More on Bad Education Benchmarks

I heard the saddest story last night. My husband was talking with an old family friend who has been a middle school librarian for ~30 years. She told him that her job has recently become boring, because many of the teachers in her school have stopped doing research projects with the kids because they are so focused on the scores on the standardized reading tests. So the students don't come to the library anymore, and they don't learn how to do research (other than using Google) or write a report.

This tactic pays off - the bored librarian works in one of the only middle schools in the county that didn't "fail" adequate yearly progress this past year. But then, it also has one of the lowest immigrant populations in the county too, so they had an advantage to start with.

Yet this county is considered to have the finest schools in the state, and parents stretch their budgets beyond the limit to pay the mortgages that get their children into these schools, which have long produced very high rates of college attendance, high SAT scores, tons of honors and AP courses, etc. But now, just in the last year or two, they've stopped teaching middle school students how to research and write papers so they can make sure even the slowest, least interested students will pass the standardized exams. Guess what that is likely to do to the SAT scores and college success of county graduates in a few years?

I'm going to have to differ with Huckabee a little bit here. He says the states should set the testing benchmarks, but the more I think about it, the more I question the utility of standardized testing for accountability. Saying that standardized tests are needed to keep educators accountable is a lot like saying standardized restaurant reviews are needed to keep restaurants accountable. True, the health inspector should ensure the food is safe, and restaurant reviews can help people pick a new one to try, but primarily the public holds them accountable by voting with their feet. Maybe the bureaucrats decide the quality of a steak is an important benchmark for a restaurant and a reviewer pans the steak at a particular establishment, but what about people who prefer salad and find their salads to be great? Should the government (whether federal, state or even local) be "failing" restaurants on the basis of non-hygiene criteria set by bureaucrats? Likewise, should the government be "failing" educators who teach students how to write a really good essay without making sure they can define the word "gerund"? Or educators that spend a lot of time making sure students understand and can use the scientific method but their students haven't memorized many random science facts they'll never need to know again?

If you want accountability, make the schools accountable to parents by giving them choices. I agree with Huckabee that private school vouchers may not be the best way to do this. Public school choice plus private school tax credits are much better, because then parents and the public get to choose whether public schools or private schools (or both) are more worthy of educational spending.