As teenagers, most of us opt for the easy way out. Adults, on the other hand, love to take the difficult route because most of the time, that’s the right one.
Yet with education, it seems everyone’s looking for easy answers. The PSAE test scores came out and there’s another uproar—mostly directed at teachers and schools. What a surprise.
Statewide, 98.5 percent of Illinois high schools failed to meet federal standards under No Child Left Behind. Only eight of the 666 high schools in Illinois made Adequate Yearly Progress, according to the Illinois Board of Education.
The conversation about what to do about test scores in schools, though, never seems to change. Politicians in Congress and citizens in their living rooms alike blame the teachers and schools. They’re not good enough. They’re not trying.
It’s a stale conversation, and a few epiphanies need take place before any real change will occur. We need to realize that this is a complicated issue and that not every factor is within the school.
Accountability is a good thing, but the PSAE is a flawed test not only because it doesn’t test everything a school does, but also because it doesn’t matter to students. That’s definitely true at Kaneland, where 71 percent of students put a lot less effort into the PSAE than the ACT, according to a Krier poll of last year’s juniors conducted last April.
That’s why the PSAE isn’t a good measuring stick to begin with. Let’s compare GPAs and ACT scores. Let’s compare the number of students who take AP classes. Let’s compare solid proof.
But beyond that, we need to look at all the reasons why test scores don’t impove. Many factors like teaching style, years of experience and curriculum matter, but so do social and economic factors like student motivation, student ability, parental involvement, family education and household income.
Even learning styles have changed; the way we learn isn’t the same as it was in 1940. Schools need to adapt in a way that’s more in-depth then throwing computers in the library and giving each classroom a projector.
Each student needs to be treated individually. Not everyone can read literature and see the importance of irony.
Sometimes it’s easy to see why one school does better than another. For instance, DeKalb High School has a 41.1 percent low income rate, Kaneland has 13.7 percent, while Geneva has 5.2 percent. DeKalb’s class sizes are bigger, and Geneva spends close to $1,000 more on operating expenditures per pupil. It’s no surprise, then, that Geneva’s scores are better, Kaneland’s are in the middle, and DeKalb’s are the weakest.
But it’s not always easy to compare schools or figure out why one does better than another. Here’s an example: statistics show that our parental involvement is 96.2 percent, while DeKalb has lower test scores but has 100 percent parental involvement. DeKalb parents are more involved, but Kaneland does better.
For education to improve, all these factors need to be addressed—not just one. That’s why politicians, the media and citizens should stop pointing their fingers and start addressing these complex social issues.
Our scores don’t mean that Kaneland is a bad school. Each of us are capable of excellence.
What we do know is this: it doesn’t help students to learn by labeling nearly all Illinois high schools as failing. It doesn’t help students to learn by stripping away their school’s federal funding.
Politicians should be focused on helping students, not on dinging their schools for “failing.”