Failure’s Enablers
It’s not difficult trying to imagine the thought process of the editors over at La Socialista (a.k.a. The State newspaper) this week …
With the exposure of a major testing scandal down in Charleston, S.C. (which La Socialista thankfully had an excuse not to cover), it was inevitable that news of the academic fraud – and subsequent failure of the Department of Education to do anything about it – would be reaching the state’s political class at large through the blogosphere.
Which it did – here, here and here.
“We’ve got to get ahead of this,” you can almost hear the left-wing editors at La Socialista muttering to themselves, intuitively recognizing that public education in South Carolina desperately needed an artificial infusion of confidence – ASAP.
And so in this morning’s edition of La Socialista they conspired to do just that – publishing a double shot of bureaucrat-apologist talking points designed exclusively to deflect attention not only from the brewing scandal in the Lowcountry (and perhaps beyond) but from fact that our state’s accountability efforts over the past decade have also been a fraud.
First, we have reporter Carolyn Click’s prominently-placed “news story” on the end of the Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test (PACT) – a costly, inefficient and easily-manipulated joke of a standardized assessment that teachers have been (rightly) complaining about for years.
Click, who evidently only interviewed State Superintendent Jim Rex, one of his subordinates and some University of South Carolina bureaucrat for her “story,” predictably paints a rosy picture of PACT as having accomplished all sorts of things for our state while perpetuating the myth that it was one of the nation’s toughest standardized measures.
And perhaps it would have been tough … had educrats not decided to routinely fudge its numbers by counting children with only “basic” proficiency in the top two strata of test scorers, anyway.
As if Click’s propaganda piece wasn’t enough, you better believe La Socialista’s truth-averse editorial board wasn’t about to be outdone by its so-called objective counterparts in the newsroom. And so once again, not surprisingly, La Socialista used its lead editorial today to praise the “progress” our state has made on PACT – progress that for whatever reason is at odds with South Carolina’s graduation rate, SAT scores, ACT scores, NAEP scores and literally every other objective measure that’s out there.
To put it bluntly, people, our standards suck – even before you start addressing the fact that certain educrats had to cheat just to reach them.
The legacy of PACT isn’t one of “progress,” it’s one of well-heeled special interests in Columbia preserving a flawed and expensive test that bore absolutely no relation to what our students were actually learning in the classroom – and provided parents and teachers with none of the diagnostic tools needed to fix the problems.
Its a legacy of bureaucrats continuing to distort reality for their own personal gain, and willing accomplices in the media going along with the charade.
The legacy of PACT is one of enabling of academic failure, pure and simple, and we have no reason to believe its replacement test – the PASS – will be any different.
Comments
By Eric on September 14th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
They hate kids.
By vagabond on September 14th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Dead on…whenever The State quotes a school choice supporter they also quote opponents out of “fairness,” but seldom apply the same standard when the reverse is the case.
California-based McClatchy owns The State and pays the salary of Brad, Cindi and the newsroom staff. They continually rail against the “out-of-state” interests funding school choice as reason to ignore the merits of their arguments. According to that logic, shouldn’t we ignore The State too? Oh yeah, citizens already are.
Thank goodness for the Post and Courier.
By Catherine on September 14th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Seriously, choice isn’t an answer. Private schools in my area aren’t good enough for my dog to attend — much less Sic Willie’s. So aside from that, and aside from the cheating incident that now gives everyone another argument, I agree that PACT isn’t an answer. Let’s focus on that and decide what IS an answer. It’s accountability in the most basic ways, but also in a state that has long (centuries) valued individual district autonomy. No one can truly control the 86 districts without some serious restructuring — the kind that doesn’t sit well with the traditional powers (Leatherman, McConnell) in the Legislature. So let’s stop pointing out what’s wrong and really suggest what can work!
By Nope on September 14th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Maybe you missed this, by your hero, Mike Smith of the Spartanburg Herald Journal:
Belittling progress
Higher test scores are good, no matter how you view them
Published: Friday, September 12, 2008 at 3:15 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, September 12, 2008 at 10:18 a.m.
It’s become a regular pattern over the past few years: The state Department of Education releases a set of test scores – ACT, SAT, PACT – that shows improvement by South Carolina students, and South Carolinians for Responsible Government follows with a news release that attempts to turn the good news bad.
It happened again this week. State education officials reported that the state showed marked improvement in proficient and advanced scoring across the board in 2008, the final year of PACT administration in the state’s public schools.
South Carolina students scored higher on the tests. More of them met the proficient standard and more met the advanced standard. The numbers of students meeting those standards aren’t as high as we’d like, but the movement is in the right direction.
It’s still not good enough for those pushing to use taxpayers’ funds to send kids to private schools. SCRG, which refuses to let South Carolinians know who funds its efforts, sent out its news release explaining why the improvement was actually a failure.
The group’s thinking is that since the scores of eighth-graders aren’t as high as third-graders, “social promotion of unqualified students remains a major problem in public schools.” Of course, that conclusion is unwarranted. There could be a host of reasons why eighth-grade scores are lower than third-grade scores, but the group isn’t really interested in the reasons. It’s interested in running down the state’s public schools, no matter what the results show.
SCRG says it is targeting the state-run public school system, the bureaucracy. But it’s belittling and denigrating the success of students in public schools. It continually demeans the job done by the teachers in those schools.
The group is pushing for school choice. Fine. But does that have to mean continually finding nothing to praise in our public schools, even when test scores rise?
The group can use all its money – wherever it comes from – to push for voucher programs for private schools. But it doesn’t have to continually undermine the morale of and confidence in the state’s public schools.
There is a lot of work to be done in our schools. Graduation rates are too low and dropout rates too high. Too many scores don’t compare well with levels in other states.
But when scores are rising and progress is being made, it isn’t helpful to anyone to deny that progress or reject it as insignificant “incremental” progress.
Give students and their teachers some credit for the success they’ve achieved.
This story appeared in print on page A6
By Not Only That on September 14th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Will, you know that South Carolina’s standards are high. You know that our standards for “proficiency” equate to the standards for “basic” in virtually every other state, which is why other states escape punishment under No Child Left Behind. You know it because the US Department of Education has said it, and any number of education research groups have said it, including many conservative groups that you cite all the time.
We won’t meet our objectives for average yearly progress under No Child Left Behind, even though our PACT scores rose A LOT, because we haven’t lowered our standards. We could have, and we didn’t.
You know all this. So I think you are no different than South Carolinians for Responsible Government (so laughable), about which the Spartanburg Herald Journal just had this to say:
“When scores are rising and progress is being made, it isn’t helpful to anyone to deny that progress or reject it as insignificant ‘incremental” progress.’ Give students and their teachers some credit for the success they’ve achieved.”
By fitsnews on September 14th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Seriously … it’s like every educrat on the face of the earth is here.
Yes we read Mike’s column, and have commented in response to somebody else pasting it in its entirety in a previous post.
Look, people. Just as every blind hog finds an acorn, every Hall-of-Famer has days when he puts up an O-fer.
Oh well.
As for “N.O.T.,” the only people who think our state’s academic standards are high either get paid to think that way, or are are high themselves.
By baker on September 14th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Will,
While I’m not surprised that you are offended by The State’s editorial about PACT scores, I don’t really understand your complaint with Ms. Click’s article. I’d say it’s a fairly benign look at a standardized test that’s being thrown out the window.
As you noted, teachers (rightly) complained about it. Changing the test may have been too slow to come, but it is happening. Meanwhile, PACT and accountability — a package driven in SC by the generally conservative business community, by the way — have given the state and its public schools some experience to build on….in other words, not a total loss.
This quote from the “bureaucrat” you deride seems pretty reasonably balanced:
“I think that what we learned from PACT is that accountability is important,†Sternberg said. “The issue is whether PACT became too much of a focus for accountability, and that is always a worry with any kind of standardized test.â€Â
By Mincing Words on September 14th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
I have to agree with Baker, Willie. Methinks you overreacted a bit.
By BIN News on September 15th, 2008 at 1:43 am
It’s the poverty, stupid! Check out the editorial in The State:
http://www.thestate.com/opinion/story/524055.html
Okay! It’s a lot more than just poverty. It is also the shameful “mini-me” standard advocating a “minimally adequate” standard for education in SC.
Check out our link, sic(k) willie. It’s from “minimally adequate” to you.
BIN News
Flair and Balanced
By Not So Dum on September 15th, 2008 at 9:06 am
Ten years of PACT testing produced what exactly? Smarter kids? Not if you go by the morons who wait on me at Wendys. Higher SAT scores? Nope. Lower dropout rates? Nope. Hold back students who didn’t meet even the minimal standards? No way. We can’t have illiterate kids be penalized with the stigma of actually having to meet certain standards before advancing.
So what did ten years of testing actually do? Well, it consumed two weeks or more of each school year. It sent principals and teachers into bunker mentality. It forced teachers to teach to the test and never slow down if the students didn’t grasp a topic.
Well, it did line the pockets of the test makers (who are connected to whom?) and kept a bunch of high paid educrats employed spinning the results.
Wake up, people! Teachers are all we need to handle the situation. They know which kids are Below Basic before the tests are handed out.
And guess what – kids are on average, average. Some kids will be dumb as rocks and never get any better no matter how much of other people’s money you throw at them. Just as we can’t teach a kid to run a 10 flat 100 meter race, you can’t turn every kid into a genius. We should be providing skills that match the capabilities, not trying to jam every kid into the same cookie cutter approach.
By Nope on September 15th, 2008 at 11:09 am
“Among the states studied [there were 26], Colorado, WIsconsin, and Michigan generally have the lowest proficiency standards in reading, while South Carolina, California, Maine, and Massachusetts have the highest. In math, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin have the lowest standards, while SOuth Carolina, Massachusetts, California, and New Mexico have the highest.”
“We found that South Carolina’s definitions of proficiency in reading and mathematics are relatively difficult, compared to the cut scores set by the 25 other states in the study. In other words, South Carolina’s tests are well above average in terms of difficulty.”
That’s from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, which is neither paid to think that way nor, presumably, high.
By fitsnews on September 15th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Nope-
The standards can be as tough as Ali, but if they’re not being enforced (which they’re not) and people are cheating (which they are), then what’s the point?
Absent enforcement, standards mean nothing.
-FITSNews
By Nope on September 15th, 2008 at 11:38 am
If you have evidence that schools are routinely cheating on PACT, I’d encourage you to share it. I am not aware of any cheating scandal other than the one that emerged in Charleston this week, and you certainly can’t say that nobody is doing anything about it.
Here’s the point: PACT is tough. It’s not easy to score proficient or advanced on it because, unlike other states, we set the cut scores high. So when more students meet those standards it’s a good thing, no matter what SCRG says.