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The Federal Department of Education was formed in 1979. It is a huge bureaucracy that has done at best equal part damage and advancement of education in the US since it's beginning, and that is if you are being charitable. What we are discussing is certainly not something they would be pushing.What do you mean "just" state level? Almost every aspect of education happens at the state and local level.
The "DoE" is the Department of Energy, you educational nincompoop!Recent stories about deficient schools, districts, and demographics point to the need for some way of measuring the actual meaning of a High School diploma.
Imagine that our unconstitutional U.S. Department of Education actually gave a damn about K-12 education. Imagine that they were interested in student LEARNING rather than scams to help the teachers' unions. Imagine that they focused on the mythical Three R's rather than sex education and cultural indoctrination.
OK?
Would they even countenance developing a comprehensive, standardized test for HS seniors that would ascertain whether or not, and to what extent, those humans have learned the materials that the Education Establishment claims they were taught?
And now for the greatest challenge to your ability to imagine: Imagine that they were willing to administer such a test with ZERO REGARD to race, ethnicity, gender, household income, religion, or sexual identification. Indeed, NONE of these factors would be tabulated, accumulated, or reported, for any reason whatsoever. To do so would be a crime.
And the results would be published to the students and families. SUMMARIES would be made public for schools, districts and politicians to use them for whatever purposes they deem suitable. Individuals could disclose scores to others, and employers would be free to ask scores of job applicants. Obviously, colleges could request the scores, and use them in the selection of incoming freshmen.
The tests would be fairly difficult, so that less than one percent of takers would get a perfect score, and time would effectively be unlimited to take the test itself. Subjects?
I would suggest:
But the actual subjects should be selected by teachers and administrators of K-12 schools. If possible, the tests would focus on knowledge rather than intelligence.
- Math (including geometry)
- Reading comprehension
- Sciences (Chemistry, Physics, Biology)
- American history
- Geography
- Logic
- Civics
In my view (obviously) we should not have to imagine these things. The DoE SHOULD be focused on education and be doing things to promote or facilitate education.
Just my opinion.
And has very little to do with how local schools are run, what tests they give, etc.The Federal Department of Education was formed in 1979. ......
A test of that nature would be somewhere in the range of 3-5 days of testing, all day long, and then you would only have a very few students who could pass. More gaslighting is not needed.Not going to happen, though I would approve. Furthermore, any student upon reaching the end of 1st semester grade nine or higher, should have a one time right to challenges the test and if passing, be granted a legitimate high school diploma from their high school, not a GED. In addition to this, the passing student should be awarded in education grant money 50% of the projected state and federal dollars that would have been devoted to seeing them go through the rest of their high school career. This would be a significant saving of educational dollars to the government and reward those that prove themselves able to meet the standard. Win/win.
...
There is no such national, standardized test. ......
Florida had the FCAT (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test) which has been around since 1998 and was used until 2014. What was wrong with Florida grading the students based on their knowledge? Don't pass it, you don't get a diploma.The anal sphincter that identifies itself as "Unkotare," while making several assertions of the existence of such a test, comes up with bupkis. Who knew?
There is no such national, standardized test. The fact that some states have done something similar will not answer the point. Are "we" not entitled to know whether a HS diploma in Massachusetts is more valuable than one from Arkansas? One from Baltimore vs. one from suburban Boston?
Wannabe communists start with a love of centralized planning/control. Education is almost entirely a state/local matter......
There is no such national, standardized test. ....
Do you remember this little program called the Common Core Standards? That went over like a lead balloon. They were what a student was supposed to know.A test issued by the Department of Education is no attempt at government control. Legally, it could not be mandated to the States, merely suggested. It is just providing valuable information to the States, so that the States can make sense of it and react. It is similar to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report in that regard.
The test itself can be farmed out to the NEA, as far as I'm concerned. Teachers should definitely have the major role in formulating it. But there is value in finding out whether the nation's public schools, state by state, are succeeding in teaching what they purport to teach.
Pay attention: Such tests already exist. Almost every state has one of its own.A test issued by the Department of Education is no attempt at government control. Legally, it could not be mandated to the States, merely suggested. It is just providing valuable information to the States, so that the States can make sense of it and react. It is similar to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report in that regard.
The test itself can be farmed out to the NEA, as far as I'm concerned. Teachers should definitely have the major role in formulating it. But there is value in finding out whether the nation's public schools, state by state, are succeeding in teaching what they purport to teach.
| The Keystone Exams fiasco |
| (April 6, 2022)--Background: From the Pennsylvania Department of Education website: “In 2010, Pennsylvania passed a law that supported the creation of end-of-course assessments, known as 'Keystone.' These would serve two purposes: (1) establishing high school graduation requirements for students throughout the state; and (2) providing a way for the state and the federal government to hold high schools accountable for educating students. Students began taking the tests in 2012, with a plan to have Keystones become a graduation requirement in 2017.” ____________________________________________________________________ Early history of test experience In the initial requirements for graduation a student had to achieve a score of proficient on the exams in three areas covering math, English and science. Test results for the end of course exams in Algebra, English and Biology were first posted for tests taken in in school year 2014-2015 for the graduating class of 2016. The results were far from good. On the Algebra test 35.5 percent were below proficient, 27 percent were below proficient in English and 41 percent were below proficient in Biology. The large percentage of students statewide failing to show proficiency on the tests prompted the Legislature to enact Act 1 of 2016 that delayed the requirement of achieving scores of proficient on Keystone until the 2019 graduating class. Over the following six years test results for Algebra and English not only failed to improve but slightly worsened through 2019 (math 36.7 percent below proficient and English 28.5 percent below proficient), and following a COVID cancellation in 2020, fell again in 2021, especially in English with 50 percent below proficient. (Note that the number of students taking the English test statewide fell 91 percent from the 2019 count of 118,885). Continuous legislative postponing of imposition of graduation requirement True to form, the Legislature passed bills each year through 2020 further delaying by another year the use of the Keystone exams’ proficiency requirement for graduation. As of now the year of requiring the use of the Keystone results has been postponed until 2023 by Senate Bill 1216 passed in November 2020 (Act 136). However, to further complicate the issue, in 2018 the governor signed Senate Bill 1095 (Act 158 of 2018) into law that provides over 20 alternative accomplishments that can be used to meet graduation requirements for students who cannot reach proficiency levels on the end-of-course Keystone exams. A few examples of the alternatives provided in the act that can be used to meet graduation requirements when a student does not attain proficiency on the Keystone exams are shown here to illustrate the range of options available. 1) successful completion of locally established, grade-based requirements for academic content areas associated with each Keystone exam on which the student did not achieve at least a proficient score and demonstration of one of the following: (i) attainment of an established score on an approved alternative assessment. 2) successful completion of a concurrent enrollment course in an academic content area associated with each Keystone exam on which the student did not achieve at least a proficient score. 3) successful completion of a pre-apprenticeship program. 4) a letter guaranteeing full-time employment. 5) satisfactory compliance with the National Collegiate Athletic Association's core courses for college-bound student athletes with a minimum GPA of 2.0 or the equivalent on an alternative grading scale. Implications for Pittsburgh Public Schools Thus, for the nearly 40 percent of students statewide who cannot achieve proficiency on the Keystone Algebra test or the 30 percent who have not adequately mastered English, there will be a large and extremely wide range of alternatives to be administered by the schools in conjunction, presumably, with state oversight. However, as seen in Keystone test results from Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) high schools, the application of the huge array of enormously varied alternatives to meet graduation requirements will require a massive amount of time and expertise far beyond the schools’ current capabilities. In 2019 the PPS had nine high schools, not counting the Online Academy (which had only 16 test takers). The nine schools had 1,283 11th -grade students take the Keystone Algebra exam. Of that number, 49 percent (629 students) failed to score at the proficient level. Five of the nine schools had percentages scoring less than proficient that were above the state average of 36.7 percent below proficient. These schools with below proficiency level scores ranged from 49.6 percent to 82 percent. The best performers were CAPA (25.8 percent) and the Science and Technology Academy (20.9 percent). Two schools, Obama and Allderdice, had scores in the 30 percent range. This analysis looks only at the Algebra scores because English and Biology patterns are very similar. Moreover, while all test-takers in 2021 took the Algebra exam, a fairly large percentage of students taking the Keystone exams did not take the English test and many did not take the Biology test, so to compare the two years’ results only the Algebra scores are truly meaningful. In 2021, 968 11th -grade students took the Keystone Algebra exam. Of the test takers, 52 percent (502) failed to achieve a proficient score—a three percentage point rise from 2019. Statewide 37.6 percent of test-takers failed to score at the proficient level. Only two PPS schools—CAPA at 24.2 percent and the Science and Technology Academy at 14.5 percent—had better results than the state average. Indeed, both these schools had better results than in 2019. The other schools ranged from 44.4 percent to 100 percent failing to reach the proficient level. Three schools had over 90 percent scoring under the proficiency requirement. Clearly, with the underperformance numbers displayed by roughly half of 11th -graders in both years, the efforts and cost to come up with a program every year to get 600 plus students to meet alternative schemes to meet graduation requirements will be massive—indeed, it might not be doable. And whatever the bill for the remediation efforts amounts to will be on top of the nearly $30,000 per student per year the PPS already spends. To have half of 11th -graders falling below proficient on the Keystone Algebra exam when a relatively poor district like Windber in Somerset County that spends a mere $13,081 per student had only 11 percent below proficient in math is not just embarrassing, it is inexcusable. State and other school comparisons Note that statewide the number of 11th -graders failing to score at the proficient level in 2021 was 37.6 percent or 38,294 students. For the previous years the number of test takers below proficient on the Keystone Algebra exam has been over 40,000. Little wonder the Legislature has kept delaying implementation of the graduation requirement. In 2021, only three high schools in the state had zero students scoring below proficient on the Algebra exam—Julia Masterman (Philadelphia City), Downingtown STEM Academy and the Wilkes-Barre STEM Academy, which had only 19 test takers. In the Pittsburgh region, the two highest academically ranked high schools—Peters in Washington County and Pine-Richland in Allegheny County—had 6.1 percent and 6.5 percent, respectively, below proficient on the Algebra exam in 2021. Conclusions and recommendations The major point is that the concept of achieving proficiency on Keystone exams as a graduation requirement as currently constructed has been a very costly failure. Implementation has been continuously postponed while more and more complicated and expensive-to-administer alternatives have been enacted into law. But other than demonstrating the inadequacy of learning by large numbers of students, the Keystone tests have accomplished nothing other than being a source of angst for students, parents and teachers and school administrators and a waste of the Legislature’s time and money. There can be little doubt that the performance on the Keystone exams will track very closely with scores on college entrance exams. Why not use those instead? Set a minimum score to graduate. Clearly, this is a highly politically sensitive and corrosive issue and, unfortunately, is unlikely to be corrected by drastic steps such as eliminating the test scores (or one of a myriad options for those who fail the tests) as a graduation requirement. The convoluted process has made the Keystone exam requirement a mockery that only its progenitors can support in its current form. Indeed, its very existence points to the failure that high school education has become for nearly 40 percent of Pennsylvania high school students. Something drastic needs to be done and soon. Continuation of the fiction that high school students are qualified for a diploma even when they perform very poorly on math, science or English tests undermines credibility and tells failing students they are educated when they are not and likely consigns them to menial jobs. Jake Haulk, Ph.D., President-emeritus If you wish to support our efforts please consider becoming a donor to the Allegheny Institute.The Allegheny Institute is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and all contributions are tax deductible.Please mail your contribution to: The Allegheny Institute 305 Mt. Lebanon Boulevard Suite 208 Pittsburgh, PA15234 |
A little revision is necessary. You can’t test anyone’s competency in physics and Chemistry until they complete algebra 2, beyound geometry, and math that includes trig and pre calculous.would suggest:
- Math (including geometry)
- Reading comprehension
- Sciences (Chemistry, Physics, Biology)
- American history
- Geography
- Logic
- Civics
You need to get to know more people. 97% of colleges accept GED like they do high school diplomas and over 60% of GED recipients go on to attend college.Most state have GED, but nobody I know looks at it as the equal to a high school diploma
It doesn’t work that way in states that manage up to date curriculum. They have school boards at local and state level who’s job it is to monitor corporate America and it’s education needs which then filters down through colleges, universities and vocational institutions. It’s a well managed curriculum that ultimately decides on the courses offered based upon the needs of the job market and the next steps in education.But the actual subjects should be selected by teachers and administrators of K-12 schools. If possible, the tests would focus on knowledge rather than intelligence.
Of course it does….Just a made up statement. States that have universal background checks average less gun violence then those that don’t. It’s the same for developed countries. For decades, the states that instituted stricter gun laws have seen drops in gun violence.Or is this like "reasonable gun control legislation" that everyone wants, but does not actually exist?
Btw, where is the quote from ? Joe Blow on the street corner ?"Until the [Pennsylvania] Governor and Legislature stand ready to take on teacher unions, entrenched state education department employees and school boards of districts with high percentages of inadequately prepared students and enact major reforms, the status quo of unsatisfactory results will continue and tens of thousands of students will graduate each year with serious deficits in literacy and numeracy. And the futures of many of these graduates will be diminished accordingly."
Is there any state where this assessment would not be accurate?
But I guess the real question is, What are the "Major Reforms" that would have any impact?
Or is this like "reasonable gun control legislation" that everyone wants, but does not actually exist?
Every school district where I taught high school in had a votech high school option.So Johnny or Suzie don’t want to attend a “traditional high school” then why not provide a vocational alternative? The cookie cutter mentality has proven a failure yet it persists. What’s to say a graduate of a vocational education, after several years work, decides to apply themselves and further their education. At least they were not subjected to the belief that they are already a failure.
