We don't need no education

I guess I should give credit to the Times Union for running an editorial today about the retirement of state Education Commissioner Richard Mills, even if this bit doesn't make much sense. "The high school graduation rate has risen, but the rate for minority and disabled students lags, as does that for boys compared with girls.  Many students take five or six years to graduate from high school." Educators can't win. If students are having difficulty learning, you can either socially promote them and confer meaningless degrees, or not, and if not then they may take a bit longer to graduate, which should not result in criticism from editorial writers.

The federal No Child Left Behind law has given everyone some very useful data about school results, mostly through increased testing (which Mills also pushed). But NCLB's drawbacks are implicit in its ridiculously sentimental title, along with the provisions in every big education law (much like decrees by the Supreme Soviet regarding five-year agricultural plans) that by a certain year all students (or at least an ever higher percentage) will do ever more wonderfully. Mills' decrees abolishing local diplomas and requiring all students to pass the Regents exams to get a meaningful high school graduation certificate had a distinctly Soviet flavor, and led him and his department to dumb down the content and scoring of Regents exams to make them easier to pass.

The Obama administration's big domestic issues are the economy, health care and energy, not education, which seems even more neglected by state politicians. A big current issue is whether the state Legislature will restore Mayor Mike Bloomberg's power over the NYC schools, but no politician or pundit seems interested in the statewide school system, witness the complete lack of public discussion about who will or should succeed Mills. It does not inspire confidence that the decision lies in the hands of the Board of Regents, who are all in effect appointees of the Assembly speaker but accountable to nobody (which would be a good topic for a state constitutional convention if we ever get one).

There has been public interest in restraining school spending and property taxes, with the Suozzi commission producing a sound report that was put on the shelf. But the lack of interest in education policy at this time of transition is a sign of the decadence of New York public life.

Comments

[Brian]

I blame Mills for pioneering the fetish for standardized testing up the wazoo that eventually caught on nationally, which has certainly been lucrative for some businesses. Standardized testing can serve a useful purpose, but all sense of proportion has been lost. Instead of being a useful measuring stick, it's become the raison d'etre. Actual education is being lost in the process, with teachers being required to be automatons.

And your analogy to Soviet master planning is a bit off. At least the Soviets let their master plans last five years. Today's kids get tested every time they go to the bathroom.

Oh and there's another Catch-22 you may have overlooked. I read an article a few weeks ago that state officials were concerned, yes concerned, that test scores were going up because they presumed that meant the test was too easy and therefore had to be made harder. So if test scores are "too low," schools are punished. If test scores are "too high," then the presumption is not that kids and teachers are doing well but that the test is too easy. A presumption of guilt AND a recipe for mediocrity all at once.

[Brian]

When Mills started, I believe kids used to be state tested after 4th and 8th grades as well as with Regents exams at the end of the cycle of each material. That seemed not unreasonable to me. Now it seems like these poor kids are being state tested every other week.