Give the kids a break
Editorials
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Monday, February 5, 2007
LISTEN UP, kids. Your pre-teen and barely-teen eyes may glaze over at this paper’s coverage of the Legislature, and we understand. Kids don’t pay the bills. What do y’all care about tax decreases? And you’re too young to play in some never-never lottery.
But just in case you skipped your morning brain food, and went straight to the funnies or Sports, you need to know this: Those tests are going to change in school.
That’s right, kids, there’s something happening over at the Ledge that may affect you directly. Not your parents, not the old folks down the street, but you.
You’re in school, aren’t you? (You better be.) You take tests, right? Then listen up.
The Joint Budget Committee over at the Legislature has okayed a deal to combine some of your tests, which means you won’t be taking them as often. Which is good news, kids. Remember taking the Benchmark Exam to see how much you knew about state-required courses? Then you had to take the Iowa Test to see how you compared to other kids around the nation. Test, test, test, it seemed. Teachers were saying all that testing was cutting into their teaching time. This state was developing some of the most over-tested but under-evaluated students in the country.
But soon, thanks to your friendly neighborhood Ledge, the state will begin using an Augmented Test, which is a fancy way of saying all those tests will be combined into one.
Confused? Don’t be. Listen to Jim Argue, a state senator from Little Rock, chairman of the education committee, and a guy who’s always had the interests of the next generation at heart. He also has a gift for putting things plain. And he did it again in this case, explaining why we need one (1) augmented test, not two or three or four different ones. He was talking to a legislator/car dealer at the time, and came up with just the right comparison:
“Using an analogy from your [business], where your customer makes a trip to the garage to get tires and pressure checked, and later they make another trip to the garage to check the oil. We’re sending the kids to the shop twice for two different tests now. What this proposal gives us a chance to do is check the tires and the oil pressure on the same trip to the shop.”
Translation: Less test time for you, kiddos. Which means more time for teaching, and studying, which could translate into even better test scores the next year and the next and the next. Till you’re all prepared to earn one of those big-paying college scholarships. How about that?
ALL OF WHICH makes us wonder: How come the state has taken so long to switch to these augmented tests? Because we can scarcely remember a time when we haven’t been trying to make a case for giving just one standardized test to kids instead of two. But by the time different companies had submitted different bids, and the lawyers got involved . . . . It turns out that improving education can be as long and laborintensive a process as education itself, which is no short jaunt. It seems there’s always another hill to climb. Which only increases our admiration for long-toiling legislators like
