There was an article in the recent issue of Education Week entitled Experts to Weigh in on Common Tests. They will have their chance to speak to U.S. Department of Education in Atlanta, Boston and Denver.
A bit of background. Forty-eight of the 50 states have agreed to work together to develop “common academic standards” in math and language arts. In order to measure these standards, the Department of Education wants to develop a set of “common tests.”
The common academic standards will define what students should be able to master by the end of high school. According to the Education Week article, grade-by-grade common standards will follow. So the Department of Education wants to invest $350 million to solicit proposals to work out the details of “common tests.”
A little more background. Last year the Department of Education received nearly $5 billion dollars from the economic-stimulus package passed by Congress. Two programs have emerged that will be funded by this money. The first is Race to the Top Fund, (Appropriation: $4,350,000,000) and the second is money to be used for Investing in Innovation grants (Appropriation: $650,000,000).
Both of these funding programs are designed to lead to “education innovation and reform” in four core areas (follow this link for more information):
- Adopting internationally-benchmarked standards and assessments
- Recruiting, developing, retaining, and rewarding effective teachers and principals
- Building data systems that measure student success and inform teachers and principals how they can improve their practice; and
- Turning around our lowest-performing schools
Funding in these two areas (Race to Top; and Innovation) will be aimed at these goals:
- achieving significant improvement in student outcomes, including making substantial gains in student achievement, closing achievement gaps, improving high school graduation rates, and
- ensuring that students are prepared for success in college and careers.
The article, and the links to the U.S. Department of Education website where The Race to the Top and Innovation Grants are described raise the question of “What knowledge of most worth.” As soon as the Race to the Top was announced by Secretary Duncan, I was disappointed by the use of such a phrase, but even more so by the details of the goals of these two hugely appropriated programs. It seems to me that the article that was in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that I referred to in my last post about mathematics education is right on target here as a criticism of the underlying goals of the Race to the Top, but also the effort underway to establish a set of “common standards.” Given that we are starting in mathematics and language arts, it might be that Ken Sprague’s suggestion that we are simply developing math curriculum for math’s sake, and not taking into account how mathematics knowledge might be presented in a practical way.
For as long as I can remember as an educator, we have been engaged in developing state and national standards that try to answer the question: What knowledge is of most worth?
In an article by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, he points out that our schools are in need of improvement, but he moves us in a different direction when thinking about improving schooling. He said this:
So our schools have a doubly hard task now — not just improving reading, writing and arithmetic but entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity. Bottom line: We’re not going back to the good old days without fixing our schools as well as our banks.
Are these new efforts by the 48 states to develop a common set of standards, and the U.S. Department of Education to fund the development of “common tests” leading us in the right direction? What role will entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity play in the new common standards? Or will they? What do you think?
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I think it is great that the government wants to improve education and create national based standards to make the students are being treated equally. However, there are two main flaws I believe in programs such as these. The first it completely neglects schools who receive little funding to begin with. The students do not have the resources to be able to equally acquire knowledge and then be tested on it. In order for a plan like this to work, social and cultural backgrounds of students also need to be taken into account where students of low income families typically score lower on the standardized tests. Nothing seems to be addressing this know fact.
Secondly, this plan in my opinion seems to completely disregard the other aspects of education such as the creativity that you spoke about. This will then cause schools and teachers to emphasize mathematics and language arts and neglect the other subjects. For some students, their strong points might not fall into these two specific subjects. Therefore, these standardized test scores will never address their true potential.
Essentially, I feel like these programs will not lead us in the right direction mainly because I feel that innovation and creativity will be neglected.
I believe that these programs will narrow the work of teachers. Innovation will not be able to thrive. It wil create an atmosphere of test prep. Already, I am under scrutiny to use 21st century learning and inquiry but need to make sure that the kids do well on the test. That pressure is enormous. The big question is: What is the purpose of education? I am sorry, but a college degree is not needed for everything and expecting kids to have a college prep education when they are not cognitively at the same level as others is a disservice. I am sure that is an unpopular viewpoint. The really troublesome reality is that education cannot cure all ills. Focusing on social equity can change more. Will we end up losing good teachers decades from now and still realize the gap that exists?
From the National Research Council to the Department of Ed.
“Improvements on the necessarily limited content of a high stakes test may be offset by losses on other, equally valuable content that happens to be left
untested.”
So who gets to decide? Any way you cut it there are consequences.
The Letter is here.
[...] children to be proficient at all state measures.” Faced with urgent need for change the question of what a school (and therefore community) should value often becomes framed within a predefined context of [...]