After an early childhood of private schooling, I
entered public school in fifth grade at Bluford Elementary which,
coincidentally, was the single year Mark Moore taught what was then
called the AG, or academically gifted, program there.
While
I learned many facts and figures from Mr. Moore, the most important
lessons I learned were related to critical thinking, a skill that,
according to a recent survey, is in short supply.
The
survey was conducted over the course of 2006 by an alliance of business
research and advocacy groups who set out to discover the skill set
corporate America
values in new hires and whether American students possess those skills.
Four hundred American employers responded that while basic skills, such
as reading, writing and math, are essential for job readiness, applied
skills, such as critical thinking, are vastly more important.
Unfortunately,
69.9 percent of employer respondents said recent high school graduates
lack applied skills, statistics made all the more alarming by the fact
that these are among the first students to graduate under No Child Left
Behind. According to the NCLB Web site, the program was enacted in
order to, “ensure that all children receive a high quality education so that no child is left behind.”
Perhaps
it’s mincing words, but if the majority of American high school
students are ill prepared for jobs with earnings growth potential, are
we keeping some children from being “left behind” by lowering the
educational standards for all?
Though
it has been nearly two decades since I lucked into Mr. Moore’s class,
he was more than willing to shed some light on this tricky issue.
“Something
had to be done,” Mr. Moore said recently, citing the all-to-common
occurrence of valueless materials in pre-NCLB classrooms. “But it’s
almost like they saw a mosquito on the wall; here’s a flyswatter and
here’s a Howitzer cannon. Let’s use the Howitzer and let’s just destroy
the wall.”
Every parent of a school-aged
child has seen what replaced the wall: exam-lead lesson plans covering
math and English almost exclusively and testing during which educators
around the country have reported kids vomiting from stress.
“Don’t
get me wrong,” said Mr. Moore, “kids need reading and math. But you’ve
got to throw something else in there to make them want to do it.”
In
my fifth grade class, “something else” included lessons on earth
science coupled with environmental activism, physics with model
rockets, world history with my first understanding of the word “irony”
(a la destroying a village to save it). I left fifth grade with the
tools for critical thinking and an unquenchable thirst for learning.
Perhaps
proponents of NCLB believe that students can find their own way to
critical thinking so long as public education leaves them proficient in
the “three R’s”. Unfortunately, 42.2 percent of employers surveyed said
that high school graduates were deficient in even these NCLB-intensive
areas.
Meanwhile, private schools, unbeholden
to the funding-cut threats of NCLB, continue to provide their students
with-rounded educations. Is it so outlandish to imagine a future in
which these educational disparities become earning disparities? Is it
alarmist to suggest that kids educated under NCLB would see education
as a source of valueless stress and therefore settle for a high school
diploma?
Mr. Moore refers to education under
NCLB as “forced mediocrity,” in which test scores are more important
that true comprehension, challenging advanced students or captivating
poorer students. Meanwhile, the opportunity to not only to prepare
students for a working adulthood but also to instill in them a love of
learning is passing us by.
This column was originally published in the News & Record on February 21, 2007.
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