Texas Is Not Helping

Every so often I write about a story that I come across showing how today's youth are the dumbest, laziest, most disreputable generation ever to blight this earth. You'd be surprised how often it comes up.

Readers of amNew York yesterday were treated to a story about a science poll among children that found that many named Buzz Lightyear as the first man to walk on the moon and who thought Isaac Newton invented fire. Incredible. This truly is the dumbest, laziest, most disreputable generation to ever blight the earth. (Click here for Socrates' thoughts on the matter.)

Before we transfer all this wailing and teeth gnashing into a desire to pick up torches and pitchforks and march against the teachers unions, I should point out that this study was conducted in Britain. Maybe this will be a good opening for us to finally reclaim some of that glory our education system has been lacking lately.

In an effort to ensure that we don't run up the educational score on our peers across the pond, the Texas school board has finally approved their standards and in a perverse way, it's kind of a thing of beauty. Ronald Reagan? He's in. Need to emphasize him in the history curriculum. Thomas Jefferson? Nah. I mean, what's he done for us lately? Did he singlehandedly defeat communism?

Oh yeah. And Joseph McCarthy was right all along.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Unfortunately, in this case what happens in Texas doesn't stay there. Because it represents such a large textbook market, we'll be seeing snippets of Texas standards in textbooks all over the country.

Somehow, I doubt that's going to help us when those dumbest generation researchers comes to this side of the Atlantic.

Oh, Texas

Thank god for the Texas school board. Here in New York we've all been up in arms about the fact that the state legislature didn't lift the charter cap and what's going to happen to our Race to the Top application. Out in Texas, they opted out of that whole Race to the Top thing a long time ago. Clearly. Instead, they're focusing on the important issues, like making sure that Commies don't appear in the classrooms - not even in book form. And even when they aren't actually pinkos.

In one of those too strange to be believed moments of educational reform greatness, the Texas school board removed Bill Martin Jr. (author of the Brown Bear, Brown Bear books) from the social studies curriculum list of individuals to be studied for their cultural contributions. The reason? He'd apparently written another work called Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation. Somehow I missed that one in the school library.

Turns out that not only was this a rather sharp turn in Mr. Martin's writerly MO, but he was also dead when he did it. Oops. Turns out Bill Martin isn't such a unique name after all.

And that's who's making educational policy in Texas these days.

I wrote a while back (and again here) about how things like this have to make you wonder about the efforts to install national standards. But I'm actually starting to re-think that position now. Remember, Texas with its huge textbook market in many ways sets the standards that are going to be reflected in textbooks used across the country. And you can see how they're using that clout. At this point, anything to take power away from Texas almost has to be seen as a good thing.

Also, so there's no doubt, I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the Communist Party.

What's the Value?

A quick lesson in economics:

Marx said that the value of something was equal to the labor put into making it. That's why profit should belong to the workers - they were the ones who instilled it with value. My grandfather always used to say that something is only worth what you can get for it. He wasn't a great economist, but as a banker he did have a certain level of valuable insight. By either measure, the value of a high school diploma is in real trouble if this story from the New York Times is accurate.

For those of you who are linkophobic, the story says that states tend to lower their standards when it becomes apparent that many students aren't going to pass state exit exams. I think I've mentioned before that the Times is sometimes a little slow in getting to these education stories, so you probably aren't shocked to be hearing this. But once it's in the paper of record, it's worth noting.

Let's assume the best case here and ignore the fact that the reason standards are being lowered is that no one wants to be in charge when a bunch of kids are denied diplomas who thought they would be getting them. Let's assume that the standards game is a way to ensure that more kids get diplomas because we know that those are valuable for job seeking and other endeavors.

There's that v-word again. What is the value of a diploma? If standards are being lowered and kids don't need to work as hard for it, then Marx would say that it wasn't as valuable. If employers know that kids with diplomas aren't necessarily ready for meaningful work, then diploma holders aren't going to get as much for having one. Whether you listen to Marx or my grandfather, the value of a diploma is goes down when standards go down.

The bottom line - and I don't think this is controversial - is that we need to make sure more kids are getting diplomas, but we need to do it by raising the kids to the level of the diplomas, not by lowering the diplomas to the level of the kids. In the end, we aren't really helping anyone by doing that.

A Different Track

Louisiana schools have been garnering some controversy for their plan to introduce a "career diploma" for students who aren't likely to be attending college after high school. As I understand it, the first two years of high school would be pretty much the same for everyone. After that, there's a split. Those on the college track would be moving through more advanced courses in the basic core subjects. Those on the career track would be taking more electives that would prepare them for future careers, presumably in manual trades.

I think the controversy is pretty well summed up in these two quotes. An opponent says:

“This policy creates a path to lowered expectations and diminished opportunities for some students, and we know from experience in other states that ‘some’ often means low-income students, and students of color.”

In contrast, a supporter of the new track says:

“How much lower is your standard for that student that you push out and put on the street? You tell me how we’re lowering it any lower than that.”

And that's pretty much the crux of the argument. Are the standards being lowered for kids who could succeed if they were just pushed a supported a little more or is this providing a meaningful alternative for kids who will otherwise get little meaning out of their "education"?

Of course, this all comes down to how well it's executed. That's always the case. Provided that it is done well and used appropriately, I don't see anything wrong with letting kids who want to be electricians or auto mechanics or any of those trades start preparing for their careers rather than force them into classes that don't mean anything to them. This plan is absolutely compatible with a viewe of education that is about preparing kids to succeed in the world. However, if this career track is a mere dumping ground, then it's a big problem.

So much depends on execution.

A Surprising Surprise

I often find myself surprised by the things that education researchers seem to find surprising. Take a recent analysis by the Brookings Institute on education standards. As the researchers write, "Our analyses suggest that the creation of common standards will have little impact on our future in and of itself." Rather, the researchers conclude, it's measures like "aligned assessments, and aligned curriculum, and accountability for educators, and accountability for students, and aligned professional development, and managerial autonomy for school leaders, and teachers who drawn from the best and brightest, and so on" that actually have a real benefit on student learning.

In other words, just setting standards doesn't cause kids to meet them. You also need to ensure that teaching and all the other aspects of what actually goes on in the classroom are high quality if you want to get great results. The researchers write that these findings "surprised many readers." Really? It's surprising to people that setting a goal isn't enough and that you need to make sure you're actually working toward achieving that goal?

The Brookings people are careful to point out that standards are not useless and I agree with them. It makes sense to have clear benchmarks for what students should be able to do. However, we can't confuse the setting of those benchmarks with steps that will actually help students meet them. Surprisingly, that's surprising to some people.

Unspeak Bonanza

Well, it's Friday and the Daily News has come through with an educational unspeak bonanza. Unspeak, you may recall, is the art of making an argument without actually making an argument. It's about picking language that seeks to preclude any disagreement (think "support the middle class," whatever that means). Education is chock full of unspeak and the Daily News tapped into the motherlode this week.

In the article, "test experts" say that the tests being given to city kids are getting easier, which means more kids are passing and moving on to the next grade. In other words, standards are being dumbed down to undermine accountability and that's leading to social promotion. Holy unspeak!

Frankly, I don't habe the background or the data in front of me to agree or disagree with the claims. DOE says that the tests have gotten harder so they're requiring fewer correct answers to show proficiency. Critics say that it's a game to make the schools look better and reflect more favorably on the Mayor (juking the stats, as they'd say in The Wire).

That said, it sure does look bad. According to the story, on this year's test kids needed to answer 28% of questions correctly to be judged proficient. When you remember that these are multiple choice tests with four possible answers (and thus someone who guesses randomly on every question should figure on answering 25% of the questions correctly) that seems pretty low. A slilghtly lucky kid could simply guess his way to proficiency.

I guess the real question here is whether standardized testing is really the best way to assess standards. Unspeak though they may be, I agree that there needs to be some baseline of what kids should learn in school. I just doubt the bubble filling and all the drama and juking that comes with it is really the best way.

Some Big Ifs

Teachers union president Randi Weingarten had an op-ed in Monday's Washington Post making the case for national standards for learning. On the one hand, it was nice to see the union head making a stand for what is unquestionably a major education reform. Hopefully that at least sets back some of the union-as-obstructionist charges that we hear. However, the whole idea of national standards rests on a few very big ifs.

National standards do make a certain amount of sense if we're committed to a national program of testing and accountability. For better or worse, this does seem to be the road we're on in the NCLB era. We've seen what happens when the federal government says to meet standards, but then doesn't define what those standards are - it's the oft-cited race to the bottom. So if we're dedicated to this course, then national standards do make sense.

However, if we're going to set up national standards, we'll probably also have to set up a national standardized test. Weingarten makes the point that it would be unfair in football if teams had to move the ball differing yardage to gain a first down. True. She says that when states have different promotional standards you're getting the same effect. True. But unless we have a national test to measure these standards, then it will be like saying that every team has to go 10 yards but then letting each team measure 10 yards as they see fit. We'd end up with the same race to the bottom that we have now. This time it would be in testing instruments rather than the standards themselves. So if we want meaningful national standards, we'll also need a standardized national test.

And, of course, all of this only makes sense if we can set a good set of standards in the first place, which I'm not 100% convinced of. As we saw in Texas, there's a lot of potential for mischief in the process. Even if we brought in a broad-based group of "educators, elected officials, community leaders, and experts in pedagogy and particular content" I am not convinced that we would be able to arrive at a single set of clear, measurable standards that would (and should) apply equally to every single student in the 50 states.

I should say here that I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea of national standards. In many ways I think they could be an improvement over our current system of testing regime. However, there are some major ifs associated with pursuing this course. Until they are addressed I will continue to have my doubts.

The Trouble With Standards

I've written before about the advantages of national standards as a way to limit the race to the bottom effect that's become apparent through the No Child Left Behind Act. The idea is that if we're going to say that all states are responsible for meeting certain criteria, we should say what criteria those states are required to meet. If we're going to insist on high stakes standardized testing then I still think this makes a certain amount of sense. However, lately I've been thinking about some of the problems associated with that approach.

First of all, we've all heard talk about how standards limit the curriculum; especially when they're tied to high stakes tests. When we set standards for what must be taught we are excluding other topics that now won't be taught. This limiting effect is grounds for major pause as we consider the prospect of national standards. What's often not considered is that the curriculum could also be expanded, but in negative ways.

Let's look at Texas for a moment. Over the last week, the state board of education there was considering whether or not to include in their state science standards the "weaknesses of evolution." This pretty much translates into wanting to require that the state teach creationism as a valid (it's not) alternative to evolution. On the surface, this doesn't seem to have much national significance. If the folks in Texas want to do it, let 'em. However, Texas is one of the country's largest markets for textbooks (along with California and New York). Thus, textbook authors try to write their books to meet those standards. Since they tend to write only one version of the books that are then distributed nationwide, the Texas standards often act as a kind of de facto set of national standards. And look at where that almost got us.

It turns out that the Texas board backed down, but this has to reason for pause. We often talk about national standards as some sort of platonic form that is the perfect model for what learning should be across the country. But there is no guarantee that this would be the case. Any set of standards would be created by us mere mortals and would reflect the pedagogical (phonics vs. whole language), social (evolution vs. creationism), and political battles of our time. And the stakes would be really high. I don't know that I'm totally dead set against national standards now. But I'm certainly not as for them as I was a few weeks ago.