As we continue to gush billions of dollars for Afghanistan and Iraq as well as giving $100 million buildings to Israel, our school system continues to decline and our student school continue to rank below a long list of other countries. The most recent reports of fourth and eighth graders shows the United States lagging behind Asian and European countries in math and science. Nevertheless, we will continue to give billions to wealthy countries like Israel with better schools and increasingly hostile countries like Pakistan and Egypt. The real threat to this country is the collapsing educational system and erosion of our competitive labor force.
The two new reports, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, show South Korea and Singapore leading in science in the fourth grade and Singapore and Taiwan leading in the eighth grade. The U.S. ranked 11th in fourth-grade math and 9th in eighth grade math. We ranked 7th in fourth grade science and 10th in eighth-grade science.
I am less worried about the ranking as I am with the fact that only 7 percent of students reached the advanced level in eighth-grade math compared to 48 percent of eighth graders in Singapore and 47 percent of eighth graders in South Korea.
I have been admittedly harping on this issue for years. I fail to understand how our leaders can get away with the lack of priority shown toward education which plays directly into our competitiveness in the world market.
Source: New York Times
ap, 😉
Elaine M.,
And soon, we’ll probably be hearing something about “ballbusting.”
nick,
And where did you teach–in the pit of Hell?
My bad! I forgot–you’re always right. Anyone with a different opinion is living in some “otherworld”…doesn’t really know what she is talking about…doesn’t understand what is going on in the “real” world. Heaven forbid anyone should be snarky toward you. The land of Snark is your domain.
*****
BTW, I really don’t care where I fit on “your” list. I speak from my own experience. You don’t like what I have to say? That’s your problem…not mine.
Elaine, More and more I am seeing you must have taught @ Nirvana Grammar School, where all the teachers are superb and all the students above average[an homage to Garrison Keilor]. Your haughtiness and snark is compensation for a failed system. I obviously hit a nerve. You do know that boys have fallen farther and farther behind in the last 3 decades..that’s an indisputable fact. And to deny that male teachers do better w/ male students, and vice versa is to deny genetics. I know the feminists of the 60’s spouted the flat earth science, “Girls and boys are not different..it’s our culture” horseshit. However, they went on to raise boys and girls and realize there is an enormous difference. Are you one of those Japanese soldiers still defending a remote island still believeing WW2 is ongoing? I was very successful, the students, parents, principals and good teachers would attest to that. And they were listed in order of importance!! The union rats hated me. Your derision of me will be left for you to draw a conclusion where you fit on that list.
nick,
Oh, my achin’ head! I don’t even know where to begin to address what you just spouted about women teachers, male teachers, male/female student relationships, disruptive students, etc. BTW, the teaching profession–as far back as I can recall–has always been dominated by women. Maybe that is one of the reasons that the profession gets so little respect.
Like many of my female teaching colleagues, I related well to male students. We women teachers had no problem understanding and relating to the boys in our classrooms. We understood how to work with boys–and with girls–who had behavioral issues. That doesn’t mean that we never had problems with some of them. Still, we didn’t let “those” kids be damned.
I believe it crucial to address any issues children may have that could have a negative impact on their ability to learn, to progress, to achieve, to develop socially and emotionally as soon as they enter school. Can’t wait until middle school–otherwise, the issues will just get more serious.
You’ve told us time and again how successful you were in the classroom…a kind of miracle worker while the other “union” teachers couldn’t hold a candle to you. Too bad the union thugs drove someone as talented and amazing as you out of the profession.
rafflaw, I think you have it backwards, teachers are underappreciated[the good ones] because they are a union that protect the lazy and imcompetent. I grew up in a factory union household. My old man said back in the 60’s that unions had outlived their purpose, they were for the most part a way for union executives to have big salary jobs. He pointed out to me that unions had devolved to a system that protects the worst employees. He worked for Pratt&Whitney, building jet engines. The guys of his generation took that duty for perfection DAMN serious because it meant lives. He and other good mechanics saw lazy, shoddy, mechanics protected by the IAM. It was horrible for safety and morale. Kids don’t die because of incompetent teachers, they just work @ McDonalds.
Elaine, We are BOTH speaking in generalities, you about the best, I about the worst, so lets put that to rest. I do not to “throw out the baby out w/ the bathwater,” I want to throw out the feces that baby left while taking a warm bath. Let’s be brutally honest. The teaching profession has become a female dominated profession. The big positive is girls have been more recognized and the teaching enviroment caters to them. Female teachers connect better w/ female students. The ying/yang problem is w/ boys. Let’s also be honest here..boys are almost always the problems, the kids who disrupt class and take a lot of energy. Most female teachers can’t handle them. Most men can. I would hope you can understand I did REAL WELL w/ those kids. And you know what that meant, I got almost all of them in my classes. And, I was fine w/ that, particularly when I taught middle school. As you know, that’s where you win them or lose them..it’s the most critical juncture. I unabasedly love kids, not just the teacher’s pets, all of them. That’s why I got into teaching @ age 48. Many of those “bad” boys didn’t have men in the home, or they had loser men in the home. With my skills from the real world, I could walk into a class and tell the kids[girls were more subtle..they took a little time] w/o men in their home. Elaine, that’s not the teachers fault or the systems fault. But, you don’t just let those boys be damned, because it’s not their fault either. All people, companies, and organizations must adapt or perish. A union, bureaucratic system does not adapt, it attempts to have the world adapt to them. It doesn’t work that way.
mespo, Love your idea. But, @ the core of the resistance to your very good idea is teachers loathing tests. I do believe a test is not the sole indicator of competence, but it is most certainly a big part of it.
Keeping an Eye on the Unregulated Testing Industry
By Gerald Bracey, Fellow at the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University
Posted March 13, 2009
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-bracey/keeping-an-eye-on-the-unr_b_174731.html
About 30 years ago, Boston College professor, George Madaus, called for an “FDA for testing.” The point was–and, sadly, is–that school testing was a huge industry totally unregulated. Since Madaus’ proposal, the testing industry has exploded in size. And there is still no regulation, no oversight. “Tests are regulated less than the food we feed our pets,” said the National Center for Fair and Open Testing.
The media assume that tests are valid and accept the claims made for them. If tests say American schools are lousy (they don’t but fear mongers use them that way), then it must be so.
In fact, tests are so much a part of the educational air we breathe, we probably don’t think of them as needing regulation. Just like we didn’t think about regulating the quality of peanut butter–until recently.
Testing often tries to put on a white hat as part of the educational enterprise, trying to help kids succeed. In reality, the test companies are as full of greed and avarice as the financial sector or any other part of the economy. We don’t notice it because…there is no regulation. Test companies make enormous claims for the ways in which their products will help your kid, or your school or your district. Is there any research to back up these claims? No. Are there any sanctions for overstating what the tests can do? No. Companies are totally free to claim whatever they wish.
The relationship between those who make tests and those who use them is way too cozy. In most other industries, such relationships would be banned as sources of conflict of interest.
A small, non-profit operation, the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, universally referred to simply as FairTest, tries to keep an eye on the industry. Its goal is to end all misuse of standardized tests of which, there is today far, far too much. The evidence is all around, but can be seen in books such as Sharon Nichols’ and David Berliner’s Collateral Damage: How High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America’s Schools. FairTest works to end this corruption.
It has no regulatory power and can only work to make people aware of problems by newsletters, by providing testimony to state school boards and legislatures, and, on occasion, by organizing for a cause. At the present time, perhaps its most important organizing effort has been one to bring about major changes in the federal No Child Left Behind law. To date, 149 organizations have signed a petition calling on congress to overhaul the law in ways such as to “replace the law’s arbitrary proficiency targets…” and to “measure progress by using students’ growth in achievement…”
mespo,
There are many excellent teachers who do not teach in wealthy school districts. They go unnoticed and unacknowledged because their students don’t score as high on standardized tests as do students who live in wealthy school districts.
The myths of standardized testing
By Valerie Strauss
4/15/11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the-myths-of-standardized-testing/2011/04/14/AFNxTggD_blog.html
Are the following statements true or false?
*Students’ knowledge and skills can be assessed by a sample of content that makes up a 45-question test.
*High test scores of students at any particular school prove that there is high student achievement and quality teaching at the institution.
*Punishments or rewards to teachers or students based on test scores motivate them to do better.
*A standardized test score is a better reflection of student learning any any other form of assessment.
*If the stakes to a test are high enough, people will work harder and improve their performance to meet the challenge.
These are common myths of high-stakes standardized tests, which have become the focus of modern school reform and used to evaluate schools, students and, increasingly, teachers.
Plenty of people believe these to be true, though they are not, as explained in a new book, appropriately called, “The Myths of Standardized Tests: Why They Don’t Tell You What You Think They Do,” by Phillip Harris, Bruce M. Smith and Joan Harris.
The book explains, using a load of research, why high-stakes standardized tests are less objective than many people believe, why they don’t adequately measure student achievement, how the results distort the validity of the assessment system, how these tests “inadvertently” lead young people to become “superficial thinkers,” and much more.
The easy-to-read book does not only look at what’s wrong with tests but also discusses what “genuine accountability” looks like.
This is all especially important today as Congress considers whether and how to rewrite the 2002 No Child Left Behind law, the major education of the former Bush administration that ushered in the era of high-stakes testing. Thus far, the Obama administration’s policies have done nothing to change the dynamic, and in some cases, have even encouraged states and school districts to raise the stakes by linking test scores to teachers’ evaluation and pay.
Here are a few excerpts from the book:
“As psychometrician Daniel Koretz puts it, scores on a standardized test ‘usually do not provide a direct and complete measure of educational achievement.’ … Tests can measure only a portion of the goals of education, which are necessarily broader and more inclusive than the tests could possibly be…. Here is Gerald Bracey’s list of some of the biggies that we generally don’t even try to use standardized tests to measure:
creativity, critical thinking, resilience, motivation, persistence, curiosity, endurance, reliability, enthusiasm, empathy, self-awareness, self-discipline, leadership, civic-mindedness, courage, compassion, resourcefulness, sense of beauty, sense of wonder, honesty, integrity
“Surely these are attributes we all want our children to acquire in some degree. And while not all learning takes place in classrooms, these are real and valuable ‘achievements.’ Shouldn’t schools pursue goals such as these for their students, along with the usual academic goals? Of course, a teacher can’t really teach all of these things from a textbook. But, as Bracey points out, she can model them or talk with students about people who exemplify them. But she has to have enough time left over to do so after getting the kids ready for the standardized test of ‘achievement.’
“In fact, there are more problems associated with the impact of standardized testing on ‘achievement’ than simply the fact that the technology of the testing cannot efficiently and accurately measure some vitally important attributes that we all want our children to ‘achieve.’ Alfie Kohn put it this way:
‘Studies of students of different ages have found a statistical association between students with high scores on standardized tests and relatively shallow thinking….’
“So by ignoring attributes that they can’t properly assess, standardized tests inadvertently create incentives for students to become superficial thinkers–to seek the quick, easy and obvious answer….”
—
“Tests drive instruction. They will continue to do so as long as anyone cares about the scores, and merely publishing the results for each community school in the local newspaper is enough to give the scores weight and cause people to worry about them. So we need to stay alert to the direction in which the tests are driving instruction. We think it is clear that the current frenzy of accountability testing is driving instruction away from long-term projects and investigations whose outcomes aren’t known and whose evaluation depends to some extent on direct human judgment. The outsized emphasis on test scores has driven instruction toward items with one clear, right answer, in an attempt to prepare students for what really counts–the standardized test.
“You’ll often hear someone say that a good test is one that teachers should be pleased to teach to. But this proposition concerns us. When it comes to whether teaching to the test is a worthy goal, we don’t worry so much about the items on the test…. We think that a far more important issue is almost always overlooked in policy discussions: what’s not on the test.”
—
[This passage refers to the deadline written in No Child Left Behind that calls for most students in U.S. public schools to be proficient in reading and math by 2014, a goal that is expected to lead to virtually all schools being labeled failures because of the complex rules associated with meeting it.]
“Now we have a new federal administration, and it has proposed doing away with the 2014 deadline for proficiency. Surely, that’s a good thing, no? To which we reply, “Yes, but….” The big ‘but’ is that the ‘blueprint’ set out by President Obama and [Education] Secretary [Arne] Duncan adopts the same approach to accountability as its predecessors did. The 2014 deadline has been replaced with a ‘target’ (they say it’s not an absolute deadline) that by 2020 all students (here we go again with ‘all students’) will be ‘college and career ready.’ But the same misunderstanding of accountability plagues the new proposal. That is, ‘college and career ready’ still relies on annual testing in grades three through eight and once during high school; still relies on rewards for success (i.e., high test scores) and ‘interventions’ for persistent failure (i.e., low test scores), and still fails to address the fundamental social, cultural and familial issues that strongly influence students’ performance. But ‘interventions’ are so much nicer than ‘sanctions,’ don’t you think?”
“In fact, there are more problems associated with the impact of standardized testing on ‘achievement’ than simply the fact that the technology of the testing cannot efficiently and accurately measure some vitally important attributes that we all want our children to ‘achieve.’ Alfie Kohn put it this way:
‘Studies of students of different ages have found a statistical association between students with high scores on standardized tests and relatively shallow thinking….’
“So by ignoring attributes that they can’t properly assess, standardized tests inadvertently create incentives for students to become superficial thinkers–to seek the quick, easy and obvious answer….”
—
“Tests drive instruction. They will continue to do so as long as anyone cares about the scores, and merely publishing the results for each community school in the local newspaper is enough to give the scores weight and cause people to worry about them. So we need to stay alert to the direction in which the tests are driving instruction. We think it is clear that the current frenzy of accountability testing is driving instruction away from long-term projects and investigations whose outcomes aren’t known and whose evaluation depends to some extent on direct human judgment. The outsized emphasis on test scores has driven instruction toward items with one clear, right answer, in an attempt to prepare students for what really counts–the standardized test.
“You’ll often hear someone say that a good test is one that teachers should be pleased to teach to. But this proposition concerns us. When it comes to whether teaching to the test is a worthy goal, we don’t worry so much about the items on the test…. We think that a far more important issue is almost always overlooked in policy discussions: what’s not on the test.”
—
[This passage refers to the deadline written in No Child Left Behind that calls for most students in U.S. public schools to be proficient in reading and math by 2014, a goal that is expected to lead to virtually all schools being labeled failures because of the complex rules associated with meeting it.]
“Now we have a new federal administration, and it has proposed doing away with the 2014 deadline for proficiency. Surely, that’s a good thing, no? To which we reply, “Yes, but….” The big ‘but’ is that the ‘blueprint’ set out by President Obama and [Education] Secretary [Arne] Duncan adopts the same approach to accountability as its predecessors did. The 2014 deadline has been replaced with a ‘target’ (they say it’s not an absolute deadline) that by 2020 all students (here we go again with ‘all students’) will be ‘college and career ready.’ But the same misunderstanding of accountability plagues the new proposal. That is, ‘college and career ready’ still relies on annual testing in grades three through eight and once during high school; still relies on rewards for success (i.e., high test scores) and ‘interventions’ for persistent failure (i.e., low test scores), and still fails to address the fundamental social, cultural and familial issues that strongly influence students’ performance. But ‘interventions’ are so much nicer than ‘sanctions,’ don’t you think?”
-0-
Elaine M:
Actually, we have two silver medal high schools (out of 8 in the state) in our county. Not so surprisingly they are in the most affluent areas If the county and the best teachers want the best facilities.
Students succeed when they know success is expected…from the parents, from the teacher, from society. Education in the US is broken and money cannot fix what apathy can destroy.
We do not revere intellect. We applaud reality mentality.
nick,
Teachers need unions because they are underappreciated.
Rockola,
This one’s for you:
The Big Tests: What Ends Do They Serve?
by Gerald Bracey
November 2009
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/nov09/vol67/num03/The-Big-Tests@-What-Ends-Do-They-Serve%C2%A2.aspx
Excerpt:
To measure the quality of our schools, we need more instruction-sensitive measures than NAEP, PISA, or TIMSS.
I was recently interviewed by the editor of my local paper, the Port Townsend Leader, who expressed a pretty low opinion of tests. His wife teaches 3rd grade in a public school, and he can’t imagine how anyone would think that a test could reveal more information about a child than a teacher collects as a matter of course. I agree.
In the last 50 years, the United States has descended from viewing tests first as a useful tool, then as a necessity, and finally as the sole instrument needed to evaluate teachers, schools, districts, states, and nations (Bracey, 2009). In a nation where test mania prevails, tests will occupy part of the education landscape until we can dig ourselves out of that 50-year hole. In the meantime, it’s interesting to consider what some of the well-known testing programs measure and what their appropriate (and inappropriate) uses might be. Here I look at three testing programs—one domestic and two international…
Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS)
TIMSS comes to us from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement in The Netherlands, but most of the technical work is conducted at Boston College. It measures selected math and science skills in grades 4 and 8 using short, fact-oriented stems and mostly multiple-choice questions.
We have been through four rounds of TIMSS: 1995, 1999, 2003, and 2007. As with PISA, politicians and the public are quick to use TIMSS results to criticize the quality of U.S. schools. In his March 2009 speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, President Obama observed, “In 8th grade math, we’ve fallen to 9th place.” Ninth place was indeed the U.S. rank (among 46 nations) for the 2007 TIMSS administration, but in 1995, the United States ranked 28th out of 41 countries. U.S. scores as well as ranks have actually risen for 8th graders, and they have been stable for 4th graders.
The TIMSS developers explicitly make a causal connection between high scores and a country’s economic health and claim that “there is almost universal recognition that the effectiveness of a country’s educational system is a key element in establishing competitive advantage in what is an increasingly global economy” (Mullis, Martin, & Foy, 2008). Even if this were true, the question would be, Does TIMSS measure that effectiveness? The answer is no. No test can do that, because no test can measure the many complexities of an “educational system,” much less a test that measures only two subjects. To get some idea of the complexity of an “educational system,” I suggest that readers glance through the 100-plus goals of public education in John Goodlad’s 1979 classic, What Schools Are For.
mespo,
Are you sure the superintendent didn’t think it was a bad idea?
You have a silver medal high school with competent teachers? I got the impression from you that teachers were lazy and only in education to get a paycheck.
Elaine M:
Actually I have proposed it to our local school superintendent. I suggested we take 6 math teachers from our math specialty center at our silver medal high school and send them to one of our under-performing high schools. The six teachers at the under-performing high school would come to the specialty center. The superintendent told me the teachers wouldn’t stand for it.
mespo,
I taught for more than three decades–had many different classes. Some classes tested better than others depending upon the make-up of the group. We put too much reliance on tests these days to determine the academic development of students. I am not anti-testing. I think tests can be valuable tools when they are valid and used in the right way. There are also other ways to assess the educational progress of children. Yet, we put all our educational eggs in the testing basket. I think it is very short-sighted. Instead of spending valuable classroom time prepping students to take high stakes tests, we should be trying to meet their educational needs, to help them develop their individual talents, to give them basic skills and knowledge, and to inspire them to become lifelong learners.
BTW, do you really think that your idea would be an easy one to implement? Go for It! Maybe Bill and Melinda Gates would be interested in funding your project.
How about every school gets the same amount of money? This notion that property taxes should determine school funding is nutty. It entrenches poverty in poor sections of town and entrenches the inequality these students feel every time they go to a well funded school for any event. The rich districts get most of the good teachers eventually because they have the best facilities.
Elaine M.nick:
There’s an easy way to prove the case for or against teachers. Let’s take teachers whose students pass the standardized tests with flying colors and give them to the students who fail. Then we’d take the students who fail and let them be taught by the teachers from the class that passes. If the teachers are not the problem, the failing kids will fail again and the successful kids will stay successful.
Any takers?
What Rafflaw and Elaine said. In addition, Prof. Turley and anyone else who believes these international studies’ purported comparisons between the cited countries, as well as Finland and Russia, with the U.S. needs to read the writings of the late, great Gerald Bracey on this topic.