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Standardized Tests Hurt Asian-American Students, Too, Though Many Get High Scores

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Standardized tests are one of America’s most racist institutions.

Year after year, decade after decade, the poor and people of color get fewer school resources, larger class sizes, narrowed curriculum and lower acceptance to colleges.

And all this simply because they tend to score lower on these types of assessments than richer, whiter people.

That’s no accident.

Yet, as defenders of standardized testing (and racist practices in general) love to point out, not all minorities consistently fail these tests.

In particular, Asian-Americans – taken as a whole – score better than white Americans.

So the tests are totally fair, right? Case closed?

Wrong.

Asian-Americans, who make up roughly 5 percent of public school enrollment nationally, are just as much victimized by standardized testing as any other minority. The only difference is their success is held up as an excuse for upholding this deeply inequitable practice.

It’s kind of like if two people were pitted against each other in a race, and one had to run a mile, and the other had to run 1.5 miles – and the second person actually won. Would that make the race fair?

No. Not at all. But the organizers point to the result as proof that running that extra distance in the same amount of time was nondiscriminatory. So stop complaining!

Weighted practices like these have impacts that go far beyond numbers on a page.

Take the SAT. Asian-American students typically score higher than other students on America’s most popular college gatekeeper as they do on other standardized tests. For instance, among high school students who graduated in 2020, Asian students scored an average of 632 on the SAT math section, compared with 547 for white students. The average math score overall was 523 (out of 800).

What does this really mean?

ASIAN AMERICANS ARE NOT A MONOLITH

First of all, when we talk about Asian-American students doing well on standardized tests, we’re generalizing. We don’t mean all Asians – only a certain percentage of certain kinds of these people. After all, Asia is a pretty big continent.

According to the US Census Bureau, there are roughly 23 million Americans of Asian descent, and the largest subgroups are people of Chinese and Indian ancestry with populations of approximately 5 million each. Next comes people of Filipino (4.2 million), Vietnamese (2.2 million), Korean (1.9 million) and Japanese descent (1.5 million). 

But those are just the biggest subgroups. When you add in all Asian-Americans including Pacific Islanders, you get more than 50 different ethnic groups with varying languages, immigration histories and educational experiences. 

Any generalization about such a diverse group will leave out important details, including test scores.

ALL ASIANS DON’T GET HIGH TEST SCORES

For example, high test achievement is not something attained universally by all people who can trace their parentage through that part of the world. It’s actually much more common for East Asians than others. In particular, we’re talking about people of Chinese, Korean and similar heritages.

If you know anything about those countries, it’s easy to understand why this is so. Historically, these areas have had their own kinds of standardized exams for centuries.

In these countries, college admission often is decided on a single high-stakes test – the gaokao in China or the suneung in South Korea. People whose cultures trace back to these parts of the world are used to engaging in intense test prep as a regular feature of teenage life. So many Asian immigrant parents with ties to these countries often see the SAT or ACT as the equivalent of Asia’s admissions tests and thus engage in test prep as a matter of course, regardless of cost or effort.

This goes far in explaining why Chinese- and Korean-Americans have the highest rate of participation in SAT/ACT test prep – even more than people from other Asian ethnicities.

In one study, more than half of Korean-Americans and 42 percent of Chinese-Americans took an SAT prep course before college compared to 35.6 percent of white students, 32.4 percent of Hispanic students and 40.4 percent of black students. This is true regardless of household income. Affluent Asian Americans were more likely to take test prep, but 46.7 percent of low-income Korean-Americans still took a prep course.

Test prep is a double edged sword. The companies providing such services claim to increase test scores hundreds of points, but average gains are more often in the range of 10-30 points.

East Asian-Americans show statistically significant gains from test prep much more often than others. This is partially due to having better access to adequately funded K-12 schools than other minority groups. They are less likely to attend racially segregated, poorly resourced schools, unlike their Black and Hispanic peers. Even Asians from lower socio-economic backgrounds tend to get more out of test prep than others because they are more likely to attend well-resourced schools than their counterparts in the same socio-economic bracket.

And let’s not forget that test prep companies target Asian-American communities. You’ll find them in urban centers like Koreatown in Los Angeles or heavily Asian suburbs such as the San Gabriel Valley. Advertising material for these services are often in multiple languages or displayed in Asian-language newspapers and ethnic media.

Most of New York City’s 411 prep centers are based in Queens and Brooklyn, “with over a quarter of them… most notably in the boroughs’ Asian enclaves of Flushing and Sunset Park in Brooklyn,” The New York Times reported.

“On the opposite coast, 861 such tutoring centers exist in California’s Orange, Santa Clara and Los Angeles counties, all heavy with Asian-American families,” the article states.

So it’s no wonder why certain Asian-American communities – especially East Asian communities – tend to favor test prep and achieve high standardized test scores.

ASIANS ARE HELD TO UNFAIR STANDARDS

But let us not forget that East Asians are not ALL ASIANS. If you’re unlucky enough to be from other parts of that massive continent or the island chains of the Pacific, the US will still paint you with the same broad brush.

All Asian-Americans – whether of East Asian descent or not – are held to a higher standard in things like college admissions where overachievement is considered the norm and little else is tolerated.

A National Study of College Experience led by Espenshade and Radford (2009) showed that a student who self-identifies as Asian will need 140 SAT points higher than whites, 320 SAT points higher than Hispanics, and 450 SAT points higher than African Americans.

This is unfair to East Asians because it expects them to jump through more hoops than white people or other ethnic groups just to be accepted, but it is even worse for other Asian subgroups.

A 2022 study of the nine-campus University of California – the state with the country’s largest Asian-American population – concluded that Filipino, Thai, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander and Laotian students were admitted at below-average rates and that many ethnicities including Samoans and Chamorros, were underrepresented in the system.

Why? They had lower test scores than admissions officials expected.

Such an emphasis on standardized testing is not healthy for students of any nationality. The College Board makes millions of dollars every year with assessments like the SAT and ACT holding the scores up as proof that certain students have what it takes to excel in college or universities.

However, standardized tests do not assess things like critical thinking or even consistent academic effort. As such, those admitted mostly because of standardized achievement have a tendency to fizzle out in certain fields that require more creativity or originality to succeed.

This is a rarely mentioned side effect of Asian-American’s standardized testing overachievement. And it may help to explain why – despite scoring well on standardized tests – Asians don’t complete college as often as students from other ethnicities.

According to an analysis of the 23-campus California State University System, all Asian subgroups were less likely than whites to complete their degrees in four years. There were roughly 78,000 Asians attending the university system in 2016, yet their four-year completion rate was 3% below that of all students. Only a few subgroups – Japanese and Asian Indians – had four-year completion rates that exceeded the average.

If test scores and admissions were all it took to achieve post secondary success, you’d expect college completion to be shared by Asian-Americans across the board.

In reality, college attainment varies significantly within the Asian community. While more than half of Japanese and Korean Americans (and nearly 3/4 of Asian Indian Americans) age 24 or older had a bachelor’s degree or higher in 2019, the same was true for less than 1/5 of their Laotian, Hmong and Cambodian counterparts.

CONCLUSIONS

Therefore, it is highly suspect when standardized testing apologists point to Asian-American test scores as proof the system is fair and balanced.

First of all, it conflates the achievements of mostly East Asians with all Americans of eastern heritage. Second, it demands more of one minority group to be accepted as equal to a white majority.

If standardized assessments were fair tests of academic achievement or ability, there would be no need for such contrivances. If they really showed who would de best in colleges or universities, that would be borne out in graduation rates.

Instead, a closer look at the data shows just how unfairly discriminatory these tests and this system is. Standardized tests of this sort were invented in America as a way to privilege white Europeans from other ethnic groups, and even after a century of revisions, they still function the same way.

Standardized testing should be abolished in favor of more accurate assessments of learning such as classroom grades. Teachers should be unshackled from the need to cater to the testing companies and allowed to emphasize critical thinking, originality and creativity in the classroom.

After all, these are the skills necessary for the jobs of the future – as well as for students to self actualize into the adults they want to be.

In any case, the standardized testing industry can no longer hide behind the myth of the Asian-American model minority to justify their shady business practices.

 

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School Sports are Overwhelming Academics. Time to Kick Them Out

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The United States is obsessed with sports in ways that other countries are not.  


  
Nowhere is this more apparent than in our public schools.   


  
Crucial hiring decisions are often made based – not on how they will impact academics – but on how they will improve the school’s athletics program.   


    
US districts spend exorbitant amounts of their budgets staffing, managing, transporting, insuring, and promoting their sports teams.   


  
And millions of students are unnecessarily injured every year with the risk of life-long health consequences while also being encouraged to be less empathetic and hyper competitive.  


  
This may sound hard to believe, but it’s not this way in the rest of the world.   


  
Most countries don’t have school sports teams at all, and even those that do rarely compete with each other.   


  
In places like Finland and Germany, kids play sports in local and national clubs. These clubs identify and train children from an early age to become athletes – especially in soccer, which is much more popular there.   


  
Even Canada follows this practice with hockey. Young athletes don’t play for their high schools; they play for one of three national hockey leagues – the Ontario Hockey League, the Western Hockey League or the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.  


  
Schools in these countries still have physical education classes. Students still exercise and play games including sports during the day. However, the schools don’t organize extracurricular teams that play matches against each other transporting students far and wide.  

 
  
The way we do things in the US – combining athletics and academics under one roof – ends up making each undertaking enemies.  


 
Kids are unnecessarily injured in the games and indoctrinated in an ethic of dominance. In addition, sports programs gobble up limited resources meant for the classroom, and incentivize bad decisions that prize athletics over everything else.  


 
  
Let’s look at each in turn:  

  
1)    Injuries  
  
  

School sports began as a way to keep kids safe.

About 120 years ago, schools were not involved in organized athletics.


  
Around 1900, if children wanted to play sports, they did so in pickup games wherever they could – in parks, fields and alleys. However, these were chaotic affairs rife with cheating that often degraded into brawls.  


 
It got bad enough that adults thought organizing sports in the schools would be safer for all involved.  

However, after more than a century, these games, themselves, have become a source of injury.  


 
“High school athletes suffer two million injuries, 500,000 doctor visits and 30,000 hospitalizations each year,” According to Youth Sports Safety Statistics.  


 
Perhaps the most dangerous are concussions. These are especially frequent in contact sports like football where athletes bump or smash their heads or bodies into each other. Even with protective equipment like helmets and pads, such collisions can cause traumatic brain injuries that can alter the way brains function for a lifetime.  


 
An estimated 300, 000 sport-related traumatic brain injuries occur annually in the United States, according to a 2007 study by the Journal of Athletic Training. There is some evidence that the number may be even higher today.   


  
In fact, sports are second only to motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause of traumatic brain injuries among people aged 15 to 24.  


 
During the 2005-06 season, high school football players sustained more than half a million injuries nationally, according to the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Columbus Children’s Hospital. While football easily incurs the highest risk, even sports like soccer and baseball are responsible for thousands of injuries to adolescents between the ages of 10 to 14 every year.  

 
 
And that’s only the most obvious danger. It doesn’t even include increased steroid use, fighting during games, hazing violence, excessive training, verbal abuse, and failure to provide proper care during important matches.  


 
Competitive extracurricular sports can be dangerous to young people’s health. It is certainly valid to question whether schools should be involved in such practices incurring liability and potentially harming their own students.  


  
 
 
  
2)  Warrior Mindset  


  
And then there’s the question of whether school sports are healthy for our minds as well as our bodies. 


 
At the turn of the 20th Century, schools started organizing their own teams because they wanted to not just keep kids physically safe, but provide a healthy alternative to the kinds of activities they might be lured into on the streets. Based on the Victorian ideal of “Muscular Christianity,” sports was considered something wholesome that would district American children (especially boys) from social ills like gambling and prostitution.   


 
However, even then it was a manifestation of the period’s xenophobia. 


 
In the early 1900s, the US had just admitted a surge of European immigrants. Some people were worried that immigrant children would overrun the kids already here. Physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. described this class of American-born kids as “stiff-jointed, soft-muscled, paste-complexioned youth.” It was suggested that organized sports would help them become as brawny as those just coming to our shores. 


 
So the driving motives behind the creation of school sports were bigotry and fear.  


 
Sadly, not much has changed in the intervening years. 


 
Sports culture creates understandings of the world and self that are not entirely healthy in a democratic society. 


 
For instance, an emphasis on competition instills the ethic that it is the outcome – winning or losing – that is most important. As kids become adults, this informs the way they frame ethical choices. Moreover, it dampens empathy. You’re discouraged from caring about members of the other team and encouraged to be hostile to anyone considered an other. Even teammates are only worthy of care in so much as they help you win. There is always latent competition because there is a constant danger that one of your teammates could take your place. 


 
Moreover, sports do not value critical thinking or individuality. You listen to your coach or team captain or whoever in the hierarchy is above you. Questioning authority is discouraged. Instead, you’re impressed with the duty to follow and accept the decisions of those in charge. 


 
These values would be more helpful in the development of warriors or soldiers – not democratic citizens. We need people who value tolerance, discussion, justice, caring, and diversity of ideals – exactly the opposite of what organized sports instills.  


 
The world view promoted by organized athletic competition is not healthy for our students. 


 
 
  
3)  Expense   


  
However, even if school sports didn’t hurt kids physically and mentally, they cost a ridiculous amount of money! 


 
On average, American schools spend $100 billion on sporting events and more than $56 billion in catering for food and beverages every year.  


  
About 8 million high school students participate in sports annually – roughly 3 million girls and 5 million boys.  


However, this is actually a minority of students, only about 42%. That’s because it often costs parents an additional fee for their kids to play on school teams – between $670 – $1,000 a year. This includes sporting registration fees, uniforms, coaching, and lessons.

Contrary to popular belief, ticket and concession sales do not generate a profit for most high schools. They often don’t even cover costs.

This is true even in colleges. According to the NCAA, among the 65 schools in Division I, only 25 recorded a positive net generated revenue in 2019.


   
 
Costs to districts are hard to quantify but significant. 


  
Football is easily the most expensive high school sport. Consider that many football teams have half a dozen or more coaches, all of whom usually receive a stipend. And some schools go even further hiring professional coaches at full salaries or designate a teacher as the full-time athletic director. The cost of new bleachers can top half a million dollars – about the same as artificial turf. Even maintaining a grass field can cost more than $20,000 a year. Not to mention annual expenses like reconditioning helmets, which can cost more than $1,500 for a large team. To help offset these costs, some communities collect private donations or levy a special tax for initiatives like new gyms or sports facilities.  


 
There are so many costs people rarely consider. For example, when teachers who also serve as coaches travel for game days, schools need to hire substitute teachers. They also need to pay for buses for the team, the band, and the cheerleaders. And that’s before you even take into account meals and hotels during away games. Even when events are at home, schools typically cover the cost of hiring officials, providing security, painting the lines on the field, and cleaning up afterward. 


 
They often end up spending more per student athlete than they do per pupil in the classroom. 


 
Marguerite Roza, the author of Educational Economics, analyzed the finances of one public high school in the Pacific Northwest. She and her colleagues found that the school was spending $328 a student for math instruction and more than four times that much for cheerleading—$1,348 a cheerleader.  


 
In an age when school budget cuts are the norm, spending on academics is shrinking just as spending on sports is increasing. Athletics is increasing by up to 40% every year. Meanwhile, teachers are furloughed and academic programs cut as school budgets haven’t even returned to the level they were before the Great Recession. 


 
One wonders – can we afford school athletics? Wouldn’t it be better to spend school budgets on learning – something all students participate in – rather than something that only benefits a fraction of the student body?  


 
 
  
4)    Decision Making  


 
The cost of school sports isn’t measured just in dollars and cents but in the kinds of decisions administrators and school board members make for the sake of athletics – regardless of how it impacts academics. 


 
People are often hired for important school positions based on their sports credentials even when their jobs are supposed to be mainly focused on improving student learning. 


   
This is especially true where I live in Western Pennsylvania.  


  
In my home district of McKeesport, when our superintendent, Dr. Mark Holtzman, was hired, he did not have any proven track record of scholastic success but had been a football star when he was a student here.   


  
Likewise, the district where I work as a teacher, Steel Valley, hired Eddie Wehrer as superintendent without any degree in education but experience as a football coach.   


  
And until recently, the biggest district in the region, Pittsburgh Public Schools, had a former NFL player, Dr. Anthony Hamlet, as superintendent.   


 
The same goes for principals recommending new staff. 


Sometimes administrators will lower their standards and recommend a less qualified applicant if he or she has experience as an athletic coach.  


 
Whether they’ll admit it or not, the prospect of a winning season for the football team is often prioritized over new textbooks, smaller class sizes or other improvements. 


 
The act of running for school board is often seen as a way to have greater control over district athletics. Go to most local school board meetings and you’ll hear much more discussion of various teams and extracurricular activities than academic programs.  


 
Even during the Covid-19 pandemic, we saw many schools reopening against the recommendations of county, state and national health organizations because of the needs of sports. The teams couldn’t get back on the fields when school buildings were closed and classes on-line. Moreover, they ignored safety concerns for players who would by necessity come into close contact and could not realistically practice social distancing or masks wearing.  


 
This is partly because American sports is big business.  


 
National organizations like the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball recruit most of their players from colleges who recruit most of their players from K-12 schools. It’s a lucrative system with billions of dollars in profit on the line.  


 
If students get an excellent education, that’s seen as a personal benefit to them, alone. But if a student athlete gets signed to a sports contract, that enriches the team and the corporation orders of magnitude more than the athlete.

Schools bask in the reflected glory of successful athletes, teams and programs. Grown adults who are too old to participate, themselves, take vicarious pleasure in these successes.  

I understand that this is a very controversial topic.  

There is a small minority of students who benefits from school athletics and even come to school primarily just to participate in sports.  

However, the negatives far outweigh the benefits.  


I think it’s time we begin considering separating sports and schools. 

Students who want to participate in such activities can do so through private athletic clubs just like kids all over the world.

  
And before I’m criticized as being anti-sports, consider that such a separation would benefit both endeavors. Students would have more time and resources to focus on learning, while athletes could concentrate more on their chosen sport and train all year long instead of just during a certain season.

I have no illusions that anyone will take my advice. Sports are way too entrenched in American schools and our elected officials can’t even seem to find the courage to enact obvious reforms like gun control, repealing charter schools, ending standardized testing and funding schools equitably.

However, if we really want the best for US children, we should give them what kids the world over already have – schools separate from organized sports.  

 

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Why High Stakes Testing Was Cancelled This Year (and Probably Will Be Next Year, Too)

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Screen Shot 2020-05-16 at 10.22.26 AM

 
There are at least two silver linings to the current Coronavirus catastrophe for education.

 

One – with nearly all public schools closed, March was the first month since 2002 without a school shooting.

 

Two – districts nationwide cancelled high stakes standardized tests in April and May.

 

Taken together, these are two victories that no one could have predicted before November.

 

Gun safety restrictions remain laughably lax in the US compared to the rest of the world. And our system’s reliance on high stakes testing to hold schools and teachers accountable for economic inequalities and racially biased standards has been thoroughly criticized for nearly a century.

 

In short, the virus succeeded where policy did not.

 
The pandemic’s other effects have been more damaging as students, parents and teachers have struggled to move education online at home.

 

Teachers are seeing high absences especially among poor, underprivileged and special needs children. Not to mention worries about the quality and depth of education provided virtually and the stress it places on families.

 

To make matters worse, the situation seems likely to continue in some form when next school year begins in the fall.

 

With the COVID-19 virus likely to endure spreading unchecked due to a lack of adequate health screenings, the time it takes to make a vaccine, and an unwillingness by the government to save everyday people from the economic consequences of a nearly stopped economy, not to mention an increasing unwillingness among people to continue thorough social distancing procedures, schools may be left to solve the crisis themselves.

 

There’s been talk that when schools start up in August and September they may simply continue with cyber curriculum. Or they may open the physical buildings with safety protocols including half day classes of smaller size to keep students a safe distance apart.

 

In any case, the question of standardized testing arises again with a vengeance.

 

While there is some wiggle room, federal law (The Every Student Succeeds Act) requires all public school students be given standardized tests in grades 3-8 and once in high school.

 

The U.S. Department of Education waived that mandate this year because of the virus.

 

That was great news – a sound decision from a government agency known more for market solutions than rationality.

 

The question remains: why did the department do it?

 

Whether staffed by Democrats or Republicans, this doesn’t sound like them.

 

Why was this exception made and will it be extended again given that the circumstances may be little different in 2020-21 than they were in 2019-20?

 

The answer seems to be rooted in the tests, themselves, and the economic circumstances which create and sustains them.

 

WHY TESTS WERE CANCELLED

 
In late March, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said that her department would streamline the paperwork for states to request a waiver allowing them not to give high stakes testing this year and that the government wouldn’t use this year’s testing data in future school accountability ratings.

 

DeVos said in a statement:

 

“Students need to be focused on staying healthy and continuing to learn. Teachers need to be able to focus on remote learning and other adaptations. Neither students nor teachers need to be focused on high-stakes tests during this difficult time.”

 

How did we get here?

 

Well, imagine a world where this didn’t happen.

 

Before DeVos made her statement, some states like Colorado and Texas had already eliminated testing requirements without waiting for a response from DeVos.

 

If the federal government hadn’t answered these requests in the affirmative, it would have had to engage in an open power struggle with the states over control of public schooling.

 

This would be especially damaging for a Republican administration because of the party’s stance on state’s rights.

 

However, even if we put aside this power dynamic, the decision was inevitable.

 

CORPORATIONS FIRST

 

 

All of these assessments are the property of private corporations. These include Harcourt Educational Measurement, CTB McGraw-Hill, Riverside Publishing (a Houghton Mifflin company), and NCS Pearson.

 

States purchase the right to use these tests but assessment material is the ideological property of the parent corporation. And so they want it guarded from theft.

 

That’s why nearly all high stakes testing requires proctors – people whose job it is to set up, monitor and secure the testing environment. They make sure test takers don’t cheat, but they also are responsible for ensuring no information about specific test questions leaves the assessment environment.

 

This is true for standardized assessments at the K-12 level as well as college and certification tests.

 

I know because I’ve spent every year of my teaching career employed as a proctor throughout most of April as my students take the Pennsylvania System of School Assessments (PSSA) tests. But also when I got my degree I had to go to a designated testing center where I could be monitored as I took a series of assessments necessary to get my certification.

 

I had to sign in, empty my pockets including giving over my cell phone, and submit to being observed by the proctors and video surveillance. I even had to sign out and back in when I needed to use the restroom.

 

With physical classrooms closed, there was simply no way effectively to do this.

 

The College Board tried anyway with an abbreviated Advanced Placement test taken online from home this month to disastrous results – glitches, server issues and a failure by the organization to take responsibility.

 

However, the problem isn’t essentially technological. These assessments could be given online. Many districts do exactly that, but with teachers in the room acting as proctors.

 

The technological infrastructure may not yet be in place for widespread virtual testing, but that’s not an insurmountable hurdle.

 

Test security is a much stickier issue – without real, live people policing the environment, testing information would be at risk.

 

Rival companies could get access to trade secrets. The value of scores could come under scrutiny due to concerns of student cheating. And the tests, themselves, would for the first time be visible to parents and the general public.

 

TESTING SECRECY

 

 

As a classroom teacher, I get to see these infernal tests. I get to see the questions.

 

They are not good. They are not well-written, well considered, developmentally appropriate or even good at evaluating student understanding of the knowledge they claim to be assessing.

 

But up to this point, anyone who gets to see the tests is sworn to secrecy including the students.

 

The kids taking these exams – regardless of age – are no longer treated as children. They are clients entering into a contract.

 

At the start of these tests, they are warned of the legal consequences of violating the terms of this agreement.

 

THE PSSAS

 
In particular,the PSSAs require students to read the following warning on the first day of the assessment:

 

DO NOT PHOTOGRAPH, COPY OR REPRODUCE MATERIALS FROM THIS ASSESSMENT IN ANY MANNER. All material contained in this assessment is secure and copyrighted material owned by the Pennsylvania Department of Education. Copying of material in any manner, including the taking of a photograph, is a violation of the federal Copyright Act. Penalties for violations of the Copyright Act may include the cost of replacing the compromised test item(s) or a fine of no less than $750 up to $30,000 for a single violation. 17 U.S.C. $ 101 et seq

 

So the first act of testing is a threat of legal consequences and possible fines.

 

In the commonwealth, we also force kids to abide by a specific code of conduct for test takers. They must enter a quasi-legal relationship before they are even permitted to begin.

 

Much of this code is common sense. Get a good night’s sleep. Fill in bubbles completely using a number two pencil.

 

But some of it is deeply disturbing.

 

For example, students are told to “report any suspected cheating to your teacher or principal.”

 

They have to agree to be an informer or snitch to a government agency. My students aren’t old enough to vote or even drive a car, but they are directed to collaborate with the government against their classmates.

 

In addition, they are told NOT to:

 

-talk with others about questions on the test during or after the test.

 

-take notes about the test to share with others.

 

Students are compelled into a legalistic vow that they won’t break this code. On the test, itself, we make them fill in a bubble next to the following statement:

 

By marking this bubble I verify that I understand the “Code of Conduct for Test Takers” that my Test Administrator went over with me.

 

As a test administrator, I am not allowed to move on until all students have filled in that bubble.

 

Technically, we are not making them promise TO ABIDE by the code of test takers. Perhaps we lack that legal authority. We are, however, making them swear they understand it. Thus we remove ignorance as an excuse for noncompliance.

 

As a proctor, I have to sign a similar statement that I understand the “Ethical Standards of Test Administration.” Again, much of this is common sense, but it includes such statements as:

 

DO NOT:

 
-Discuss, disseminate or otherwise reveal contents of the test to anyone.

 

-Assist in, direct, aid, counsel, encourage, or fail to report any of the actions prohibited in this section.

 

So even teachers technically are not allowed to discuss the test and should report students or colleagues seen doing so.

 

And according to the “Pennsylvania System of School Assessment Directions for Administration Manuel”:

 

Those individuals who divulge test questions, falsify student scores, or compromise the integrity of the state assessment system in any manner will be subject to professional disciplinary action under the Professional Educator Discipline Act, 24 P.S. $ 2070. 1a et seq, including a private reprimand, a public reprimand, a suspension of their teaching certificate(s), a revocation of their teaching certificate(s), and/or a suspension or prohibition from being employed by a charter school. [emphasis added]

 

CORPORATE VULNERABILITY

 

 

If students were allowed to take these tests unsupervised at home, all of this legal protection would disappear.

 

The corporations would be much more exposed and defenseless.

 

THAT’S why the tests were cancelled this year.

 

It wasn’t because anyone rethought the value of high stakes tests – though they should have. It wasn’t because anyone had considered standardized testing’s history in the eugenics movement – which they should have. It wasn’t because anyone was worried that giving these tests would take away precious academic time – though they should have.

 

It was to protect the business interests that would be at risk otherwise.

 

THE DYSTOPIAN TESTING FUTURE

 

 

The need for proctors is a problem that the testing companies know about and are working to eliminate.

 

In fact, they’ve been trying to line things up in their favor for years.

 

Their answer is something called Competency Based Education (CBE) or Proficiency Based Education (PBE). But don’t let these names fool you. It has nothing to do with making children competent or proficient in anything except taking computer-based tests.

 

Paradoxically, it’s sold as a reduction in testing, but really it’s about changing the paradigm.

 
It’s a scheme that ed tech corporations privately call stealth assessments. Students take high stakes tests without even knowing they are doing it. They’re asked the same kinds of multiple-choice nonsense you’d find on state mandated standardized assessments but programmers make it look like a game.

 

This safeguards the tests because kids aren’t aware of being tested. Constant micro-assessments blend in with test prep curriculum until there is little to no difference between the two. Academics gets dumbed down to the level of multiple choice and critical thinking is redefined as asking “What does the questioner want me to think?”

 

Yet the results could still be used to label schools “failing” regardless of how under-resourced they are or how students are suffering the effects of poverty. Mountains of data will still be collected on your children and sold to commercial interests to better market their products.

 

But that’s just how it is used in schools today.

 

The potential is to make this a replacement for physical schools.

 

It’s a disaster capitalism reform tailor made for the Coronavirus age, but not yet ready for large scale implementation.

 

Imagine a world where there are no schools – just free range children plopped in front of a computer or an iPad and told to go learn something.

 

No schools, no teachers, just gangs of students walking the streets, stopping along the way to thumb messages to each other on social media, play a video game or take an on-line test.

 

That’s the world many ed tech entrepreneurs are trying to build.

 

One thing they need is a pet policy of DeVos and the Trump administration – Education Savings Accounts (ESAs).

 

Normally, the federal, state and local government collect taxes to fund an individual child’s education, which is then spent at a public or charter school.

 

 

However, ESAs would allow that money to go elsewhere. It could go to funding the tuition at a private or parochial school like a traditional school voucher.

 

 

Or it could be used for discrete education services provided by the ed tech industry.

 

It’s almost like homeschooling – without a parent or guardian in charge.

 

The idea is often called a learning ecosystem.

 

 
But it’s just a single person cyber school with little to no guiding principles, management or oversight.

 

Education is reduced to a series of badges students can earn by completing certain tasks.

 
Reading a book or an article gives you a badge. Answering a series of multiple-choice questions on a reading earns you more badges. And if you’ve completed a certain task satisfactorily, you can even earn a badge by teaching that same material to others.

 

It’s the low wage gig economy applied to education. Children would bounce from a few hours of Khan Academy videos here to a software package there and Voila! “Modern” education!

 

And as an added benefit, the badge structure creates a market where investors can bet and profit off of who gains badges and to what degree on the model of crypto-currencies like Bitcoin!

 

 

Make no mistake, it’s not about improving the quality of education. It’s about providing the cheapest possible alternative and selling it to the rubes as innovation.

 

 

It’s school without the school or teachers.

 

 

CONCLUSIONS

 

 

This is where the testing industry is going.

 

This is where we would be today if the legal framework were in place and the technology were widespread, adequate and capable of safeguarding corporate intellectual property without the need for test proctors.

 

In the short term, this is good news.

 

As long as the pandemic keeps school buildings closed or keeps them running at less than capacity, the chances of mandating high stakes testing during the crisis goes down.

 

On the flip side that’s detrimental to student learning in the here and now, but it does offer hope for the future. It at least opens the door to cancelling high stakes testing in 2020-21 like we did this year. And the longer we keep those tests at bay, the greater likelihood they will go away for good.

 

However, the people at the testing corporations are far from stupid. They know that each year we forgo the tests proves how unnecessary they are.

 

A coalition of six neoliberal organizations warned against cancelling the tests nationwide in March.

 

“As the coronavirus pandemic evolves on a daily basis, it would be premature to issue blanket national waivers from core components of the law. Thus, case-by-case consideration of each state’s needs is, at this time, most appropriate,” said a letter signed by testing industry lobbyists including John King, the former secretary of education and head of the Education Trust.

 
They have the future mapped out – a future with immense earnings for their companies and shareholders.

 

We must be fully aware of what is happening and why if we are to have any chance of opposing the next disaster and coming out of the current crisis with better school policy than we went in.

 

If we are to safeguard an authentic education for our children, we must learn these lessons, ourselves, now.

 

 

 

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Who’s Afraid of Public Schools?

stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, capitalism, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, college, Corporate Education "Reform", Donald Trump, Education, Grit, Learning, Parents, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Propaganda, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, segregation, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, White Privilege , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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Public schools are the bogeymen of American life.

 
We so often hear the bedtime story of “Failing Schools” that it’s no wonder some folks will do anything to ensure their kids get in elsewhere.

 
And let’s be honest. It’s the same impulse behind the latest college admissions cheating scandal.

 
A group of wealthy – though not too wealthy – parents thought their children should be able to enroll in the most prestigious schools.

 
So they bribed college admissions officers, cheated on standardized tests or paid coaches or other officials to accept their children as college athletes even if their kids had never played the sport.

 
We see the same kind of thing everyday in public schools – a confederacy of white parents terrified that their kids might have to go to class with black kids. So they dip into their stock portfolios to pay for enrollment at a private or parochial school.

 
Or they take advantage of a tax scholarship or school voucher to avoid an institution with low test scores by enrolling in one where students don’t have to take the tests at all.

 
Or they cross their fingers and enter their kid in a lottery to a charter school praying their precious progeny will escape the horrors of being treated just like everyone else’s kids.

 
And they call it a meritocracy!

 
What a joke!

 
They pretend that their children have earned special treatment.

 
WRONG.

 
No child deserves favoritism – paradoxically –  because all children do!

 
There are really two important but related points here:

 
1)  The children of the privileged don’t deserve a better education than anyone else’s.

 

2)  Children who come from wealthy families (and or from privileged social circumstances) don’t do anything to distinguish themselves from the underprivileged.

 
But these nouveau riche parents tried to bribe the way forward for their kids anyway even though to do so they had to launder the money through a fake “charity.” They didn’t care that doing so would earn them a tax deduction and thus result in even less money for the underprivileged. They didn’t care about the underlying inequalities in the system. No. They only wanted their children to remain in the class of America’s chosen few.

 
And the best way to do that is with cold, hard cash.

 
America doesn’t run on Dunkin. It runs on greenbacks. Dinero. Swag. Bling. The prosperity doctrine made physical, quantifiable and mean.

 
No one really denies that there are two Americas anymore. We just lie to ourselves about how you get placed in one or the other.

 
And that lie is called excellence, quality, worth – the ultimate in class war gaslighting.

 
It’s a deception that this scandal has shattered to pieces.

 
The privileged don’t earn their privilege. It’s not something they possess on the basis of intelligence or hard work shown through test scores. They don’t have it because of drive, determination or grit – once again shown through test scores. They have it based on wealth – the kind of wealth that buys time and resources to either pass the tests or bribe the gatekeepers to change the scores.

 
Think about it.

 
George W. Bush got into Yale and Harvard and graduated with a 2.35 GPA. Why? Not because he had the grades and demonstrated his worth. He was a legacy. Like at least one third of all admissions to Ivy League schools, he got in purely because he had family who graduated from there.

 
You think Donald Trump threatened the College Board not to release his grades because they were all A’s!?

 
According to one account, his scores were merely “respectable.” Yet he still dropped out of the prestigious Fordham University and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania after two years based on family connections and the reputation of his father, Fred Trump, one of the wealthiest businessmen in New York at the time.

 
Moreover, his kids, Don Jr. and Ivanka, were both enrolled at Penn around the same time as their father made hefty contributions. They began classes in 1996 and 2000, respectively, just as the university and its private Manhattan clubhouse received more than $1.4 million in pledged donations from Trump, the school newspaper reported.

 

This is not merit. This has nothing to do with what these people deserve. It is money – a pure transaction, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.

 
The only thing that separates what the Trumps and the Bushes did with this latest scandal – the so-called Operation Varsity Blues – is the amount of wealth involved.
If you’re super rich, you can get away with it. If you’re just rich, you’d better not get caught.

 
And if you’re poor or middle class, you’d better stay in your lane.

 
But there shouldn’t be any lanes on this highway. Or at least they should only be in place to maximize fairness and student success.

 
We sneer at the idea of Affirmative Action but only because it’s directed at people of color. No one says anything about the real Affirmative Action that’s been in place since before our country even began – the system of reciprocity and privilege keeping wealthy white families in positions of power like Lords and Ladies while the rest of us serfs scramble for their leavings.

 
All children deserve the same opportunities to succeed. All children deserve the chance to get an excellent education. All children should attend a first class school filled with highly educated and experienced teachers who can draw on plenty of resources, wide curriculum, tutoring, counseling and support.

 
And the only way we’ll ever achieve that is through a robust system of public schools.

 
I’m not saying they’re perfect. In many neighborhoods, they’ve been sabotaged and surgically dismantled, but that’s a problem with an easy solution. Invest in public schools!

 
Because the stated purpose of public education, the reason it exists at all, is equity.
The alternatives – private and charter schools – are essentially unequal.  That’s their raison d’être – to create a market that justifies their existence.

 
In order for charter and private schools to be a thing, there must be schools that don’t otherwise meet students’ needs. There must be an unreasonable demand that schools indoctrinate students into parents’ religious beliefs. There must be schools that aren’t as well funded or that have to meet ridiculous federal and state mandates.

 
The result is a two-tiered system. Schools for the haves and for the have-nots.
It’s an apparatus that perverts the public to make room for the private.

 
In the public system, students are segregated into communities based on race and class and then their community schools are funded based on what their parents can afford. The rich shower their children with the best of everything. The poor do what they can.

 
Then the federal government pretends to hold everyone “accountable” by forcing students to take standardized tests that merely recreate the economic and racial disparities already present in their districts and neighborhoods. In turn, this provides the justification for charter and voucher schools that further erode public school budgets and increases the downward spiral of disinvestment.

 

 

Meanwhile, few notice how the equity built into authentic public schools gets left behind by those enrolling in privatized alternatives. No more open meetings. No more elected school boards. No more public comment or even a voice in how the money is spent.
 

So long as there are two Americas, the fear of being in the wrong one will motivate the privileged to cheat and steal their way to the top. They will horde resources and wealth for themselves and their children while denying it to others.

 
It is a self-perpetuating system – a loop that we’re all caught in.
We must break the chain. We must recognize our common humanity and stop the zero sum game.

 
And perhaps the best way to begin is by supporting authentic public schools and not privatization.

 
We have been taught to fear public education, because it is really our only hope.

 

 

Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

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Yellow Vest Protests Include Resistance to School Corporatization

stevenmsinger Accountability, Bill Gates, Budget, capitalism, Censorship, Civil Rights, college, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Donald Trump, Education, G.E.R.M., Journalism, Labor, Media, Obama, Police, Politics, Poverty, school violence, Schools, small class size, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, standards, student action, Students, Teachers, Unions , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

thumbnail_Paris-closes-tourist-sites-ahead-of-new-yellow-vest-protests-this-weekend

 

If you want to know what the French Yellow Vest Protests are all about, just refer to the arrest of 153 teenage students this month near Paris.

 

 

The kids at a high school in Mantes-La-Jolie were forced to kneel down, hands on their heads or secured behind their backs with zip ties as riot police circled them with assault weapons.

 

 

Why did law enforcement take such extreme measures? The students had been protesting their government’s education policies.

 

 

“What a well-behaved class!” French police commented ironically on a video documenting the arrest on social media by Violences Policières, a watchdog group.

 

Yes, how well behaved!

 

 

Of course! Children should be seen and not heard. Speaking out for yourself is a definite faux pas.

 

 

So is detaining minors without a lawyer, which the officers did and which is illegal in France.

 

But C’est la vie!

 

 

 

Unfortunately such scenes have been repeated throughout the country since November. Despite police opposition, high school students from a number of French schools have joined the Yellow Vests to protest French President Emmanuel Macron’s education policies – inaccurately dubbed “reforms” – among other austerity measures resulting in stagnant wages and a high cost of living.

 

 

Macron was elected in 2017 on a neoliberal platform much like that of Barack Obama. And though he was praised for his demeanor, especially in comparison to the boorish Donald Trump, his policies at first met with criticism and then outright protests in the streets.

 

 

Citizens took issue with new labor laws, the rail system and taxes. You can’t save the environment by cutting taxes for the wealthy and raising them for the poor to discourage them from driving. You can’t stomp on workers rights in order to create more low-paying jobs.

 

 

Protestors repurposed the yellow vests they are required to keep in their cars in case of an emergency into an iconic image of resistance to the gas tax. Hundreds of thousands demanded not just a repeal of Macron’s policies but a new platform to bolster social services and the economy.

 

 

The Macron administration has met these demands by at first violently stifling them and then agreeing to individual points before returning to suppression.

 

 

Perhaps it is the administration’s insistence that it is beset by violent “hooligans” while most protestors do no more than block traffic that has resulted in a continued rejection of Macron. Protestors even spray-painted a demand that Macron resign on the Arc de Triomphe, the arch on the Champs-Elysées.

 

 

Though the American media has mostly ignored the situation, critics blame widespread police brutality including the use of tear gas and clubs for at least four deaths and 700 people wounded in weeks of political challenges that some have compared to the French Revolution.

 

 

In particular, students take issue with at least three components of Macron’s plan: (1) changes to the high school graduation exam, (2) changes to college admissions and (3) a new requirement that all students participate in a lengthy volunteer national service project.

 

 

First, protestors oppose changes to the end-of-school exams known as baccalaureate or ‘bac.’ Though the proposal includes positive reforms such as reducing the number of exams and providing a longer time frame to take them, it also changes focus from academics to careers.

 

 

Much like Common Core did in the United States, the exams would be revised and rewritten. Instead of being tested on broad subjects such as science, literature or social sciences, students would be assessed on much narrower content.

 

 

Macron seems to be taking his queue from US philanthrocapitalists like Bill Gates in order to make French students more “college and career ready.”

 

 

The new assessments would push students toward specific degrees sooner. Before their final undergraduate year, high school students would have to choose two specific majors and two specific minors alongside the standard curriculum – similar to American colleges.

 

 

Students are against this because of what they call “hyper-specialization.” They say these changes would deprive them of exposure to a wide range of disciplines and force them to make life-long choices too early. This would be especially harmful for poor students because, as Liberation editorialist Laurent Joffrin put it, “Those who have more, know more.” In other words, wealthier students would probably be better prepared to navigate the choices open to them than those in poorer areas.

 

 

Next, students also want the repeal of stricter selection criteria to universities – a law passed just last year – which they say increases economic inequality between rich and poor schools.

 

 

The government provides free college to any student who passes the high school exit exams. However, just like in the US, corporate interests complain that college students struggle with the increased workload and pressures at universities. The new measure solves this by ensuring that fewer students are admitted.

 

 

Students say Macron has it backwards. The government shouldn’t be undermining free access to higher education. It should be investing more in the country’s universities and helping students succeed.

 

 

Finally, students want to get rid of a mandate that all 16-year-olds will have to participate in a national civic service program scheduled to begin in 2026.

 

 

French youths would have to volunteer in fields like defense, environment, tutoring or culture. During the long school breaks, they would have to undergo a one-month placement, consisting of two weeks in collective housing to promote a “social mix,” and then another two weeks in smaller, more “personalized” groups.

 

 

The measure doesn’t go as far as Macron wanted. He originally proposed mandatory military service.

 

 

Students object to the plan because they say it’s unnecessary and extremely expensive. The program is estimated to cost $1.8 billion ($1.6 billion Euros) with a $1.98 billion ($1.75 Euro) investment up front.

 

In addition to these demands, some have included limits on class size. Protestors have demanded no more than 25 students per class from nursery school through high school. Low class size ensures each student gets more personal attention from the teacher and a better chance to ask questions and learn.

 

 

 

What we’re seeing in France is extremely important for those living in the US.

 

 

It shows that as terrible as the Trump administration is, there are many flavors of bad government. When your representatives are more interested in seeing to corporate whims than the will of the people, chaos can ensue.

 

 

Perhaps the US media has been so adverse to reporting on the Yellow Vests because of corporate fear that protests will jump the pond and land on our shores, as well. We have many similar neoliberal and neofascist policies in the US of A, some passed by Republicans and others passed by Democrats.

 

 

Here’s hoping that we all can establish legitimate governments that seek to further the ends of liberty, equality and fraternity.

 

Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

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College Remediation is Less About Bad Students Than Academic Elitism

stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, Budget, capitalism, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, college, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Learning, Politics, Prejudice, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, small class size, Special Education, Standardized Testing, standards, Students, Teachers, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

51b1a5d1ef37dc704930ac333d90b1b9

 

Ah, college.

 

The school on a hill.

 

The marble columns, wood paneled studies and ivy encrusted gardens.

 

It’s never really been a place for everybody. But in rhapsodizing the college experience, our lawmakers have pushed for universities to enroll an increasing number of students. The demand for free or reduced tuition – especially for low-income students – has meant more kids putting on a letterman jersey and giving it the ol’ college try.

 

Teenagers who wouldn’t dream of higher education in previous decades are going for it today.

 

And the result has been a greater proportion of incoming college freshman taking remedial courses before they can even begin the normal post-secondary track.

 

According to a 2017 report by the Hechinger Report, more than half a million students at two- and four-year colleges in 44 states had to take such courses.

 

This costs up to an estimated $7 billion a year.

 

So, as usual in our country, we’re looking for someone to blame. And look! Here’s our favorite scapegoat – the public school system!

 

The gripe goes like this: Incoming college freshman wouldn’t need remediation if the public schools had bothered to teach them correctly!

 

However, the argument ignores several important factors and jumps to a completely unearned conclusion.

 

 

1) Public schools don’t decide who is accepted at colleges. College admissions departments do.

 

 

If people in higher learning think all these teenagers don’t belong in college, don’t accept them. Period.

 

But that would mean fewer students, less tuition and forgoing the lucrative revenue stream provided by – surprise! – these same remediation courses!

 

We pretend that colleges are special places where honor and scholarship rule the day. It isn’t necessarily so.

 

They are run by people, and like anywhere else, those people can be ethical and egalitarian or petty and materialistic.

 

Colleges aren’t immune to small mindedness or the economic realities facing institutions of learning everywhere.

 

Like most schools, they’re starved for funding.

 

The state and federal government have slashed subsidies to colleges and universities just as they have to public schools. Colleges have to make up the shortfall somewhere.

 

So they enroll students who don’t meet their own academic standards and then charge them for the privilege of attempting to get up to snuff.

 

It’s a good deal. You get to blame kids coming in AND reap the rewards.

 

 

2) How exactly do we determine that these kids need remediation?

 

 

 

In many schools, they use standardized tests like the SAT or ACT to make this determination. Others give their own pretest to all incoming freshman and assign remediation based on the results.

 

You’d expect more from institutions of higher learning.

 

You’d expect them to know how inadequate standardized tests are at assessing student knowledge. After all, most of the mountain of studies that conclude these tests are worthless are conducted at the college level. However, it seems people in admissions don’t always read the scholarly work of their colleagues in the departments of education and psychology.

 

I remember when I was in college, several classmates were being pressured to take remedial courses but refused. It didn’t stop them from graduating with honors.

 

 

3) Let’s say some of this remediation actually is necessary. Why would that be so?

 

 

These are high school graduates. What has changed in public schools over the past few decades to increase the need for these additional services at colleges?

 

It seems to me the answer is three-fold:

 

1) School budgets have been cut to the bare bone

2) Schools have to fight for limited funding with charter and voucher institutions

3) Standardized testing and Common Core have been dominating the curriculum.

 

If you cut funding to schools, they won’t be able to prepare students as well.

 

That’s a pretty simple axiom. I know business-minded number crunchers will extol the virtue of “doing more with less” and other such self-help platitudes, but much of it is nonsense.

 

You never hear them explain how cutting CEO salaries will mean corporations will run more effectively. It’s only workers and schools that they think deserve tough love and penury.

 

Look, schools with less funding mean fewer teachers. That means larger class sizes. That means it’s more difficult to learn – especially for students who don’t already come from privileged backgrounds.

 

None of this is bettered by the addition of charter and voucher schools sucking up the limited money available. We don’t have enough for one school system – yet we’re asking two or more parallel systems to exist on that same amount. And we’re stacking the deck in favor of privatized systems by prioritizing their funding and not holding them to the same accountability and transparency standards as traditional public schools.

 

It’s like deliberately placing leeches on a runners back and wondering why she’s started going so slowly.

 

Moreover, it’s ironic that the Common Core revolution was conducted to make students “college and career ready.” It has done just the opposite.

 

Narrowing the curriculum to weeks and months of test prep has consequences. You can increase students ability to jump through the hoops of your one federally mandated state test. But that doesn’t translate to other assessments. It doesn’t mean they’ll do better on the SAT or other college entrance exams. Nor does it mean they’ll possess the authentic learning we pretend we’re after in the first place.

 

The bottom line: if we really want to improve student academic outcomes in public schools, we need to fully and equitably fund them. We need to abandon school privatization schemes and fully support public schools. And we need to stop the obsession with standardized assessments, curriculum and – yes – even canned standards, themselves.

 

That might actually reduce the numbers of students who allegedly need remediation at the college level.

 

However, there is another aspect that we need to consider that is harder to remedy…

 

4) Developmental psychology.

 

 

Schools – whether they be post-secondary, secondary or primary – are built to meet the needs of human beings. And human beings don’t grow according to a preconceived schedule.

 

Just because you think someone should be able to do X at a certain age, doesn’t mean they’re developmentally ready to do so.

 

Speaking from experience, I was a C student in math through high school. It wasn’t until I got to college that I started to excel in that subject and earned top marks.

 

I didn’t have to take any remedial courses, but I was forced to take a quantitative reasoning course as part of my liberal arts majors.

 

I’m not alone in this. Many people aren’t cognitively ready for certain concepts and skills until later. That doesn’t make them deficient in any way nor does it betray any problems in their schooling.

 

That’s just how their brains work. We can whine about it or we can accept human nature and do what we can to help students cope.

 

 

And this brings me to my final reason behind the college remediation trend – a problem that is more insidious than all the others combined.

 

 

5) The elitism behind the whole post-secondary system.

 

 

For centuries, higher learning has been seen as a privilege of the wealthy and the upper class. Sure a few exceptional plebians were let into our hallowed halls just to “prove” how egalitarian we were.

 

But college was never seen as something fit for everyone.

 

As such, the attitude has always been that students are on their own. Many who enroll will not end up graduating. And that’s seen as perfectly acceptable. It’s part of the design.

 

It’s the baby sea turtle school of education – thousands of hatchlings but few survive to adulthood.

 

However, if you really want to make college the right fit for an increasing number of students, you have to get rid of the elitist attitude.

 

If students come to college and need remediation, stop whining and provide it.

 

And it shouldn’t incur an extra cost from students, either. This should just be a normal part of the process.

 

If a patient comes to the emergency room with heart disease, you don’t penalize him because he didn’t eat heart healthy. You do what you can to help him heal. Period.

 

That’s how colleges and universities need to approach their students.

 

You know – the way public schools already do.

 

 

SOLUTIONS

 

 

In summary, it’s not a case of colleges vs. public schools. And anyone who tells you differently probably has a hidden agenda – the standardization and privatization industry, for instance.

 

We need to support colleges and universities. We need to support public schools. Both need additional funding and political will.

 

However, colleges need to become more accepting and supportive of the students enrolled there. They need to meet them where they are and provide whatever they need to succeed.

 

Moreover, public schools need the autonomy and respect routinely given to college professors.

 

The answer is a transformation of BOTH institutions.

 

That’s how you make a better school system for everyone.

 

That or we could just keep grumbling at each other, forever pointing fingers instead of working together to find solutions.

 

Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

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