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Fri, 22 Aug 2008
What does a high school diploma mean?
If, like me, you have a high school student in the house, you probably know about the new requirements for high school graduation. Adopted in 2003, the first class to satisfy them (mostly) has just graduated.
The requirements are interesting. There is a requirement for a certain amount of course work, and also a requirement for a "project" that involves a great deal of individualized attention and instruction. Students are expected to think of something good to do, to do it in some depth, and to report on it with a paper or presentation. At my daughter's school, she tells me that one boy, a drummer, composed a piece of music for nine xylophones and another converted an old car to use biodiesel. Others arranged internships with a variety of local businesses. The idea is to acquaint the students with pursuing something deeply, while also allowing them to follow their own interests.
But those aren't the only parts of our graduation requirements. Seniors are also required to have taken the NECAP tests, a standardized test administered in the fall of junior year. This is kind of a curious requirement, since the test was designed to be an assessment tool for an entire school, not an individual student.
The problem with the NECAP tests is a suspicion among people on the Board of Regents that lots of students don't take it seriously enough. So it was added to the new graduation requirements, though at a low enough level that flunking the test won't deny anyone a diploma by itself. It's an odd reason to add this as a graduation requirement, but it's an odd world, isn't it?
The graduation requirements were developed five years ago, by a different board not yet dominated by Governor Carcieri's appointees. But now it is, and now this board is considering a proposal to make the NECAP test worth a third of a student's final grade, a level at which flunking the test could indeed cost a student a diploma.
Sounds good to you? Get tough with those students, right? Well maybe you should ask what's the difference between a tool for evaluating a school and a tool for passing a student. The important one is this: more people flunk, and that's kind of the point. The reasons are technical, but the basic idea is that you learn more from the statistics if the passing rate is much lower than would be true for a review test in a class. So, for example, there's trigonometry on the math section of the test, which lots of students haven't taken by 11th grade. Is that the kind of test you want where a kid's future is on the line?
What's more, the test is administered annually in the fall of 11th grade. What's the point of a "graduation" test that covers only what you learned in 9th and 10th grades? Really, this is just reform that sounds good without actually being good.
In truth, though I think they're overrated, I really have nothing against high-stakes tests. The nation of France has survived just fine with one for decades. But France also has a uniform national curriculum to get their students to it and past it. We have only the test. (They also have widespread agreement about what constitutes a good education, something else we don't have.)
High-stakes testing is only fair if it comes with a curriculum to match, and then only if we don't pretend that the students who don't pass will somehow vanish. Those students are all real people, every single one of whom deserves a fair chance at a decent life. What's on the table isn't going to offer it to them.
Being fair about this means adding test days to give kids a second chance, providing remedial classes for kids who fail, and changing curricula to accommodate the test, and this is the real problem. Because if you think we can add services like that in a state where even our "rich" school systems can barely maintain the programs they already have, then you haven't been paying attention in class.
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