When an argument comes up multiple times in comments, it’s probably worth making my response a post of its own, if only so that I can link to the response in the future rather than having to write it again. A few months ago, in “Alas” comments, Bob Hayes (who later backed down from this position, to his credit) wrote:
If you want to talk about black disenfranchisement, how about this: most black people want school choice and they want it bad, and most people on the left won’t even talk about it with them. How non-racist can a political movement be, if it won’t even address the issues that the minority group wants to address?
Earlier today, in the comments at “Family Scholars,” “GregA,” supporting his argument that I’m a racist, wrote:
Amp’s opinion on a number of other policy areas shows his total disregard for the opinions of the black community, in favor of his own ‘enlightened’ opinions. Most notable is his opposition to school vouchers, which interestingly enough the black community says they need to improve their educational opportunities, and their standing in the middle class. Maybe Amp knows better what the black community needs than the black community its self?
Taken broadly, both arguments are based on the premises that 1) It’s undeniable that most Black Americans favor school vouchers, and 2) disagreement with this position constitutes evidence of racism. I will argue that neither premise is true.
1) Well-designed polls show that most Black Americans oppose vouchers
It’s true that some polls show that most Black Americans favor vouchers – but these are usually polls in which respondents aren’t given an opportunity to choose between vouchers and other possible reforms; and in which no costs for vouchers are mentioned. (Apparently the money to pay for voucher comes from magic pixies, rather than from cutting other programs or raising taxes).
If even a hint of where the funding comes from is included in the polling question, support for vouchers plummets. Here’s one example, from a story by the St. Petersburg Times:
The same is true in which more alternatives than just vouchers or status quo are presented:
When choices are added to polling questions, voucher support shrivels. A 2001 Opinion Research poll found that 61% of blacks and 59% of Latinos would rather see more funding “go toward public schools than go to a voucher program.” The same year, Black responders to a Zogby International survey placed vouchers fifth among options they would choose to improve schools. The more choices, the less the appeal of vouchers.
And in the poll that actually counts – the voting booth – many more blacks oppose than favor vouchers. See the exit polls from California and Michigan, for example (scroll to the bottom). When it came time to vote on voucher ballot measures, black voters were two times (CA) or three times (MI) more likely to vote against than for vouchers.
2) Disagreement, in and of itself, is not racism.
I don’t think the implicit premise of these comments – that disagreement with most Black Americans on a particular policy issue necessarily indicates racism or disregard for black people – is true. (Incidentally, I doubt many conservatives would raise this argument if the subject were affirmative action or the minimum wage, rather than vouchers).
There certainly are areas in which I disagree with the majority of Black Americans – for example, polls show that Blacks are even more likely than whites to oppose same-sex marriage. However, disagreement does not have to equal disregard or disrespect. There are many people I disagree with but nonetheless hold in high regard.
The measure to use is not whether or not I disagree with the majority of blacks on a particular policy question, but if I disagree for racist reasons, or if I show a pattern of taking contrary opinions less seriously when they come from people of color.
The idea that I should always agree with the majority of Black Americans on policy matters is a racist idea, because it puts Black folks on a pedestal. Automatic agreement, without regard to merits, is condensation, not respect.
I do think that in regard to policies and issues that strongly relate to Black people’s experiences or lives, it behooves whites to listen very closely and to interrogate our own motives and logic if we find ourselves disagreeing with mainstream black opinion most or all of the time. This is because Black people, on average, know more about racism and race than white people do; and because we should acknowledge the possibility that our opinions have been warped by unquestioned racism and racist assumptions in my thinking. However, this self-questioning does not preclude disagreement with Black people; it merely means I try to make a point of questioning myself and my opinions.1
[Crossposted at Creative Destruction, where we say “I love you” with vouchers and “let’s fund education” with flowers. If your comments aren’t being approved here, try there.]
- Although the particular issue being discussed in this group is blacks and school vouchers, I favor this same general approach for ablebodied people considering disabled issues, non-fat people considering fat issues, white people considering American Indian issues, men considering women’s issues, cisgendered people considering trans issues, and so on. [↩]
I’m not a big fan of vouchers, but I’m also not a big fan of the very low level of accountability for how money is used in the public schools. Accountability at every level needs to be set up into the system if you want to expand the pool of people who will support spending more money on the schools. That includes accountability for the curriculum, accountability for administration (including how top-heavy it can be), and accountability for the teachers’ competency.
I realize that there are many other factors in how well a child learns besides the competency of the teacher, most especially the attitudes of the child’s parents towards academic achievement and whether or not that kid goes to school with food in their stomach, clothes on their back, and glasses on if they need them. But there are bad teachers out there, and there has got to be a way to weed them out. Revocation of the whole concept of tenure would be a good first step.
By accountability for the curriculum, I’m talking about what is actually being taught. Too often it seems that there is not sufficient emphasis on skills like math, science, English reading, writing and comprehension, history, etc., and too much on a social agenda or on athletics.
You’d have been very amused by the discussion we had Sunday night over dinner, Ron. My family was sitting around, discussing schools at dinner. My Dad (a retired teacher) and Aunt (a resource aide) were debating whether teachers should be reassignable (within a district) against their will. A lot of it boils down to “accountability”– good teachers transfered to bad schools still won’t get enough support from families. Since they’re judged more and more by standardized test scores, there’s no incentive for them go forth and try harder– when they inevitably get lower scores, they’ll be castigated, not praised for taking the harder challenge. So they continue at the schools where they’ve earned (via tenure) the privilege of working– which leaves the fresh out of school teachers, who are desperate for any teaching job, stuck with the most intractable problem schools. No wonder burnout’s so high.
Everyone expressed uniform disapointment with the “test more” regime– Dad got out early because they were emphasizing testing so much that it got in the way of real teaching. He dreaded continuing and having students return, saying, “I didn’t learn anything but how to take a test from you.” He also had a chilling story about the district’s Teacher of the Year for Science…
RonF – I’m not sure what the revocation of tenure has to do with the issue of vouchers, which as I understand it concerns K – 12 education. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I wasn’t aware of K – 12 teachers earning tenure. Tenure is designed to allow university professors to follow any avenue of research and to discuss their research as they see fit they without fear of reprisal like loosing their jobs. Does this lead to bad professors out there? Yes. And I’ve sat in my share of classrooms taught by such bad professors. But that’s a different topic and I don’t think removing tenure is going to help (full disclosure: I’m a prof in training, so my take on tenure is obviously affected by my surroundings and training )
Now this I can agree with. Do I contradict myself? Well, I’m one of those academics that takes teaching seriously. My research is designed to make me a better teacher. I understand that with the Ward Churchill’s in the world, the argument to abolish tenure can be persuasive, but I quess I’m still young and naive enough to believe that our educational system can change for the better without taking away the much needed protection that researchers need to further knowledge.
But I digress. I’m an English major, and so my focus is on reading, writing and comprehension. I don’t need to bring up a social agenda in my classroom because I focus on reading, writing and comprehension, as well as rhetoric and how writers and speakers can use language to further their own social agendas (and this is true of both the left and the right). The great thing is that if you give the students the tools, they will figure it out on their own (You also have to be willing to accept that some of your students are going to present well-reasoned arguments that you disagree with and that you CAN NOT penalize them because you disagree). And so, yes, I absolutely agree that focusing on the basic skills is neccessary and definitely lacking in education.
I’m not even gonna go into athletics.
As for the attacks on Amp being a racist, I can’t help but to notice that the people who are accusing him of knowing better “what the black community needs than the black community its self” are doing the same exact thing they are accusing him of doing. The use of the pronoun “they” leads me to believe that these aren’t Black people, and so I can’t help but to interpret these statements as saying “I know better than Amp what the Black community needs, and so Amp is a racist.” Huh?
The “concept of tenure” was created because public school positions had been used as political payoffs – when the government changed parties all the old teachers, allied with the other party would be fired and friends and relatives (qualified or not) of the new administration rewarded for their support with teaching jobs. Yes, in many places firing bad teachers needs to be made easier, but eliminating the whole “concept of tenure” is not the answer.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I wasn’t aware of K – 12 teachers earning tenure.
In the public school system that I grew up in, K – 12 teachers were able to earn tenure.
The demand for vouchers from some quarters and a resistance to putting more money into public schools seem to me to stem at least in part from a perception that the public schools are a) of unacceptable quality and b) refractory to change as presently constituted. If the schools improve, part of the demand for vouchers will go away. The answer many have for that is “great, put more money into the schools”, but a lot of people think that putting money into the schools will not improve them, as it will simply give more money to an institution that will waste it on poorly chosen curricula and unaccountable staff and teachers. So they say “the hell with this” and they want to leave, either using vouchers to transfer to a better public school using public money, or by using the money that would otherwise go to increased taxes to spend on a private school instead.
Yes, tenure exists in the public schools, at least in Illinois. Once a teacher passes his or her (21:79 in my elementary school district) probationary period, it costs about $50,000 each to fire them. I know this because it was an issue in the recent local school board election, the one where every incumbent was defeated and new people were elected.
The chief problem here, it seems to me, is that it’s very difficult to come up with an objective measurement of the effectiveness of a teacher that eliminates the other factors (parental neglect, economic status, etc.) that affect a student’s achievement potential. If such a measurement could be established, it would go a long way towards being able to keep good teachers, get rid of bad ones, help improve the middle, and thus start building more support for public schools.
As far as “teaching to the test” goes; I haven’t seen these tests, myself. It’s my understanding that the concept behind them is that a child should have mastered certain concepts by the time they graduate from a certain grade level, and that these tests, like any other test you take in school, are a tool to evaluate whether or not a child has mastered those concepts.
So the question is, how is it that you can have “I didn’t learn anything but how to take a test”? Didn’t the student have to master the concepts the test is designed to evaluate? Isn’t the primary job of the school to ensure that the students master those concepts? I’ve heard this critique before, but I don’t understand the problem. What am I missing?
One thing the voucher idea does is try to separate public funding of schools from public administration of schools. Hang out on the right-wing blogs much and you’ll see opposition for both concepts (from a certain segment, not a majority). But there are plenty more that, while seeing a role for public funding of education, would like to see the government out of the business of running it.
That would make teaching to the test even more critical. As long as a school’s graduates could pass the tests, they could operate independently of public oversight of their curriculum.
RonF,
I can speak to “teaching to the test” as I see it in the world of math.
The problem is two-fold: tests, especially multiple-choice tests, are somewhat predictable, and often poorly designed to measure key skills; also, not all students are well-prepared/motivated to learn.
So, for example, you get a student in algebra who knows how to solve the common sorts of multiple-choice fraction problems on a calculator, because he has been drilled in how to input them into a calculator–but has no understanding of how to work with fractions manually. He has been “taught to the test” on fractions; he can get the answers right 75% of the time, but does not understand what he’s doing.
Now, the problem starts feeding on itself. To do algebra, you need to be able to manipulate fractions manually (since the fractions are now in symbolic, rather than numeric, terms). But the algebra test assumes that you are starting with a student who knows the pre-reqs–after all, he passed the pre-req test. So, the easy thing to do is to look at the algebra test, figure out the common sorts of problem presentations, and work on memorizing answer patterns for those problems.
Of course, next year in geometry, the problem is worse.
True, they’re trying to tell whether or not you’ve mastered those concepts. Except, teaching people to “intelligently guess” is takes a lot less time than getting the core concept. You’ll also find teachers emphasizing the material that will be on this year’s test over the groundwork for next year’s lessons.
If there’s a useful subject that teaches useful core concepts, interests kids more, and provides a more comprehensive world view (like, say, using science to illustrate why math is useful) but the test only cares about the math part– you’ll find people teaching math and going over it twice so the slowest kids can get it right, even though that loses the majority of the class and denies them science lessons at all. (Or abbreviates it so greatly that there’s no understanding of the scientific method… also not tested on 3R tests.)
Every subject you take in high school and college, at least, has a “final exam”, a test you must teach to. Now, of course, those exams are not just multiple choice, they admit to the inclusion of essay questions, etc. OTOH, you have to pass the test. So testing the kids itself is not the evil here. Kids are tested all the time to see if they’ve retained what they’ve learned.
I think that if the State is to be responsible for spending our money to pay for someone else’s childrens’ education, the State needs a way to evaluate what you and I are getting for our money, and whether or not there are problems in the system. That in turn would seem to mean that we need some kind of State-wide standardized testing to evaluate that.
So given that, and given what you are saying, is the issue that we are testing for the wrong things? Are we using the wrong testing methodogy? Or both? Or something else instead oras well?
True, they’re trying to tell whether or not you’ve mastered those concepts. Except, teaching people to “intelligently guess” is takes a lot less time than getting the core concept.
Is the State, then, asking you to teach too much? Does the test cover so much more ground than the amount of information that would otherwise have been taught that you are forcing the teachers to teach how to intelligently guess than simply teaching the information on the test itself?
You’ll also find teachers emphasizing the material that will be on this year’s test over the groundwork for next year’s lessons.
Why would the two be different?
So, for example, you get a student in algebra who knows how to solve the common sorts of multiple-choice fraction problems on a calculator, because he has been drilled in how to input them into a calculator–but has no understanding of how to work with fractions manually. He has been “taught to the test” on fractions; he can get the answers right 75% of the time, but does not understand what he’s doing.
Then instead of teaching him to solve them on a calculator to begin with, why not teach him to solve them manually to begin with?
Would it be considering ‘highjacking the thread’ if I asked how you would reorganize education if you were in charge?
I come from a very different background, and had a chance to observe my sister going through a public school in Chino, CA. Later on, I taught a intermediate programming course in a high school in Rock Hill, SC. As far as I am concerned, teachers in the United States face impossible, insurmountable hurdles: disruptive students you cannot get rid of, lawsuit happy parents, threat of violence, and the ridiculous expectation to be able to teach everyone.
Speaking just for myself, in South Carolina I did not need more money to do a better job. I would have settled for having the right to get three students out of the class. Two for not having any intention to learn anything, and only being there for the audience/ambience, and one because she a very hard time understanding how programs execute. I felt bad about her, but I was spending five times more effort on her than on anyone else, and I resented it.
I do not understand why everyone focuses on funding. The biggest advantage of private schools is that they are not expected to work miracles with people who do not want to learn.
I think that if the State is to be responsible for spending our money to pay for someone else’s childrens’ education, the State needs a way to evaluate what you and I are getting for our money, and whether or not there are problems in the system. That in turn would seem to mean that we need some kind of State-wide standardized testing to evaluate that.
I agree
So given that, and given what you are saying, is the issue that we are testing for the wrong things? Are we using the wrong testing methodology? Or both? Or something else instead or as well?
All of the above (in the math world, in VA, which is what I know).
First, multiple-choice tests are fairly blunt instruments–“show your work” is pretty important in judging actual competence–but the standardized tests are all multiple-choice for ease of grading. And, to aggravate the problem, the SOLs are badly designed even for multiple-choice tests; they are pretty easy to game, since the problems are often in the same exact format. To further aggravate the problem, calculators are allowed on the test from 3rd grade on; thus, there is NO test benefit to teaching children the multiplication table thoroughly, even though that is a key skill in algebra (you can’t factor without knowing the multiplication table), and NO test benefit to teaching children how to simplify fractions.
Second, the material tested is not well-thought-out. The key material for further study is not necessarily emphasized on the test. So, in some cases, you can pass the test, but not know the key material for the next subject–see above paragraph for two examples.
Third, the tests only cover certain subjects–generally college-track subjects–and it takes a certain number of math SOLs to graduate. Some students are not college-bound, but the system doesn’t recognize this fact. So you have to take algebra, algebra 2, and geometry to graduate–even if consumer math would be far more useful to you.
Is the State, then, asking you to teach too much?
No/yes/it depends. The amount of material is reasonable if students are willing to work, know the material they should coming in, and are mentally capable of learning the new material. But many students aren’t very willing to work, and learning math requires work; some students don’t know the material they should coming in, and catching them up puts the whole class behind; and due to the fixed 1% limit on exemptions (only 1% of students can be exempt from the SOLs–even if you have 2% of students with IQs below 75), sometimes teachers must teach students who aren’t capable of learning the material.
So, then, we agree that testing is necessary and justifiable. The problem seems to be that you think a) the tests don’t cover the right material, b) are not properly conducted, and c) are complicated by the issue that some kids don’t come to school prepared to learn.
I can go along with all of that. Now, while A and B should be fixable by the State, fixing C is another matter. The State can’t fix C. And this is while I hold that such tests are necessary to evaluate the kids and are reasonable indicators of how well the tested children are learning, they are less satisfactory indicators of how well their teachers are doing their jobs. The teachers can’t fix these kids’ parents or homes.
Pingback: Wednesday Links « The Angry Black Woman
The State can’t fix C.
“Can’t fix” is not a synonym for “can do nothing about” or “cannot alleviate”.
For example, if kids are not coming to school ready to learn because they are hungry, the State can certainly try to fix that with free or reduced-price meals. If kids are not coming to school ready to learn because they are sick and have no health care, the State can offer medical care. You may oppose these things on philosophical grounds, but that is different than ‘won’t work.’
Mythago, it seems to me that what you are advocating is that the State take over the duties of a parent when that parent does not fulfill their duties – to feed, clothe, and protect their child.
To a certain extent, I agree with you, especially with the particular examples you have posted. And I will say that it is demonstrably in the public interest that children be properly educated so that they can become productive citizens who are also able to understand the issues of the day when it comes time to go into the voting booth. The State has an interest in alleviating factors that interfere with this.
But I stand by my comment as posted. The State can’t fix C. Even in my middle-class suburban neighborhood, you see this. The vast majority of the kids in my neighborhood rarely are in families that cannot provide these things for their kids. But all too often kids come to school (and Scouts) unprepared physically because of sheer parental neglect. The kid can’t see, but no one bothered to arrange to have the kids’ eyesight checked. The kid jumps off the school bus with no coat on not because he didn’t have a coat, but because no one cares enough to make sure he wears it. A child comes to school with wildly inappropriate clothing, because said child sees entertainers wearing such and the parents let their children buy anything they want instead of exercising some discipline and teaching their child about what the right choice to make is. And a child comes to school not having done their homework, but being able to recite in detail every inning of last night’s Cubs game or who wore what and sang what on that night’s episode of American Idol or having the level of expertise in an on-line video game or gained by playing it for 4 hours straight. Or because a parent will pay for a soccer coach, but not a math tutor.
The State can alleviate some aspects of C. If the child’s problems are in great part the kind of thing your examples illustrate, then that child and those like him or her will greatly benefit, and I favor such programs. But overall, the State can’t fix C.
Mythago, it seems to me that what you are advocating is that the State take over the duties of a parent when that parent does not fulfill their duties
Read the post, RonF, instead of going ballistic when State intervention is brought up in any context. You said that there was nothing the State could do if kids don’t come to school ready to learn; I pointed out that you were incorrect.
And your comment, “can’t fix”, is clearly meant to imply that if the State can’t remedy the problem 100%, there’s no point in doing so and shouldn’t try.
Please have the stones to admit that your issue is with the principle of State intervention, and not the effectiveness.
Let me start by telling you that I took my father’s advice and didn’t go into teaching. My family just happens to be filled with school teachers. That out of the way…
If we assume that the people who are most interested in knowing if students are learning are (a) the students themselves and (b) their parents, then there’s no standardized testing required. Either the parents care about what their children are learning, ask the kids and evaluate the skills they demonstrate reinforcing the importance of learning in the process, or they don’t.
Student’s don’t need a test them to tell them what they know– they know what they’ve learned and not learned. A test won’t tell them that– though it might tell them what other people expect them to know.
As for the rest of us… sure, in the abstract it matters what students are learning, but industry is smart and will adapt to the inputs. If you have a large population that can’t read english, you’ll have icons on the buttons in your plant. If you don’t trust their poor math skills, you compensate with automatic change machines– or replace checkers with self checkout. While it’d be nice for society to have a stream of perfect product coming off the school assembly line, it’ll adapt if there’s a hitch in their production.
Read the post, RonF, instead of going ballistic when State intervention is brought up in any context.
My comment that this responds to is by no means “going ballistic”. It was a rather emotionless statement of fact. It’s the responsibility of parents to make sure their kids have food, clothing, proper health care, etc. If a child’s needs in this regard are neglected, the child will be coming to school unprepared to learn. Do you disagree with either statement? I doubt it. Your proposition seems to me to be saying that if a child’s parents fail in such responsibilities, the State should intervene. And I in fact agreed with this.
What I further pointed out, though, was that there are many other things that are factors that cause a child to come to school unprepared to learn that are the responsibility of the parents to deal with, and that the State cannot alleviate if they don’t.
You said that there was nothing the State could do if kids don’t come to school ready to learn;”
I did not. I said that the State can’t fix kids coming to school unprepared to learn; it can’t fix these kids’ parents or homes. And, as you yourself pointed out, “Can’t fix” is not a synonym for “can do nothing about” or “cannot alleviate”.” So your assumption that “your comment, ‘can’t fix’, is clearly meant to imply that if the State can’t remedy the problem 100%, there’s no point in doing so and shouldn’t try.” is quite unfounded.
I pointed out that you were incorrect.
No, you made an unwarranted assumption about what I meant based more on an inaccurate stereotype of what you think my politics are than on what I actually said. When you differentiated some of the issues that would cause a child to come to school unprepared to learn and suggested ways that the State could alleviate them, I readily agreed.
“Please have the stones to admit that your issue is with the principle of State intervention, and not the effectiveness.”
I certainly do have a problem with the principle of State intervention. That’s no secret to anyone who’s read at least two or three of my posts on this blog, so it did not occur to me to reiterate it to you. But while it is something that should be a last resort I don’t dismiss it out of hand, as I explained above when we discussed the issue of doing things like providing health care and cheap meals to schoolchildren. There are times when it is warranted. And there are times when it is not. And there are times when it’s impractical, ineffective, unconstitutional or some combination to implement; e.g., fining or jailing parents if they don’t exercise discipline over their child and he spends too much time playing video games and not enough time studying math.
Or, maybe, just bringing back the stocks in the village square; the local mall would be the equivalent. Public humiliation is insufficiently utilized in our present judicial system.
“Please have the stones to admit ….”
Hm. In my experience, “stones” in this context is a euphemism for testicles, and seems to be trying to influence my behavior by challenging me to conform to a sexual stereotype. Please explain to me how that’s not a sexist comment.
HELP, HELP, I’M BEING OPPRESSED!
Part of it is that we want two conflicting things: 1) graduate children, and 2) educate children.
Those are not conflicting in many cases. But when you run into a system (and I’m including the children in “system” here for a moment) where the resources don’t match demand, you have to sacrifice something.
The problem starts WAY before we generally attempt to tackle it. I used to tutor in college on the side. I knoew a few people for whom it was almost “too late”: they’d already missed out on some of their best learning years, and had to UNLEARN decades of bad practice in order to succeed. They didn’t know how to think simply–much less in a complex fashion.
These students were not idiots. But they lacked the support at an EARLY age that would have been the crucial building blocks in their later academic career. Like someone said earlier: If you can’t do basic math, you can’t do algebra. And if you can’t do algebra, you can’t do precalculus (or higher math), or stoichiometry, or…. You would be surprised at how many people lost MAJOR points in college chemistry because they couldn’t do simple subtraction or multiplication in their head. I won’t even start on division.
What we need is more programs like, say Head Start: The time to improve someone’s educational skills is not in a college remedial class.
What we also need IMO is to drop some “efficiency” in light of potential increases. E.g.: if a school has higher than 90% free lunches, provide everyone a free lunch without paperwork for the next 4 years and reevaluate then. Yeah, you’ll pay for a few extra lunches. But you avoid hungry kids (huge cost in the long term) and save parent’s time (huge cost across all parents) and so on.
Support really is pretty crucial.
RonF: Perhaps you should view this from a pure efficiency angle and you will feel better. Even if the state is doing things it shouldn’t “have to do” it will often have an overall financial benefit. Remedial education is expeeeeensive.
Your proposition seems to me to be saying that if a child’s parents fail in such responsibilities, the State should intervene.
Again, you didn’t read carefully, because you indeed can’t get past your panic reaction to the notion of State intervention. I pointed out that the State has the ability to affect whether a child comes to school prepared to learn. That is different from the point you prefer to argue, which is whether or not the State should affect whether a child comes to school prepared to learn.
You do know why we have a school lunch program, yes?
Please explain to me how that’s not a sexist comment.
If you were serious rather than merely trolling, I’d note that ‘stones’ is a deliberately-chosen neutral term which can refer to either testicles or ovaries.
Again, you didn’t read carefully, because you indeed can’t get past your panic reaction to the notion of State intervention.
You keep coming up with terms like “ballistic” and “panic”. It’s interesting that you substitute misleading hyperbole for actual reason.
“I pointed out that the State has the ability to affect whether a child comes to school prepared to learn.”
Which I didn’t and don’t deny.
” That is different from the point you prefer to argue, which is whether or not the State should affect whether a child comes to school prepared to learn.”
Which, in fact, I never argued. What I’m talking about is what factors there are that affect a student’s ability to learn, and which of those factors the State both can and should do something about.
You do know why we have a school lunch program, yes?
Because hungry kids have a hard time concentrating on their studies, and there are a certain number of kids whose parents either can’t or won’t feed their kids properly.
If you were serious rather than merely trolling,
Another foray into personal characterization substituting for actual debate.
I’d note that ’stones’ is a deliberately-chosen neutral term which can refer to either testicles or ovaries.
I’ve never heard “stones” used as a euphemism for ovaries. Now, that may mean that I’m going to learn something new today. But while the etomology of “stones = testicles” shows in a quick search to date back at least to Shakespeare’s time, I can’t find any slang or any other reference for “stones = ovaries”. Does anyone have a reference for this?
Illinois found that it had a big conflict between “graduate” and “educate” a while back, espeically in the Chicago Public Schools. Schools were moving kids up to the next grade on a “social promotion” basis, even though the kids hadn’t actually learned the material needed to succeed in the next grade. This was having some pretty predictable results.
So, Illinois now basically tests all kids every year, although not in all subjects each year; it’s a 3 year rotation. The distribution of the kid’s scores is posted for all schools, as part of that school’s “report card”. Kids who don’t meet standards are not promoted. It’s not pleasant, but as you say it’s a lot better to fix these things early rather than late.
Again, my focus is not so much on what the State should or should not be doing, but what’s out there that the State cannot do. As I’ve pointed out, the State cannot fix parents. At least, not without interventions that would be unprecendented and likely unconstitutional.
RonF,
I’m in pretty complete agreement with your #14.
ScottM,
You are missing something important when you say,
If we assume that the people who are most interested in knowing if students are learning are (a) the students themselves and (b) their parents, then there’s no standardized testing required. Either the parents care about what their children are learning, ask the kids and evaluate the skills they demonstrate reinforcing the importance of learning in the process, or they don’t.
This only works if the parents already know the material the student is learning. If your child is learning something you don’t know, you can’t easily evaluate the skills learned by asking your child. And in most of the communities where children are poorly educated, the adults are also; a good system of tests would communicate to parents how well their children are doing.
If we assume that the people who are most interested in knowing if students are learning are (a) the students themselves and (b) their parents, then there’s no standardized testing required.
I don’t agree with assumption A. Certainly in the lower grades, I doubt that the kids have any focused concern on whether or not they are learning much of anything, as long as they don’t get kept back a grade. In fact, in American society I think there’s a pretty heavy strain of anti-intellectualism, to the point that kids who do well in school are ostracized by their peers. It’s the athletes and the “cool kids” who are up on clothes and music who seem to be meeting the societal goals.
Either the parents care about what their children are learning, ask the kids and evaluate the skills they demonstrate reinforcing the importance of learning in the process, or they don’t.
The parents are pretty much depending on the kids’ test grades to figure this out, especially for those subjects where the parent is not qualified to make an independent evaluation. How much do you remember of trignometry, calculus, chemistry, or how to diagram a sentence?
As for the rest of us… sure, in the abstract it matters what students are learning, but industry is smart and will adapt to the inputs. If you have a large population that can’t read english, you’ll have icons on the buttons in your plant. If you don’t trust their poor math skills, you compensate with automatic change machines– or replace checkers with self checkout. While it’d be nice for society to have a stream of perfect product coming off the school assembly line, it’ll adapt if there’s a hitch in their production.
Industry also adapts by outsourcing various jobs overseas. And all these adaptations cost money to create and implement. That doesn’t mean that’s a good thing for American society.
And in any case, the needs of industry are not the only consideration. If your math is no good, how can you evaluate the town/county/state/Federal budget and bond proposals and the effects on your taxes? If your English skills are no good, how much more likely are you to fall for 30-second sound bites from politicians and be unable to read a newspaper article, or a web citation on a blog, and be able to intelligently evaluate a candidate’s positions and decide who to vote for? How will you be able to appreciate good literature, and how likely are you then to support it and pay for it to be taught in the local schools? How will kids know the difference between socialism, capitalism, libertarianism and understand the meaning of the Constitution if they haven’t learned good English comprehension skills? How will they be expected to understand the issues of global warming and pollution if they haven’t had a decent science education?
There’s a lot of reasons for having the public well-educated besides ensuring that we are all skillful and efficient cogs in the machine.
If I’m going to pay for the public to be educated, I need to know how good of a job the system I’m paying for is doing. Standardized testing isn’t a perfect vehicle for this, but it’s the best tool we have right now, and it can be improved. And in those areas where it’s deficient, such as not taking into account the issues of neglectful parents, or those who would be good ones but have insufficient resources, we need to know so that we can at least try to come up with some kind of strategy to deal with the problem.