anitram said:
If you cannot pass a basic English test and have a 3.84 GPA, there is something wrong with the school you are attending.
Originally posted by martha
Sure, they've had the material taught to them, but whether or not they understood it, they're advanced onto the next level, because the extensive California state standards don't leave room for reteaching.
Originally posted by Dreadsox
In 2007 apparently NCLB will be up to be renewed...and...the rumor is they are going to make it so that if your top scores drop, you lose points towards NCLB.
Taken together, these sum up why I feel deeply ambivalent about where all this testing emphasis is headed.
I don't think students should be passed or graduated if they can't meet their system's most basic requirements. And I know there are teachers out there who, for whatever (bad) reason, will rubber-stamp failing students through regardless. On the other hand, it disturbs me to see governments taking the final say on a student's readiness to proceed out of the hands of teachers, who know better than anyone else what each student is truly capable of. I worry that teachers will wind up effectively being blamed for the very real obstacles which class size, variant leaning speeds, and nonexistent parental support pose to their efforts to ensure all students master all phases of the curriculum. I worry this could actually
reinforce the tendency to teach things at a pace and style geared to the strongest students, while consigning weaker ones to repeatedly revisit classroom setups that didn't address their needs to begin with. Precise repetition doesn't necessarily address why a student failed initially; nor does failure to grasp
some aspects of a concept necessarily show that a functional grasp of its real-life applications wasn't achieved--again, I feel a given student's teacher is better placed to evaluate the latter than a one-size-fits-all test.
Most of all, I think, I worry about undue devaluation of what a given student's GPA reveals about his/her potential. The schools I attended in rural Mississippi, from K-10th grade, were very poor from a college or job preparation standpoint--poorly educated teachers; poorly equipped facilities; and always, the need for classes to be geared towards students coming from homes where parents were illiterate and/or had such low expectations in life as to not see any point to succeeding in school. Nonetheless, I worked hard for the straight A's I got, and I believe they reflected both my teachers' honest evaluation of me and--realistically--their honest evaluation of what lengths they had time and resources to push me to under the circumstances. However, when my family moved to Brooklyn where I finished high school at a very good yeshiva (with generous financial accommodations for poor students), my grades were middling despite equally hard work, and I was not eligible for the "advanced" courses in anything, which bitterly disappointed me.
I did do fairly well on my SATs, but had to study much harder for them than most of my peers did. I didn't apply to any elite colleges: I chose a large but good public university, where I sought out professors I knew I could count on to be honest with me about my progress, relative to other comparably ambitious students, as mentors. I took on tutors for writing and math, even though I could've *passed* my courses without them, because my skills did not reflect my capabilities and I knew it. BUT I knew this only because my yeshiva experience forced me to realize that my 4.0 indeed did
not mean what the 4.0s of some of my peers--who'd attended competitive schools in well-off, highly-educated communities their whole lives--meant.
So--what's in a GPA, and what's in a standardized testing score? On the one hand, yes my good grades in K-10 were relative, and didn't show the level of preparedness I'd once thought. (And yes, any college admissions people who assumed they explained my SAT scores were duped.) On the other hand, I think the intelligence, ambition, and diligence indicated by those grades had
everything to do with why I caught up to my best-prepared peers eventually. And I strongly believe there was nothing "wrong with" most of the teachers who assigned me those grades--they did the best they could, for everyone, within the environment they inherited. Today, as a professor, I go out of my way to champion and challenge my own bright-but-underprepared students to maintain enough faith in themselves *and the system* to realize that
it's not too late to transform the same gifts that once earned them good grades in poor schools in poor communities, into success and competence at a much higher bar. Not all of them make it, especially among the older, "nontraditional" students who've spent years in the job market internalizing a view of themselves as "just not as smart" as their managers, administrators and oft-promoted coworkers who came from better schools. But enough DO make it to convince me that my own experience wasn't some kind of fluke. (I hope and pray that my colleagues in the education department are doing the same thing, because
their students more than anyone's MUST not be allowed to limp through: they'll be in charge of ensuring a decent shot at success in life for the next generation.)
Like it or not, students from socioeconomically underprivileged school backgrounds are just not going to arrive at college, or the job market, as all-around-well-prepared as students from socioeconomically privileged school backgrounds. That is simply reality; school is not a magic antidote for the cumulative effects of inequality. I understand why there might be temptations for teachers in underprivileged schools to pass students who have not met the minimum--or worse, to gear their teaching in general towards assuming the least, rather than demanding the most, of their students. Particularly when new requirements keep being introduced "midstream" on students whose past preparation doesn't facilitate it. This was precisely what happened to me at yeshiva, and it took years--not months--of hard work, good mentoring and faith in my potential (from both me and my teachers) for me to catch up. But I never repeated a grade or a class, and I don't think it would have served my best interests to.
I do not feel qualified to speculate how often truly unwarranted passing happens, nor what the best solutions to it might be. But I am deeply skeptical whether standardized testing, followed by forced repetition of what (apparently) didn't work the first time, is the right response. My own experience inclines me to prefer solutions which would give teachers more--not less--authority to decide for themselves which approaches engage the interest and understanding of the largest number of students. And which would reserve for teachers the last word on how ready each student is to move on, and what each student's performance shows about his or her potential given their environment.