Oh dear.
I read superintendent Aderhold's
letter. I thought it was very good in places (e.g. the stress survey, the fear of getting a B, the need to think seriously about what overachievement-of-necessity is doing to kids). Etc. I had a good opinion of the letter initially. Then I got to the part about midterms and finals. They've eliminated them in favor of projects and "common assessments:"
High school teachers added that even with the last four days of the school year set aside for final exams, many students had multiple parts for these exams administered during the last full week of classes, meaning that students were assessed continuously throughout the month of June.
The logic here seemed off. Why does a final need "multiple parts" if four whole days are set aside for tests in 6-8 classes? That gives 2 finals
per day minimum (up to 3 hours per test), which sounds like plenty of time for a comprehensive exam to me. Given that classes like PE won't (or shouldn't!) give a final, and that most kids take ~6 classes, the schedule seems completely reasonable. If teachers are giving constant exams for 2 weeks before finals begin, I suspect that something is wrong with the pacing of the courses and/or with how the kids are being assessed.
Aderhold claims that ditching these exams and replacing them with "authentic learning experiences" (whatever that means) will prepare kids for the reality of college. Since when? I took midterms/finals in nearly all my college classes, and had to write 20-page papers for the very few that didn't require them. There was also some flawed logic about exempting A-students from finals (apparently the "vast majority" of seniors fit this description. Emm....). The problem was their POLICY about grades and exams, not exams
per se.
THEN I got the part about the gifted program in mathematics. First, I got annoyed (because they're going to eliminate it in 4th/5th grade), then I reached edumacator happy-pretend-land and guffawed at the following:
Our A&E Math curriculum is “designed to meet the needs of those rare students who have exceptional talents in Mathematics...”
Sounds promising, right? Rare students! Exceptional talent! We help them! But...
Quite simply, I have not found an educator who has witnessed the testing process in Grade 3 and believes it is developmentally appropriate to begin determining a child’s mathematical capabilities at this point.... Asking 8 or 9 year olds to take a high stakes test that questions deep mathematical thinking often yields a success rate below 10 percent.
Clearly, Mr. Aderhold has different definitions for the words
rare and
exceptional than my DH and I (we were thinking 2-3% for a program like this one), or, say, the world's various public health authorities (imagine if a disease like diabetes, which affects ~10% of the US population was called "rare.") Oh no. Aderhold is clearly saying that putting even 10% of students into a program for rare exceptional talent was
too low. Solution:
Get rid of it!I then learned that per the district's own previous policy,
3-5% of students were expected to qualify for this program. So I guess they didn't like their own policy.
After reading the article in the Times, I was sympathizing with the "whole child" side of the debate. After taking a closer look, I no longer feel that way, and strongly suspect that the school board is trying to water things down by replacing finals with projects (which reward students who can't remember all those bothersome facts about functions or the Magna Carta and maybe even draw conclusions from facts) and by pretending that >10% = rare.
IMO, if they want to cut the stress, they need to pace courses properly, cut the homework load (including AP summer work; how many college classes require students to teach themselves the first 2 chapters over the summer??), be honest about the 3-5% thing, and lobby the college admissions committees to stop rewarding MORE activities and MORE AP classes and MORE A++++s and MORE overseas voluntourism internships and etc.
Meh.
