If you want to lower standards in education, all you have to do is sprinkle your proposal with words like 'rigorous' and 'standards-based'. Your slide to the lowest common denominator will be heralded as the path to closing the achievement gap. After all, the lower the standard, the narrower the achievement gap. It's simple math.
Susan Castillo has just announced that 'credit by proficiency' is the key to improving Oregon schools in the future. The first question that comes to mind is why she would believe that she knows this, given that Oregon implemented and discarded the 'credit by proficiency' nonsense during the waning years in the 1980's. (Not her fault, really, since she may not have been involved in education in the 1980's) Every high school class had a list of proficiencies as long as your arm, and every teacher was expected to check off each 'proficiency', one at a time, for every student. It fell flat. It was a phenomenal waste of time. It did nothing for student achievement. For many courses of study, it simply made no sense. But like every failed idea in education, it has waited in the wings in hopes that memories would fade, allowing it to be relabeled as an innovation.
Credit by Proficiency is just the latest rendition of the old war between 'academics' and vocational training. The 'proficiency' theory is that students should receive high school credit based on what they can do and should not receive credit just for sitting in a classroom for the designated amount of time.
The argument appears at first to be just a matter of common sense, but on closer inspection it is founded on a classic straw man. Whether they call it 'seat time', call it 'sit and get', or any number of names that are intended to discredit (in this case literally) the exchange of ideas between teachers and students, the claim is that students are currently receiving high school credit based solely on how long they sit in a chair. It's a simple claim, and it has a certain appeal to everyone who was every bored in school. But it takes very little reflection to realize that only in cases of outright fraud did 'seat time' automatically generate credit toward graduation. If it had, we wouldn't have such vivid memories of tests we didn't prepare for, papers we didn't finish on time, and failing grades. Yes, failing grades. Why? Because contrary to the myth perpetrated by the Credit by Proficiency folks, grades are not and have never been based on seat time, but on performance on several measures including classroom discussions, quizzes, tests, papers, daily math lessons, ect.
LET'S BE CLEAR. THE 'CREDIT BY PROFICIENCY' ADVOCATES' FREQUENT CLAIM THAT STUDENTS CURRENTLY EARN CREDIT BY ACCRUING 'SEAT TIME' (SIMPLY SITTING In A CLASSROOM FOR THE APPROPRIATE LENGTH OF TIME) IS A LIE. TAKE AWAY THAT LIE AND THEY HAVE LITTLE OR NOTHING TO OFFER.
But is it a lie, really? And if it is, is it polite to say so? Consider this. If credit is currently given just for showing up, why are so many students credit deficient? Why is the graduation rate so abysmal? One of the top reasons that students give for leaving school is that they are hopelessly behind in earning credits toward graduation. How did they get so far behind? By missing seat time? Not so. It is against the law in Oregon to withhold credit or to lower a grade based solely on lack of attendance...clearly a devaluation of seat time and a requirement that grades be based on performance and not on showing up. Kids who fail to earn credit fail to achieve.
Finally, if seat time is all that matters, how is it that some students are earning A's and B's while others are earning C's, D's and yes, even F's? Clearly there is much more than seat time going on here. And one has to believe that the proponents of 'Credit by Proficiency' know all of this.
In Corbett, which can make a claim to being a high performing program, about one in every seven grades is an 'Incomplete'. This is in a school in which 90% of sophomores pass the 1oth grade reading assessment. Clearly we don't believe that proficiency is enough. There is more to being an educated person than meeting some state-sanctioned minimal proficiency, and that 'something more' should be our priority.
So what is the goal of the 'credit by proficiency' clan? It's to create the illusion of education without having to work at the real thing. It is education by checklist, with the goal for every child being identical...put a check in every box. It's the 'field strip and M16 in 30 seconds while blindfolded' theory of learning. Ultimately, it is about education on the cheap. It's about devaluing the role of the teacher. It's about devaluing any learning that can't be reduced to a checklist.
Proficiency as a goal has it's place. In vocational training. But not in education.
Why not? Because like every permutation of the Standards Movement (credit by proficiency is just the blue collar version of the broader Standards debacle), its implementation inevitably limits student achievement. It has a leveling effect whereby the minimum standard tends to be adjusted downward (like the Oregon 10th grade assessments in Reading and Math) so that a respectable number of students will pass (it's funny how these 'standards' always wind up being normed to a curve) and it discounts excellence. Everyone gets pushed to the middle...standardized, as it were. Once a student has met a standard (and it is imperative to remember that this standard will always have to be low enough that the vast majority of students can meet it without too much effort!) then there is no need for the most able students to extend their learning. In fact, in a true proficiency model, there won't be any course material beyond the 'proficient' level...it will be time to move on and demonstrate another 'proficiency'.
A final word for you professionals: the proficiency movement, to the degree that it is internally consistent, will wind up decapitating Bloom's taxonomy and leaving little (if any) room for anything beyond application. This is the level at which the vast majority of 'proficiencies' will be targeted, since synthesis and evaluation don't lend themselves to a checklist approach. Whatever is easiest to measure is what we will always tend to measure most.
