The last day of a four-day weekend. Officially a federal holiday, whose anniversary was celebrated yesterday, except for those communities who held their parades on Saturday. A time of commemoration of history, much of which we ignore and forget. Through it all - as with so many "holidays" - a time for shopping, our true national means of celebration.
For me, these four days are an end and a beginning. In a few hours I will finish the first draft of an 8,000 word piece for a professional educational journal that must be submitted for peer review within one week. The first draft will be the end. Only then does the real work writing - revision - begin.
And today represents the last before tomorrow, when I get students for a special summer school program.
All of these are interconnected. Let me explain why.
I teach in Maryland. Like most states, we have end of course exams passage of which is required for high school graduation. Sort of. Not really. But after all, we believe in accountability.
Let me return to that in a moment. You deserve an explanation.
My 8,000 word piece is an essay review of three books (with reference to several more). All address in some fashion the misguided direction of our national education policy. All three of the authors, who range from William Proefriedt, largely unknown outside education circles, to Gerald Bracey, well-known curmudgeon and critic of sloppiness in writing about educational matters, to Diane Ravitch, whose most recent book has become a phenomenon perhaps not previously seen in books about education, rising to more general non-fiction best-seller lists and contributing to a a strong movement in opposition to much of our educational policy.
The books differ in aspects of their approach. Yet one thing that ties them together is their concern for democratic aspects of education.
If we learn anything else about a liberal democracy (technical term) it is that mandatory uniformity of thought and action is in conflict with its very principles.
In recent years far too much of the thrust of our educational policy has been in the direction of commonality, now apparently culminating in the Common Core Standards which, while not proposed by the Federal Department of Education, have advanced by the more than tacit blessing bestowed as part of the criteria for receipt of Federal education funds.
What if we proclaim loudly and widely our commitment to high standards, at the same time we know our rhetoric can never be fully achieved? Under No Child Left Behind we imposed a requirement for 100% proficiency for all students by 2014 in math and reading. Except no one ever believed that was achievable unless the standards by which proficiency was determined were so ridiculously low as to be essentially meaningless. After all, there are those of limited intellectual capacity, there are always English language learners . . . And yet editorial writers, think tanks and politicians proclaimed the virtues of the imperial dress of high standards and accountability even as they knew the falsity of what they propounded. So let me be the little boy declaring the emperor naked: it was a rhetorical device, because to state otherwise would be to admit that we would by such measures always leave some behind, because it was "politically unacceptable" to say our children would be 85% or 90% or even only 8-% proficient. That is, assuming "proficient" had any real meaning, that our test scores were accurate indicators of real and useful learning beyond the ability to perform well on the tests.
Maryland has four required examinations. For each there is a scaled score: your raw points are converted to points on a scale. Anyone who has taken an SAT or AP exam has been through a process of receiving a scaled score. Consider the SAT: each part has a 600 point range, from 200 to 800. Leave everything blank and you get a 200. Get everything correct you will receive an 800. Thereafter the raw scores you earn are converted to those 600 points by distribution along a normalized curve, with the curve centered around the median of 500, with each 100 points above or below that equaling one standard deviation from that point. That's an overly simplified explanation, but perhaps it will help.
The four tests in Maryland are English (10th grade), Data Analysis (effectively Algebra, and in some cases taken as early as 8th grade), Biology (usually 9th or 10th grade), and Local, State, and National Government (usually taken in 10th grade). For each of these exams one must not only pass the test, but also the accompanying course.
One may substitute passing of an equivalent Advanced Placement or IB course in lieu of the regular course. And in theory, if one has received a passing score on the AP or IB exam, one does not have to pass the High School Assessment (HSA - state exam) for that course, except of course one does not have one's AP scores (exams taken in early May) at the time of the HSAs (late May) so one is still usually required to sit for it.
Even using scaled scores, the passing point for the four exams is not the same, as you can see by this:
English 396
Algebra/data analysis 412
LSN Government 394
Biology 400
"Passing" became mandatory for graduation for the class beginning 9th grade in 2005. Only it was becoming obvious that an unacceptably high percentage of students, primarily minority and/or of lower SocioEconomic Status, would fail.
So the state began tweaking the requirements.
Modified tests were created - for English Language learners, for example. These had only four choices per question instead of the regular 5.
The state dropped any writing requirement, going to all multiple choice.
And you did not have to PASS all four, merely achieve a total of 1602 scaled points (the sum of the four passing scores) provided no single score was below a floor set a number of points below passing, as you can see by these figures (with the "passing" score in parentheses):
English 386 (396)
algebra/data analysis 402 (412)
biology 391 (400)
government 387 (394)
and NOTE: that floor is an inconsistent number of scaled points, either in actual points or in percentage, beneath the passing score.
And still, the failure rate was going to be unacceptably high.
So the state established a Bridge Plan, which allowed students who had (a) passed the underlying course, but (b) failed the exam at least twice to have an alternative method of meeting the requirement for high school graduation.
How, might you ask? By doing supervised "projects" to earn points to bring one's scores up sufficiently to qualify for graduation. The projects require step by step tasks the lead the student through a portion of the content area. In theory completion of a project warrants adding points to the students' scores because it demonstrates some improved level of understanding of the content, what the tests were supposed to have measured.
Tomorrow begins my 2nd summer of teaching in the Bridge plan. Perhaps 1/3 of our students will be those who should have graduated in May (there is a Bridge plan during the school year, not just during summer school). We are trying to get them through the process in time to obtain their diplomas in August.
Most of the others will be rising seniors - remember, they have to have passed the underlying course to qualify for this program - although a few have earned too few credits to yet qualify. For them we not only guide them through the project process, but also prep them to retake (on the computer) the relevant HSAs in the hope that the combination of approaches may be enough to get one through the totality of graduation requirements.
In theory one could graduate having passed NONE of the HSAs, raising scores sufficiently via the Bridge program, and many, many projects. Which should lead one to ask this question - if the completion of projects is such an acceptable alternative to demonstrating sufficient knowledge for the state to authorize a high school diploma, why do we need the tests in the first place?
But we won't answer that question.
During the year, half of my students are taking Advanced Placement - mainly 10th graders undertaking a college level course. None of them ever seems at risk of not passing the HSAs, and they - and I - resent the instructional time we lose for practice tests and benchmarks for the lower level exam required by the state.
And with my students, it is far more likely they will pass the HSA and fail my course (because of not doing the work I require): several years ago I had ten students who failed all four quarters with me yet passed the HSA in May. They had to retake the course (usually in "regular" summer school, sometimes the following year, either during the day or at night school).
I actually enjoy working in this program. It is a very different kind of teaching. It is very much working one on one with kids. I have to help build up their confidence. I have to go step by step. I cannot come close to doing the work for them. I can lead, prod, question.
These are sometimes students who were just lazy. Those are the easiest to deal with. Often they achieve a passing score when they retake the exam after spending time with me.
But some are the students who are being ill-served by our educational policy, which increasingly tends to push all students into a common frame, requiring the same courses and the same assessment even if it is not relevant to the lives they will lead. Along the way we are teaching them a hidden curriculum - that they are somehow less than worthy, that they don't meet some arbitrary standard, that they do not matter as much.
Today is the last day of a four-day break. I did not go shopping. I have been writing and reflecting - and spending time with our five cats, as my wife wife traveled to the Midwest so her baby sister would not be without family during the holiday.
Tomorrow I meet my new group of students. For five weeks, four days a week, i will work closely with them, building up their confidence, helping them reach the goal of being able to meet the state requirements for high school graduation.
Today I will finish my first draft, of an essay on several books critical of our approach to educational policy.
So I ask myself: if our educational approach of raising the bar and demanding "rigor" is such an appropriate path to follow, why have the results been an increasing need for programs like the one in which I will again be teaching? Might it not be that our policy is actually creating more problems than it solves?
And how, on this weekend where we supposedly commemorate our commitment to liberty and freedom and democracy, is our educational policy empowering all to participate in our liberal democracy? Are we not denying some life, liberty and especially the pursuit of happiness?
I cannot answer that question. But tomorrow, and for the next few weeks, I will have students whom I can help with moving towards whatever dream might await them once they can achieve a high school diploma. What I do will on a human level be valuable, for them. That it is necessary tells me there is still something very wrong about our educational policy.
Now let me finish that rough draft.
Peace.