Leaving Children Behind

The "No Child Left Behind" Act is up for revision. If you've been paying attention at all over the last few years, there has been great outcry over "more bricks, no straw" provisions, especially from educators. However, I will say that it's probably good to provide accountability for failing schools and seek improvement so that, well, we don't leave any children behind. A Kingdom value if I ever heard one!

Leaving out comment on the draconian practices of the act, the thing that really gets me is the fact that this is all based on standardized testing. I'm a bright enough fellow, but when I was a kid taking the Iowa Basics, my favorite pastime every fall was seeing if I could get 99th percentile on all categories. I think I may have actually made it as a freshman on the Stanford Achievement Test (or some such device). I scored well enough on my PSAT to make it worth my while to take the SAT. I got a very nice score there. Fine enough. But the ACT kills me. I had a (literally) jaw-dropping score after my first attempt. (A kid forced me to tell him.) However, in Oklahoma, there are score threshholds where if you cross them, you basically get an absolutely full ride at OU. Not knowing where I was going to college, I took the ACT again and got a ridiculously sick score. (Hang with me, this is all leading somewhere.)

So in college, I wanted to take as much Greek as possible, and I found that taking CLEP (credit by examination) tests was pretty convenient. (Let's see, take standardized tests, which I love, pay sixty bucks, get three to six hours of college credit so I can take something I care about . . . I'm in!) I regret not taking it now, but History of Western Civilization 2 seemed pretty dispensible. I signed up for the CLEP test, and didn't really bother studying, because I didn't think it was likely I would be better prepared trying to learn the "second half" of the history of western civ in a couple of weeks. I went into the test knowing that if you have absolutely no idea on a question, leave it blank; if you can narrow it down to three answers, take a stab, because statistically, you will come out ahead despite a one-fifth point deduction for a wrong answer. 120 questions. I left two blank. I was confident on one question. I totally guessed on 117 others. I left the test feeling quite ill. How could I have gotten myself into such a debacle. Sixty bucks down the drain. A few weeks later, I got an envelope from ETS in my mailbox. Filled with disappointment masterfully mixed with dread, I tore open the envelope there in the campus post office. To my utter shock, I got a 550 (or so) out of 800, enough for three hours of credit.

For me, this stellar cheating of the system (no actual cheating involved; just "good test-taking skills"), cast doubt on my previous achievements. I'm good at taking tests, and I probably should have exploited that more. But what about the poor kids who don't know how to take tests? They may be getting along in their education just fine, but they don't get into a competitive college because American College Testing wrote an assessment just for me. And this certainly calls into question how we assess whole schools per the NCLB Act.

I would much prefer a discipleship based model of school assessment. Get great principals who will help form great teachers under them. These great teachers will help the students along in their educations, and will obsoletize any need for silly standardized-test-based assessment programs. Okay, madly idealistic, I know. And I know we have a massive teacher shortage. (I'm thankful my wife is in school right now to be a high school math teacher. She's gonna be great!) Good grief. With all my complaining, I think I'm feeling a tug into public education. I'll have to think about this.