The Exit Test Test

Governments make many vain attempts to quantify what our children learn, but rarely do they actually come up with any ideas that fundamentally augment the nature of education in Pennsylvania, let alone America. They rail against throwing money at problems as governments incrementally grow larger every year, and net household incomes grow smaller.

Two significant developments regarding standardized testing recently caused me to do more that nod my head in consternation at the hypocrisy. First, the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) law was found by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals (Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee) to be in violation of the constitution regarding its provision regarding unfunded mandates. Second, the State Board of Education passed a regulation that high school seniors by the year 2014 will have to pass a series of exit tests to prove that what they have learned in school passes what certain bureaucrats believe students need to go forth and conquer.

First, the NCLB...Those of us who have tracked unfunded mandates know that these arise when governments - usually federal and state - tell local school districts what they want as an end result of 12 years of schooling, but fail to provide adequate funding for that result to be achieved. It used to be that Pennsylvania's funding standard was to provide 50 percent state match, with local governments kicking in the other half of the effort, but in the past three decades or so, this state match has become woefully closer to 33 percent.

The federal government similarly, dangles its power of the purse - telling states they can access $x,000,000 in federal funding in exchange for meeting these criteria, or worse yet, demanding that states comply of face the penalty of the withholding of federal funds they are already receiving - to force compliance with what they feel is the best course of action from their potentates in the committee rooms in Washington, DC. But the criteria is necessarily so fundamentally unbtainable as to be a Catch 22 - NCLB states that 100 percent of students must pass a standardized test by some date certain in the future, which makes sense, only in that you can't pass a law called No Child Left Behind with a 90 percent compliance standard, in other words, acknowledging that a certain percentage of the student population will simply not be able to obtain this goal no matter how many laws or dollars are tossed at schools.

NEA estimates that nationwide, unfunded mandates to fulfill the requirements of NCLB amount to close to $70 billion, the GNP of a moderately sized nation.

More and more, such lures of federal money for compliance with federal law are something states are rejecting, in this case, with a court case, which the government can probably appeal all the way to the Supreme Court, if that highest court will accept the case.

It is every teacher's goal to provide the students in their charge with the education they need to go forth into the world and become productive citizens, and they know that a standardized test and being forced to teach to that test, is not the answer.

Now let's turn to point two, the state exit test. Fortunately, there is a regulatory process in place that does not simply entitle the State Board of Education to pass a regulation and have it go into effect immediately. Such suggestions first have to be vetted through the state House and Senate Education Committees, and then must pass muster before the Independent Regulatory Review Commission. During this process, regulations sometimes change or are withdrawn, but if a regulatory body gets so frustrated that it plunges forward, chances are some new reg will be on the books at some point, but not without a fight.

Once again, such an exit test will force teachers to teach to a test, because presumably, noncompliance with a reg will be accompanied by some sanction, i.e. some funding will be withheld until compliance is established.

So, teacher will end up spending more valuable classroom time teaching students to pass a test, and if I remember my matriculation, I, although a smart student, often did poorly on standardized tests because my forte was in essay writing and creative thinking, not in rote memorization.

Q: Standardized tests encourage students to:

A. Memorize facts only to forget them.
B. Learn facts, but fail to learn concepts like working as a team to achieve a goal, which can be applied to real-world situations in the workplace.
C. Think like everyone else, rather than thinking independently.
D. None of the Above
E. All of the Above.

I am not sayinf I know what the answer is: more federal and state standardize tests or educational anarchy, but maybe what we really need is a law that encourages No Parent to be Left Behind, and that doesn't place all of the responsibility on school systems and teachers to teach chidlren but demands compliance and participation by parents in their child's education.

Just try withholding money for noncompliance or requiring a standardized test to be taken by all parents that examines the adequacy of the state of parenting in the United states, and cuts tax refunds for noncompliance. We might just have a rebellion on our hands, but parenting as it relates to the education system is another topic for another day.

As always, your comments are welcome.