This is a rant. I wrote it three weeks ago now, and have now
“cooled off” enough to still think it’s worth posting.
One of my summer tutoring kids just left, and I was talking
to Mick and he suggested I write all this down.
He’s right, and I’m furious. This
is a rant about the State of Georgia and the state of our public education, and
if you don’t feel like reading a rant or if you think you’ll get fired up as
well and aren’t up for that, take this warning and close this link. I promise I won’t get angry with you. But I don’t want you reading along if you
don’t want to deal with a rant. Consider
yourself warned.
Still with me? You
are so good to me!
Here is the story.
This kid should have graduated two months ago. He hasn’t passed the Georgia High School
Graduation Test yet, though, despite a handful of opportunities, and that just
plain stinks. I am by no means a
bleeding-heart or an excuse maker, I don’t feel bad for kids just because they
can’t pass a test, and I almost certainly do not believe in “test
anxiety.” That being said, this kid’s
been robbed in more ways than one, and I am furious that he’s a victim of our
lousy system. He’s one of the good kids, and he’s a
victim. And I’m pissed.
First of all, the test itself is patently unfair. This is not new in the history of Georgia
tests. For years, the GHSGT Science
component was known to be ridiculous and the very model of a bad test: after three years of high school science,
students were expected at the end of their junior years to recall facts from a
class they took two years ago. And the GHSGT
isn’t the only Georgia test rife with issues and questions of validity, either,
but we’ll save that for another rant, another day.
It used to be that the math component asked questions such
as “which of these is used to measure temperature?” and showed images of a
clock, a thermometer, and so forth. A
lot has changed since then, of course, and the state has done a 180-degree
swing to prove just how much it has “increased standards.”
Unfortunately, they went about it all wrong. Now, the math test is a lot more like the
science test used to be, which is to say, asking three years of content
material in one exam, and much of that material either at the basic “recall”
level (do you remember this specific fact, kinds of questions) or at way too
high of a level for a specific topic. What
do I mean when I say that? Great
question. What I mean is that although the question itself may be a
higher-level question, because the test covers so much material, even these
questions are reduced to “do you remember this specific concept?” and are not,
in the end, higher-order-thinking questions as much as memorization
questions. Thus, the GHSGT is terribly unfair,
unrealistic, and I’ll say it: damaging.
I know you’re thinking, “okay, but what makes it so bad?” The short answer is that it covers too much
material too specifically, which I just explained. But it’s more than that.
Let’s start with a simple question: what is the – or any -- high
school graduation test designed to measure?
It seems to me that it should measure basic competency to be a
functional adult. It should show that a
student went to high school, took math classes, and has a functionally literate
understanding of math. Pardon my French
here, but who really gives a rat’s you-know-what if Junior can identify the
properties of the circumcenter of a right triangle? What we should be measuring with this
graduation test should be basic benchmarks.
Can you identify the graph of a quadratic? What happens if the leading
coefficient is negative? Can you use and apply the Pythagorean Theorem? Can you calculate area and understand the
difference between, say, lateral and surface areas of a prism? Can you perform simple operations and solve
moderately complex equations? Can you
add and subtract fractions? Can you find
an average? Perhaps even a weighted
average? Can you identify and apply
mean, median, mode and understand why mean is not resistant to outliers? Can you read a graph or a pie chart? Can you write, graph, and identify a linear
equation? Can you manipulate a recipe or figure out how
much paint you need for a room, or can you convert inches to miles, centimeters
to feet?
THESE are the things that make for a functionally literate
adult.
We don’t need to know if you remember how to use the
sigma-notation formula for standard deviation, or how to complete the square for
a quadratic function. If you ever need
them again (and you may well – I don’t
dismiss these skills out of hand; I am merely agreeing with most high schoolers
when they say they will never use this stuff again), you will surely be
able to look it up. But you should know,
for example, that there are 52 weeks in a year*, 3 feet in a yard*, and how to
make change if I buy a shirt for $19.99, tax is 6%, and I hand you two
twenties*…. And I don’t say that because I expect you to be working retail. I say that because I expect you to understand
American currency and simple arithmetic.
*all things my
students did not know how to do. That should tell you their level, and affirm
the idea that they would be better served in a slower, lower-level math class
that meets their needs and prepares them to function in society. I’m not saying they need a life-skills class,
but I wouldn’t argue against it if you offered them one! These are good, articulate, kids. They are not “slow,” and they will be
outstanding members of society. But
instead, we’re saying they don’t get to graduate high school, and that in turn limits
their options severely. They’re not
trying to go to Harvard. They’re trying
to go to community college, or take the ASVAB and join the Navy. The Navy will realize soon enough that
they’re not fighter-jet pilots… why can’t the State of Georgia?
But that’s not what happens in Georgia. Instead, students are asked to both remember
and correctly apply more challenging concepts as much as three years after they
first encountered them. And for some
students, that’s not a problem, but for the kids who don’t really belong in
those classes to begin with, that’s grossly unfair and entirely
unreasonable. It doesn’t measure what
they can do, it measures what they have specifically remembered – because it
was not, sadly, actually ever learned. It
fits right in line with the Georgia – and national, to some extent – misguided
mantra to “raise standards,” without any regard to whether there is any actual
learning. We’re so concerned with
telling everyone how much material we cover, that we never actually tell them
how many kids never “got it.” And we
doctor our test scores and cutoff marks to make it almost impossible for the
layperson to realize how doctored and sad and off-the-mark the tests and measures
really are.
I’ve said this many times, and I don’t want to stray too far
down a tangent here, but wouldn’t it be better for all of us if, instead of
saying “look how many topics we covered,” we could say, “look how much we
learned”? We race to touch upon so much
more than reasonably fits in a school year, we shove material down kids’
throats when the kids are not ready for it academically or developmentally (in
some cases, both), and then we have to dumb it all down so the kids can at
least have some measure of success and the failure rates are not astronomical. Then, we test these same kids at higher
levels and wonder why no one is successful.
It makes no sense!
The GHSGT should not be a “final exam” for subject-area
content. It should be a gateway exam to
say that you meet minimum competencies as a literate adult. The measure of how
well you understand specific difficult concepts from Algebra 2 or Geometry
should come from those course grades and those EOCTs (what with being in a
testing frenzy and all, though I do happen to agree with EOCTs, if not exactly
– or even remotely -- how they are handled in Georgia).
The Georgia High School Graduation Test as it is now sets up
these good, but ill-placed, kids for failure.
Our system of “bigger, better, faster,” ignores the needs of the kids
that are not special-needs, but DO need a slower pace. We have effectively said they won’t be good
members of society, and to prove it, we will make it so that forever, they will
have to say that despite four years of excellent attendance, decent grades, and
all sorts of participation in extra-curriculars, they have to say for the rest
of their lives, “I didn’t graduate high school.”
Why do we do this?
We know at whose expense it is, so I ask again, WHY DO WE DO
THIS?
