Mercedes Olivera, Dallas Morning News - It’s become almost axiomatic these days to talk about America's educational system as "broken." U.S. students do poorly on tests when compared with those in other countries, especially in math and science.
But recent studies also reveal that U.S. students from middle-class families and well-funded schools outscore students in nearly all other countries.
"Our average scores are less than spectacular because the U.S. has the highest percentage of children in poverty of all industrialized countries," said [Stephen] Krashen, professor emeritus at the University of Southern California
"People think that our schools were once very good and that they have declined, and the best way to make them better, as good as they were in the good old days, is 'rigorous' standards and tests to enforce the standards. But the assumptions aren’t true."
Poverty means inadequate nutrition, inadequate health care, exposure to toxic chemicals in the environment and little access to books. All those factors are strongly associated with lower school performance, he said.
"If all of our children had the same advantages middle-class children have, our test scores would be at the top of the world," Krashen said. He criticized the Obama administration’s move to spend billions on new standards and tests, which he said will do little to improve a child's ability to learn.
9 comments:
Poverty is not the problem. The problem is everyone blaming everything but themselves.
It has been demonstrated that the failures of institutions are very seldom the failures of their people. Teachers are excellent. It's the system that's no good.
Teaching and testing for record must be separated completely. It is immoral to do otherwise, and it always has been. The schools were designed for indoctrination, not education, and they've been that way for a thousand years at least. Past time for a change.
I disagree with Anonymous @ 8:03 PM; America is two countries, a small wealthly one and a large impoverished one. The poverty will always drag down the scores, no matter if everybody took responsibility as Anon thinks we should.
@Strelnikov It's really hard to give up that excuse, isn't it? But the truth is, you are as smart and capable as your innate ability and your willingness to work hard make you, whatever your income. Blaming someone else for your failure just delays the day when you learn to apply yourself.
Capt. America,
Your emphasis on testing makes no sense. Testing only shows which children test well, and many children don't test well, no matter how many testing drills or how much test prep they do.
You are spot on about schools being for indoctrination. Until independent study becomes the educational norm, public school will never be more than obedience training schools.
12:45:
You are not going to get decent education without grades and certifications. Open relational databases of millions of tested questions and answers is the key to realizing large scale good quality independent study. I emphasize testing because the wrong people are doing it, which is why it is done so badly. It seems to me that for someone who doesn't test well, taking tests made to order for the testee, as all tests should be, would be the best form of instruction.
Capt America
Finland has the most successful public education system in the world, and they don't use testing. The only test Finland uses is one given to graduating students, a test they have had years to prepare for. Finland does so well because of small class size, well trained and committed teachers, and an educational philosophy that uses independent study to teach children how to learn on their own. Self directed learning is something American public schools actively discourage with all the importance placed on testing instead of learning. Testing only tells which students test well, and it punishes students who don't test well.
Your database of questions won't improve a flawed testing based system, but it might obscure the flaws of it for a couple of years during a transition to it. It will never teach children how to be self directed learners, or how to think critically. Testing is a scam to make test publishing corporations rich.
12:47:
An open database cannot make test publishing corporations rich if tests are composed on demand and never published at all as I advocate.
Finland makes an effort to separate the teachers from testing, according to you. So that is good, yes?
You think Finland couldn't do even better? I don't.
Beware of those who claim to teach "how to think". Zero chance those people know how to think.
Capt America,
The database you suggest for testing would be so wide as to be useless as any sort of measure. Your database would be so easy to custom choose the questions, that teachers would cherry pick questions to be sure their students all got As. The grading system is a sham too, but if you are going to use testing, you'll need grades too.
Independent study and self directed learning give students the skills to learn anything they need when ever they need it, which is part of critical thinking. This cannot be achieved with the learned helplessness that public schools and standardized testing require. Focusing on test prep encourages students to only learn for the test and only retain info long enough to get past the test.
Testing does far more harm then good for the most part, and there are better ways to evaluate learning that doesn't penalize students for not being good at taking tests. Testing doesn't really show what the student has learned, it only shows if the student can remember the test prep info and take the test well. Testing expands the learned helplessness of public schooling, where students wait in hope and fear for the gold star or the red ink, so the teacher, like a god, can either praise or punish, and the student is trained to wait for validation from above.
This learned helplessness is exactly what's needed by those wanting mindless worker drones, and a compliant citizenry.
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