Re: Test Prep Company and non-prepped kids

[Csubstance@aol.com]

12/3/07

Colleagues and friends:

I know the hype about test prep, but the fact remains that the best 
preparation for the tests is to know a lot about the subject matter and to have led a 
childhood where the child's interests and passions have been encouraged by the 
family (or families if there has been some separation along the long road of 
life).  

I "taught" in the Kaplan test prep stuff in Chicago 15 years ago, at the dawn 
of the Vallas era, and learned how simplistic (stupid, really) the approaches 
were. CPS sponsored Kaplan as part of that overall attempt to help kids goose 
up their scores. It was sad, really, given that the same time devoted to 
intensely reading a couple of good books might have achieved the same results.

But there is more than that for us personally. 

Over the past three years, the Substance web guy (my son Dan) finished high 
school in Chicago at Whitney Young. He studied hard through all his years in 
public school, and did well on the PSAT. (He's now studying engineering at Berkel
ey).  

When Dan headed into his final years of high school (and in the face of all 
that high stakes testings), we had a sort of a contest. He would pit his test 
taking skills on both the SAT and ACT "against" the other top students in CPS. 
Virtually all of them did some form of test prep -- at considerable expense to 
their families. All also took the test(s) more than once to achieve their 
highest scores, often at equally great expense. These things need to be checked 
against reality.

Three students at Whitney Young last year (class of 2007) score a "perfect" 
36 on the ACT. Other students in Illinois got a "perfect" 2400 on the expanded 
SAT.

Dan didn't do quite as well as the "top" scoring students, so he wasn't 
featured on TV (which was OK with all of us, I think). 

But a 35 (ACT) and 2350 (SAT) are pretty good considering (a) no test prep 
and (b) he took the ACT twice, the second time from ACT itself (as you know, CPS 
and now Illinois supposedly imbed the ACT into the "Prairie State" Illinois 
test).

Dan's ACT and SAT scores certainly don't correlate to our family income 
(which is sadly not too high right now). They do correlate to the second major 
factor (emphasis in the home on education; size of home library; etc.).

It might be worthwhile to try and tell families that instead of spending all 
that time and money on test prep (and making Kaplan and the others wealthier), 
they should invest in home library materials, magazine subscriptions, decent 
computer systems for their children (hardware and software), and a broad range 
of materials that flow from the child's interests at all stages in life. 

I still laugh about those stages and how we worked them in. At a very young 
age, for reasons that still puzzle me, Dan was proclaiming he was going to be a 
"Chiropterist" when he was five and six. He loved bats and studied them, 
during which time he was a member of "Bat Conservation International" and we 
reread "Stella Luna" dozens of times, among other bat books. 

One day, bats were no longer a passion, and he was going to be a 
"Herpetologist" or "Paleontologist" (lizards, snakes, and dinosaurs). So from about seven 
to nine there was a a subscription to "Reptiles and Amphibians" magazine was 
part of that process. The passions were so great that his Mom (from whom I've 
long been divorced) once took him to a Reptile show in Florida. When Sharon and 
I married in 1998, half our kitchen (safely separated from the main part, as 
Monty and others have seen) was devoted to our collection of Herps and 
Arachnids. There was a sign on the wall that said "Caution: Tarantula Crossing" and a 
tarantula (named Timmy), a Bearded Dragon (named Lizzie) and assorted other 
lizards and snakes nearby. Then with Lizzie's death, that ended. I was a bit 
sad when I didn't renew "Reptiles and Amphibians" and we gave away Timmy. 
(Lizzie died of digestive tract problems).