Have Educational Standards gone Too Far?

I recently read an article on Lincoln Consolidated school, in Ypsilanti. The article once again discussed the issue of  the school failing to meet adequate yearly progress, and it got me to thinking, have we gone too far in our push for standards in public education? I think we have. I don’t want to sound like I’m on a raving rant here but my dislike of standards, I am not after all totally against them and I understand that standards are a necessary evil in public education. Students need to be able to succeed in a world where they will be competing with the rest of world. Students are no longer just citizens of the United States, but also citizens of a global economy. They need certain skills in order to compete, but the question is, are we at the same time treating our students like they are all the same, like they can all be shoved into the same generic box?

In the last twenty years it has become necessary to raise the standards of public education due to the advent of globalization and the publication of A Nation at Risk: The Imperative For Educational Reform, the title of a 1983 report by former president Ronald Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence in Education. The report indicated that we were failing our students and we needed to do something make students more successful in math and science. The Commission recommended that standards be raised to include: four years of English, three years of math and science, three years of social studies, and one semester of computers. They recommended that teachers’ salaries be performance-based and that teachers be “competent” in an academic discipline. The commission stated that the federal government played a key role in meeting the needs of all students, including the socio-economically disadvantaged, minority and language minorities, and the disabled. It was after this publication that the federal government began to play a larger role in public education, implementing more rigorous standards and increased funding for public education.

In 2001, President George W. Bush implemented a program I particularly dislike and is the basis of my concerns about whether standards have gone too far, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). NCLB was implemented to make sure that every student succeeds in reading and math, and it provides for drug-free, and violence-free programs in failing schools, and gives parents a choice to move their children to better performing schools if their home school continues to fail.

The problem I see with this Act and others implemented to improve school performance and increase accountability in schools is that the minimum requirements they require of all schools are very difficult for all low-performing schools to meet, within the time frame that they are allowing. All schools have different obstacles and problems they have to contend with to make adequate yearly progress. Advocates of NCLB expect proficiency in twelve years in all schools, but that simply isn’t possible. It angers me that in education that the government want to see visible results in twelve years, but, in anything else “progress” means results in twenty years, not twelve. For example, many members of congress are concerned about urban renewal, particularly those that are from eastern seaboard states, and are fighting for money for urban renewal projects in their states. These projects can sometimes take twenty years or more before much improvement is seen from these massive projects. Yet, members of congress keep on pouring money into them even because they know improvements will be seen from them down the road and they will be profitable projects in the long run. Yet when we discuss education we don’t have the same attitude, we know improvements will be seen but if we don’t see improvement in a short amount of time, then we don’t want to pour any more money into the education program because we believe its not working. Education is not like a lot of other programs because a lot of the gains of money spent on education can’t always be visibly seen and because educational spending doesn’t have any obvious profit incentives and this encourages government to want to see fast returns on their investments.  The problem is that in education we’re not going to see progress to the level that the advocates of NCLB want so soon. To improve the overall achievement of our students takes time; it’s not something that can be corrected so soon. It’s difficult to improve scores on students’ standardized tests quickly when they are in middle school or high schools and have had years and years of poor education. To fix the problems you have to backtrack to make up for students’ who weren’t taught the basics well when they were younger and then teach them the new stuff—you can’t build on knowledge you don’t have.

NCLB advocates contend that the government has put so much money into education, it should be seeing results. But results are being seen just not in ways that can be easily measured. You can’t test for the fact that sixth grade students are learning to believe in themselves more because they finally mastered reading at the 5th grade level, you can measure that if they’re reading at their grade level but if they are behind then it seems like they are still failing. It is often disregarded that the student improved a whole grade level in reading ability. That is a big accomplishmen, just not up to the standards of the avocates of NCLB. Don’t get me wrong, I am not avocating that we should get rid of all standardized testing just that we need a longer time frame to meet those standards and that a different format for the testing. I have never been a big avocate for multiple choice testing, I want to know what  kid really knows not what they don’t know. I like extended answer tests, these unfornately take a long time to grade and are expensive to produce and distribute. I think that test scores on these few tests shouldn’t be given as much weight, and be the sole determinate as to whether a school is achieving or failing. What about looking at the tests that the students are already receiving in school and seeing if the curriculum itself is up to par? What about looking at portfolio evaluations of the students at their individual schools to determine whether their schools are failing or students are making progress? I think its unfair to label a school as failing when there are other factors that are affecting their success. There are many different opinions about what students should know and what exactly progress is. The local community should have some say in what students learn and develop a curriculum that meets federal regulations but also meets the individual needs of the community in which it serves.  schools have more problems to deal with, such as low-income schools have more special education students so the money doesn’t go as far and they don’t have the support from the parents like in wealthier, higher-achieving schools. It takes longer to see results in these districts where you have to contend with the problems in community and the home life of the students as well as improving the students’ education.

The problem that I see is that the standards for progress are not being created by the educators actually in the schools but by government officials who specialize in education, but aren’t educators—its not the same thing. When you’re not an educator its hard to really know what is going on in the schools that our children go to. They don’t know what life is like for students living in the ghetto, or who come from a single parent home, to have drug or alcohol problems at home—or, worse, have a mom or dad in jail.

I’m a future educator. I know what it’s like because I have had students tell me about their home lives. I have actually listened to what they have to say. I have tried to help these same students with their reading and math and seen their faces when they finally understand. That’s the real accomplishment to me. To see students that at the beginning of the year could barely read at the fourth grade level, but,  in the sixth grade, be able to actually handle beginning sixth grade level material by the end of the year.

We [As a nation] shouldn’t be punishing districts because they aren’t making enough progress, because we are comparing one district to another district when they are not comparable. For example, it’s an unfair comparison to compare West Bloomfield to Detroit because they’re not comparable. There a lot of different issues that are affecting achievement behind the scenes in Detroit than in West Bloomfield. Schools are forced to deal with these issues first in Detroit before achievement can go up. The results are that it will take longer for Detroit to meet minimum federal standards than West Bloomingfield. One reason for this is that West Bloomfield is already meeting minimum federal regulations and Detroit is not. I’m not saying that Detroit can’t ever meet those minimum standards, it just will take longer. As long as a school district is moving forward and not backwards than progress is being made. Districts shouldn’t be punished for working towards the goal because its taking too long.  We should be congratulating the advances that schools do make with their students every year.

When you clump every school together as if they are all the same, its more likely for many schools to fall behind and not be able to keep up year after year. We are underserving our communities and our schools when we treat them like they are the same and we advocate that students be taught to the tests just to put on the appearance of achieving success. There are more important things than making sure every school gets a specific score on a test. There is actually trying to improve the lot of our individual students who go to these schools, and will be participants in the world of the future. Is that not the goal of public education, to produce good citizens who can participate in the world of the future? Citizens who can think for themselves and bring about a better world? Our current push for results doesn’t allow for the students who are already at the bottom to learn to be free thinkers. Instead, it allows for them to become good test takers and to fit into a standardized box where everyone pops out the same. That’s not the future I want to see. That’s not what I envisioned I would be doing as an educator, producing zombies for the next generation. Its a little Brave New World for my liking.