The Argus Foundation

Preface: As the moderator of a School Match forum in Orlando, I wanted to share the details espoused by education "experts" on what is taking place in public education in the United States. The two keynote addresses were given by Dr. M. Donald Thomas; former Superintendent of Schools, Salt Lake City, Deputy State Superintendent for Public Accountability for South Carolina, and Advisor to the Governor of Tennessee. Dr. Richard Boyd; Chairman of the National Assessment of Education Progress, and State Superintendent of Education for the State of Mississippi. Dr. M. Donald Thomas: Public education is the "unifying glue" of our society, and is the single most important service provided by tax dollars in support of our democracy. Despite the political belief of some, "poverty is not a self- selected position, that is made by personal choice."
Historically education was the path that led many out of poverty, yet today for many of our poorest, public education does not work. In fact because of pockets of poor education, poverty tends to be reinforced. In order to see improvement we need to recognize the following.

Accountability needs to focus on individual student achievement, not who is the best and and who is worst.

Increase the availability of well planned early childhood education programs. Policy makers need to look at full day kindergarten programs, and school based pre-school opportunities.Assessment and instruction needs to be based upon "mental" age not "chronological" age. We lack the perspective of reality that says in society that 15% of the population will be high achievers, 15% will be low achievers, and the rest of the population will fall somewhere in between. There is no ceiling on any child’s ability to learn. However, we must recognize that there are differences in learning. The greatest variable to learning is the quality of the teacher. The next are diet and intellectual stimulation of children prior to entering school. Dr. Thomas feels that state criteria reference testing is based upon what he refers to as "beat-up on the victim syndrome." You cannot set standards that are absolute for all demographic groups. "High stakes" testing results in “teaching to the test” which narrows educational opportunity and exposure. In measuring educational success it gives too much weight to a test score that does not recognize differences in “mental age.” In order to better establish accountability, benchmarking of students annually would lead to a “value added” approach, i.e., the measurement that each student is increasing their knowledge at a predictable pace, year to year. Achievement is related to access to knowledge and teaching on a "value added" basis supports individual improvement in cognitive ability. Other suggested areas for improvement were the following:

Dr. Richard A. Boyd:

Until the mid 80’s schools had no “bottom lines” as a measurement to tell how school’s were performing. In the 1980’s taxes were going up, and student test scores were going down. Japan and Germany were knocking our socks off economically, and conventional wisdom was that the contributing factor to Japan and Germany’s success was a better educational system. Though there was no clamor at the time to spend more money on education, it was felt that the problem in the U.S. was centered on schools needing better management. Evaluation of schools prior to the 1980’s was to look at “input” into schools, i.e., facilities, equipment, teacher qualifications, without ever looking at the “output” of the schools. No one had ever focused on the question “is anybody learning anything?” We operated on the assumption that if the “input” was there, the “output would naturally follow. No one ever
thought that if a library had 75,000 books, that no one might not read them. At last educators woke up to the fact that legislators and a large segment of the public did not want to give more money to education without a means to evaluate what students learn. This has led to the holy trinity in education-STANDARDS, ASSESSMENTS, and ACCOUNTABILITY. Though we need to support outcome accountability we need to call for revisions. The current approach is not leading to improvement in education.

Standards:

“High stakes” testing only benchmarks the best against the worst. Standards of competency are the subjective opinions of those who are setting the standards as to what is competent. In Texas 86% of the students passed the competency math test. In Massachusetts only 55% passed the math test. Yet on national math tests students from Massachusetts out-scored students from Texas.

Assessments:

There is no correlation between the standards and what is being asked on the tests, and the “mental” age of progress of the students. Teachers are teaching to the test.

Accountability:

In every state when test results are tabulated the best tests come from “high income/advantaged” students, and the poor scores come from “low income/disadvantaged” students. Accountability needs to focus on individual student achievement, not who is best and who is worst. Educational effectiveness needs to measure like groups of students with like groups of students measuring their progress.

Summary:

Henry Ford II said, “we can’t take a slipshod and easy-going attitude towards education in this country. And by “we” I don’t mean “somebody else,” but I mean me and I mean you. It is the future of our country - yours and mine - which is at stake.” Political posturing about education reform has been easy. Unfortunately those firm convictions have been supported by very little proof that those convictions actually improve education. In recognizing our diversity in this country as a strength, we must also recognize achievement as a singuler attainment. The School Match seminar focused on fostering educational attainment as an unlimited goal for all students, while recognizing that levels of academic success are determined by much more than the score on a single test. What we need to strive for is not universal perfection, but rather universal improvement that allows each student the opportunity to “be all that they can be.” Only then well we have accountability in education.

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