I couldn't believe that he didn't feel a tug on the steering wheel that would let him know that his left rear tire was nearly shredded. But there he was, happily driving along, gesturing back at me, evidently tryingto interpret what I was yelling from the passenger side of my Dad's car as we sped down the freeway. I couldn't have been but eleven or twelve years old, and I'm sure I looked like a lunatic waiving my arms, pointing and laughing until tears streamed down my face while trying to form words so that the hapless driver in the other lane would realize his problem.
Hard to say what made me think of that.
I just read an account in the paper of the State of Oregon's new plan for rating schools. It sounds complicated. It includes points for meeting benchmarks on the state assessments. I get that. Then there are points for how much a student improves, unless that student has already met the benchmark in which case his or her improvement doesn't count. Or unless the student is in 10th grade, in which case his or her improvement doesn't count whether or not he or she met the benchmark. With me so far? Now in the lower grades, a student can be counted as meeting the standard even if he doesn't meet the standard, so long as his score is sufficiently improved from the previous year. O.K. Points for improvement. Got it. Now if students are economically disadvantaged (about 25% of Corbett kids, for example) then they count double if they meet the benchmark in the lower grades or if they improve adequately without meeting the benchmarks in the lower grades or if they meet the benchmark at grade 10. Whew! Double! Unless they are both economically disadvantaged and on an IEP. Then they count three times! Oh, and if they fail to meet the benchmark or to make adequate progress, then that one student counts the same as three failing students! Does this mean that passing rates could exceed 100%? Or be less than zero? Stay tuned.
Those of you who follow education in Oregon remember that the argument made for dropping the CIM (during the current ODE administration) was that it was too complicated! (I said at the time that it was really dropped because too few students were earning a CIM, but ODE insisted that it was abandoned for the sake of simplicity.) What we needed was transparency! And this new system? Kafka called. He's suing for copyright infringement and insists that the new rating scheme was lifted word for word out of The Trial. The State's defense? Their plan isn't that well written. Case dismissed!
I can't pretend to be a good enough mathematician to keep up with all of this, but I have a prediction to make. At the end of this magnificent statistical extravaganza, more schools than ever will achieve a satisfactory report card rating, the differences between the highest ratings and the lowest ratings will diminish, and Oregonian headlines will announce, 'Oregon School Ratings Soar!' (they are stuck on the word 'soar' lately). The public will be invited to believe that this latest rearranging of the deck chairs marks significant progress in the Closing of the Achievement Gap, which seems to be the extent of Oregon's vision for education.
So what? What's so bad about giving double and triple points (like coupons at the local grocery store) for various categories of kids? Why not elevate the closing of the Achievement Gap to the status of an educational Holy Grail? For the same reason that the equal protection clause isn't the entirety of The Constitution. Of course equity is a core value. But it is not the only value, and it is not in itself constitutive of an adequate vision of the good life. There simply has to be more.
One of the two most troubling aspects of this costly, convoluted, mathematical maneuvering is the assumption that we have reached an acceptable level of achievement for the non-categorical kids (those who only count half as much) in the state and all that remains is to raise everyone else to their achievement level. It also makes the tacit claim that when two students meet the 10th grade benchmark, one with a score of 260 while still in the 9th grade and one with a score of 236 after three attempts in 10th grade, the achievement gap has been eliminated. A third flaw might be that it reduces academic achievement to nothing more than scores on state tests. In the twelve years that I have been watching state test scores go by, I'm not sure that we have yet administered the same battery of tests for two years in a row without a major revision or a glitch in the system. I therefor don't put much stock in using state assessment results as evidence of much at all, and I don't put any stock in the state's definition of or preoccupation with The Achievement Gap.
So here is my own version of the achievement gap. It's what keeps me up at night:
There is a gap, better yet a chasm, between what Oregon's most able and committed students are capable of creating for themselves and what schools are allowing them to achieve. Fully half of Oregon's high school students should be earning university credit prior to graduation and half of those ought to earn a full year before they cross the stage. We should be aiming for K-13 by age 18 and offering real hope of college completion even in these economically difficult times. And anyone who believes that an aggressive pursuit of this goal will not maximize achievement for all students has simply never experienced life in a real learning community.
Corbett's 9th graders are taking AP Human Geography this year. A quarter to a third of them will pass the AP exam with a score of three or higher, chalking up three credits each should they decide to submit their scores and their applications to Oregon State University (or any Oregon University or college). Last year twenty percent of 10th graders passed AP World History, which is good for six OSU credits. U.S. History? English? Add nine more credits for the two of them. Psychology, Micro Economics, Calculus (ab)? Twelve more credits. And so far no scores above a three are required. A four in Biology? Twelve credits. A four in Chem? Fifteen. We have had numerous students earn their way into their sophomore years upon graduation from Corbett High School. There are footsteps in which to follow. And none of those students had the supports that we have since put in place for students in grades nine and ten. They were trailblazers, first innovators. They proved what can be done.
There is an achievement gap in Oregon. We aspire to close it. And we believe that doing so will maximize the achievements of all of our students. But only if we recognize the 'other' achievement gap. I believe that this doesn't have to be done at the expense of our best and brightest. We should be cultivating and then emulating their success, not putting them on hold in the false hopes that this new Skinner Box will cause everyone else to catch up.
Yes, Oregon, we have a flat tire. Don't you feel the tugging on the wheel?
