Challenging Assertions

What is clear,
and Kentucky has 20 years of experience that shows it,
is that for any test that is adopted
teachers will be coerced into teaching to it.
Despite all the work with national standards,
students may emerge from schools
expected to know only what is on tests.

-- Skip Kifer

In a Monday Herald-Leader Op Ed titled, "New standards alone won't improve education," assessment guru Skip Kifer challenged a couple of ideas offered by Educati0on Commissioner Terry Holliday and CPE head Bob King.

At issue was their Sept.19 column, "Smarter standards; Ky. tackling challenges to meet ambitious goals".

Education Commissioner Terry Holliday and Council on Postsecondary Education President Bob King in their op-ed focus on national education standards and related issues....They say, "It has been common that students who have been earning A's and B's in high school have been placed in remedial courses in college." They say students have not been learning the right stuff in high school and that national standards will solve the problem.

... decades of research has shown the single best predictor of success in college is a student's high school record. Doing well in a rigorous college preparatory curriculum is the key to doing well in higher education. How have or will national standards change that?

Perhaps these hypothetical students were not in college preparatory classes. In that case, one would not expect them to be related to success in college.

Then Kifer disputed international comparisons. Holliday and King stated that, "Among the 40 most industrialized nations, American students perform in the bottom quartile on international math and science examinations."

In the latest 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), U.S. fourth graders were ranked 11th of 36 in mathematics. Their eighth grade counterparts were ranked ninth of 48...

Kentucky did not participate as a state in TIMSS. However, the commonwealth's fourth and eighth graders participate in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessments. Their scores are at about the national average. It is likely then that Kentucky performance on TIMSS would be similar to the U.S. as a whole; they would be in the top one-third in 4th grade and the top 20 percent in 8th grade.

Similarly in science Kifer finds that Kentucky's performance on the TIMSS could be in the top 20 percent: sixth or seventh at fourth grade and ninth or 10th in eighth grade.

Holliday and King stated that, "Since early this summer, teams of teachers and college faculty have been translating sophisticated technical language (of the national standards) into objectives students and their parents can understand." But Kifer wonders,

Suppose another state were doing the same thing. Is there any reason to believe the two groups would come up with the same statements? It would appear the process is a way to turn national standards into state curricula, a problem national standards were meant to solve.