In last Saturday's Budgeteer News, Pete Langr disputed an earlier column on education by another Budgeteer columnist, Virgil Swing. See "Test scores aren't a reliable indicator of quality", Pete Langr, Duluth Budgeteer News, 2009-08-15. Swing used test results to compare the quality of various schools, locally and internationally. Langr wrote that test scores are only part of the picture.
As an example, Langr use a remark by his sister that her school was better than a neighboring school. Her school kicked out its two worst students who went to the other school. That those two students increased the score of one school and decreased the score on another school says nothing about how well the rest of the students are doing. Without the scores of those two students both schools may have done equally well, as measured by standardized tests.
Langr and I exchanged a few emails on his column, and with his permission, here is some of what we wrote.
Magree: Thanks for another good column.
I don’t think many want to make the effort to measure the true success of schools: how happy are graduates with what they do with their lives and how much have they made the lives of others better?
You could measure how much graduates earn, but that doesn’t measure how much better they have made the world.
You could measure how many go on to college but NCLB doesn’t wait that long. For example, if Central High is failing because it didn’t meet AYP standards, is anybody counting how many graduates go on to college? I would bet that there are more Central graduates who go on to college than there are Central students who don’t make Annual Yearly Progress.
I think NCLB and the whole school quality “debate” are hidden ploys to decimate the public school system, ignoring that public schools have helped build a robust economy by producing a huge number of skilled people.
However, an unrestrained “free market” does not lead to a better education system. See “School Politics and the Wealth of Nations”.
Keep writing.
Langr: Your statement "how happy are graduates with what they do with their lives and how much have they made the lives of others better" is well beyond what I was thinking. I think you have a good perspective. I hadn't even got nearly that far. I was accepting the tests, but of course criticizing how they were used. You go way beyond that. Eventually, I will write more about what I think we should do.
I agree with you that much of NCLB actually seems designed to hurt schools, rather than help. We'll see how that plays out.
Thanks for the comment.
Magree: I just got back from choir practice and read your message. I got better music education in public schools than many people seem to have, but not enough to be a good musician. I know how to read music though not how to match it well. But one remark made by a high school music teacher has had a more profound impression on me than all the remembering of FACE and Every Good Boy Does Fine. [For those of you who "can't read music", FACE are the names of the notes between the lines of the usual staff and EGBDF are the names of the notes on the lines.]
In tenth grade music class, the male teacher said, “Anyone with intelligence can sing.” I don’t remember a single other thing he said or taught and only have a vague memory of the class room, but I’ve never forgotten that remark. Do you think any teacher would get performance pay for that kind of remark?
