Apparently, that hasn't happened here, huh? What is wrong with "teaching to the test" if the test embodies the information the teacher is supposed to be conveying in class? I realize that this might interfere with self-esteem sessions, lessons on life skills like applying a condom to a banana, exploring alternative lifestyles in a value-neutral way, and other such liberal blather, so here's a novel idea
Maybe the damned teachers should just stick to the damned curriculum that they are supposed to be teaching, and the damned parents could shut off the damned TV long enough to ensure that their dumb-assed, five-time-failure-of-a-moron-level-test kids did their homework.
If those two things happened, then I'm guessing almost everyone would pass on the first test.
If those two things happened, then I'm guessing almost everyone would pass on the first test<<
Well, that's the question, all right.
It is an hypothesis-and an hypothesis only-that correct process, in this case a certain type of education, delivered in a certain way, will result in all or nearly all American eighteen-year olds being able to pass an exam showing basic competency in english grammar and composition, algebra and geometry, basic natural sciences, and history.
This hypothesis further requires that all identifiable racial or ethnic groups of students have similar (high) pass rates.
Now, if you are correct, and what is missing is the delivery of certain content in the pedagogically correct way, then this is no problem.
What if you're wrong? At no time in the educational history of this country prior to, say, 1960, did we have universal high school. When my Dad was in high school, many students left after eighth grade, to work for sure, but also because they did not have the interest or the aptitude to succeed at the high school level. These interests and aptitudes may not be evenly distributed among our diverse population, even today.
So where do you think all this twelfth grade aptitude has come from, to allow all or nearly all students to succeed at that level? I don't think it's there-I don't think it ever has been, or ever will be, there-and the teachers have for the last forty years run an adaptive con by passing and promoting those without these aptitudes to be successful.
That's how we got MCAS. The public began to suspect-and then more than suspect-that the HS diplomas did not reflect what they did in 1960. MCAS and similar "high stakes" testing has everywhere revealed that this is true-that students who are clueless and unready have been promoted and promoted and graduated without any objective, honest assessment.
So far, so good. But you cannot, as they say, make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. In communities where the average IQ is 85, how is "sticking to the *** curriculum" going to get competency in algebra and geometry done? How?
And whose fault is it? And what is the solution?
This does not even begin to address the harm done to the average student who, if properly stressed could master this stuff, but who under circumstances of grade inflation and incompetent evaluation does not do so.
The problems in the public schools go much, much deeper than condoms on bananas and sticking to the *** curriculum.
The problem is that the promise of universal, quality, "true" twelfth grade level education is a fraud and a scam, and all of the children, capable and not, motivated and not, energetic or not, are paying for the lies and delusions of their elders.