Standardizing Public Education

Today I was reading a post about the national decline of SAT scores over at my friend Erik's blog, and it got me thinking about our current emphasis on standardized testing in the public education system.

Personally, I've always had a bone to pick with the SAT. In my experience, SAT scores do little more than assess how well students TAKE THE SAT, not how good they are at the material covered in it. In fact, I believe the test itself has little bearing on how smart students are, how much they've learned, or how well they'll do in college. For example, when I was in high school during the late 1990s, I knew kids who routinely flunked their classes, yet walked away from the SAT with scores well into the 1500s. Conversely, plenty of smart kids doing well in the rigorous Advanced Placement classes (and who placed well
in AP exams) struggled to get scores in the low 1000s.

Why is this?

First, the SAT does not necessarily cover what high school kids are learning. It demands excellence in the "math" and "verbal" skills alone, which break down roughly into "algebra and geometry" and "grammar and reading comprehension." Although that sounds basic, when you take a look at the realities of high school learning, it's not. In the math category, the test does not take into consideration that every high school senior is at a different place in his or her math education. Some students have never taken algebra or geometry, instead filling math requirements with computer science or other math-related classes. Still others, such as myself, had been pushed ahead, taking calculus in high school. Most of us hadn't seen an algebra equation since we were 12 years old -- a situation which left us a bit rusty on those geometry theorems. Similarly, the grammar portion of the English test (besides being tricky) hearkens back to ideas which most students learned in first or second grade, and haven't been asked to replicate since. Then, the reading/vocabulary section favors students who are taking the most advanced English classes in high school, while there is little to reward those students who have instead chosen to focus their intense studies in the science, history or technology fields - all of which are almost completely absent from the exam.

This disconnect between the test and the student is one which highlights a major flaw in how we educate public school students in general - but more on that later.

Secondly, the SAT is psychologically more manipulative than your average test, and therefore, those who succeed at the exam do so more because they've learned to "play the game" than because they're exceptionally knowledgeable about the content. Essentially, the SAT asks students, "Can you demonstrate math and verbal skills to us while we try to trip you up as much as possible within a time limit. Remember to consider that if you skip a question it doesn't count against you, but if you answer wrong it does, and every 1/3 of a point equals something else, and by the way, the rest of your success in life depends on this."

Give me a break.

Why all the mind game crap? Why not just a simple test, where a correct answer is a point and an incorrect one is not? The fact that kids even take "SAT PREP CLASSES" says it all. What the SAT SHOULD be evaluating is what students have learned from their normal 12 years of pre-college education, not what they learned in a week of expensive "how to take the SAT" classes. That way, students who worked hard all through school would naturally do well, and those who did not would not.

But the SAT doesn't makes things this simple because it is a BUSINESS.

The college board makes lots of money by holding "official" SAT classes, and then sits back and collects entrance fee after entrance fee from students who take the test again and again in hopes of getting a better score. Then there are the computer tutoring programs, and the books, and the guides. Finally, there are even those insane parents who go out and hire their son or daughter a SAT COACH. I'm not even going to get into how this economic push behind the SAT process favors the rich, while putting poorer students at a distinct disadvantage. And for what? Because the college board, like the Godfather of some College Admissions Mafia, has convinced the entire country that your SAT score effects the rest of your life.

Bullshit.

I scored an embarrassing 1092 on my first SAT. True, a lot of colleges wouldn't look at me as a result. But I got into Wheaton College (named one of the best in the country recently by The New York Times), graduated as a double major with a 3.75 GPA, and now go to an Ivy League graduate school. Take that.

So why do we put up with all this? Because the Board of Education demands that public schooling be STANDARDIZED. Clearly, everyone should learn the same thing, at the same time, and be able to perform the same on a test which asks the same thing of everyone.

But let's face it - no two kids are alike. Some learn faster. Some learn slower. Some are naturally better writers, others mathematicians, others scientists, and others artists. Also, no two kids learn the SAME WAY. Some memorize things by rote, while others need to do them out. There are visual learners, hands-on learners, and kids who learn by listening. There are kids with psychological problems. But yet, we expect to pour them into one end of a funnel and have them come out the other side doing equally well on an exam made by people who haven't been students in decades. It just doesn't work. If you want to standardize something, give kids a test in kindergarten and see HOW they learn. Then educate them for the next 12 years accordingly.

I realize however, that the resources to do this are likely beyond our grasp. Okay. So how about instead, if you want to STANDARDIZE EDUCATION so much, why not do it in a SENSICAL way?

Take history for example. Why are kids taught early American History in elementary school, World War II in 5th grade, ancient Egypt in 6th grade, geography in 7th grade, the Holocaust in 8th grade, anthropology in 9th grade, Rome in 10th grade, American history (again) in 11th grade, and all of European history in 12th grade? Does that make sense to you? It doesn't to me, and it sure as hell didn't as a student. If you want kids to be better at a linear subject like history, you need to teach it in a linear way. Do ancient history in elementary school, the middle ages and Renaissance in middle school, and then the Enlightenment to the present in high school. History builds upon itself, but students can't make those connections when their learning is so disjointed.

The same is true of other subjects. Why did I learn to write a business cover letter in second grade, when I didn't need to know how until my senior year of high school (and had certainly forgotten by then)? Why did fractions and percents always come at the end of the math book, so that we never got to them before summer, and then the next year's text book started all over again with addition? Why wasn't one grade begun with fractions and percents, and assume kids remember addition? I still don't know how to calculate percents, and I'm 24 years old with a Master's degree!

These are problems we CAN FIX. Lower SAT scores are a symptom of a much larger problem, and that problem is not the kids.

The War Tapes

Earlier tonight I attended the hometown premiere Deborah Scranton's documentary film, The War Tapes. Deborah, an alum of my graduate program, was there to talk to the crowd before and answer questions after the screening of her movie, which recently won "Best Documentary" at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival, and "Best International Documentary" at the 2006 Britdoc Festival.

The War Tapes is a gripping film, shot almost entirely with handheld DigiCams by members of the New Hampshire National Guard infantry division during their tour of duty. Stationed at LA Anaconda in the Sunni Triangle, the film follows three men who volunteered to be outfitted with cameras: Sgt. Steve Pink, a 24-year-old from Kingston, MA (right next door to my hometown of Plymouth), Sgt. Zack Bazzi, an Arabic-speaking Lebanese immigrant from Watertown, MA, and Specialist Mike Moriarty, a 35-year-old family man from Windsor, NH. Almost immediately we are drawn to these three personalities as they become comfortable with their newfound roles as cameramen. Although Deborah was in internet contact with the men to direct some shots from the background, for the most part she let them film as they pleased - and the result is a movie which is startlingly REAL -- something I can imagine my brother making with his friends... only thousands of miles away in the middle of a warzone.

As a result, they bring a humanity to the war that isn't the emotional drama of a so-called "reality" show. Rather, you see the honesty of normal people dealing with abnormal situations. Sometimes they're funny, writing "bigger is better" on a missile launcher. Sometimes they're pissed, sometimes they're bloodthirsty ("I wanna kill something, now!"), sometimes they're horny ("I'm gonna jerk off now because there'll be no time to jerk off later"), sometimes they're politically incorrect ("Let's just nuke the entire fucking country"), and sometimes they're just unabashedly BOYS, putting a scorpion and camel spider in a tank and cheering them on as they fight to the death. It's through these things that we see our friends, our neighbors, our fathers and our brothers.

Of course, there are moments of gravity; at one point, an Iraqi woman is killed when she is hit by one the guys' trucks as she is crossing the street. "There are cookies everywhere," one of the soldiers says. "She was carrying fucking cookies."

Providing an emotional foil to these personalities is footage of their loved ones back home, shot by Deborah and spliced between scenes of Iraq. We get to see Pink's girlfriend going about her day without him, and Moriarty's wife trying balance her job with raising her kids. Most heartwrenching for me, however, was seeing Bazzi's mother -- an bubbly Lebanese woman with a thick accent -- allowing her laughter to crumble for just that one moment when she says, "I left everything behind [in Lebanon] because I wanted to save my kids. Now here I am, and he's in the worst place in the world."

But really makes this film impressive is how it manages to remain completely apolitical. All of the men have their reasons for being in Iraq (all voluntary), and all have differing opinions about Bush, the political climate, etc. But the film itself holds back any kind of judgment of its own. As Deborah said in her talkback, "Whether we like it our not, we're a country at war. So we should damn well know what it looks like, sounds like, and feels like." The film asked 3 men to show us just that, and that's exactly what they did.

Personally, I've found myself perpetually conflicted about the Iraq War since it's inception in 2003 -- an unusual feeling for me, as I generally have very steadfast opinions about such matters. As of late, however, I find that my overwhelming perception has aligned itself closely with that of former President Clinton -- regardless of why went to Iraq and what anyone's personal opinion is of that fact, the bottom line is this:

We're there now. Let's deal with it.

Historians can argue for the 10 next millennia as to what our motivations for involvement were and whether or not destabilizing the country was a good idea, but as long as there are troops on the ground, we should forget all that BS and make the best decisions for us right NOW.

We should all start by watching this film.