They may eventually “make it.” But I have to tell you that their admissions results this year do not reflect the supposed “elite” standing of the school. If “making it” includes a top 20 college, they’re not succeeding in that department. And they, more than families of underperforming schools, are the ones in denial.
But even that is beside the point I addressed, a point nevertheless pertinent to the article I linked. Whether a public school calls itself, or is ranked, “high” or “elite,” academic essentials to succeed in college and later on the job are not being delivered. Unless one’s student attends a private school, a parent should be outraged. Should be.
I hear you, epiphany. Before leaving academics, my husband was a tenured college professor who had to deal with outrageously under-educated kids all the time. Many came from “elite” high schools schools (though also expensive privates) and were culturally illiterate. Example: he was teaching a freshman seminar course, required of all incoming freshmen. He asked that students name one French author they’d read. No one could. He asked students to name one French author they’d HEARD of. No one could. He asked students to name one French PERSON they’d heard of. A kid said, “Napoleon.” Close enough, husband thought.
People will be outraged only when they see their kids failing to find jobs. But upper-middle class kids – the ones who attend those “elite” high schools – do “make it” because they’re on the right side of the economically stratefied society we’ve created in the past half a century.
A good article on what the SAT really measures. It’s not an IQ or ability test–the A in SAT has changed from “aptitude” to “achievement” to nothing. What it really measures–for students who have reached a certain level of school proficiency–is the student’s ability to take the SAT. As such, it doesn’t really matter how it is changed because it was never particularly valid to begin with.
Why aren’t you? We homeschool, but I’m well known in our public school system and invited to sit on community boards because of my involvement in public education in our state. You can participate in the policymaking of your district whether or not you send your children to the local public school.
Because I’ve done it in this past, because I’ve also participated in homeschooling programs and charter school programs (for others) and have advocated in various ways even beyond when my children were in school. I’m busy with other matters in education at the moment. I expect the moire direct stakeholders to care more than they seem to be doing at present.
Lots of private schools are not high quality also. Out of the many private schools in the area, only a few appear to be well known for high academic quality.
Also, the idea that all public schools are low quality is absurd when many of their graduates (even from non-elite ones) do quite well in college.
Where did I use the word “all?” Answer: never. Despite that, it’s clear from my wide acquaintance with public schools that most of the ones in my own region which claim to be “elite” and “highly ranked” are underserving their students. Period. I never claimed that some of those students don’t somehow make it into fine colleges, despite that fact. It remains true, however, that high schools overall are under-preparing students for college in key academic areas.
However, I certainly would agree with the implication that no tears need be shed for colleges who rely on the current or new SAT, plus student-chosen subject tests, to evaluate applicants to their institutions.
I would actually prefer if they went back to the idea behind the old SAT (more focus on aptitude, including the analogies section, plus emphasis on logic, critical reasoning, etc.) but worked to improve it so that it was much less skewed by cultural and economic privilege (both in the specific cultural literacy required to understand questions and in the the ability to pay for expensive test preparation to improve scores). If it truly tested aptitude, and that information was combined with both the information from a student’s HS GPA and from other tests focused on achievement (ACT, SAT Subject tests), then college admissions committees would have a more balanced picture of a student’s mix of abilities and achievements (or lack thereof). At the moment we are very far from that balanced picture, and it sounds like the new SAT is moving steadily away from any relevance it ever had.
I personally have been a polite gadfly to my kid’s teachers, principals and the BOE. It has not served my children particularly well, in that there has been definite backlash to them as “the one with the complaining mom.” Secondly, epiphany, there are too many people–individuals such as yourself–profiting from the deficiency of our public schools. Among them are the very teachers themselves, who run quite a profitable tutoring business after hours. Many set up shop in our public library from 3-7 PM (They don’t even have to rent office space! And yes, I complained to the Superintendent of Schools about how unseemly that was, and to the library director because of the noisy waiting room atmosphere of the library with lots of talking, and to the town council because of the tax implications. I got nowhere, btw.). Given that the culture of a large percentage of the population in my region simply assumes the schools are inadequate and are accustomed to paying for supplemental education, the high school can puff up its chest and point to many successful students such as our NMF’s and claim they are doing a fine job. The reality is that it’s the epiphanies who are actually teaching the kids and saving the teacher’s necks.
Implied by your statement “Unless one’s student attends a private school, a parent should be outraged”, since that assumes that a public school is automatically low quality enough for parents to be outraged.
I’ve been overall pretty happy with my kids’ public schools, especially when they were in magnet programs. There were always some things I didn’t think were delivered as well as they could have been, but I was far from outraged. Maybe we were just lucky.
Well, my kid’s schools provided all of that. It’s among the top school systems in our state, but it’s not Scarsdale or TJ either. When I volunteered in the elementary school, I helped provide some of those very things, so I know they were doing it.
I have no doubt that there were some kids in the schools who did not absorb it all, though. But I don’t think that is the fault of the school.
Post 33:
I’m very happy for you and your family, Hunt. Maybe the more important issue is the lack of uniform excellence among publics, nationwide. I’m glad to know there’s at least one corner of the world where an educated parent can recommend the public K-12 education of his own children. I cannot do so for my region. And I am not comparing publics to privates as much as current publics to past publics. My public school classmates were not “privileged” by today’s economic standards (a fair amount of economic variety in any classroom and great variety in educational attainment of parents), yet our public school education was qualitatively different – in some of the basic ways I listed earlier – than this same region is today. I have objective criteria & outcomes by which to make such a statement.
At our public HS, the ones who didn’t get a good education are the ones who chose not to. Now, they want to complain, blaming everything and everyone else. I’m not buying it anymore.
Is this whole view of public K-12 education the same as the general public’s view of Congress? You know, the way that Congress rates incredibly low (approval ratings below cockroaches and traffic jams!) but most people like their particular representatives? Maybe we all have to believe that K-12 education is abysmal 'cause that’s what our culture tells us to believe, but if you looked at everyone’s actual experiences with their local systems, you’d find out that most people think their own system is at worst pretty okay.
I would actually prefer if they went back to the idea behind the old SAT (more focus on aptitude, including the analogies section, plus emphasis on logic, critical reasoning, etc.) but worked to improve it so that it was much less skewed by cultural and economic privilege (both in the specific cultural literacy required to understand questions and in the the ability to pay for expensive test preparation to improve scores). If it truly tested aptitude, and that information was combined with both the information from a student's HS GPA and from other tests focused on achievement (ACT, SAT Subject tests), then college admissions committees would have a more balanced picture of a student's mix of abilities and achievements (or lack thereof). At the moment we are very far from that balanced picture, and it sounds like the new SAT is moving steadily away from any relevance it ever had.<<<
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When discussions about the SAT appear in this forum, I often have great difficulty to follow the criticisms. Fwiw, it is easy to know where Atkinson and Geiser come from. They have been at it for a long time and mostly fail to define a better mousetrap. Atkinson, in particular, presided over an academic flip-flop that would have made John Kerry proud. Is the UC for or against the SAT or for or against Subject Tests? Hard to say as they keep changing their mind!
As far as aptitude versus achievement, that canard is still quacking loudly. The SAT is neither in a direct way. It is a REASONING test and it is THAT part that annoys the academic establishment that is SUPPOSED to prepare students for tertiary education. Why does it annoy it? Because it can’t teach reasoning properly for the most part. Our education model is based on rote memorization of a great number of trivial facts and superficially tested.
The reality is that the SAT is losing its relevance because the high school students are taught differently and NIT necessarily closer to what a competitive college might expect. In general terms, our education is anchored in a sea of growing mediocrity and contemplacy. Teachers do not want testing because the mediocrity can no longer be hidden … easily.
The other reality is that “we” do NOT want a test that exposes us and hurts the fragile American ego. Hence the needed alignment to less critical reading and less reasoning. We do not want the embarrassment that FOB immigrants do better despite a poor command of English.
The problem of the SAT is that it has to expose our weaknesses because they exist! Same story about tests in general. Our solution? Lowering the standards even further!
Do yourself a favor and check your local high school and look at whom is grabbing the prizes! There are people who have embraced the challenges and focused on beating the tests. And plenty of others who prefer to complain about how hard they are.
We should, however, forgive them as there are plenty of voices that support less testing and kick the proverbial can down the street.
Is this whole view of public K-12 education the same as the general public's view of Congress? You know, the way that Congress rates incredibly low (approval ratings below cockroaches and traffic jams!) but most people like their particular representatives? Maybe we all have to believe that K-12 education is abysmal 'cause that's what our culture tells us to believe, but if you looked at everyone's actual experiences with their local systems, you'd find out that most people think their own system is at worst pretty okay.<<<
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Absolutely. But you’d better not ask them to solve a basic math word problem, point to a map of Europe and ask where Poland or Serbia are located, spell with a modicum of accuracy, and answer questions about culture.
We live on the shores of Lake Wobegon and the kids are all wonderful snowflakes. People are happy with their local system because most could not care less about it or have no yardstick. They are both happy but also unwilling to support bond elections or bother to vote.
We want to feel good and prefer to ignore the problems. Pretty simple! And why a 1500 SAT score means that the test must be crummy. Not the school with that B+ average.