Our kids are not learning what they need to know in our nation's schools. Parents know this, but educrats deny it.

The Washington Post [April 27, 2004; Page A21] reports this bad news:

Dumbing Down Our Schools
By Ruth Mitchell

In a high school science class, students are learning the metric system to measure parts of a diagram. In a high school English class, students are coloring shields that represent a Greek god or goddess. A 10th-grade biology class is cutting out labels to be glued on paper in the correct order of photosynthesis.


If you visited these classes and didn't look at the sign over the door of the school, you might think you were in an elementary school, or a middle school at best. But such classes are not atypical in large urban high schools, where, except for the Advanced Placement (AP) and honors classes, much of the classroom work is below grade level.

On one trip to a Midwestern city, I found one out of eight assignments at grade level in two high schools. A colleague popped in on about 40 English classes in the course of a day at a West Coast high school and found one -- just one -- class where real learning was going on.

This is the dirty secret in the wars over teacher quality: the low level of academic work at all levels in far too many schools. The consequences of low-level work are seen in poor test results: Students given only work that is below their grade level cannot pass standardized tests about material they have never seen.

I'm not alone in trying to focus attention on the low level of teaching. A West Coast group called DataWorks has been analyzing the work given to students since the late 1990s. In one California elementary school, DataWorks found that 2 percent of the work in the fifth grade was on grade. That's not a misprint: 98 percent of the work that students were doing was at the level of the fourth, third, second and even first grades. In South Carolina, DataWorks looked at work assigned in 14 high schools and found that most of the 12th-grade work was just below 10th grade level.

The public is largely unaware of the problem. Those who follow education, write editorials and commentaries and make policy were themselves successful students who were in the highest tracks at their high schools, and their children are also successful students enjoying the best and most experienced teachers, because they're in the AP and International Baccalaureate (IB) classes. Legislators and policymakers tend to come from a social class in which people not only have benefited from good teachers but also have fond memories of a particular teacher or teachers who turned them on to the pleasures of poetry or the intricacies of DNA.

Students in the schools we visit are not turned on. Black, brown, speaking broken or accented English, with cultural values clashing with those of the white middle class, they are seen as needing elementary instruction in secondary school; as capable only of drawing and coloring; as in need of discipline rather than encouragement. They are asked to make acrostics in middle school social studies; to write eight sentences in high school English class; and to fill out endless worksheets in math class.

Teachers say they have to teach the students where they are, which means at sixth-grade level in high school if they can't read well. Their attitude may be compassionate, but it is misguided. There's ample evidence that accelerating instruction works better than retarding it in the name of remediation. Observations made in the Dallas Unified School District show that students who score well have teachers who cover the curriculum appropriate to the grade level. These teachers spend little time on drill and practice, and don't remediate in the classroom but rather get help for students outside of class.


Too often, however, policymakers accept the teaching profession's excuses -- students' background and lack of parental support -- for student failure. Policymakers don't visit classrooms or, as we do, sit in on teacher meetings designed to help teachers reflect on their work. The experience can be profoundly depressing: In the West Coast high school, students in English classes were sleeping through movies, even in AP classes. And four of the teachers were late for class themselves.

Teachers have themselves been badly served by the educational system. Poorly trained for the most part and without subject-matter degrees at the elementary level, they are now being faced with requirements that students learn material at certain grade levels -- material that in some cases, such as elementary mathematics and science, teachers don't know themselves. Teachers have been trained to think their work is done if they have delivered the material in the textbook, kept the class from bothering the principal and assigned grades that don't fail too many students.

Their training was simply not adequate to the new demands of standards-based accountability. No wonder there's such an outcry against the accountability provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act.

But no matter how much we may sympathize with the teachers, our concern must be with the children. The most pressing need in education for kindergarten through 12th grade today is massive teacher retraining. School boards and administrators who do not act to provide it are betraying the public trust.

The writer is an educational consultant.
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And then there is:

Low Scores Bar Many Admitted to CUNY
By KAREN W. ARENSON (NY TIMES, May 28, 2004)

Thousands of students admitted to the bachelor's degree programs at the City University of New York cannot enroll because they are scoring too low on tests the university uses to determine college readiness, according to data CUNY has filed with the state.

More than 23,000 students were judged eligible for CUNY's bachelor's degree programs last fall based on the number of college preparatory courses they had taken and the grades they had received. But more than 5,000 of them failed to meet CUNY's criteria for registration by September.

CUNY introduced the tests four years ago, after Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and others attacked it for not having high enough standards. Under the policy, students must demonstrate proficiency in reading, writing and mathematics to enroll in bachelor's degree programs.

They can show proficiency with scores of at least 75 on the New York Regents tests or 480 on both the College Board's SAT verbal and math exams, or comparable scores on CUNY's own skills tests.

The university provides free summer immersion courses to help. But those who still do not qualify by the end of the summer are directed to CUNY's associate degree programs or other transitional programs.

Previously, students judged unprepared based on placement tests were required to take noncredit remedial classes. But Mayor Giuliani and others charged that too many CUNY students were mired in remediation, and the university trustees voted to end remedial classes in bachelor's degree programs. (CUNY still offers remedial classes for students in its associate degree programs.)

When opponents said the new system would unnecessarily limit access to bachelor's degree programs, CUNY agreed to report to the State Board of Regents on the impact of its tests. The figures on last fall's admissions were included in a CUNY filing last month.

According to that report, CUNY admitted 23,553 students to its bachelor's degree programs for the fall, some of them conditional upon demonstrating their readiness. By July 1, 6,561 - more than a quarter - were deemed unprepared to begin college level work. Another 2,207 did not need to demonstrate proficiency because they were admitted under waivers for disadvantaged students and students for whom English was not a first language.

Of the remaining students, 1,525 were pronounced ready after taking CUNY's summer preparatory courses. But more than 5,000 students were still judged unqualified by registration day. Of these, nearly 3,000 enrolled in other college programs - two-thirds of them outside of CUNY. And more than 2,000 did not enroll at any college.

Some critics of CUNY's testing policy say it is unnecessarily limiting access.

"Many people will say, 'Yes, but if applicants can't pass the tests, they don't belong in college,' '' said Bill Crain, a psychology professor at the City College of New York. "This argument might carry some weight if the test cutoff scores were good predictors of success at CUNY. But the tests are weak or worthless predictors. So the tests erroneously keep out many applicants, and they disproportionately turn away African-American and Latino students."

But CUNY officials say the sorting process reflects their high academic standards, and that enrollment in their bachelor's degree programs has risen to 10,208 first-time freshmen last fall, from 8,448 four years earlier.

Matthew Goldstein, CUNY's chancellor, said the university was working with students who do not qualify to try to "get them over the hump," but that it is important to be honest with students who are not ready.

Diane Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University who supports standards-based education, says she applauds CUNY's approach.

"It is a reasonable position to have some colleges for which you have to be prepared to do the work," she said, "and not to have open admissions everywhere."

Dr. Crain said he was especially troubled by the students who had not enrolled at any college.

"They have other options, of course," he said on CUNY's Internet faculty discussion site. "But many don't find these options. What happened to these students? Did the discouragement of rejection combine with other hardships?"

But CUNY officials say that even before the test requirements were introduced, similar numbers of admitted students failed to enroll each year.

"Even under the old admission system, we always had a large number of students who didn't come to CUNY or to any other college," said David B. Crook, the university dean for institutional research at CUNY.
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Study Finds Senior Exams Are Too Basic
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO (NY TIMES, June 10, 2004)

A study of high school graduation exams, rites of passage for more than half the nation's secondary school students, shows that they largely test material taught in the 9th and 10th grades. Such material, the study said, is often taught at the middle school level in other industrialized countries.

The study found that the tests measured very basic material and skills, insufficient for success in university courses or in jobs paying salaries higher than the poverty level, currently about $18,000 for a family of four.

The study, by Achieve Inc., a nonprofit organization created by state governors and business leaders, analyzed high school exit tests in mathematics and language arts from six states, and writing tests from four of the states. The states were Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio and Texas.

Mike Cohen, president of Achieve, said the report found that the tests were not "not pegged at a very demanding level." He said states should gradually improve instruction and raise the minimum standards for graduation.

The exams have met with opposition, and some states, like Arizona, have been forced to postpone plans to attach consequences to the results of the exams. Testing experts generally warn against making important academic decisions on the basis of a single test. And while the research is inconclusive, some studies have suggested that the tests may contribute to higher dropout rates.

Matthew Gandal, the executive vice president of the organization, noted that exit exams were frequently attacked as unfair. "We think it's the opposite," he said. "It's unfair not to expect students to learn what's on these tests. By the time they graduate, if they haven't learned what's on these tests, they'll be really unprepared, and by then it's too late. They won't be able to go to college or to get jobs with which they can support a family."

The study also compared the material tested with benchmarks from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, concluding that in math, the skills tested on high school exit exams in the United States are taught in middle school in many other countries.

Lisa Graham Keegan, the former commissioner of education in Arizona, said she had begun looking into high school graduation exams, but on the first administration of a test found that 84 percent of the students had failed. Arizona has continued giving the exams, but will not require them for graduation until the spring of 2006.

"Obviously, the biggest barrier is not politics, it's reality," said Ms. Keegan, who now runs a conservative nonprofit organization called the Education Leaders Council. "We don't teach this content well, and any barrier exam you put up right now doesn't mean that kids are going to learn that material."

Ms. Keegan said that before these exams could be fairly imposed on high school students, schools needed to ensure that they were actually teaching the material, an elementary step that she said surprisingly eluded many school systems. She praised the report, however, for highlighting the quality of the exams and grade-level standards.

The report came under attack from FairTest, the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, which opposes what it calls "one size fits all" exit exams. Bob Schaeffer, public education director for the organization, said that Achieve's reports invariably called for raising the academic bar for students.

"It sounds like the latest installment from the 'Chicken Little, the Sky is Falling' crowd," Mr. Schaeffer said, adding that the group frequently tied reports of poor academic performance to dire predictions for the American work force and economy.

"All judgments about where to set the bar, where the cutoffs should be, and how much students should learn at any grade level," he said, "are inherently subjective and political."