Jim Foster over at the state Dept. of Ed. drew my attention to this recent report on MSNBC that touches upon the great problem that South Carolina has with No Child Left Behind: That the federal law judges states on how well they meet their own standards, and South Carolina has some of the nation’s highest.
Of course, all of us who had been paying attention knew that already. If the feds want to assess the schools, they need to come up with a uniform standard for the assessments to mean anything. But here’s a better idea: Shut down the U.S. Dept. of Ed., and get the federal gummint out of our schools.
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So what good are high standards if you don’t do anything about the kids who don’t meet them? Just passing them along from grade to grade until they drop out is not exactly something to cheer about.
Look at the facts instead of parroting whatever the Department of Ed. tells you.
The pass rate decreases for English and Math for each grade, third through eighth. Students who cannot even meet the Basic standards in the eighth grade are passed along to high school. That’s a complete dereliction of duty for the Department of Ed no matter how they spin it to the public.
PACT was a failure. There is zero evidence to the contrary. It wasted resources that could have been used for educating kids. And now we’ll see more of the same with PASS.
Here’s a novel concept – why not let the teachers (you know, the ones who spend years in training in the profession) determine if a child is not meeting the standards? Then give those kids a test (a standard, national test) to find out where the problems are and then (I know this is a scary concept) DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Hold kids back. Require summer school. Pay teachers extra money to hold tutoring sessions. You know, TEACH instead of TEST?!?
As you ignored the facts on your other recent PACT love letter, you’ll probably do the same here.
Meanwhile, a principal in Charleston apparently doctored the tests of her kids in order to make it look like she was some kind of educational savior. Did it for a couple years. Got all kinds of recognition and pats on the back from the Department of Ed (who obviously knew it was statistically impossible to get the kinds of improvement that occurred).
End result – illiterate kids pushed on to further illiteracy.
I would encourage all parents of students who will be taking the PASS test this year to decide whether they think their kids are doing well enough based on their report cards. If you do, just tell your kids to sit quietly with hands folded and not take the exams. Let’s trust teachers again instead of educrats.
Brad,
How would your approach to work be impacted if you and your publisher were compensated on how well your readers comprehended your editorials?
Would you be creative? would you dumb it down a bit? Would your principal be looking over your shoulder as you type?
That’s what teachers and principals face every day now thanks to PACT.
oops… change it to “Would your PUBLISHER be looking over your shoulder as you type?”
As long as we’re using multiple-guess tests to determine the rankings, SC schools will be fighting it out with Mississippi for last place. NCLB was supported by both Senator Kennedy and President Bush, which should have raised some very big red flags. Speaking as someone who graduated from Irmo at the same time as Andre Bauer, I can speak from experience when I say that the best thing the state and federal governments can do for education is to get out of the way and let parents, teachers and the communities teach our children.
News flash for the Dept of Ed!
Those 50% of blacks who drop out are not included in that “tough PACT test”.
First solve the bastardy and child abuse problem among blacks, then worry about their test scores.
Lee, if you’re from SC, then you must surely know that what you describe cuts across racial lines, and has more to do with poverty than the color of a human being’s skin.
You disgusting version of said creature.
Here’s the evidence of the Department of Ed. using the elementary school in Charleston as public relations fodder.
From November 2007 Charleston Post & Courier:
“Sanders-Clyde Elementary is one of six low-income schools across the state that’s being recognized for superior student achievement.
The school will receive a $25,000 award for receiving an honorable mention as the state’s Distinguished Title I School for Overall Achievement, according to an announcement by the state education department on Monday.
Sanders-Clyde is the only Lowcountry school to receive an award, which was part of the National Title I Distinguished Schools Recognition Program authorized by the federal No Child Left Behind law. Title 1 schools qualify for federal money to provide extra academic help to low-income students.
Schools recognized for overall achievement have greater percentages of students scoring either proficient or advanced in English and math on the state’s standardized test during the past two years. ”
—
So when should we expect the school to refund the $25K so it can be given to a school that actually earned it?
It’s amazing that this story is not on the front page of every paper in the state. Well, actually it’s not. It would kind of shoot holes in the whole PACT accountability case…
LOL, I think Doug has set up a Google alert for when Brad posts anything about PACT. It is pushed to Doug’s Blackberry (thanks to John McCain) and he drops everything to blog.
The point I see in this thread is how the standards vary greatly from state to state. Doug, look up NAEP scores and you’ll see that SC is NOT at the bottom. In fact, we often are in the middle of the pack in many areas. E.g. 2007 8th grade math, SC is at the 40th percentile and higher than the national average.
Hoo Ray to Lee Muller for telling it like it IS!! Nowhaumsainbro!!!
What’s the problem with testing? Having standards, expecting the best?? Oh yea, that is being white.
Liberals sling your slurs, and check the crime statistics, hire a bodyguard, and send your kids to public school, like the
OBAMAOID, jus lik regular folks, those obamas. Maliki and Shemika Marxist, Afro Diaspora Gobbledegookists.
James, could you link me to some statistics that show dropouts or PACT scores or whatever the doodlebug you’re talking about relates more closely to poverty than to skin color?
I’d really like to believe that poverty, not culture clash, is the problem.
Randy,
You never answered my previous question. Are the students you are seeing in high school better prepared for your math classes than they were a decade ago?
Do you see students who are moving on to 9th grade who are not ready to do the work?
If you tell me the kids are smarter, I’ll believe it. If you tell me a test proves it, I won’t.
What do you think should be done to the principal who apparently changed all the tests for her students in Charleston for several years? Who at the Department of Ed should be held ACCOUNTABLE for rewarding the school for “progress” that was obviously suspect?
Yes, I know that poverty and a sorry home life is an impediment to learning that, for many children, cannot be overcome by spending more money on their public education.
The fact remains that black children, by a much larger percentage, live in poverty and have no decent home life. Most of their poverty is the direct result of their being born out of wedlock, to promiscuous mothers who lack the skills to earn a decent living, and to absent fathers who contribute nothing.
Until the so-called “black leaders” and “compassionate white liberals” face that fact, and start to do something to clean up the moral decay in the black community, they have no right to ask for a penny more from the decent taxpayers, black and white, who are supporting these abandonded children.
White liberal policies destroyed the black family, which used to be a very cohesive social force. It is unreasonable to expect white liberals to admit their folly, much less fix it, but they could at least sit down, shut up, and get out of the way of those who do know how to clean up their mess.
Also, Randy, if the NAEP scores show South Carolina is doing fine, what purpose did PACT serve?
I was proven right on the uselessness of PACT by its demise wasn’t I? Unfortunately, with educrats, you can never kill off the bureacracy. They just start it up all over again. I would think you could come up with more productive ways to spend the money that was wasted on PACT that would directly benefit teachers and students.
What!?!
Spend the money on basic skills instruction instead of administrative salaries and consultant fees?
Heresy! No way!
Doug, I agree that the Post and Courier story about the pricipal who apparently rigged the testing should be in every paper in the state.
But, I’m getting something a little different out of the story. From what I’ve read, DOE became suspicious by the number of erasures after the first year of vastly improved scores. They sent monitors in for this year’s testing and took the tests out of the school every night. When the scores came out, the kids were back where they started 2 years ago. The case has been referred to SLED. The prinicpal left at the end of school this year and became an asst. superintendent in NC (is that a warning about nationwide searches for superintendents who come from across the country and about which nothing is really known?)
I graduated from high school in 1969. THE pet peeve of one of my English teachers was that teachers were no longer getting a major in a particular subject area, but in education. She was convinced this would lead to decline in being able to teach a subject well. If you read a little about education, you know that the education establishment seems to have realized the primary focus on the education degree as opposed to a subject has been the wrong approach.
I graduated from college in 1973. I put off taking the requisite math courses until my junior year because I had struggled so unsuccessfully with numbers. Well, much to may amazement and joy, I got a teacher who was able to make math and algebra perfectly clear to me for the first time in my life. It was exhilarating!! I don’t think there can be a more exciting subject (even, as much as I love history) when you finally get it. The next semester, I had another teacher, if you want to call him that. He dropped off mimeographed sheets of problems at the beginning of class to “do at your own pace” and disappeared. I was back to square 1, just when I thought I could take off. Quess what, the second teacher was in the education department teaching prospective teachers how to teach math?
Am I making myself clear? Are you getting that the problems in education are being created, can’t be coming from anywhere else, in the schools of education in our colleges and universities. THEY are teaching the teachers how to teach. And, THEY are being allowed to do it in an atmosphere of no, none, nada accountability for their abject failure. Why are we giving them this free ride?
K-12 is where the problem becomes apparent and we want to ride them to death without making these, mostly state supported, colleges produce a product that can do the necessary work. It ain’t fair.
Martin,
You are correct. There are some bad teachers out there. They are protected by a system that rewards years of experience and degrees held over actual performance in the classrooms. That definitely can have an impact. It’s compounded by the lower salaries that keep certain people (especially males) from entering the profession. Having a larger pool of qualified people in the profession would raise performance, in my opinion. Why should the school superintendents in the Midlands make a salary that is five or six times the pay of a first grade teacher?
As for the Charleston elementary school issue, I believe it took three years before a real effort was made to monitor the tests. In the meantime, the Department of Ed. gave the school a $25K award for performance and mentioned it frequently in it’s public relations efforts. And now let’s watch and see how the Department of Ed. responds to the situation? Will anyone take responsibility? Will they be open about the process and explain how such dramatic gains were not immediately analyzed? And will they be actively involved in prosecuting the offenders? Or will it all just be swept under the rug?