Good test scores - rats

Students must pass the Basic Skills writing test to graduate from a public school in Minnesota. It’s given in 10th grade. The Mankato Area School District tested 557 students this year and produced a roughly 95 percent passing rate.  "Test passing rates high," Mankato Free Press, April 26, 2006.

Now that's a depressing set of numbers. Oh, I am pleased for our teachers and administrators for meeting  a challenge our legislators set out in teaching kids how to write. By anyone's measure, getting 95% of 10th graders to take a test seriously, let alone pass it, is remarkable.

So why do I see a cloud around this silver lining? First, it's damn hard getting a teacher to try a creative approach to teaching writing, especially using technology, when as measured by state testing, they are already doing quite nicely using conventional methods, thank you very much. Teachers in those "lucky" districts with poor performing students must be much easier to get to try new approaches. They might even be desperate enough to try technology.

But more worrisome is what I remember reading in  Collin's book Good to Great a few years ago. Collins warns that one thing that keeps a company from "greatness" is accepting that "good is good enough." Will my district and others like it, consider themselves good enough if a sufficient number of students simply pass state tests?

Yes, basic literacy - reading, writing and math - is important. Memorizing and regurgitating a few bits of cultural literacy on a state test doesn't  really hurt anyone. But what about some other abilities and attributes of a person educated for survival  today? Let's just take three:

• Creative, critical thinking and information problem-solving.
• Ethical decision-making and moral reasoning.
  
• Love of learning.

 I worry that schools will spend far more time getting the final 5% of students passing "the test" rather than developing these 21st century skills in the other 95%. Why? Our state's standards don't acknowledge such skills. And education hasn't designed metrics which will credibly measure such skills.

Is being "good enough" for the state and NCLB really "good enough" for our students?

Comments

[Tom Hoffman]

Nope, it isn't easier in a low performing school.