Posted on 05/10/2006 1:49:51 PM PDT by JSedreporter
“Teaching to the test” is a common complaint of public school teachers whose students have an increasingly difficult time passing such examinations with the passage of every school year.
“Teach to the test, please,” Richard Ferguson of the ACT advises, “because the skills we are measuring are the skills that are needed.” Ferguson spoke at a conference at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel here in which the ACT released its new report, which is entitled “Ready to Succeed: All Students Prepared for College and Work.”
The ACT that Ferguson heads administers one of the two most widely-used college entrance exams in the United States. At least those teachers who dread exams such as the ACT might be consistent. The odds are that they didn’t handle such tests very well as students either. Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, who also spoke at the conference, pointed out that the aggregate number of college graduates who take up teaching represent the bottom third of scores on the ACT and the SAT.
Ferguson has worked with the ACT for more than 30 years. “Where the United States used to be number one, we are now ninth in the world in high school rankings and 10th in college rankings,” he points out.
“NAM [the National Association of Manufacturers] did an important survey in which 90 percent of their members reported a shortage of skilled workers,” Ferguson said. “Specifically, they lack reading, writing and communications skills.”
“Toyota is building a plant in Canada because they can find a higher skill level there,” Ferguson notes. Arthur Rothkopf of the United States Chamber of Commerce agrees. “Businesses spend hundreds of millions of dollars in remediation in workforce training,” Rothkopf told the crowd. The USCOC represents three million businesses nationwide—small, medium and large, according to Rothkopf.
“The K-12 system is not doing what it has to do,” Rothkopf says. “Studies showing that most parents are satisfied with their children’s schools points up part of the problem. The public is unaware of the problem.”
“Out of every ten students who enter ninth grade, seven will graduate high school in four years, four will go on to post-secondary education and two will earn a Bachelor’s or Associate’s degree,” Ferguson reports.
“Far too many students are not being educated for either college or the work force,” Cynthia Schmeiser, also of the ACT, concluded. “Two-thirds of new jobs require post secondary education.”
“They need math and reading skills to enter the work force or to enter college without remediation.” Schmeiser is the senior vice president for research and development.
“Seventy-five percent of our students require remediation in the first year of college,” Keith Bird, chancellor of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System, says, explaining the mushrooming of remedial courses in institutions of higher learning. Bird recommends changing pedagogy and teacher training. “The line between high school and college is becoming blurred,” he observes.
Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.
Ping
What do you call the lawyer who graduated at the bottom of his class and got the lowest score on the Bar Exam? "Your Honor."
Like I said elsewhere here today about the "rememdial education" required prior to Community/College entrance in Portland, OR......PARENTS are NOT getting what they are PAYING FOR!
Clearly, the test discriminates against idiots.
I heard a version of that one from one of my law school professors, who'd been assigned to counsel grade point average underachievers in the first year class. Noting that I had the highest LSAT score in the class, the guy was puzzling out loud about why I'd gotten such unimpressive grades. I explained to him that I was doing enough to pass everything, but that it was all just too boring to spend the huge amounts of time that are invariably required for As. That's when he gave up trying to "motivate" me, and delivered the line about where the C students will end up. The way he told it was the A students will become professors, the B students will become the attorneys, and the C students will become the clients. And he was absolutely right about that. I'm a banker and hand off all my legal grunt work to big-firm attorneys who got Bs at big name law schools. I don't make a whole lot more money than they do, but I also don't slave away 100 hours a week on stultifyingly boring document drafting (and I make plenty more than the professors do).
Trouble is, the parents aren't usually paying, and that's why they're not attentive to what a joke the public schools are. The public schools are paid for primarily by property taxes, the overwhelming majority of which are paid by people whose children go to private schools and/or whose children are past school age.
When all the real costs are figured in (including land purchase, contruction, and maintenance of school buildings, which school districts routinely omit from the per-student spending figures they report), most public schools are spending around $20,000 per year per student. I can assure you that few if any parents who have children in the schools are paying anywhere near that much in property and other taxes that fund the schools.
Do YOU know anybody who has 2 children in public schools, and is paying $40,000 a year in property taxes? Or who has 3 children in public schools and is paying $60,000 a year in property taxes? The fact is, the public school system has become just another socialist wealth redistribution scheme, under which one group of people pays for the program and a different group of people uses it.
I guess you get what you pay for....
This is why we need more illegal immigration.
I thought law professors made $100k + a year, which isn't exactly poverty level or anything.
Of course it's not nearly as much as the richest trial lawyers make, or the richest clients make, but it's nothing to sneeze at, no?
The A students probably have the characteristics of A students - a love of learning and a love of pontificating - and that probably means law professor is their dream job.
D
And the worst thing about it is, that system is customer-responsive to neither those who pay for it, nor those who use it. It's a government semi-monopoly - why do they have to care?
It's nowhere near as much as a first-year associate at a major law firm makes. And keep in mind that if you live in or very near a sizeable city, which is where most law schools are located, and you're making payments on your $100,000+ of accumulated student loans from 4 years of college and 3 years of law school, and that a $100,000/year income disqualifies you from student loan interest deductions on your taxes, that $100,000/year income doesn't go far. After taxes and a modest contribution to a retirement plan (which is financially insane not to do if it includes a matching provision), and $1500-$2000/month student loan payments, you'd be down to about $4000/month. In Manhattan, several major California cities, and a few other places, a very modest one bedroom apartment will run you at least $2000/month, and a very modest 2 bedroom more like $3000/month. In Manhattan, a parking space in a garage will run another $3-400/month, so most people with incomes as low as $100,000 don't have cars. Anybody who got As at a decent law school and becomes a professor soon afterwards, either really really loves teaching/researching law, or is so socially inept that major firms just won't hire him/her. Pretty much the only decent professors in law schools are those that spent a number of years in lucrative big law firm or corporate in-house counsel jobs, and then essentially retired from the high-pressure rat race.
Hooray! Well said. If the tests are drawn up correctly (a big IF, I grant you), then they cover what the students are supposed to know. Teaching what they're supposed to know (aka teaching to the test) will give them the preparation to pass the test.
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