02.01.07
Lost in Lake Wobegon
Ok, so I’ve been glancing at this free weekly newspaper on the table for days, not sure if it’s worth the effort to read it. But I had the nagging feeling that I probably ought to read it to try and catch up on local news once in a blue moon, since there’s really no other way to find out what’s happening on a truly local scale since the local daily sold out and gave up reporting and/or printing news.
I’d been seeing that top headline “Below average” next to some other headline that was a little too close in alignment, so they kind of ran together. Underneath was a subtitle “Students struggling to meet state standards”. Well, no surprise there, eh? Considering how badly thought out the standards are, how poorly students are taught, and how little we expect them to be able to do – right up until test day – it’s amazing that more aren’t struggling.
But today, finally I picked the paper up and started to read the text of the article. It began, “More than half of…” Suddenly I had an attack of realization. The reporter was setting an arbitrary cutoff at “half”, as though all we need to do now is fix that, get those students up above average, and they’ll all be above average, just like Lake Wobegon, where all of the kids are above average.
I could of course say, What does it mean when a reporter who’s supposed to be informing us has made an error showing basic innumeracy, innocence of the fact that the average is always smack in the middle, half above and half below. I’m not sure that’s fair, though, since newspapers nowadays hire most of their writing staff on the basis of whether they are willing to accept the low wages that are being offered.
But you know, I think there are people higher up that we can point the finger at. We’ve got ourselves a system that relies on testing instead of teaching. Students can spend weeks taking tests in a year, and because of the importance of the tests to the school, the schools have no choice but to spend class time teaching the students how to take tests, time that would be utterly wasted except for the fact that classroom time is generally wasted anyway.
Then they take the scores, add them up and compare the schools. It’s a grand and glorious plan, to judge schools on many different testing criteria, and then have them straighten out and fix the ones they didn’t measure up to. But the net result is that there are so many different different ways to fail that even the best schools fail in some way or another every year.
How can a school fail? Let’s look at a few ways. Only a certain percentage of special needs students can be exempt from the test, and the others are expected to pass it with the same scores as regular students, regardless of their circumstances. So if you have a school system with a cluster of retarded students, forget it. You’re screwed from the time they enter kindergarten until they leave the system, and if they can’t achieve with the top learners, it’s the school’s fault.
Students who are new to the US and speak little English are expected to take the tests and pass. If your school system is in an area that has a substantial immigrant population, again, you’re screwed.
If you’ve got everything planned out, but the wrong kid stays home the day of one of the tests and doesn’t make it up, you’re screwed.
If your students are below average, you’re screwed, because the No Child Left Behind Act is based on two premises: the first is that it is not only possible, it is desirable, it is necessary for all students to be above average.
We only have to look to the source to see where this came from – someone who is so far below average that he is living proof that it is not necessary to be above average.
The other premise functions to raise the ante, to raise the standards every year. It assumes that the only limiting factor for learning is the quality of schooling.
Now before my ranting gets completely out of control, let’s just look again at whose idea this program is. George W. Bush. Let’s step back and see how well he illustrates his own principles.
Did passing tests and achieving high get Dubya where he is now? Not a chance. If it wasn’t for Daddy’s money, he’d have had to go to a community college and been drafted into the service instead of getting that cushy Guard post back when being in the Guard was a refuge, rather than a hazard to life and limb. If George Bush had had to earn a living in his life, he’d be living in a trailer someplace, with Laura still working as a librarian to pay the bills.
How about raising the bar? Could a better quality of education and more caring and highly educated teachers have turned Dubya into a high achiever? I am laughing right now as I type this.
What it really is all about is maximizing the number of schools that fail each year in order to defund public education and send the money to religious and charter schools which are held to no standards at all, and which, it turns out, fail miserably at educating students.
The tide may turn, but as yet it has not, regardless of who we have voted out of office. We have too many people who are busily trying to keep up with the requirements, as though they were not a moving target, destined to disappear off into the distance.
Stop what you are doing. Breathe. Think.
