Every day I have the chance to learn with some highly motivated, inspirational young learners and educators at Apex Friendship High School. Imagine my excitement when the day before winter break AFHS was selected as number 13 of the near 60 high schools in the Research Triangle area. This came from a NC Department of Public Education study and was reported on by Seth Thomas Gulledge of The Triangle Business Journal. I contacted Mr. Gulledge upon my return from holiday. I wanted to know more about the measurement of “College and Career Ready”. As it turns out, the College and Career Ready Score is nothing more than an aggregate of the end of course English, Biology and Math scores. Really? Not again!
In September I wrote the following as a reaction to the US News and World Report High School Rankings How do you measure whether a high school is great? The US News and World Report of Top High schools came out in early May. It was brought to my attention from a Social Media post that stated something like, “So proud of our school; we made the top five high schools in Ohio.” I immediately went online and found the report; not so I could see where my school fell on the list, but so I could discover how the rankings were done. After all, with the right statistical measures I could be the greatest . . .. I hoped and prayed there would be something about the development of qualitative skills necessary for successful employment, or at least something other than “test scores”? Deep breath . . . In sum, the “broad range” of indicators are state tests, graduation rate and AP and IB tests taken and scores. You can read the entire description of the measurement system here. It generally looks like a composite put together by The College Board. At the top of the description of the measuring system is the platitudinous statement, “. . .a great high school must serve all of its students well, not just those who are college bound, and that it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes to show it is successfully educating its student body across a range of performance indicators.” “Broad range of performance indicators”, really? Test scores demonstrate how successfully we are educating? Educate - from the latin root, educere, which means to draw out to bring forth. Do we truly draw out from our youth their true potential by asking they perform on standardized tests? Are our youth more than proficient test takers? Do we wish for them to be thinkers, doers and innovators? According to the ultimate customer, the employer, we want more than test takers. Therefore, how do we measure which schools are truly doing outstanding work? What other measurements are there to determine the true quality of our work as educators? Check out the work being done to develop “a master transcript” at several high schools and colleges around the country. That was back in May. And today, we are still measuring greatness by standardized tests. This is wrong. A new paradigm is needed. Do we want for our greatness to be measured by tests of knowledge that could easily be found on Google, or do we wish to provide our emerging leaders with skills that they can use to help create value for themselves and others? At Apex Friendship many of our learners and educators work wonderfully together to produce high quality human capital that is college and career ready. Most of that capital investment is in the form of skills learned from meaningful, semester-long projects that engage our students. For four years Apex Friendship students learn with some of the best in the area; no doubt about it! The results of this outstanding creativity and collaboration can not be found in a percent score. It is found on the classroom walls, at a dance recital, a choir concert, an internship night, a Battle for an Angel pitch competition, a swimming pool or tennis court. It is in what our children and educators do that make us great, not in a test score or a GPA. It is in the hearts of us all that are passionate about pursuing education purposefully. For this paradigm shift to occur, colleges must use different measuring sticks to determine entrance. Are they ready to do that, for our young learners’ sake? We’ll keep that for another time. Leave a Reply. |
Author: Dan Jackson
Experienced Reflective Learner and Strategic Thinker with an ongoing track record of of innovative, adaptive leadership in education and business management. Archives
December 2019
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