I was reading an article in the Kennebec Journal on the trials and tribulations of being in eighth grade.
I remember eighth grade. I was not the best year of my life.
There certainly are many changes taking place in an adolescent's body, and also mind. And, according to this article, the changes can affects a child's test scores on all those standardized tests they have to take.
The basic gist of the article, is that younger children are adult-pleasers, while older children gradually lose that quality and become more interested in their own individuality and the approval of their peers. This affects test scores negatively. At least that's the theory behind the drop in test scores in this school district.
Essentially, what the school system is saying is that scores might have dropped because kids tried less.
I don't buy it.
I've been a public school teacher for nearly a decade, I've administered countless standardized tests. I've also been on committees in my school system that looked at our standardized test scores from kindergarten to 12th grade. In other words, for a non-administrator, I've got a lot of experience looking at and thinking about standardized test scores across all the grades.
Although, while giving a test, you will sometimes see a student just "christmas tree" their answer sheet, or bubble in a column of C's, that's actually pretty rare.
By far, most of what I see is student's working hard to do well.
Yet, as the students age, they don't do well, in general. On average, they do more and more poorly. Some people, like those mentioned in the article try to explain this trend with the "adolescence" argument. That is, adolescence is a period where kids withdraw from adulthood, form their own cliques, have their own tribal rituals, and generally do not interact with adults and the rest of society in a way that is remotely human.
A lot of educators buy into this myth.
So, do some parents.
It's not true. While the "experts" tell us that adolescence is a period in a human's life when she is singularly anti-social, I've found the adolescents I teach to be very much a part of the society they live in.
Yes, they listen to music that I don't listen to.
Yes, they have a lingo that I don't immediately understand.
No, they're not on another planet, scheduled to return when they're twenty-five or so.
For the most part, the kids I teach are interested in bettering their lives. They're also interested in the world they live in.
In case you're wondering, I don't teach kids from the upper strata of society, far from it. I would say, socio-economically, my students draw from the bottom third.
If find them to be engaging, interested, and in pursuit of better lives.
When I watch them take standardized tests, I feel like I'm looking at the room full of kids who are trying to do well.
Unfortunately, they don't actually do that well, at all.
What I notice in test scores myself is that the number of students who do poorly increases dramatically from third grade to eleventh grade.
As a mathematically trained person, I'm quite capable of thinking about data, and what I see can have basically two explanations.
One: students become disinterested, and thus their scores decline.
Two: as the material gets harder, the students gradually fall farther and farther behind.
The second explanation is the one I would bet is correct.
We call it social promotion--the idea that a student needs to graduate to the next grade, or even the next level of schooling merely because of his age.
Many of the students I teach never make really good grades in math. They get by with barely passing grades. Like people who gain a few pounds every few years only to find themselves really obese, these students carry a growing lack of mathematical knowledge with them from grade to grade.
At some point, usually around ninth grade, their deficit catches up with them, and they start failing, instead of barely passing.
What's to be done?
Well, the institution of school can change. (It's changing even now.)
Most importantly, parents and their children can take charge of their own education.
I know the idea of personal responsibility doesn't sit well with some, but you have to admit, it's uniquely American!
Part of the problem with parents being responsible for their children's education is that most parents couldn't pass a fifth-grade mathematics test. I don't mean that to be hurtful. It's just that most folks daily lives don't require anything beyond basic arithmetic, if that.
So, what are you to do?
Well, hiring a tutor for your child is certainly a good option. Call a local college or university. I'm sure you can find a math or physics student who needs extra money. When I was in school, I would have jumped at the chance to tutor a few kids for money.
If you can't hire a tutor, you can always subscribe to a math learning service on the Internet. MathFoundation Online Math Courses has a wealth of stuff that can help your child. This is a paid subscription service, but for the money, it's worth it. Look at it this way, it costs a lot less than a tutor. Even a college student!
