1 in 10.....

I've seen this article several times and I'm finally going to comment on it.

According to the NY Times 1 in 10 high school graduates are capable of completing high school and college level classwork.  This is in spite of graduating from high school.  Later in the article it claims under 40% are capable of doing college level work.  I wish they would make their minds up and get their numbers straight.

In any event,  this is a basis for the corporate attack on teachers.

Let's face the truth - we are seeing the results of 15 Years of the No Child Left Behind" - the corporate written, Republican passed, President (sic and sick) George W Bush authorized law that imposed testing on every student. And, if that weren't enough,  teacher evaluations are based in part on these tests.

The tests have several standards applied to them:

1. Nobody can see the tests or all the test questions after the exam.  Teachers become aware of what is on them on the day of the exam.  The public is not allowed to see them at all after the exam is given.

2.  The tests will always have mistakes on them.  The questions will be developmentally inappropriate.  My favorite is the "more than one correct answer" that confuses students, teachers, and administrators.  This leaves everyone running for cover as the state has to figure out what to do and then the tests have to be checked again to give credit to the students that chose the other correct question.  Or there is the famous "let's just invalidate the question" and re-calibrate the scoring rubric.  More of a mess, but it has happened.  More than once.

All this leads to student burnout - the very people that are supposed to be helped by all this are this side of giving up.  It's "I need to know this for the test" not "I'm going to be an engineer so I need to know algebra, physics, calculus because....." or "I'm going to be a doctor/nurse and I need to know this biology/chemistry because..."  I need to know this for the test.

Students do not care about tests.

No employer that I have spoken to cares about how some student did on a test.

Properly done,  and these are far from, tests give students, teachers, administrators, and parents important information about the student's abilities and achievements.  It also gives everyone a potential snapshot of what a student's future might be.  And their future is our future.

The way I see it,  the architects of our future are getting burned out and turned off of reading, writing, mathematics, science, anything that matters or can be tested.

And,  according to the NY Times, 90% are being left behind.

That's a 10% success rate.

When I was growing up,  that was an F in the grade book and on the report card.

So the way I see it,  the system is failing us.

No the students.  Not the teachers.  Not the administrators.

The system and our leaders that are running it.

The system needs to go and we need socialism.  Now.