What's this--good news about student test scores this year? And not just on some rinky-dink Arkansas-only test but on the nationally recognized and respected Iowa Tests of Basic Skills.
Arkansas' second-graders scored at the 50th percentile in vocabulary, at the 54th in language and math, and at the 56th in reading. To translate all those numbers into words, they mean this state's kids now meet or beat the nationally recognized standards in education. To drop into the vernacular, they done good. So did everybody else responsible for these test scores--the kids' teachers, families, and even the school administrators in their offices. All deserve congratulations. As does good old Arkansas, which is turning out to be good new Arkansas if these test results can be trusted. And this time they can be.
Why the improvement? Maybe because Arkansas was among the more than 40 states that adopted the Common Core standards after they were established six years ago. Despite all the scaretalk back then about Common Core being a subversive plot, it turns out to have laid the groundwork for these dramatic gains in how our kids have done in these later and better days. If the kids' test scores keep improving on the square, so will the state's future. For these kids are this state's future.
It's remarkable the things some folks can be scared of. In this case, better and better measured education. It certainly beats ignorance, which thrives on fear. As this year's presidential race demonstrates. If it's not Donald Trump wanting to lock out Muslim immigrants, it's Hillary Clinton warning that her favorite villains--gun owners, for example--must be stopped. Or good old Bernie Sanders pushing his hydra-headed thing, whether he's being a Democrat, Socialist or Independent at the time.
Remember when we were all warned against Teaching to the Test, which was supposed to be a dreadful practice? But what were teachers supposed to teach to if not the test? Their own moods, inclinations and eccentricities? Not that it isn't a fine and memorable thing to have a teacher with her own eccentricities--so long as she's an effective teacher.
All of us have had a memorable teacher or two in our past, and should be grateful for it. A friend who grew up south of the (state) border in northern Louisiana recalls one teacher who had her third-grade class listen to Kate Smith's news-and-variety show every morning. She loved Jimmie Davis ("You are my sunshine") as well as every one of her kids, all of whom were white in those separate-but-unequal days. Our friend's fourth-grade teacher, Miss Hinkle, loved softball and taught her kids that it's not whether you win or lose but how you play the game--a principle that applies to a lot more than sports.
His fifth-grade teacher's specialty was world, meaning European, history. She had the boys in her class build miniature guillotines. And she didn't issue a trigger warning, a now popular way to avoid any mention of the bloodshed that so often is the essence of man's tortured history. (The girls in the class got to sing "La Marseillaise.")
But whatever their individual quirks, all our friend's teachers back then knew that, if their charges' report cards--which served the same purpose as today's test scores--didn't show progress in readin', writin' and 'rithmetic, not just their kids but they would be in trouble.
Families that care about how their kids are doing in school can check out the latest test results from the school their child attends. They're no longer a deep dark mystery. Though they may vary widely just in one school district like Little Rock's--all the way from a Franklin Elementary down there at the 17th percentile to a Gibbs Elementary up there in the 80th percentile. Check out the test scores for yourself. Nothing can do more to improve education (or any other profession) than knowing that somewhere, somehow, somebody is watching.
Editorial on 06/22/2016