Schools for the 21st Century Misled Legislators – by Senator Joe Zarelli
April 17, 2010
By Senator Joe Zarelli
Years and years ago, in a magical land far, far away, a group of medical researchers theorized that if every pre-school child was injected with huge doses of radiation, they would grow up immune to cancer. They obtained federal and state funding and promised that within ten years, cancer would be eradicated as we know it.
Critics were brushed off as “glass-half-empty types” who wanted to go back to the days of the plague. Ten years later, 70 percent of the children were ill beyond remedy and their chances of a healthy life were forever dead.
But rather than admit failure or pretend the original experiment never happened, the researchers asked for more money – a lot more. And they broadened the scope of their experiment to include every American child through compulsory participation laws.
Of course this story is fiction, but if it were true, who would be liable? The theoreticians? The legislators who funded the scheme? The doctors who inoculated the children? Or parents for not rejecting what they thought was the best new hope for their children.
“Preposterous!” you say?
This scenario is happening in our state – not in medical clinics, but in schools. It’s been exposed in a recent report to the legislature by researchers connected with the Washington Parents Coalition for Academic Excellence, and Citizens United for Responsible Education. The statistical report exposes a human experiment, which may have damaged the academic future of 52,000 children who participated in the “Schools for the 21st Century Program.”
The report focuses on the $20.7 million program established in 1987 as a pilot project to foster change in the state common school system, enabling selected schools or districts to restructure and develop models proving increased student performance. In 1993, the pilot schools continued the experiment under the new education reform law, which mandates performance-based education methods for all children in the year 2001.
The researchers decided to see how the pilot schools performed on the new fourth grade assessments which schools across the state failed last spring.
Education reform supporters dismissed the failing scores as proof the tests were harder, and asked for another ten years to prove the system works. Logically, students who already had nine years of performance-based education’s harder questions should have outperformed students from traditional schools. But they didn’t.
The statewide percentiles of students meeting or exceeding the standards were: math, 21.1; reading, 47; writing, 41.7 and listening, 61.3. These are the kids who haven’t had ten years of the harder questions. And it’s not like the standard was an exaggerated one. To meet it, they only needed to score 72 percent in reading and 65 percent in math.
Compare those scores with the 21st Century school students who met or exceeded the same standard: math, 15.3; reading, 38; writing, 36.3 and listening, 54.9. The students who were trained with harder questions performed 5-to10 percentage points worse. These were apple-to-apple statistics that are unquestionable.
This objective data should sound the alarm that education restructuring is an expensive, radical abandonment of objective knowledge for subjective what-everisms.
Another clue should have been the downward five-year trend in CTBS (Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills) scores for many of the 21st Century Schools. The CTBS is the traditional measure of factual knowledge. In fairness, some have maintained their already low scores and others have shown only marginal improvement.
Incredibly, the State Board of Education reported to the legislature in 1995, “Kids in Schools for the 21st Century Project are performing above the academic level of traditional schools.”
Twenty-first Century project administrators misled elected representatives in their “1993 Report to the Legislature on the Schools for the 21st Century” which stated, “In just two years, the scores (in the Orondo district) climbed to the 62nd percentile.”
However, the Orondo CTBS scores between 1991 and 1996 fell from 43 to 14 percent. That included the period referred to in the report to the legislature. If dropping from 43 to 14 percent is an increase to 62 percent, performance-based math will soon produce a nation of teetering bridges, wobbling skyscrapers, and crap-shoot medicine.
Were 21st Century Schools aiming to insure literacy, instill accuracy or train children in the scientific method? No. The 1993 report to the legislature described the 21st Century change in strategies as: site based management, whole language, early childhood education, strategic awareness, cooperative learning, adapting to change, performance assessments, integrated curriculum, conflict resolution, team teaching, higher-level thinking skills, multi-cultural studies, block scheduling, consensus decision making, outcome-based education, and community service.
These are the same strategies now being implemented in your neighborhood school. School boards and legislators cannot continue to reward failure with more money and children. We must demand validated research from the carpetbaggers at the school trough who have no business handling kids. For real education reform, the legislature must hear from the people today if we have hope to travel confidently on bridges or space shuttles tomorrow.
Sen. Zarelli (R – Battle Ground) serves on the Education Committee in the Washington State Senate.
By Senator Joe Zarelli
Years and years ago, in a magical land far, far away, a group of medical researchers theorized that if every pre-school child was injected with huge doses of radiation, they would grow up immune to cancer. They obtained federal and state funding and promised that within ten years, cancer would be eradicated as we know it.
Critics were brushed off as “glass-half-empty types” who wanted to go back to the days of the plague. Ten years later, 70 percent of the children were ill beyond remedy and their chances of a healthy life were forever dead.
But rather than admit failure or pretend the original experiment never happened, the researchers asked for more money – a lot more. And they broadened the scope of their experiment to include every American child through compulsory participation laws.
Of course this story is fiction, but if it were true, who would be liable? The theoreticians? The legislators who funded the scheme? The doctors who inoculated the children? Or parents for not rejecting what they thought was the best new hope for their children.
“Preposterous!” you say?
This scenario is happening in our state – not in medical clinics, but in schools. It’s been exposed in a recent report to the legislature by researchers connected with the Washington Parents Coalition for Academic Excellence, and Citizens United for Responsible Education. The statistical report exposes a human experiment, which may have damaged the academic future of 52,000 children who participated in the “Schools for the 21st Century Program.”
The report focuses on the $20.7 million program established in 1987 as a pilot project to foster change in the state common school system, enabling selected schools or districts to restructure and develop models proving increased student performance. In 1993, the pilot schools continued the experiment under the new education reform law, which mandates performance-based education methods for all children in the year 2001.
The researchers decided to see how the pilot schools performed on the new fourth grade assessments which schools across the state failed last spring.
Education reform supporters dismissed the failing scores as proof the tests were harder, and asked for another ten years to prove the system works. Logically, students who already had nine years of performance-based education’s harder questions should have outperformed students from traditional schools. But they didn’t.
The statewide percentiles of students meeting or exceeding the standards were: math, 21.1; reading, 47; writing, 41.7 and listening, 61.3. These are the kids who haven’t had ten years of the harder questions. And it’s not like the standard was an exaggerated one. To meet it, they only needed to score 72 percent in reading and 65 percent in math.
Compare those scores with the 21st Century school students who met or exceeded the same standard: math, 15.3; reading, 38; writing, 36.3 and listening, 54.9. The students who were trained with harder questions performed 5-to10 percentage points worse. These were apple-to-apple statistics that are unquestionable.
This objective data should sound the alarm that education restructuring is an expensive, radical abandonment of objective knowledge for subjective what-everisms.
Another clue should have been the downward five-year trend in CTBS (Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills) scores for many of the 21st Century Schools. The CTBS is the traditional measure of factual knowledge. In fairness, some have maintained their already low scores and others have shown only marginal improvement.
Incredibly, the State Board of Education reported to the legislature in 1995, “Kids in Schools for the 21st Century Project are performing above the academic level of traditional schools.”
Twenty-first Century project administrators misled elected representatives in their “1993 Report to the Legislature on the Schools for the 21st Century” which stated, “In just two years, the scores (in the Orondo district) climbed to the 62nd percentile.”
However, the Orondo CTBS scores between 1991 and 1996 fell from 43 to 14 percent. That included the period referred to in the report to the legislature. If dropping from 43 to 14 percent is an increase to 62 percent, performance-based math will soon produce a nation of teetering bridges, wobbling skyscrapers, and crap-shoot medicine.
Were 21st Century Schools aiming to insure literacy, instill accuracy or train children in the scientific method? No. The 1993 report to the legislature described the 21st Century change in strategies as: site based management, whole language, early childhood education, strategic awareness, cooperative learning, adapting to change, performance assessments, integrated curriculum, conflict resolution, team teaching, higher-level thinking skills, multi-cultural studies, block scheduling, consensus decision making, outcome-based education, and community service.
These are the same strategies now being implemented in your neighborhood school. School boards and legislators cannot continue to reward failure with more money and children. We must demand validated research from the carpetbaggers at the school trough who have no business handling kids. For real education reform, the legislature must hear from the people today if we have hope to travel confidently on bridges or space shuttles tomorrow.
Sen. Zarelli (R – Battle Ground) serves on the Education Committee in the Washington State Senate.