\doc\web\99\11\gbracey.txt Send reply to: wa-ed-deform@egroups.com From: "Gerald W. Bracey" To: , "Cindy K (by way of Fred Battey )" Copies to: , Date sent: Wed, 21 Jul 1999 15:40:31 -0400 Subject: [wa-ed-deform] Re: Right wing OBE vs abandoning "higher standards" Cindy K says "There is a certain body of information kids need to learn at each level." To this I would respond: Oh, really? Says who and why? How do you decide what that body of knowledge is? On the basis of what criteria? Who gets to decide? Why should all kids learn the same stuff? In a diverse, rapidly changing, problem-riddled society shouldn't different people learn different things in the hopes that some of them will find a solution? To me, having everyone learn the same thing is like breeding for a single characteristic: The whole species can get wiped out if a disease comes along that there's no resistance to. What is taught is often justified in terms of a) it'll be needed later and/or b) the knowledge/skill is needed to get a good job. Beyond a grounding in the three R's and some oral communications skills (which, I admit, we don't do well at all), I don't think anything can be justified on these grounds. Life is too uncertain. The half-knowledge in some fields is a few years. Skills needed for most jobs are too specific for schools to deal with. My son majored in English literature and has the soul of a poet, but manipulates data bases for a firm that buys, sells, and evaluates used airplanes. Not much you can do to prepare for that in h.s. or college. Even if the world were stable, life is too uncertain to say that X,Y, and Z will be needed later or to get a good job. Like everyone in my h.s. in the college track, I took French. Never expected to use it. Came in handy when I went to France to live. Came in handy when I lived in Italy and Spain--the structure of those languages are virtually identical to French with only minor variations. It even helped learning Russian as there are some things in that language that don't exist in English but are identical to what appears in French (e.g., past imperfect, reflexive verbs). I'd need algebra, I was told and, indeed, I have needed some, though not the whole field since I work a lot in the realm of statistical analysis. On the other hand, I haven't taken a derivative or found an integral since calculus in 1961. Bob Samuelson at Newsweek estimated that only about 4% of the population needs advanced math skills. Does that mean it doesn't matter what kids learn? No. There is always the valid argument for cultural literacy in order to communicate. More important, the disciplines are not arbitrary concatenations of unrelated facts. Physics, chemstry, math and even the arts have evolved over centuries as means of understanding the universe. To discard that would be silly and foolish. I think the message in the above is that you should learn everything you can about everything you can because you can't KNOW what's going to be important. I don't think kids "need" to learn a certain amount. To say so is to treat children as miniature adults, not children. It is to see them as unformed entities, blank slates on which certain things must be written. To cure this view I would recommend spending a week in a classroom. Or, if that isn't possible, at the very least reading Tracy Kidder's Among School Children and if you can find it, the 1971 book I think is the best ever written about schools, Jim Herndon's How To Survive In Your Native Land. It's out of print, but well worth finding. I said it was the best ever written about schools, but that diminishes it. It is a wonderfully written book, period. ----- Original Message ----- From: arthur hu To: Cindy K (by way of Fred Battey ) Cc: wa-ed-deform@egroups.com ; fredb001@mail.dreamscape.com Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 1999 2:52 PM Subject: [wa-ed-deform] Right wing OBE vs abandoning "higher standards" > Arthur, I think the public school system has been an abysmal failure. > Since you have chosen to put your kids there, I don't know why I am > spending time talking to you. We obviously are diametrically opposed in > ideology. > Our expectations for a class should not be a bell curve. There is a > certain body of information kids need to learn at each level. One This all goes back to norm vs criterion referenced test, and the idea that you can set standards without paying any attention to what average is or where the curve is. Other than who gets to write the standards, you are actually in near complete agreement with Marc Tucker and the whole Standards Based reform movement. You both agree that we should not tolerate or give a diploma to any student who demonsrates anything less than 12 grade math and reading skills when they graduate. I'm trying to beat sense back into people by convincing them that the traditional method - where in fact we've been graduating people with grade 4 and 5 skills is FINE as long as we given them a D average in dummy level classes anyone who cares to look at a transcript can figure out, and their SAT scores will show they didn't learn much either. That's what we've got with the range of ability we've got. Here's the cold hard reality, and what we have to fight for * It is OK to give out diplomas at grade 4 literacy level with a D average, as long as you give out straight As and honor that mean something. Low grades are their own punishment just as achievement is its own reward. * It is OK if not everybody masters everything as long as you teach enough for the best students to reach the highest levels. * Each student and parent is responsible for their own performance. It's not the job of the state to guarantee or require any level of performance beyond mandatory attendence, and even that should go away. If you are Thaddeus Lott and can figure out how to graduate everybody at the 80th percentile, that's great, but for petes' sake don't make that a grade promotion requirement. You raise instruction FIRST, then raise the standards when indeed 90% of kids are performing at what used to be 50th percentile. Anything otherwise is backwards. How can you say if a man or woman is a fast runner? A 5 minute mile? 10 min? 15 min? The only way we can tell is that if you're in the top 1% , that's probably really really fast, and if its in the 50th percentile, it's probably not since "fast" means faster than average. Now how smart is smart, and how smart is smart enough? What commitee can state, like they do in WA, how difficult a problem should have to be to set the "standards" and what % correct should it be when they've deliberately kept the percentage who scored correct from the judges? And how can you possibly set the standardsThe whole basis of SB reform is to set standards as high as people think they can stand and then magically watch performance "rise to the higher bar" without ever demonstrating an actual cross-section of kids than can perform at such levels. When you set a standard where even a 97th percentile school fails, it's like saying 4th place in the Boston Marathon is unacceptable performance. Look man, if the top 3 out of 100 isn't good enough, what is?? Just because you teach addition, subtraction and division doesn't mean you can expect 100% of kids will memorize enough math to get a 650 on the math SAT. In fact, most teachers (who are smarter on average than the average worker) only retain at best grade 5 or 6 math, yet these standards basically expect that ALL students should perform at the level of the top college bound track which is either ready for or already taken calculus and linear algebra by senior year. NAEP results show even the best students miss some problems that look pretty easy. There is a huge disconnect between the expectation of 12 grade skills for all 12th graders when in fact traditionally, only about 5% of students master math at a level that the NAEP thinks is everything a 12th grader should know -- that's a level good enough to get you into all but the top 10 colleges in the nation. Same with their literacy scale - if only the top 5% are completely literate, that's a level that's literally the class of people who write for the New York Times and goes to Ivy League schools. The trick to traditional education vs outcome based education when you teach everybody the same thing is that instead of one standard of performance and vary the time, you keep seat time the same and expect varying levels of performance. Some kids will get 100% some will get 60% some will only get 15-30%. You deliberately teach content that only the top few percent will fully master -- that's what high standards used to mean. If everybody can do it in their sleep, it's not hard. So you teach the content, and you assign grades based on how much the kids retain. The object of education is NOT to expect proficiency from every child, or declare any child who does not master everything they are taught a failure. The alternative is individualized instruction, with absolutely no grade level norms or expectations which is exactly what you can do with homeschooling, but it's certainly not suited to mass public education as we now know it. I might agree that all first graders should be able to read at some level, but does that mean picture books with one line per page like the hungry caterpillar or Green Eggs and Ham, pages with 6 lines per page like advanced Dr Suess, or Treasure Island, or the book of Job? I know of no state standards that give a reasonable definition of grade level reading expectations. At A.G Bell, all kindergarteners are required to read 12 lines with no pictures to fluency and write sentences to respond to comprehension questions AS HOMEWORK, and they claim nearly all students can do this. Should this be required of all kindergarteners? If not, why not? Yes, I have chosen to put my kids in the public schools but complain about the level of expectations they put into class and homework. For all my gripes, my kindergartener is doing math and reading at a first grade level, and my 1st grader is reading at 2nd grade @ 95th percentile with math at 75 even if they didn't teach him squat about fractions or measurement. Even my neice who barely speaks english is doing math and reading at a basic grade 1 level after half day kindergarten. So my kids could survive fine, it's just they could be much better if they weren't doing all this mad scientist raising the bar "challenge the kids" nonsense. I'd be happy if they could master any of my kindergarten or grade 1 workbooks at a 95% rate without any of this over grade level bragging stuf. Date sent: Wed, 21 Jul 1999 08:19:42 -0400 To: 71524.2205@compuserve.com From: Cindy K (by way of Fred Battey ) Subject: Schools need to play straight with us on student performance > They are playing straight with us on student performance, finally. > Arthur, I think the public school system has been an abysmal failure. > Since you have chosen to put your kids there, I don't know why I am > spending time talking to you. We obviously are diametrically opposed > in ideology. Our expectations for a class should not be a bell curve. > There is a certain body of information kids need to learn at each level. > One example is that the goal for reading should be by the end of first > grade. The nefarious president has set the goal at third grade, as has > my county, but unfortunately, only about 40 % of our 4th graders in Fl. > can read at grade level. > > It doesn't matter what you think about Virginia's standards, or what > your standards are. Call the admission department at MIT or Stanford > and ask them some key questions, and you'll find out they lament the > grade inflation happening in high schools. Admissions departments in > all high schools are complaining that they have kids with really high > GPA's who have really mediocre scores on their SATs. They admit them > anyway, and what do you know, they have a high rate dropping out the > first year because they can't hack it. > > I am not sure what you mean about "You pick out the 3rd best high > school in your state and tell me that it's a failure, and on what > grounds.....I don't think you'll find many illiterate students in such a > school, or be surprised if 90% of such kids go to selective colleges > likeMIT or Stanford." The third best (?) high school in my state > probably has dropout rates of at least 25%, and I would consider that > failing. The school has failed the students who drop out. They > probably have a significant percentage of students who have to be > remediated for math and/or English when going to college, even jr. > college, because they have been inadequately educated. I have no idea > where you live or what you do for a living. I live in Florida, where > schools are in abysmal shape. I home school because I would not subject > my kids to public education. They score 4-6 years above grade level on > their testing. > > I think the education system has been an expensive fraud for long enough > now, and the only way to turn that around is to raise the standards. > That will be a painful process for the high school students who have not > even had an adequate elementary education. I can tell you in my county, > with 10 high schools, 2 years ago every high school had math scores at > the critical level. Grade level here is considered at the 40% on a > standardized test. I don't know how you can say people are getting > smarter. Some people are getting smarter, but many people can't do math > without counting on their fingers if you take their calculators away. > > I realize my expectations are high. Before I was 27 I had helped set up > an open heart program and was a head nurse of the unit. I discovered > something significant while I was head nurse. I discovered that people > will frequently live up to your expectations. We aren't expecting > enough of our students, and they are living up to our expectations. > > If you need cardiac surgery Arthur, who do you want taking care of you > after surgery? A pro, or someone who graduated on the bottom half of > the bell curve? you'd better think about it. We are shaping the next > generation of cardiac surgical nurses. ck > Arthur Hu arthurhu@halcyon.com Education Deform Critic Index: http://www.leconsulting.com/arthurhu/index/edreform.htm listserver: http://www.egroups.com/list/wa-ed-deform -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Click Here! eGroups.com home: http://www.egroups.com/group/wa-ed-deform www.egroups.com - Simplifying group communications ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ___________ eGroups.com home: http://www.egroups.com/group/wa-ed-deform http://www.egroups.com - Simplifying group communications