More Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations
We're told we have to hold teachers and students to high expectations, but somehow it's OK to have low expectations of policy makers. Teachers and other school staff have learned by now that they must never say never. But policy makers? Don't expect too much from them.
Jay Mathews is just the latest to accept this double standard. "It is politically impossible to pass a plan that doesn't make teachers accountable for student performance," he writes.
We will never return to the good old days (in the minds of some) when we ignored that factor. I agree...that there are better measures of schools, but for the moment they are way too expensive (like regular inspections) and way too complicated for voters to understand and trust."
I admire Mathews very much, but he's way off base here. If we expect schools to move every mountain--"do whatever it takes"--to make every child successful, then why should we let policy makers off the hook in demanding--and paying for--much better methods for measuring schools? Sure, they're expensive and complex. But whatever happened to the philosophy of "no excuses?"
After all, the measures are incredibly important. They shape our vision of success and failure. They drive truly momentous decisions about teaching and policy. They help us determine which students need most help--and where. They may even determine which teachers will get more pay, and which ones will get the boot. So it's not OK to throw up our hands at the high costs of doing assessment right. (Valerie Strauss offers more thoughts here.)
The Obama administration deserves high praise for pledging to support "a new generation of assessments." Let's hold them and Congress to high expectations.
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Nor, for that matter, are the
Nor, for that matter, are the options necessarily so expensive. School inspections are not very expensive.
Thank you Claus. I had the
Thank you Claus. I had the same thought about that Matthews piece. It's silly to say we have to do things the wrong way because it's too hard to do them the right way. But I actually think Matthews is wrong about the cost. If you added up all the costs NCLB-type testing, which Obama's blueprint basically continues, I would wager that it would cost far MORE than an inspection system. Besides the costs of test administration and scoring, the current system requires every school to devote roughly an entire week to testing. That's a huge loss of teacher time, not to mention a loss of students' instructional time -- for results that have virtually no educational merit for the student -- since scores typically don't come out until months after the test and typically don't identify specific weaknesses in any case. Inspections are expensive relative to testing only if you don't put a price on teachers' and students' time.
Tom and Melody--To be honest,
Tom and Melody--To be honest, I'm not sure how much school inspections cost, but I do know that they are time-intensive (which isn't necessarily a bad thing.) Melody--good point about the opportunity costs (to borrow some of the business lingo) of frequent test administration and preparation. Still, I would envision an inspection system (which would have to be a good system, which is no small matter) coexisting with very good assessments, which are harder to score than the the current bubble tests are. All of that is expensive. But I think that's the price we're going to have to pay for quality. It's all to easy to cut assessments in lean years, but EVERYTHING else suffers as a result.
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