Few arguments about education are as effective at galvanizing public attention and motivating political action as those that compare the performance of students with their counterparts in other countries and that connect academic achievement to economic performance. Because data from international large-scale assessments (ILSA) have a powerful effect on policy discourse, it is important to understand the limitations of these data as well as their benefits. This paper concentrates on three sets of cautions and caveats in the interpretation of ILSA and proposes a modest research agenda aimed at reinforcing the validity and utility of cross-national educational comparisons. Although aimed primarily at American policy and research audiences, the arguments in the paper are relevant to other countries for which performance on ILSA influences education reform.
The effort to write acceptable national goals into law can be understood retrospectively as the natural continuation of a discourse that was launched by the landmark report A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education [NCEE], 1983). Following on that enormously effective wake-up call, which alerted Americans to impending calamity if action was not taken to shore up our educational foundations, it was easier — for a brief moment in time — to find receptor sites across much of the political spectrum for the notion that national goals could be the basis for needed reforms.
Granted, ideologues on the right and left continued to fear, for different reasons, the encroachment of federal bureaucracy on the local definition of education and the local governance of schools; the specter of a national curriculum remained a looming threat. Nonetheless, the national goals in the Goals 2000: Educate America Act were written in language simple enough to deter overwhelming opposition and yet were meaty enough to be more than apple pie and motherhood (see Swanson, 1991). They covered a number of key issues — early childhood readiness, high school completion, student achievement and citizenship, science and mathematics, adult literacy, school safety — and by implying a commitment to increased equity and higher standards, the goals echoed a theme that had been pervasive in American educational history for over a century (e.g., Cremin, 1990).
Keillor may not have known the data, but he had a good intuition that President Nixon’s exuberance even about the past was off the mark: The United States had never really been “numero uno” on most indicators that matter.
More: No Country Left Behind: Rhetoric and Reality of International Large-Scale Assessment
This past April, schools across the country participated in statewide standardized testing. Thanks to the No Child Left Behind Act, a school’s funding is now based on the test scores of its students. The need for high test scores puts an immense amount of pressure on teachers and students alike. Teachers are compelled to spend weeks preparing students for the standardized test; valuable classroom time that would normally be used to teach math, science, literacy, and art is instead used to teach students how to manipulate the test.
Universal education access has been a tired horse ridden by politicians for years now. It's promoted so vehemently that only an outsider might oppose the idea, yet the methods by which it is funded are immoral, as the taxpayers are given no choice as to whether or not to participate. The state's monopoly on force gives no option to opt-out of the program, hence it is immoral and despite any positive benefits.
Students are well aware of the negative impact poor test results will have on their schools and their futures. 8th grader Katie Hartman wrote: “In the end what standardized tests give us is a number and nothing more. A number that may or may not be a fair representation of how a person understands all they have been taught. For years these scores have dictated high school courses, college acceptances, and the self-esteem of students around the nation. Students’ futures can lie in those very digits. Yet a mere number cannot evaluate a person’s creativity, understanding, ethics, and many other traits that we respect in others.” Is this the kind of pressure we want our kids feeling as they sit for these tests?
No Child Left Behind? Yeah, Right! - Commentarista :Commentarista
And things aren't any better domestically than they are internationally...
"No Child Left Behind Obama Style" - Michigan test scores reveal a country in steep decline.(TT).Racial gaps in Michigan exam results a concern.Michigan educators have spent years trying to address the persistent gap in achievement between white and minority students, but Michigan Merit Exam results released Thursday provided troubling news: The gap keeps widening.
“Results in Detroit Public Schools were grimmer. Just 205 students — or 6% of the 3,418 who took the math exam — passed. In science, 104 students — or 3% of the 3,477 students who took the exam, passed. Only 1.8% DPS students were deemed college ready. “
The State Board of Education and the Michigan Department of Education recently set closing the achievement gap — the difference in percentage of students passing the exam — as a key goal for the 2012-13 school year.
• Database: Find 2012 Michigan Merit Exam results for your district or school
The gaps, State Superintendent Mike Flanagan said in a statement, are “shameful.”
“We need to end this disparity in education, and we need to do this together as a state,” Flanagan said.
Overall, Thursday’s release of MME results was mixed. Average ACT scores are up. So is the percentage of students considered college-ready. But students struggled against a higher standard for passing the exams, with only about a quarter of them passing in math and science.
The achievement gap between white and black students widened in reading, math, science and writing on the MME, and narrowed in only social studies. The gap between white and Hispanic students widened in math and science, but narrowed in other subjects.
The gap also widened for both groups in the percentage of students considered college-ready.
Plymouth-Canton Community Schools leaders have worked for several years to address the achievement gap.“We are very concerned about (the gaps),” said Jeanne Farina, assistant superintendent for instructional services. District and building equity teams are looking at the gaps, she said, “and digging deep into the data to find out where did they start to fail and what we can do about it.”
• At nearly 80 schools statewide, none of the students was considered college-ready. That includes 11 charter schools, 31 alternative schools and 36 traditional, comprehensive high schools. Sixteen Detroit Public Schools had no college-ready students.
• Only six schools in the state had more than half their students considered college-ready.
If America doesn’t turn around (like repeal healthcare, shun statist socialism and get back to liberty, freedom and business) it’s future is here.Hmmmm......Now if he follows the 'example of his BFF Erdogan he could start 'Religious Imam Hatip schools' the level is 'easier'.In Turkey, only 27 percent of the adult population has a complete secondary school education, compared with 65 percent in the EU, 74 percent in Korea, 82 percent in Poland, and 87 percent in the US.Read the full story here.
MFS - The Other News: "No Child Left Behind Obama Style" - Michigan test scores reveal a country in steep decline.
Still think everyone deserves public education, despite it's overall failures and moral deficiencies?
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