School Board Member Takes State Standardized Test and Fails

The Answer Sheet educational column in the Washington Post had an interesting article this week.  It dealt with a School Board member in Florida who took that state's standardized test for promotion to the next grade, a test called the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT.  FCAT is one of the oldest of the state assessment test, and has been held up as a model to other states that are newer to this type of high-stakes testing at the state level.

The board member, who is named Rick Roach and is on his fourth term on the Orange County, FL board, had questioned the value of the FCAT and arranged to take the 10th grade version of the test himself for a first-hand experience.  He admitted that out of 60 math questions, he didn't know any of them, but was able to guess correctly about 10 of them.  On the reading section, he only scored 62%, which is a D in their system.

Before you start thinking that this guy is a dumb loser, hear him describe his educational background:

I have a bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours toward a doctorate. I help oversee an organization with 22,000 employees and a $3 billion operations and capital budget, and am able to make sense of complex data related to those responsibilities...

Hmmm.....well, maybe he just forgot what he learned in 10th grade.  However, he seems to be doing just fine without it.  This is his point about the test:

It might be argued that I’ve been out of school too long, that if I’d actually been in the 10th grade prior to taking the test, the material would have been fresh. But doesn’t that miss the point? A test that can determine a student’s future life chances should surely relate in some practical way to the requirements of life. I can’t see how that could possibly be true of the test I took.

 Apparently, this experience relates to an argument that Roach has been having with colleagues on his school board.  This year, only 39% of Orange County (home to Orlando, FL and neighboring suburbs) 10th graders passed the reading portion of the FCAT.  Roach simply didn't believe that there were so many students who couldn't read, and began to wonder if the issue was with the test, not with the students' abilities.

Taking the test himself settled the matter for him.  Here are his conclusions about the test (according to the Washington Post)

If I’d been required to take those two tests when I was a 10th grader, my life would almost certainly have been very different. I’d have been told I wasn’t ‘college material,’ would probably have believed it, and looked for work appropriate for the level of ability that the test said I had. 

It makes no sense to me that a test with the potential for shaping a student’s entire future has so little apparent relevance to adult, real-world functioning. Who decided the kind of questions and their level of difficulty? Using what criteria? To whom did they have to defend their decisions? As subject-matter specialists, how qualified were they to make general judgments about the needs of this state’s children in a future they can’t possibly predict? Who set the pass-fail “cut score”? How? 

I can’t escape the conclusion that decisions about the [state test] in particular and standardized tests in general are being made by individuals who lack perspective and aren’t really accountable.

I think this is a great perspective on the whole rush-to-tie-everything-to-standardized-testing drive in school reform.

Should We Radically Change the Format of Middle School?

One of my favorite educational columnists, Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post's Answer Sheet, had a post yesterday about transforming the structure and nature of middle school education.   She has a great attention-grabbing title for her article:  How to fix the mess we call middle school.

She starts off with some of the reforms of middle school tried to date, and how they don't seem to be succeeding, at least in raising test scores.  She then states what she thinks are the issues with middle school students (students aged 11-14):

Here’s some of what we know about kids in this age group — and why it is past time to do something radically different: 

* Students in this age group are known to be egocentric, argumentative, and — this is not small thing — utterly preoccupied with social concerns rather than academic goals, driven by the swirling of their hormones. 

* They don’t always have solid judgment, but they find themselves in position to make decisions that can affect them throughout their lives. 

* They enjoy solving real life problems with skills. 

None of this adds up to a great experience with the traditional academic classroom.

She doesn't cite any data for these statements, but just lists them as givens.  Now, I have to say that I haven't really experienced the problems she reports in her first bullet with the middle schoolers that I know through my homeschool classes and activities, as well as those I teach in my Sunday School classes.  However, neither homeschooling nor our spiritual community reflect "mainstream" America, so maybe all those middle schoolers in schools show up that way.

But the second two--that they are old enough to make some serious mistakes when some, at least, haven't mastered impulse control or thinking through the consequences of their choices, and that they are hungry for problem-solving and real life experience--I definitely agree with.

So as she as proposed before, Strauss argues that we ought to do away with the academic focus in middle school, and instead turn that time into a "boot camp for life."  What would this boot camp look like, at least in Strauss's opinion?  It would focus on learning skills in applied settings, rather than traditional academic classes, with a strong focus on physical activity and REAL community service.

Strauss believes this is the perfect time to give students some real responsibility to meet a true community need.  As she correctly states, many school "community service" projects are one-shot deals that involve little challenge or commitment.  Picking up trash in a park is fine, but it doesn't develop any skills.  Instead, Strauss proposes that students serve daily at a homeless shelter for a few months, where they will have to confront how our society deals with issues like poverty, mental illness, substance abuse, and the like.  It would also give young people the potential experience of really making a difference in someone's life--and just think how that might change the path of their career and life choices.

Strauss continues that young adolescents need to be out in the community, helping out or being paired with mentors.  She also advocates giving such students more choice by letting them choose the books they will read and discuss, the music they will play or listen to, the art projects they will do.  Finally, she talks about what all the homeschoolers I know already do:  drawing out the "academic" topics in real life activities.  Regular readers of this blog know, for example, that I use cooking to teach math, history, science, literature, art, world religion, and probably a few other disciplines I'm forgetting right now, as well as developing such skills as time management, following instructions, budgeting and shopping for best prices, concentration, the value of precision, nutrition, hygiene, and many others.  And I don't know about you, but I don't know any middle schoolers who aren't interested in the topic of food.

And this is the joy of homeschooling.  Many of us run our middle schools very much like she is saying, at least in my homeschool group (although we do have academic classes as well).  Many of our classes and activities are organized around, or at least take account of, the students' preferences.  We do a lot of learning in applied contexts and hands-on projects, rather than getting everything from a book or a website.  And we have more time for sustained activity on community projects that we care about.  We have a group of homeschoolers who visit an assisted living facility, not just at Christmas when it is "time to think of others," but every month for years on end.  In my son's case, he has been there almost every month for 11 years--over 130 visits so far.  You think maybe that is why the middle schoolers I know aren't "egocentric," "argumentative," and "utterly preoccupied with social concerns"?

I don't know what it would take to get the schools to change in the direction she advocates.  But based on what I've seen in homeschooling,  I think that is the direction to go.