<p>Friedman quotes everybody’s favorite university president who is looking at No Child Left Behind from a different perspective.</p>
<p>“For the first time in our history, we are going to face competition from low-wage, high-human-capital communities, embedded within India, China and Asia,” President Lawrence Summers of Harvard told me. In order to thrive, “it will not be enough for us to just leave no child behind. We also have to make sure that many more young Americans can get as far ahead as their potential will take them. How we meet this challenge is what will define our nation’s political economy for the next several decades.”</p>
<p>In reading this column, I thought of the way my kids’ hs experience reflected the current educational bias (in the public schools) against tracking, etc. There’s no doubt in my mind that (false modesty aside) without DH and myself conveying that being really smart can be a really positive thing and worth developing, they would have gone with the prevailing culture of mediocrity and anti-“elitism.” </p>
<p>Are we encouraging our brightest kids? Should that be, as Summers seems to be suggesting, a national priority?</p>
<p>Aparent:
I am very ambivalent about this issue. We, too, have had to put up with the anti-tracking bias in our school (allowing S in 3rd grade to do math with 4th graders who were in the same classroom was considered elitist by one teacher). At the same time, I think that, as a nation, we really need to work on both ends of the problem: allowing students to advance but also bringing up the performance of the struggling students. It does not really do much good if we turn out the best engineers in the world, if they have to rely on an ill-educated workforce. One key to the performance of Japanese industry is the uniformly high secondry school education of its population. Indeed, some innovations in design have come from the shop floor.
As well, substandard education brings with it all sorts of social and political problems. </p>
<p>So, color me wishy-washy parent of a high-achieving kid. BTW, Summers is basically saying the same thing Robert Reich used to say when he was in the Clinton administration.</p>
<p>I am not in the least ambivalent about the deliberate crushing of the spirit that occurs with most highly intelligent students in today’s high schools. Policies seem to be set up to diminish the assets of as many students as possible, not to enhance them.</p>
<p>For example, our state-wide student testing, the WASL, has components in reading, math, writing, and listening. The math component requires more writing–explaining how problems are solved–than the writing component. How, exactly, does that work to allow students who are strong in math to show off their skills?</p>
<p>As another example, many schools emphasize <em>amount</em> of work rather than quality of work. My son once got a 70.1% in math when he’d gotten 100% on every single test–but had turned in only one homework assignment. (30% of the grade was based on homework completion. Not accuracy. Completion.) Does anyone hear really believe he knew less math than the kid who got a 70% on every test and turned in 100% of his homework, for an 85%?</p>
<p>You see numerous kids here on College Confidential who have 4.0 averages and mediocre SAT scores (1000-1100) and thought, until they got their SATs that they were being well-served by their schools. And there are kids who get 1500 on their SATs and have a 3.5 average at the same schools, who have brains that have simply not been stretched.</p>
<p>dmd - I’m not disagreeing with the concept of your post, just the math. A student with 70% on every test (weighted at 70%) and completing 100% of his/her assignments (weighted at 30%) would have a 79% weighted average. C+.</p>
<p>Another thought on the WASL - allotted time was 2 to 2.5 hours each of 8 testing days. Most kids needed about 1.5 to 2 hours, some the entire 2.5 hours and more. It is an untimed test and every student is allowed all the time they like - and some like lots more (excused reason to miss class). This is more testing time than is required to apply to college. SAT+3SATII = 6 hours (old SAT). Add a couple 3 hour AP tests in there and it’s still under the WASL’s 16-20 hours.</p>
<p>M&B, you’re absolutely right about the math. I remembered the 85% and mostly 70%'s so he must have gotten a few test scores over 70 (it was a friend of my son’s).</p>
<p>The WASL is definitely over testing! We’re in agreement there. My other problem with it is that it’s a MINIMUM competency test and has no scaling.</p>
<p>You have no idea how bad some of this crap is. At least where I went to HS, busywork had hit epic proportions.</p>
<p>I don’t think I ever missed a test question in chem, bio, history, etc (AP 5’s), but I routinely got B’s and C’s in the classes. Why? because we were required to do massive amounts of homework (which often accounted for 25-50% of the final grade and was graded on “completion”) and keep a “binder” which had all our homework assignments, returned tests/quizzes, notes etc not only in there, but in perfect order, as well.</p>
<p>It was mind numbing to watch my 100% tests be overtaken by people who had pretty “binders” but 60% on their tests.</p>
<p>The end result is our top 10% (save for a few) were people who couldn’t think their way out of a wet paper bag. They had work ethic (or at least parents riding them hard), but they couldn’t do calculus, chem, etc.</p>
<p>…now compare that to systems in other countries.</p>
<p>I agree that many high schools are broken. Sometimes I think the “mission” of our local public school is to reward obedience and punish disobedience. Learning is low on the priority list.</p>
who is looking at No Child Left Behind from a different perspective.</p>