Two Columns

Two pretty good and not unrelated columns in Sun's newspaper. One, by Leonard Pitts, explores the recent pummeling journalists have received over the actions of a few of their own. He's right in explaining that there are rules to follow in journalism, that integrity matters, and that "expedience [might be] sometimes compromised." (I rearranged some of his words, but didn't take from their meaning.) It's not easy to do what Pitts did, to take some of his profession to task for violating ethical standards. He's to be commended. Although we don't always agree, esp of late, Pitts is a good columnist, one who writes well and has insightful, thoughtful ideas. He's certainly well worth reading.

The other column was by Walter Williams. Again, I don't always agree with Williams, who is sometimes far too simplistic, but he's always like Pitts--thoughtful, insightful, and worth reading. His article focused on cheating by teachers and administrators on student test scores. It seems answers were changed by teachers, they gave answers to some questions, and they allowed lousy students to sit close to good students, making it easier to copy/cheat. For their part, administrators allowed or even encouraged this to happen, maybe even changed answers themselves, and falsified test scores for their reports. Why doesn't any of this surprise me? First, the pressure for teachers and schools to have continually improving test scores (ultimately an impossibility) is getting intense. Most teachers have never been through the rigors required of quality education, so they are not prepared for such pressure. Hence, the cheating. Stupid policies and laws, that's what it is (but not to excuse the cheating). Of course, education, as I have often said, brought this on itself--no need to go into that now. Second, many educators surely have ideological problems with "tests" (and grades). How then to explain the incredible grade inflation of the past 20-30 years? Third, does all this ring true of the philosophy of "positive self-concept(image)" which has been far more important than actually learning and knowing anything over the past few decades? It reminds me of a couple of incidents in another lifetime when I was teaching in the high school. (If one teaches for 40+ years, one gets to see a lot of "incidents.") Both involved a North Central Accreditation process. The process involved self-evaluation, an invitation to cheat, er, at least skew results. One dept in self-evaluating didn't score itself high enough, according to the NCA building "steering committee." "Oh, you're better than that," the committee said, returning the self-evaluation survey to the dept to redo. The dept has some smart folks and, although it honestly answered the first time, knew what was wanted of it. So it merely went through and graded itself the highest it could. "Ah, now, that's better." It may have been the same NCA process or maybe a later one, but when I filled out my individual one for my dept, I noticed my results weren't counted. Why I asked why, I wasn't given an answer, although it was obvious. I didn't rate the dept high enough, so my "self-evaluation" of the dept wasn't included. When the visiting NCA team came to the school to assess the, ahem, "self-evaluation," it blindly (and ignorantly) accepted the findings of the school and its depts. I remember approaching the team leader, a principal at a downriver high school (which told me something right away!), and telling him the above. I mentioned the "self-evaluation" was dishonest and, therefore, inaccurate and that his report should reflect that. From the typical administrator look I saw in his eyes, I knew I was being ignored and that none of my concerns would be addressed. When the final report came out, there was nothing of those concerns, which I still think are very real. So, Willams' article is not at all surprising to me. Oh, here's another one. In the last year or two of my teaching at the hs, about half a dozen or more of the younger teachers were taking the same online course--for credit, for degrees, for more pay. Once a week, after school, the half dozen or more teachers taking the course would meet in the same room, with the computer, and do their own work together. That says a lot about Williams' column and the integrity of online courses, soon to be the new rage.

Out to walk Roscoe....