…of the travesty, indeed atrocity that American public education has become:
The reporter, Ginger Thompson, describes how a teacher prepares students for a standardized test. It’s a classic case of “teaching to the test” rather than teaching the subject itself. But that’s only part of the problem:
“If you see a question about Bolsheviks on the test,” Ms. Cain said, “the answer is probably Red Scare.”
So that’s the one thing Virginia high school students are apparently expected to understand about the Bolsheviks: They inspired American paranoia. That’s the Bolshevik legacy, you know.
Sadly, it’s no doubt a tip of the iceberg. And of course the NYT reporter found nothing remarkable about it.
It says a lot about both what is taught and what is tested. Both are deficient.
Educrats write the test, so, yeah.
Still, at least for math, physics and other hard sciences, what’s wrong with teaching the test? If you know how to solve a certain class of questions, then you at least know how to solve that class of questions. I would be very happy if more than 50% of the people I walked up to on the street could find the 1st derivative of a polynomial.
While math skills would be nice, I’d be even happier if 50% of the people I walked up to on the street had a basic understanding of American history. To include comprehension of what the Constitution (and Bill of Rights) actually says.
As Sobran said, the public schools are the liberal’s (statists) reproductive system.
Which is why I support the separation of school and state. By constitutional amendment, if necessary. If there’s another freedom based revolution in this country, that principle would have a prime place in the new declaration of liberty.
When the Framer’s said there would be no religious tests by government they never considered that some people would make the government their religion.
So much for No Child Left Behind
On the “testing to the test” problem, it’s worth asking what were the teachers objectives before standards tests were implemented? Think about it this way, if Congress suddenly passed a mandate that all vehicles launched by NASA were to be painted red, white, and blue, NASA would implement the policy. But they wouldn’t forgo NASA objectives like completing the ISS or cravenly sacrifice safety and reliability just to pass that particular requirement.
My view is that if a bunch of schools are suddenly focused completely on passing these standards tests, then it is very likely that these schools had no other real goal. Perhaps they aren’t accredited and don’t have any state-level mandates to follow? That seems unlikely.
What does seem likely is that schools that are teaching to the test now weren’t doing a good job before the tests and aren’t doing a good job now.
Teaching to the test seems to be the norm in govt. projects. Many of the tests I took in OK as an air traffic control specialist were of that sort. Bluntly. They gave us the question, then gave us the answer… word for word as it would be on the test.
Fortunately for air traffic, those test were peripheral to the actual requirements of the job.
Somewhat the same thing in the Air Force ken. Except the first portion of our school was book learning in a class, they didn’t teach the test, they gave impressions of importance on some paragraphs of the book. We saw those questions. A lot depends on the instructor as well, bot in Air Traffic and public schools.
“What does seem likely is that schools that are teaching to the test now weren’t doing a good job before the tests and aren’t doing a good job now.”
Not sure about else where but here in Dallas the percentages of students passing has been steadily increasing the past few years. So, while they are still teaching to the test, they are at least getting better at it.
I agree that of course there’s no value in teaching to the test when “They gave us the question, then gave us the answer… word for word as it would be on the test.”
But again, for math, physics and other hard sciences, I really can’t see the harm in teaching the process over and over and over until it is absorbed