The Finish Line For K-12 Education - SAT/ACT

Home schooling families and private schools have not been able to completely ignore Common Core because the threat at the finish line, the SAT, was poised to align to CC. The question we have not been able to answer is how big an impact that would have on the curriculums for these non-public school options . The New York Times reported recently on what we might expect from the revised SAT.

 “The heart of the revised SAT will be analyzing evidence,” David Coleman  said. “The College Board is reaching out to teachers and college faculty to help us design questions that, for example, could ask students to use math to analyze the data in an economics study or the results of a scientific experiment, or analyze the evidence provided within texts in literature, history, geography or natural science....

... it shouldn’t just be about picking the right answer,” he said. “It should be about being able to explain, and see, the applications of this math.”

The biggest change will probably come in the essay portion of the test.

"Most likely, he said, the outlines — sections on critical reading and math and a 25-minute essay — will remain the same. But Mr. Coleman has made known his discomfort with the essay, which puts no premium on accuracy. Students can get top marks for declaring that the Declaration of Independence was written by Justin Bieber and sparked the French Revolution, as long as the essay is well organized and develops a point of view"

The ACT has been left out of some of the discussions about Common Core since it was Coleman, as President of the College Board, who made the much publicized statement about aligning the SAT to CC.  However, the ACT has been on board with CC all along. From a press release dated June 2010

"The Common Core State Standards Initiative is led by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, in partnership with ACT, the College Board, and Achieve."
ACT's site looks like they have been aligning all along. The NYT reported, "ACT plans to start yearly testing as early as third grade to help guide students to college readiness."

The ACT and SAT are becoming more like mutual companions on a journey toward one national college readiness testing track.  With Pearson helping the ACT move towards computers for testing and tracking, it is very possible that the Pearson/ACT/SAT alliance was the plan all along. SBAC and PARCC were just a way to make it look "state-led."   

It is interesting to note that a thirty year executive at ACT came out of retirement last year to work with SAT.  These two powerhouses could eventually merge and become the alternative "independent" testing company for the Common Core as states pull out of SBA or PARCC.

Are You Smarter Than A Chinese High School Senior?

"In the U.S., where No Child Left Behind has made standardized testing a core article of faith in assessing student readiness, you have more and more parents worried about the lack of rigor in our curricula, and fearing the rise of China and other nations that excel in international math-science competitions." WSJ 6-26-2012

On the other side of the world what is China doing?  Their high school seniors must take the Gaokao, a grueling three day long exam that will determine whether they go to university or not. Tao Jones of the WSJ described the gaokao this way,

Many of us who took the SATs remember them with little fondness. Well, the SATs are child’s play compared to the gaokao. If the SATs are the academic equivalent of, say, a brisk footrace, the gaokao is an Iron Man triathlon. Across a minefield and through a piranha-infested river that ends in a waterfall. With people throwing ninja stars at you the whole time! Freaking ninja stars.

Students' senior year is entirely devoted to preparing for this exam. Roadways are closed off around testing centers to help students concentrate. Society does its best to make the lives of students easier for this critical test. This exam is critical because one's scores on it determine whether or not one gets into one of China's 2000 colleges.  There are only two thirds as many opening available in those colleges as there are students applying.  But a qualifying gaokao score can open one of those seats up to any student, regardless of where they come from.

"Taken across three consecutive days at the beginning of June, the gaokao covers three mandatory subjects — Chinese, Mathematics, and a foreign language, usually English—and three other topics drawn from a pool of electives: Physics, Chemistry and Biology for science track students, and History, Geography and Political Education for those on the humanities track. Yes, you have to decide what track you’re on before taking the gaokao, because its outcome will, quite literally, determine your fate."

The Margins magazine, a flagship online magazine of the Asian American Writers Workshop is hosting a contest to see how Americans would respond to the surreal gaokao.

Pick one of the following real gaokao essay topics and respond to it BY MIDNIGHT, JULY 3 in 400 snappy, brilliant, offbeat words or less. Feel free to be earnest or funny, snarky or sincere.
Email your entry to gaokao@aaww.org with the subject line I HAZ GAOKAO (please include the question you’re responding to). Feel free to enter as many times as you like BEFORE MIDNIGHT, JULY 3. Be creative in how you answer: Multimedia, artwork, photography, poetry, prose – all forms and formats are acceptable and encouraged.

Three winners will get a copy of Dave Liang‘s excellent album of remixes of Chinese children’s songs, “Little Dragon Tales,” and have their entries published on The Margins and in this column. Plus, we’ll send you to college in China. No we won’t! But we will honor you like the shining example that you are, in perpetuity.

REAL 2012 GAOKAO QUESTIONS
WRITE A BRIEF, 400 WORD ESSAY ON ANY OF THE FOLLOWING

1. I was helping my family with some farming work during a weekend and the field was very muddy due to the rains. I was carrying a lot of equipment on my shoulders and was afraid of falling over. My legs were shaking. My mom spotted it and told me to take off my shirt and shoes and try again. It was much easier. Eventually I brought the stuff to mom and she said, “It’s not that you can’t do it — you were too worried about getting your shirt dirty. By taking them off, you got rid of the unnecessary concerns.”

2. Old Ji is a railway security man and he works on a mountain. His job is to examine the railways to prevent the fallen stones and trees from affecting the trains. He salutes every time the train passes, and the train will honk its horn in return. What do these scenes remind of you?

3. Two fish are swimming in a river. The older one asks, “How’s the water?” The younger one says, “I don’t know if it’s clean or cloudy.”

4. Various communications methods are being developed: email, SMS, etc. Do you think the letter is replaceable?

5. For several months, a sign was left on a ladder at a construction spot: “Notice: Ladder.” One day, a guy came and changed it to “Notice: put the ladder down, not upright, when not in use.”


We invited MEW readers to share their essays with us in the comment section. 

What's REALLY Happening in Schools? Common Core Control Coming Soon to Your Public School...or Home School...or Private School.

If you have stories about your child's Common Core implementation and would like readers to know how it is impacting your child's learning and testing, we'd like to pass it on to other readers.  Since it's "common", your experiences are likely to be similar to those of parents/students in your consortia.  Homeschooling and private schooling parents, please pay attention to how Common Core will be invading your teaching materials as well.

Common Core tales from a mother of four children in the Midwest:

Regarding David Coleman being named president of the College Board, this could be good news in a way.  Here in Indiana we have organized groups of home schoolers, who have been asleep at the wheel since the mid 90's, when they rallied against OBE, Goals 2000. etc. I have been frustrated that I haven't been able to get the lobbyists who represent them to pay attention. They think they are "safe" because they home school. Those days are numbered and they are going to have to join the fight!

Why should home schooling parents or even parents private schooling their children be concerned?  

  

Some people I know who have taken the courageous step of home-schooling have understandably lost interest in fighting the federal take over of schools. They have the attitude that they can teach a good solid curriculum to their children, many of whom will outperform regularly schooled kids on the SAT, and get into a great college.  If the SAT is rewritten to align with the Common Core, they may think again before ignoring it.

For example, the Common Core inspired reform/"fuzzy" math my third grader brings home is difficult to do well on, unless it is specifically "taught.". It requires scripted written explanations and solving problems in unconventional ways. Getting the answer right using the standard algorithm doesn't cut it. The child's' answer is marked incorrect. It necessitates teaching to the test. It has exemplified to me that in certain subjects there will be items that will have to be taught, in order for a child to score well on a Common Core test.

Private schools that are accredited in Indiana all must take the federally funded PARCC assessment. Non-accredited schools are talking about how they will be impacted by the fact that most of the mainstream textbooks will be rewritten to be Common Core aligned. Now, if the SAT is altered most every college bound student will become entangled in the Common Core, regardless of how and where they are schooled.

Since taxpayers are paying for this privilege of unfunded/unvoted mandates and they are supplying their children to this system, the bureaucrats should be delighted to hear from the people paying for this service:

Another pathetic tidbit is that after 35 parents went to a School Commission meeting,with complaints such as "I have a degree in finance and I can't understand how to help my third grader with her math homework, the Principal called in a Pearson sales rep to sell us on the book.  When parents weren't satisfied, the Principal finally responded in frustration, "Look, I know parents don't like this kind of math because it isn't how any of us were taught, but we have to teach it this way because this is what is going to be on the PAARCC assessment."

Bingo. The principal isn't concerned the process of teaching math is all wrong.  He/she is concerned that the kids learn how to learn this process because that's the way the students will be assessed.  Now when your curriculum director and superintendent tells you he/she will still be able to set the curriculum, you know he/she is not telling you the truth.  It truly is "teach to the test."

The tactic of ignoring the public school educational reform debacle by home schooling and private schooling won't work either. If your home schooled, privately schooled child can't answer the question in the way it's designated by Pearson (a privately held company unaccountable to taxpayers), your child (even though he/she understands math) will most likely not do well on the PAARCC (or other consortia) assessment.

Do you believe David Coleman's promises on untested, unproven and unconstitutional standards...or tales from parents who are actually experiencing the standards and bureaucrats shrugging their shoulders because they see themselves as powerless?  Welcome to Arne Duncan's educational reform.

Have a story to share?  Contact stlgretchen@gmail.com

Poverty vs the SAT

Last week there was a hearing on Capitol Hill on the latest ESEA bill. DC is still trying to "fix" education and the bill's 800+ pages shows us that they are working very hard to do that.  They are even trying to return control to local school districts. But things are on and off the table so frequently it looks more like the dinner rush hour at the Cheesecake Factory than a measured attempt to make public education better.  The problem may be that they are looking at everything on the dessert menu, when the problem lies more in the liver and onions main course.


University of Texas physics professor Michael Marder has looked at the data (something reformers love to use when it suits their agenda) regarding education and economics. His charts point to something that almost no one in the education debate wants to address, though it may be one of the most significant factors in education "success."

Dr. Marder looked at Texas data to see how the corporate model of standardized testing and charter schools was affecting there. The chart below plots poverty concentration against percentage of students meeting the SAT college readiness criterion. Each dot represents a single high school. The size of the dot represents the number of students who tested at that school and the color of the dot represents the ethnic/racial makeup of the school.

The chart clearly shows an inverse correlation between SAT scores and poverty. As the poverty rate goes up, as defined by qualification for reduced prices lunches,  SAT and ACT scores go down. In Texas,  and in most other places, race and ethnicity correlate with lower incomes and lower test scores. Not surprisingly, schools made up of primarily rich students do better on these tests.

Dr. Marder found this correlation in public schools and also looked for it in charter schools.  Given that charter schools were originally established under George Bush as a tactic to help low income struggling students one would hope that the correlation would at least be less for charters. In fact there does seem to be less correlation but that is because Texas charters, regardless of income level, don't come close to preparing their students for the SAT. Most are close to 0%. The idea that public schools are bad is false. For well-off white kids public schools are pretty good. Students from low income families just aren’t achieving college readiness at the level of their more wealthy peers.

This is not a condemnation of charter schools, as some have seen it. It IS an verification of something that almost every teacher in the public school system knows. Children from certain cultural backgrounds are less likely to succeed, as academic success is currently defined. This cultural influence is seen at all ends of the academic performance spectrum.

The U.S. Department of Education’s statistical and testing arm, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), released its latest “progress” report November 1st: The survey measured fourth- and eighth-grade scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP.  A graph depicting the NAEP scores, published by Associated Press as percentage figures in the print edition of the Washington Times shows, at most, a two-percent change in both math and reading scores between 2009 and 2011. However, a standard three-percent margin of error for such statistics means, realistically, that scores did not change at all in these two years. While the report did not break out scores for Asian minorities, the who have historically done considerably better than whites, blacks or Hispanics, the statistical flat line should apply to their scores as well indicating that Asians are still doing better at the same comparative rate.

It would be interesting to find out how many Asians were in the poor performing schools and whether their scores were typical of the low income school in general. My guess is that they are not, especially if they are less than 3rd generation American.

So who wants to have a conversation about how you motivate a culture to elevate the importance of education?  To start with you have to figure out why the poor are poor.  Ultimately you have to be able to accept the findings, which may be political toxin, which is why most politicians will never address the real causes of the "performance gap."