A new yardstick? Or another excuse for bad schools?

Editorials

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Sunday, January 29, 2006

DON’T WORRY your poor little heads about it, kids. You’re not expected to be very smart, anyway. 

That’s the first thought to enter an inky wretch’s cynical mind when reading about this new School Performance Index. 

School Performance Index. The phrase makes the eyes glaze and mind wander. No doubt it’ll soon be reduced to SPI and stored away with all the other arcana in the state’s attic, like the old School Equalization Formula. 

Just what is the School Performance Index? It’s a number-crunching analysis from some researchers at the University of Arkansas. Their study looks at certain demographics and how much money communities have, then compares all that to—get this—Projected Achievement on Tests. 

Projected Achievement? 

What is that? 

Let the University of Arkansas’ study explain, sort of: “A school with high test scores might actually be of sub-par quality propped up by very advantaged students. Conversely, a school with low test scores might actually be of high quality masked by the severity of its students’ disadvantages. Unless one isolates the influence of student characteristics and other resources made available to schools, it is impossible to determine school quality simply from test results.”  Translation into plain English (we think): Projected Achievement is how a school’s students can be expected to perform when ranked against other schools by race, class, income, etc. 

It’s like grading whole school districts on a curve—not an academic curve but a sociological one. The lower your sociological rating, the less we may expect of you. 

The whole idea gives us a familiar sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach—’cause we get jittery when educators start saying, “It is impossible to determine school quality simply from test results.” We get real jittery. Not because we don’t know that, but because of its connotations. It sounds like an invitation to cop out. 

This SPI thing also sounds condescending, racially tinged, class-conscious, sociologically primitive, and generally not good for education in Arkansas. Or for the future of democracy. It sounds like a verdict on a whole generation, as if we shouldn’t expect the children of the poor, the black, or of the newest wave of immigrants ever to compete with the rest of us. 

It sounds like Leave Some Children Behind. 

YOU CAN guess how the SPI turned out: Some of the worst school districts in Arkansas were actually the best! 

Altheimer Unified School District—which had to be taken over by the state in 2002, and which made the Washington Post as one of the poorest performing districts in the nation that year—was ranked No. 1 in Arkansas! 

Also making it to the Top 5 was the Helena-West Helena school district, which had to be taken under the state’s wing in September. 

This is the high quality the study cites? Unfortunately, it’s the kind of quality, or lack of same, it might encourage. 

The lesson here is clear: Keep expectations low enough and anybody can win. (Except for the kids, of course.)  How about we aim a little higher? How about we try to educate all our children by the same standards, whether they live in Turrell or Bentonville? How about we tell all ours kids that, yes, you can do this! You can compete with the best. Your fate isn’t unalterably determined by the circumstances of your birth. If you’re poor and rural—or black or Hispanic, or living in a one-parent household—you just may have to try harder to succeed, but you can if you try. 

This is America! And you don’t get judged by a lower standard. 

One of the top guys involved in this study said it was put together to improve accountability in education. We’re glad to hear that. ’Cause if we didn’t know any better, we’d think it was a dandy way to make some schools less accountable. As in, “Hey, you can expect only so much from these poor kids.”  A question: Now that we know what an SPI is, just what is it good for? Besides rationalizing the performance of some of the worst school districts in the state. 

Have the professors who designed this Student Performance Index fashioned a crutch that, far from helping these kids, will only be used to hold them back because, what th’ heck, we really can’t expect them to compete on a level playing field? 

And just how sophisticated are those sociological markers the profs factored into their formula? Because if there’s anything more dangerous than making educational policy on the basis of sociology—remember social promotion?—it’s making educational policy on the basis of bad sociology. 

WANT ANOTHER reason not to like this study? We quote Altheimer’s superintendent: “I love news like this.”  We just bet he does. 

This from a school district that, while making significant strides in the last year, is still on the state’s school-improvement list. 

Nor does it speak well of this study that the executive director of the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators waves it around like some kind of endorsement for the state’s worst school districts, claiming it shows that they “are doing a pretty darn good job educating the kids that they apparently have in their schools.”  No they aren’t! 

That’s not what the study says—not at all. But it is a good example of how the study can be manipulated to say the worst schools in Arkansas are doing the best job. 

We’re all for information. Heck, we’re in the information business. And if the scholars who put together this study just want to give taxpayers and educators more information, fine. 

If they want to compare demographics in Arkansas to other states, fine. 

If—without editorial comment—they want to show teachers the challenges they face in the classroom, fine. 

If that’s the message, fine. 

So long as the message isn’t: Don’t worry your poor little heads about it, kids. You’re not expected to be very smart, anyway. So you can’t be expected to get as good an education as the privileged classes. And our worst schools are really our best when you think about the sorry human material they have to work with. 

One more thing, kids. As for those educators who would like your work graded on a separate-but-unequal scale, they’re not doing you any favors.