Any legit school teacher who understands NCLB-era testing already knows this,
but I'm not sure you do so I'm posting this for you -- you can easily verify
it on the web. According to the New York Times (I would post the URL, but the
URLs are sending my post to review. You can google it.):
"The No Child Left Behind law lets each state set its own standards for
academic proficiency. The wildly variable benchmarks, especially in
chronically weak states, too often subscribe to the Limbo Rock Rule: How low
can you go?"
That statement can be broken down in the following way:
1) States create their own standards.
2) States create their own tests (benchmarks) based on their adopted standards.
3) No state test is the same as another state's test.
4) Any state can make their test as easy as they like as long as it conforms
to the standards adopted by that state.
My addition: there are NO NATIONAL STANDARDS FOR ANY CONTENT AREA.
Thus, your assertion that Colorado students are smarter/better than California
students based on test scores is baseless, i.e. you CANNOT provide an accurate
side-by-side comparison of the performance of the two states' children by
looking at test scores. You'd have to give the same test to kids of the same
educational background under the same conditions. Then and only then could you
rank students by test scores.
You could try to cite graduation rates, but AGAIN, unless you do a district by
district study of graduation requirements and survey individual classes for
rigor, you cannot -- with any authority -- state that one school system
is "better" than another. One might just be EASIER than the other, which
would result in higher graduation rates, test scores, GPAs, etc.
Now, you keep saying things like "on average" to moderate your frequently
unfounded claims. Well, consider this: on average, Californians are wealthier
than Coloradans. Does that mean that Californians are smarter than
Coloradans? The median income in Mission Viejo, CA, is higher than the median
income in Boulder, CO. Does that mean that kids in Mission Viejo are BETTER
than kids in Colorado? I don't think so. You're stretching to infer things
the evidence does not support.
You also said something to the effect that California schools are widely
derided by other people as terrible. Well, for a long time, interracial
marriage was widely derided as terrible. In other words, Rodeo, consensus
doesn't necessarily equal fact. 73% of American families are happy with their
local schools, according to the Princeton Review. Are all of those families
wrong? Or are they all in states other than California? I doubt it.
Based on other posts of yours I've read, I don't think you've seen a NCLB-era
CSAP test since you said elsewhere that you're 13 years out of Colorado public
schools. How can you pretend to equate something you haven't seen (CSAP) with
another test you probably haven't seen (STAR), as only certificated teachers
are allowed to handle California state tests?
You also said in another post on another thread that you had observed classes
in California. While you failed to mention grade level, subject area, or
geographical location, you did say that some of the schools you observed
matched your academic experience in Colorado. Tell me, how many schools did
you attend in Colorado? Do you have experience in other areas of Colorado,
both urban and rural, impoverished and wealthy? If not, how could you say that
on average, schools in Colorado are better than those in CA? I hardly think
attending 3 or 4 schools in Colorado is a healthy sample upon which to base a
valid hypothesis about ALL the schools in CO and ALL the schools in CA.
You've admitted elsewhere that no one would want to teach in Denver. I infer
from your comments (please correct me if I'm wrong) that your antipathy to
Denver schools stems from the challenges of teaching inner-city kids, kids who
are transient, English Language Learners, impoverished, etc. Well, perhaps you
should consider that a large proportion of California districts are heavily
impacted by those issues. If more regions in Colorado were confronted with
these challenges (as are most of Los Angeles, San Diego, the Bay Area, and the
Central Valley) that would certainly impact other people's opinions of the
performance of Colorado schools, wouldn't you agree?
Your posts fall apart under any serious scrutiny. Have you looked for a logic
and debate class at your local community college? Or at least look up logical
fallacies on the internet; your arguments are rife with them. And you ought to
stop the ad hominem attacks. They're ugly and have no place on a forum that is
supposed to be populated by professionals.
Rodeo, in life, "you make educated guesses about [things] you don't know
because otherwise you are going through the world blind" -- those are your
words, not mine. (IIRC, you followed that statement up by calling me a Polly
Anna. BTW, that's one word; i.e. Pollyanna.) I think you would be much better
served by taking time to logically suss out why things are the way they are
instead of making snap judgments and committing them to writing; it makes you
appear ignorant and prejudiced. Based on some of your other posts, I'm not
sure that accurately reflects who you are.
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