New poster here, so bear with me. I’ve been giving this some thought and am compelled to reach out for opinions:
G.W. Bush signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which among many things, required improvements in teaching standards AND student testing. So, if those who are howling at the demise of MCAS because they feel the Government’s standards somehow diminish Massachusetts (and exactly how is never made clear), then aren’t they railing against the very testing requirements Republican’s (and Dems) saw fit to enact?
As a parent, I NEVER liked MCAS and thought it didn’t work for everyone, but in light of this backlash toward government standards, the argument leaves me confused…
Please share widely!
I think being confused about education policy at this point is a sign of some intelligence. Certainly if you try to figure out current educational policy in a traditional right-left, liberal-conservative framework, it is very hard to understand what’s going on.
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p>The fight over state versus national standards (MCAS versus some other brand of standardized tests) seems like a distraction, kind of a Coke v. Pepsi quarrel that doesn’t get at essential questions like whether we want to continue overtesting and undereducating our poor, special needs and limited English proficient students or whether we can close achievement gaps when wealth gaps are wider than almost any time in our history.
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p>Yesterday’s news: One in seven Americans now live in poverty, the highest percentage in 51 years, and the black poverty rate is twice that of Americans in general. The number of children living in poverty has increased by 2.1 million. Meanwhile, the top 1% of Americans now take in nearly 25% of the country’s income. With standardized test scores so closely linked to family wealth, closing the score gap seems like a losing battle as long as the wealth gap continues to gape.
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p>More fodder for confusion: Here we have our “progressive” governor and president embracing a traditionally conservative program of high stakes testing based on a corporate approach to education that is enriching testing companies and doing little to benefit struggling student groups like English language learners, impoverished students and those with special needs.
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p>Then there are the hedge fund managers, not traditionally known for their altruism, embracing the cause of charter schools for poor minority students (though rarely if ever for their own children, it seems). And we have a liberal Democrat (and union member) producing a documentary film, Waiting for Superman, that reportedly indicts our system of traditional public schools, places the blame for poor students’ low achievement squarely at the feet of teachers unions and says that the only escape for poor black families is charter schools. (The film has not yet been released so I have seen only the trailer.)
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p>Obama campaigned against No Child Left Behind, saying “creativity has been drained from classrooms, as too many teachers are forced to teach to fill-in-the-bubble tests.” Now his education secretary, Arne Duncan, has successfully bribed most states to adopt policies that are likely to increase the emphasis on prepping for tests by policies like tying teacher evaluations to student test results.
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p>Commentators like Diane Ravitch, who once embraced standards and high stakes testing and charters but has been convinced by the evidence that these don’t work, say Duncan and Obama are continuing, or even worsening, Bush’s education policies. Ravitch wrote, “based on what I have seen to date, I conclude that Obama has given President George W. Bush a third term in education policy and that Arne Duncan is the male version of Margaret Spellings [Bush’s secretary of education]. Maybe he really is Margaret Spellings without the glasses and wearing very high heels.”
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p>Teacher and blogger Anthony Cody thinks we may be at or near a tipping point, writing in Education Week that “ideologically driven projects like this have a way of over reaching, over-promising, and overestimating their strength. And the moment that they reach their apex is actually the moment they begin to collapse. Education reform has finally jumped the shark.”
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p>I hope he’s right.
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p>Lisa Guisbond
Citizens for Public Schools
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MCAS has been successful because it’s more content-based, not critical-thinking-based. It’s the only program that has shown real results.
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p>Content is opposed by the ed establishment which doesn’t believe in it (A), and doesn’t want to work to learn or teach it (B), and doesn’t want to be evaluated or held responsible for anything at all (C).
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p>I’m not crazy about the MCAS, but Patrick is proposing to replace a semi-working program with one that has never shown sustained improvement. He’s watering down ed reform for Democratic constituency groups, even if he can’t give them what they really want [see (C) above].
The comments offered have provided food for thought, but admittedly, I have little patience for the ‘politicking’ of education.
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p>Not long ago a friend brought up an interesting possibility: why not evaluate children just before the end of grammar school with a Myers-Briggs test and see where their tendencies/aptitudes are heading? Directing their curriculum in subjects they prefer might inspire them, and (hopefully) reduce the dropout rate, especially in urban areas – which was the crux of her point.
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p>Granted, not everyone is geared to be a scientist, and, some will be plumbers. If we made an effort to get inside our children’s heads early enough, in time, municipal education could wind up with more money and less kids who groan when they have to learn. Perhaps this ala-carte concept is too idealistic, but I liked it immediately.
I would argue that NOT measuring the critical thinking capabilities of a child makes zero sense and only tells us half the story (in terms of their overall intelligence).