Education is Your Business

Should states manage testing?

States manage their K-12 testing systems. They determine what passing is, what questions get asked, everything. And there are some serious problems with the set-up, as Steve Peha points out in a comment on the EduWonk blog:

Letting governors and state legislators set educational standards in their own states is a bit like letting the fox guard the hen house. Much research has shown how state politicians have chipped away at rigor over the years, and Mr. Jindal’s latest attempt is no exception.

A few years ago, I worked extensively in Arizona, one of the “tough” states requiring that kids pass reading, writing, and math tests to qualify for high school graduation. The year before the law was to go into effect, they dropped the requirements for a passing score more than ten percent. Then, the following year, they created a formula whereby kids who didn’t pass tests could still graduate through a combination of attendance, grades, and test prep classes. As a result, only six kids failed to make the grade that year, demonstrating clearly that it is indeed possible to leave no child behind if we can only figure out the correct mathematical formula that lowers the bar far enough.

State testing must be conducted by independent organizations with no political or financial stake in the outcome. What’s more, we already have good models of this practice in the NAEP, SAT, and ACT tests. Whether one likes these tests or not, it is hard to dispute the fact that they are all regarded as more reliable than state tests.

I’m not a big fan of testing. But if we’re going to do it, let’s do it right. Too much hangs in the balance when our tests are subject to manipulation by shortsighted politicians who care more about their approval ratings than they do about the fate of children in their states. It takes courage to reform education. And few of our political leaders seem to have it.

To read the original post and other comments, go here.

Drop-outs and test-prep fallacies

Couple things in the news yesterday that really stick in my craw.

The first is a North Carolina bill working its way through the state legislature that would allow public high schools to improve their graduation rates by getting "credit" for drop-outs who attain their GEDs. (Read more from the N&O article). On the surface, this might not seem like such a big deal. But I think it's false advertising -- not to mention unfair.

By allowing high schools to add GED recipients to their graduation rates, the public is misled about a given school's ability to engage students and prepare them for life after graduation. That could create a false sense of achievement that can take the heat off districts to do better by their charges. After all, they didn't give kids instruction that was relevant enough to keep them in school. Yes, some kids drop out for other reasons, but many (if not most) leave because they'd rather get job training than academic training. And that's because there's a lack of context and connections that link U.S. history or algebra to skills needed to succeed in life, not just college. 

The practice also would be unfair to our state's community colleges, which do clearly connect high school equivalency requirements with real life. They're doing a great job getting drop-outs back on track and they deserve the credit.

How big is the drop-out crisis in our nation's 12 largest states, including North Carolina? Read this CNN article. For exhausting detail, you can click here for the full text of The Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University's "Left Behind: The Nation's Dropout Crisis".

The next issue is a national one. Is anyone actually surprised at the results of yesterday’s National Association for College Admission Counseling’s report on SAT coaching? I certainly wasn’t. The study, released yesterday, found that test prep may add 30 points to a child’s score on the 2,400-point test. Test prep courses range from $100 for a short workshop to one-to-one tutoring starting at $200 per hour.

I’m pretty confident that paltry increase could be achieved by buying a book for 50 bucks and walking your kid through it a couple of times before the big test day.

The value of college admissions tests has been under fire for the last several years, and this latest development prompted the NACA to warn school admissions offices not to become too reliant on the SAT or ACT tests, as differences in scores could be the result of measurement error, unequal access to coaching, etc.

Inflated claims of effectiveness are nothing new in business. And test prep is a business – a huge one estimated at $4 billion. But what’s especially nefarious about this is twofold:

First, it preys on parents’ fears of their children’s academic success and ability to get into the “right” college. So they’ll invest anything to help give their kids a leg-up.

Second, and most importantly, it sets kids up. Despite some attitudes to the contrary, high school kids really do want to please their parents and meet their expectations. Many care a great deal about getting into college, too. Giving them false hope is just mean.

Want to know more about the report, which surveyed 11,000 college admissions officers, high-school guidance counselors and private advisors? Here’s a good article in the Wall Street Journal. And here's a link to the full report "“Preparation for College Admission Exams,”

The price of the achievement gap

Last month, ginormous consulting firm McKinsey & Co. released The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America's Schools, a report that estimates the achievement gap's impact. The report found that the difference in academic achievement of high-and low-income students equals a $700-billion "cost" that is the equivalent to a “permanent national recession” in terms of its impact on GDP.

Here's a good take on disconnect between schools and the business world from Stanford (Former Foes Unite in Battle to Bridge K-12 Achievement Gap). Ouch.

Here in Chapel Hill-Carrboro, we're content to point to high graduation rates and rest on our laurels and the most successful public school district in the state. But buried in the data, and belying the reputation, is a widening gap between our low-income students and their more affluent counterparts.

The Daily Tar Heel reported the gap last month (Test Score Gap Keeps Growing). And Steve Peha wrote a scathing op-ed in the Carrbor Citizen last week (From Gap to Chasm).

All are worth reading -- and worth acting on.

How President-Elect Obama can start fixing education

Steve and I offer suggestions to help President-Elect Obama begin the arduous task of turning our schools back into institutions that actually help students achieve in this week's Carrboro Citizen:

Eight great ideas for the Obama administration

The (non-)Politics of Education

Our latest column for the Carrboro Citizen, published 21 August 2008:

As we head back to school this fall, we’re also heading into one of the most important presidential elections in history.

The candidates are already running ads and the issues seem clear: the war in Iraq, the economy, healthcare, the price of gas, etc. But not education. As important as everyone seems to think education is, it barely rates a blip on a pollster’s radar. Why?

Think about the life-changing value of a good education. Where would most of us be without the educational opportunities we’ve had? Obviously, many of this year’s crop of issues are more urgent — but that doesn’t explain why education is never a top priority in a national election (or, for that matter, in state gubernatorial elections either).

For starters, neither candidate has a well-defined position on education. And even if they did, it’s unlikely those positions would differ much. The biggest educational issue is No Child Left Behind, and it has been enthusiastically supported by both Democrats and Republicans. Neither McCain nor Obama is likely to call for dismantling it entirely; and even if they did, that still might not get the people’s attention.

This is either because we can’t see that NCLB has made any significant difference in how well we educate our children or that no one has proposed a different solution. Even after seven years, the jury is still out on whether the most ambitious education reform in American history has accomplished much in the way of reform.

If we look at how our politicians treat education, and how the voters feel about it, we might conclude that people don’t think educational change is possible. Public school is free, everybody goes — and no matter what legislation passes or doesn’t pass, school remains pretty much the same. Our inability to change education leads to passivity among the general public about whether it can be changed at all. And things that can’t be changed don’t make good issues at election time.

But education can be changed. If the right policies were in place, we could begin to make progress. If candidates talked about a single national testing system that used challenging tests like the NAEP or SAT, we could make some change. If candidates talked about overhauling teacher training on a national level, we could make some change. If candidates endorsed universal pre-school and all-day kindergarten, we could make some change.

But no one is talking about these issues now and we suspect they won’t come up in any significant way in the near future.

When it comes to education, we are focused on the wrong things. Or, rather, we’re only focused on one thing – NCLB – that probably won’t make a difference no matter which way it goes during reauthorization next year. If we want to be as serious about education as we are about healthcare and the price of gas, we need to concentrate on big issues that cut cleanly across the electorate. Senator, are you in favor of universal pre-school? Yes or no? And if so, how would you propose to pay for it? It’s got to be that simple or education will never get off the ground as an election-year issue.

If we’re going to make real progress in education, we have to get real with our political leaders about the kind of progress we want. Right now, we’re giving them a free pass. That’s no way to run an election. If holding our kids accountable for test scores is such a good idea, why can’t we hold our political leaders accountable for policies that really make a difference?

Steve Peha and Margot Carmichael Lester own Teaching That Makes Sense Inc., an education reform, advocacy and consulting company based in Carrboro.

Quit Blaming the Kids

The big news in the paper this week is the alarming number of area schools that aren't meeting federal expectations. According to the Raleigh News & Observer, more than half of Triangle schools didn't have enough students passing state exams this past school year. As a result, the Federal government will intercede as part of No Child Left Behind. (For more on NCLB, see this article we wrote for the Carrboro Citizen.)

That's not good. It shows that even here in Chapel Hill-Carrboro, the cradle of public higher education in our nation, public grade school education isn't making the grade.

But what's worse than 35 schools in our area facing federal intervention is the continuing refrain I hear all the time: that it's the special groups -- like non-English speakers or low-income kids -- who are to blame for all this. You see, when things go wrong in schools, it's much easier to blame the victims -- the students -- than the adults who are actually in charge at every level from the classroom to the administrative offices to the state board of education right up to the U.S. Department of Education.

Talk About New Math: Zero now equals 61

Here in the Chapel HIll-Carrboro Schools, they're teaching a new math. The district has proposed a new "standardized" grading policy in which the lowest grade a kid can get is 61. So if you decide not to do your work, that dreaded zero is no longer a possibility. You'll get a whopping 61 whether you bother to try or not. Instead of getting an F for assignments not turned in, you'd get an incomplete.

Wow! If only real life worked that way. If only I could get paid $61 for assignments I don't turn in instead of the $0 my clients would insist on. Wouldn't that be swell?

Putting Testing to the Test

It's no secret that I think we spend too much time testing (and teaching to the test) rather than providing meaningful real-world relevant instruction to our kids.

Read the latest opinion piece on this topic that I co-wrote with Steve in this week's Carrboro Citizen.

***
And since it is the season, if you or your kid is about to head into an end-of-course or end-of-grade test, here are some of Steve's top tips for test-takers.

The Destructive Practice of Lowering The Bar

In today’s installment of WUNC-FM’s Put to the Test, one of the ugly truths of the testing movement was revealed, albeit in passing. One of the featured students in the week-long series had not passed his algebra end-of-course test -- again. Failing to meet the state-set passing mark would mean another year of algebra (because, you know, giving you another year of the same class you didn’t pass in the first place will magically make you suddenly understand!). Yet the student was given an odd reprieve. He wasn’t put in a class that would help him develop the foundational skills he needed to build an understanding of algebra. Oh, no! The state decided to lower the grade required for passing. Not just for this student, but for every student.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the untold story of testing. And it goes to the heart of what needs to be addressed in education reform. States are threatened with losing federal funding for schools where kids repeatedly fail tests. You don’t have to be a straight-A student to figure out that it’s a heckuva lot easier to lower the bar than actually figure out how to teach kids to meet a high one.

To Test or Not to Test; That is NOT the Question

The debate over the value of NCLB has been characterized in a way that isn’t useful. Is testing good or bad? Like everything else, it depends. And what it depends on is much more subtle. Rather than asking if testing is good, we should be asking what testing is good for. And then making that happen.