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If progress were measured by how much a student learned during the current school year rather than whether a student was at "grade level", the system would work better. We already have the previous year's scores for students, simply compare this years score to last years score and see how much learning took place. If a kid moves from 1st grade reading level to 3d grade reading level, should we penalize a teacher for not getting the student to 4th grade level? If another student starts and finishes the year at 4th grade level, does the fact that the student happens to be in the 4th grade mean their teacher did a great job?
Switching to a value added system would also keep teachers from being penalized for teaching in low-performing school systems. It would keep teachers from being unfairly rewarded for teaching in schools with above-average students. And it would keep the focus directly on student learning.
Personally I think the whole notion of "grade level" is outdated, its factory style managment. I'd like to see masters level teachers supervising 4-6 assistants (AA-BA) in classrooms of 50-60 students at a variety of levels. Skills and knowledge mastery could be measured via regular low-stakes testing on secure computers the way the GREs are administered. Classrooms would be bigger with spaces designed to have multiple configurations depending on activity. But that's another story.
Posted at December 27, 2005 8:35 AM in response to Gifted Children Left Behind?
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I can understand how some recent Asian immigrants might not know that participation in athletics or extracurricular activities and volunteering is important . . . but Asians can be athletes just like everyone else. In fact, some sports were invented/are dominated by Asians. Colleges have a legitimate interest in finding excellent students who also excell in non-academic activities for their undergraduate programs. A student who manages to juggle tennis, wrestling, yearbook staff, volunteering at the hospital, and playing in the orchestra while still pulling a 4.8 weighted GPA and a 1480 SAT is a much safer bet than a student who has a 4.99 GPA and a 1550 SAT but has no extracurricular or athletic activities. Once you get above a certain tier, all the students are academically excellent and scores and grades really aren't that important. Its more important to find out whether a prospective student can bring more than 0.1 extra GPA or 80 extra points on the SAT to the table.
Posted at December 16, 2005 4:16 PM in response to Asian Admissions
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Selective colleges and universities want students who participated in extracurricular activities in high school. At the most elite schools, *all* the realistic applicants have great grades and test scores. At the top of the heap, 0.2 on a GPA, 60 points on the SAT, or a couple of spots on the class rank list doesn't mean that much. Extracurricular activites show the ability to work with others, to manage time, to serve the community, and so forth. Athletic participation shows competition, physical vigor, ect. When choosing from a pool of great students, things like that matter.
GPA, class rank, and test scores get you in the door so that college admissions will consider you seriously. Beyond that, if all you do is study, you are at a disadvantage. High schools might need to do a better job of communicating this to parents. Elite colleges are pretty savvy about screening out fluff activites from meaningful ones, so students who don't join a million clubs aren't penalized. If a student doesn't like the range of clubs or sports at their school, they can get involved in community activities. Volunteer. Something.
The bottom line is that there are diminishing returns to putting time into studies in high school. There are other valuable life lessons that high school kids can learn, and colleges value that in the selections process. Marginally improving your grades isn't that important. An A+ isn't worth more than an A if it comes at the expense of living a little.
Posted at November 8, 2005 4:14 AM in response to The New Jews
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Why on earth would the testing companies want a single nationwide test? Better to have 50 seperate tests, which have to be constantly updated, balanced, reviewed, etc.
Posted at October 11, 2005 4:19 PM in response to Pseudostandards Revisited
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Bennett moved the arguement from the effects of a policy that allows women to choose whether or not to abort pregnancies to a policy that would force women to abort pregnancies. Obviously the sole purpose of legalized abortion is not to reduce the crime rate .. . its not even the main purpose of legalized abortion. The "you" that decides whether or not a woman will get an abortion is the woman herself, not some pundit like Bennett.
As far as abortion rates and crime rates, I didn't think it had to to with poor mothers aborting children so much as in an overall reduction of the birth rate . . . fewer babies eventually means fewer 15-30 year old men, which leads to a lower crime rate. But I'm not a freakanomicsist. Are there really fewer crimes per 100,000 young males, or are there just fewer young males in comparison to our overall population?
As far as the caller who asked Bennett about abortion's effect on social security and lost workers, why don't we here more about the wage stagnation, productivity gains, and skyrocketing corporate profits that started about the same time as legalized abortion? Yeah, there are fewer workers, but corporations are making more money. Is the 50-50 payroll tax split still appropriate? If corporations would have passed on their gains to employees in terms of wages, what would social security look like?
Posted at September 30, 2005 3:59 AM in response to In Defense of Bill Bennett
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Why can't students just get tuition refunds from their old private schools and use that money to pay for their tuition at the new schools? Or, if the parents have other priorities after the flooding, they can use the money however they want to improve their families lives. It's their money. Does George Bush really know how they should spend it better than they do? That's nonsense. There is no need for vouchers unless the plan is to let the original schools keep the tuition money.
Posted at September 18, 2005 7:33 AM in response to The Setup
