Liam Julian wrote in his article, “Michigan’s Tests Leave Children Behind,” from the Detroit News, that Michigan’s testing standards are not on par with the rest of the nation, and that they are not consistent throughout the grade levels. This leads to a “proficiency gap,” where parents think their children are doing well in school and are meeting all standards, where in reality, Michigan’s standards are too low to mean anything. Julian said that Michigan residents trusted their lawmakers to enforce rigorous academic standards, and that they were failed by the people in charge. According to Julian,
Michigan is setting its students up for failure. The score eighth-graders must reach to be considered “proficient” is far harder than the score third-graders need to achieve. That is, Michigan’s tests are not well-calibrated across grades.
His solution to the state’s education problems is to create a national exam and standards to measure students’ progess, and to not allow individual states to set their own assessments anymore. Also, education standards and tests should be relevant to real-world situations, preparing students to join the American workforce and improve the economy.
I don’t know where Mr. Julian has been all these years or what schools he’s been visiting, but I’m pretty sure that Michigan schools are already trying to prepare their students for life beyond high school, that is, for college and their careers beyond that. Schools are not just trying to bore the students or stuff them full of useless facts, but are trying to make well-functioning, good members of society. If you look at any school’s mission statement, it will say something to that effect. However, in Julian’s mind, Michigan schools are really just trying to deceive innocent, trusting parents, and are lying about their progress.
Another issue I have with Mr. Julian is his solution to improving Michigan schools. Rather than place on emphasis on true learning in the classroom and authentic assessment methods, he feels that a national standardized exam will fix all our problems. It does seem that making a national standard would solve everything, but isn’t that what NCLB is already supposed to be doing? And failing miserably?
Michigan’s tests leave some students behind
Liam Julian, October 10, 2007
Detroit News
2 responses so far ↓
1
Chris
// Dec 4, 2007 at 5:15 am
Wow. This Julian character seems to put a lot of emphasis on standardized tests. I disagree with him completely, as you seem to have. What are we going to find out if we have a perfect national standardized test to assess how students are doing? Oh, it turns out their not doing well, lets concentrate on improving our education program. GREAT. We could just concentrate all this standardized testing effort on teaching kids and we won’t have need for a test to tell us to teach them better because we’re already doing it! The only useful thing I can see that we gain from all this testing is finding out schools that aren’t doing well and thus need extra help. The problem is that it seems like, rather than actually helping them, the reaction to this information is to tell them to do better and then shut them down if they don’t. This is a fantastically ineffective way to go about improving education. It’d be nice if we could just change how we’re doing things now rather than continuing to pursue this worthless goal of comparing everyone.
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