exvigilare

Talking to my wife this morning about schools in England, which - to my mind - have generally been higher quality than the run of the mill public school in the U.S., I learn that English school teachers aren’t correcting spelling. You read that right. The reason? So that they don’t negatively affect the student’s self esteem. WTF? How does a crappy speller with a “high self esteem” outweigh a good student (with what is probably higher self esteem because they can communicate properly in the world)? Ah, the joys of a socialized education system. Don’t even get me started on my mother-in-law’s recent hip replacement in England. 

Add to this the recent Colorado House Education Committee shoot-down of a bill that would require 4 years of mathmatics and 3 years of science as high school graduation requirements. House Bill 1118 would have raised graduation requirements to reflect modern workplace demands. The Senate sponsor, Josh Penry (R-Fruita), even offered to lower the math requirement to 3 years and allow students to test out of required classes but the bill was killed on a party line vote (guess which party has the majority). As Penry says,

Colorado is last in the country for statewide graduation standards, and it’s putting students at a competitive disadvantage.

Denise at Colorado Charter Schools pointed out a while back that the state’s current graduation requirements don’t even meet most college entrance requirements. Hello? No wonder the state legislature is so bad at math.

Also add to this that the legislative majority is trying to kill charter schools altogether (which, cumulatively make up the 3rd largest school district in Colorado). So far, both Republicans and smarter-than-most Democrats banded together against Senate Bill 61 (written by Sue Windels, (D - Arvada)) to keep that from happening.

The there’s the whole standardized tests issue. Meh. I don’t see what the fuss is about. Every spring now in my neighborhood I see signs go up (most notably ads on bus benches across the street from schools) complaining about the horrors of CSAPs. Presumably, these instigators are also against ACTs and SATs, as well. How else do you measure whether or not has achieved its goal of, y’know, teaching something? Like it or not, these students will be measured against their peers in the future. When I hire someone, I look at their resume and interview them. That’s a comparison against their peers. One of them is going to look to me like a better employee.

Les Perelman is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (he’s actually the director of the Writing Across the Curriculum Program at MIT). He says that the new essay portion of the SATs isn’t just a poor measurement of a student’s writing ability, but that it’s actually harmful.

The essay is harming students, Perelman said, because it rewards formulaic writing that views the world as black and white, isn’t based on any facts, and values a few fancy vocabulary words over sincerity. He also said that while most college instructors work to “deprogram” students from the infamous “five paragraph essay” they learned in high school, the SAT test reinforces that approach. Perelman and others noted that the problem isn’t limited to the time students spend actually taking the SAT, but that many students devote months or years of study with coaching services to learning how to write the way the College Board wants — and with students fearful that a poor score will hurt their chances of college admission, they focus on that kind of writing.

Last Friday at the annual meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication Perelman was among several experts who warned that the current push to assess writing skills may be acheiving the opposite effect.

He drew particular attention to the way the College Board has openly stated that students are not penalized for not getting their history correct. “This is a total disregard for the facts,” he said.

The skills students learn to do well on the SAT “obliterate the writing process,” he said. “They encourage false dichotomies. They discourage history. You are punished for taking time to think.”

Perelman also distributed the list he gives students of tips for how to do well on the essay. He advises people to include at least one quote from history, regardless of whether it is relevant or accurate — and he reports that this seems to work. The advice he gives is summed up on his handout: “Basic assumption: The essay is a completely artificial and unnatural piece of writing.”

It appears that the “progressives” out there don’t want students to be able to spell correctly, have competitive math or science skills, or be able to write effectively. Oh sure, that makes perfect sense. At least the students will feel good about themselves. Well, until they realize that they’ve been taught as little as possible and probably won’t ever find a decent paying job to support a family.

Related (kinda): Poor Behavior Is Linked to Time in Day Care

Every year spent in such centers for at least 10 hours per week was associated with a 1 percent higher score on a standardized assessment of problem behaviors completed by teachers…

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