<p>I'll start looking for the associated data tables.</p>
<p>Yup. NCLB scores go up; SATs go down. There was a state-by-state analysis in 19 states some years ago cross-referencing state-based assessments with other metrics (Iowa Tests, SATs, ACTs, etc.) In 18 of 19 states where state-based assessments were undertaken, there were inverse relationships between those assessments and other external instruments.</p>
<p>Cut to the chase: schools are making the kids dumber.</p>
<p>It would be regrettable if young people are doing less independent reading than they did in my generation. I suspect that avid, unassigned reading does a lot to help a high school student score high on all the sections of the SAT or ACT.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Cut to the chase: schools are making the kids dumber.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Sarcasm set aside, there is a lot of truth in Mini's statement. The slide is, however, not a recent "accident" as it has been in the making for more than one generation. This is the price our country pays for clinging to a model that satisfies nobody except the political leadership that keeps both teachers and students hostage of a cynical system.</p>
<p>In the meantime, we will continue to dismiss our domestic results --and the damning intenational comparisons of TIMMS/PISA/etc-- and blame NCLB as the culprits of all evils and failures. We will also continue to apply the All-american cure to all symptoms: throw more money at the problem and pray that solves everything. </p>
<p>At this time, we start with what are probably the most advanced and best prepared pre-Ks, slowly lose our edge through elementary and middle-school, and allow our high schools to become academic and intellectual wastelands, only to reverse the trends as our tertiary education remains the envy of the world. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, sooner or later, we will also lose that final edge as the world does not stand still in awe of the US might and financial power. </p>
<p>When "A Nation at Risk" was published in 1983, it generated a lot of interest and a lot of criticism. At that time, some said that our country was at the edge of a deep precipice. To paraphrase a favorite cliche of African leaders, now we may say. "Yes, our country was at the edge of a deep precipice. I am pleased to announce we have made a giant step ... forward!"</p>
<p>It's kind of sad that among high scorers in math (750-800) the ratio of males:females is 2:1...</p>
<p>Xiggi - it's not just the TIMSS trash. You are right about the generational effect, but studies have also seen it accelerating since 2000.</p>
<p>Here's an article I wrote for a homeschooling journal - take with two fi<em>s</em>t<em>f</em>u*ls of salt, and an Alka-Seltzer.</p>
<p>Schools Make the Kids Dumb(er)</p>
<p>Now that got your attention, didn’t it?</p>
<p>I know what at least some of you may be thinking. The infamous homeschooling author has taken a cheap shot. On what basis can he possibly make such a wild, categorical, and overreaching claim? And, even if there is some truth to the argument, why make it here? </p>
<p>These thoughts have crossed my own mind as well. But, with a sigh, I’m continuing to write. You’ll soon find out (I hope) that it isn’t a cheap shot, and that folks much more knowledgeable about such things than I am are the ones making the claim. But I throw myself at the mercy of my homeschooling readers, with the following pleadings: A) I am more than aware that the vast majority of parents in this country are not prepared to homeschool their children, and that, as a society we have a stake in the future of all children, not just those fortunate enough to be homeschooled; and B) In my experience, when it comes to education, most everything about school is wrongheaded, but if we can understand in some detail precisely what it is schools get wrong, chances are we won’t stumble into the same mistakes.</p>
<p>Anyway, you know the usual drill. The state (or local) level data on those high-stakes tests are released to the local press. A bunch of public officials say that grades are higher than ever. The schools are doing a great job, though there’s still room for improvement. And if only we had more money! No attempt will be made to follow the same kids year after year so that we might find out whether what happened in the classroom actually made any difference. There will be occasional outliers, but, on the whole it is predictable that, when you examine the charts in the local newspaper, scores by school will reflect local real estate values. There won’t be any mention of the real statistical anomalies, such as the fact that every state is above the national average in test scores. (Don’t ask me how that is possible – the new math is not my strong suit.)</p>
<p>Since the introduction of intelligence testing in the early part of the 20th Century, scores on so-called “objective”, criterion-referenced tests have increased in a consistent manner. Until the 1990s, tests scores had to be recentered every 15 years or so to reflect improved performance. The “Flynn Effect”, named after Australian political scientist James R. Flynn who first described the phenomena, mostly reflects improved performance in the “bottom half” of the population, resulting at least in part from improved nutrition and environmental conditions, as well as increased exposure to scholastic skills and perhaps to testing itself. </p>
<p>And then sometime, it seems around the late 1980s/early 1990s, the process ground to a halt, not just in the United States, but abroad as well. Last January (2006), I came across the work of Professors Michael Shayer and Philip Adey of Kings College at the University of London. Adey and Shayer have been following the results of tens of thousands of children on intelligence tests over the past 30 years. And their findings? Eleven-year-old children are, “now on average between two and three years behind where they were 15 years ago” in terms of cognitive and conceptual development.</p>
<p>These are no fly-by-night researchers. Shayer and Adey have for decades been two of the foremost and highly respected lights in British education. Their work is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, Britain’s leading think tank on educational matters. Previous research by Shayer in the 1980s had validated the use of particular standardized measures, unchanged since 1976, as predictive of general levels of performance, and had, in fact, formed the basis of nationwide intervention models for poor-performing students. His work has since been replicated on three continents.</p>
<p>“It’s a staggering result,” stated Shayer, “But the figures just don’t lie. The results have been checked, rechecked, and peer reviewed.” “It is shocking,” said Adey, “The general cognitive foundation of 11- and 12-year olds has taken a big dip.” The test, noted cognitive scientist Denise Ginsberg, measures both general intelligence and “higher level brain functions.” “It is nothing less than the ability of children to handle new, difficult ideas.” </p>
<p>The results have already caused experts in England to question whether the standardized national tests they have been using are of long-term benefit to learning, and cast doubt, according to Paul Black, another educational luminary at King’s College, on claims that standards are in fact improving.</p>
<p>The articles I read noted that the study was to be published in 2007 in the British Journal of Educational Psychology. I decided not to wait that long, so I contacted Adey and Shayer directly and they were gracious enough to send me an advance copy. (If you would like one, send me an e-mail, though note that much of it is quite technical.) Without going into too much detail, the large drops in competency between 1976-2000 were evident. But, and more striking, the declines seem to have accelerated since, even as schools were implementing test-normed “higher standards”, adhering to “National Numeracy and Literacy” projects.</p>
<p>In press accounts, Adey and Shayer are somewhat circumspect when it comes to explaining the observed mass cognitive retardation. “I would suggest,” says Shayer, “that the most likely reasons are the lack of experiential play in primary schools, and the growth of a video-game, TV culture. Both take away the kinds of hands-on play that allows kids to experience how the world works in practice and to make informed judgments about abstract concepts.” </p>
<p>Adey went a bit further. “By stressing the basics – reading and writing – and testing like crazy you reduce the level of cognitive stimulation. Children have the facts but they are not thinking very well. And they are not getting hands-on physical experience of the way materials work. Parents should switch off the television and sit children around the dinner table to debate issues such as ‘What should we have done about the whale in the Thames?’” (For information on the whale in the Thames, visit <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/01/20/britain.whale/index.html%5B/url%5D">www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/01/20/britain.whale/index.html</a> )</p>
<p>In the article itself, it is evident that Adey and Shayer are aware of some of the contradictions inherent in their work. In the tradition of the child development pioneer Jean Piaget related to the formation of intelligence, of which the authors are a part, it is “the whole everyday environmental experience of the child that drove cognitive development, with schooling possibly playing only a minor part in the process.” On the other hand, it is now a given within the educational orthodoxy that school should be able to play a more significant role, and the evidence now suggests that it does – negatively. Adey and Shayer’s article concludes, “Perhaps the next major Government objective in education should be to address the question: in focusing teachers’ attention on the specifics of the 3Rs only, what has been lost from the earlier primary practice of attending to the development of the whole person of the child?”</p>
<p>Homeschoolers don’t have to live inside that contradiction. I note that despite Adey and Shayer’s research conclusions, they remain focused on where the teachers’ attention should be, rather than that of the kids. Realistically, and given who their employers are, perhaps that is asking too much of them. But in the spirit of learning from the demonstrated success of schools in retarding children’s intellectual development, and school being the leading preventable cause of learning disabilities, we can at least take a hint. Want your kids to be better at math? Throw out the workbook pages, let them play in puddles, bake some cakes, grow some vegetables, assist you with map directions. Want them to read better? Let them help you with the shopping, choose the videos, sort the mail, and provide them with enough experiences so they’ll want to make use of the reading skill. Oh, and lots of good conversation – precisely what they will never get sitting in those little chairs behind those little desks never to be seen anywhere else in the real world.</p>
<p>Glad we’re homeschooling.</p>
<p>• * * * *</p>
<p>Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water….</p>
<p>One area that requires further exploration is the impact of teachers “teaching to the test.” Professor Black hypotheses that when the stakes are high, teachers do in fact teach to the test. “This produces a short-term, three-year uplift in results before they plateau.” But it also “means students can perform well in the tests without necessarily understanding the underlying concepts.” A study by two leading psychometricians at Arizona State University, found that in 17 of 18 states that had adopted high-stakes testing” (all of which reported “improvement”), levels of student learning as measured by other independent measures of academic achievement were indeterminate, remained at the same level, or actually declined after the testing policies were implemented. Scores went up; learning went down.</p>
<p>One would hope that at some point this madness would come to end, but, sigh… (this article has so many sighs!) Just when I thought I had exhausted the subject, a homeschooling friend in North Carolina alerted me to the latest trend in educational profiteering. School districts in some 17 states are now purchasing “pre-tests” to be utilized before the high-stakes ones (the mega-million-dollar company marketing them calls them their “award-winning formative assessment product line”). Now there are tests before the tests, and progress and diagnostic monitoring assessments (more tests) so that teachers can teach to the assessments before administering the pre-tests in preparation for teaching to the test that is then supposed to identify children who are at risk of “not meeting performance standards and to develop intervention and targeted instructional strategies to improve student performance.” (A mouthful, isn’t it, but then most of us haven’t been reading what passes for educational theory these days, or at least I hope not.) In a previous article, I wrote about the teaching of “Phonics in Utero”; now it should be reported that we are likely not far from an assessment strategy to go with.</p>
<p>To borrow a catchphrase from my professional work in the alcohol/drug treatment field, this reminds me of “the hair of the dog that bit you.” (I am tempted to describe what I see happening in educational circles these days as akin to drug addiction, but I think I’ll save that for another time.) People quickly forget that the purported aim of high-stakes testing to begin with was not to identify children in need of help, but schools that were not performing well. Well, heck (pardon me), as noted, in the main I could have done that before this latest iteration of school reform began – just check the real estate values. And maybe (as John Taylor Gatto has suggested recently), that’s what the whole thing is really about.</p>
<p>Gladder we’re homeschooling!</p>
<p>While I don't doubt that schools have some responsibility in making kids dumber. I think video games and TV are just as likely culprits. And for what it's worth - NYS assessements require reading and listening to passages and writing about them. The math assessments aren't just fill in the right bubble. And the high school Regent's exam cover many subjects in a fair amount of depth. (Though passing scores are set pretty low.)</p>
<p>"While I don't doubt that schools have some responsibility in making kids dumber. I think video games and TV are just as likely culprits."</p>
<p>Kids spend 6 hours a day, 185 hours a day, in school. Video games and TV are likely culprits, not because they are video games and tv, but because they detract from experiential play. Increasing homework has exactly the same effect, except that tv and video games likely give the kids a greater sense of "how the world works" than their homework geared toward NCLB does.</p>
<p>In support of Mini's post #2:
Headlines from Boston Globe re: SAT scores (today's Globe) and MCAS scores for 2006 (2007 scores are not yet available). SAT scores down for two years in a row. MCAS scores up.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/08/sat_scores_dip_1%5B/url%5D">http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/08/sat_scores_dip_1</a>.
<a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/09/20/10th_grade_mcas_scores_up_younger_students_show_no_gain_decline/%5B/url%5D">http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/09/20/10th_grade_mcas_scores_up_younger_students_show_no_gain_decline/</a></p>
<p>James R. Flynn is an American who has lived for much of his career in New Zealand (not Australia). He also has no particular buy-in to the idea that improved nutrition raises IQ test scores, and points to areas in the Netherlands that experienced genuine famine in World War II as a counterexample. Flynn points out in most of his studies that tests that purport to estimate "fluid intelligence" have a rising trend in scores that is contrary to tests of "crystallized intelligence." For example, IQ scores can go up in the same country while achievement tests in school subjects are going down. </p>
<p>Here are some citations to articles by James R. Flynn, particular to his earlier seminal articles. </p>
<p>Flynn, James R. (1984). The Mean IQ of Americans: Massive Gains 1932 to 1978. Psychological Bulletin vol. 95, pages 29-51. </p>
<p>Flynn, James R. (1987). Massive IQ Gains in 14 Nations: What IQ Tests Really Measure. Psychological Bulletin, vol. 101, no. 2, pages 171-191. </p>
<p>Flynn, James R. (1998). IQ Gains over Time: Toward Finding the Causes. In Neisser, Ulric (Ed.). The Rising Curve: Long-Term Gains in IQ and Related Measures. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.</p>
<p>Flynn, James R. (1999). Searching for Justice: The Discovery of IQ Gains over Time. American Psychologist, vol. 54, No. 1, pages 5-20. </p>
<p>Flynn, James R. (2000a). IQ Gains, WISC Subtests and Fluid g: g Theory and the Relevance of Spearman's Hypothesis to Race. In Gregory Bock, Jamie Goode & Kate Webb (Eds.), The Nature of Intelligence (Novartis Foundation Symposium 233) (pp. 202-227). Chichester, United Kingdom: Wiley. </p>
<p>Flynn, James R. (2000b). IQ Trends over Time: Intelligence, Race, and Meritocracy. In Kenneth Arrow, Samuel Bowles & Steven Durlauf (Eds.). Meritocracy and Economic Inequality (pp. 35-60). Princeton: Princeton University Press. </p>
<p>Flynn has some newer publications (which I have read, as I have read all of the above) which add some additional nuances.</p>
<p>marite, </p>
<p>you can't draw any conclusion just from two reports like this. so what if SAT scores go down while MCAS goes up? They are two different test populations, as you should know. </p>
<p>And the same comment goes to mini. </p>
<p>I would pay a whole lot more attention to NAEP score trends versus state test results. Anyone have that data?</p>
<p>With most test scores highly related to family income and with the growing number of lower income families due to immigration both legal and illegal it should not be too surprising that scores go down a tad.</p>
<p>NMD:</p>
<p>I'd be inclined to agree with you about MCAS vs. SAT if it weren't for the massive shift in resources in schools for students to pass the MCAS. Even teachers who had once spearheaded MCAS boycotts were forced to toe the line when it became clear that their schools would be penalized. </p>
<p>I am not suggesting that teachers should neglect struggling students. But students who are not struggling may be receiving less attention. </p>
<p>As for having only two years of data, let's remember that the new SAT was introduced in 2005. It would not be appropriate to use pre-2005 data.</p>
<p>Also issues faced when trying hard to get to the problem students.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
With most test scores highly related to family income and with the growing number of lower income families due to immigration both legal and illegal it should not be too surprising that scores go down a tad.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>The massive entry of low SES (and illegal) immigrants does indeed have an impact on school statistics. However, this should have a more profound impact on "NCLB" scores than on SAT scores, since the percentage of low SES students staying long enough in high school to even consider attending college is dwindling rapidly after middle school.</p>
<p>For what it is worth, when addressing the issues of educating the lower SES and growing immigrant population, we tend to look almost exlusively at the students for the reasons of lower performance; a better approach might involve looking at the environment in which this education is delivered. For instance, hispanics are forced to attend larger public high schools in larger numbers than white (and blacks) and often schools where poor minorities are in the ... majority. Unfortunately, this amounts to a mere "parking" of bodies until they reach the age of "legally dropping out."</p>
<p>"And the same comment goes to mini.</p>
<p>I would pay a whole lot more attention to NAEP score trends versus state test results. Anyone have that data?"</p>
<p>Yep. The Arizona study I cited covered it.</p>
<p>Thanks. Flynn is indeed from New Zealand. The reasons for the Flynn effect are still being explored (not only by Flynn).</p>
<p>mini, this is your idea of a citation?
[quote]
A study by two leading psychometricians at Arizona State University, found that in 17 of 18 states that had adopted high-stakes testing” (all of which reported “improvement”), levels of student learning as measured by other independent measures of academic achievement were indeterminate, remained at the same level, or actually declined after the testing policies were implemented.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That and studies from the UK? Actually, the UK study seems to undermine your whole argument anyway.</p>
<p>The trends of SAT I scores per income level and family education level are very interesting. At the end, kids from families that have been educated with more money would statistically get a better education. The cycle continues.</p>
<p>
[quote]
It's kind of sad that among high scorers in math (750-800) the ratio of males:females is 2:1...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Not if you happen to be one of those female high scorers. ;)</p>
<p>The SAT test was pretty drastically changed two years ago. Could that have any bearing on the drop in scores since....2006?</p>