So says Georgia Superintendent of Schools, Kathy Cox, and Georgia Governor Sonny Purdue. We’ll make the bar higher; make the curriculum tougher; and test them till the sun goes down. Not a quote, but that’s their idea. According to Cox, “we could not wait any longer.” “The world is going to have high expectations for our students in the 21st century, so we must be sure we have high expectations for them.” Well, it doesn’t seem to be working that way.

Take a look at a sampling of the test results from the CRCT Test Scores, 2006 for a few school districts that I am familiar with. Most of them are in the Atlanta area, except for Muscogee (Columbus, GA), and Walker (NW Georgia mountains). In two of the districts, Clayton and Atlanta, 40% of the students did not pass the test (meet the state’s standard). And these weren’t the worst scores. More than a dozen other school systems scored lower. Or another way to put this, many of our schools did not meet the “bar” that Cox and other state officials set.

The science test that the Georgia Department of Education administers measures students’ ability to master “material.” Although they state claims that their test require students to demonstrate higher thinking skills, paper and pencil tests rarely, if ever, come close to finding out if students can solve problems, be creative, and think futuristically—the kinds of abilities that “world-class expectations” require.

Curriculum has been aligned to grade-level tests. As such, the curriclum as carried out in the classroom is nothing more than helping students reherse and practice skills that state educators think will help them pass the test.

There is a huge disconnect between what innovative science educators think should characterize school science, and what state eduction officials describe as science education. Cox and others, including the Perdue have the single-minded notion that student’s should focus on improving performance. And to do this, the state officials compare test results from one year to the next to “measure” the improvement. It’s no different than looking at your stock portfolio from one period to another. How is the market performing? How are the students performing? Any difference between these two parametrics?

And of course politicians like Cox and Purdue think in terms of “basic skills” or “core knowledge” and place emphasis on pedagogy that is no different than the pedagogy used a hundred years ago. It is the model of learning in which students are vessels and teachers become dispensors pouring “core knowledge” down the funnel. Modern science education is based on a cognitive model in which student “construct” knowledge through social interaction and hands-on/minds-on experiences. Consequently “evaluation” becomes nothing more than using testing trivial knowledge judged by panels of “experts.” There is little or no room for innovative and student centered assessment. No wonder Cox is the state official who wanted to ban evolution from the science curriculum, one of the most revolutionary and visionary theory in the biological sciences.

And what does improvement (or “fails to meet the standards) imply? It becomes a silly annual series of press releases comparing those who did with those who didn’t muster up to the state’s standards. And their solution: do more; go back to summer school; practice for the test; you’ll make it; if you don’t, we’ll leave you behind. And in districts whose students did well on the test, what do they say? They must have worked harder; the curriculum is really working; teachers are doing their jobs. They are on the right track!

World-class thinking? No, I don’t think so. We need a change. Whew. More later.