March 29, 2024

Education models should include regular assessments, quality teachers

If you have not been reading the national and international reports on education, it would be understandable to have a misperception about what is happening. The U.S. made a bad decision to abandon the model of education successfully used for thousands of years to develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills, has paid a heavy price, and is now attempting to get back on track.

The bad, pseudo-education, model of memorization relied on dumbing down the assessment tests every three to four years when at least 50 percent of the students were unable to pass them (thus lowering standards and inflating results). Most other states have now adopted the grade-level 65th NPR as the student proficiency standard, and 38 of them have teacher training programs working toward this standard, but Iowa remains at the 41st NPR standard and fails to achieve even this in student proficiencies.

Results seen by the public are based on this low standard of inflated test results. A simple analogy would be to take a score of 10 and divide it by .41 (which equals 24), and then divide this same 10 by .65 (which is 15). Equivalent grade levels shown on the Iowa Assessments are also inflated by almost two years as a result of using the lower standard of 41st NPR.

The bad model of memorization also relied on the scapegoating of students and not counting low test scores (further inflating the results so schools looked better) rather than performing a regular impartial assessment of the process being used. No Child Left Behind put a stop to not counting some test scores as part of their intervention to get back on track. When educators today scapegoat students as an excuse for failing to get proficiencies back up to grade level, they are documenting their poor training as part of the bad model rather than the proven successful model used by the rest of the world for thousands of years.

According to international reports from the O.E.C.D., other countries have almost no proficiency gaps among demographic groups because they focus on regular assessments of the process and only hire teachers with the skills to effectively teach at grade level. Their cost of education is about $9,000 per student while Iowa spends about $12,000 per student (55 percent of Iowa’s budget). The successful model costs less, is provably more efficient, and provably more effective, with almost no achievement gaps in proficiencies.

Sue Atkinson

Baxter