Can’t Predict Success
The following is a letter regarding “Math Scores on the SAT Hit Highest Mark in 30 Years” (Aug. 30):
Don’t get too excited. An increase of three points means that students are answering two or three more questions correctly.
In my thirty-two years of classroom teaching experience, I still have many students who have taken algebra and geometry fail the ninth-grade math proficiency test. Most lack basic skills with fractions, decimals, percentages, and analytical problem-solving. Let us remember that the SAT is an aptitude test (readiness, ability, talent, knack, skill, proficiency), not an achievement test (success, attainment, triumph, accomplishment). Standardized tests ignore skills and abilities needed to function in a complex, pluralistic society—such as the ability to work collectively in various social and cultural contexts, to adjust to change, to understand the perspectives of others, to persevere, to motivate, to solve problems in a real-life context, to lead, and to value moral integrity and social commitment.
I have known many students who attended prestigious colleges yet have not been “successful” and many who have attended local community colleges and universities and succeeded very well.
As Marian Wright Edelman said, “You can get all As and still flunk life.”
David A. Hancock
Chesterland
LETTERS
HOMEWORK’S PROBLEM
I read with interest the article “Homework Overload—Are We Trying Too Hard?” (Feb. 14). As a public school educator for thirty years, I agree with William Glasser, MD, author of The Quality School, Schools without Failure, and several other books. As difficult as it may be for both educators and parents to accept, mandatory homework may be the main reason that so many students take schoolwork out of their quality worlds.
Leadership guru W. Edward Deming would say that if 80 percent of the workers will not do what they are asked to do, it is the fault of the system. This is a significant statistic proving that the “do what we tell you to do whether it is satisfying or not,” boss-managed system does not work, yet we continue to pay little attention to the system itself.
The way to solve the problem of students not doing homework is exactly the opposite of what we do now: reduce compulsory homework drastically and emphasize the importance of classwork.
David A. Hancock
Chester Township
Hancock teaches at Cleveland Heights High School.
The Book That Ignited the Great Homework Debate: The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning
Etta Kralovec and John Buell are educators who dared to challenge one of the most widely accepted practices in American schools. Their provocative argument—first published in their book and featured in Time and Newsweek, in numerous women’s magazines, and on national radio and network television broadcasts—was the first to openly challenge the gospel of “the more homework, the better.”
Consider the following:
□ In 1901, homework was legally banned in parts of the US. There are no studies showing that assigning homework before junior high school improves academic achievement.
□ Increasingly, students and their parents are told that homework must take precedence over music lessons, religious education, and family and community activities. As the homework load increases (and studies show it is increasing) these family priorities are neglected.
□ Homework is a great discriminator, effectively allowing students whose families have more to surge ahead of their classmates who may have less.
□ Backpacks are literally bone-crushing, sometimes weighing as much as the child. Isn’t it obvious we’re overburdening our kids?
“Is it possible that homework isn’t good for kids? Dare we even consider such a shocking idea? Does it make children, teachers, and parents angry at each other rather than allied with each other?” (Deborah Meier, author of The Power of Their Ideas and Will Standards Save Public Education?).
“The increasing amount of homework may not be helping students to learn more; indeed, it often undermines the students’ health, the development of personal interests, and the quality of family life” (Theodore R. Sizer and Nancy Faust Sizer, authors of The Students Are Watching).
Etta Kralovec, a recent Fulbright Fellow, earned her EdD from Teachers College, Columbia University. She was a high school teacher for over twelve years and professor of education and director of teacher education at the College of the Atlantic for eleven years.
John Buell, PhD, University of Massachusetts, author of Democracy by Other Means and Sustainable Democracy, has taught at the College of the Atlantic.
Alfie Kohn’s The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids are Getting Too Much of a Bad Thing.
David A. Hancock
Chesterland
LETTERS
TEACHERS’ BOYCOTTS MIGHT END PROFICIENCY TESTING
To the editor:
Oh no! It’s that time of year again—proficiency tests and school district report cards. I would think that by now, most everyone would realize that using an assortment of bribes and threats to try to coerce everyone into concentrating on test results does not work with high-stakes testing. It has been described as educational malpractice by Alfie Kohn in his book, The Case against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools.
In grade 4, of the 97 reported Ohio school districts, the failure rate is as follows: 61 percent, citizenship; 91 percent, math; 72 percent, reading; 14 percent, writing; and 88 percent, science. Thus, it seems difficult to justify holding a fourth-grade teacher accountable for his or her student’s test scores when those scores reflect all that has happened to the children before they arrived in class.
So what is the solution to this gargantuan quagmire? Boycotts and civil disobedience, which lead to striking results. Elementary school achievement is high in Japan, partly because teachers are free from the pressure to teach to standardized tests because teachers collectively refused to administer them. For many years, they have prevented the government from doing to their children what our government is doing to our children.
Similarly, teachers in England and Wales stopped the new national testing program in its tracks, at least for a while, by a similar act of civil disobedience. What began as an unfocused mish-mash of voices became a united boycott involving teacher unions, a large number of governing bodies, and mass parental support, according to Kohn. Teachers made it clear that their action
