Most-Clicked: Georgia Tosses Test Results

This story's at the top of the SmartBrief radar: After reporting 70–80% failure rates, state officials in Georgia are throwing out the results of two statewide middle school social studies tests. Students also fared poorly on the state's math tests, with about 50,000 students unable to advance to the 9th grade (because of failure) without retesting, attending summer school, and/or filing an appeal for promotion.

The social studies scores are getting discarded, officials say, mostly because it was too much new curriculum and not enough direction on how to teach it.

Comments

[E Sheppard]

I teach third grade in Georgia, and this year's test results have been a shock to us all. The content area standards (science and social studies) are very vague, and apparently the vagueness caught up with us this year on the state tests. Also, many resources used for teaching these subjects were outdated and unaligned with the new standards. Hopefully this is a wake up call for everyone: national and state officials, educators, parents, and students.

[Barbara Veltri,Ed. D.]

Who in the legislature was responsible for deciding the fate of kids based on 'high stakes' testing in Social Studies without clear guidelines as to what would be covered? Does anyone realize that Social Studies can cover any time, topic, date, or personality from Ancient Civilization to the Modern Era?

How many of the members of the body that makes these decisions, could pass the test if limited time for instruction and rich discussion in the Social Studies was the norm?

Social Studies and Science teaching in Arizona is often left to the back burner of one's teaching day, as is the case in certain states or locales. And in others, the teaching is prescribed, broad-based and pressurized, in it's goal to cover knowledge bytes with less than ample conceptual understanding . Currently, my grad students, in a course entitled, Professional Problems of Teachers, that Social Studies teaching appears to be a "Hidden Curriculum" now.

But, Why? Many report that the State of Arizona mandates two hours of reading instruction for all children ( writing is not to be included in this). Couple the latest ELL four-hour mandate (where kids are removed from the regular classroom to work on proficiency in English at the expense of other subject areas) and you have the makings for a null curriculum: Social Studies and conversations on issues, from the Earthquake in China to the elections in the U. S. are not happening.

My mother attended public schools in New York state in the Depression era, when there was little funding. Her parents didn't speak English; Ukrainian was spoken in the home. Her brother arrived in Kindergarten without understanding a work of English.

Mom graduated from high school with a college scholarship and speaks fluent English and her native language. She laments, along with her friends, as to what is happening with all of this nonsensical testing! She inquires of her grandkids, "How was school today?" And all she hears is, "It's okay when we don't have testing." All of her grandkids attend public school.

I suggested to my mother that she needs to rally the older generation to help support some of the initiatives that are currently mandated and "hidden" from the taxpayers whose funds support program requirements that sound good, but are not adequately considered or funded.

The Georgia test is a case in point. But Georgians are not alone.

In New York state, some years back, parents in a wealthy suburb of Scarsdale, kept their children at home during test week, as a protest to the drill and kill aspect of a narrowed curriculum. The result: the Commissioner of Education sent a stern letter to the district superintendent who mandated attendance the following year.

What is happening, in addition to wasting taxpayers money, is that we are driving great teachers elsewhere, and not at all addressing the needs to prepare our kids for their roles as global citizens in some regions of the country. We are looking for some to drop out of school and others to fill working-class jobs.

But public education was more than that for my mother, a child of a non-English speaking, immigrant factory worker, and many Americans who are entrepreneurs, taxpayers and citizens in our democracy.

What should be done? Well, let's not pretend that we are preparing all of our children for their role in the 21st century economy. If so...

We should be teaching social studies, mandate a foreign language requirement in the primary grades, and installing the internet into all classrooms for the maps and issues of today require technology instead of textbooks.

Dr. Gene Carter's column, "Is this good for kids?' resonates with me, no matter what topic he tackles.

And now, I am asking the same question... Is this good for kids?

I have walked the hallways of schools in several states... and I'll tell you that in some places, there is one computer ( teacher has it on his/her desk); students have 30 minutes of (computer lab) technology once a week and cannot access internet in school ( neither can the teachers.. to pull up maps and current materials); others teach social studies for 20 minutes twice a week if they are lucky.

And we are supposed to be competing with the world?

C'mon get real.. this is an embarrassment not only to Georgia, but to people who depend upon the public schools in the United States to be a safe harbor for all kids to be equally treated under the law, and educated.

Testing tends to create yet another reason for the flight of families into private and charter schools, and to more affluent neighborhoods or magnet schools that offer what their kids can't get in many of the public schools in our rural and urban areas.
This supports a privatization agenda and segregates our kids who live in poverty.

The mandates are pervasive, however. Teachers must focus on math and reading. But don't we need to know the law and the citizenship concepts that are not just identifying dates, symbols and certain people.

The Geography and History knowledge of our young people, including those who are in college and universities is seriously lacking. This poses grave consequences to those who believe that we will do business abroad.

Perhaps Georgia is a wake up call that the testing fiasco is just that. Teachers in prior decades were provided a guideline as to the topics from which rich discussion, research papers, and primary sources were utilized. Now, teachers tell me that they cannot teach Social Studies ( really) until kids are in the middle schools.

How is that preparing our students for a global economy and 21st century citizenship? We have kids who have family members in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why are we not teaching about The MIddle East in the primary grades when we discuss families and cultures? We look at China and India and see billions of potential clients for industry. When are we going to learn about these cultures and lifeways?
We have genocide in Darfur and millions are refugees in Chad, and we are concerned about testing?

One teacher of mine in Texas last year, reported that her public school students ( 6th grade) have the option of learning Hindi and Mandarin in classes that meet daily during the academic year.
Their language requirement is one of the two, or Spanish.

My mother's group of well-informed and go out to vote seniors, are adamant that we insert a language requirement in the pre-school years that follow students through high school.
Arabic anyone? Hebrew?

I prepare future teachers in the Social Studies and teach graduate courses for practicing educators, in the United States and abroad.. thanks to the wonder of on-line courses ( graduate level).

My undergrads are getting as much from me as possible with integrating social studies into reading,b/c otherwise they won't be able to teach it consistently.
My grad students are currently in 20 districts ( one in Taiwan).
I am learning how the international students are more enriched and have a greater understanding of geography and language than we have here.

On a trip to Japan eight years ago, university students presented a group research project on Boston and other historical places in the United States in ENGLISH. If it works for the countries abroad, why are we doing a disservice to our young people by structuring the NCLB laws to eliminate the study of cultures, peoples, places and environments?

There are leaders who are obsessed with Americanizing every student who attends school in the U.S. with a range of English only dictums that are limiting the experience base of our kids.
Further, the federal Department of Education, and many state-wide Superintendents of Public Instruction and Commissioners of Education, are leaders who have not spent enough time in schools to effectively address the issues. Would we ever support the nomination of a justice to the Supreme Court whose career was spent mostly as a dentist?

I was privileged to not only listen to the key note speaker at the 2007 NCSS ( National Conference for the Social Studies), Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who advocated for major changes to NCLB, but I learned much about her commitment in supporting the teaching of Social Studies, Government and International Studies during our return flight to Arizona, where she was seated next to me!

She wondered how our young people could aspire to careers in law, the legislature, or assume roles as active citizens in a democracy,if we scale down quality social studies teaching, reduce the discussions and ideas that were part and parcel of the framework of our democratic society, and limit teaching to 20 minutes twice a week.

We have shifted like a vessel on a waterway with contrasting navigational signals. We have moved away from the very ideals of an experiential and integrated curriculum in a range of school settings around the country and have widened the divide as it relates to truly educating our young people, especially those in areas where immigration and low-socio-economic status populations are so closely tied to federal and state funding compliance.

I hope that we have not paid a long-range price for policies that will be difficult to recover from. Students, parents, teachers, administrators and those who advocate for a just and enriched public education for all have noted over the years, that what was once viewed as at least, 'getting all of our kids on the radar" through NCLB's AYP monitoring, has evolved into an often wasteful, time consuming, and monotonous series of requirements that reduce the discovery aspect of schooling.

There is much that needs to be done and perhaps voices of public outcry may echo in Georgia.

But, my hope is that people, like my mother, her voting senior friends in Connecticut and citizens around the country, will raise a united voice that critically examines and demands limits on the reauthorization of the high stakes nature of state tests, federal mandates that are often fraud with inconsistencies and abuse, and waste billions of dollars, that could be redirected for experiential learning, technological implementation and the removal of restraints on teachers whose desire and calling is to educate our future.