For a high school math teacher, few times of the year are as fraught with tension as the end of April. As the rest of the nation is recovering from tax day, the public schools are gearing up for the annual standardized tests. What’s sad is that the scores on these tests actually depend less on where the students go to school or what they learn there, and more on who the students are.
Let’s look at the ten comprehensive high schools in San Francisco. In particular, let’s look at the three high schools that scored highest last year (Let’s call them the “Big Three”), and the three that scored lowest (We’ll call them the “Bottom Three”). I won’t say their names, but chances are that if you live in San Francisco you know which schools they are.
What’s interesting is that if you look to see which schools have the highest percentage of white and Asian students as compared to black or Latino students, it just so happens that it’s the Big Three! And would you believe that the schools with the highest percentage of black and Latino students as compared to white and Asian students are the Bottom Three? How can we make sense of this remarkable coincidence?
As I see it, there are three possible explanations. The first is that the Big Three actually are the best schools in the district and that the Bottom Three are the worst. If that’s true, that means that we are sending our white and Asian students to the best schools and sending our black and Latino students to the worst schools, and we’re right back where we were before the civil rights movement, in a city that prides itself on being the capital of American progressive action.
The second possible explanation is that the Big Three score highly because of the inherent superiority of the high percentage of white and Asian students there, and that the Bottom Three score poorly because of the inherent inferiority of the high percentage of black and Latino students there. If you want to believe in some sort of inherent superiority or inferiority of the races, there are plenty of indicted war criminals in the Hague that would probably love to have you as a pen pal. Hopefully, however, we are able to reject that option out of hand.
That leaves me with my third option: that there is some sort of inherent bias against certain groups of students in society which the test scores reflect; and that bias ought to invalidate the tests as measurement tools for comparing student performance, especially since the scores are used as a basis for decisions about funding, staffing and student placement which only serve to increase the disparity between groups of students in public schools. This is the view held by most of the teachers with whom I’m acquainted. That doesn’t stop us, however, from hyping up the tests to our students as if their entire future depended on their results, putting enormous pressure on minds too young to comprehend how useless the test scores actually are.
So, this year, I have decided to abandon the grueling ritual of test prep. Rather than leaving behind my actual curriculum for several weeks in order to train students in test-taking strategies, I will continue teaching math as usual, up until the first day of testing. If the tests actually measured how much students have learned, my regular teaching ought to be all the test prep they need. I have neither the training nor the inclination, however, to prepare them for a test that seems to measure their ethnicity more than anything else.
- "But... you're bleck!"
Friday, April 22, 2005
Monday, April 18, 2005
legal + profitable = moral?
On my way to work today, I was listening to Morning Edition on NPR and I heard a story about an oil boom in the Russian island of Sakhalin. Apparently, foreign oil companies (primarily American) have come in and made a fortune... but the locals are not profiting a bit, and they're starting to get a little bit upset.
One of the guys they interviewed for the story was a veteran of the Alaskan oil boom and had represented his company there. In Alaska, the people who live there were paid for the right to drill on the land, and received rather substantial royalty checks every month. Needless to say, they thought that the oil company being there was a good thing. This guy is contrasting that to the situation in Russia, where the system is corrupt and the government contacts, mafia enforcers and local "bosses" are reaping all of the profit, while the locals are getting nothing.
What really caught my attention was that the American guy said something like "that's just the way it is in Russia, and if you want to do business here, you have to go along with it."
If that's the way it is, and you know it's not right, why in the world would you want to do business there?
Do I really have to answer that?
The American religion of consumerism/capitalism has made it a "sin" to pass up an opportunity to make a profit. Heck, it's even illegal. Time and time again, I've heard CEO's, financial analysts, stockbrokers, and news commentators state that a company has a "legal responsibility to its stockholders" to make as much profit as they possibly can. That refrain is constantly used as justification for pursuing the most predatory and morally questionable practices... as long as they're not specifically illegal.
So, under this system, a company would be acting unethically if it passed up an opportunity to make scads of cash by partnering with a corrupt, oppressive system if their only qualms were moral. As long as there's no law preventing them, they HAVE to pursue the opportunity.
I first started thinking about this a couple of years ago, when I heard another NPR story about the impact that the "war on tobacco" is having on tobacco farmers in the US. One tobacco farmer who was interviewed said that in his view, the state (I don't remember which one he was from) should use some of the money they got from the tobacco companies as a legal settlement to subsidize his TOBACCO FARMING, since the settlement has made it harder for the big tobacco companies to pay him as much for his product. This guy was totally serious. He saw no problem with claiming that some of the money the states were awarded BECAUSE TOBACCO HARMS AND KILLS PEOPLE should rightfully go to him so that he can afford to continue GROWING TOBACCO.
I thought that this guy actually exemplified the sort of new moral compass that defines American economics and business. The reason this guy started growing tobacco was because it was profitable. The question of whether he SHOULD grow a crop that didn't contribute nutritionally to anyone, but rather served only to sicken and kill them was not part of the equation. The closest this guy came to considering this choice from a moral standpoint was to ask himself "is it against the law for me to grow tobacco?" The choice was not whether he should use his resources as a farmer to produce a product that contributed to people's health and well-being or to their illness and death; the choice was which crop that he is legally allowed to grow will net him the most profit.
In American business circles, to say "I haven't done anything wrong," actually means "I haven't done anything illegal." Partly to blame is our mania to use legislation as our exclusive weapon against predatory or oppressive practices. Remember the old saying, "you can't legislate morality"? Well, it's right. All the laws in the world won't make people moral. The most we can hope for from laws is that they limit the amount of harm the powerful can inflict on the vulnerable.
So what can we do about it? Pass even more laws? I would caution us against continuing down that road. By no means should we abandon legislation which is designed to protect the vulnerable, but neither should we assume that passing those laws is all that is necessary to establish justice. A person or group of business-people must want to pursue practices that put the considerations of the needy above those of themselves and their (mostly wealthy) stockholders. A power and authority higher than human laws is needed to accomplish that. An authority that considers the vulnerable before the powerful, who raises the valleys and lowers the hills, who brings calamity upon the wealthy and hope to the poor.
Don't worry, it's coming. Until then, all we can do is decide to accept or reject the morality of profit for ourselves, and to live accordingly. To join ourselves to a people who live by a different hope and under a Truth so large that it obliterates the lies that define our broken world.
Sounds simple, huh? It is. It's also so difficult that it's impossible to do ourselves, and impossible to do alone.
So don't do it yourself. And don't do it alone.
- "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
One of the guys they interviewed for the story was a veteran of the Alaskan oil boom and had represented his company there. In Alaska, the people who live there were paid for the right to drill on the land, and received rather substantial royalty checks every month. Needless to say, they thought that the oil company being there was a good thing. This guy is contrasting that to the situation in Russia, where the system is corrupt and the government contacts, mafia enforcers and local "bosses" are reaping all of the profit, while the locals are getting nothing.
What really caught my attention was that the American guy said something like "that's just the way it is in Russia, and if you want to do business here, you have to go along with it."
If that's the way it is, and you know it's not right, why in the world would you want to do business there?
Do I really have to answer that?
The American religion of consumerism/capitalism has made it a "sin" to pass up an opportunity to make a profit. Heck, it's even illegal. Time and time again, I've heard CEO's, financial analysts, stockbrokers, and news commentators state that a company has a "legal responsibility to its stockholders" to make as much profit as they possibly can. That refrain is constantly used as justification for pursuing the most predatory and morally questionable practices... as long as they're not specifically illegal.
So, under this system, a company would be acting unethically if it passed up an opportunity to make scads of cash by partnering with a corrupt, oppressive system if their only qualms were moral. As long as there's no law preventing them, they HAVE to pursue the opportunity.
I first started thinking about this a couple of years ago, when I heard another NPR story about the impact that the "war on tobacco" is having on tobacco farmers in the US. One tobacco farmer who was interviewed said that in his view, the state (I don't remember which one he was from) should use some of the money they got from the tobacco companies as a legal settlement to subsidize his TOBACCO FARMING, since the settlement has made it harder for the big tobacco companies to pay him as much for his product. This guy was totally serious. He saw no problem with claiming that some of the money the states were awarded BECAUSE TOBACCO HARMS AND KILLS PEOPLE should rightfully go to him so that he can afford to continue GROWING TOBACCO.
I thought that this guy actually exemplified the sort of new moral compass that defines American economics and business. The reason this guy started growing tobacco was because it was profitable. The question of whether he SHOULD grow a crop that didn't contribute nutritionally to anyone, but rather served only to sicken and kill them was not part of the equation. The closest this guy came to considering this choice from a moral standpoint was to ask himself "is it against the law for me to grow tobacco?" The choice was not whether he should use his resources as a farmer to produce a product that contributed to people's health and well-being or to their illness and death; the choice was which crop that he is legally allowed to grow will net him the most profit.
In American business circles, to say "I haven't done anything wrong," actually means "I haven't done anything illegal." Partly to blame is our mania to use legislation as our exclusive weapon against predatory or oppressive practices. Remember the old saying, "you can't legislate morality"? Well, it's right. All the laws in the world won't make people moral. The most we can hope for from laws is that they limit the amount of harm the powerful can inflict on the vulnerable.
So what can we do about it? Pass even more laws? I would caution us against continuing down that road. By no means should we abandon legislation which is designed to protect the vulnerable, but neither should we assume that passing those laws is all that is necessary to establish justice. A person or group of business-people must want to pursue practices that put the considerations of the needy above those of themselves and their (mostly wealthy) stockholders. A power and authority higher than human laws is needed to accomplish that. An authority that considers the vulnerable before the powerful, who raises the valleys and lowers the hills, who brings calamity upon the wealthy and hope to the poor.
Don't worry, it's coming. Until then, all we can do is decide to accept or reject the morality of profit for ourselves, and to live accordingly. To join ourselves to a people who live by a different hope and under a Truth so large that it obliterates the lies that define our broken world.
Sounds simple, huh? It is. It's also so difficult that it's impossible to do ourselves, and impossible to do alone.
So don't do it yourself. And don't do it alone.
- "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
Monday, April 11, 2005
What standardized test scores really tell us
The API numbers are out, and guess what? They tell you (once again) which students go to which schools.
What's that? You thought that they were supposed to tell you how well the students were being educated by their schools? You mean you bought that line? Let me tell you how the system really works:
Performance on standardized tests (including the CAT-6 and SAT) can be predicted very reliably by a few factors... none of which is the school the student attends.
Regardless of which schools students attend, the most reliable factor is the parents' level of education. More highly educated parents have kids who get better test scores. I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that the average student spends less than 1,500 hours a year under a teacher's supervision in a classroom, and more than 3, 500 hours a year under their parent's supervision outside of school. Who do you think has a greater impact on how they spend their time, especially in middle school and high school where those 1,500 hours are split up between 5-7 different teachers?
Another factor that affects test scores more than which school a student attends is socio-economic status. Poor students do worse than rich students, no matter where they go to school. Not suprisingly, there's a lot of overlap between parents socio-economic status and level of education. An interesting exception which proves the rule is the fact that children of teachers tend to do better than other students whose parents are in the same income bracket. If anything, this might be used as evidence that teachers are under-paid...
Another unsurprising trend is that minority students do worse than white students. What might be surprising is that this trend has more to do with socio-economic factors than race. It just so happens that more minorities are poor. Rich minority students with highly educated parents do nearly as well as their white counterparts, and the same trend can be seen in the poor performance of poor white children of poorly educated parents and their minority counterparts.
So, what do API scores tell us? They tell us the level of education of the parents of the students at that school, they tell us about the socio-economic status of the students at that school, and to a limited extent, they can give us an idea of the likelihood of minorities being over- or under-represented at the school. What they can't tell us is how well that school is educating students.
What to do? How about de-segregating schools? We've been trying to do it for 40 years, but schools are still segregated. It's less a question of race, however, than of socio-economics. We need to integrate the schools with rich kids and poor kids together. We need highly educated parents' kids in school with less educated parents' kids. That's the only way that test scores will be useful in the ways we try to use them.
I expect this will happen soon... as soon as the Devil ice-skates to work and farmers need airplanes to herd their swine. Until then, by all means let's punish schools for being willing to educate the poor and needy. I mean, what's the use of being rich and well-educated if your kids don't get preferential treatment?
- "Wait a minute. Are you telling me that we're so far behind the other students that we're going to catch up with them by going SLOWER than them?" (I'm kind of cheating, this is from a TV show and I couldn't find the exact quote...)
What's that? You thought that they were supposed to tell you how well the students were being educated by their schools? You mean you bought that line? Let me tell you how the system really works:
Performance on standardized tests (including the CAT-6 and SAT) can be predicted very reliably by a few factors... none of which is the school the student attends.
Regardless of which schools students attend, the most reliable factor is the parents' level of education. More highly educated parents have kids who get better test scores. I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that the average student spends less than 1,500 hours a year under a teacher's supervision in a classroom, and more than 3, 500 hours a year under their parent's supervision outside of school. Who do you think has a greater impact on how they spend their time, especially in middle school and high school where those 1,500 hours are split up between 5-7 different teachers?
Another factor that affects test scores more than which school a student attends is socio-economic status. Poor students do worse than rich students, no matter where they go to school. Not suprisingly, there's a lot of overlap between parents socio-economic status and level of education. An interesting exception which proves the rule is the fact that children of teachers tend to do better than other students whose parents are in the same income bracket. If anything, this might be used as evidence that teachers are under-paid...
Another unsurprising trend is that minority students do worse than white students. What might be surprising is that this trend has more to do with socio-economic factors than race. It just so happens that more minorities are poor. Rich minority students with highly educated parents do nearly as well as their white counterparts, and the same trend can be seen in the poor performance of poor white children of poorly educated parents and their minority counterparts.
So, what do API scores tell us? They tell us the level of education of the parents of the students at that school, they tell us about the socio-economic status of the students at that school, and to a limited extent, they can give us an idea of the likelihood of minorities being over- or under-represented at the school. What they can't tell us is how well that school is educating students.
What to do? How about de-segregating schools? We've been trying to do it for 40 years, but schools are still segregated. It's less a question of race, however, than of socio-economics. We need to integrate the schools with rich kids and poor kids together. We need highly educated parents' kids in school with less educated parents' kids. That's the only way that test scores will be useful in the ways we try to use them.
I expect this will happen soon... as soon as the Devil ice-skates to work and farmers need airplanes to herd their swine. Until then, by all means let's punish schools for being willing to educate the poor and needy. I mean, what's the use of being rich and well-educated if your kids don't get preferential treatment?
- "Wait a minute. Are you telling me that we're so far behind the other students that we're going to catch up with them by going SLOWER than them?" (I'm kind of cheating, this is from a TV show and I couldn't find the exact quote...)
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