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Crucial questions about 'standards'
By Marion Brady
*July 1, 2003
'Many parents and teachers across Florida," says Jim Horne, Florida's
commissioner of education, "recognize and understand the vital role that FCAT
has played in Florida's consistently rising student achievement levels. But for
some, the FCAT and the system around it remain a mystery."
Horne is advancing a new theory. The old theory was that everybody liked the
FCAT except parents whose kids couldn't pass it, and teachers who didn't want to
be held accountable. The new theory is that those who oppose the FCAT just don't
understand it. It's "a mystery."
In a recent "My Word" column for the Orlando Sentinel, Horne unravels the
mystery. In two simple statements, he explains the FCAT for those of us too dim
of wit to grasp its merit:
One: "The FCAT is simply a tool. It is designed to measure how well a student
has learned a given subject in each grade."
Two: "Exactly what students are supposed to know in each grade is determined by
the Sunshine State Standards."
Most people buy Horne's reasonable-sounding argument. Certainly, those who
control the media buy it. Editors and news-program managers raise questions
about the test's inevitable cultural bias, call attention to games being played
with FCAT scores, wonder if the tests are the best use of scarce education
dollars, worry about the test's impact on non-tested parts of the curriculum,
criticize the secrecy that makes test analysis impossible, question the use of a
single measure to determine a school's merit, point out that teaching to the
test gradually invalidates the test. They even sometimes echo educators'
contention that it doesn't really measure what most needs to be measured.
But when FCAT scores are released, all doubts and reservations evaporate and the
media become partners in the farce. Test scores and school rankings make the
front pages and the evening news, backed up by pain-and-suffering human-interest
stories.
Horne's defense of the FCAT is based on a single claim: The Sunshine State
Standards upon which the FCAT is based are rock-solid organizers of education.
If you've studied the Sunshine State Standards, you were probably impressed.
Standard No. 1 for sixth-grade math says that "The student associates verbal
names, written word names, and standard numerals with integers, fractions and
decimals; numbers expressed as percents; numbers with exponents; numbers in
scientific notation; radicals; absolute values; and ratios."
Social studies Standard No. 2 for that same grade level reads: "The student
understands the world from its beginnings to the time of the Renaissance."
Your reaction to those and similar Standards is very likely to be, "Excellent!
Finally, a high-school diploma means something."
But are the standards, individually and collectively, appropriate? That's a good
question, one which no one in an official position seems willing to discuss.
But maybe it's the wrong question. The high-school senior completing 12 years of
satisfactory performance but denied a diploma because of a low FCAT score might
reasonably ask a different one: "Is ignorance of scientific notation sufficient
reason to slam in my face the door to the thousands of jobs for which a
high-school diploma is a necessary step? Do I need to know about it to write
advertising copy? Do social work? Teach a foreign language? Start a business?
Write computer software? Serve in the state Legislature?"
Another diploma-denied senior might ask, "Is the fact that there are gaps in my
understanding of the world from its beginnings to the time of the Renaissance
sufficient reason to close the field of accounting to me? Construction
engineering? Robotics design? Music teaching? Biological research? Physician's
assistant?"
A long time ago, in a very different era, our forefathers fashioned a series of
hoops through which students were expected to jump. Those hoops have been passed
along from teacher to student for more than a century, with no real dialogue
about their appropriateness. Nevertheless, for the past 13 years, Washington has
been intent on bolting those hoops ever more rigidly in place. The hoops are
labeled "standards," their validity is taken for granted, and we don't ask
questions about them.
But we should. For starters, here are four: Should unstandardizable kids be
forced to jump through rigidly standardized hoops? Why? What are the human and
societal costs of jumping? Can we afford those costs?
Standards, yes. But standards for students, not standards for school subjects --
standards that respect the infinite variability of the young, and of the
potential for good inherent in that variability.
*Originally published in the Orlando Sentinel. Published here by
permission of the author.
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