Today wiped me out pretty thoroughly...talking, talking, talking all day long, class after class, giving out my policies and rules to kids most of whom I've never met, keeping my radar out for any potential problems I might face in the future with this group of kids or that, trying to remember exactly what I've said from class to class for fear of repeating myself (few things are as embarrassing as leading up to a really, really important point, complete with huge buildup, only to have four voices chirp, "You already told us that!"). My head was pretty much spinning when I left, and then I got a call from my wife telling me news of a family emergency; we just got back from the hospital. Everything's okay, but we're pretty wiped out (my wife's a high school teacher, too; she teaches art in a different district), so this posting will be kept pretty short.

I promised to address the fallacy of using international standardized test scores to compare how we stack up against other countries that allegedly have surged ahead of us educationally. It's really a no-brainer, really, for two separate and very important reasons. First, we're all sharp enough to understand that performances on tests are not truly comparable unless all of the tests are the same. Yes, you can compare the test results, but unless the tests are identical, the comparison is rendered meaningless. So in being told that Japanese high school students, for example, consistently outscore American high school students in terms of test scores, how often have you heard exactly what was being tested? We know that American test scores are based largely on ACT and/or SAT results; what are the Japanese tests? Second, you can't compare test results between two different countries when only the elite students in one country are being tested and virtually all of the students in the other are being tested. In Colorado, every high school student in the state is required to take the ACT test on the same day in April, every year. These are among the scores being generated as part of the basis for comparison with other countries--regardless of the huge range in ability levels, all scores are reported. I'm aware of no other country where this is the case. Suppose we decide to test only our elite students and compare their scores with those of other countries; who do you think is going to win that race? I'll go out on a limb here. I'll put my money on the kids from the U.S.--every time.
I'm too tired to know if I explained this as well as I'd hoped to, but I don't need numbers and statistics to understand how vacuous our "Chicken Little" concern over our standing in the international community is, given the rationale being used to generate the panic. We all need to be aware of when we're being sold a bill of goods. Many of us don't seem to be aware that standardized test scores bear relatively little significance in measuring student performance to begin with--certainly nowhere near the weight they're given by the state and federal governments today. To exaggerate their importance further by using them in comparisons with other countries (where they bear equally relative insignificance) is to add fuel to a fire that never should have been ignited to begin with.
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