Education/Letters

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The letter below comes from a retired teacher, who wants his name omitted, granted permission to expand on his thoughts.

I've spent a lot of time claiming that introducing high-stakes testing to the public school system was going to have a lot of unintended consequences. I also claim that social sciences are misnamed. The social sciences are really philosophies, and 'data' that comes from them is always tainted by opinion, that variables are never controlled like they can be in real science, and that relying on social data is pointless.

Well, here is an article in the New York Times that brings  mathematical acumen and social acumen together into one neat package.  (see NY Times Article )

Retired Teacher

Expanding on the what the teacher says, there are strange things that we've noted in EQAO test scores in the past. (Ontario's standard testing database)  We've written many articles about the Ontario test scores.  Most of them have been putting the graphs and scores in a form that is readable.

Strange things appear in them.  One wonders if they are just mistakes, accidents or teaching to the tests.  The scores we looked at were for grade 3, 6 and 9. 

One strange set of scores came from a small rural school. Students who were good in one grade seemed to be not good at all in another. Because the school is small, we assume that a majority of students were tested and remained at the school.  It's impossible to tell, because nobody publishes those facts. It's hard to tell, what's going on with them.  Students are not tracked on the net, but are lumped into grades, schools and school boards.

The retired teacher is talking about 'high-stakes' testing.  What he means by that is the consequences.  They can be some of the following in the US:

• States lose federal funding.

• Schools are closed.

• Teachers get graded.

The 'No Child Left Behind' program of George Bush has been a bitter disappointment because states were allowed to set their own standards.  In order to get Federal funding, states played with their standards and tests.

Some inner city schools get closed and the students moved to other schools.  There is no evidence that this helps.  Charter or so called Magnet schools have become popular where entrance is by lottery from a group of qualified students, where qualified is hard to pin down.

Grading teachers on a broad scale is difficult to do.  Some schools in the same board area differ dramatically.  You can take a good teacher from a good school and he/she will have poor results in another school in the same school board district.  This is sometimes due to how the parent interacts with the child and not how the teacher teaches. 

One thing is sure.  It's a very difficult problem.   Standards are ok, when you  know who you're testing.  This is why the retired teacher says that "variables are never controlled".   We've noticed this in our research.

What would help mathematics and science literacy would be to mandate a degree in the area for teachers.  It's hard to teach music, if you don't play an instrument or sing.  It's hard to teach mathematics and science, if you are not comfortable in the disciplines. 

A student question  "Why do I need this" is not easily answered by a teacher who was not fluent in Mathematics or Science.  If you can't speak French, it's pretty hard to teach it.

For many articles that deal with EQAO testing.  Click here to go to our Kincarding and Saugeen Times search engine and type in EQAO.  You'll find 19 articles and now 20.

For an idea about how you can spot faked figures, take a look at Benford's Law

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Sunday, February 20, 2011