despite the challenges posed by a student body with 80% below the poverty line, and most of which speak English as a second language. Principal Hajara Rahim has struggled for nine years to help raise the educational quality of the school, and she seems to have done a great job of it:

Van Asselt is the kind of school that educators call "challenging."

As part of the improvement effort, Rahim said, the school also began tracking its students more carefully, assessing their skills with tests at the beginning of the school year, in the middle and at the end, which allows teachers to tailor lessons more effectively...They coordinated the after-school program to reinforce the school-day instruction. They emphasized homework, in some cases recruiting members of the community to help students whose parents are illiterate in English.

The result? Math proficiency scores at Van Asselt, as measured by the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL), have nearly doubled in just two years. Just amazing.

ba ha ha ha!

This has nothing to do with testing, but it tickles me so to see an identity thief get what he deserves. I just had to post it.

The relationship between social studies and voting

The Opinion Journal links decreasing voter participation to the dire state of public school social studies education these days. The theory is that dumbed-down social studies education, which is so "tailored" that kids often don't learn about anything not directly related to them, has resulted in a new "standard":

The percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds who voted fell to 32% in 1996 and 2000, from 50% in 1972. A study in 2000 found that only 28.1% of college freshman kept up to date with politics, a record low and down from 60.3% in 1966. "The current generation of young people may set a new standard for both civic disengagement and civic misinformation," writes J. Martin Rochester in his Fordham essay.

When I was in college (late 1980's), I remember waiting for my boyfriend so he could cast his vote for Michael Dukakis. I didn't cast a vote, mainly because I had very little idea what was going on with either candidate. By graduate school, I was watching the debates, but nothing about either candidate seemed to affect me to the point where I felt the need to vote in either '92 or '96.

Now, of course, it's a different story for me, thanks in no small part to the blogosphere (and September 11th, and the fact that I pay taxes, and etc). So how can we get the bloggers to invigorate political education? Some college courses require students to survey blogs; I think that needs to be pushed down to the high school level as well.

One educrat speaks his mind

Edublather extraordinaire from Hal Alford at the Verde Valley Online new site:

There is considerable controversy surrounding the federal "No Child Left Behind Act" because the law is based almost solely on competency testing...

While a single-test assessment system may be well intentioned, the practice seems to violate many fundamental psychometric, pedagogical, and ethical principles and standards of the education profession and may be harming rather than helping many children. The testing practice can be especially damaging to children of poverty who lack the supports and assets that are available to children elsewhere. It should be no surprise that most of the 276 schools identified as "underperforming" for the 2002 school year, were from schools located in economically distressed areas.

It is no surprise, because many of those schools are in fact "underperforming," and are shortchanging their students of an education. The whole point of NCLB was to refuse to allow loopholes for schools that don't use the money they have to educate children as well and as efficiently as possible. If the tests were removed, these schools would still be underperforming; we just wouldn't have objective evidence of it. These results are a validation of the testing program, not a criticism of it.

Characterizing schools as "underperforming," as the Arizona State Department of Education has done, publicly embarrasses and stigmatizes children and entire communities. Should a school under perform according to test results for a second consecutive year; they are classified as "failing." The law requires that "failing" schools take corrective steps, such as replacing the principal and allowing parents to send their children to other schools. This becomes costly and creates chaos for already beleaguered schools.

Oh, how sad. Much better that an inefficent principal remain in place. Much better that parents be forced to keep their children in bad schools, with no input other than their tax money. How dare they want the same choice that more financially-gifted parents have? If schools are so already-beleaguered, why should parents be forced to stay and support them?

Due to external pressures on schools to perform well on the tests, educators are reluctantly but invariably gearing their curricula to "teach to the test," a practice that undermines the teaching and learning process and negatively affects teacher and student morale.

I've said enough about "teaching to the test" before, so I won't go into all that again, but let me just point out that the test in question is AIMS, Arizona's Instrument for Measuring Success, and it measures only reading, writing, and arithmetic. Try as I might to go the distance with these testing critics (and I admit I don't try too hard), I just can't get worked up about teachers being forced to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic in an timely manner.

Are they doing so in Arizona? Doesn't yet seem like it. Here's a sample high-school level reading test. The readability of items on this form can range anywhere from fifth-grade on up, even though it's 10-, 11th-, and 12th-graders who take this exam. Note that the two sample items are a technical manual and a weather map. Then go to this document, scroll to page 7, and note that only 62% of 10th-graders, 42% of 11th-graders, and 32% of 12th-graders met expectations on this reading exam.

Granted, the 11th- and 12th-graders who took the exam were either new students or previous flunkers, but those results are still wretched. Some Arizona teachers have a much worse problem than morale; they're also incompetent.

...The tests are almost exclusively focused on math, reading and writing and ignore other important areas of learning such as art, science and social studies.

Which are all just oh-so-useful to kids who haven't mastered reading yet. It's admirable that Hal wants schools to focus on science, but when kids haven't mastered reading weather maps, I'd say they're not quite ready to start learning meteorology yet.

The tests fail to account for individual learning styles and developmental capacities, and they ignore state-of-the art research on multiple intelligences, including emotional intelligence. The emphasis on testing is certain to leave many children behind feeling discouraged and less confident about their ability to learn.

Gak, choke, urk.... *chugs Maalox* Ahhh. That's better. I really should be more careful about reading such piteously weeny edublather, at least while I still have these ulcers. My gag reflex is more sensitive than it used to be.

But seriously, while I hate to beat a dead horse, almost 40% of the 10th-graders flunked the basic reading comprehension part of the AIMS, and the math results are worse - MUCH worse. And Hal is worried about their emotional intelligence? Can these kids spell "emotional?" Can they count the number of letters in the word? Hal's emotional senses sure seems to be working overtime here in his concern for these kids. While some kids might indeed be "harmed" by tests, my guess is that those who haven't bought into the educrat theory that EI is more important than reading or math skills will come away relatively unscathed.

It worries me that Hal deliberately chooses to say that kids, rather than being discouraged about what they've learned, are instead going to discouraged about "their ability to learn." Please tell me he's not going where he's going with this...

The single-test assessment system discriminates against visually and linguistically limited learners who might otherwise be uniquely talented. History is full of examples of famous individuals who were said to have learning disabilities such as Winston Churchill, Walt Disney, and Albert Einstein. One can only wonder how they would have performed on standardized tests?

Yep, that's where he was going - the sacred space of learning disabilities.

All of you LD advocates who insist that Albert Einstein was learning disabled can just. Stop. It. Now. This claim, invented by LD advocates and repeated by gullible educrats, has been disproven by Einstein's biographers. Einstein was a quiet youngster, to be sure, but was a wonderful student from day one and was reading physics books by age 12. The only tests he ever flunked were ones he didn't bother to study for. He was not dyslexic. He would have been bored out of his gourd by the AIMS, I'm sure, but if he'd shown up for it he would have passed it.

What is it with LD advocates and these great history figures? All three of the great men mentioned above have been "diagnosed" with learning disabilities well after the fact, by those who have a political axe to grind. Was Winston Churchill learning disabled? Even the sketchiest biography mentions that he was shy and had a speech impediment, but notes that as soon as he discovered his passion (the military), he was a whiz-bang student. Does this mean we should conclude that all LD students are just bored, and goad them to work harder? Or should we follow Winston's example and send them all to military school?

The practice of wholesale versus individualized testing is also psychometrically unsound and it violates the ethical codes of professions whose members have been principally responsible for the evolution of the testing movement, such as the American Psychological Association, the American Counseling Association, and the National Council on Measurement in Education. The standards of these professions remind practitioners that assessment should be highly individualized and that educational and counseling decisions should never be based on single test scores alone.

Buried within this mound of edublather is this, the one valid criticism of testing in this article. I've written about this before. Note that the AERA qualifies its own claim, though, by saying that if only one test score is used for a high-stakes decision, there should be ample validity evidence, and the students should be allowed multiple chances to pass, and given remedial education if they fail. For example, all schools that use exit exams follow these rules, and they often provide alternatives (or loopholes) for students who don't pass the exit exam. What Hal wants you to believe is that the AERA's own statements forbid the use of standardized exams in high-stakes situations, which is not true.

Most importantly, the results of any test must be interpreted in light of many other factors including gender, age, race, ethnicity, disability, language acquisition, and socioeconomic status.

The document that Hal is allegedly getting this from is the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, and I've got my copy right here. The standards state quite clearly that:

* Overall passing rates need not be comparable across groups for a test to be considered fair
* Validity evidence should be presented for all subgroups
* Differential item functioning should be examined for all subgroups
* The test items should be examined for biased or offensive content
* Mean group differences should be investigated to ensure that the differences are not due to contruct-irrelevant skills
* Separate prediction lines should be used if the test is found to have differing predictive validity for different subgroups.

This is all from the section on "Fairness in Testing and Test Use." Note what Hal didn't mention in his "summary" of these standards? He doesn't mention that group mean differences are not in and of themselves unfair, and that if all validity and correlational evidence suggests it, it's perfectly okay to hold both Group A and Group B to the same passing score, even if the result is that 20% of Group A flunks while 80% of Group B does. No demographic information about the two groups is a priori of importance.

It's simply not true that the test results must be interpreted in light of gender, race, etc. Not if the test has been found to be unbiased. It shouldn't be assumed that the test is biased without empirical evidence, either.

[Devoted Reader Laura points out that students with organic disabilities who are unable to progress beyond a certain point, such as those with Down's Syndrome, should not be held to the same testing standards as other students. I agree, but I understand why NCLB demands that schools test these students. It's to discourage the schools from fudging their averages by placing non-disabled students into special education. There's a solution here that takes care of both problems, but I don't know what it is.

The Guidelines do note that test developers should make exceptions for disabled students, and this is the only group that is singled out for special treatment. But my comments above still hold for when Group A and Group B differ in a way that is not being directly measured by the educational assessment, such as race, sex, income level, etc. There's no reason to label a test as automatically unfair if fewer female students pass it, or fewer Hispanic students pass it, or fewer poor students pass it.]

Many empirical studies have shown that there are strong correlations between test scores and such factors as family income, education of parents, single-parent families, and school enrollment. Simply put, children who have two educated parents who are economically secure are much more likely to do better on tests than children who do not have the same assets.

And they're likely to do better in school; they're less likely to have run-ins with the law; they're more likely to have better health, and to go on to college, and to do well in life. This is a statement that supports marriage, not one that invalidates testing. Every measure of academic achievement correlates positively with family income and parental education; that's not a reason to believe those measures aren't assessing a valid construct. Grades correlate with income, too; does Hal believe we should abolish those?

This is the same old tired argument that, "It's just not fair that some kids have more advantages than others." Ironically, it's being used here as an argument against an act that is trying to ensure that kids from poor homes still get a good education in school.

Or, put another way, one can predict with astoundingly high probability that children from neighborhoods of poverty, many of whom are children of ethnic minority, will achieve poorer results on the tests than their affluent counterparts, irrespective of the quality of teaching.

But it's not irrespective of teaching, you see. These kids are more likely to go to bad schools, but if they come from poor homes or uneducated parents, they're more dependent on those schools for everything they learn. And those schools are less likely to hire good teachers and less likely to hang on to the ones they have. The good schools that don't buy this argument - the schools with outstanding achievement despite high levels of minority or lower-income enrollment - do so, in part, by relying heavily on testing. They don't tolerate poor test scores any more than they tolerate bad teaching.

It is for this reason that the National Association for Multicultural Education called for an end to the misuse of standardized and state mandated testing because it only creates more barriers to equal opportunity for large numbers of Americans.

Not true. The barriers are already there. A kid who can't read a weather map in 11th grade is at a disadvantage whether we test that or not. The tests are not the barriers. They're showing us which schools are the barriers. And when this many people are steamed about them, I know the tests are showing us something we should be looking at.

Assessment results should be interpreted only in relation to other behavioral data and the socioeconomic and cultural background of learners. They should take into consideration the diverse learning style and varying developmental capacities of all children. The best kind of assessment is ongoing, within each classroom, and geared toward teaching each child better in terms of his/her genuine needs.

Not true. This kind of claptrap is what allows educrats to believe that it's okay if a child of a certain "cultural background" can't read at grade level, or that "diverse learning styles" are what prevent well over half of Arizona's 8th-graders from passing the math portion of the AIMS. Good teachers instinctively tailor their approach for individual students, and to use tailored teaching as an excuse for letting kids flunk is an insult to their intelligence, and to ours.

You know, Hal is a retired principal. His school, Mingus Union High, seemed to do okay, despite a nauseatingly PC mission statement. This report card even brags about the high number of Flinn Foundation Scholars they've produced (which are chosen, in part, on SAT scores). But the school recieved only a "Maintaining Performance" rating this past year. Could that be the ultimate cause of this outpouring of seemingly-well-intentioned yet sadly-misinformed testing criticism?

Testing vocational students

Should vocational students who fail the MCAS nevertheless be allowed to graduate? Some advocates think so and, along with groups such as the Massachusetts Association of Vocational Administrator, have filed a class-action lawsuit against the state of Massachusetts:

Even as vocational schools improve their scores and reduce failures to the single digits, advocates hope to change the law through the courts so that tech students are evaluated as much or more on their trade skills than on MCAS.

Lyons supports a class-action lawsuit that would allow schools to graduate vocational students who fail MCAS provided they demonstrate proficiency in their trade. Such students would be presented with a "certificate of occupational proficiency."

On the one hand, the vocational schools claim that their students are learning a trade, and thus deserve an exemption. To me, that claim carries more weight than their second reason, which is that the MCAS is "unfair" to votech schools because such schools have more "low-income and special-needs students." The lower-income students, at least, are the ones who are most in need of education and were the students in mind when NCLB was implemented. Wouldn't the MCAS serve at least as a reminder to vocational schools that, in this day and age, a student with a shoddy education in math and English is going to be at a disadvantage even if the student is good with his hands, or has learned a specific trade?

Some schools seem to have taken up the challenge and devote more time to academics (and to MCAS prep):

At Shawsheen, 300 students took the test last spring, 88 of whom are considered of special needs. Yet their proficiency in English language arts jumped since last year from 34 to 54 percent while math proficiency more than doubled from 14 to 35. Meanwhile, failures declined from 13 to 4 percent in English and from 41 to 18 in math...

Voke students across the state improved in English and math and saw failure rates drop.

Another form of motivation

The schedule for students at Shelbyville Junior High (IL):
Practice, practice, practice.
Repitition, repitition, repitition.
Testing, testing, testing.
Balloons, balloons, balloons.

Informing the business crowd

The NCLB Act is "hard work," educators tell business leaders. Imagine that:

Superintendents for the Gainesville and Hall County school systems paired up Thursday to talk to area business leaders about the federal No Child Left Behind Act...

Standardized tests do "better at finding out what you can remember, (such as) dates and facts," Fordham said. "But when it comes to deeper understanding, they're not as good as they claim to be."

Actually, standardized tests can be as good as they claim to be for measuring "deeper understanding," if the items are well-written and the subject material is well-integrated. There are a few guidelines out there for writing good test items of this type; this manual, by Case and Swanson, is adaptable to many item types, is used in many item-writing workshops, and is considered to be somewhat of an industry standard. But that's a lecture for another day.

I'm not sure why this speech needed to be given to the Greater Hall Chamber of Commerce's board of directors. Perhaps some of you readers can enlighten me.

Assessing scientific knowledge in Massachusetts

The first science, technology, and engineering portion of the MCAS was administered to students in Massachusetts this past year, and the public schools hope to use the exam as a guide to curriculum changes:

While other students were taking Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests in English and math last spring, fifth- and eighth-grade students took the first science, technology and engineering exam, which will be a permanent fixture on the test schedule from now on...

The tests help to prepare students to take science MCAS tests in 10th grade, which will become a requirement for graduation in 2006. Subject-specific tests in biology, chemistry, physics and technology/engineering will be given to 10th-graders as a pilot program in 2004 and 2005, but scores count in 2006.

Here are the disclosed 2003 science test forms for Grade 5 and Grade 8, if you're interested. The multiple-choice items seem pretty straightforward, although the subject material covered is so broad that the items seem to really jump around in terms of content, from ecosystems to the earth's crust to biology to auto mechanics. Really - item 12 on the eighth-grade exam asks which car part belongs to its control system, and if the answer is not, "Fuel tank," then I feel really stupid. [Update: Reader Chris tactfully points out that the control system probably involves the steering wheel, not the fuel tank. I tell you, my days with no caffeine just keep getting better and better.]

The open-ended items seem a bit tougher. Students must list the necessary items and steps for conducting experiments, describe animal and plant cell functions, and describe wind patterns. Straightforward, but certainly not something the students can BS or fudge answers to, I would think. The 32% number for the proficient/advanced group, while not stellar, is about what I would expect from today's public school students.

Weary in Carolina

South Carolina's students are confounding the state's DOE; the students improved substantially on math but dropped at every level on English, according to the most recent Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test (PACT) scores. Right now, almost 30% of SC's students do not score at even the "basic" level in English/language arts, a drop of 4 percentage points, whereas math scores increased by 6 percentage points. Educators blame test fatigue for the decline:

Something happened (in English/language arts) that we can’t explain,” said Sandra Lindsay, deputy state superintendent. “We’re checking everything we can think of.”

“By that time, they were losing focus,” said Mini Johnson, a fourth grade teacher at Lewis Greenview Elementary in Columbia.

That's possible. Educators have moved the English portion to the beginning of next year's exam, and if their theory is correct, the decline in scores will not continue.

College roundup

Essayist extraordinaire Victor David Hansen is one of the featured authors in the National Review's new special on higher education. Yes, every other page is an ad, but it's worth reading (and the ads make me nostalgic for college days, which I didn't think was possible). The topics include the heavily-politicized college atmosphere, the impact of September 11th on campus discussions, and the controversies surrounding community service for college students.

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Are Georgia's college hopefuls not that motivated to do well on the SATs? That's the theory of Governor Sonny Purdue, who ultimately hopes to see the SATs required for the HOPE scholarship. Right now the scholarships require only a B average in core curriculum classwork, which allegedly has led to grade inflation in Georgia's schools. The interview with the governor is here. Controversial? What do you think?

The governor didn't suggest a minimum score. But he said even a low minimum SAT would help create an incentive for some students to do better on the exam.

"It would be devastating for minority students," said House Education Chairman Bob Holmes (D-Atlanta), a member of the HOPE study commission who is African-American. "Even the people at the College Board indicate you should not use this as a reflection of how well students will do in college."

That's interesting, given that the College Board markets the SAT as a method of indicating college readiness, to be used in combination with grades. I wasn't aware of any press release or research from the CB which stated that the SAT was not related to college performance.

And we're not really talking about high standards here. One suggested SAT cutpoint for the HOPE is a score of 1000, which is an average score nationwide, but above Georgia's average of 984 (the lowest in the nation). That requirement would have disqualified almost one-third of the HOPE scholars in 2000 - and remember, these are kids with B averages in high school. Luckily, Governor Perdue has faith in his students and doesn't expect minority scholarship offers to plummet if the SAT is included in the equation.

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Professorial gadfly Mike S. Adams is back with another column at Townhall.com. This time, he's written an open letter to UNC's Director of Diversity, in which he wonders why the new spirit of moral relativism and non-judgmentalism that's so prevalent on campus shouldn't be extended even further - say, to pedophiles?

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From AZCentral.com's College Guide, here's how to master tests without technically cheating. The suggestions, which are fantastically unimaginative (I mean, what student isn't going to try to buddy up on homework assignments or get copies of old tests these days?), reminded me of my experience as a TA for a legendary, tough old teacher in my graduate department.

This professor reused exams from year to year, but his exam questions were so monstrously esoteric and vague and broad and eccentric that you literally could not pass his exams unless you reviewed copies of previous exams, so that you'd have some idea of what you were in for. The items were unlike any that I'd seen on any other statistics exams, and it took people hours to finish these tests.

I took the course one year and TA'd it the next. When the time came to grade the first batch of exams, I asked the professor for the key, and he said there wasn't one. I was just to solve all the exam items on my own, and then check it against the class's work, and call him if there were any problems. It was like having to take the class all over again - but I admit, I really got a lot out of it the second time around.

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And finally, Slick Willie, otherwise known as former President William J. Clinton, has created a foundation to provide free test preparation services to Little Rock students. The William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation is teaming up with the Princeton Review to fund a program forstudents who are headed for college and would like to take the SAT or ACT, but cannot afford any test preparation courses. Right now, Arkansans who take the SAT score above average on the exam - but they represent only 6% of Arkansas's graduating seniors.

Howdy

Hi, everyone. I'm at work and online but still feeling quite a bit under the weather. Of course, that could just be due to the lack of coffee, or the general lack of anything spicy, acid, peppy, or invigorating in my bloodstream. Hopefully, I can soon reintroduce caffeine, chocolate, and alcohol into my system; otherwise, life might not be worth living.

But I'm doing much better and hope to get a post or two up today.

Blurgh.

Tempting though it is to spill all the details of my oh-so-wonderful day, I'll just say that I spent the day in the ER, that I don't have GERD but instead esophageal ulcers brought on by another medication, and leave it at that. Blech.

So now I have all sorts of chalky medicine, and I'm eating like a very, very old person (did you know Ensure comes in flavors like butter pecan?), and hopefully everything will go down easily and stay down. I do feel better already, and it helped to have my boyfriend with me all day (and the doctor and nurses weren't bad, either). Hopefully I'll be back to normal in no time. Blogging should resume on Friday; Saturday at the latest.

today's schedule

Hello, everyone. I have lots of meetings today, but also a doctor's appointment to keep, because my GERD symptoms are so severe that I'm having a lot of trouble just getting around. I don't think my doctor will send me to the hospital right away for tests, but you never know.

I'll hopefully be blogging late this afternoon, but if you don't hear from me, I just wanted to give advance warning as to why that might be. I don't want to scare you guys (I'm not about to keel over on you), but I also don't want a possibly-long stretch of non-blogdom to go unexplained.

Do teddy bears get issued at orientation, too?

I was greatly amused by this article (found through WSJ's Best of the Web), which *giggle* reports that a total of four students have *snicker* fallen out of bunkbeds at a certain school, and this is a lot considering that school has just started, so *snurf* the school is going to insist on *teehee* guardrails being installed on beds that don't already have them.

How callous of me to poke fun at poor, injured students from some elementary boarding school, right? Think again. The school in question is the University of Buffalo:

Four University at Buffalo students have injured themselves falling or jumping out of bunk beds in the first month of school, an unusually high total that concerns school officials.

"...or jumping?" The hell? Jumping implies intent, in which case the administrators should invoke Darwin's theories and remove all guardrails at once. Perhaps the students jumped because they were late for class; perhaps they jumped because they were suicidal over having to take a statistics class this semester, and they were too lazy to drag their tails out to the nearest bridge.

Either way, why's the U of B administration got to be involved when adults choose to jump from a bunkbed? What's next, height markers on the walls in the manner of depth markers on pool perimeters?

In response, UB administrators are warning students to be careful when using the beds, and the school is ordering guardrails to install on all beds that don't already have them. The series of accidents is surprising to officials, who say UB typically receives one report a year of a student falling out of a bed.

You know, I did a lot of wild and stupid things in college. Things I won't write about here, because I know of at least one minor that reads this blog (Hi, J!). But I never did anything quite so wild as majorly hurting myself falling off a bunkbed, nor anything so stupid as reporting it to the college. I mean, seriously. Who tells their campus administrators that they fell out of bed?

"It's an unprecedented situation for us," said Joseph J. Krakowiak, director of UB's residence halls. The students who fell reported minor injuries - the most severe was a broken ankle - in incidents that took place over the past four weeks in UB residence halls, said Dennis R. Black, vice president for student affairs.

Okay, are they all fallers now? Or do we still think some of them were jumpers? Man, that suicidal one must be pissed about that broken ankle. And if that's the most severe injury, why were the other three reported at all?

There's no common thread among the accidents, Black said. In one case, for example, a sleeping student either heard a phone ringing or dreamed she heard a phone ringing and hurt herself when she jumped out of bed to answer it.

*mgphfhg* Okay, I will not laugh, I will not laugh...

In another, a student woke up one morning to find himself lying on the floor next to his loft bed and sporting a bloody lip, Black said. The student could only assume he fell out of bed but wasn't jarred awake.

*snortpdmhpgh* Okay, so he's a jumper AND he has blackouts. Or maybe he got the bloody lip somewhere else and just passed out on the floor?

Another student fell when she eschewed the bed's ladder and tried to climb down onto the top of a nearby desk.

Bahh hha hah hhah! I mean, come on. If she was the one with the broken ankle, then I feel bad for her, but surely it's not the college's responsibility to make sure that she comes down out of bed in the proper manner in the morning, is it? Suppose the guardrails were there and she just clambered over them to step onto the desk, and then subsequently slipped and fell after landing on a pencil? What's the college supposed to do then, lash students into bed at night and unstrap them in the mornings?

This last accident, though, given that it was in the morning, is the one most attributable to muleheaded stupidity, and least attributable to alcohol. I find it very interesting that this article doesn't even mention that most famous of balance/judgment destroyers until the verrrry end, nor does it report whether intoxication was related to any of these accidents - and we know it had to be. That guy on the floor with a black lip? Please. If his veins contained more red blood cells than Rolling Rock, I'd be surprised.

The loft beds in use at UB's dormitories typically aren't used as bunk beds in a traditional sense, with two students sleeping one above the other. Most often, the UB beds are raised as much as five feet off the ground so that students can fit storage boxes, a computer desk or a chair underneath.

So, five feet. Not that low to the ground. About nose- to chest-level with most students. You'd think that young adults smart enough to get into college would eye this distance and wonder if maybe it wouldn't be a good idea to plan on sleeping on the floor when inebriated, or to make sure to use the ladder that the school so thoughtfully provides.

The university sent an e-mail to students last week urging them to be careful in using their loft beds, particularly if they've consumed alcohol or used drugs or medication. The e-mail also asked students if they want a rail installed now or if they want their bed lowered to the floor.

Actually, considering how often college students engage in binge drinking, I'm sure there were more falls than were reported. During Pledge Week people were probably dropping like coconuts throughout the dorms. And it's not that I don't think guardrails would be a useful feature on beds placed that high. I just think it's ridiculous that the tone of this article, and the administrators' comments, seems to be that everything that happens inside a dorm room is U of B's fault, and that students just can't be expected to be responsible for their own choices, be they beer-drinking or ladder-avoiding ones.

Mississippi flunks in history

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation has issued "flunking" reports to 23 states, including Mississippi, that were based on the "comprehensive historical content, sequential development, and balance in each state's history curriculum."

One professor says she's not surprised:

"Our state standards are very vague in terms of giving teachers guidance in what history content should be taught," said Mary Beth Farrell, a University of Southern Mississippi professor who supervises student teachers who teach social studies in grades 7-12.

"Usually, what happens with thematic approaches, the focus is not on history, but on themes," Porter said. "A cultural interaction theme might mention a few events while teaching culture ... It's not really teaching solid American history."

No, doesn't sound like it is. What on earth is a "cultural interaction theme," anyway? And why is that considered by educators to be a better way of learning history than learning facts, dates, and the chronological unfolding of events in the US or in the world?

These grades, by the way, are part of the recent Fordham Institute project, "Back to Basics: Reclaiming Social Studies" that has been so much in the news lately. In case you're wondering, the six states that recieved A's in History are Alabama, Arizona, California, Indiana, Massachusetts, and New York.

Pennsylvania, where I live, got almost the lowest possible score, and its standards begin with the claim that:

History...is a narrative—a story. In order to tell the story it is not sufficient
to simply recall facts; it is also necessary to understand the context of the time and place and to apply historical thinking skills.

However, the state then goes on to teach history in chronological fashion by grade, so that students don't study colonial history after 6th grade, and don't study much that happened after 1890 until they reach 10th grade. To further complicate things, the study of History is divided up into twenty somewhat arbitrary categories, and students study only small "thematic groupings" of people from long periods of time, so that the historical context and sense of time is lost.

Alabama, on the other hand, which got a very high score, begins teaching students about slavery and its legacy in the fourth-grade, going from the country's origins to the civil rights movement. In fifth and sixth grades, students cover much of the same material, much more thoroughly, and their studies again take them from colonial days to the present. Thus, the chronology of history is drilled into young Alabamians from the start, before they've even reached high-school level history.

And what was so bad about Mississippi's History standards? The Mississippi Social Studies Framework mission statement states that social studies is meant to "promote an understanding of the world, human interaction, cultural diversity," which apparently requires a lot of poster-making. And Mississippi also suffers from what seems to be part of the definition of a bad History program, which is to say that their program is organized in a thematic, rather than chronological, manner.

Also on the site, for you interested (or alarmed) parents, here are six questions to ask on the first night back at school. And don't miss the report, "Where Did Social Studies Go Wrong?"

Getting a head start on testing

Head Start, founded with the best of intentions, is a pre-school program that is supposed to rescue disadvantaged toddlers and help prepare them for schools. Problem is, according to the federal government, when Head Start youth enter the first grade, they still lag behind the other students, so the government wants to begin administering tests to these 4- and 5-year-olds.

Does that decision generate some controversy? Does the sun rise in the mornings?

The Head Start test is already drawing some of the same criticism as other standardized tests, such as the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. Critics say a more informal, year-round assessment that includes discussions with parents is a more valid way to assess preschoolers.

Others say the new test could stress out kids and pressure teachers to replace play activities with a more structured curriculum, narrowing the purpose of Head Start, established in 1965 for economically disadvantaged families.

The problem is, the efficicacy of Head Start seems to vary wildly depending on who's doing the talking, and what the speaker expects Head Start to be doing. The government seems to be concerned that Head Start is not bringing kids up to speed quickly enough on reading skills - but defenders of Head Start say that's not true:

Children who have graduated from Head Start are less likely to repeat a grade or require special education and more likely to graduate from high school, according to the Florida Children's Forum, a child advocacy group. Local Head Start directors in Florida point to the results of a broad state test that showed at least 80 percent of Head Start children having the motor, cognitive and language skills they needed to begin school, slightly more than their peers who were not in Head Start.

It seems to me that Head Start teachers and administrators don't want the government to determine how well children are progressing, which is an iffy stand to take, given that Head Start is a government program:

Head Start teachers have always charted the progress of their students, they say, but by their own methods - and without having to report their measurements to the government. Much like private preschool providers, they measure student performance by talking to parents, by observing students playing with other children and by observing their knowledge of the alphabet, shapes and numbers.

The suggested test, though, sounds rather innocuous (and is 20 minutes really too long to expect a four-year-old to concentrate? I wouldn't know). The real issue here seems to be that the government-based test measures only reading and math, while Head Start teachers believe that Head Start is designed to focus on social skills and fine motor skills.

So who's right? I don't know. It depends on what the focus of Head Start is, and whether the government is willing to incorporate research suggesting that basic standardized tests might not be the best way to assess preschoolers, or to assess whatever it is Head Start is supposed to accomplish. Perhaps some of you out there with more familiarity with this program can clue me in.

the voice of reason from northwest indiana

Grade inflation doesn't help anyone learn:

...In 1966, only 15% of college freshmen were averaging A's; In 1991, that number jumped to 24 percent. Grade inflation is very much a reality. Some believe it originated in the 1960s. As a result of the Vietnam War, college professors lowered standards to keep average or failing students out of the draft...

Many feel that colleges are no longer educational institutions, but businesses where the students are the "customers." According to John Leo, author of the 1993 U.S. News & World Report article "A for Effort. Or for Showing Up," "market forces" are to blame. "As tuition rises, so does grade inflation," he states. He makes a valid point; however, many are reluctant to make such an accusation...

Misunderstanding the meaning of test prep

Here's a well-intentioned, if slightly clueless, SAT article from Post-Standard (NY) writer Kate Perry. It seems she's convinced that the SAT is unfair because kids who pay for test prep might do better on the SAT than kids who don't:

It's no secret that the SATs are as much about knowledge of how the test works as about the questions on the exam. [By the way, this isn't true, but testing critics keep repeating it.]Students who are more acquainted with the test have an advantage over students who are unfamiliar with the strategy needed to crack it. This advantage comes at a price.

Students who can afford private tutoring sessions, books and high-tech calculators have a distinct edge over students who can't afford any of these things.

That this is stated as a serious criticism of the test amazes me. Let's take an analogous situation. You want to take a driver's license exam. You think you're naturally a bad driver, so you go to driving school, or you pay someone to teach you, or you just practice a lot. You end up passing the test, while a friend who did much less in the way of preparation failed to pass. You now have a driver's license, and she does not.

Is this proof that the driver's license exam is unfair? Don't be ridiculous. Test takers gain an advantage on virtually every exam under the sun (except perhaps for IQ tests) by preparing for that exam. The fact that the SAT, or any test, can be prepared for does not mean that the test is not a valid measure of acheivement or skills or knowledge. As this principal puts it, the key to better SAT scores is practice, practice, practice. That's also how you get to Carnegie Hall, should anybody ask.

What's more, this journalist buys wholesale the claim (made only by the test prep companies, not by the College Board) that she can expect a 200-point increase by taking a few practice exams - a few expensive practice exams, that is. If you refuse to grant her that assumption, and I do, then her entire argument that SAT point increases can be "purchased" falls apart.

What does it always come down to with these types of crusading journalists? Money. What this writer wants you to believe is that:

(a) it's inherently unfair that some kids grow up in richer families than others, when those kids have more options for academic practice open to them,

(b) it's possible to create any valid measure of academic achievement on which kids who are better prepared will not have an advantage, and,

(c) that no poor kid has a chance to do well on the SAT.

I believe (a) and (b) are bunkum, and it can be shown that (c) is pure poppycock. Every library in the US has practice SAT books, and these same books can be bought online, either from ETS or from booksellers, at a very reasonable price. Any kid who is discliplined enough to sit down with the tests, take many practice exams under the time limit, and ask a teacher or parent for help with the items they got wrong is going to get as much benefit from it as those rich kids whose parents can foot the bill for the test prep companies.

And that $28 test fee? Every testing company in the US allows for fee waivers from students who can't afford the bills. Some give partial waivers, some full; some high schools foot the bill as well.

Although I've written about this before, I still remain amazed that a journalist can get an article published despite the fact that they don't bother to do their research (re: cheap test prep and fee waivers), and despite the fact that they take the inflated claims made by test prep companies and restate them as criticisms of the tests themselves.

What I said to that other credulous reporter back in February still stands:

Last I checked, not only is there no solid research indicating that test prep courses work for all kids, but there's also no research showing that price is any indicator of the quality of a test prep course. Let me point out again that the test was designed as an equalizer and in fact works as one - but our society is unequal with regards to wealth, and always will be. A poor kid with great SATs will not be poor for long. A rich kid who can't pass the SATs will be dependent on familial influence and money to get into college. The kid who works the hardest and had the most ability will probably do the best. The test prep companies will charge whatever credulous customers...are willing to pay. And this is a criticism of the tests how? It isn't ETS creating that divide.

And life just keeps getting better...

Okay, so I already lost a day of work (and blogging) thanks to everything else I had to get done yesterday, and my GERD is still really, really bad, and I'm also suffering from the consequences of caffeine withdrawal. But I managed to pull it together this morning, and at 8:15 I was on my way into work, all ready to give a presentation in front of an item review committee.

At which point, I was promptly involved in a four-car accident.

My car seems to have the most damage, because my car was #3 in the lineup and the only car actually hit by another moving car (#4). I seem to be okay; my Saturn has a very sad-looking rear end at this point, but it's still driveable. My car didn't really do any damage to the other two cars that were involved, because I was at a complete stop when I was hit. I thought at first that my car was completely dead, but that was just because Saturn thoughtfully installs auto shutoffs on their newer models, and so being hit caused my car to turn off and stay off for a short period of time.

So, I'm several hours behind schedule, I'm tied to my cell phone waiting for the insurance adjuster to call me, and I need to contact one of the other accident victims tonight to let her know what's going to happen with the insurance. Oh, and the accident brought on a nice case of extra-upset stomach and general shaken-up-ed-ness.

Blogging will resume when whomever or whatever placed this curse on me decides to have pity on my poor fizzy body and scrambled brain and remove it.

Update: Upon rethinking, I suppose I should look at the silver lining here, and be grateful that I have a lot of friends with medical knowlege (so that they can lend sympathetic and informed support about my GERD), and a boyfriend who works for an auto insurance company (so he can hold my hand, take me through the steps, and figure out plans for saber-rattling against the person who hit me, if need be).

Miss fizzychest, continued

Oh, well, I suppose I should be glad that it isn't anything cardiac-related. But my case of GERD seems to be pretty bad, and the OTC stuff didn't touch it. My doctor's given me meds; hopefully they'll work so that I can avoid the whole visiting-the-hospital-for-ooky-tests thing.

And thanks to those of you who wrote (privately) that you've had your own issues with acid reflux. I don't plan to turn this blog into some kind of support group (although I suppose it is, in a way, for people who get high blood pressure over educational idiocies), but I appreciate the support nonetheless.

More homeschooling blogs

The homeschooling blogs are popping up like mushrooms; go to School @ Home and check the list on the left for even more sites.

Surely, the kids should be blogging too, as part of their lessons, right, Tenn?

Tolerating the intolerable

In an age when honor students get suspended because a steak knife or cap gun is found in their car, a group of football players at Mepham High School (NY) can get away with sexually attacking three younger teammates, and the school does virtually nothing until the press finds out about it. Michele of A Small Victory has the entire story at her site, and she has inside information on it because she's local to that area.

The three attacks took place at a football camp in Pennsylvania. There were apparently three separate attacks of sodomy, three attackers and three witnesses, all of whom threatened the victims with further violence if they told anyone. One victim, though, didn't stop bleeding for days afterward and was forced to tell his mother. I assume this was the same victim who required surgery to correct the damage.

The players at the camp knew about the attacks, but did not tell the coaches. Everyone was suffering under a code of silence meant to protect the attackers and witnesses and intimidate the victims and their families. When the story finally made the national news on Sept. 16th, the attackers had not even been suspended because a written statement from witnesses or victims had not been obtained.

Cap gun in your car? You're out, no excuses, no complaining.

Brutally sodomize younger teammates? Hey, as long as nobody signs anything, the school will sit on its hands.

This would be enough to enrage anyone, but Michele has more:

The media gets a hold of the story and all hell breaks loose. Adults become defensive. School officials feign horror. The students of the school become divided, with some saying - remaining anonymous in interviews - that the participants should be expelled, while the cheerleaders and football players rally 'round the molesters.

Oh, it wasn't all the kids. It was just the football players, the cheerleaders and a few stragglers who thought it was a good way to get out of class.

Michele is sickened by the support being shown for a corrupt group of teammates, and understands completely why canceling the football season is necessary. The team knew about brutal sexual assaults and did not tell the coaches. If the football players don't understand the concept of culpability in the eyes of the law, now's a good time for them to start.

Michele is astounded, and more than a little nauseated:

The loud protestations of those who are fuming at the school board makes you wonder who they think the victims of this whole thing are? Do they honestly think they have been wronged? What kind of homes do these people grow up in that they have the audacity and the smugness to prance around like they have been wronged when there are three boys - school mates of theirs - who have been basically raped by their fellow students?...

Do I need to tell you why those statements make me sick?

It gets worse; one of the players who is accused of participating in the sexual assaults had been warned by school officials before the camp not to "harass" any other teammates. Michele neatly outlines the various groups who are to blame:

The fault for this whole episode begins with the parents of the accused players, for raising kids who think that they have the right to do this to people; the attackers themselves; the kids who watched and said nothing; the kids who found out later, knowing who the attackers were, and still said nothing; and the school for allowing a serious discipline problem to go unchecked and permitting this previously suspended football player to go on a school-sanctioned trip.

In other words, the fact that the school might have known about the brutality of one player beforehand doesn't place the fault of this all on the school. The attackers - and the witnesses - should face severe legal consequences. Michele fears a round of "Boys will be boys" defenses in court. I fear she's right.

By the way, the press releases for Mepham High stop at September 5th. Imagine that.

"common sense surrenders"

That's the headline that Fark.com gives to this story, and I can't come up with one more concise - and appropriate:

Pupils across Lincolnshire may soon be able to sit exams without fear of failing, when new government guidelines come into effect. The guidelines, for marking key national curriculum exams, recommend that the current F grade, for 'fail', should be replaced with an N grade, for 'nearly'.

Nick Seaton, the chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, described the changes as "political correctness gone stark raving bonkers". He said educational managers were afraid to use the words 'right', 'wrong' and 'fail'.

I think, if this is not a joke, that Nick is right. "Stark raving bonkers" is the least-extreme term I'd use for this. Hey, Mr. "Spokesman," do you really think that a kid who gets several steps of a mathematical equation right, but gets the "uncreditworthy" answer, does in fact know what he's doing, math-wise? Do you really believe that kid should get some credit, if only psychologically, for getting to the wrong answer? What if that kid gets into engineering school with this sort of mathematical training? Would you ever drive over a bridge designed by that type of student?

Math has right answers and wrong answers, and all this PC fuddling around to hide the fact that Lincolnshire can't teach its kids to get the right answers isn't going to change that. If they follow the right steps but get the wrong answer, it's just plain WRONG, and the student's work should be corrected.

Methinks these folks need to read music teacher Bob Blount's essay on why effort isn't good enough (cached version; not sure how long it will be up). Key line:

If the results are poor but I praise the effort, here's what I'm telling them: "The quality of effort that produces poor results is not only acceptable, it is praiseworthy." I don't know about you, but I don't want MY kids getting that message from anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Bugging the educators

A student in a California high school wants to start a "Caucasian" club - but the membership rules aren't quite what you'd expect:

Lisa McClelland says she isn't a racist. She says her campaign for a Caucasian Club at her California high school is a move toward diversity, not bigotry. She says everyone is invited -- and nobody will be excluded.

McClelland's ethnic background includes American Indian, Hispanic, Dutch, German, Italian and Irish. She says she and her friends feel slighted by other clubs at Freedom High School in Oakley, such as the Black Student Union and the Asian Club.

I can understand why she feels slighted. But if everyone's included, why call it the Caucasian Club? Just to make a point? Just to get under the skin of the PC crowd? Just to give the principal fits? I mean, if you want to get creative and funny with names in ways that will make your principal break out in hives, this is the way to do it.

Did the "holistic" admissions model work?

The Tri-Valley Herald provides an update on the "innovate" college admissions policy implemented by UC President Richard Atkinson. The plan two years ago was to move away from test scores and GPAs, and towards a "comprehensive, holistic" form of judging applicants (despite their best efforts to deny it, judging applicants is exactly what they're still doing).

Has it worked? I suppose that depends on how you define "worked":

On Thursday, the effectiveness of that policy was a dominant theme of Atkinson's last board meeting before he retires on Oct. 1.

The proportion of black, Latino and American Indian students admitted to UC has also increased, and more are applying to the system -- a reflection of California's changing demographics and the increasing number of minority high school graduates, the report said.

Oh, so the racial balance hasn't been upset. Good, good. Of course, that "increasing number of minority high school graduates" might have been dependent on the recent decision to push back the high school exit exam. What happens with the UC admissions model if minority high school graduation rates drop? Will they allow their admissions model to remain the same even if minority enrollment rates then decrease?

And what kinds of students are attending UC these days?

Barbara Sawrey, chairwoman of UC's Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, which oversees matters relating to undergraduate admissions, said the report should also allay critics' fears that the comprehensive review policy would diminish the quality of entering freshmen...

Sawrey said academic achievement is still factored heavily in the new process, although admission consideration has been broadened to also take other factors into account, such as personal achievement.

Personal achievement that isn't apparent in increased test scores or in increased GPA, that is. I'm all for personal achievement, but it's downright bizarre to see colleges downplaying academic achievements and giving heavier weight to non-academic matters, such as whether you were the first in your family to go to college:

The new comprehensive admissions process combines the current two-tiered policy into one review. The new policy allows UC admissions officers to consider all applicants' extracurricular activities, leadership skills and personal obstacles, in addition to academic achievement.

It also allows admissions officers to consider if the student had to overcome difficulties, such as being the first in the family to go to college or attending a school with limited educational resources, in making decisions to admit students.

Well, I guess that's one way to get rid of those annoying legacy students who went to good schools, made good grades, and hoped to follow in Dad's footsteps at UCLA. No need for them as part of the campus's "diversity." As one critic of the admissions model wrote in an Los Angeles Times article around the time of implementation, "It looks like they're trying to punish kids who have gone to good schools, tried their best and played by the rules...And they're really pulling the rug out from under them by doing all this at the last minute."

Have the academic standards actually remained high? I'd like to see that above-mentioned faculty report mentioned above to judge for myself.

Mistakes were made - but not just by us

The database company that was involved in the missing MEAP problem a while back admits culpability - but says that it wasn't the only one at fault:

The company that set up a student database for standardized test scores said Wednesday it made mistakes, but it isn't the only one responsible for the delayed test scores.

Enterprises said it expected to receive test scores in March, but didn't until June 12. The tests were scored by a different company, Durham, N.C.-based Measurement Inc. Officials from Measurement Inc. said they didn't receive the last batch of tests from schools until late April. Iyer and Kevin Ireland, national sales manager for Enterprises, also suggested that the state's MEAP office is understaffed.

So the schools were late in sending the tests, the scoring company was late in sending the scores, and the database company had a glitch in their problem. A cavalcade of errors, it seems.

Defending NCLB in Tennessee

Tennesseean Senator and Senate majority leader Bill Frist (R) sticks his neck out to defend the No Child Left Behind Act in front of a most-likely-skeptical audience of educators:

''I firmly believe it would be a tragedy to not hold schools accountable for all students in that school,'' Frist, R-Tenn., told about 400 people at the Education Leaders Council conference in Nashville. ''We will not turn our backs on any single child.'' Because he is the Senate majority leader, Frist's support is a strong indicator that President Bush and Education Secretary Rod Paige are not planning to back down from the tough standards imposed on schools by the law.

''The intent is to strengthen, to strengthen the public school system and to make sure all children learn,'' Frist said. ''It's as simple as that. By holding the school accountable for results, we force schools to pay attention to students that have been ignored for far too long.''

Is something screwy in East St. Louie?

Something seems to be very, very wrong with the standardized test scores for children in East St. Louis (Illinois), and an audit is being considered to further examine scores which are going up and down like a rollercoaster ride:

Something is wrong, possibly very wrong, with standardized test scores for East St. Louis school children. That's the conclusion of Richard Mark, chairman of District 189's state-appointed oversight panel, after nearly a decade of watching test scores climb and fall like a rollercoaster, often in the same school buildings and only a few years apart.

And at seven other District 189 schools, variances of 12 percentage points or more were found over a four-year period, ending with the 2001-02 school year.

Emphasis mine. A similar problem with high variability in test scores uncovered a cheating scandal in Chicago recently, and that's what's feared here in East St. Louis. The words "red flag" come to mind for everone who's examining these data.

Why does this variability suggest cheating? According to one study, classrooms that cheat with teacher participation will show unusually large score gains for one year, but these gains do not continue - scores level out or even drop the subsequent year. The key is in the size of the gain - individual students may show large fluctuations, but overall mean scores shouldn't show huge amounts of fluctuation year to year, especially fluctuations that change direction.

Of course, a school that implements a radically-new process could show a large gain one year, with gains leveling off after that. Low- or no-stakes tests can also be more unstable, because kids may not try their best. And those who want to examine the scores face charges of racism, despite the fact that cheaters, whether they be teachers or students or both, aren't doing kids of any race a favor.

In a related article, a buddy of mine, testing and test cheating expert Professor Greg Cizek, is pontificating on the subject of "test tampering" - which seems to be on the rise:

Some educators call teacher cheating the inevitable result of the nation's test score obsession. And experts agree that test tampering - and suspicion of it - is on the rise.

"It's picked up," said Gregory J. Cizek, a nationally known testing and cheating expert at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "I am responding all the time to school districts who say, 'We have a problem with this teacher. Can you do an analysis?' " said Cizek, author of Cheating on Tests: How to Do It, Detect It, and Prevent It.

A great book, by the way - and reasonably priced, too! (I figure the more plugs I give his book, the more likely he'll pay for dinner next time he's in town)

But seriously folks, in an age when real estate agents are allegedly showing school report cards to prospective home buyers in an attempt to cash in on good test scores, it's not surprising that some folks are trying to take the easy road:

The most noted test scandals have occurred in New York and Texas, but smaller-scale allegations have erupted in recent years from California to Chicago to Connecticut.

Similar, but more isolated, test-tampering cases in Houston, Austin, Dallas and several other Texas districts helped lead to the formation of that state's Public Education Integrity Task Force in 1999.

Dr. Cizek's theory is that teachers who oppose testing may have decided that test-tampering is "justifiable civil disobedience." I can understand teachers not wanting their efforts to be judged wholly by test scores - but any teacher who helps children cheat is not doing them a favor, and the message being sent is not that the government is wrong, or that tests are wrong, but that children should be helped to cheat in order to protect the teacher's reputation and the school's standing. And that's very wrong.

Separating the boys from the girls in public schools

Devoted Reader Mike sent along this Brothers Judd blog link, which reveals that some public schools in the Midwest are quietly segregating classes by sex, despite the fact that this may violate federal laws - and for most students, it seems to be working out just fine:

One year ago, Clarksville (Ind.) Middle School began a quiet experiment with its seventh-graders, separating boys and girls during math, English, science and other core courses. Genders were mixed only in classes like music and art, and they could socialize in the halls and at lunch.

"I don't think you can argue with those kinds of numbers," said Tammy Haub, the English teacher who suggested the change.

Tammy may be innovative, but she's naive; the ACLU and the National Organization of Women are more than willing to argue with the numbers:

Critics from organizations such as the ACLU and the National Organization for Women contend that single-sex classes are a step backward, and probably violate current federal laws and regulations that prohibit such programs in all but the most limited situations, such as physical education classes involving body contact.

Emily Martin, a staff attorney for the ACLU's women's rights project, said single-gender classes are "pretty clearly prohibited" by current federal law.

"A step backward" - even if kids prefer it, and even if testing scores go up (which would argue against any "separate-but-unequal" theories), the ACLU is having none of it. Interestingly, the US Education Department announced last year that it may amend the regulations which govern segregation of classes by sex, which explains both why some schools are confident enough to give it a shot, and why the lobbying organizations who oppose this are having tizzies.

And some of these tizzies fly in the face of empirical evidence:

In Kentucky...where there have been single-sex classes for at least three years in a half-dozen schools, some administrators argue that the benefits are clear.

Richard Dowdy, assistant principal at Paducah Middle School, said that since the program started there three years ago discipline problems have declined, and girls are doing better in math and science classes. The school separates boys and girls for all their courses.

Oh, but NOW is still mad about it. Lord knows, we can't have girls doing better in math and science classes, not if these higher scores are achieved in a politically-incorrect, non-NOW-sanctioned manner! Sheesh.

This type of segregation hasn't worked for all schools, but I believe schools should have the freedom to try it, and the freedom to drop it if it doesn't work for them. And it's important to me that the kids seem to like, and understand that this relieves them of some of the presure that Madison Avenue places on them to be sexually appealing and socially-focused as early as seventh grade:

In single-gender classes....some girls no longer worry about "looking silly" in front of boys, and some boys aren't as tempted to show off as they might be with girls in the class. "The social pressure is off,"...and boys and girls can focus their attention on academics.

In a survey last year among seventh-graders who were in the single-sex classrooms, 65 percent said the program was helping them learn.

Fear of a cap gun

Devoted Reader and fellow vacciniumcorymbosumparthenophobe Erin (trust me, she knows what that long word means) sent along this tale of a horrible, violent student at Maple Grove (MN) High School (registration required). The student, Jake Trembath, has been suspended for an entire year, and good riddance. I mean, what was he thinking? Serving on the student council, playing lacrosse, and attending Bible class every morning - sure, those are fine things, but obviously they shouldn't outweigh having a cap gun accidently left in one's car while it was parked on school grounds:

As a result of finding a toy cap gun -- "painted to look more real," a school report said -- in Jake's car last week, Maple Grove school officials suspended the teen and have begun expulsion proceedings. Jake said the toy doesn't belong to him and he didn't know it was there.

The school officials aren't budging, because, according to the kid's father, "I think they believe that if they yield on Jake, the next kid who says 'I didn't know' will get off, too." Of course! Why, if you allow the innocent transportation of a pop gun, next thing you know, kids will be sneaking in water guns, slingshots, and those big Nerf bats. It'll be Columbine all over again.

Strangely, though, this school policy isn't doing much to create a quieter campus with more docile students - in fact, it appears to be creating the opposite situation:

Jake's friends and classmates have rallied. On Friday, Jake's sister Whitney brought home a petition signed by more than 300 students. It said: "Help Jake! We think that Jake was expelled for an unjust reason." Some are wearing "Free Jake" T-shirts to school, Whitney said...

For Jake, the anger is growing. He's been booted off the student council, his name has been removed from the banner lauding the Homecoming court. For a kid who recalls his last time in trouble as sitting in the principal's office for "flicking a staple" in the seventh grade, this is a hard lesson.

Jake should be mad. This is utterly ridiculous. These types of policies don't make kids feel safe on campus; instead, the students now walk on eggshells, fearful that Grandpa's fish knife or little Bobby's cap gun will find its way into their cars or their bookbags, and completely torch everything they've been working for so hard.

Local resident and uber-columnist James Lileks has more on the story. He has a delightfully precocious three-year-old daughter, and I believe he's starting to worry how her experiences with the public school system will develop:

Some cultural notes: We have one of those “zero tolerance” cases here, and I’m sure you can guess the details. Kid’s friends are playing around with cap gun. The gun migrates to the car in the course of weekend tomfoolery. Kid drives to school. Security guard notices gun in car while trolling the lot and peering through windows. Kid - who is a good student, and attends Bible class every morning for class - gets in trouble. And by “trouble” I mean he is suspended for the entire year.

2. “Once a year we pass them out and the class reenacts the Charge of the First Minnesota at Gettysburg.”

James is much more in favor of the second answer, as am I.

Welcome to the world of miss fizzychest

Well, so much for the plan of blogging this weekend. Instead, I got to discover that my body seems to having some issues. It seems quite possible that I have GERD, or Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease, commonly known as acid reflux disease. You know, the disease they talk about on all those Zantac commercials? The commercials I've completely ignored in the past? Well, I'll be ignoring them no more.

The problem, of course, is that a sudden (and I do mean sudden) first attack of GIRD can mimic, especially in women, symptoms of heart disease. So, on Sunday, when I had planned to do a lot of house cleaning and blogging, I found myself instead with stabbing chest pains, nausea, headache, sweating, and clamminess. But I don't have high blood pressure, or asthma, or any history of cardiac problems, and I seem to be breathing okay, so right now the doctors have me on Zantac. Further tests should clear things up, but let's just say it put a damper on my weekend all around.

More information than you wanted, probably, but I just wanted to explain my absence this weekend. I should be back to blogging Monday (barring time out time for a doctor visit or two).

Light bloggage again...

Hi, everyone. Philly came through the hurricane relatively unscathed, although some outlying counties in PA really suffered. I'm still encountering a hurricane storm of work here at my office, though, so I won't get to blogging until later this weekend. I apologize for the delay.

And, unlike most weekends, I do intend to get quite a few posts up; I've been saving them over the last day or two, and I already have five to ten articles that must be posted, linked, critiqued, and discussed. So check back over the weekend, when stuff will be posted throughout the days (man, can't wait to get into all this FCAT challenge nonsense....)

Battening down the hatches

Hi, everyone. Work today is quite crunchingly heavy, and then there's this whole Hurricane Isabel thing. We've already lost one psychometrician (who works from home in Delaware) because her power's out, and I have to be ready to give a presentation tomorrow in case my boss doesn't make it in - of course, that presumes that I won't lose power as well, and I haven't yet decided if my loyalty to this company includes sleeping here and showering downstairs in the gym if need be.

Nope, I've decided - my loyalty definitely doesn't extend that far. :)

Anyways, I'll try to post a couple of things today but may not have time, and if nothing gets posted tomorrow it may be because we don't have power. If I get to stay home, I'll read Life Of Pi, which a Devoted Reader recently sent to me (thanks so much). Everybody stay safe.

Redefining "Advanced Placement"

The Ector County Independent School District (ECISD) in Texas decided last year to make AP courses available to all students, instead of only to those whose previous academic performance qualified them for the classes. The result? The number of students who took AP exams nearly tripled - from 624 last year to 1709 this year - but the passing rate decreased, from 34% last year to 21% this year (in absolute numbers, around 212 students passed last year, and about 358 passed this year). Statewide, the passing rate is 52%, but in some other districts, unlike ECISD, students who take the courses don't have to take the exams, so there is self-selection going on.

Nevertheless, if more students pass, but a fewer percentage of them pass, does this "open enrollment" for AP classes sound like a good idea? Is it realistic to assume that every student will gain something from AP course enrollment, or that teachers will not be overburdened with the increased need for AP course training?

In ECISD...all students who take an AP course are required to take the test for that course. ECISD also foots at least part of the bill for the test. The district pays about $50 of the $80 fee for each test, while the state pays the rest...The district receives $100 back, however, for each student who passes an AP exam regardless of the number of exams a student passes, she said. Based on those figures, that would mean ECISD spent $85,450 on AP exams last school year and brought in about $35,300.

Wow. I never knew that schools could earn money back for students passing the AP exams. The ECISD lost money this year - but is the goal ultimately to earn money this way?

Fighting the unions in California

The battles waged by former NBA star Kevin Johnson in his attempt to transform a low-performing California public school into a better charter school are documented here on the National Review website. The proposed charter school generated wide community support, millions in donations - and fury from the local union, the CTA:

Impressed by Johnson's plan and his ability to mobilize local support, the school board voted to close Sacramento High at the end of the school year and granted Johnson's group the right to reopen the campus as a charter school.

Under California's charter law, St. HOPE was also free to hire its own teachers. That explains the furious reaction of the California Teacher Association and its local affiliate. These groups wanted the new school to be staffed by the same teachers who had "led" the school to its record-setting level of low performance.

The school opened its doors on September 2nd of this year. I hope it does well. I'll be keeping an eye out for future reports on it.

I got them standardized testing blues...

The September 3rd strip of Safe Havens by Bill Holbrook:

Why don't teachers prefer merit pay?

Hmm. Can someone explain to me just why anyone should believe these arguments against merit pay for teachers? I'm serious. I just don't get it. I do understand that money doesn't solve every problem, that teachers are often motivated mainly by the love of teaching, and that the frustrations teachers go through will not be assuaged with extra take-home pay. But these specific criticisms just seem surreal to me:

1. Control. People with more power usually set the goals, establish the criteria, and generally set about trying to change the behavior of those down below. If merit pay feels manipulative and patronizing, that's probably because it is. That's funny. Like most people in the business world, I work at a job where my raises and bonuses are tied to performance. I don't see this as patronizing. Being expected to work hard when there's no chance of being paid more than the person in the next office who slacks off - now that's patronizing.

2. Strained relationships. In its most destructive form, merit pay is set up as a competition, where the point is to best one's colleagues...pay- for-performance programs don't have to be explicitly competitive in order to undermine collegial relationships. If I end up getting a bonus and you don't, our interactions are likely to be adversely affected... Are these bonuses made public? Are teachers going to go around demanding to know who got bonuses and who didn't? Are teachers expected to be so immature that they will demand to know who got bonuses, are incapable of understanding that a bonus is based on meeting a set of standards for the year, and will then sabotage the performance of other teachers to get that money? I don't see this sort of competition in my job, despite the fact that we're all hoping to get bonuses. Are teachers really expected to be that cutthroat?

3. Reasons and motives. The premise of merit pay, and indeed of all rewards, is that people could be doing a better job but for some reason have decided to wait until it's bribed out of them. This is as insulting as it is inaccurate. Funny, I don't know many people who hold back and work hard only when there are monetary incentives. I do know people who expect to make more money and receive more praise when they improve their work performance, because even though their drive comes from within, it's nice to have the external validation. Also, I would think that teachers, of all people, understand that kids sometimes need outside incentives to better their performance. Why isn't this type of extra motivation considered valid for teachers as well?

Again, I know that school districts don't necessarily have cash to spread around, and that money doesn't solve everything. As this article points out, money isn't even listed as the most common reason for leaving the teaching profession. But I find these efforts to damn merit pay as quite bizarre, and I've yet to see anything that could convince me that teachers wouldn't be happy with better pay for better work, just like everyone else in the working world. If you've got an argument for that, be sure to share it with me.

I also note that the article equates paying people "fairly" with paying everyone on some measure other than merit, which doesn't seem fair to me. The author is also one of those people who believes that any sort of high stakes or accountability measures are bad simply because some people are motivated to cheat when the stakes increase, as though this were a valid criticism of the stakes, rather than the people involved. These statements make me even less likely to give his anti-merit-pay arguments due consideration.

Rating teachers online

Last week, when I was glancing through an issue of Seventeen magazine, I noticed an article about the two-year-old website ratemyteachers.com. The article enthusiastically and uncritically pushed the website as a place for students to anonymously lavish praise on their favorite teachers - and make critical comments about ineffective or just plain bad teachers.

Unsurprisingly, Education Week now reports that the site is coming under fire from some educators as being "irresponsible" and possibly "libelous":

The site is also attracting unexpected participants: Some teachers are posing as students in order to critique their colleagues, posting hurtful messages for everyone on the Internet to see...

Critics, however, give the site low marks. Students are able to post incorrect information or make nasty remarks about teachers without being held accountable, said Kathleen P. King, a professor of adult education..."They are more or less putting it out there with very little constraint or validation," Ms. King said of the site's operators, "and that's a big issue."

Actually, that's the Internet. There's nothing to stop a student from starting a similar site, or even a blog about their own school that is anonymously run. Constraining an Internet site from posting information is close to impossible, unless one has deep pockets and goes the $cientology route (suing anyone and everyone who posts confidential or critical information).

Are there spiteful and obnoxious comments being posted? I'm sure. But unless schools provide students with the chance to provide feedback (in perhaps the same fashion that collegians rate their professors), the students are going to find somewhere to make their comments. This is just desserts for schools that promote teachers based solely on seniority, and not on quality of teaching. My guess is that some schools are afraid of any critique of their teaching staff whatsoever, especially by the people who are the consumers of that teaching.

So much for parental guidance

Urgh. Zwire reports today that a mother in Pennsylvania is fighting her daughter's dismissal from school. It seems the 13-year-old engaged in oral sex on the school bus with a male classmate while returning from a field trip. The mother is fighting the dismissal because the school district was allegedly "not clear in its written policies that oral sex on a bus was unacceptable behavior" :

Judge George E. James disagreed, ruling that the expulsion was legal and was supported by substantial evidence. James upheld the disciplinary action and denied the appeal...

Neither the bus driver nor two chaperones noticed what was going on. Administrators learned of the incident after several pupils told a guidance counselor, who reported it to Ralston...

Um, mom? Fighting your child's expulsion on these grounds is not what you should be concentrating on right now. If you must be involved in threatening legal action, you should be demanding that the driver and chaperone be fired/sanctioned; the chaperone is, at the very least, guilty of "contributing to the delinquency of a minor" by not providing any chaperonage whatsoever. If you have any sort of case against the school district, I think this would be it.

But the legal battles should be the least of your concerns right now. You should also be urging your daughter to attend the county's mental health agency for counseling, which should give her the strength to understand what she did wrong and to find a whole new set of friends - ones who won't encourage her to engage in risky sexual activity in public.

The daughter needs emotional support right now, and the mother's legal action that splits hairs over whether such behavior needs to be explicitly prohibited isn't providing it. This type of legal battle suggests that any behavior not explicitly prohibited should be considered okay, which is most definitely not the case.

a test you really can't study for

The state of Arkansas has decided that childhood and teenage obesity is a problem. Their solution? To "test" each child in the public school system and send home a letter that lists each student's body mass index (or BMI) in a "health report card" that also includes educational materials about heath risks from obesity.

So, it seems the school districts are assuming that fat kids don't know they're fat, that the parents of fat kids haven't noticed that their kids are fat, and that both parent and child have somehow managed to miss the wave of information about weight-related health risks. The school districts are assuming that it's their business to put this right, and that this sort of measurement is the way to do it. Not everyone agrees.

As one senior put it:

To Mary Katherine Smith, a senior at Central High, "It's not the school's business. You go to school to get an education, not to learn whether you're fat or not. I know I'm probably overweight, and I don't need a report card to tell me."

Democratic Arkansas House Speaker Herschel Cleveland is behind this, because "we have to start somewhere and try to protect children." Apparently anything is acceptable if it's For The Children. And while it may be true that some parents are in denial about their kid's health, the statement that, "Parents also will be advised to seek medical attention for their children, if warranted," suggests to me that schools intend to back up health report cards with force. If a parent decided not to get medical intervention, does the school place a call to Social Services?

The jury is still out on whether this method of informing parents can actually help teenagers with their weight problems. And while I rarely give credence to the argument that nothing should be done in school to hamper "self-esteem," I can also see where these public BMI measurements on healthy-yet-large female students could have a negative impact, as far as body image goes. Parents also point out that if the schools really want to combat this, they could bring back PE and make sure healthy food is available in the cafeterias.

No longer giving A's for effort?

Jay Mathews is back in the Washington Post with a warning about the effects of testing on effort and motivation in class. He tells the tale of Kerry Constabile, a high school student who didn't qualify for placement in the AP American History course, so she took a regular History class and studied for the AP exam on her own time:

Constabile's grades in freshman and sophomore social studies were not good enough to get into the Advanced Placement (AP) American history course she yearned for in her junior year. She had discovered a great love for American politics, but the social science department chairman said no, you cannot take AP. So she studied for the AP course on her own, supplementing the homework she got in her regular history course with assignments her friends in AP were getting.

Expressly banned from consideration in the main course grade are the following factors, and I quote from guidelines helpfully supplied by the Montgomery County school system: "effort, participation, progress, attitude or behavior."

I agree with Jay that this is bizarre. The school is essentially trying to keep teachers for rewarding underperforming students with grades that don't objectively reflect their achievement - but this wording suggests that effort and attitude are not valued by teachers, when, of course, they are. Where the tests come in is that the tests don't measure these more intangible qualities, and when objective tests are correlated with class grades based on intangibles, it becomes difficult to see the relationship between the two. It's a comparison of apples and oranges.

It's good for the schools to take steps to prevent grade inflation, and to prevent grades that do not accurately reflect achievement for any reason. Yes, a teacher might be rewarding effort, but it's easy to slip into the "bigotry of low expectations" and award a disadvantaged child points just for showing up. At the same time, I don't blame the teachers for wanting to reward such children in some way just for showing up, if in fact getting them to show up is a problem.

Jay spoke with a few teachers about this conundrum:

...is the Montgomery County response, tying grades firmly to academic performance and nothing else, the best solution to the problem? I asked a few experienced teachers what they thought of the issue and they almost all made the same two points: (1) everybody has to know how the student is performing on the standards that will be measured, but (2) removing rewards for effort and attitude from the grading process is not the best way to ensure good scores on the state test.

Essentially, they all let Jay in on the "dirty little secret...that [teaching] is an art as well as a science." And they point out that disadvantaged kids aren't the only ones who lose out if effort is discounted. The "genius slacker" who skips classes yet shows up to score high on tests should somehow be convinced to come to class, and basing part of the grade on participation is one way to do that.

The founders of the KIPP schools, David Levin and Mike Feinberg, note that they emphasize grading on performance but also make sure to drill into students' heads the importance "effort, attitude and participation;" the rewards for these are not higher grades but non-academic treats. Students in KIPP schools perform well on standardized tests not only because their academic performance is objectively evaluated in class, but because their teachers have learned to reward extra motivation without artificially inflating grades.

This proposed grading policy, by the way, has been temporarily delayed because of "complaints and concerns." Hashing out the best way to help teachers learn to reward motivation without giving unearned grade points won't be easy, but it's essential in this situation.

diversity - at a price

John of Discriminations sent an interesting article my way about the stumbling blocks that NCLB has placed in the path of some diverse Delaware schools. Delaware is proud of its diverse student body - one of the most diverse in the country - but has discovered that when it comes to federal education reform, this diversity can be a liability:

...many Delaware schools and districts failed last month to make the grade under the No Child Left Behind Act...Though intended to make sure subgroups of students - black, poor, special education, non-English speaking - succeed in school, the law is counter-productive...

In a mostly all-white or all-black school or district, there can be as few as five. Miss one target and the school or district fails to meet the federal standard.

One professor concludes that the more integrated the school, the higher the failure rate will be, simply because there are more targets to meet and less students who contribute to each target. But the subgroup targeting plan in NCLB is there for a reason. It's to prevent schools from raising student achievement as a whole while leaving the performance of certain student subgroups unchanged. Does the subgroup target plan make it more difficult for a school to get a good score? Yes it does - but it also prevents schools from ignoring any of their subgroups.

One solution would be to relax the law so that schools would still need to show growth by subgroups, but only a certain percentage of the subgroups would need to show significant improvement. This would reduce the occurrence of absurdities such as schools with 20 subgroups, and 19 passing scores, that receive a failing grade.

What's more, Delaware's administrators insist that their school are already performing well, and that they shouldn't be punished simply because they have more targets to meet:

Weeks earlier, test results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal measure of how well students are doing, showed that Delaware had moved from the bottom third to the top third of the states academically. And it led the nation in overall point gain in the test scores.

Moreover, those test results also show that Delaware's test scores for black, Hispanic and low-income students are higher than the national averages for those groups on both the reading and writing tests...But No Child Left Behind makes no room in its rating system for that kind of success...And because of No Child Left Behind, most states are just starting the state accountability testing that Delaware has had for six years, another anomaly that could make its situation difficult. Test scores rise more quickly in the first years of school reform than in the later years.

Between the large number of targets and the higher overall performance on test scores, I agree that Delaware's administrators deserve a break.

new kid on the block

Go check out Jeff Hellman's new blog (active since August), which is entitled, So You Want To Be A Science Teacher... In fact, Jeff does plan to be a science teacher; he's a graduate student in science education and is working as a student teacher as well. His observations on teaching seventh-grade science are amusing and informative, so go read him.

an even more shameful day in a colorado school

This is just appalling. A middle school social studies teacher in Colorado was suspended for showing a 9/11 video on September 10th. The CNN-produced video, "America Remembers," was part of the prerequisite for his lecture on terrorism, a very apt and necessary lecture in our time, but apparently he was supposed to get permission from both parents and administrators first. Students protested his suspension, along with their parents.

As LGF reports, it gets worse: The teacher, Jason Ritter, was forbidden to teach anything on September 11th about the events of 9/11/01 except the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 and a standard lesson plan about the foundation of American government:

Jeanette Washington, a student curriculum administrator, dropped by Ritter's classroom [on Sept. 10th] while he was playing the video "America Remembers," and Ritter later was called out of class to meet with principal Cynde Fischer.

School officials told him they would sit in on the class, and when he protested, they told him he could follow their directions or leave, Ritter said. When he went downstairs to think about it, he returned and Fischer told him to leave, he said. He returned for a regular day of work Friday, but administrators asked him to leave again, he said.

He's back in the classroom now, thank heavens.

What in the hell were these administrators trying to control? Did they think that their 13- and 14-year-olds couldn't handle being told that we were attacked two years ago, or any discussion of why that might have happened? The video is sold through CNN's website and the costs of the video/DVD go to provide educational assistance to the families of survivors. It was meant to be an educational program.

Yet the administrators of the Cherry Creek School District have treated Jason Ritter as though his actions were unconscionable and his judgment regarding classroom curriculum uncertain. To demand that teachers refrain from mentioning 9/11/01 in the classroom is simply appalling. It's good to see that his students, and their parents, seem to be backing him; the worst anyone had to say is that maybe he should have sent a note home first. Perhaps he should have. But it appears that the school punished him for not following that procedure with slurs about his "emotional" preparedness for the classroom, which can only mean that they believe there should be no emotion attached to the discussion of events on 9/11/01. Given their suggested lesson plan - and this is for a social studies class, remember - it appears they desire no 9/11/01 discussion in classrooms whatsoever.

Appalling.

Update: Caerdroia has another post on this here. He's not too happy about it either.

Update: Teacher Jason Ritter is allegedly "off the hook," and is back in the classroom. The school is claiming that it gave him the option to discuss "the overall impact of Sept. 11 [and] the patriotism it inspired" in the classroom last Thursday, which contradicts Ritter's earlier statements. A true "miscommunication," or backpedaling from the school? Who knows?

Update: Letters from parents can be read here. Best quote: "Falcon Creek's action underestimates its students and ignores the environment in which they live." Indeed.

a shameful day in philly's schools

Daquan Wilson is a nine-year-old student at Elkins Elementary in Kensington (a neighborhood in Philadelphia). He got beaten up in June this year by three bullies on the playground - and the school system's solution was to hire a bodyguard for him, because the bullies are still in school:

No one knows what prompted the June 17 attack...Daquan was repeatedly kicked by the three boys, [his mother] said. Later, he was seen by the school nurse and when he came home from school, his mother took him to the hospital. He was treated at Temple Children's Hospital for a gash to the back of his head and released, she said.

But Wilson is incensed that two of the three attackers still attend Elkins, and that her son has been assigned a bodyguard. She now wants to transfer Daquan out of the school.

She should be mad. So the kids admitted to the attack - yet that merits only two days of suspension? And the district is concerned enough to hire a bodyguard (which can only make Daquan feel more ostracized), yet can't find a way to punish the bullies even further? The school is claiming the mother requested the bodyguard, yet she said she first heard about it during a meeting with school officials. I'm more inclined to trust the mom's story - it's hard to believe that a mother could force a school to pay for a bodyguard when the school's story is that the bullies' actions don't merit a transfer.

The attackers - and their parents - are serving five weeks of Saturday morning detention this fall. But the bodyguard's presence suggests that either the school or Daquan's mom doesn't believe that the detention will do much good.

You can't go back to high school

Two twenty-something Ohioans are in a heap of trouble for their "prank" of going to a high school and posing as "students":

Two men who tried to pass as students at an Ohio high school were jailed on charges including disorderly conduct, trespassing and inducing panic. Lancaster High School was evacuated for about an hour as a result of the prank Thursday morning by Nathan Shahan, 20, and Anthony Bobo, 21.

Evacuated. Nice. Shahan and Bobo obviously didn't consider that their presence might be taken seriously, surprising given that there's no good reason for two men their age to be prowling around a high school, posing as students. And no, the movie, "Never Been Kissed" doesn't count.

A teacher stopped Shahan as he tried to enter the school, and the two got into a scuffle, said Fairfield County Sheriff Dave Phalen said. Sheriff's deputies found Bobo inside the school at 7:45 a.m. Bobo was charged with a felony count of inducing panic for being inside the school. He also was charged with misdemeanor counts of possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia and violating probation.

Sheesh. Bobo really IS a bobo. Not only is he trying to get into a high school, but he's dumb enough to scuffle with a police officer while he's got weed and a pipe (or something worse) in his pockets. Something tells me Bobo didn't crack the books too hard at his own high school, assuming he made it that far.

Shahan was charged with a felony count of parole violation and misdemeanor counts of assault and underage alcohol consumption. Bond was set at $50,000 each, and both remained in jail Friday.

Shahan is a bigger bobo, considering he was on parole and presumably had alcohol in his system, yet was under 21. Sheesh. I think the appropriate movie reference here would be, "Dumb and Dumber."

testing expert criticizes tests

One testing and assessment "expert" from UCLA has nothing but bad things to say about standardized tests, which leads me to doubt his expertise:

[Dr. W. James Popham], the emeritus professor of education at UCLA told teacher leaders at CTA's Summer Institute, you can't use standardized achievement tests to measure student performance. They're not designed to measure what's being taught or learned, but what knowledge or aptitude is being brought to the table. In fact, if a test item is answered correctly by too many students, it's taken off the test in the next revision. A teacher who does a good job and teaches students the material thoroughly will not be rewarded for the effort.

What? How does he conclude that no standardized test measures what has been taught or learned? How exactly do students gain knowledge if it isn't taught to them? Tests like the FCAT aren't measuring IQ-test-like skills such as digit memory; they're measuring how well kids were taught to read and understand passages. Teach a kid to read well and they'll pass the FCAT.

And the part about removing items that everyone does well on is bunk. Yes, a test question that every student answers correctly - i.e., a very easy item - might be taken off an exam, because it's not discriminating among students, but it won't necessarily be removed. It's not even likely to be removed if the exam is criterion-referenced; there are easy items on all standardized exams, and no school district is going to complain as the percentage of students passing the exit exam rises.

What's more, if easy items are removed, then students who are being taught more thoroughly are going to benefit from that, not be disadvantaged by it. It's the kids who aren't being taught well who are going to start flunking. No aspect of the standardized testing system disadvantages kids who learn more, or who learn better, except that they might be bored by dumbed-down exams.

What teachers want and need is "instructionally supportive tests that provide clear descriptions of what's tested; measure a modest number of curricular aims; and supply instructionally informative results." In other words, they need tests that give them information they can use to adjust their teaching and fill gaps in student knowledge in a timely fashion.

That, in and of itself, is not a bad idea, but I thought that was how teachers were supposed to be testing in the classroom. If teachers never give any exams except those mandated by the government, of course they're not getting feedback in a timely fashion. If teachers need feedback, they give their own exams. The large-scale exams provide a snapshot of how large groups of students are doing at one time, and while this can provide some feedback, it was never intended to provide all that a teacher needed to be effective. It does, however, indicate how schools are doing overall, which is what NCLB-related exams were meant to do.

Teachers are in a predicament, said Popham. They can't complain about the tests too loudly. "Attempts to have the [test] replaced by instructionally supportive assessments will be seen as a flight from accountability."

Actually, I've read about few teachers who claim that the accountability standards should remain, but with different tests in place of the standardized tests. The teachers who are accused of fleeing from accountability are the ones who claim that their school's F grade is just fine, or who claim that they simply can't be expected to actually teach their young charges to read, given the race, or background, or SES of said students. Those teachers are attempting to avoid any objective measure of their teaching skills, and the anti-accountability label is apropo in those cases.

[Teachers] need to be able to explain the likely impact of unsound tests, why inappropriate tests give schools inappropriate labels, how tests may measure what students bring to school rather than what they learn, and how to judge what schools are doing the right way. "We have to educate parents and pertinent policy-makers about the evaluative inappropriateness of standardized achievement tests. And we have to collect convincing evidence signifying that students are learning worthwhile things."

Yes, they do need to understand which tests are unsound, but they also need to understand that not all of them are. I fail to see any information here which supports the argument that standardized tests are, in and of themselves, unsound. This sounds suspiciously like the same "holistic/portfolio assessment" argument in new clothes, which, given that Dr. Popham's arguments are allegedly about keeping standardized tests from eating up class time, is especially disingenuous. How would many little narrow performance assessments not eat up an equally-large amount of time, if not more?

And how can any test be given if the concern is all about students who are "poor test-takers?" The focus on that suggests that no testing can be done at all, and any teacher who argues for that is indeed in flight from accountability. And if Dr. Popham is convinced that standardized tests measure only what kids "bring to school", isn't he saying that teaching can have no impact whatsoever on how well a child can read or do math? That sounds much more like an indictment of the teaching profession than of the testing profession to me.

One California school under the gun

Some Californian schools are facing sanctions if their students don't improve on standardized tests this year, which leads to a "do-or-die" atmosphere where some teachers complain of feeling "under attack." Given that some of the action against teacher seems to be related to their union activity, perhaps this is not surprising:

For those who work in schools facing sanctions, this is a "do or die" year. If students do well, schools might exit the programs that threaten to punish them. If schools don't meet growth targets on standardized tests, they might be taken over by the state or closed down completely.

At Curtis Middle School in San Bernardino, teachers say they would like nothing better than to see the school improve academically. When the school was first subjected to federal scrutiny, they were optimistic that things might turn around. However, since the principal decided to transfer teachers against their will - as well as urge teachers to seek work elsewhere - without legal justification, morale is now dropping much faster than test scores...

Auditors from the state, working under the auspices of the federal government, first visited the site last October to observe and interview staff. The auditors reported that the school lacked "strong and effective leadership." Shortly thereafter, the principal was replaced. They also said Curtis lacked a positive climate for learning and needed a "consistent and effective" approach to managing student behavior for a safer school environment. Teachers, who had decried a lack of discipline at the school, did not disagree...

Apparently, though, negotiations between the union and the school broke down, and the teachers who have been reassigned think it has nothing to do with teaching abilities. Curtis Middle School has the lowest possible Annual Program improvement scale, and last year the standardized test score means dropped nine points. The teachers feel the school is the problem; the school seems to think the teachers are the problem. With morale plummeting, it seems hard to see how the students are going to benefit from any of the changes.

The diversity of homeschoolers

Homeschooling - it's not something that just "earth mothers in Oregon" are doing anymore:

Fed up with her son's performance in school, Kim Clayton pulled him out of third grade at Dasher Green Elementary in Columbia during spring break in 2002 and never took him back...Clayton, who lives in the top-rated school system in the state, started teaching her son year-round in the living room of her Howard County home. She's part of a 20-year trend that has seen a growing number of families - from a recently increasing variety of backgrounds - abandon public education for lessons led by parents...

Severe budget shortfalls, ethnic achievement gaps, failing test scores and shortages of qualified teachers are among the reasons parents list for choosing to instruct their children at home, where they can ensure small class sizes and individualized attention.

The article notes that the number of home-schooled children in Maryland has increased ninefold in the last 13 years, and that's not counting the parents who are more underground about their homeschooling. One enterprising parent has founded the Columbia Homeschool Community, which offers support parents and helps organize field trips and socialization activities. Although it was mainly Christian families who were homeschooling in the 1950's, the number of non-Christian families is increasing, as well as the number of non-white families.

Maryland, it seems, is not placing many of the more problematic hurdles in the way of homeschooling parents. On the other hand, you have California, which is aiming to require that parents become certified teachers in order to homeschool. That, to me, seems unworkable, and too high a hurdle.

Education news roundup

Today's another busy day, so busy I don't even have time for my usual Friday Favorite's list (of course, I didn't post one last week, and no one seemed to notice, so perhaps it's not a crowd-pleaser). I do want to draw your attention to a few interesting tidbits out there, though.

Schools in Wisconsin are using ACT scores to track their students' progress, although administrators insist they don't panic over year-to-year fluctuations.

The Mississippi report cards are out today, for all you people from the Magnolia State. The report cards will include information about teacher qualifications in core academic subject areas as well as student performance.

One principal in Charleston, SC, tried to stem the tide of lost textbooks by not allowing kids at Rivers Middle School to take textbooks home for the first 10 days of the school year. The rationale was to wait and see which kids decided not to transfer out before letting the books out of the building; critics are buzzing about "the message this sends to the children" and "low expectations." The real shamefulness is the reason that 69 kids transferred out during those first 10 days - last year, over three-quarters of Rivers students performed at below-basic level on the math portion of the Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test (PACT), with almost as many testing below-basic on English.

Om, om, ommmm...A group of parents in Chicago are pushing for Transcendental Meditation to be taught in area schools, claiming that the techniques "reduces stress, rejuvenates the body and mind, and improves academic performance." Iowa, Michigan, and Washington DC already have schools that include TM during the day. The usual flutter about religious preferences and teaching of religious techniques in schools has begun.

Want to know if a woman will be a good nanny for your child? Give her a test. The Princeton, NJ-based International Nanny Association has developed a standardized credential exam, in the hopes that this will enhance the "professionalism" of the, er, profession. The mind reels in envisioning the exam items, and I can only recall what few things I learned in my (limited, much-hated) babysitting experiences: Get emergency phone numbers, remember who is allergic to what, develop a high tolerance for dumb board games and even dumber jokes, and learn how to prepare the exact perfect grilled-cheese sandwich.

Do our elected officials send their kids to public schools? What do you think? Devoted Reader Mike brought these snippets of the Heritage Foundation report to my attention:

41 percent of U.S. Representatives and 46 percent of U.S. Senators send or have sent at least one of their children to a private school. In the general population, only about 10 percent of students attend private schools.

And check out these tables. Democrats are only slightly less likely to send their kids to public schools than Republicans - but many more of the Democratic House representatives voted against Amendment 90 for H.R. 1350, which would have helped to "establish innovative parental choice programs for students with disabilities." School choice for me, but not for thee?

Finally, another Devoted Reader writes in about the Pushy Peanut-Phobic Parent story. This DV has a child with extremely severe peanut allergies and can completely understand the mom's concern, but notes the following:

...The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN) is a very responsible, thoughtful organization that has developed well thought out plans for dealing with school at every age. It runs a number of regional conventions every year. The school program suggestions are available at very reasonable cost directly from FAAN. By and large, FAAN does not suggest isolating the peanut allergic child, or prohibiting peanuts in the school. Sensible measures will usually solve the problems..."

This reader also notes that peanut allergies do seem to be increasing in our society, and that schools should be anticipating these problems. Solid education - for the schools - may help prevent the schools from going overboard and distressing other parents. Thanks for the insight.

Memorial Day

Hello, Devoted Readers. I won't be posting today; what little time I have to spend on the internet, I'm going to use perusing a few thoughtful September 11 remembrance sites and postings. The mainstream media has, by and large, chosen to forgo any special programming today, but the bloggers have not forgotten that dark day two years ago, and they don't want to see this day pass without memoriams, remembrances, and heartfelt discussions.

Here are the links, in case you're interested:

Voices: Stories from9/11, by Michele of A Small Victory

Surviving, by Jeff Jarvis

How Not To Remember September 11th, by Christopher Hitchens

Two Years Later, by Stephen Green of Vodkapundit

The Sept 11th Stories thread on Little Green Footballs

Sheila O'Malley's fisking of the PBC WTC documentary (and a related rant here)

The Pangs of New York, by journalist Roger Franklin

Black Tuesday, by the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler

And do NOT miss James Lileks' Bleat today. He knows what to say, and says it better than anyone.

Zero tolerance - for peanuts

A pushy mom in Orange County (CA) was concerned enough about her five-year-old's peanut allergies to convince the school to hire a nurse, to force his little peers to wash their hands every morning, and to institute lunchbox searches. Needless to say, the other parents think she - and the school - have gone overboard:

[Confiscation of other student's lunches] was enough to get the petitions out and by Monday night's PTA meeting more than 70 people had signed their names to a demand that school officials explain what steps have been taken and why they were necessary...Many of those attending questioned why the boy couldn't be schooled at home if his condition is so severe.

As far as his mother is concerned, the other parents are "uninformed" - as though none of them have ever heard of peanut allergies, or have kids with life-threatening allergies themselves. The comments of one allergist are enlightening:

Walnut Creek allergist and immunologist Dr. Nancy Mozelsio earlier in the day told The Chronicle that it is not unusual for schools to create a "nut- free zone" for allergic students. Children are asked not to bring nut products to class, and even items like coconut sunblock are checked.

It's possible that this 5-year-old's reactions might be so severe as to be a threat, but that would be very unusual, Mozelsio said. "I would say having someone (a nurse) go around with that person and searching lunch boxes is a bit excessive, in my opinion," she said. "There have been a couple of cases written up of reactions from people who experienced a reaction just touching or breathing peanut dust. But I think there's a little hysteria involved. That's not typical of what we see."

Important things to note: (a) the parent may be exaggerating if she claims her kid can die just from touching a drop of peanut oil, (b) if she's not, and he is that allergic, she should understand that his condition is rare enough that many parents may not believe it, nor should they be expected to know about it, and it's quite logical for them to ask why the kid shouldn't stay home, and (c) the allergist puts the onus where it should be - on the kid not to eat other children's food.

As a parent of another peanut-allergy sufferer and Valle Verde alumi put it:

"By kindergarten, and certainly by first grade, my son was able to say, 'What is in that?' " she said. "Searching a lunch box is insane. This goes to personal responsibility not changing the rest of the world to fit you."

The OpinionJournal found this story first, and I wish I had thought of the line, "Yeah, well, good luck trying to establish a nut-free zone in California" first.

American schools are too patriotic - except when they aren't

Joanne Jacobs (isn't she supposed to be on vacation?) has a great new post up. In it, she juxtaposes journalist Andrew Gumbel's recent snit over a patriotic song for first-graders - he couldn't stand that a song for six-year-olds was seemingly lacking in historical accuracy and, gosh, so insensitive at at time when we're engaged in a war that all enlightened parents should oppose - with a recent report showing that, for all of the faults of US schools, excessive patriotism is not one of them:

Too many classroom lessons and text books contribute to a sense of historical indifference by focusing on America's darker moments, the report says. In a push to give a warts-and-all account of the struggles of democracy, schools have turned the nation's sins into the essence of the story instead of just a part of it, the new report says...

But it takes aim at a lack of teaching about non-democratic societies, saying that comparison could show the "genius" of America's system.

The "genius" of American's system, and any attempt to inform schoolchildren of it, is just what horrifies snobs like Mr. Gumbel:

There is much that is admirable in the unique brand of idealism that drives American society, with its unshakable belief in the constitutional principles of freedom and limitless opportunity. Too often, though, the idealism becomes a smokescreen concealing the uglier realities of the United States and the way it throws its economic, political and military weight around the globe. Children are recruited from the very start of their school careers to believe in Team America, whose oft-repeated mantra is: we're the good guys, we always strive to do the right thing, we live in the greatest country in the world. No other point of view, no other cultural mindset, is ever seriously contemplated. Schoolroom maps of North America detail city names, roads and rivers within the continental United States, but invariably leave the areas within Canada and Mexico blank, as though reality itself stopped at the national border.

In other words, US schoolchildren shouldn't take pride in their country, shouldn't believe in the idealism that this country was founded upon, and shouldn't focus on learning the specifics about this country before they learn about other countries. Joanne patiently explains why he's wrong about this, and she does so in a much nicer fashion than I would have.

By the way, Mr. Gumbel also opposes the singing of the national anthem before ball games (you can almost see the effort it took for him not to explicitly equate "flag-waving" with "goosestepping" or "Heil-Hitler-ing"). How dare we show support for our country before a "routine game"? Why, don't we know that suppresses "dissent" and "critical thought" in our schoolchildren?

One of Tim Blair's commenters had this to say about Mr. Gumbel's piece:

Gumbel's piece made me laugh out loud. I haven't seen such a display of ignorance and hatred of American culture since I speeches I have read made by national socialists in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

People like Gumbel should not be taken seriously in public debate, since their motives are entrenched in irrational thought and emotional nonsense.

The widespread support for the Shanker Institute's report suggests that Mr. Gumbel's thoughts won't be taken seriously in the future. Good thing, too.

Update: Scrappleface has the scoop on the purging of "raging patriotism" that will soon take place in our nation's schools, and thoughtfully provides some sample information that will soon be available in history textbooks:

* The so-called 'Founding Fathers', when debating the Constitution, failed to consider the feelings of homosexual Latino abortion-advocating animal rights proponents. Therefore, the Constitution does not apply to anyone who disagrees with it.

* If it were not for the Watergate break-in, George McGovern would have won the presidency in 1972, and by 1974 he would have taught "the world to sing in perfect harmony."

making it easy for counterfeiters

For all of my Devoted Readers who regularly bitch and moan about how the US public school system can't teach kids to do arithmetic, as evidenced by the fact that cashiers these days need the computerized registers to guide them, because they're utterly unable to make change on their own, without help, I give you....this Food Lion cashier as candidate for "Bonehead of the Year" (the competition for the award is stiff, though).

Apparently, the amount of change given was correct in this instance, but we have to assume that's because the computerized register was working that day. And isn't the corporate policy stated at the end hilarious? Guess Food Lion will have to make that policy a bit more specific, just in case something like this happens again...

school choice, looping, and hoping for miracles

There are quite a lot of good articles floating around today, should you (unlike me) have time to peruse them at length. US Secretary of Education Rod Paige has an enthusiastic essay about school choice in DC over at National Review (and the voucher bill was just approved by the House of Representatives, by the way).

The WaPo reviews a new educational method called "looping" that allows teachers to advance to the next grade levels along with their students, so that teachers can spend less time getting to know the kids and more time teaching them.

Mount Holyoke College is reconsidering the segregated-orientation idea, because these gatherings might be "a force toward rigidifying racial boundaries" instead of one that allows students of all races to mingle and interact. Who would have guessed?

Watch out, New Orleans - there's a new (education) boss in town. The embarassing story of the New Orleans valedictorian who flunked the exit exam hasn't been forgotten, and Anthony Amato, the new New Orleans School Superintendent, has stepped into the picture. His previous track record in Connecticut and NYC is good; Louisiana's parents and educators are hoping he can work miracles down South as well.

And that flunking valedictorian? Her guardian is considering suing the high school for failing to teach Ms. Green the required information. No one should be surprised.

Righteous indignation in Indiana

Today's another madhouse day, so instead of finding something to rant about, I'm going to let Nick of Twilight of the Idols do it for me. Nick's read a couple of recent editorials by Charlie Nelms, who is the Vice President of Student Development and Diversity at Indiana University, and he's deeply unimpressed by them. It seems Nelms is another supporter of the "Free speech for me, but not for thee" viewpoint.

Go read, and see what you think.

What's wrong with the fast track in Florida?

A proposed law for Florida: Let kids graduate from high school in three years if they're smart enough and fulfull the alternative requirements. Fixes the overcrowding problem (although I doubt that was ever an issue for 12th-graders), lets kids get on with their lives, and teachers can focus on the remaining kids who presumably need more help. Who could complain about this?

Well, for starters, there are critics who say that this law would "deprive early graduates of extracurricular activities and senior year milestones." Whaaat? If a kid cares that much about her senior prom, she'll stay in school. But if she's smart and wants to get out early, why not let her?

I wonder if this is what critics are really pissed about:

Under the option, students can graduate with six fewer credits, as long as they double up on English classes to earn four credits and study a foreign language for two years. They are allowed to skip several elective credits, including physical education, art and life management courses.

Oh, I see. Doubling up on English classes and getting a foreign language under one's belt is not as important as sticking around for those life management courses. God forbid kids should forgo these electives.

"Kids are having a hard enough time as it is in college," said Okeechobee County School District Assistant Superintendent Lee Dixon. "You're giving up the fourth year of high school math, and high school science. You don't want to leave it up to kids to shortchange themselves."

Other educators say students who have six credits less than their peers when they graduate won't be as competitive in university admissions. And they'll likely be too far from their 18th birthdays to immediately enlist in the military.

So they'll work at the Gap until they're old enough to enlist, if that's their goal. Do these educators really think that any kid who cares about being competitive for college will deliberately shortchange themselves by six credits? Those who want or need the courses will stay; guidance counselors can let juniors know what colleges expect in the way of credits. The kids who don't need these credits, like student Cole Crockwell, just want to get on with their lives. Maybe some kids want to fulfill the minimum requirements and get out because they know they'll need to work for a couple of years before even starting college. Why stand in their way?

I know that in South Carolina students can graduate at least a semester early - at least, that was the case in the 1980's. It's surprising to find out that that's not the case in Florida.

The ABCNews view of exit exams

ABCNews tackles the subject of exit exams, but while it appears the reporter may have tried to balance out the article, he didn't adequately research the topic, and most of the space is given over to testing critics:

[Teacher] Orlinsky's concern has become an issue nationwide, as more and more states move toward requiring that every student pass a standard statewide test on top of their regular class requirements in order to graduate.

Critics of the move say that there is already evidence that children — particularly minority and poor children — are dropping out or being pushed out of schools as a result of emphasis on high-stakes testing.

The Amrein and Berliner study is quoted as "proof" that exit exams seem unrelated to actual academic achievement, or may actually impede learning - but the subsequent criticisms of the study (and one of the author's own waffling quotes) that appeared in the very recent Center on Education Policy paper on exit exams are not mentioned in the ABCNews article. Accidental oversight? Or does ABCNews want to leave readers in the dark about research showing that exit exams may indeed have a positive impact on other measures of academic achievement, a point which David Berliner himself has conceded?

The final sections of the article cover the topic of dropouts and alternative assessments, and here the reporter's lack of research and knowledge about the topics are apparent:

...research seemed to confirm what critics have said about increased rates of dropouts and so-called "push-outs," cases when poor-performing students are allegedly either counseled to leave school, ostensibly to focus on taking high school equivalency tests, or are intentionally discouraged by being repeatedly failed in the years before they would be required to take assessment tests.

"It looks like these exams may be causing dropouts, and this is really serious, because dropouts have a much harder time throughout their lifetime," Gayler said.

A few sentences later, a researcher is quoted who does note that the research linking exit exams to dropout rates is inconclusive, but it's telling that the reporter is willing to give credence to the theory than an increased dropout rate is a valid criticism of the exam, and not of the schools that are responsible for failing to educate their students. If schools raise standards in any fashion, via graduation requirements, exams, or other options, and more students drop out in response, I fail to see why critics then rush to judge the standards. Can't this also be seen as evidence that the schools are merely failing to meet their own standards?

Finally, the mantra of "holistic assessments" is once again invoked without any concern for the cost and psychometric complexity involved with these types of assessments:

There is strong evidence, though, that different people test differently, critics of the reliance on tests say, and they while the tests might be good tools for certain kinds of assessment, they are not always the best way to judge how much a student has learned...

Rather than putting all students through standardized tests, "richer, more complex types of assessment" such as student portfolios, classroom-based tests and teacher assessments would give a "much more fair and accurate" picture of what a student has learned, said MassCARE statewide coordinator Jackie King.

Does Ms. King have any idea how much it costs to develop and pilot tests assessments? Is she aware of the amount of bias that is introduced by such assessments? Are those who are are concerned about correlations aware that the lower the reliability of the instrument, the lower the correlation it will have with any other assessment - and performance assessments nearly always have lower reliability than multiple-choice assessments?

Student portfolios are expensive to develop, expensive to grade, and introduce the potential for a fantastic amount of rater bias. I've written about this multiple times (see here and here), and yet I've almost never seen a reporter inform readers about the fact that these politically-correct, touchy-feely exam alternatives come equipped with massive drawbacks and pitfalls as part of their standard operating system. This may explain the incorrect-yet-seemingly-widespread view that performance assessments are easier to develop and score - and are by definition more "fair" - than the oft-vilified objective assessments.

Duke battles segregation with more segregation

Conservative-thinking student Steve Miller has already done battle with Santa Monica High School, and now his college of choice, Duke, is next in line. I think he'll do quite well in the major of political science, and Duke's professors had better be prepared for him. He's already started a Students for Academic Freedom chapter on the campus, and his sharp eyes (and equally sharp mind) have noticed signs of trouble even in orientation:

...I began to quietly, politely, question some of the troubling things I had observed during our orientation. For instance, during our schedule on one day our lunch was from 12-2. The itinerary read as follows:

In response to my question the dean remarked in the past Duke used to be segregated and that this was something the faculty was (rightly) ashamed of. He explained that they had an obligation to create as inclusive an environment as possible. He did not explain how we are to compensate for past segregation with more segregation; maybe that's one of the things I am supposed to learn at Duke.

Another student learned at Duke that it's impossible for a history course to present facts, and perhaps those who insist on factual knowledge should consider dropping it, especially if they're Republicans. Steve Miller's got his work cut out for him.

Giving states the leeway to define teacher quality

Should states be given the leeway to decide which of their teachers are "highly qualified?" One of the criticisms of NCLB is that, while certain aspects of education are micromanaged by the federal government, the definition of what makes a teacher qualified is not. Thus, the definition can vary greatly from state to state - and some states might be tweaking these definitions in order to keep up appearances.

This post from Ohio, for example, says that Ohio has one of the best sets of guidelines, yet some teachers were undoubtedly missed:

Ohio data showed 82 percent of the state's teachers are "highly qualified" by state standards. Among poor school districts, 78 percent of teachers meet the requirements...

The Ohio data sent to Washington reflects teachers during 2002-03, not the current year. It ignores some highly qualified teachers, those with master's degrees, and relies on statewide data. It does not divide that information down to the district level and offers no indication of trends because it is the first year of reporting.

On the other hand, there's California:

California had to scrap its initial definition, which converted nearly all teachers, whether on waivers or emergency permits, to highly qualified status. Responding to an outcry from education groups, the California State Board of Education is in the process of sculpting new requirements.

Another interesting report on California comes from the Pacific Research Insitute, which claims that California's credentialing procedure reduces the chances of the state's bringing highly qualified teachers on board. Why? Allegedly because the credential requirements haven't been validated, the training required for credentialing may not be related to teaching ability, and because there are so many loopholes that the minimum standards are often not met.

Only ten states have so far defined what constitutes a "highly qualified" teacher, and Florida is one of those states:

Guidelines regarding employment of highly qualified teachers have been distributed to each district. Florida has moved beyond "planning" into implementation of the requirements as stated in the law. This includes the provision that newly employed teachers in Title I schools must be highly qualified (effective at the beginning of the 2002-03 school) and that all teachers in core subject areas in all schools must be highly qualified by 2006.

I dug around until I found Florida's actual set of standards for a "highly qualified" teacher:

All teachers who give instruction in the core academic subjects of Arts-Visual Arts, Dance, Drama-Theatre, Foreign Languages, Language Arts, Mathematics, Music, Science, Social Studies and Graded Self-Contained at any level must meet the following criteria in order for a "yes" response to be provided:
* holds an acceptable bachelor’s or higher degree, and holds a valid Florida certificate in-field in the subject area assigned

"New" elementary teachers (hired after the first day of school in the 2002-03 school year) must meet one of the following criteria in order for a "yes" response to be provided:
* has passed the appropriate subject area test in the area assigned OR
* holds a valid in-field Professional Certificate in the area assigned.

So becoming "highly certified" is possible even if the appropriate subject test is failed. That's interesting. Loopholes for the FCAT are accompanies by loopholes for the teachers as well.

If you've recently read an interesting article relating to teacher certification and/or definining "highly qualified" teachers for your state, be sure to send it to me. The Devoted Readers of this blog would be interested to hear about it.

Tilting the SAT playing field

There's a fascinating article over at Education Next entitled, "Disabling the SAT." It's long, but well worth your time.

Those of you who are regular readers know that I have long been critical of some issues surrounding accommodated testing, most especially the decisions by testing companies to discontinue the flagging of tests that are given under extended time limits. Those of you who wish to review my comments on this can click here, and, especially, here.

Done? Good. Back to the EN article. Attorney Miriam Kurtzig Freedman has answered my prayers with a long and thoughtful look at the recent ETS/College Board decisions surrounding accommodated testing, and the lack of public controversy surrounding the concessions on the part of testing companies is as surprising to her as it was to me:

In 1999, after taking the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), the standardized exam required of applicants to business schools, Mark Breimhorst sued the test’s maker, the powerful Educational Testing Service (ETS). Breimhorst was born without hands and thus had been given more time to complete the admissions exam. His lawsuit contested ETS’s practice of informing schools when students take one of its tests under specialized conditions, effectively placing an asterisk or, in testing parlance, a “flag” next to their scores. For unexplained reasons, instead of weathering a trial, ETS settled the case and agreed to stop flagging GMAT scores.

Once the GMAT was no longer flagged, disability rights activists went after the SAT, claiming that these flags "stigmatize" disabled test takers. As I posted previously, a flag is a "stigma" only if we are willing to concede that admissions officers choose to discriminate against handicapped applicants, which is hard to believe in this day and age. Removing the flag, on the other hand, is a surreal denial that the test was given under non-standard conditions in the first place. At the heart of the matter is whether choosing to interpret a non-standard test differently from a standard test is "stigmatizing," or sound psychometric practice.

Accommodations like extended time, [disability rights advocates] believe, are necessary to equalize the testing experience for disabled and nondisabled students and thus make the scores of disabled students [on the SAT] more valid.

The problem is, those scores haven't actually been validated, not in a statistical sense. Equalizing the testing situation in this sense doesn't automatically translate into equalization of the predictive validity of the two types of scores. There's a great deal of controversy over whether extending testing time actually "levels the playing field" for disabled students, as well as whether accommodations can benefit non-disabled students who obtain fraudulent diagnoses. If the former is false, there's no reason to offer accommodations; if the latter is true, the potential for fraud is great. Neither of these, though, have any bearing on whether admissions officers should know whether a test was non-standard.

Should a test be flagged if it's given in Braille for a visually-disabled test taker? Not necessarily, because a credible argument can be made that the same skills are being measured. Reading comprehension is reading comprehension, whether you read with your eyes or your fingers. But because admissions tests are almost always speeded, changing the time limit of the tests will almost certainly change the nature of what's being tested, so extended-time tests should be flagged. The only question that needs to be asked when considering the removal of these flags is, "Do non-standard tests predict college GPA as well as standard tests?" If they do, there's no reason to flag. If they don't, it's fraudulent not to flag, all the talk about "stigma" notwithstanding.

As Ms. Freeman notes,

"The College Board website tells aspiring matriculants, “Your scores show colleges how ready you are to handle the work at their institutions and how your verbal and math skills compare with those of other applicants.”

Therefore, no scores should be used unless they have been validated in this respect. Regardless, the College Board appointed an expert panel to discuss the removal of the flags, and ultimately they did remove them (with their main competitor, ACT, following suit only weeks later).

How many test-takers does this affect? Only 2% of SAT-takers request special accommodations - but almost all of them request additional time, and for some, such as those who claim learning disabilities, this is the only accommodation they request. As for learning disabilities (LDs), these diagnoses have increased 300% since 1976 - and while the percentage of SAT-takers has increased only 18% since 1987, the percent of those requesting accommodations has increased by more than 300%. (Don't miss the accompanying graphs, by the way, which suggest that this increase in the requests for accommodations have been accompanied by an increase in test scores for disabled test-takers.)

When the number of people in any situation who claim to be disabled increases at a rate this much faster than the increase in the general population, either something is happening to create disabilities, or a new way of diagnosing disabilities is present - or some people are not being honest about their disability status. Removing the "stigma" of the flag for extra time (which is the accommodation that LD test-takers will virtually always request) will do nothing to stem any tide of fraudulent claims.

Ms. Freedman goes one step further than (correctly) criticizing the College Board's puzzling decision to stop flagging on the SAT. She suggest three alternative routes that could have been taken:

Untimed SATs for all. If, as the College Board asserts, time doesn’t affect validity, administer the SAT untimed for everyone! As she notes, this would still change the nature of the test - but at least it would change it for everyone, so that everyone's scores could be lumped together for the validity studies. However, despite the claims of the disability advocates that they simply want disabled test-takers to be on equal footing with everyone else, I have the feeling that few of these advocates would go for this truly leveling option, as opposed to one that gives preferential treatment to disabled test-takers.

Let the students decide. If time does affect validity and standardized norms, as we have been led to believe since the precursor of the SAT began in 1926, then the Board can avoid the allegation of discrimination by allowing all students to choose whether they want extended time. No. Given the ease with which some students have obtained fake LD diagnoses, this is essentially what ETS and the College Board are already doing. Also, this doesn't remove the problems of the necessity of flagging and the differential test validity. Besides, I'm cynical enough to believe that some test-taker will be willing to sue on the grounds that being forced to choose is in and of itself stigmatizing, if the flags are still in place.

Defend the SAT. The College Board could void the settlement. If actually sued, it could defend the SAT in court...a court would most likely defer to educational experts, uphold standards supported by evidence of the SAT’s validity, reliability, and technical underpinnings, and find flagging not to be unlawful discrimination. This is, not surprisingly, the option that I believe College Board should choose, not least because this is the only option that conforms to the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing set forth by American Educational Research Association (AERA), the American Psychological Association (APA), and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME):

When there is credible evidence of score comparability across regular and modified administrations, no flag should be attached to the score. When such evidence is lacking, specific information about the nature of the modification should be provided, if permitted by law, to assist test users properly to interpret and act on test scores.

The proof of "credible evidence" should have been the lynchpin of the expert panel's decision to remove the SAT flags, but Ms. Freedman's summary of their conclusions makes it devastatingly clear that this decisions was not guided by research, nor by sound psychometric theory:

The bottom line is that the panel majority had no research directly comparing changes in the performance of nondisabled and disabled students when both are given extended time. Moreover, the existing research, given the limitations outlined above, hardly establishes that many nondisabled students would not benefit from having extra time. This is not to criticize the research, since the researchers themselves acknowledge these limitations. The problem is with the panel majority’s drawing of firm conclusions based on inconclusive evidence...

The two psychometricians on the panel certainly recognized this. In a joint statement accompanying their individual reports to the panel, when they asked themselves the key question—whether scores from the SAT taken with and without extended time are comparable—one answered “no” while the other said “not sure.”

What's more, the panel quibbled over the definition of "credible evidence," and focused on the fact that the research did not conclusively show that the two forms of testing were different, when in fact the decision to remove the flags should have been made only if the evidence conclusively showed that there was no difference in predictive validity. I was previously unaware of the exact breakdown of the vote, but this outline makes it quite clear that the decision was primarily based on the urging of the three panelists "with experience and training in the special-education and learning-disabilities arena." Funny, I don't remember seeing anything about that in the Standards for Testing guidelines.

The conclusion?

With the decision to end flagging, most students will take the test in three hours, some in four and a half hours, others in five hours (for a shorter version of the test), without any reporting of these differences. Does that pass the test of common sense?

No. As noted in the article, speed counts in the real world, admissions officers would prefer to have the flags for making decisions, and the potential for disability-claim abuse will only increase. The playing field is now more unequal; students who receive accommodated tests, even if not truly disabled, will most likely have an advantage over students who do not. It's hard not to conclude that this is what the disability rights advocates and people "with training in the learning-disabilities" have wanted all along.

NCLB: A summary

On Joanne's blog - and on Jewish World Review - you can read more about the No Child Left Behind Act, Joanne's comment on the law, and the Education Gadfly's comments. EG also provides a link to the Slate article: "Flunking Out: Bush's Pet Education Bill Is In Serious Trouble."

EG's summary is quite good (the road rubber and Canadian geese metaphors are particularly descriptive), and the meat of the article is his clearly-defined separation of the real problems from the meaningless honking. Bureaucracies are hard to change, even from above, and the American public is ambivalent enough about this that poll results can easily show support for or opposition to NCLB. Some parts are managed too closely; others, not closely enough. Fine-tuning is definitely needed. Finally, the EG comes to the same conclusion about NCLB that I have made about many of the standardized testing errors that have come to light:

...much of the current squawking has to do with start-up difficulties and confusion, the friction of changing familiar practices and the pain of stretching long-idle tendons. Another year of experience will see some difficulties resolving themselves, states and districts (and schools and educators) beginning to grow accustomed to doing things differently and, perhaps, more imagination in resolving implementation problems. Mainly, though, it's important for everyone to recognize that a new day has dawned in American education and that it simply won't do to go back to sleep.

Much of the current squawking about errors in standardized tests is, I believe, due to startup issues that would be present in any endeavor - but also because there are still those out there that wish the whole testing business would "go back to sleep." That isn't going to happen.

Update: A Friendly Neighborhood Psychometrician sent an email my way because one paragraph in the Slate article seemed particularly full of "illogical statements and non-sequiturs":

NCLB was supposed to improve schools by holding them to higher academic standards and letting students transfer out of failing schools. Instead, over the past few months especially, this massive education law has generated little more than bad news, indifference, and increasing resistance. The hard-to-imagine numbers of failing schools in California and elsewhere have worn down the public's confidence in the law. Low-income and minority parents have failed to show strong interest in the transfer option that was supposed to help them escape dysfunctional schools. Congressional Democrats and some of the nation's largest education groups have already begun working to stop it in its tracks. The law seems to have few friends and many enemies.

As the FNP puts it,

Isn't the bad news and resistance exactly the result of identifying and holding schools to higher standards? If it was expected that most of the news would be good, there would have been little reason to enact the law. And who is it that finds the number of failing schools unimaginably large (other than administrators and teacher's unions, who are the main source of resistance)? The bill, and the standards weren't intended to make friends. Why doesn't the author instead look into the motivations of those resisting?

Grudge match: Students vs math teachers

Now, I'm all for giving students non-monetary incentives to improve their academic performance. However, I find this a little....skeevy:

In an effort to encourage ninth-graders at East Ascension High School to take a standardized test seriously last year, a poster was circulated at the school promising students they would have a chance to dunk Algebra I teacher Judy Braud. The advertising gimmick worked as 156 sophomores made the grade...

The students were rewarded with a day in the sun for earning a higher score on the ninth-grade IOWA than they did in the seventh grade. "All they had to do was improve by one point and they were eligible for the fun day," she explained.

I understand that the IOWA is used for school ranking and not student ranking, and therefore students might not take it seriously. But still, giving credit for a one-point increase in scores? That makes it obvious that the school wasn't comfortable with rewarding only those students who made meaningful improvement, but was willing to reward those who basically stayed the same (the one-point increase is most likely well within the standard error of measurement).

Plus, if the kids did better on the test, why make one of the rewards a kind of "punishment" for their teachers? Yes, I know dunking is in good fun - but isn't it nice to imagine a situation in which teachers get dunked if their students do worse on the exam? Doesn't it make more sense for a student to want to dunk a teacher who shortchanged them, rather than one who helped them improve their scores?

Grudge match: ACT vs SAT

The Associated Press is adding 2+2 and coming up with 3 when they compare the recent releases of nationwide ACT and SAT scores. The SAT says math scores are at a 35-year high - but the folks at ACT say that this year's incoming college freshmen are unprepared for college-level math courses. Are these two conclusions necessarily contradictory?

The ACT scores for the high school class of 2003 were identical in math and science to the year before - 20.6 and 20.8, respectively, on a 36-point scale. In the last five years, math and science scores have dropped slightly on the test, taken by nearly 1.2 million of last spring's high school graduates. Researchers for the ACT analyzed this year's results and concluded that just 26 percent of test-takers were ready to handle college coursework in science and 40 percent in math.

Meanwhile, the SAT math scores were the best since at least 1967: 519 on a scale with a top score of 800. Since the 1999 exam, math scores are up eight points.

So scores are rising on the SAT - but not on the ACT. Has the SAT been getting easier? Are there college performance indicators that indicate which test is more accurate? Some say yes:

Some educators say the number of students enrolled in remedial math and science courses at four-year schools support the ACT's conclusions. Michael Kirst, a Stanford University education professor, said the ACT's position is compatible with a study he co-authored earlier this year. It also found that many freshmen are not prepared for college math and science, despite gains in achievement scores.

"To have scores higher than 35 years ago and to be testing a larger and more diverse student body than was tested 35 years ago is pretty darn impressive - whether they're ready for college or not," Porter said.

Eh, I don't know about that. Yes, it's impressive that SAT scores have gone up, but SAT scores are supposed to predict readiness for college. SAT scores are supposed to predict first-year grades in college. If high SAT scores aren't predicting that, or if students with high SAT math scores are in remedial math classes, then something is wrong. I think it does matter if students are "ready for college or not."

Of course, the SAT and ACT populations may be different. The ACT packs in the Midwestern crowd, while the East and West Coasters are more likely to take the SAT. Ivy League colleges are more likely to require the SAT as well.

The ACT decision that today's high school seniors was based in part on questionnaires that showed fewer than half had four years of math classes. But how many of those with only Algebra I, II, and Geometry under their belts planned to attend college? What's more, the College Board reports that high school precalc course enrollment is up 12% from 1993.

So what's going on? I disagree with the cynical view that this is all due to marketing. One explanation could be that the SAT test-takers now include enough stellar students to move the mean upwards, while the ACT does not. The ACTs estimation of student readiness could be incorrect. Or, it could be the case that even though students are testing better on standardized math tests, those scores are the result of better preparation in the lower math courses, and not necessarily an indication of whether the students are ready to do college-level math work. I don't have the answer, but I'm not impressed by the AP's willingness to let the question be cynically and abrubtly dispatched with claims of marketability and test promotion.

Trying out a new method

Hello, Devoted Readers. I've been thinking about the amount of time I spend on this blog, and I've decided that (a) it might be too much, and (b) greater amounts of time don't necessarily create better quality. What's more, real life is definitely intruding at this point. I have several other projects going on, and I simply won't be able to spend as much time on N2P as I'd like.

So I'm going to experiment over the next couple of days with sifting through possible stories and posting fewer items that will be (hopefully) of higher quality. I've been trying to get the "scoops" on a lot of small news stories by making lots of little posts throughout the day, and I'm not sure that I'll be able to continue doing that. I may see if it works out better for me to collect stories all day and post them all at once in the evenings as opposed to more continuous posting.

Let me know if you've got any suggestions out there for changes I can make that will reduce my time burden without reducing the quality of this blog. I still intend to post every day, so I'm not going to disappear on you. I just know that I need to make some adjustments to the blog, time-wise. Also, if it's important to you guys that you see some comments from me in response to your own comments on my postings, let me know. I've been trying to respond to as many comments as possible, but I don't know if that's a desirable aspect of the comments sections. Maybe you just all want to debate amongst yourselves.

College is not for everyone

No, this isn't another Mark Edmonson post. On the History News Network site, there's a very interesting article by professor Thomas Reeves that questions why we assume everyone should go to college. Certainly, that is an assumption in our society - witness the furor over high school exit exams and AA in college admissions. Depriving someone of their "right" to attend college, even if it's through a selection process that measure academic readiness, is considered a sin by many activists, politicians, and general left-leaning pundits:

Going to college has become a national fad, a rite of passage, millions hope, into the world of hefty salaries and McMansions. The trek to academia has now spread to the working class, who see sending their kids to college as a sign of respectability... but is this crush for diplomas necessarily a good thing?

Let us consider our nineteen new college students [mentioned on a billboard]. In the first place, how many of them have the intellect and the intellectual preparation to be serious and successful students? ACT scores continue to decline nationally, and Richard T. Ferguson, ACT's chief executive, urges better high school preparation. About four in ten last year scored well enough on the test to suggest that they could earn at least a C in a college-level math course. On tenth grade math tests in Wisconsin recently, 76 percent of white students attained proficiency or better, compared with 40 percent of Hispanics, and 23 percent of blacks. In Michigan, Colorado, Texas, and New York academic tests have been altered or thrown out because of low scores. The great majority of high schools continue to require little in exchange for their diplomas. Hundreds of thousands enter the campus gates without a clue about the intellectual challenges that are, or at least should be, awaiting them.

What happens to the underprepared? They're more likely to drop out, of course - but they're also likely to contribute to the dumbing down of class content and discussions. When a professor is confronted with "a classroom full of people who do not read, study, or think,", it's not a stretch to conclude that the standards will be reduced to the point of being useless for any student who does think.

But why is this situation considered acceptable?

In America and all across the western world, intellectuals are enthralled with the abolition of moral and intellectual standards. In the courts and in the media, as well as the classroom, they are ramming this dogma down the throats of the vast majority.

Not surprisingly, the commenters to Dr. Reeves' post immediately assume that he is racist and "classist" - such is the kneejerk response to anyone who states outright that perhaps not every kid is college material, and that admitting students who are not college material is not the best thing for those students or the colleges they attend. Dr. Reeves' post says nothing about race or class, but, paradoxically, anyone who does not support the very racist practice of AA (and I assume Dr. Reeves would not) finds himself tagged with the "racist" label these days.

(Thanks to Devoted Reader Mike D. for the link.)

Mark Edmonson is not going away

Devoted Reader Frank Admissions (who now has a permalink on my front page) sends along the links to Mark Edmonson and continuing fight for truth, justice, and admission to UNC despite his extreme senioritis and extremely shady rationalizations.

In the Charlotte Observer:

Edmonson's mother, Barbara Edmonson, said that after discussing the case with their attorney the family has decided to go ahead with the breach of contract lawsuit. "We will continue to pursue it because his acceptance was wrongly and untimely rescinded by the university," Edmonson's attorney, Marshall Hurley, said Wednesday...

"He needs to be in school," she said. "He wanted to be in school."

Really? Based on his wretched senior GPA, I never would have guessed.

From FA's own blog, a link to a Daily Tar Heel article:

Barbara Edmonson, his mother, said she and her son are going forward with the breach of contract lawsuit and are appealing his admission decision.

"I really can't believe that he's not in college at this point," she said.

You know, for a mother who sounds this concerned now, concerned enough to be quoted in every frickin' article about Mark, you have to wonder - where WAS she all last year? You know, when Mark was completely tanking in his high school classes and writing evasive letters to UNC? When he was allegedly having huge problems with medication, yet managed to pass AP exams? She can't believe he's not in college right now? Why wasn't she this incredulous when she saw his grades last April?

"2-4-6-8! Windows XP is so great!"

"Microsoft to build city high school"...the headline says it all.

The Philadelphia School District and Microsoft Corp. will partner to build a new $46 million high school steeped in the latest technology for learning, business functions - even sports.

The school, which will serve 700 students in a location not yet determined, is the first venture of its kind for Microsoft, which in the past has provided support to schools on a smaller scale. It is scheduled to open in Sept. 2006, but district chief executive officer Paul G. Vallas said he hopes to have it ready a year earlier.

Technology or no, if the cafeteria food tastes good, it's not a real high school. And what does a "paperless" high school mean, anyway? Homework on computers only? Digitized report cards? The entire school IM'ing one another instead of reading that downloaded copy of Romeo and Juliet? Will kids be rebels not with cigarettes and leather jackets but with Linux and Macs? The mind reels...

Fighting back against yobbishness

No, not snobbishness. Yobbishness:

Schools will have to tackle a culture of "yobbishness" if teachers are to be kept in the profession, says the School Standards Minister, David Miliband. Addressing a conference about the retention of teaching staff, Mr Miliband said some "simple truths" about pupil behaviour needed to be asserted.

"No parent has the right to abuse a teacher or any other member of the school team ... and no teacher or support staff should ever be told that respect is old-fashioned or authority out of date," said Mr Miliband.

Wow, all those years of denigrating authority, of child-centered education, of fear that discipline would "repress" children...it's finally come full-circle. Mr. Miliband notes, as do others, that some kids get little positive attention or discipline training at home, but that doesn't mean these kids should be given a pass on respecting others at school. Indeed, school might be the first place in which they learn to sit still and respect the rights of others.

So, what exactly is a "yob"?

"There is a yobbish culture that says that it's OK to mouth off. Wrong. It is never OK," said the minister...

Unruly behaviour by pupils has been cited as an important reason why teachers have decided to leave. A survey earlier this year claimed that a third of teachers planned to quit the classroom in the next five years - with many blaming aggressive pupils and parents.

Ah, what a useful term. Yobs are mouthers-off, unruly kids - and bullies too, I'm sure. Perhaps this is one instance in which video cameras in the classrooms could help? After all, if the school wants the right to expel little miscreats, it would be nice to have their exploits on tape.

Nature, nurture, and IQ

Various bloggers are all over some recent research on the Head Start program which suggests that, at the low end of the income scale, IQ is less determined by inheritability than environment, as compared to the higher end, where inheritability plays a larger part. Here's a summary of the report and various comments:

"Genes' sway over IQ may vary with class" (Washington Post)
"Environment, IQ, and Head Start" (Mark Kleiman)
"Nature vs nurture, part 4578..." (Calpundit)
"Plug" (Jane Galt)
"Liberals for the Status Quo" (Joanne Jacobs)

What do I think? I think most of the blogosphere's got it absolutely right (Calpundit, on the other hand, is wrong in believing that Bush wants to "gut" the program by increasing the academic challenge and decreasing the federal control). These findings call not for a preservation of status quo, but for introducing changes into Head Start - and into the public K-12 system - that focus on intensifying the cognitive atmosphere surrounding minority youth. As one of Joanne's commenters put it, in the 1970's social workers became afraid to shove "middle-class ethics" down the throats of minority clients, and now we're seeing the inevitable end result.

All fears that kids are going to be pushed beyond their "readiness" level should be put aside, especially when the kids are coming from poor homes. Disadvantaged kids should not be coddled, nor saddled with the "bigotry of low expectations"; instead, they should be getting more stimulation, more exposure to facts, more intensive education - because they're not getting it at home.

I'm not going to get involved in the topics of federal vs. state spending or programs; I'll just say that this is yet another piece of evidence suggesting that lower standards in academic environments, from ineffective Head Start programs to bad schools to grade inflation to all the way up to AA in college admissions, disproportionately hurt those at the lower end of the SES scale who need help the most.

How schools shortchange boys

The newest concern is, it seems, the underperformance (and over-medication) of boys in the K-12 system. Such concerns are not unwarranted:

In classrooms nationwide, girls are pulling ahead of boys academically. Recent federal testing data show that what starts out as a modest gap in elementary-level reading scores turns into a yawning divide by high school...And while boys still score slightly higher on federal math and science exams, their advantage is slipping.

Last April, when Kenneth Dragseth, superintendent of schools in Edina, Minn., presented a paper describing his district's gender gap at the American Educational Research Association's annual meeting in Chicago, he says the reception ranged from chilly to hostile. Female education researchers in the audience questioned whether helping boys would mean hurting girls.

Why does it have to be a zero-sum game? Why is it astonishing to discover that boys and girls, who mature at different rates, also learn at different rates, and with different methods? The only answer that comes to mind is that a politically-correct hostility or indifference towards boys is what is acceptable in education colleges these days.

The schools that get boys off Ritalin and more involved in the classroom activities should be held up as role models:

...anecdotal evidence shows that far more effective strategies are available for teaching boys than plying them with Ritalin. Patricia Henley runs a boy-friendly charter school in Kansas that hires many male teachers. It also recognizes boys' natural tendency to favor active learning by conducting more class work on the chalkboard and allowing more student movement within the classroom. And the school trains teachers to deal with boys' particular styles. For instance, because boys volunteer answers more slowly than girls do, teachers are told to count to 10 before calling on a student.

It's appalling to learn that graduates of educational programs who spend so much time exploring "theories of learning" are exposed to little or no information about differences in male-female brain functioning, thanks to the politics of their instructors. Ignoring those differences doesn't make them go away; it just creates a situation in which men are less likely to graduate from high school, less likely to go to college, and less likely to become productive members of society - and it's worse for minorities, to boot.

Therapeutic teaching

Does it make sense for schools to focus on the "social and emotional" development of their little charges? According to this research, the answer is yes, because it increases academic achievement:

In Mary Ellen McDonnell's 3rd grade class, children have a lot of decisions to make. Just one slice of a typical day offers an example. As social studies begins, McDonnell asks: What do you want to learn today about Illinois' early explorers, and how should you go about learning it?

After discussion, and working out differences of opinion, the pupils set one academic goal and one social goal: In small groups, they will research how the early fur traders helped build Chicago, and they will practice listening well to one another. When they're done, they'll reunite and analyze what went well, what didn't go well, and why.

But did they actually learn anything? Or are they focusing more on how they interact, instead of how well each of them understood the historical facts being presented? It's hard to tell, here, the way this is phrased.

...proponents of "social-emotional learning" contend that schools will reach their academic goals more effectively if students, while tackling math or reading, are also learning how to manage emotions, challenges, and relationships and to make good decisions.

...a growing body of research suggests that a deliberate and comprehensive approach to teaching children social and emotional skills can raise their grades and test scores, bolster their enthusiasm for learning, reduce behavior problems, and enhance the brain's cognitive functions.

Hm. I'm skeptical, but I understand how this can work, especially if it is, as subsequently described, integrated into the curriculum. The problem, I would think, would be in defining the social and emotional skills that are necessary, figuring out a way to integrate them, and allowing for children who are't that social to continue to achieve (e.g., some children don't work well in groups, and shouldn't have to do so constantly).

The Child Development Project appears to be boosting both motivation and performance in the eight districts in which it's been employed. Certainly, if it's an integrated program with proven results, I already like it better than the more problematic touchy-feely philosophy that self-esteem is enhanced by refusing to allow kids to fail, or that self-esteem is damaged by insisting that kids learn to work hard in school.

Astonishingly, though, one person connected with the study insists that the current mindset in education is all about facts, and not about social development. This certainly isn't what parents that I know have encountered when dealing with public schools, and it isn't what most of those in education reform have experienced or documented. Since the 1970's, factual knowledge has been continually devalued, and the cult of self-esteem worshipped. That would explain why there's skepticism about this program, right now.

I mean, kudos to the researchers for going after this topic with research instead of ideology, and for pointing out that social and academic development aren't mutually exclusive - but it's not the fuzzy therapeutic stuff that ed schools are going to find controversial.

The burdens of exit exams

The Center on Education Policy has released a report detailing the unexpected consequences of implementing exit exams, which are now used in 19 states for over half of all US public high school students. It's not all bad news, of course, as the exams do seem to be creating a better alignment between standards and course content, and they are boosting the educational progress of students at the remedial level.

The complaints, however, are not surprising. The "teaching to the exit exam" worry is that teaching is now broad, but with little depth, and the financial burdens are higher than previously expected. There's no consistent evidence to support the notion that exit exams mean higher dropout rates. And while it's obvious that certain groups, such poor students, minority students, and disabled students all pass at lower rates, this can be seen both as (a) a reason to remove the tests, so that these students aren't disadvantaged, or (b) a reason to keep them in place, so that schools can't continue to give up on these kids and give them meaningless diplomas.

A few thing I noted from the report (which is 140 pages and will not be covered in detail here):

1. Despite fears that exit exams will be eliminated, or dumbed down beyond all recognition, the report claims that states are committed to them and are making relatively minor modifications. Some states lowered standards, but some didn't, even in the face of extreme public opposition.

2. The map on page 7 is interesting. Any reason why the exit exam fervor has left the midwestern/northern states relatively untouched?

3. The educators, once again (p. 21), are concerned with the "fairness" of a test which has differential impact. But I've written before about how these educators are essentially arguing that these exit exam must produce equal results for, and thus be considered fair to, students at the group level - but they weren't designed for that. They were designed to be fair at an individual level; if a student has the skills, they pass, and if they don't, they don't pass. These exams were never designed to make sure all groups were treated the same, but all students.

4. The Amrein and Berliner study, which allegedly showed no impact of state-level high-stakes exams to more substantial academic achievements, is mentioned, but it's balanced out by mention of the substantial criticisms that followed the study (even though Berliner is allowed to make a waffling rebuttal in this document).

Discrimination in the news

Hie thee to John's Discriminations blog, where he's all over recent newstories which that Michigan does not prefer minorities, but in fact creates them. He also notes that the NAACP has come far from its original mission of creating "color-blind" hiring situations, especially when it comes to firefighters.

Teaching vs testing in rural north carolina

The Smoky Mountain (NC) News has a thoughtful article on the struggles of teachers in rural mountain schools to comply with NCLB, and their concerns about the "standardized testing culture":

“Here we go again,” Tammy Bates thought as she passed out the second standardized writing test in one week to her 10th-grade English students at Tuscola High School...

In the back of Bate’s mind, she wondered what would go wrong with the test this time. A week earlier, the state told teachers to administer a field test and that a pilot test would come later. Later happened to be the following week, affording no time to discuss the pilot test with students and work through problem areas. The previous year the writing topic was “diversity,” something there isn’t a lot of at rural mountain schools. The topic was deemed too subjective and the marks thrown out.

The article describes the rushed time schedules, inappropriate test content, and the stack of new national standardized tests that have been piled onto a school system that already had a meaningful local standardized test system in place. What's more, the NCLB-mandated division of students into ever-more-precise racial and educational groups doesn't work the same way in these rural schools:

Western North Carolina lacks some of the profile groups found in larger cities. Profile groups that are present in rural mountain schools often exist in smaller numbers. This works both for and against the region in meeting the No Child Left Behind standards.

But at a rural school, there might be only 40 students in a profile group. If 15 fail their reading test, they don’t make the 76 percent mark, and the entire school gets a failing grade.

All this additional bean-counting is frustrating the teachers, because it isn't telling them anything new:

For all the turmoil and aggravation, the No Child Left Behind standards tell educators and politicians very little that they didn’t already know. Low-income children, minorities and disabled students do not perform as well on tests as white, non-low income students, according to state test results on ncschoolreportcards.org.

“Schools have been dissecting this data for years. In North Carolina, people can be frustrated and rightfully so because we already had a testing regime in place,” [Director of research John] Poteat said.

Chronicling the diversity of the modern university

The National Review's Peter Wood reviews the latest Almanic Issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. As he puts it, "Here is American higher education reduced to its industrial organization and consumerist profiles:"

Here is the dust in industry (43.8 percent of college presidents have "education" degrees; 89 percent of 4-year public colleges offer "distance-education" programs) and the sum in consumerism (43.7 percent of dependent college students get federal aid; 36.9 percent of college women chose their college partly on the basis offers of financial assistance, but only 30.7 percent of college men.)...

These labels translate fairly seamlessly into social attitudes. More than half of faculty members in American colleges and universities (55.3 percent), for example, agree that "racial and ethnic diversity should be more strongly reflected in the curriculum." Think about that. In most colleges and universities, the curriculum is already a charm bracelet of ethnic-studies courses and special pleading on behalf of minority subcultures, but the majority of the faculty nationwide are saying "not enough."

He also notes that 28 percent of faculty members believe that the frenetic pursuit of "diversity" results in admission of underprepared students, which leaves 72 percent who apparently "don't mind the gross disparities in academic failure and dropout rates between regular students and those admitted because of racial and ethnic "plus factors." Ouch.

Documenting academic outrages

Front Page Magazine has a "back-to-school" special which includes articles related to UNC's growing conservative student movement and the stunning lack of diversity at universities that supposedly value it. They also have a link to the Students for Academic Freedom site, whose motto is, "You can't get a good education if they're only telling you half the story."

I began reading some of their reports, and got engrossed in the battle over Laguardia Community College in NY. It's seem their math department has been totally corrupted by cronyism and political hiring, to the point where one full professor of Mathematics (allegedly) has no knowledge of calculus.

I found this hard to believe, but then I found this memo that describes the level of teaching taking place among the 44 sections of Statistics I in the college:

[The] new syllabus contains all the material of the old Statistics I plus all the material of Statistics II, with no increase in class time. The new course has now run for three semesters. Let's try to see what has happened in the classroom. If you look at the files that contain the (cumulative) final exams instructors are required to submit, you can review the final exams of the 44 sections of the new course taught thus far...

1. 19 of the 44 final exams are missing...
2. One quarter of the existing exams make no reference to any syllabus topic beyond Normal Distribution, which is lesson 17 out of 36...They seem to have completed substantially less than half the course.
3. Half of the existing exams do not show a syllabus topic beyond Confidence Intervals, lesson 21... These instructors have apparently omitted ALL of Hypothesis Testing ( lessons 22-36, i.e., roughly half the course ). Hypothesis testing is the heart of the subject, for those Math faculty not familiar with Statistics.
4. No exam shows a syllabus topic beyond t-test ( lesson 24 ). The vitally important topics of Correlation, Regression, Chi-Square tests and Analysis of Variance all appear to have been omitted by EVERY instructor.

In other words, although Laguardia's catalog claims that this course covers all the concepts of two Statistics courses, only half the students are being exposed even to the most basic concepts, and none are learning some of the most important concepts. Not only is this shameful, but the syllabus begs for revision. Normal Distributions aren't mentioned until Lesson 17? When I teach Stats, I teach that much, much earlier in the course, because it's the building block for z-scores and hypothesis testing.

Anyway, I found the Students For Academic Freedom site to be an engrossing (if frustrating) read. I'd love to know what you think.

A memorable way to start the school year

It's the first day of school at most places 'round the country, and what surprises have already popped up?

Well, for starters, there are the Striking Catholic Teachers of Philadelphia, who will be holding up classes for 23,300 students starting tomorrow. The unionized teachers claim recent pay raises will be wiped out by increased health plan costs. The schools intend to move forward with administrative work that doesn't require teacher presence.

There's a strike going on at Yale as well, this one being held by "clerical, technical, service and maintenance workers." Some professors are planning to hold classes off campus. Bewildered freshmen, whose dorm dining halls have been closed, have been wandering around campus looking for nourishment, and upperclassmen have been given rebates to buy groceries off-campus.

And speaking of nourishment (or not), some little Californians got the shock of their lives today, as they realized their schools are no longer selling candy or fatty foods. Soy milk, turkey burgers, and skim-milk pizzas are now on the menus, while doughnuts and Starbursts have been deep-sixed.

Meanwhile, in New Orleans, schools have given in to the trendiness not of soy milk, but of cell phones, which will now be allowed in some schools as long as they're kept turned off. Astonishingly, for the past 14 years, it's been against the law in Louisiana for students or adults to carry wireless phones in public schools - and some parishes are sticking to that law.

Teachers in Washington DC have been busy transforming their schoolrooms into oases of color and fragrance, filled with potted plants, pets, and air fresheners. Their theory is, as one teacher put it, students will be more productive "if I can create an atmosphere that focuses on simplicity and harmony and peace ." And reading and writing and 'rithmetic, don't forget that. Let's see, if Ms. Smith has $400 to spend at Pier One, and paper umbrellas cost $.40 apiece....

New schools have emerged in NYC, created from renovated churches and mansions. One school was so Gothic as to prompt reporter David Dunlap to comment, "Hogwarts will soon be in session."

In Boston, the big surprise was that the annual invasion of over 250,000 students went smoothly for once. Students ate Krispy Kreme doughnuts, hauled dorm refrigerators, books, and musical equipment back and forth, and didn't cause the expected snarly traffic jams. Boston has, I believe, the largest number of college students (or greatest number of colleges, I can't remember which) of any city in the US, which gave rise to this classic exchange from This is Spinal Tap:

IAN: Oh there's uhh...the other thing is that the uh...the Boston gig has been cancelled.
NIGEL: What?
IAN: Yeah. I wouldn't worry about it though, it's not a big college town.

Back when I first saw that movie, in SC, I didn't get the joke.

At least one student's move to Boston didn't go smoothly, though. A senior at the New England School of Photography got mad when movers tried to bilk her after transporting her furniture. Apparently the movers tried the same scam on Karen O'Neill that many an unscrupulous mover has tried before; once her possessions were "hostage" in the van, the movers demanded $150 more than expected to unload her furniture. Karen was fiesty, though (and had a written contract to back her up), and decided to jump into the back of the van to prevent the movers from driving off.

So the movers locked her in the van and threatened to take off with her. Thank God her friend called 911. The police arrived after Karen was freed, but made sure the contract price was enforced. The movers should have been thrown in the pokey, too, if you ask me. "Almost getting kidnapped" shouldn't have been on Karen's "What I Did On My Summer Vacation" essay.

Figuring out the ACT in Colorado

Want to know more about interpreting ACT scores - and about how well (or poorly) a school is doing? Ari Armstrong, posting for the Colorado Freedom Report, has a discussion about the performance of Colorado's schools on the ACT. He graciously allowed me to make some comments about the interpretability of ACT scores and the true distance (in terms of academic achievement) between Colorado's best-performing schools, and its worst. Go, read, enjoy.

Too much of a good thing in South carolina

South Carolina's young'uns sound plumb worn out by the battery of tests they face each year - at least one in every grade, including kindergarten:

The state requires five standardized tests — the Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test, the South Carolina Readiness Assessment, the BSAP Exit Exam, the High School Assessment Program and end-of-course tests for four high school-level classes. Two other tests — the TerraNova and the National Assessment of Educational Progress — are given to samples of students. Greenville County requires two more — the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the Iowa Test of Algebra Aptitude.

That means some eighth-graders could take as many as six tests this year.

That's too many. The folks in SC are sounding pretty civilized as they call for reform, though; they don't have a problem with testing, but they don't see the need for so much of it, especially when there's overlap. And one education professor at USC has some practical solutions in mind:

...there should be a way to streamline testing.

"I think we need to test to make sure kids are learning what they should be learning, but I don't think we have to test all the kids all the time," Anderson said.

Making the grade

A Devoted Reader alerted me earlier today to "Making the Grade," the Discovery Times Channel's documentary on testing and the NCLB Act. I haven't had the chance to watch it - but dig this review that has already appeared in the Palm Beach Post:

...the Discovery Times Channel's special Making the Grade (8 p.m. today) [is] a searing look at the high-stakes world of standardized-test scoring. "We regulate dog food and we don't regulate these companies," an industry watchdog says during the one-hour special.

"Searing?" My, I never knew my field was that exciting. I find it hard to believe that even the most dogged of investigative reporters would have used that word after following a few psychometricians around for a day...

The directors point their camera at a world in which four companies -- CTB McGraw-Hill, Pearson NCS, Riverside Publishing and Harcourt Educational Measurement -- control 95 percent of the nation's test preparation and scoring. It's a "cartel," says one state's school superintendant, and it gobbles the largest slice of a $730 million pie.

Four independent companies, and it's a "cartel?" The last I checked, these four companies were in competition for their products, which would rule out their working together to control prices and supply. What's more, it's not the large companies themselves that prevent the smaller companies from gaining a bigger slice of the pie, but the public's demand for speed and accuracy. After all, if a giant like NCS Pearson can make a big mistake, as they did in Minnesota, why would a school district trust an even smaller company, which would presumably have fewer QC controls in place?

To comply with a 2001 federal law, most states, including Florida, instituted massive end-of-year tests. Spring might have most people here thinking swimsuit shopping, but for test companies, high season means a deluge of pencil-flecked answer sheets. For their efforts, Making the Grade gives them a fat, red F, claiming their errors have affected 1.5 million students and rankings or bonuses for 4,000 schools.

Thus we are treated to a rehash of the NCS Pearson errors (which were substantial) - but does the documentary note, as the NYTimes did, that the demands of the school districts help to create a situation in which there wasn't enough time for adequate QC? Does it mention that errors would be expected in any enterprise that has been geared up to the extent that standardized testing has been over the past few years? The question is not, "Were mistakes made?" but, "Were more mistakes made than would be expected, given the limited time most companies were given?" and "Can we live with the results?" I'd say the testing industry has made fewer errors than you'd expect, given that some tests were ordered only three months before they were needed - but the results of errors have indeed been high-stakes, and there's the rub. Can accountability wait until the testing process is "perfected"?

Refusal of the four largest test companies to participate leaves the viewer wanting more, but the documentary offers in their place an illuminating behind-the-scenes peek at a fledgling test company that welcomed the publicity. That company's execs offer an earnest appraisal of the pressures they face from increased testing.

I'm not surprised at the refusal of these four companies to open their doors to scrutiny, thanks to the fact that testing reporters are rarely unbiased - but kudos to the fledgling company that spoke with reporters.

The Discovery Times Channel website contains a primer on testing that isn't bad, though there are plenty more subjects it could have covered, and it's surprising that the site omits the fact that computer scoring of essays is one of the biggest areas in educational testing research right now. Even the test prep companies know that on some high-stakes exams, computerized essay scoring is already in place.

Anyway, as I said, I haven't watched the thing yet, and might have to take some blood-pressure medicine before I do so, in case I feel the need to put my fist through the TV screen. Hopefully, it won't come to that.

The blogosphere, in person

By the way, I feel as though my bloggage today is uninspired, in part due to my fatigue. I had a bad burger at a Labor Day cookout yesterday, and it wore me down from the inside out (bleagh) all last night.

However, I would be remiss not to mention that the weekend started off on a much higher note. Friday night I finally got to meet John Rosenberg, of Discriminations fame, and his lovely and intelligent (and talkative) family. They were in town because his daughter Jessie was returning to Bryn Mawr, where she will begin her senior year (at the tender age of 16). We had a great dinner out - it's so much fun to talk with people who have an opinion on standardized testing other than, "Huh?" or "Yuk." I can't say enough about how much I enjoyed meeting John in person and getting to know his family, of whom I had heard a great deal, and I promise I'm not saying that just because he picked up the check.

It was also funny to realize that all of us had read that day about the U of Michigan's "new" diversity-enhancing entrance requirements, but John and his family read the Washington Post article on it, which contained different details than the version that I read, so John got to blog different elements of the same story:

The [Washington Post] article did, however, quote an interesting comment from Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. Mr. Nassirian said that over the years college admission people had grown dissatisfied with relying on applicant's grades because they realized that 4.0 in one [high] school wasn't equal to a 4.0 in another school."

Curiously, Mr. Nassirian was not quoted as saying anything about the role of standardized tests in alleviating that problem, a striking omission. In the context of the article, the clear implication of his comment is that it is unreasonable to rely too heavily on grades, which differ considerably in what they mean from school to school, but it is quite reasonable to pay attention to race, which right- (which is to say, left-) thinking people know is the same everywhere.

Indeed. "Group identity" is everything to the left-thinking, so that a black student will add "diversity" regardless of that individual's academic performance, attitudes, politics, and ideals. And just today, John uncovered a brutally-honest assessment about this sort of narrow-minded thinking.

Donald Scoggins is a concerned black father who was dismayed to discover that his mixed-race kids felt compelled to choose, on the U of Michigan's application form, the race which they felt would give them the greatest boost in admissions:

Ironically, the week before the oral arguments in the University of Michigan case, one of my sons was accepted to the school's engineering program. He's quite smart...I'm black, but my wife is Asian Indian. My sons selected "African-American" on their college applications. My wife was offended, and suggested they select "Asian-American" or "other." The boys said they might not get in because everyone knows Asians are smart and my sons didn't think their academic records were that good. They reasoned that selecting African-American and having reasonably good grades and test scores would allow them to rise to the top of the pile of black applicants...

Genuine black achievement is stigmatized by the perception that what blacks achieve was helped by special exceptions. Maybe a black freshman was accepted because he got a perfect SAT score and had a 5.0 grade point average with advanced placement courses. Unless you know that student and recognize his abilities, you might guess he is instead cruising by on his skin color.

Ready for Harvard? Not quite.

The Instaman has a little controversy going over whether Harvard "doesn't think much of U.S. high schools," at least from an academic standpoint. First, there's this post on Dissecting Leftism:

There has been lots written about what a poor education the Left-leaning teachers of U.S. High Schools give to their students these days. But sometimes deeds speak louder than words. And the deeds of adminstrators at Harvard speak very loudly indeed. Harvard gets the cream of U.S. High School graduates so at least those students should be 100% as educated as you can get -- right? Wrong! One of my readers writes that the reality is much, much worse than that:

Can anyone now deny that vouchers are the only hope for the U.S. school system?

One of the Instaman's readers, though, has an alternative explanation:

I just saw your link on Harvard's opinion of US high schools. I'm afraid it doesn't quite mean what you (and the person you linked to) think it means. I graduated from Harvard in 2001 and the dirty little secret of the [remedial] program was that, overwhelmingly, it was populated by recruited athletes. One of my roommates was a safety on the football team and many of my best friends were recruited players on the football team and soccer teams - I certainly didn't have any problem with them being at the school. But Harvard does drop its academic standards significantly for people on its premier sports teams (primarily football and men's hockey - although it happened somewhat on the women's teams as well, it didn't happen nearly as much). There was a rumor my year that at least one player on the hockey team had an SAT score below 1000...

When athletes with below-average SAT scores can get into Harvard, it's no surprise that public high schools think they're doing their jobs right. It's also no surprise that a furor has erupted over exit exams, since it's possible that a student performing at a level this low would fail to pass an exit exam, Harvard acceptance notwithstanding.

Can a student brandishing an Ivy-League acceptance letter successfully sue a school district over a flunking exit exam score? It hasn't happened yet - but it will.

Paying parents who care

The NYC school district just committed to spending $43 million to - increase test scores? Revise classroom content? Buy new textbooks? No, to put a parent in every school as a "liason," at salaries of between $30K and $39K a year. Their task? Why, to "improve communication between teachers and parents," of course.

The NYTimes has more, much more:

In a year of budget cuts, the New York City Department of Education is spending $43 million to hire a parent coordinator in every school, to encourage parents to participate in their children's education. They will be paid $30,000 to $39,000 annually.

There are certain steps a reform-minded school system can take to improve the quality of education, like adding teachers, cutting bureaucracy and introducing a new curriculum. But Chancellor Joel I. Klein acknowledges that parental involvement is a wild card, a factor as elusive as it is critical to children's academic success...

And how will parents be earning their paychecks?

If parental involvement is a wild card, so is the position of parent coordinator. According to the job description, the parent coordinator should be an ombudsman for parent and school concerns, maintain contact with community organizations involved in school activities and create "a welcoming environment for parents." The coordinator must do this 12 months a year and 35 hours a week including some weekends and evenings.

There's already a bit of PC-indoctrination involved - parent coordinators have been briefed on how to handle "cultural sensitivities" - but otherwise it appears that these coordinators will be attempting the simple (note, not easy - simple) task of getting parents more involved with their kids' educations. Not a bad thing, but is this really what NYC needed to spend millions of dollars on right now?

Too much demand for testing

The NYT has the scoop on the spate of recent testing blunders, and wonders if the rising demand for tests should be met with a rising demand for accuracy and accountability from test developers:

Testing is the buzzword of education these days, with state legislatures and the federal government demanding more of it than ever before. Everything from high school graduation to eligibility for transfers, tutoring and federal aid is tied to the results. But educators and some testing industry experts are warning that the new demands are pushing the limits of the testing industry's ability to provide fair and accurate tests.

When President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act in January 2002, calling for increased annual testing in grades three through eight by the 2005-06 school year, the testing industry — dominated by a handful of companies — had just weathered the three most error-plagued years in its history. Researchers at Boston College recently found that last year was hardly better, with at least 18 problems reported, almost matching the total reported between 1976 and 1996.

This surge in testing errors is no joke, but it's also no surprise to those of us who have watched the industry expand at a much faster rate than psychometricans can be trained and standards can be perfected. Testing companies are notoriously close-mouthed about what goes on inside their doors, but part of the problem is that they are expected to provide tests "good, fast, and cheap" - and the problem is that they've had to "pick any two" of those qualities to get the job done. Errors often get caught when test forms are released, but that practice is prohibitively expensive for many states.

Some of the more recent testing criticisms lump big errors in with little ones, as I noted a while back. But even testing defenders concede that the haste in which they are asked to produce good material is the main cause of errors:

Several testing company executives said that the Boston College study reflected an "antitesting agenda" and that it did not distinguish between serious errors and trivial ones. But they agreed with the researchers that haste was the most common contributor to errors. Neal Kingston, the chief operating officer at Measured Progress, said his company had occasionally been asked to devise and deliver new statewide tests in three months — an utterly impossible task, he said.

Is industry regulation the answer?

Concern about this rising tide of testing errors is reviving the long-dormant issue of industry regulation. "We regulate our pet food, and we don't regulate the tests which are making major decisions about the lives of our kids," said Monty Neill, executive director of FairTest, an advocacy group in Boston.

Even some testing executives see merit in at least compiling a national database to track testing errors. "Researchers have to hunt and peck where they can to find the mistakes and compile them," said Dr. Kingston of Measured Progress. "A lot of mistakes, quite possibly, don't even get caught."

An independent oversight panel, free from all political bias? A lovely thought, but does such a collection of psychometricians and educators exist?

The Regents Ruckus

The Fark.com headline sums it up well: "Problem: Thousands of New York teens may fail to pass regency exams and graduate. Solution: Lower the standards, of course."

Staring at the prospect of tens of thousands of members of the Class of 2004 failing to graduate next June because they couldn't pass toughened Regents exams, the state is faced with an unpalatable choice: stand firm or retreat.

Current rules, announced amid fanfare nearly eight years ago, call for raising cutoff scores on the five Regents exams required for graduation from 55 to 65, starting with this year's seniors. But testing results so far show that this could well threaten the diplomas of several thousand teens on Long Island, and far more than that statewide.

They've had eight years to prepare for raising cutoff scores from 55 to 65, and this is what happens? Boycotts, protests, and hemming and hawing from the state? And why do journalists keep protesting astonishment at the realization that exit exams, which determine who earns a diploma, will, if implemented, prevent some kids from earning a diploma? It's as thought no one realized until now that flunking the exam means losing out on a diploma. Did people really think that every single student would pass the exam?

One option under serious consideration by the Board of Regents would leave cutoff scores at 55 on selected exams, at least temporarily. Other proposals would go further -- for example, by averaging students' scores together, rather than risking not graduating because of failing a single exam.

"If kids in honors classes are having trouble, you know other kids are going to be in trouble," said Jessica McCaffrey, 17, a 12th-grade honors student at Sewanhaka High School in Floral Park.

Jessica, you have no idea. If students in honors classes can't pass an exit exam - on which they can start as early as ninth grade, by the way - then other kids are indeed in trouble. However, it's the school's administrators whose feet should be held to the fire. No honors student should have trouble passing an exam like this, unless schools are dumbing down honors classes beyond all recognition. If parents are having to hire tutors, the schools aren't doing their jobs.

About 12% of Long Island's students failed to meet the 65 passing standard, including - surprise! - a disproportionate number of black and Hispanic students. Well, by all means, then, let's remove the higher standard and cover up the fact that LI's schools are shortchanging those students.

It's not as though the Regents exams are perfect - far from it - and some of the proposed revisions, including one for averaging scores, aren't bad. But the extreme claims that are being made here - that so many kids have testing phobias, for example, or that these tests somehow disadvantage both honors students and underprivileged kids - are obscuring the fact that these tests aren't that hard, and the passing standards aren't that high. Historically, students had to answer about 65% of the items correctly in order to gain course credit. Now, a more sophisticated scaling system is used, but the passing score is still only 55 (or a proposed 65) out of 100, which suggests that students are still required to answer only a slight majority of the items correctly (give or take some adjustment for form difficulties).

Information on the English exam can be found here. US History and Government, here.

Will New York hold fast to the increased standards (which are equal to what students have always needed to obtain a Regents-endorsed diploma, and far below what students would need to obtain college course credit for the material)? Or will they give in and keep the standard at 55%? The problems with the exams, most notably for Physics and Math, cannot be ignored - but that doesn't mean that the concept of using Regents as an exit exam is flawed beyond all belief, nor does it mean that standards cannot be raised.

Angry cheerleaders, naked teachers, and drunken students

Lawsuits - they're not just for top scholars anymore! An angry cheerleader in Westmoreland County (PA) is suing her school over her "demotion" from the varsity squad. Once again, it appears to be a "he-said/she-said" situation; cheerleader Felicia Huffine claims that her past record of varsity performance should exempt her from tryouts. Plus, she skipped a cheerleading camp in July; she says she was given permission to skip, while the coaches say she knew that skipping would result in her being removed from the squad.

Felicia, you're not alone! In 2002, Wisconsin cheerleader Andrea Warren sued her school after she was "unfairly" stripped of the title of team captain. It seems Andrea admitted to drinking alcohol at a party and smoking on school grounds, and graciously accepted the punishment of having her title removed for her junior year. However, when the squad voted Andrea as captain the next year, the school decided to extend the punishment and prevent her from being captain her senior year, which might have affected her ability to earn cheerleading scholarships.

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A Japanese school teacher, with a reputation for "diligence,", was diligent indeed in his pursuit of comfort during a heat wave. I doubt that "50-yard-dash" from the police did much to cool him off, though.

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Rapides Parish (LA) is closing a loophole with its decision to automatically expel students who appear intoxicated at school or at school-related events. Breathalyzer tests may be used, but note that the symptoms of "speech alterations, bizarre behavior and unsteadiness of gait or posture" may also be used to expel students. Bizarre behavior? Yeah, that's a clear-cut concept, especially considering we're talking about teenagers here.

The backstory is amusing:

The change comes after the Rapides Parish School Board settled a lawsuit in May with a Brame Middle School student who was expelled for testing positive for marijuana at school.

His parents sued the School Board because the previous policy only prohibited drug possession, which does not apply to drugs inside the body.

Bah ha ha haaa! You mean some pothead's parents actually supported their kid's decision to be high during school by insisting that actually consuming wacky weed is not the same thing as possessing it? Boy, talk about setting a great example for your kids.

In response, the school seems to be cracking down on a whole range of behaviors, including fights between kids over the age of 11 (now requires a 911 call), truancy (now requires a referral to Juvenile Court), and the use of cell phones (forbidden at school-related events).

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Finally, it's "Google for me but not for thee" as New Zealand's cheating students are getting caught by teachers who enter plagiarized essay phrases into Internet search engines. It's amazing that the students didn't foresee that their teachers could find key phrases online in the same way the students did. Live by the Internet, die by the Internet.

Buried under the mess on my desk

Hey, everyone. Hope you had a good Labor Day weekend! Mine was not as relaxing as I'd hoped, and now the work is piled up on my desk. There's a whole bunch of little postings and a couple big ones I hope to make today, but we'll have to wait and see if I get to them...