Standards left behind

Rick Perlstein is, to put it mildly, not optimistic about the next four years.

Read the entire essay, "Eve of Destruction" -- read it over and over and over again, my friend, if you don't believe we're on that eve. But I want to focus here on Perlstein's comments on No Child Left Behind:

You've heard of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, the one that produces those anguished news reports every four years about all the countries American schoolchildren lag behind in basic skills. But according to the TIMSS, if Minnesota were a country, it would have the second-best science scores and the seventh best in math. By No Child Left Behind's statutorily required benchmarks of "Adequate Yearly Progress," however, only 42 percent of Minnesota fourth-graders were proficient in math. And NCLB's test targets increase every year. So by one estimate, in 2014, some 80 percent of the schools in Minnesota's world-class education system will be rated "failures."

The benchmarks are insane, you see. ...

Which serves the administration's purpose admirably. Failure, glorious failure: In Chicago, the city must now offer 200,000 students the chance to move out of "failed" schools -- but there are only 500 spaces in which to place them elsewhere. So now the public school system must be destroyed.

The significance of that "Adequate Yearly Progress" standard was ignored by every school in the nation. They failed to understand how NCLB changed the rules for education. They swallowed the ruse that this is about educational "standards."

It's not about standards. Standards, in education, would mean deciding that all students in a particular grade must learn X, Y and Z in order to move on to the next grade. Students could be required to take a test each year to prove they had mastered those standards.

But that's not what NCLB requires. It requires that a school's scores on such annual tests must improve every year. Failure to improve is regarded simply as failure. The only standard that counts, in other words, is the previous year's scores.

To illustrate how insane this really is, consider Ted Williams' triple-crown season in 1942 -- one of the most remarkable seasons ever put together at the plate in baseball history. He batted .356 with 137 RBIs and 36 home runs (and that was when 36 home runs still meant something).

According to the standards of NCLB, that season was a failure. Teddy Ballgame failed to demonstrate Adequate Yearly Progress. His batting average and home run totals failed to improve upon the previous year's (.406, 37). Failure, glorious failure.

A more successful hitter that year would be someone like Washington Senators backup Mike "Shotgun" Chartak, whose 10 homers and .237 average in 1942 were significant improvements over his previous big league marks. Unlike Williams, Chartak demonstrated Adequate Yearly Progress.

I've never understood why some shrewd superintendent didn't attempt to game the system in the first year of NCLB. The first year of testing counted only to establish a benchmark for each school against which that school's future yearly progress could be measured. Schools thus had an incentive to score poorly -- as poorly as possible -- during the first year of testing. The lower the initial scores, the easier it would be to demonstrate future progress.

A rational approach therefore would have been to instruct students, during that benchmark round of testing, to answer everything wrong. If you're not sure what the wrong answer is, leave it blank.

This would have ensured that the school would do better in ensuing years, demonstrating the yearly progress that NCLB counts as success. It would also have provided students with a valuable lesson about the meaning of education in America. It's not about mastering the three Rs, and it's certainly not about something loftier like becoming more fully human or the ideal of paideia or other such nonsense. It's about figuring out how the Powers That Be keep score and learning to do what you must to keep them happy.

Comments

[Buhallin]

Unrelated, but similar story...

During my last years in the Air Force, I was fighting their weight program. I had actually lost over 40 lbs from when I started on it, and was 25 lbs UNDER my max weight. Unfortunately, their body fat measurement is NUTS, and I just couldn't beat it.

I had to lose 5 lbs a month, or 1% body fat. Well, by the time you lose 40 lbs, the 5 a month doesn't keep going, and the body fat measurement (note that I was on the hook for 1 point a month) had a standard deviation of something like 12 points. It was all over the chart.

Do, I played the system. I'd get sent over to the hospital, and they'd measure my body fat, then I'd go back to my unit to get weighed. I got a copy of the tables, and figured out what it was. If the body fat came in low, I put 8 lbs of dive weights in my pocket when they weighed me. So, I was way high on my weight, giving me a good head start for the next month.

Gaming the system is a valuable skill to have, as is an appreciation for the utter idiocy of government programs. It's just too bad we're starting them so young these days.

[Patrick J. Mullins]

I was very impressed with Perlstein's article too.This is all definitely what I have been expecting, and I expect everything he said will happen, plus more. That's just where it happens to be at.

[Emily]

I was in high school before NCLB but after the various standards testings programs had become the rage in individual states.

One particularly well-liked English teacher explained this to us, explaining that the school was expected to improve every year. Starting this year.

Hands were raised, students suggested gaming the system by blowing the test, because we were 15 years old and we STILL knew there was something wrong with that.

[Susan]

Honestly, I'm surprised people are surprised by any of this. I work for an educational publisher - one of the "big four," I won't mention which one - and after this bill passed we were given a briefing on it by one of our number who had actually read it. We realized immediately that NCLB was a cover for the destruction of the public school system. No matter what schools do, the end result - that every student be "proficient" in reading (and eventually other skills) - is bloody impossible to meet. So every school will eventually be "privatized," just as the Repugs want. Oh, and by the way, they slipped in a provision that for a school to receive public money, they must allow military recruiters in and give said recruiters the names and addresses of their students. Or else.

We knew this four years ago. Where in the hell has everyone else been that they're now wandering around acting surprised?

[valley imp]

Like other components of the publick skiyool system, "standardized" testing prepares Our Nation's chil'un for filling out their "personality" questionaires for Wally Whirled, Kmart, etc. I had to fill out one of these questionaires for a low level supermarket chain job once. You couldn't honestly answer many of the "when did you stop beating your wife" questions and be hired. Everybody lies on these things. When the interviewer raised some concerns about 2 or 3 questions I answered honestly, I told him, "If the applicants answered these things honestly, you'd never hire anybody including, very probably, yourself. So, you hire people who have lied to get hired. What good does that do? These test are self defeating because they encourage one the behaviors that you're trying to weed out." All this inane crap had pissed me off at this point. To return the favor, I mentioned to the interviewer his company's questionaire reminded me of the questionaires given by Scientologists to hook the Unclears into Scientology. Needless to say, I didn't get the job. The other funny thing is that you have to go thru more "personality" testing for a low level clerk's job at Wally Whirled than you do for a security clearance at a bomb factory like MacDac. Go figger.

[Edward Liu]

Howdy,

Considering that a distressingly large proportion of Americans buy the newspaper only to read the sports section, and can rattle off statistics perfectly for the 1984 Mets but can't find Afghanistan or Iraq on a map or place the American Civil War within the right 50 years, I wonder if the sports analogy you just used isn't the best way to drill home the complete, sheer lunacy of NCLB. I wonder if some sports analogy would be the best way to explain how completely moronic the "privatize Social Security" plans are to the average Joe Sixpack.

On the other hand, maybe the value of gaming the system is the lesson they mean to teach with NCLB. GWB has been gaming the system his entire life, and look where it's gotten him.

-- Ed

[seamus]

I like the Bishop Allen reference.