February 28, 2007
Educational Testing and Our Public Schools
James Deneen
Member of Princeton Old Guard
Minutes of the 21st Meeting of the 65th Year
President Giordmaine called to order the 21st meeting of the 65th Year of the Princeton Old Guard at the Friend Center. The invocation was led by John Marks.
The minutes of the previous meeting were read by Rosemary O’Brien with appropriate obiter dicta concerning the subject at hand, as well as her new eyeglasses.
There were no guests or visitors present. John Schmidt, on behalf of the Membership Committee, proposed the names of Samuel Lenox, Harold Buckley and William Barger, and after a second, the candidates were elected by voice vote to the Old Guard.
President Giordmaine announced that next week’s speaker would be Vincent Poor, of Hospitality House. He then said that today’s scheduled speaker, Sarah Jones Nelson, had had a medical emergency that pre-empted her presence. In her stead, Old Guard member, Jim Deneen, was contacted at 7 a.m. and asked to volunteer to take her place. He agreed, immediately left his hot coffee behind, and started to cobble his notes together to present a detailed discussion on subjects near and dear to all of us. His lifetime of dedication, professional preparation and long experience as both an educator and an executive with Educational Testing Services no doubt provided a strong base for his deft handling of what he called his “disorganized notes.”
Jim divided his presentation into two categories: First: Educational Testing. He defined a test as a 4 letter word, denoting something none of us enjoys. Basically, no one cares to be tested and possibly found wanting. Yet tests are critically important to our schools. Teachers and the whole education enterprise must have a way of assessing what students have learned, and what they have failed to learn. Good teachers test in the broadest sense, not using just written exams, but through constant alertness to the students’ progress and modifying their next moves based on observed results. In truth, tests are a way of motivating students to study, review and memorize what is being taught. Jim gave as example the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District in North Carolina, which requires all teachers to employ a system of brief 30-item tests, 4-6 times/year. The teachers receive analysis of the results for each kid within one week. Low performers are immediately assigned tutors. The downward spiral is arrested on the spot. In a federally sponsored program involving 11 major cities called the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s students excelled in every category of the assessment and virtually tied with the far more affluent Austin Texas School District in overall performance. The inference and the Charlotte teachers’ conviction is that their system-wide testing and follow-up efforts have worked.
Jim admitted that testing can be and in many cases, is overdone. But the real issue is whether the feedback is properly analyzed and used.
In the second part of his presentation, Jim discussed the state of our public schools. Given that the goal of education is to help students to lead productive lives, he pointed out the obvious and huge discrepancies in results across the country. After citing the relatively good performance of our local schools, Jim went on to question public school outcomes in places like Newark, New York City, Washington, D.C., LA, and Appalachia. Most kids in these schools are not learning adequately. It is a shame. It is a cause of concern, but what are the reasons? The simple measure of tax money spent per student is not the whole explanation. The average per student expenditure in New Jersey is $13K, but the Newark School District, one of the poorest performers, spends an average of $16K. NYC spends $14K. These numbers mean something when we consider that the national average per student in public school is about $8K. If not money, what conditions shape the huge differences that characterize American public education?
The levels of affluence or poverty in the districts make the difference. Jim cited the many conditions we have in our central New Jersey schools that contribute to the higher levels of success:
First, affluent parents are involved in the financial and moral process of education, are not afraid to put pressure on their public schools establishment, and provide both high expectations and in-home support for their children who tend to live in safe neighborhoods.
Second, one of the strongest correlatives exists between the educational levels of the parents and the achievements of the local schools.
Jim then assured us that not all poor area, or inner-city schools fail. He introduced, as an example, the Northstar Academy in Newark, a public charter school open to all applicants through a lottery system of admission. Northstar cannot select its pupils, but it can and does set the rules by which they attend and learn. Just to make sure, the student and their parents sign the regulations. To underline the level of poverty in the Academy, Jim said that 90% of the students qualify for the free-lunch program. What have been the results to date? Northstar has a 100% graduation rate from 12th grade; the highest college placement rate in NJ; test results of 95.2 % proficiency in language arts, and 95.7% in math. There are other successful efforts going on around the country, such as the Knowledge is Power Program, and the Teach for America Program. In all these cases, certain inferences can be drawn: There must be reasonable discipline to learn. Classroom management techniques are inviolable. Parents and teachers must be on the same page and stay there. And, it goes without saying that teachers have to adjust their techniques to where their students are in the lifelong discipline of learning. Simply throwing money at the problem is not the sole solution.
A tribute to Doctor Deneen’s abstinence from his morning coffee was the large number of questioning hands raised as President Giordmaine gaveled the meeting to its close at 11:30 sharp.
Respectfully submitted,
James Ferry
The minutes of the previous meeting were read by Rosemary O’Brien with appropriate obiter dicta concerning the subject at hand, as well as her new eyeglasses.
There were no guests or visitors present. John Schmidt, on behalf of the Membership Committee, proposed the names of Samuel Lenox, Harold Buckley and William Barger, and after a second, the candidates were elected by voice vote to the Old Guard.
President Giordmaine announced that next week’s speaker would be Vincent Poor, of Hospitality House. He then said that today’s scheduled speaker, Sarah Jones Nelson, had had a medical emergency that pre-empted her presence. In her stead, Old Guard member, Jim Deneen, was contacted at 7 a.m. and asked to volunteer to take her place. He agreed, immediately left his hot coffee behind, and started to cobble his notes together to present a detailed discussion on subjects near and dear to all of us. His lifetime of dedication, professional preparation and long experience as both an educator and an executive with Educational Testing Services no doubt provided a strong base for his deft handling of what he called his “disorganized notes.”
Jim divided his presentation into two categories: First: Educational Testing. He defined a test as a 4 letter word, denoting something none of us enjoys. Basically, no one cares to be tested and possibly found wanting. Yet tests are critically important to our schools. Teachers and the whole education enterprise must have a way of assessing what students have learned, and what they have failed to learn. Good teachers test in the broadest sense, not using just written exams, but through constant alertness to the students’ progress and modifying their next moves based on observed results. In truth, tests are a way of motivating students to study, review and memorize what is being taught. Jim gave as example the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District in North Carolina, which requires all teachers to employ a system of brief 30-item tests, 4-6 times/year. The teachers receive analysis of the results for each kid within one week. Low performers are immediately assigned tutors. The downward spiral is arrested on the spot. In a federally sponsored program involving 11 major cities called the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s students excelled in every category of the assessment and virtually tied with the far more affluent Austin Texas School District in overall performance. The inference and the Charlotte teachers’ conviction is that their system-wide testing and follow-up efforts have worked.
Jim admitted that testing can be and in many cases, is overdone. But the real issue is whether the feedback is properly analyzed and used.
In the second part of his presentation, Jim discussed the state of our public schools. Given that the goal of education is to help students to lead productive lives, he pointed out the obvious and huge discrepancies in results across the country. After citing the relatively good performance of our local schools, Jim went on to question public school outcomes in places like Newark, New York City, Washington, D.C., LA, and Appalachia. Most kids in these schools are not learning adequately. It is a shame. It is a cause of concern, but what are the reasons? The simple measure of tax money spent per student is not the whole explanation. The average per student expenditure in New Jersey is $13K, but the Newark School District, one of the poorest performers, spends an average of $16K. NYC spends $14K. These numbers mean something when we consider that the national average per student in public school is about $8K. If not money, what conditions shape the huge differences that characterize American public education?
The levels of affluence or poverty in the districts make the difference. Jim cited the many conditions we have in our central New Jersey schools that contribute to the higher levels of success:
First, affluent parents are involved in the financial and moral process of education, are not afraid to put pressure on their public schools establishment, and provide both high expectations and in-home support for their children who tend to live in safe neighborhoods.
Second, one of the strongest correlatives exists between the educational levels of the parents and the achievements of the local schools.
Jim then assured us that not all poor area, or inner-city schools fail. He introduced, as an example, the Northstar Academy in Newark, a public charter school open to all applicants through a lottery system of admission. Northstar cannot select its pupils, but it can and does set the rules by which they attend and learn. Just to make sure, the student and their parents sign the regulations. To underline the level of poverty in the Academy, Jim said that 90% of the students qualify for the free-lunch program. What have been the results to date? Northstar has a 100% graduation rate from 12th grade; the highest college placement rate in NJ; test results of 95.2 % proficiency in language arts, and 95.7% in math. There are other successful efforts going on around the country, such as the Knowledge is Power Program, and the Teach for America Program. In all these cases, certain inferences can be drawn: There must be reasonable discipline to learn. Classroom management techniques are inviolable. Parents and teachers must be on the same page and stay there. And, it goes without saying that teachers have to adjust their techniques to where their students are in the lifelong discipline of learning. Simply throwing money at the problem is not the sole solution.
A tribute to Doctor Deneen’s abstinence from his morning coffee was the large number of questioning hands raised as President Giordmaine gaveled the meeting to its close at 11:30 sharp.
Respectfully submitted,
James Ferry