Whether a tremendous focus on standardized testing is the best way to educate young people is a legitimate question. Should an equal, or greater, emphasis be placed on creativity, or individualized learning? Good, legitimate questions. Here is what is not legitimate:
The idea that expecting K-12 students to score at their own grade level in reading, writing and math is just too much to ask, too unrealistic, unfair in lower income neighborhoods overall, not the right educational approach. Those claims really translate to classic dumbing down, to inexcusable lowering of standards; more than anything, to blatant disrespect for countless tens of thousands of children.
The idea that George W. Bush or anyone else is wrong, or malicious, or ill informed for asserting that American children can improve, can perform, can master basic skills is itself an anti-educational platform masquerading as educational reform.
When standardized testing is pitted against other forms of education, the debate is a valid and valuable one when it presupposes the mastery of essential skills, such as reading, writing and math at grade level.
Unfortunately, in much of our educational system, the very definition of grade level has itself been degraded; the standards that standardized testing are supposed to measure are themselves diluted. All in a misguided attempt at . . . at what? Erroneous self-esteem? Fallacious educational allure?
It is time for a reality check among many educational reformers. Let them visit Europe or Israel or, for that matter, countless quality schools in the US. Educational achievement is not a rarity.
One endemic intellectual assumption seems to be that if a student comes from a lower economic stratum, this automatically translates into lower educational ability. Major error. The assumption seems to be that, right off the bat, one must expect less from kids whose parents earn less money. Major insult.
For generations, children of immigrants in this country have been pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. Their native language may be Yiddish, or Welsh, or Spanish; it makes no difference. Students who are addressed in a way that does not exempt them from meeting standards, perform. Those schools, such as the Wyatt School in Denver, that educate students who are widely, and erroneously, seen as incapable of a standard and even an excellent performance, should be seen for what they can be: the rule, not the exception.
Copyright © 2011 by the Intermountain Jewish News
