On my way home from work, this evening, I listened to a replay of today's "Talk of the Nation" on NPR, and listened in horror to the third segment about Virginia and Florida public schools lowering the standards for passing specific portions of their standardized tests based on race and disabilities.
That's right - according to the guests and the host, the states of Virginia and Florida have adjusted the percentages required for passing portions of their respective standardized tests based on the students' race.
According to the host and panelists, in order to pass the math portion on Virginia's standardized test, students must achieve the following scores:
Disabled - 33%
Black - 45%
Hispanic - 52%
White - 68%
Asian - 82%
So, just to be clear, in order to qualify for an exemption from the feckless and worthless No Child Left Behind legislation pushed by the Bush Jr. Administration, Virginia implemented an educational plan that revised the standards for kids based on race and background downwards...to boost their "success" rate.
Forgive me for being blunt, but, what the fuck is wrong with these people?
I can hardly be considered a conservative - I basically piss Socialism - but, we really need to go back to the standards we held even thirty years ago; further back would be better.
At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, back when I was going to school, there was a policy of holding kids back when they failed to learn the requisite knowledge needed to move from one grade to the next. Today, kids are basically guaranteed a diploma at the age of 18, regardless of whether or not they have managed to retain even the most basic information about math, science, history, or language arts.
I understand that holding kids back almost always results in students getting frustrated with their educational experience and increases their risk of dropping out, but let's be honest - why cut them slack at the front end? As soon as they enter the world outside the hallowed halls of education, they enter onto a level playing field, and simply passing them along without ensuring they know at least the cursory bits of knowledge they will need to function as a member of adult society does them no favors. Furthermore, the threat of being held back and not graduating with one's peers and friends seemed to serve as a strong deterrent and at least some incentive to get their shit together, and work a little harder.
I get it - people learn in different ways, at different speeds, and may not retain information as easily as other students; this does not, however, mean that we should be lowering our standards of excellence just so they can feel good about themselves.
Pardon my cynicism, but there is simply too much "positive reinforcement" in the current educational experience. I don't care about their fragile self-images, their bruised egos, or their diminished feelings of self-worth, and frankly, neither will their future employees. In the real world, people don't give you pats of the back every time you put out the minimum amount of effort for mediocre results. If you put out a subpar product, you're likely to get your ass fired, and if you've never experience failure or been taught that mediocrity is not acceptable, you're going to be pretty fucking surprised when your boss hands you a pink slip.
Frequently blamed for our students' failure is that we don't have our educational system set up so that students receive a hands-on, one-to-one learning experience. Well, not for nothin', but shut the fuck up. That's why there are tutors. What is often needed is a good kick in the ass and the will to fail students.
Prior to the disaster that was and always has been Block Scheduling, students in high school took seven to eight courses a year for an entire year in order to give them enough time to learn and retain the information. Colleges and universities complained that incoming students weren't prepared for the longer class periods that higher education present them, and so the concept of Block Scheduling was plunked into the laps of America's public schools, leaving arts programs devastated, and students scrambling to learn the same amount of information in half the time.
Some will argue that the longer class periods gives students more time each day to retain information; in reality, it just means you spend longer period teaching the same skill set that you would in a shorter period, and eventually end up learning only 3/4 of the information once taught in a year-long course. If teachers spent the actual amount of time it took for their students to absorb the information, it naturally requires more time than a single semester provides.
Virginia's race-based test requirements is not a result of Affirmative Action; it's a result of race-based preferential treatment. So, black and Hispanic students are only required to learn half of the math as white and Asian students? White students should expect to learn only 68% of the information taught in a class?
Let's expand that to other aspects of life: if someone is a civil engineer, and they've only been required to score an 82% on their math exams in order to get their degree, would you trust them to design and build bridges? If a bridge was only 82% successful at getting travelers across, would you drive on it?
If we want to adequately address our educational shortcomings, we need to stop applauding mediocrity, rewarding tepid learning outcomes, and start spending however long it takes in order to make sure every student gets the information, even if that means holding students back until they learn the goddamned information. We need to stop doing our children a disservice by allowing them to progress to the next grade without learning the skills and information they should have acquired during the prior year.
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