Student accountability? Say, wha?
Education poobahs from everywhere will go this week to Orlando for a k-12 summit hosted by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and friends. In yesterday’s Orlando Sentinel, I wrote about the need for summit participants (and legislators and bureaucrats generally) to forget the hype and avoid focusing overmuch on dropout rates—that is, on the numbers themselves, which are essentially meaningless because states can render receipt of a diploma as difficult or facile as they wish. Lots of states have already succumbed to “lower the dropout rate” pressure by defanging their exit exams.
Two readers thought my piece worth commenting on on the Sentinel’s online site, and both had the same gripe: that my article didn’t even mention student accountability. This is a complaint that I frequently stumble upon, especially in comments sections where readers post opinions about the op-eds they’ve just ingested. In this particular ed-related observation (anong sundry others), the thinking public is far ahead of 1) the education thinktankerati and 2) government officials. One surmises that not a few thoughtful individuals have surmised that not a few high school students are screw-ups who don’t want to be in school, don’t want to learn, and don’t want to behave. Many of them will probably drop out, and many people seem to think that’s generally okay because at some point in time a 17-year-old has to take some responsibility for his own education and life. (Al Shanker, longtime AFT president, believed in student accountability, too.)
To utter such thoughts today is generally not acceptable in polite, ed-policy company, the membership of which concocts dreamy goals such as 100 percent proficiency by 2014. (Soon enough, we’ll have national 100 percent high school graduation targets.) Such student accountability observations are termed “unhelpful” and “unprodcutive.” Of course, they’re also true. But frankness is frowned upon, and so we watch chutzpah-less state legislators backtracking on exit exams and standards because they can’t bear to see anyone fail. Chapel Hill considers making 61 percent the lowest grade a pupil can garner—i.e., “You refuse to do your homework, Johnny? Okay, then. I’m afraid I’ll have to give you a 61 percent.”
Certainly, it’s important to offer second chances to kids who have screwed up but genuinely wish to work hard and compensate for their previous mistakes. Some students, however, simply have no such wish. It’s worth realizing that.
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June 16th, 2008 at 11:55 am
There’s that idea that students don’t want to learn and therefore won’t, but that wasn’t what I was getting at exactly. I’m thinking more about student culture and working to change group attitudes that allow those really disruptive students to have center stage in class.
When I was in school in the inner city, there were plenty of class clowns, but at the end of the day, we were IB kids who wanted to get our work done, so when someone was too far out of line, we weren’t afraid to tell that kid to shut up. Too few inner cities have a group culture that allows for getting down to business, and that’s part of what I’m getting at when I put the focus on students.