Basic Instincts

Chester Finn and Diane Ravitch are senior fellows at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and former members of the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB). They are eminently qualified to comment on how we assess our nation’s educational system. In today’s Wall Street Journal ($) they have a grim report:

U.S. students lag behind their peers in other modern nations — and the gap widens dramatically as their grade levels rise. Our high school pupils (and graduates) are miles from where they need to be to assure them and our country a secure future in the highly competitive global economy. Hence, any serious effort at education reform hinges on our setting world-class standards, then candidly tracking performance in relation to those standards. Even when gains are slender and results disappointing, we need the plain truth. Which is why recent attempts by federal and state governments to sugarcoat the performance of students is so alarming.

They go on to document how state education officials — usually acting as politicians, whatever their credentials — have systematically created state criteria set low enough to produce acceptable outcomes (see their chart, reproduced at right). In other words, if the test scores make the kids look uneducated, change the test until you get the results you want! Never mind how poorly the kids are prepared; do the liberal thing and make everybody feel good about it. What a crock!

They further document how this same crowd is attempting to change the focus from how well (or not) our kids are doing compared with those from other countries, to the much different focus of whether the trends are positive are negative. And of course, if you combine test-diddling with trend analysis, you can make anything look good. Again, never mind whether our kids are being educated — instead, let’s just bury all the evidence of the failure of our politicians to deliver the educational goods. Sort of like what the cats do in the litter box after they do their business. Hmmm, interesting visual analogy, that…

Finn and Ravitch catch our education 'leaders' in another piece of self-serving sleight of hand as well: a consistent presentation of “basic” level skills as though they were the goal for our kids, instead of the “proficient” level that was intended. As if setting expectations lower was actually a solution!

They conclude:

Just how demanding is “proficient” anyway? Here’s how NAGB defined it for fourth grade math: “Fourth graders performing at the proficient level should be able to use whole numbers to estimate, compute, and determine whether results are reasonable. They should have a conceptual understanding of fractions and decimals; be able to solve real-world problems in all NAEP content areas; and use four-function calculators, rulers and geometric shapes appropriately.” Is this too much to expect? Hardly. America’s great education problem is that for years we settled for “basic skills” rather than true proficiency. The Bush administration does a disservice to the nation if it tells educators and state officials that “basic” is acceptable. You can be sure that our competitors aren’t doing any such thing.

Recently I read an article (and didn’t save a link, darn it!) that talked about the results of giving a quiz from the San Diego public schools of the early 1900s to modern day students. Just reading the test questions was a real eye-opener — they were genuinely challenging and difficult, and they covered a very broad range of subjects. Students in those days had to pass this test with 80% or better correct in order to graduate (I believe it was a fourth grade test). Fail, and you took fourth grade over again. If my memory is correct, something like 70% of the students passed those tests. Not one of the over 100 modern fourth-grade students given this test achieved even 50% — much less a passing grade. Of course such an isolated example is fraught with problems, but … when it jibes with observation and experience, we can give it some wieght. As in with my experience a few years ago of meeting someone who had graduated from college, and yet had never even heard of Josef Stalin, much less had any understanding of that evil monster.

The Wall Street Journal is the most consistent source of high quality commentary that I know of. Even ignoring the (very high) news value of the WSJ, it’s worth the annual subscription price just for the commentary. Online is cheaper, too. If you’re not a subscriber, you should consider it…