fyi

[Zarina O'Hagin <ZOHAGIN@CLCCRUL.ORG>]

fyi

Zarina O'Hagin


School standards are real failure
September 15, 1999
BY DENNIS BYRNE SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
After new statewide student test results arrived, it is fair to wonder: Who 
are the dunces--the students or testers?
The answer is neither. But after the dismal showing by so many 
students--more than half of eighth-graders failed to meet math standards 
and a third failed in reading and writing--the state education 
establishment faces an embarrassing question. Obviously, so many students can't have become that stupid in a year, so which test was bogus: last 
year's, or this year's?
Or maybe they're all bogus. Maybe such testing should be junked. Maybe 
distant bureaucrats shouldn't be setting standards. It is instructive that 
each new testing device or teaching scheme dreamed up by the education 
establishment seems to worsen the education "crisis." And heightens the 
calls for even heavier doses of the same: more tests, more rigid standards, 
more layers of bureaucracy, more decision-making by unaccountable 
government officials ever farther from the classroom. When "teaching to the 
test" once was considered an evil, I now see state school Supt. Max McGee 
saying that some schools just weren't listening when they were told to 
teach to the state standards.
That doesn't go down well with the Illinois Family Institute. "Those 
standards themselves . . . are not likely to move Illinois schools in the 
direction McGee and the state [education] board desire," the group said in 
its Update newsletter. "Suffering from a lack of specific academic content 
and an overall vagueness, the Illinois standards fall far short of 
providing `guidelines for excellence' in education according to a panel of 
education experts convened by Illinois Family Institute to examine the 
standards document. These standards also suffer from an infestation of 
politically correct thinking, excessive direction concerning how lessons 
will be taught rather than what material will be mastered and an 
overemphasis on workplace preparation skills. Those problems will be more 
likely to dilute the quality of learning rather than enhancing it."
I've been hearing about why "Johnny can't read" and assorted other national educational "crises" since the '50s. Meanwhile, the United States has 
cemented itself as the most advanced, successful self-governed nation in 
the history of the world. Somebody must have been doing something right; 
and it was being done right while the education profession has been 
wringing its hands over, ironically, its own perceived failures. Sure, 
there's always a better way to teach, and many students do fall short 
learning the intellectual tools so necessary for success. But some obvious, 
but often-ignored, solutions abound. Among them is getting rid of tenure 
for incompetent and lazy teachers, thus making them subject to the same 
dismissal risks that the rest of us face.
But it just keeps getting worse. Take the latest wacky test scheme 
concocted by Educational Testing Service, designer of the SAT college 
entrance tests. It is designed to give "strivers" a better chance at 
getting into college, but it is little more than an elaborate sociological 
cooking of the books to favor less prepared or qualified students, putting 
them at greater risk of failure, than others who are more college ready.
As described in the Aug. 31 Wall Street Journal, it works like a golf 
handicap. Every student is assigned an expected SAT score based on 14 
categories, including family income, parents' education level, high school 
socioeconomic mix and the employment status of the mother. (A stay-at-home  mom is nonsensically defined as a handicap because it can indicate lower  education levels and fewer family economic resources.) For colleges that  wish it included, race also is used as an indicator, because being black,  Hispanic or an American Indian also is considered a handicap. If the student scores 200 points higher than what the indicators say he should, he is identified as a "striver" and ushered toward the front of the line. We're supposed to overlook the built-in bigotry of a system that makes  presumptions about a person's intellectual merit based on his race, class  and other socio-economic factors. What an insult to Tiger Woods, Serena Williams and millions of other Americans of minority or "lower 
social-economic" status who by the dint of hard work, talent and the 
helping love of others made of themselves professional, economic or 
educational successes.
E-mail: dbyrne@interaccess.com <mailto:dbyrne@interacess.com>

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