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In an open letter to
President-elect Barack Obama published on Dec. 5, Recognizing the impracticality
of an eventual goal of 100% proficiency for all students, Mathews suggests
that any number of environmental and developmental issues facing some
children preclude their reaching unrealistic levels of perfection. He then goes on to list a
rather jargonistic melange of possible alternatives, such as reducing the
proficiency level to 85% or adjusting “subgroup proficiency rates similar to
the proxy points now used for the NCLB category of students with disabilities.”
In other words, since present
proficiency rates will never be achieved, let’s solve the problem by
tinkering with the numbers until, like ever-changing pass-failure levels on
Virginia’s SOLs, we mumbo-jumbo our way to some number that will allow us to
claim that proficiency is on the rise, when it may be flat or declining. Mathews then proceeds to tackle
the question of standards. If we are to have a “federal
student learning index or accountability system,” says Mathews, “learning
must be assessed against a common body of knowledge, lest science be one
thing in What Mathews suggests is
forming a national committee of curriculum experts to assure that all states
are following the same standards in those fields tested under NCLB. Credible and reasonable as this
might sound, and viable as it might be for the fields of math and science,
whose tenets and formulas tend to be agreeably static, one must wonder about
the possibility of any committee coming up with national standards for
subjects like social studies or reading and writing. What Mathews and other
test-oriented traditionalists seem unable to acknowledge is that NCLB and
state standardized testing endeavors have been, for the most part, a colossal
flop. They are a potpourri of pestilence visited upon teachers whose
curriculums are now circumscribed by teaching to the tests and upon
administrators and state educators who are constantly under the proficiency
gun to tweak tests and test results in order to provide a visage of
progress. Why, if NCLB and SOLs are doing
the job, are eighth-grade science students in the Every year the Intercollegiate
Studies Institute conducts a civics test among 14,000 entering freshmen in 50
different colleges. The results are consistently and staggeringly poor. In
2008, the average grade for freshmen who answered 60 questions on
governmental and national issues was 51%, which is about what it takes to pass
the social studies exam on the SOLs. Last year, the ISI gave another
civics test to 2,508 people, ranging in age from 18 to 65. Some of the
questions came from the progress tests used by the U.S. Department of
Education to assess high school seniors.
Fewer than half those tested
could name the three branches of government. Only 53% knew that Congress has
the power to declare war, and a meager 27% knew that the Bill or Rights
prohibits the establishment of a state religion. A mere 20% realized that the
wall of separation between church and state came from a letter written by
Thomas Jefferson, and only 21% knew that a “government of the people, by the
people and for the people” came from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Those under the age of 34,
including recent high school graduates, scored a whopping 46% on the exam.
Obviously no one was teaching to this test.
Perhaps a welcome harbinger of
change relative to outmoded standardized testing is coming from high school
systems, like the one in Scarsdale, N.Y., that are doing away with Advanced
Placement classes and examinations in favor of less structured “Advanced
Topics” courses that allow teachers much more latitude in terms of what they
teach and now they teach it. I have no doubt that Mathews is
quite sincere in his attempts to suggest positive adjustments to NCLB. But if
we strip away the gauze that has been protecting this educational wound for
too many years, we find that tweaking numbers and standardizing national
curriculums won’t save what has become a fetid corpse. As David Brooks pointed out in
a recent column in The New York Times, the advent of a new administration and
a new Secretary of Education represents the opening salvo of an all-out war between
educational reformers and traditionalists. Let us hope that the first
victim will be NCLB and the educational morass left behind by its attendant
standardized tests. |
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lewleadbeater.com Copyright 2002 All Rights Reserved email: LWL@lewleadbeater.com |
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