Swirling Down the Toilet

Now that you mention it, I will tell you about it. The Captains of Education are wringing their hands at plummeting standardized test scores, and they have no idea why they may keep falling! I was thinking about this today as I was administering our own tests here in Washington State. All the public ever hears is that school teachers need to improve, schools are accountable, administrators are performing CYA feats of skill, and school district assessment coordinators need to inject more system into the system. Make no mistake about it...schools and teachers need to stop boring the drool out of their clientele! BUT...no where does anyone mention what the kids and the parents need to do. As long as all everyone hears is how the teachers need to teach better, and the schools have to do provide this, and the administration needs to provide that...as long as this continues, the kids (middle school age on up, at least) will slowly sink back in their seats, drop their materials, put their hands behind their heads, grab a handful of cashews and do nothing. As long as they see their success, and their future prosperity, and their goals and lifestyle choices and desires as a function of, and only of what the teachers do, they are not going to move on it. The entire variable of their own effort has been smeared and blurred out of the realm of reality. Many teachers like to boast that it is ultimately the teacher that is the most important factor in kids' success...and they are partly correct (though they shouldn't be boasting about it). But there is neuroscience research that demonstrates that a student's efforts edge out the importance of other factors (read Enriching the Brain by Eric Jensen). Look at it this way, what contributes more to the area of a rectangle...the length or the width? I thought so...and you're right. They BOTH do!Let's keep telling kids and parents that it is the school's fault for everything, and that they have no power in whether or not they fail or succeed, and we can continue to watch test scores drop like hints.

Buried somewhere in the bowels of documents of the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction in Washington State reads a phrase akin to the following: these are standards that a well-taught, HARD WORKING student should achieve. (I added the capital letters.) Alas, schools and American human potential continue to swirl down the toilet.