Legislative update, part 2

The other significant issue addressed last week was, of course, the governor's proposal for state-wide Graduation Competency Assessments.  The good news is that the GCA initiative has been postponed for a year, but like Jason from "Friday the 13th", I'm certain that we've not seen the end of it.

Over the last few weeks, the House Education Committee voted 22-1 to send a letter to the State Board of Education asking them to "re-evaluate" their proposal; the Senate Education Committee voted 11-1 to prevent the State Board from adopting the proposal without authorization of the General Assembly.; and the full Senate passed that bill by a vote of 48-2.  48-2!  The governor, however, does not appear discouraged.

But what got my attention was how the story was covered in the press. According to the AP, opponents of the proposal are primarily concerned with the loss of "local policy making authority."

Frankly, this is typical (lazy?) reporting that frames every political issue as a turf war. Personally, I could care less about the loss of local authority - if I thought that the state had come up with a good idea to improve education, I would be all for it.

So here's the heart of the argument: it seems to me that if you are going to put this much weight on a high-stakes test, you would want to make sure that the test actually measures what it's supposed to - but there is absolutely no evidence that a standardized, fill-in-the-bubble test is a reliable and accurate measurement of whether an individual student has learned - and is able to apply - the material that is being tested.

And - this really disturbs me - there has been no public discussion over what that material should be!  How was it decided that every high school student needs to know algebra, but not statistics; geometry, but not probability; chemistry, but not astronomy? 

Here's a radical, but perhaps more honest idea. When I picture the set of skills that every high school student ought to have, what I see actually lines up pretty well with our 8th grade curriculum. (When business leaders talk about the lack of "basic skills", this is what they're actually talking about.) If the state wants to implement an assessment of these skills, as an addition to local high school graduation requirements, I'm all for it.

Here's something else the state board could do: take a good look at schools that are successful, and give some thought as to how what they do could be replicated state-wide.