conclusion: your system sucks

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/html/Pa599/Pa599index.html

I'm really tired of pointing out the obvious here. Education works much like everything else; it's not one size fits all. The old joke from WW2 goes that everybody is a size 9 shoe because that was the most manufactured boot size, despite the fact that feet vary widely (and uncomfortably) around such an average. It's time we recognize that treating everybody the same is not the same as equality in action.

There's an old Confucian story in which the master teacher is said to have given two different answers to the same question. A third pupil pointed out his apparent contradiction and he was given an explanation (asking a question that points out an apparent flaw in today's educational world is a definitive no-no, teachers are infallible, or is it inflatable). "The same question has different answers for different people. The main importance is attached to their personal experience." His further explanation was that the one he said yes to was a shyer individual and would need encouragement, the other was a more assertive lad and would need reproachment. Human beings are a delicate balance between all forms of our expressions. It would be nice if we could recall being balanced by our teachers rather than measured as if we were a piece of meat for sale.

On to the highlights. "Average achievement remains flat in reading and growth in math is the same as before NCLB passage." I'll grant that Harvard has a bit of anti-conservative tilt, but in this case since the reform being judged has such an emphasis on data, there's mountains of data on which to base such analysis. There has been growth, but it has tended to be minimal, one-year upticks followed by down ticks, not a general trend toward educational nirvana.

"The racial and socioeconomic achievement gap in NAEP reading and math persists". My impression has been that politicians love to flaunt ideas that are 'intended' to close this gap. They usually don't succeed. But they do fail gloriously well and with lots of press coverage bemoaning the failure of a 'well-intended policy'. Perhaps it would help if we actually bothered to understand the educational gap that does exist and what the actual causative factors might be. For example, studies can often show that parents with university degrees tend to have 'smarter' kids, perhaps owing to a greater emphasis on learning and a positive early formative role model in the form of an educated and likely successful professional parent. The socioeconomic gap as it exists today tends along educational lines, as expressed by any high school teacher who posts on the board the median income of high school dropouts vs high school graduates,and if by extension, college graduates as well. The demarcation line extends further still if taking advanced university degrees into effect. Thus it's entirely possible that this trend would continue into the next generation(s) without some external pressures. I can't imagine how measured standardized schools has exerted any external pressure at all.

"Interestingly.... the paper finds that NCLB changes in ethnic and other achievement gaps have been mixed" This is hardly surprising news. That second quote did not also analyze trends going into NCLB times and would probably find that the basic educational trends going forward are virtually the same as what we have now if they bothered to look. Certain ethnic groups are improving, some are floundering, and others are mired in our fubar system.

"What researchers found was that students learned less in year after NCLB's passage than they did before it, a result that held true for every ethnic group analyzed and for both math and reading." Wow, that's ... not shocking at all. They're teaching to a test now, and all good test takers learn that only relevant information that will be on the test is worth looking at, regardless of whether a) such information is actually relevant to them personally or b) such information ignores other potentially more relevant information. Education in its classical sense is about expanding horizons. This appears to be about narrowing them. Typical politicians.

"...most states altering their standards, tests, and definitions of proficiency". I always loved 1984. Words can mean whatever we say they mean, and there's some logic to that. To me proficiency means that someone achieved a level of mastery above basic association with a subject. For example, I am not proficient in other languages (other than a dead one) despite my familiarity with a variety of words and phrases and my mimicking abilities of accents and dialects. I suspect if I was interested in doing so, I could overcome this defect and would then be "proficient" at some linguistic elements. But on a standardized test, it's entirely possible that my broad associations of knowledge might overpower my language failures. Or that my broad associations would be totally ignored as worthless globules of information. How the state defines this situation matters greatly as to how proficient I would be. And that's a bit silly to begin with; I suspect it only matters how practical my information is to me and whether I can actually apply and use what I have learned. Studies were done which point out that right now, most states are using my 'basic' definition as their definition for 'proficient'. Which is fine for wasting federal grant money but not for improving the educational crisis. I for one love the example on the 3rd grade TX reading test changing the test scale for passage. It went from 24/36 (a lowly D average by my reckoning, but at least a passing grade) to a 20/36, which my math is a 55%. I don't know too many occasions where that would be considered a passing grade except by political standards where a 50+1 will do, sometimes less than that. I guess our politicians got confused.

"perhaps the hardest hit subject has been social studies". Why pray tell would politicians not want us, the eventual voting class, to study social studies? What possible use could not learning history, economics (which nobody studies anymore), and civics be? One potential flower of use has been to add these disciplines into the standards mixing bowl, a bowl already fraught with an overly mixed status. Even gym class has its flag bearers for minimum standards, perhaps a useful gesture given our next generations already bulging waist lines.

In testing what we already are doing, we'll probably find that testing on everything all the time, few people will actually learn not much of anything at all. Education is not and should not be defined by tests, most people hate them, some people can't stand them and the amount of pressure applied to pass them generates considerable stress for some. I dare say young Americans are already under a considerable strain from our consistent media fear factory. We don't need them to fear knowledge and education right along with Osama and anyone else with the name Ali/bin/sheik.

Actually when looking this over, taken in coordination with other policies currently under review or in effect, I see one thread: create a standardized system. Systems work pretty well at organizing people from a top-down perspective. It makes them relatively effective at teaching a new person their job for example, or allowing for a small unit (like a sports team or small/franchised business) to operate collectively toward a common goal. What they don't do is allow for personality and freedom, which in a large society makes them often a poor choice to adminstrate from, lest it paralyze itself. Choices are part of what should define a person's existence. How we choose to experience the world around us will directly effect who we become. In our childhoods we are not given a good deal of freedom because we are ignorant of some dangers and risks that as responsible adults we do not indulge ourselves of (supposedly). But to craft a system where none exists, and where none should exist makes no sense. People are definitely different. Some are smart, or book smart, others not. Some are funny, others dull, some have certain skills and others different ones. This is a reflection of our internalized experiences and our genetic lottery winnings. A system essentially provides everyone with the same set of experiences and in turn measures deviation from the norm as a bad subset, regardless of whether such deviation is useful, even necessary for a society to function. We seem to believe politically that we need lots of systems for a country of 300 million people to function, but in fact I believe it is the opposite. Societies will tend to self-actualize and organize without systematic interference through the interaction of aspects like free markets or the application and demand for social and criminal justice. There are reasons to fear such freedom, such as the aggrandizement of power or the predatory behavior of the strong toward the weak, but these fears exist still even within the framework of a system. Ask ourselves, where is the power in our current system, and who has been abusing it? I am confident the answer will be the same for both questions, the only difference between now and a freer society would be the amount of choice we could exercise to avoid our fears and sufferings.