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A Senior Seminar Editorial by Sidney Madden, MHS 2010
The annual assessment of America’s children shows that they have peaked in terms of academic progress. According to a New York Times article by Sam Dillon, the effects of the ‘No Child Left Behind’ law put in place by the Bush administration back in 2001 have wore off and children have failed to improve scores in math from 2007 to 2008. The test, called the National Assessment of Educational Progress, is given every year to third through eighth graders. The scores are reported not just by averages, but other demographics like race and gender, and in addition to the flat lining scores, the results also shows disparities in scores when it comes to race. Many politicians and researchers were quoted in this article, and the opinion of Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a research organization in Washington, is that “The trend is flat; it’s a plateau. Scores are not going anywhere, at least nowhere important.” But what the article fails to examine is the reasons behind what seem to be “plateau” scoring and racial disparities.
One possibility that would explain the lack of improvement would be that teachers across the U.S. have not found any new ways to teach the same old subjects or get through to their students because of pressure from the government. The report states that some schools have lowered their academic standards so that students can pass the test and that the school itself can “avoid sanctions the law imposes on failing schools”. The lowering of standards is also due to the 2014 deadline set by the No Child Left Behind Law for schools to bring 100 percent of students to reading and math proficiency. This push for mediocrity in the name of good test scores is actually detrimental. If teachers are more worried about their students passing a test than actually learning the material, this makes the whole education process useless.
The gaps in score range when it comes to race can be for many different reasons. According to the article, White fourth graders, on average, scored 248, Hispanics scored 227 and Blacks scored 222 (on a 500 point scale). And White eighth graders, on average, scored 293, while Hispanics scored 266 and Black eighth graders scored 261. When looked at alone, these statistics just make the minorities of America seem not up to standard with the whites. But if examined more closely, these gaps can be explained, probably by the fact that urban area schools with high minority populations are less equipped with learning aids (like “smart boards”, for example) than predominantly white suburbs. Another possibility to the gaps could be that large group of minority children, like Hispanics, have to overcome language barriers, so they are behind the curve in terms of learning the material that is on the test.
The bottom line is, these tests scores are more about meeting a goal set by the government than actually learning, so government officials shouldn’t be panicked by the “sluggish math scores” of America’s youth. Contrary to popular belief, one test is not a true assessment of a student’s overall abilities. What people fail to remember is that learning is a gradual process that never ends, so the “inching upwards” as said by William Schmidt, a professor at Michigan State University, should not be seen as a weakness of future generations. Good test scores or not, we’ll be just fine.