Via JoanneJacobs I see this very insightful post on education reform. The key paragraphs are:
It turns out, according to the Times, that the law’s system for labeling schools failing (based as it is on the performance of various subgroups at each school) has managed to place thousands of schools in middle-class neighborhoods on “failing” lists, thus really ticking off the parents in those communities.
What a scoop!
For those of you who don’t follow education policy more closely than baseball, that’s sarcasm. This storyline is as old as the law — or at least as old as the first lists of failing schools issued under it.
When you track the performance and progress of schools in middle-class communities not just on average, but instead look at whether these schools are doing a good job of serving black, Hispanic, special ed and bilingual kids, the results are almost never very favorable.
When these schools are subsequently labeled as “failing” to meet NCLB’s guidelines, parents start freaking out: Will my kid have a hard time getting into college from a “failing” school? Will property values plummet? Will my daughter end up married to someone who went to community college?
Now, this panic isn’t entirely unjustified. This is just the kind of havoc that the law was always bound to wreak. The toughness and thoroughness of these standards is at the heart of the law: That’s NO child left behind, thank you very much.
But that brings us to the core problem with NCLB — and, I would argue, with virtually all reforms of public education.
The pattern is familiar. A law like NCLB is passed, demanding that all schools meet “high standards.” But then something completely unpredictable happens: Schools, with no extra resources, with no extra freedom to run themselves, with the exact same student populations they’ve always been serving, don’t improve all that much. Communities are outraged that their schools are failing, teachers unions look bad and so do the politicians.
So, the standards are loosened in a variety of ways: the bar is lowered (the federal Department of Education has already done some of this), the tests are made easier so that it looks things are getting better (New York state is expert at this) and more students and schools are exempted from the standards (New York and the feds are both great at this).
…
Public education reform is only as strong as the political will to enforce it.
To put it mildly, that will is never very strong. There will always be teachers unions (one of the most powerful forces in American politics), racial grievance-mongers, soft-hearted parents, lazy bureaucrats and a host of others who will say: To hell with it.
Education reform is politically difficult because it involves tackling two very difficult constituencies–teacher’s unions and parents who don’t want to see their school labeled as ‘having problem’.
I’m not at all sure what the solution is, but the subject is too important to leave alone.
The best public high school (20 national merit finalists last year) in my municipality recieved a failing grade. The problem is the law.
Public education reform is only as strong as the political will to enforce it.
And only as meaningful as the metrics they attempt to enforce.
First of all, it’s clear that NCLB is a farce. Trying to get everyone up to the standard is like Lake Woebegone Days writ large: it’s impossible by definition. Especially if you include special education kids as part of that 100%.
Now, if it’s reform of the teachers’ unions you want (why is it that the solution to every problem in America, according to the GOP, is to weaken an interest group that aligns with the Democrats? Hmmm.), then John Kerry’s your man. Here’s his proposal for a “new bargain” with America’s teachers.
I am sure that Sebastian, since he cares deeply about education reform and especially the teachers’ unions, will now be voting for John Kerry.
While there are certainly some incompetent teachers in public education, I’d like to see more pressure applied to parents.
Here’s a clue: if there are no books in your house, if there’s a TV and a PlayStation in every room, if your teen works 30 hours a week so he can have dubs on his Civic, his bad grades might not be the result of a “failing school.”
We’re running into the same sort of problem at our local public high school: my son is in the International Baccalaureate Program at his high school, and he was told yesterday by a counselor that if his school receives a “Fail” from NCLB, his IB certificate will not “count.” My task during my lunch hour today will be to discover whether or not this claim is true; I’m having trouble believing it, because it seems quite irrational to me.
The school, of course, is “Failing” (or I wouldn’t be storytelling), and the problem is well understood in our community. Our high school district includes a locality that occupies a lower rung on the socioeconomic ladder than ours (a lower-class white neighborhood, thank you very much). Last year, I occasionally helped out in my son’s Health class, and I can say that teaching these kids can be a bit of a trial, for disciplinary and attention-span reasons, rather than raw-intellectual-horsepower reasons.
Among all of the potential political solutions that have been discussed at our school board meetings, there are two that define the end points:
(1) Raise our local property taxes, and hire about two dozen more teachers (with special training) to try to bring these kids into compliance with NCLB.
(2) Take a page from the Tom Delay playbook, and redraw the school district to throw these kids into the district of another community.
For the record, my argument has been that we will indeed need to hire more (and better teachers) for these kids, but the cost can be reduced substantially if (a) some of us are willing to help out in the classroom, and (b) we can figure out some way to increase the average emotional and intellectual investment of the _parents_ of these kids. I have admitted publicly that (b) is mostly speculation on my part: I don’t know how to do this myself; maybe the parents are already doing the best they can, and I’m just making snotty, uninformed assumptions.
In any case, the idea that NCLB compliance problems can be solved primarily by bolstering our political will is uninformed at best and disingenuous at least. I’m not willing to sweep these kids under the rug, but if we can’t figure out some way to help them sufficiently to meet the NCLB requirements (i.e., if we as a community don’t have the needed skills, and we can’t/won’t hire people that do have them), then it is ridiculous to make the IB kids pay for our failure.
As further anecdotal input, I should note that the average salary of a teacher at the nearest secular private high school in our municipal area is 127% higher than at our local public school, reflecting a tuition that would make Stanford grimace. I am not a liberal by any means, but it seems to me that we expect the liberals to do the heavy lifting for us when salaries for vital services (e.g., teaching, nursing) are relatively low, but the population served merits significant sympathy (e.g., children, the sick.) In business, when we find that the average skill level of a given labor population is too low, we raise the average salary. If many of our problems with teacher skills can’t be solved by raising teacher salaries, it would be the first labor market that I am aware of that is immune to this common and trivial solution.
Good post. After they made it so that everyone has to take the Regents in New York State, the Regents became insultingly easy. I proctored a test where the main essay question, which you are supposed to answer accoridng to what you’ve learned in two years of history classes that the test covers, was “What are some of the differences between capitalism and communism?”
It’s called the advanced track for a reason. We should make sure that everyone who wants to go to a good college gets the chance to, but we also need to realize that not every student wants to or should go to a top college. Many of them can make a better and even more lucrative life for themselves by making other choices. By cramming everyone into an “advanced” system, all you are bound to do is destroy the advanced nature of the system. Sigh.
IB not count? Since the US has zero to do with the IB lisencing procedure I seriously doubt it. IB is a test-based system.
The problem with No Child Left Behind is that lots of averagish schools do very little for their lower-performing students. The whole point of NCLB is that such schools aren’t allowed to get away with ignoring those kids. It isn’t shocking that okish middle-class schools are whining–they don’t want to have to deal with those kids.
Praktike, education is one of my pet issues. I’ve been following reforms for quite some time, and I have NEVER seen a high profile Democrat do anything other than talk about the hiring/firing problem which Kerry mentions in his incredibly small section of your cited article on Education. Democrats as a rule cave on that issue first because pressure from teacher’s unions is incredibly high. I see no reason to change my vote on the basis of a promise which will clearly be broken. Kerry had 20 years to propose that kind of reform. He didn’t, and there is a reason he didn’t.
Sebastian, it’s too bad the WaMo article is no longer online. If it were, I’d point you to something or other in there that showed that Kerry has bucked the teachers unions in the past. Alas. In any case, I think it’s far more likely that Democrats will be able to get something done here, as any Republican proposal is liable to be met with scorched-earth opposition.
Please keep in mind that a Conservative goal is (and has been since the 1980s) to destroy public education in the US. One of the weapons in this little crusade is to try to test schools to death; NCLB is simply another shot in this war. Look at the writings of assorted Conservatives; you’ll see a constant cant of “the schools are terrible, the schools are failing, the schools must be destroyed”. Evidence? Anecdotes (Columbine), moral rants (bare- midriff T shirts, expensive sneakers), and, above all, test scores.
I have no idea why this is; the “taking Jesus out of education” argument seems to be limited to a few crazies. Maybe it really is only that the teachers’ unions tend to support Democrats. Makes sense, if the Republicans are trying to destroy you …
Now, there is exactly one thing that correlates with high academic achievement, and that is parental involvement. If a parent’s only involvement with their kid’s education is dumping them off in the morning and picking them up in the afternoon, the kids’ chances aren’t good. If the parents get in there with the kids and *push*, the kids will probably succeed, despite pretty much anything.
“Please keep in mind that a Conservative goal is (and has been since the 1980s) to destroy public education in the US. One of the weapons in this little crusade is to try to test schools to death; NCLB is simply another shot in this war.”
I must have missed that package. Liberals have been complaining that public education was abysmal since the late 1960s. Conservatives didn’t agree until the late 1970s. They have different approaches about how to fix the problem.
Teachers’ unions are against testing because they like the current situation where teachers aren’t remotely accountable for their techniques. There will be no major improvement without accountability. But if you would like to talk about how to get accountability without testing, I’d be thrilled to talk about it.
After a brief conversation with my son’s high school counselor, I can say that there’s no concrete reason to believe that NCLB “failure” will in any way affect an IB diploma. So there’s (probably) no reason to fear this particular consequence of NCLB.
Nevertheless, I am fascinated by Sebastian’s characterization of the hiring/firing issue as a key reason to feel that Democrats have not risen to the challenge of reforming education. As far as I can tell, neither major party is taking it seriously, NCLB notwithstanding.
It is becoming clear to those of us in the trenches (i.e., parents and teachers) who are dealing with the reality of NCLB that (a) higher taxes and (b) greater parental involvement in education are necessary conditions for meeting the new guidelines. However, at this point we have no reason to believe that they are also sufficient conditions for doing so. Perhaps, despite our best efforts, we will fail because we are not smart enough, even if we have dedicated enough time and money.
The tax issue is particularly vexing. Let us postulate for the sake of (a potentially straw-man) argument that there will be a Republican revolution in the sphere of education over the next decade. In particular, let us hope that the teacher’s unions are routed, strict competency and performance standards for teachers are put in place, and we enter a new era of teacher accountability. What then?
Won’t teacher salaries rise dramatically if we succeed in establishing this desired outcome? I assume they will, unless (a) we can figure out some way of sigificantly increasing the prestige of teaching as a profession, or (b) we also establish compulsory national service, so that we can pay talented but inexperienced people to teach at below-market wages.
For example, college professors in my field are generally paid much lower salaries than I am, even though many of them are more talented than I am. Presumably, the value that the professor places on the benefits of the academic environment (e.g., greater freedom for tenured faculty, the opportunity to teach and mentor gifted graduate students, greater professional prestige, etc.) is sufficient to compensate him or her for the difference in wages. On a related anecdotal note, I have noticed a correlation between the political beliefs of our best local public school teachers (who tend to be more liberal than I am) and their belief that teaching is a “higher calling.” Although I find this irritating, it may be a simple reflection of the demographics of our metropolitan area, which tends to be more liberal than the nation at large.
In the business world, we certainly have issues with unions and the wage/competence ratio. In some cases, we can even quantify the costs of a union, in — for example — inflated wages caused by insitutionalized seniority requirements. (Yes, there are societal costs associated with throwing older workers out onto the streets, but that’s a discussion for another day.) There are two French teachers at my son’s school. One of them is wonderful, the other is is abysmal. Unfortunately, though, the abysmal teacher is the third one that our school has hired in five years. There has been no shortage of applicants, but there has been a shortage of ability — at this point, demand far outstrips supply. The two French teachers at the local private high school are allegedly outstanding, but I don’t hold out any hope that one of them will suddenly and altruistically take a job at our public school. Therefore, it seems to me that one possible consequence of the nirvana of accountability that I have described above will be that some public schools like ours will have one (altruistic) French teacher, not two.
To summarize, my experience as a parent in dealing with the problem of improving the quality of teaching offered at our local public school (in a fashion that complies with the law, as set out by NCLB) has inspired me to ask a general question: If we succeed in establishing new standards for the competency and performance of public school teachers, then how much should we expect wages for teachers to increase? I would be grateful if anyone truly interested in this problem could point me to an estimate of the potential labor costs of complying with the new requirements.
Requisite education thread sidereal contribution:
You cannot meaningfully discuss how to ‘fix’ the education system or determine the degree to which it is ‘broken’ until you can clearly articulate exactly what it is the education system is supposed to accomplish.
On the MO post, it sounds to me like a big part of the problem is that students are being evaluated or stigmatized according to which school they went to, and not how well they did at it, which sounds to me like the worst sort of racial and economic (to the extent that there’s a high correlation between race/economic status and school location) stereotyping. I’d go to the colleges and ask what they hell they’re doing.
In particular, let us hope that the teacher’s unions are routed, strict competency and performance standards for teachers are put in place, and we enter a new era of teacher accountability.
I’m all for teacher accountability in some abstract sense. What I alluded to above, though, remains in full force: by what metrics do you gauge a teacher’s competency? How, in particular, can one determine, in some meaningfully near-objective manner, whether a teacher should be hired or fired?
This isn’t just some random griping from The Left here, it goes to the fundamental question that this debate endlessly circumscribes but never tackles: what is the purpose of mandatory public education? What are we trying to accomplish? What goals do we have in mind that are worth the expenditure of public monies? Without answers to those questions, we can’t even begin to grapple with the subsidiary questions, What is a teacher’s role in this process? and By what measures do we gauge their successes and failures?, let alone the question, How the heck do you quantify such things anyway?
Breaking “the power of the teacher’s unions” (I’m starting to get the impression that our public schools are being run by the Illuminati) as an end unto itself will only replace one broken educational system for another; we have to tackle this problem at its source and foment a national debate aimed at answering the above questions. Only then will “standards” accomplish anything, only then will “accountability” actually have a meaning, and only then will the students and parents of the US have an educational system worthy of their potential.
Nuts! I was hoping to get here before sidereal. Ah well, greats minds and all that 🙂
You gotta get up pretty early in the morning (today, about 10:00 AM) to beat me to the punch.
“The two French teachers at the local private high school are allegedly outstanding, but I don’t hold out any hope that one of them will suddenly and altruistically take a job at our public school.”
This is an interesting supposition considering that private school teachers almost uniformly get paid less than public school teachers.
Anarch and sidreal, are you arguing against public education? Is the left incapable of determining what schools are good for? Why do I hear so much about the dismal state of education from the left if we don’t even know what schools are for? How can you complain about the NCLB act if you don’t know what schools are for?
Sounds like post-modern carping to me.
“Is the left incapable of determining what schools are good for?”
I don’t know, you’ll have to ask it.
Personally, I know what *I* think schools ought be good for, but since this isn’t a dictatorship, the more important consideration is whether or not we as a society can come to some consensus on it.
“How can you complain about the NCLB act if you don’t know what schools are for?”
My complaint is that the people who wrote it don’t know what schools are for, because they haven’t bothered to figure it out. Also, it’s underfunded relative to its demands. Other than that, when have I complained about it?
“Sounds like post-modern carping to me.”
Bizarre. So figuring out what a system is supposed to do before you melee about whether it’s doing a good job is ‘post-modern carping’. Since Anarch and I are sitting around smoking weed with Derrida and Foucault, why don’t you fill us in on what the goal of the education system is, with your two feet so firmly on the ground.
Speaking for myself:
Anarch and sidreal, are you arguing against public education?
No.
Is the left incapable of determining what schools are good for?
I don’t think there’s a clearly-defined consensus of what schools are supposed to do, irrespective of political ideology. I do think there’s a misplaced belief in the universality of the justification for schools and education, as well as a common myopia correlating the desired outcomes with practices. Without exploring these vagaries, any attempt at reform will be doomed by interested parties clinging desperately to what they perceive to be the fundamental raison d’etre of education.
Why do I hear so much about the dismal state of education from the left if we don’t even know what schools are for?
Because I know what I believe the purpose of education to be, but I have no belief in the universality of such a claim. I also don’t think that my goals of education (which include a career in the field) can be accomplished with people making explicit what it is they really want the educational system to accomplish and — as with any governmental expenditure — justifying the expense of public monies on these projects.
And, of course, because I know from personal experience that the vast majority of students entering my classroom are woefully underprepared for the rigors of the class they’re taking, despite possessing the intellectual capacity to tackle the material. [Which, given how unrigorous the class usually is, is a sorry state of affairs.] Whatever it is that their education is supposed to be doing, it ain’t, at least as far as I’m concerned.
How can you complain about the NCLB act if you don’t know what schools are for?
The unwelcome silver lining: by pretty much anyone’s measure of the success of schools, NCLB is failing. You don’t really have to cut it any finer than that.
Sounds like post-modern carping to me.
Hardly. Messing around with educational reform without addressing this issue would be like remodelling the military without asking the nature of the wars it must fight, or overhauling the penal system without asking the purpose of incarceration. It’s the fundamental question without which this debate is meaningless. It’s the fundamental question that, unanswered, will turn any attempt at educational reform into a trainwreck. I can’t even begin to understand what your problem is.
But, since you seem so assured: tell me, what are schools for? Seeing as how you’re of the right, and therefore immune to such “postmodern carping”, there is a correct answer and you’ll be graded accordingly.
And in today’s thread, the part of Anarch will be played by sidereal. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Well, yours was better, but I got to sneak a drug reference in.
“‘The two French teachers at the local private high school are allegedly outstanding, but I don’t hold out any hope that one of them will suddenly and altruistically take a job at our public school.’
This is an interesting supposition considering that private school teachers almost uniformly get paid less than public school teachers.”
It is not a supposition in this case. As I pointed out in my first post above, the local private school is secular, and we have confirmed that the teachers are paid signficantly better than those at our local public school. The tuition at this private school is beyond the reach of our family budget. Nevertheless, because our son is (and our daughter probably will be) enrolled in the IB program, he will get a good education if he rises to the challenge. But I am following the spirit of NCLB, and trying to improve the quality of the education that the local public high school offers the children of the entire community.
Again, if you have any credible data that would rationally lead us to conclude that increased legal and community expectations for public school teacher qualifications and performance will not also lead to increased expectations for public school teacher wages, I would be grateful if you could point me to it. If this data includes private school teacher salaries at all, I’d be grateful if there was some way to separate secular schools from religious schools, because the secular data is more likely to be relevant to the case of public schools.
I assure that I’m not trying to score partisan high-school debating points here. I very, very much want to know the correct answer to the question that I posed above, without having to discover the answer experimentally first.
Yikes! Key typo in the first graf of my second answer above:
I also don’t think that my goals of education… can be accomplished with people making explicit…
should read
also don’t think that my goals of education… can be accomplished without people making explicit…
Sorry for the confusion.
Anarch and sidereal. Both of you claim to have ideas about what you think public education is for, but neither of you have shared them.
As for mine–in brief, public education should:
Provide a minimal level of competence for all non-seriously disabled students. That should include at a minimum:
The ability to read and comprehend writing to at least the newspaper level.
The ability to perform and understand simple mathematical operations.
The demonstrated learning of some of the more basic history of the country.
The ability to utilize computers at a basic user level.
Items like these would tend to form the minimum core competencies which should be passed by all students. If a school can’t teach nearly all of its students at this level, it isn’t functioning as a public school.
One of the key complaints about standardized testing is that it can’t effectively measure fine gradations in skill. This should have nothing to do with the above because such testing would not be targetted at sorting students into small ability levels, but rather to see if they have reached a minimum competency level.
Schools should also provide more advanced skills to those who are willing and able to handle it. This should include advanced courses or the ability to send the child to advanced courses. It should prepare for college those who are willing and able.
For those not willing and able to go to college, public schooling should provide other types of training. This is a key oversight in many modern college-oriented schooling systems. But even the non college-oriented kids should exit the school system as literate graduates with at least some functioning math and computer skills.
Thats the brief version.
NPCurnudgeon, I’ll be happy to pay more for better teachers. I will not be happy to pay more for teachers who avoid job-performance measurements which allow me to find out if the are better. And that is the problem. Teachers’ unions have demanded higher and higher pay while avoiding measurement on performance. That can’t continue.
“The best public high school (20 national merit finalists last year) in my municipality recieved a failing grade. The problem is the law.”
The problem is that you are measuring the very top level students, while NCLB wants to see progress in the bottom level students. It seems quite plausible that a school catering to top level students might let its bottom level students languish.
Sebastian, I agree with you. All of your points are well taken.
Now, is there any way to figure out how much more we will need to pay? I am merely trying to address the reality of taking the NCLB law seriously in our community, and I would prefer to anticipate the consequences as accurately as I can.
Sebastian, that’s a reasonable list, but it’s in distinct opposition to the beliefs of a number of important interest groups and has only a passing resemblance to the current public education system. A random checklist of problems I see:
Colleges, Universities, and most of the people who want to attend them believe that lower public education is there to pre-sort and filter students according to their applicability to various levels of collegiate study.
One of the current roles of the public education system (and one encouraged by many parents) is to keep children out of trouble while they keep two incomes, or one income in a single-parent household.
Many parents also believe that public school should be designed to socialize their children.
Realize that under your model, the following things would have no reason to exist (and therefore are unjustifiable expenses): sports programs, clubs, any coverage of seriously disabled students, and mandatory classes beyond the 9th-grade level.
You suggest school should ‘provide’ something but leave unaddressed what happens if the students don’t choose to accept it. You can reasonably argue that all US public schools provide what you describe, and 95% of the education problem is that students aren’t interested in it. What then? Do teachers continue their current second career as motivational counselors and are graded on their ability to get their students to try, rather than their ability to educate the students who want to try?
What is the purpose of the gradation system under your model? Is it reasonable for more or less all 9-year-olds to be in the same grade, regardless of their competence and interest?
The public education system is fundamentally broken. And will be until we collectively address these questions, never losing track of the specific goals we want the education system to achieve.
As I’ve said before, the solution is transformational, not iterative. The public system should be a very simple, very focused fallback for parents who can’t take advantage of the real solution, which is finding a school that matches their education goals and having the opportunity to put their children in it.
Following up on sidereal’s point, Sebastian, while I might agree with your list of goals for the public school system, they would be in violation of federal law in particular Title I.
Or, to say it another way, you can’t get there from here.
“Please keep in mind that a Conservative goal is (and has been since the 1980s) to destroy public education in the US. One of the weapons in this little crusade is to try to test schools to death; NCLB is simply another shot in this war. Look at the writings of assorted Conservatives; you’ll see a constant cant of “the schools are terrible, the schools are failing, the schools must be destroyed”. Evidence? Anecdotes (Columbine), moral rants (bare- midriff T shirts, expensive sneakers), and, above all, test scores.”
That’s a pretty damning indictment of public schools if you think that a good way for their enemies to destroy them is to give their students a test and show the world how poorly they do on them.
“Now, there is exactly one thing that correlates with high academic achievement, and that is parental involvement. If a parent’s only involvement with their kid’s education is dumping them off in the morning and picking them up in the afternoon, the kids’ chances aren’t good. If the parents get in there with the kids and *push*, the kids will probably succeed, despite pretty much anything.”
Then what exactly is the value added provided by the public school?
That’s a pretty damning indictment of public schools if you think that a good way for their enemies to destroy them is to give their students a test and show the world how poorly they do on them.
*I* don’t think that. The rightwingers do. The constant testing forces schools to “teach to the test”, and to spend resources on testing that could go to other things. The government claims that NCLB is adequately funded; I’ve never heard a local school district agreeing. Since most school programs are required by state and local law, the only solution is to raise taxes — and you can guess how popular that is. The chaos as parents try to shuffle their students into a “better” school balls things up further.
And, yes, if you watch the right wing websites, you’ll see plenty of calls to eliminate public education. I believe it was Reagan who floated the idea of eliminating the Department of Education; conservatives are still ticked that it’s still there, and still getting its busget increased.
Then what exactly is the value added provided by the public school?
The school provides the education. The family provides the feeling that it matters. Without the feeling that school matters, it’s just a particularly slow form of torture.
“Teaching to the test” is not a problem unless teachers want to push a personal agenda instead of teaching a subject. The questions on the test are about what the students are supposed to be leaning. So the teachers should have been “teaching to the test” even before the test existed. If they weren’t teaching to a test, what on earth were they teaching to?
As for “high standards” the requirement for graduation in Ohio is that a student pass a test that measures tenth grade skills (to graduate from the 12th grade). What makes that a “high standard”? Students can begin taking the test in the 8th grade. Both of my daughters passed all sections the first time they took it. My older daughter had two friends who were among the stupidist and laziest (academically) people I have ever met. They both eventually passed.
Schools were much better before there was a “Department of Education” (for many decades). So it is absurd to claim that wanting to eliminate a worthless and wasteful buracracy has anything to do with education. Education is not a federal responsibility. It is an individual responsibility. It is the student who must gain an education, not a school that must give an education.
The “right wing” has nothing against successful public schools. The concern that the “right wing” has is that socialist teachers are indoctrinating children with left-wing drivel instead of educating them on essential subject matter.
“The questions on the test are about what the students are supposed to be leaning.”
That, of course, depends on the test. Nothing I know leads me to believe that the makers of tests are infallible.
“So the teachers should have been “teaching to the test” even before the test existed. If they weren’t teaching to a test, what on earth were they teaching to?”
The concern is not that the teachers will have to teach the subject they’re supposed to be teaching as opposed to something else. It’s that they spend time on specifically test-related skills that are not a part of that subject — e.g., how to raise the odds of getting a multiple choice question right — and also teach in ways that up the odds of getting a good score even when that’s not the best way of teaching the subject. For instance: if the test doesn’t require essays, just facts, they may try to teach a lot of facts without teaching the connections between them.
“The concern that the “right wing” has is that socialist teachers are indoctrinating children with left-wing drivel instead of educating them on essential subject matter.”
Who are these teachers who believe in state control of the means of production?
“The concern that the “right wing” has is that socialist teachers are indoctrinating children with left-wing drivel”
Wow. You do conservatives an injustice. Most of the members of the “right wing” I know are stable, well-meaning, and thoughtful. Not the bizarre paranoids you’ve described.
hilzoy:
Who are these teachers who believe in state control of the means of production?
You’re conflating socialism with Marxism. From the Wikipedia:
Practically all Americans (like practically all Europeans) are socialists these days to one degree or another.
Dave: from Merriam-Webster: “any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.”
Stiglitz’ Glossary of economic Terms: “socialism: an economic system in which the means of production are controlled by the state”
“Practically all Americans (like practically all Europeans) are socialists these days to one degree or another.”
True, to the extent that all Americans are black to one degree or another and dead to one degree or another. But if you use such a label, the implication is that it’s true to a sufficient degree that it’s a big deal. It also carries the implication that teachers are somehow significantly more socialist than the baseline socialist tendencies of human cohabitants.