RE: I hate technology/The Web is evil.

[Rick Froman]

-----Original Message----- From: Miguel Roig [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 8:52 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: I hate technology/The Web is evil.   Miguel Roig wrote: We've had threads before about 'students getting worse' and those discussion have sometimes led me to question the accuracy of faculty impressions of the academic readiness of students.  However, annual 'report cards' of our nation's schools have not been favorable for years and verify our perceptions.  In fact, a just-published report by the Manhattan Institute (http://www.manhattan-institute.org/ewp_03.pdf) paints a pretty grim picture of public high school education.  For example, consider the following statistic revealed by the Manhattan report: "Only 70% of all students in public high schools graduate, and only 32% of all students leave high school qualified to attend four-year colleges."  I don't know what the exact figures are, but I imagine that the 32% probably translates to hundreds of thousands of students.  One also wonders how much better some private high schools really are.   Thanks, Miguel, for the link to the study. I am always looking for primary sources to give my students practice in critical thinking about research. For example, on this very issue, I have had students in the past read opposing reports on our educational system and try to ascertain which is closer to the correct picture. The two reports, while not primary sources, do provide some practice in critical thinking. The sources  are: The Other Crisis in American Education by by Daniel J. Singal at: http://www.theatlantic.com/election/connection/educatio/singalf.htm and The Near-Myth of Our Failing Schools by Peter Schrag at: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97oct/fail.htm. As to practicing my critical thinking on the Manhattan Institute study, the first point is that nothing said about today’s students alone can be taken as evidence that today’s students are doing worse than during some previous golden age. Although 70% graduation and 32% qualified for college doesn’t look good, without a comparison we can’t say that they are worse than before. When reading such an article, I always go to the Method section first because we all know that Satan is in the specifics. And this one does have some specifics. It is a great reminder to us that sometimes it is not as easy as we might imagine to get the numbers we use in an analysis. How hard could it be to get graduation rates? Pretty difficult as it turns out. I leave the details for you to slog through at the link Miguel provided. The authors go on to describe three screens they use to determine the percentage of students who leave high school qualified to attend four-year colleges. The first is HS graduation rate, the second is a transcript screen and the third is a literacy screen. In the transcript screen, they exclude anyone who hasn’t taken, in high school, “four years of English, three years of math, and two years each of natural science, social science, and foreign language.” The literacy screen excludes the percentage of those who don’t achieve a basic level on the NAEP reading test.  “Finally, we apply all three screens by multiplying the percentage of students who graduate high school by the percentage of graduates who pass the transcript screen by the number of transcript-ready graduates who pass the test score screen.” So, with a 70% graduation rate, if 70% take the appropriate curriculum and 70% of those who take the appropriate curriculum pass the literacy test, multiplying them together would give you 34% ready for college. Correct me if I’m wrong, but using the multiplication rule there assumes that all three of those screens are independent measures of college readiness. I seriously doubt that but maybe I am missing something. One other thing just smells to me but I have nothing to confirm it one way or another. The Executive Summary says, “Graduation rates in the Northeast (73%) and Midwest (77%) were higher than the overall national figure, while graduation rates in the South (65%) and West (69%) were lower than the national figure. The Northeast and the Midwest had the same college readiness rate as the nation overall (32%) while the South had a higher rate (38%) and the West had a lower rate (25%).” So the South has the lowest graduation rate and the highest college readiness rate. I live here in Arkansas and education is not one of the strengths of this region. Mississippi is last in most education-related rankings and Arkansas is often number 49. Other southern states are also low. I can easily believe that we have the lowest graduation rate of any region but I don’t understand how that translates into the highest college readiness rating, especially since one-third of the formula for college readiness is based on HS graduation. That tells me we must have higher percentages of high schools requiring the specified curriculum and/or higher literacy rates than the rest of the nation. That seems unlikely. I haven’t looked for a detailed explanation of this in the paper (maybe I will look when I have more time) but if any of you have any other ideas, I would like to hear it.   And to all you PowerPoint haters out there, guess who paid for this report? That’s right: Bill and Melinda.   Thanks again Miguel for another opportunity to exercise my critical thinking (and for my students to practice it).   --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]