Beginning in 1989, legislation was passed in
this state to implement educational reform. This was the birth date of
the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program, commonly referred to as
LEAP. The program consisted of state-developed educational standards
coupled with state-developed assessments to monitor students’ progress in
mastering these standards. High states testing occurred at the 4th,
8th, and senior high levels. Basically this meant that if student did not
perform satisfactory on the tests at the 4th and 8th
grade they were held back until they mastered these tests. At the senior
high level, students could not receive a diploma until they mastered the tests.
Throughout the 18 or so years of LEAP’s
implementation Louisiana has received glowing praise for this educational
reform movement, not only from state education reform advocates such as Leslie
Jacobs, but also from esteemed national journals such as Education Week.
In fact, Education Week gave Louisiana an A plus on our state developed
standards, a statistic most often repeated by our educational leaders.
How times have changed. A group
affiliate with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation just gave Louisiana ‘Fs’
for academic achievement, how students fare compared to dollars spent,
readiness for college and careers, and international competitiveness.
As far as the state-developed assessments,
Louisiana was given a D plus on the validity of the math and English exams as
compared to NATIONAL assessments. Basically what that means is the
Louisiana exams were not measuring students’ abilities to achieve
nationally. The state tests only compared English and math skills of
Louisiana students to each other, and gave little or no information regarding
their national academic ability. It’s kind of like what I like to term
“educational inbreeding.”
And to make matters worse, school curriculums
were designed around these tests.
However, that was not the intent of the LEAP
reform movement. Its goal was to provide Louisiana students with an
education that would allow them to be successfully competitive nationally.
All recent data indicates that after millions
of dollars spent, years of holding students back, and denying diplomas to
thousands, we have been misled not only by our local educational reformers, but
also by national journals. There has been no significant movement in
Louisiana’s ranking on NATIONAL achievement tests during the entire LEAP
implementation.
As Bobby Jindal and other ultra conservatives
continue to push their anti-Common Core Standards agenda, I would like to know
what they suggest as the alternative to an approach that attempts to address
Louisiana’s problem of “educational inbreeding”, by the development of a set of
standards that seek to ensure all students graduate
from high school with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college,
career, and life, regardless of where they live.
Will the Common
Core standards be 100% successful? Not sure, but they did include a
considerable amount of expertise in their development; a national consortium
representing teachers, business leaders, educational leaders, state governors
and parents.
And the standards are:
1. Research
and evidence-based
2. Clear, understandable, and
consistent
3. Aligned with college and career
expectations
4. Based on rigorous content and
application of knowledge through higher-order thinking
skills
5. Built upon the strengths and
lessons of current state standards
6. Informed by other top
performing countries in order to prepare
all students for success in our global economy and society
However, one thing is certain,
Louisiana can no longer be trusted to educate their youth on its own. So
let’s put a stop to all the misinformation about a government plot to take over
of our education system and get on with the business of providing our students
with the education they deserve, for this is far more important than political
grand standing.
No comments:
Post a Comment