Time is right for national standards and assessments
Former W. Virginia Gov. Bob Wise said time was right for core national standards at a UGA conference
UGA’s College of Education held its annual state of the state conference Thursday, featuring Bob Wise, former governor of West Virginia and now the peripatetic head of the Alliance for Excellent Education.
This is the second time I’ve heard Gov. Wise in recent months. He was in Georgia earlier this year at a youth conference. He is a great speaker and tireless advocate for improving graduation rates and sending more kids onto college.
Among his comments: A key shortcoming of No Child Left Behind was permitting each state to set its own measure of proficiency. He likened it to allowing him to to set his own height and speed for the high hurdle.
He flashed screen images of the wide gaps between state proficiency levels and those captured by the federal NAEP scores. (I know many of you maintain that state tests and NAEP are the proverbial apples and oranges.)
Wise believes the momentum and consensus are in place for national standards in math and reading. (See earlier post and discussion here about the Common Core standard initiative, “Socialism or good sense”)
It’s a peak moment, he said, because we are confronting crisis and opportunity at the same time.
He says the core standards would not dictate curriculum. However, there would be debate over how to assess kids. “I don’t know if Minnesota assessments are better than Georgia and if the Georgia assessments are better than Massachusetts.”
Wise reiterated his usual theme: In the 1960s, a third of U.S. jobs were manufacturing. Now, it’s less than 10 percent. Wise maintains that 90 percent of future high-wage jobs will require education after high school.
He noted that taking your car to a mechanic once involved a guy with dirty hands reaching in and pulling out your carburetor. Now, you are more likely to encounter someone in a white lab coat and a clipboard who plugs your car into a computer to diagnose the problem.
Among the questions from the crowd of largely educators, including several superintendents:
Is the focus on reading and math eclipsing all the other disciplines that contribute to turning out a rounded person, ie. arts, music and PE?
“What is going to open doors to jobs is the ability to do reading and math,” responded Wise. But creative and innovating skills will be necessary once on the job.
He disputed the idea that the “extras” have to abandoned because they are not on the test, saying that good teachers don’t need to teach to the test if they are teaching well . They can integrate the arts into their instruction. It is not, he said, an either/or situation.
I’ll post some of the other conference presentations later today. (There was a detailed talk by noted UGA economist Jeff Humphries. In a nutshell, his message to k-12 education: Keep digging in the sofa for spare change. You are going to need it.)
Wise is inspirational. But is he reasonable?
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10 comments Add your comment
jim d
October 2nd, 2009
3:43 pm
No he is not a reasonable man at all. Any reasonable person knows that abilities are only limited by those who try to test them.
Reality 2
October 2nd, 2009
6:10 pm
…good teachers don’t need to teach to the test if they are teaching well . They can integrate the arts into their instruction. It is not, he said, an either/or situation” He may be correct, but there sure aren’t many of those teachers out there. Integrating subject matters meaningfully is VERY difficult. it isn’t just singing songs to help you memorize the multiplication table.
ScienceTeacher671
October 2nd, 2009
6:38 pm
I agree that states should not be setting their own proficiency levels…by the way, Maureen, how did Georgia stack up in those comparisons with NAEP? I also agree that good teachers don’t have to “teach to the test” if they are teaching well.
(It also seems to me that if a lot of time is being used to teach reading, students could be reading about science, social studies, great literature, great people, etc., instead of reading silly stories that were invented for a reading book.)
ScienceTeacher671
October 2nd, 2009
9:35 pm
Somewhere back in about 3rd grade, we had a book or program that combined reading, geography, and social studies with music. Our teacher was a musician, had a piano in the classroom, and had us doing quite a bit of singing. Each unit in our reading book had stories about children in different countries and how they lived, and we also learned a song about that country.
The custom in that school was that each class put on a play or other program once during the school year (I can’t remember if it was just for the other classes in that grade or for the entire school; I’m sure we had more than 9 classes in the school but don’t recall going to assembly more than once a month) – that year, at the end of the year, our class performed all the “songs from around the world”.
Maureen's accountability metric
October 2nd, 2009
10:46 pm
Since Wise would like to imply a total integration of the arts can be seamlessly accomplished, and that the emphasis on testing has no effect whatsoever on subjects outside of “the test,” let’s just give him a real world example that he can relate to, or more from the point, can’t evade.
Gov. Wise, when you were studying for your driver’s license exam, “the test” as it were, did your instructor take the time to teach you how to make an origami car, and origami cones so you could “integrate the arts” into your parallel parking practice?
I didn’t think so.
Maureen's accountability metric
October 2nd, 2009
11:21 pm
Did any of the esteemed speakers address the systemic lack of support we give the classroom teachers when it comes to addressing chronically disruptive students who may be the single biggest drain on teaching and learning?
When that presenter comes on board, posts about them, because at least you know, agree or disagree, that presenter is addressing education issues with a sense of honesty and integrity.
Brian Crosby, whom Maureen has featured, would be an example of this, since he dealt with the issue head on. Of course of the many, many ideas that Maureen has featured when it came to Crosby, addressing his views on discipline and chronically disruptive students wasn’t one of them.
Why are we not surprised?
As far as Gov. Wise, he might as well join fellow politician Tom Delay on Dancing With The Stars, the way he’s tap dancing around the real truth of education issues.
Might as well add the AJC editorial board to the competition while we are at it. Of course they don’t fit the “star” profile, especially considering the losses of AJC’s subscription numbers and loss of respect in general, but I’m sure they can more than make up for it with their “tap dancing around the truth” nimbleness afoot.
Toto: exposing the man behind the curtain
October 3rd, 2009
12:04 am
Maureen, do you bother to check out the character of those you carry water for?
This disgraced former governor is the LAST person citizens need to listen to.
http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:Zum38oC_k8AJ:www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-13837047.html+governor+bob+wise+mascia-frye&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari
BTW. Since when does a Rockefeller need a government handout?
“During this period, Wise responded to the economic challenges of the state by attempting to attract businesses through an extensive tax and infrastructure assistance program. In one instance, the state issued $215 million in grants to spur $1 billion investment in projects, such as the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute,…” Wikipedia
FLAWoodLayer
October 3rd, 2009
10:43 am
Absolutely we need national standards but not just in math and reading but also science. People get scared when discussing national standards in science and social studies because of politics. The Chinese aren’t afraid to discuss evolution but left in the hands of the states it may not get taught. No wonder we fall behind. However, we can teach these standards and not have to abandon the arts. The Japanese and Chinese send their teachers here for professional development because what their nations lack is innovation and creativity.
We also need to do away with the summer vacation (don’t abandon it shorten it) and eliminate block scheduling in schools that are low performing. If a teacher does not utilize block time efficiently, students lose to much class time and never address the curriculum fully. Poor use of block time in my opinion is one of the main reason for low scores on standardized tests.
ScienceTeacher671
October 3rd, 2009
12:03 pm
This morning I’ve been watching a CNN report on Ron Clark’s academy up there in Atlanta. I notice that the school integrates music and dance into all lessons.
I’ve met Ron Clark and heard him speak, and he is charismatic, dynamic, enthusiastic, and it’s obvious he is doing great things with his students. Of course, it’s also a private school, and the school selects the students who attend. Although the students apparently would all be considered “at risk”, they do choose to attend the school, which also requires parental commitments before the children may be admitted.
I also noted that the tuition is approximately twice the average per pupil cost in Georgia (although many of the students are attending on scholarship). The school is very lively, but discipline appears to be strict and enforced, judging in part by the dress of the students and how well they wear their uniforms, and in part by the Contract of Obligation parents must sign.
Mark Pennington
October 17th, 2009
10:47 pm
National standards may help, but effectively trained teachers in the science of diagnostic assessment will do more to improve the quality of education. Diagnostic assessments are essential instructional tools. However, many teachers resist using these tools because they can be time-consuming to administer, grade, record, and analyze. Some teachers avoid diagnostic assessments because these teachers exclusively focus on grade-level standards-based instruction or believe that remediation is (or was) the job of some other teacher. To be honest, some teachers resist diagnostic assessments because the data might induce them to differentiate instruction—a daunting task for any teacher. And some teachers resist diagnostic assessments because they fear that the data will be used by administrators to hold them accountable for individual student progress. Check out ten criteria for effective diagnostic ELA/reading assessments at http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/reading/ten-criteria-for-effective-elareading-diagnostic-assessments/ and download free whole-class comprehensive consonant and vowel phonics assessments, three sight word assessments, a spelling-pattern assessment, a multi-level fluency assessment, six phonemic awareness assessments, a grammar assessment, and a mechanics assessment from the right column of this informative article.