It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single test, administered to a heterogeneous bunch of students, must be rife with bias. In other words, an SAT question that makes reference to a string of polo ponies (or 'poLOPonies,' if you're Ed Norton (the "Honeymooners" character, not the actor)) will be unfairly cryptic to those raised in the slums of Chicago.
Maybe so, but what is to be done?
One remedy would be to change the test. Another would be to expand the horizons of students who take standardized tests--in other words, students--so that they have a vaster mental database of cultural referents from which to draw. Several schools are doing just that. ("A Moo-Moo Here, and Better Test Scores Later")
At the Harlem Success Academy, for example, young students take a field trip to a farm (or maybe it was a farm trip to a field--we have trouble keeping these things straight) so that they will not panic when confronted on a test with questions of a rural bent. In principle, we have no objection to youngsters getting out into the fresh air and mingling with turkeys and ducks. But we wonder about the efficacy--or, frankly, the logic--behind this experiment.
Sure, a student from Harlem might have trouble with, say, a reading comprehension passage that revolves around the proper care and feeding of yak. But the impetus for this project seems to be a concern that students might have trouble with math problems like the following:
"How many cornstalks are in a field that has 46 rows of 32 stalks each?"
Do education bureaucrats think exposing city kids to farm life will make them more familiar with the concept of '32'?
Awhile back, we read an article in Harper's Magazine, a selection from some controversial classroom material: In a crime-ridden urban school district, teachers had put together a handout with math problems that made reference to bullets, gang members, illegal drugs, etc. The community was outraged, but it seems to us that the teachers were simply trying to make the math problems relevant to the students' lives. If the goal is to improve students' understanding of mathematical concepts, and we all agree with the premise that one way to improve this understanding is by making math "relatable," then is developing such questions really any different than taking city kids out to play with pumpkins?
We worry about where all this might lead. Consider those time and distance questions we've all had to wrestle with: A train leaves New York City traveling west at 80 miles an hour. At the same time, a train leaves Cincinnati traveling east on the same track at 100 miles an hour. How long until the trains collide?
To make that question relevant, should we load Mrs. Talbott's 8th graders onto a train and set it off on a collision course? Parents, you might want to ask some questions before you sign those permission slips.
By the way, as an aside, the above-mentioned Times article also talks about how schools in rural areas also try to introduce their students to urban settings: "In Jemez Pueblo, NM. . . . educators . . . have started taking the school's 59 students on trips to major cities, like Calcutta and Washington."
CALCUTTA?!?!?!?
Interesting concepts, but it won't fly. I had to do the New York/Chicago problem whilst never having had the "benefit" of actually going to these cities. Indeed, I lived out in the cornfields of Iowa and wouldn't have related to the corn question either.
ReplyDeleteI suspect "Mr. Jones" may have seen an opportunity to travel while getting paid for it. And why not? Few teachers are paid or appreciated for what they do.