It looks like SAT scores are down this year. That sounds bad, like our education system is doing worse, but it doesn’t really mean much. Taking the SAT is voluntary, so it’s not a random sampling of students. More people took the test this year, which means the average score included more people who were in the lower levels of academic achievement. Generally, the more people who opt to take the test, the lower the scores will be.
Case in point: Arizona’s SAT scores are higher than the national average. But only 34 percent of Arizona’s 2015 graduates took the test. By comparison, in Texas and California, 60 percent of seniors took the test. If we could get the Arizona number down to 25 percent, we’d look great! [Note: I didn’t find the national percentage of SAT test takers. If anyone locates that, add it to the comments—with a link—and I’ll put it in the post. Thanks.]
And take a look at the scores on the ACT, a similar college readiness test. They were basically unchanged. The ACT had a different sampling of students, with different results.
Digging deeper into the stats of either test won’t tell us much. As usual, Anglo and Asian test takers did better than African American, Hispanic and Native American test takers. That’s not new news, and it doesn’t make much sense to analyze those differences in detail since, again, test takers are a non-random sample of student populations, so close comparisons don’t yield much valuable information.
One genuine conclusion does jump out, however. It doesn’t look like a decade of No Child Left Behind has left fewer children behind. Scores on the college readiness tests have been in decline, and even if that’s due to more test takers, there’s no indication of an increase in the number of college ready students. If there was going to be a change, we should have seen it by now, especially since this year’s seniors have been in NCLB schools since kindergarten. If NCLB and the high stakes testing that go with it were successful, the country’s college readiness should have gone up. Looks like all that testing and all that obsession with teaching reading, writing and math—to the test—while pushing art, music and other kinds of educational enrichment to the side hasn’t done much good.
You don’t have to rely on the unreliable SAT and ACT score averages to come to that conclusion. Just look at the NAEP tests, which are considered the most reliable test-based indicator of achievement we have. The gradual improvement on student scores since the test was introduced in the 1970s slowed since 2002 when NCLB was introduced.
I’ve heard people say the testing on steroids that’s part of the Common Core regimen will improve things. I guess the problem was, the NCLB testing just wasn’t rigorous enough. If we raise the tests’ proficiency cut scores and lower the number of students who meet them, surely that will inspire teachers to teach better and students to learn more (he said, sarcastically).
This article appears in Sep 3-9, 2015.
“I’ve heard people say”??? What people, where, why? CC will leave more kids behind.
I agree with virtually everything you wrote here, David. We are obsessed with and possessed by mandatory tests, when we should be focused on inspiring and educating students.
However you thought “… there’s no indication of an increase in the number of college ready students,” bothers me. It indicates that you may have bought into the prevalent meme that divides high school graduates into groups: the college ready and those who are not. This attitude is especially insidious at Pima Community College; a college that purports to be open to all high school graduates.
Rather than community colleges like PCC insisting on determining whether or not a student is college ready, I think it would be much more productive for them to be asking whether or not their college is ready for today’s high school graduates and all of the others who want to pursue their higher education.
NOTE TO COMMENTERS: At the suggestion of a commenter, I deleted a comment on this post that was about TUSD which wasn’t on topic. Also at the suggestion of the commenter, I deleted his/her comment, since it immediately became off topic when the other one went away.
Just so you know, these are the first two posts I’ve deleted since I said I would get rid of off-topic posts. (But please don’t comment about my “delete” policy. I’m putting this note here not as a topic of discussion but so people know why a couple of comments disappeared.)
As I read this article, I was reminded that NCLB ‘dummied down’ the standards of education. There are many articles on this but here is one that was written in 2008: http://fairtest.org/confronting-myths-no-c…. I watched the texts get simpler and teaching methods as well as expectations of outcomes become more and more rote learning. Teachers were expected to teach with books in reading that were scripted, boring but taught phonics easily as one example. I know many teachers supplemented with more interesting, thought-provoking literature but I am just pointing out what materials were created as a result of NCLB.
I have taken 4 classes on the Common Core and I frankly like them because they do teach critical thinking. One of those classes showed the evidence that the 8th grade texts are now often written on, as low as, the 4th grade reading level. Our expectations have become lower, there is less critical thinking, and our results are poorer. Also the publishers publish texts based on many different criteria but following test results is one of them They gave us what it looked like we needed and/or was said we needed. I am sure other factors come into play but NCLB did us no favors.
Now I also think we have made many mistakes with the Common Core. I know Arizona has had a lot of classes but none for parents. I have heard many comments from people from other states and it seems there was generally not enough education on these standards . They are a huge leap from the ‘dummied down’ standards to what was being used. To clarify, I don’t think the old standards were bad rather how they were viewed and implemented was changed in NCLB. I think I read that in the article I just posted.
I also want to add that high-stakes testing is a separate issue. We can have these standards without the ridiculous amount of testing that is expected in most school systems now. I am waiting to see the outcome of nationwide groups who are studying the current tests taken to see if indeed they were well constructed tests. But that is another issue.
Maybe if we could stop politicizing these standards and come together to learn how we can help our kids become better thinkers, SAT scores might improve down the road. Teachers and parents can come together and instead of reacting (which I have done also), to help our children become good thinkers and not just good test takers. I don’t think the Common Core standards are perfect. I do like the intent to teach critical thinking and many standards do that. We must unify to determine if they are the best way or can we work on them so they are better for our children.
There are a lot of people who use the term “critical thinking” in connection with Common Core without having the faintest understanding of what the term means. They may understand that the bureaucratic and corporate backers of nationwide drivers of educational standardization like the SAT and Common Core are telling them that the standards promote “critical thinking,” but they are incapable of applying a genuine critical thinking process to what is going on with these testing systems.
Here are some questions important to understanding both Common Core and the SAT: Who made them? What purpose do they serve? They are spoken of in the language of student benefit, but do they actually benefit students? How so? If they don’t benefit students, whom do they benefit? What effects do they have on our students and on our society?
Food for thought from the political scientist James C. Scott:
“The great tragedy of the public school system..is that it is, by and large, a one-product factory. This tendency has only been exacerbated by the push in recent decades for standardization, measurement, testing, and accountability. The resulting incentives for students, teachers, principals, and whole districts have had the effect of bending all efforts toward fashioning a standard product that satisfies the criteria the auditors have established.
What is this product? It is a certain form of analytical intelligence, narrowly conceived, which can, it is assumed, be measured by tests. We know, of course, that there are many, many skills that are valuable and important for a successful society that are not even remotely related to analytical intelligence, among them artistic talent, imaginative intelligence, mechanical intelligence…musical and dance skills, creative intelligence, emotional intelligence, social skills, and ethical intelligence. […]
Those of us who “won” this race are the lifetime beneficiaries of opportunities and privileges that would not likely otherwise have come our way…And what of the rest? What of the, say 80% who in effect lose the race? They carry less social capital; the odds are adjusted against them. Perhaps as important is the fact that they are likely to carry a lifelong sense of having been defeated, of being less valued… And yet, have we any rational reason to credit the judgments of a system that values such a narrow band-width of human talents and measure achievement within this band by the ability to sit successfully for an exam?
Those who do poorly on tests of analytical intelligence may be incredibly talented at one or more of the many forms of intelligence that are neither taught nor valued by the school system. What sort of a system is it that wastes these talents, that sends four-fifths of its students away with a permanent stigma in the eyes of society’s gatekeepers, and perhaps in their own eyes as well? Are the dubious benefits of the privileges and opportunities accorded a presumed ‘analytical intelligence elite’ by this pedagogical tunnel vision worth so much social damage and waste?”
Good questions.
Let’s not delude ourselves that the promoters of standardization and top-down, nationally distributed curricula and tests really want to hear what teachers and parents think is “best for our children.” They want to tell us what they need the public school system to do: to facilitate the creation of a high functioning corporate army within which individuals can be moved easily from one geographic location to another. If they transfer an employee, they don’t want the employee to have to worry that the school to which their children transfer won’t be at exactly the same place academically as the school from which they transferred. (Common Core.) They want the school system to help them identify the top 20% in the analytical intelligence they value to train for their management workforce, so the 80% below the cut-off can be relegated to lower wage, lower entitlement jobs. (SAT.)
The best “critical thinking” question relating to all this that I can think of is: Why should we cooperate with the system of free schools funded by citizens’ tax dollars in a supposedly “democratic” society serving the employment goals of corporations, and not the needs and goals of the citizenry in a democracy?
I encourage all to go to the Arizona Department of Education and view the standards. They do not have anything to do with testing and the ability of test creators to make pertinent tests. I want far less testing and more educating. As for what the Common Core standards promote, I suggest all to visit classrooms who do use these standards. There is investigating and problem solving greater than I have seen in any classrooms for many years. Definitely more that what was happening in many classrooms during the NCLB years. Please note: There are some teachers who never did just stick to the basics with rote learning. Some could not ever tolerate that much limitation.
Again, I do not want to sound definitive about the Common Core standards because everything can always be improved upon and many do that in their classrooms already. However, we are making progress.
The standards “do not have anything to do with testing and the ability of test creators to make pertinent tests.” Really? Sorry, but that seems pretty naive — and another complete failure to think critically.
You don’t think, Guardians, that for-profit companies will be pitching Common Core aligned curricula and tests to districts? What, then, is Parcc testing? (And, with national uniform standards, the possibility of massive adoptions is definitely on the table, making the purveyors of these “educational products” salivate at the prospect of the massive profits involved).
What happened recently in Amphi with a “Common Core” aligned math curriculum adoption? Perhaps you should “research” it — and find out how much taxpayer money went down the drain with the failed implementation.
Ah, capital in search of surplus value: it brings tears to the eyes, the thought of how many opportunities the relentless quest to profit from the education of youth will create for students to “problem solve” and for teachers to “not just stick to the basics with rote learning.”
Unfortunately, when teacher evaluations and school performance ratings are tied to tests judging success or failure in meeting nationally determined curricular goals, it gets a little difficult for teachers to teach the sort of “creativity” and “critical thinking” they are being prevented from exercising themselves.
“We” are making progress? Some of us are, but it’s not teachers, students, or parents. Your turn to “problem solve”: who could it be?
(David: you may want to consider deleting these last two comments. Though your blog does mention Common Core in its last paragraph, the subject of the blog is national trends in SAT scores. Common Core is only mentioned in passing, so it would be fair to consider my comment here and Guardians’ above largely “off topic.”)