Without proficiency test, how to measure if state’s students learn?

Connecticut tests its public school students for academic proficiency each year in Grades 3 through 8 and again in Grade 11 but not when they are about to graduate from high school. So why not?

The short answer from the state Education Department is that a proficiency test for high school seniors is not required by state law.

Asked the other day whether the department would favor a proficiency test for high school seniors and even to require students to pass a proficiency test to advance from grade to grade, the department’s chief performance officer, Ajit Gopalakrishnan, did not reply directly but implied opposition. He said there already may be too much proficiency testing in Connecticut’s schools.

Asked how, without annual proficiency testing in every grade, Connecticut can know whether its schools are reversing the sharp declines in learning during the recent virus epidemic, or, indeed, whether there is any learning at all, Gopalakrishnan declined to answer.

But in effect this was to say that despite the $12 billion or so Connecticut spends on lower education every year, the Education Department doesn’t really want to know how it all turns out as students are delivered to the world — and, presumably, that the department doesn’t really want the whole state to know either. Any summary measure of academic performance at the end of 13 years of public education would invite accountability.

The problem isn’t just educators. Connecticut’s elected officials don’t want to know either. Otherwise, as indicated by the Education Department’s reply to the question about a high school graduation test, the General Assembly and governor would enact law requiring such a test, as some other states have done. Connecticut’s neighbor, New York, may have the best known graduation test, the exam provided by the New York State Education Department’s Board of Regents.

The problem isn’t just elected officials either. As Connecticut already has done, New York and other states are retreating from objective standards of learning for public school students, having been overwhelmed and demoralized by declining student performance. So many students now are failing that they can’t all be held back. Declining student performance is increasingly regarded as normal, and having already lowered its regents test standards, New York soon may drop the test altogether.

If educators and elected officials don’t want any conclusive evaluation of public education, do parents? Education is mainly a function of parenting, just as most measures of societal health are, and parenting long has been crashing, with about a third of the country’s children being raised in single-parent households. If there is any constituency among parents in Connecticut for reinstating academic standards in public schools, it has not yet manifested itself. Nearly everyone seems content with public education’s most basic policy — social promotion — and inclined to think that, as in Lake Wobegon, all their children are above average. Who in authority in public education will ponder the rationale for even going to school when students who are chronically absent and learn little know they will be promoted from grade to grade and given a high school diploma anyway?

When society itself is so demoralized, when so many children come to kindergarten already far behind in learning, having not gotten at home the stimulation that used to be common, and when teachers often find they cannot reach parents whose children are having trouble, educators may get demoralized too.

Society’s demoralization can’t be fixed overnight but small changes might be made quickly. Education might become a little more meaningful to indifferent students and parents by administering a high school graduation test and affixing to diplomas and transcripts a notation of the student’s test score, which prospective employers could ask to see — a mechanism of accountability for students and parents alike even as educators and elected officials keep striving to avoid accountability for themselves.

 

 

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

The views expressed here are not necessarily those of The Lakeville Journal and The Journal does not support or oppose candidates for public office.

Latest News

All are welcome at The Mahaiwe

Paquito D’Rivera performs at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington on April 5.

Geandy Pavon

Natalia Bernal is the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center’s education and community engagement manager and is, in her own words, “the one who makes sure that Mahaiwe events are accessible to all.”

The Mahaiwe’s community engagement program is rooted in the belief that the performing arts should be for everyone. “We are committed to establishing and growing partnerships with neighboring community and arts organizations to develop pathways for overcoming social and practical barriers,” Bernal explained. “Immigrants, people of color, communities with low income, those who have traditionally been underserved in the performing arts, should feel welcomed at the Mahaiwe.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Living with the things you love:
a conversation with Mary Randolph Carter
Mary Randolph Carter teaches us to surround ourselves with what matters to live happily ever after.
Carter Berg

There is magic in a home filled with the things we love, and Mary Randolph Carter, affectionately known as “Carter,” has spent a lifetime embracing that magic. Her latest book, “Live with the Things You Love … and You’ll Live Happily Ever After,” is about storytelling, joy, and honoring life’s poetry through the objects we keep.

“This is my tenth book,” Carter said. “At the root of each is my love of collecting, the thrill of the hunt, and living surrounded by things that conjure up family, friends, and memories.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Beloved classic film ‘The Red Shoes’ comes to the big screen for Triplex benefit
Provided

On Saturday, April 5, at 3 p.m., The Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington and Jacob’s Pillow, the dance festival in Becket, Massachusetts, are presenting a special benefit screening of the cinematic masterpiece, “The Red Shoes,” followed by a discussion and Q&A. Featuring guest speakers Norton Owen, director of preservation at Jacob’s Pillow, and dance historian Lynn Garafola, the event is a fundraiser for The Triplex.

“We’re pitching in, as it were, because we like to help our neighbors,” said Norton. “They (The Triplex) approached us with the idea, wanting some input if they were going to do a dance film. I thought of Lynn as the perfect person also to include in this because of her knowledge of The Ballets Russes and the book that she wrote about Diaghilev. There is so much in this film, even though it’s fictional, that derives from the Ballets Russes.” Garafola, the leading expert on the Ballets Russes under Serge Diaghilev, 1909–1929, the most influential company in twentieth-century theatrical dance, said, “We see glimpses of that Russian émigré tradition, performances we don’t see much of today. The film captures the artifice of ballet, from the behind-the-scenes world of dressers and conductors to the sheer passion of the audience.”

Keep ReadingShow less