Test-Sniveling Movement Takes Root in Dallas School Board. Just What We Needed.

By Jim Schutze Fri., Dec. 5 2014 at 5:45 AM

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Kids are born knowing how to do this. Do they really need special instruction and encouragement in it from the school board?

Two stories in yesterday's Dallas Morning News were bookends for the debate on school rigor. In one, three Dallas school board members launched a campaign against too much testing, saying it's mean to the kids. In the other, the head of the biggest company by far in Dallas and one of the biggest in the world, Exxon-Mobil, said 200,000 good jobs are going unfilled because American students are too dumb to do them.

Did I just say "too dumb?" Do excuse me. Rex Tillerson, chairman and chief executive of Exxon-Mobil, never used that phrase in addressing the quarterly meeting of the Business Roundtable recently and never would. He said instead that too many schools are "producing a defective product."

So take your pick. Which would you rather have your kid be? Too dumb? Or a defective product? Man, if those are the only choices, I'm thinking I could handle too dumb a little better than the other. At least it's human.

Meanwhile our local only daily continues to ignore the story we brought to you here a couple days ago saying the Dallas school system leads the nation in the percentage of minority 11th and 12th grade students who are able to qualify for advanced college credit through the AP testing program.

The success rate for minority kids seeking advanced credit here shot up last year when Dallas Superintendent Mike Miles expanded a program that pushes kids, first to take AP courses, then to take the tests afterward to see if they're smart enough to get the credit.

When I brought you that story, there were some legitimate quibbles from commenters about the statistics. Are more minority kids in Dallas smart than in any other American urban district, or do more minority kids in Dallas take the AP tests? Good question. Please allow me to offer a non-answer:

We have a lot of really smart minority kids in Dallas. It is reasonable to suspect that there are a lot of really smart minority kids in big urban districts all over America. The issue isn't what they're born with. It's teaching them and, yes, pushing them to the point of difficult achievement where Rex Tillerson will give them a job.

Is getting there only about good grades on tests? No. A recent study at the University of South Florida on predictors of success found that kids need to be emotionally healthy in order to succeed. That's part of it.

But the other part -- the academic part, the part schools are responsible for -- is all about taking a lot of tough courses and passing a lot of tests, according to the study. The kid who's OK emotionally and also takes tough courses and also passes tough tests is the kid who will succeed.

The three Dallas board members cited in yesterday's story for being anti-test are Eric Cowan, Dan Micciche and Joyce Foreman. Foreman, who is African-American, was elected to the board on the basis of her opposition to Superintendent Miles. Cowan, who is white, has been a Miles supporter. Micciche, who is white, has been a lukewarm supporter of Miles.

Why the racial tags? Because the anti-testing and anti-core curriculum movement in Texas has been a more white middleclass and suburban phenomenon than an urban minority one. Texas Monthly did a story on test-haters
last year, and they came off more Tea Party than Obama-backer. Obama, of course, has been an advocate for the national core curriculum.

Think about that. Barack Obama is president of the United States in good part because he took a whole lot of tough courses as a kid and got great grades on tough tests. Tillerson, the Exxon dude, doesn't say a kid is stupid or a bad person if he doesn't master the core curriculum and have the test scores to prove it. He just says he's a defective product. Ouch.

If black people in the city really want to sign up with middle class white people on this issue, they need to pause first and think about the white middleclass culture of child-worship. When your 3-year-old is throwing food at old people in a restaurant, do you really want to be all white about it and tell the kid he has choices?

And we all need to look around at the immigrants. They want their kids to get those jobs at Exxon baaaad. When they tell a kid he has a choice, it's between a Ph.D and a sharp whup upside the head.

Russell Peters is a Canadian comedian and actor of Indian immigrant descent. If you've never heard his monologue on why white people need to start beating their kids, you should give it a listen here.

No, no, I'm not in favore of beating children. You don't have to beat them. Just make them do their homework. Then make them take the test. Quit sniveling about it. You don't have to model sniveling for them. Kids are born knowing how to snivel. They're master snivelers. They don't need lessons in it from their parents.

I still say the biggest and best news here is that story about the Dallas Independent School District leading every other major urban district in the country in the ratio of the minority student population able to get advanced college credit. That means we have tons of smart minority kids here with huge potential for success.

These are kids who have responded positively to rigorous instruction and hard tests. Many of them don't get a lot of other rewards in life. Why would we take that one away?

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MikeWestEast

I keep reading about how disruptive the tests are and wondered why a few tests done a few times a year could have that impact. I found that many schools decided to only buy a few of the testing computers. That means they prefer to cycle a few students through each 2 hour period over weeks. At high school, with different subjects and more subject based exams, the coordination gets magnified. It further grows with even a practice test before the real test.

No wonder everybody thinks it is a mess. On a given day, everybody knows somebody out of class taking a test. I cannot blame Rex Tillerson and Presidents Bush and Obama for that kind of execution of a good idea.

amywallacecowan

If you had been at the meeting, Jim Schutze (!!), you would know that the movement and the pressure we parents are putting on Eric Cowan (and Joyce Foreman, since she was nice enough to come) to get rid of testing in specials isn't because we're afraid that testing is too rigorous. If anything, we're saying the opposite. It's ridiculously stupid and wasteful.

Some examples: The DISD-mandated ACP in 2nd grade PE calls for students to sit on an X, say "hi," walk slow, walk fast, dribble a soccer ball, and roll over three times. When the student is finished, there are varying reports about whether they watched a video or read books. But either way, 2nd graders are 7 - 8 years old. If they can't do those things, there is a BIG problem! This isn't demonstrating that the PE teacher has been amazing at his/her job. In other examples given, the tests don't have a correct answer, which frustrates smart kids. In other examples, the test isn't aligned with the curriculum (there is another word for this in DISD, but I can't remember what it is)- meaning that the test is asking for answers on information that is taught in second semester. In one case, a test had a type-o that left a curse word in the test... imagine how awesome that was to a room full of 8th graders!

These are wasted days of learning, and I'm sure the minority kids you're referencing would definitely benefit from more days of active learning than from sitting in the gym watching videos.

holmantx topcommenter

Urban kiddos are not going to be as emotionally healthy as those who grow up in a traditional, two-parent, family unit.Government-as-replacement for the father billet has proved to be a gyp.A bad Daddy.And it has taken a huge toll on the aggregate quality of life for generations of kids, now adults, since the introduction of the Great Society.

I know, I know, current group-think amongst the enlightened has a few words for that. It's just that the results of redistribution so graphically stares us in the face in so many ways, the words are gibberish. It's televised. We now need armed police who bring adult charges in the grammar schools to maintain order. Even you admit kids have to "grow up a lot quicker' than you had to. What we call an age of innocence lost is a euphemism for a society that has become a lot rougher. And why is that?

Inner city kids of any flavor cannot compete (in the aggregate) with suburban 'product' because too often they must first become proficient in, and pass a series of tests by, the Street. A kid can only learn so much in a day. So little Jane and Johnny must prioritize. However that educational training is of no practical use in the private sector. Not even today's military can uses them.

It is not the lack of, or to much - testing. It's the environment.

It's why those family units who can move to the Burbs - do. It is where the winners of the Spelling Bs come from for a reason. They got two parents and a safe environment, but Johnny must suffer through those pesky sit-down meals. Because Daddy's home. Or Momma is because Daddy's at work. And, yes, it might be the other way around. Who cares. It takes two to make and raise a third.

Instead we hire a 'reformer' to roll the rock of Sisyphus. Then bleed him by a thousand cuts.

We got a real mess on our hands now.

Anonymous

Jim, you are confusing taking tough classes and their associated class exams with taking meaningless standardized tests like STAAR and ACPs that take time away from those tough classes.

The parents and trustees are not complaining about class rigor and hard exams. This is a relatively simple but important distinction. I'm not sure why you're conflating two unrelated things.

ScottsMerkin topcommenter

What is Rex Tillerson's definition of a good job, and where is that list of the 200,000 open positions he speaks of?

riconnel8

Jim, I think you are just wrong. Right along with Social Security, Education (631 Billion dollars a year) is the only other government big investment that hasn't been bought by corporations. In 2007 (look, another thing that happened in 2007) Common Core, Inc. was founded. In 2009 the Gates Foundation donate half a million dollars to help get it off the ground knowing all the while that Microsoft would be the operating system. If you follow the money you'll find what companies donated anticipating the rewards over the long run.

I don't have a problem with a common curriculum across the U.S. so that children having had to move from one coast to the other aren't adrift when enrolling in a new school. And of course there should be standards for a child to be passed to a higher grade and then to graduate but anything other than that (including all the testing) is questionable.

I'm left of Hillary Clinton. I'm more Bernie Sanders left...nothing Tea Party or Libertarian about me. I was absolutely flummoxed when I read President Obama was behind Charter Schools while instituting Common Core. Today DMN did a story on Rawlings being the education mayor. Read the comments. It's a jungle out there and it gets harder and harder to tell who the good guys are. The good guys being the ones who aren't profiting but have the hoi polloi interests at heart.

You seem to want to limit your story to test scores but there is much, much more involved.

riconnel8

@holmantx I like your comment and agree that we have a real mess on our hands now. I'll even go a step further and say that even two parent homes, where both parents HAVE to work to meet their mortgage, utilities, food, clothing etc are producing tangle children. It never use to be a necessity for both parents to work and it seems to me that we had a much healthier society. The burbs are no guarantee or protection that your kids aren't going to join gangs or do drugs or drop out of school. It's a mess. My son and his spouse are never going to have the luxuries that my spouse and I worked for and enjoyed...one of those luxuries being a one income household.

JimSX topcommenter

@ScottsMerkin

Here, for the second time, is the link:

http://www.dallasnews.com/business/headlines/20141203-exxon-ceo-defends-common-core-education-standards-that-perry-and-cruz-have-opposed.ece

James080

@ScottsMerkin

Here you go Scotts:

http://www.exxonmobil.com/USA-English/HR/careers_us.aspx

riconnel8

@ScottsMerkin 200,000 openings in fracking and how many positions are already filled? That statement makes me infinitely sad if even minutely true. Odd though, many of the people I know employed by the oil and gas companies aren't college educated but instead come from those schools putting out defective products. Silly me, I see the "defective product" elsewhere.

riconnel8

@riconnel8 And yes I get that Texas doesn't use Common Core but it's all the same principle:
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/headlines/20140623-what-texans-need-to-know-about-common-core-education-standards.ece

JimSX topcommenter

@riconnel8 @holmantx

Interesting to see that you wind up on the same page with holman, who is a class and ethnicity determinist. Both of you ignore overwhelming data to show that a kid with a crack whore for a mother and no father who moves apartments every two months can be taught to full literacy and mathematical proficiency by the end of third grade, thereby hugely altering his entire arc through the rest of life. But one requirement for making that happen is teachers who believe in the potential of all children as opposed to determinists who think class is destiny, patronage parasites and all the other moral miscreants who believe that nothing will ever change in big urban school districts.

ScottsMerkin topcommenter

@James080 ha, thanks. If Exxon has 200,000 open good jobs, maybe that says more about the company than it does the people who are applying, or those that are choosing not to apply?

James080

@ScottsMerkin @James080

I don't know the answer. I'm an employer, and I'm constantly amazed at the lack of ability in English and math that my employees demonstrate. Most of my employees are Garland ISD and DISD graduates.