Enough is Enough: Georgia ranks near the bottom in SAT scores

Read the pitiful story here–> Georgia ranks near the bottom in SAT scores.  IF YOU HAVE CHILDREN OR EMPLOYEES THERE IS NO MORE IMPORTANT CONCERN FOR YOU THAN THIS.

OK, we are losing ground educationally, so now what are we going to do about it?  Our children are all we have.  If we abandon them, we abandon everything. 

The usual answer in education is that we need more resources. However, we are paying more per student for education than some of the 46 states that are better than we are. More money and more government is NEVER the answer to a problem. Personal responsibility, hard work, and ingenuity solves problems. The government did not invent the light bulb, Thomas Edison did. (And he did it to get rich. And he spent HIS own money to do it, not a government handout.)

I don’t buy the argument that Georgia has more people take the test and that makes our average go down. On average, it will work out the same (unless you believe that in Wyoming they lock up the dumb kids so they won’t take the test and drive the scores down for the 311 who took the test).  This “average” argument shows a math problem in and of itself. Average = Total Score / Number of Students Taking the Test. The “bell curve” of average probabilities says that students will score along a curve with a peak at the middle. Without getting into mean, mode, median, chi squared, and statistical significance, the average score should be at the peak of the curve. Statistics 101. A higher total number of kids taking test should make the average a BETTER indicator of overall educational performance not worse.  Come on!

The answer has to be one of four things: (1) The curriculum is not adequate (not even meaning to teach what is needed to score high on the SAT); (2) The teachers are not teaching properly (either not teaching the curriculum or don’t know how to teach); (3) The students are not learning the material (lots of reasons like attendance, parental responsibility, drugs, extracurricular activities, organic brain disorders, etc.); or (4) the SAT is inaccurate.

For years curricula has been make more politically correct and “dumbed down.” I’m not sure it is any better.  Kathy Cox says that the math curriculum needs to be adjusted.  What else needs work?  Does each parent have to get an SAT study guide and check to make sure that someone is teaching the basics?  Are our teachers or students dumber than all the students and teachers in 46 other states?  Are ALL our teachers unable to communicate with their students?  I can’t believe that. There has to be at least one state ranked above us (e.g. California or Ohio) with dumber people than us, right?  (After all they are voting for Hussein Obama right?)

The SAT is not skewed.  The political correct police have already been fly specking that test for years.  Next!

Bottom line is that unless someone can show that the average Georgia student has a low IQ and is unable to learn the material, then the answer has to be curriculum first.  If not the curriculum itself, the way it is implemented from the State level down. 

I was an instructor in the Air Force.  We often just taught the answers on the test to our students.  It was not hard to teach ABC (airway, breathing, circulation).  The material WAS the answer to a question.  Simple.    The SAT is not so simple.  You can’t just teach the test answers (e.g. “C”), you have to teach the theory and how to take tests.  Kids have to know what a triangle is, and how triangles are named in order to understand the mathematical relationship between the length of the sides  of certain triangles (the dreaded a squared + b squared = c squared for right triangles for example).  Then they have to be able to read and understand the question, pick the right answer, and bubble in the right circle to get credit.  If the student misses any one of those, they miss the question.

Hall County is BELOW the abysmal average for the state as a whole.  It is the responsibility of the school board to correct this.  No blame can be shifted to the State for the curriculum UNLESS the local local school board can show they told Kathy Cox of the curriculum issues. 

I’m afraid that education is seen by some administrators as an assembly line and as long as the line is running and product is coming off the line, they are doing a good job.  Not true.  Only quality products off the line count.  If the design (in this case curriculum) is flawed, then the product (e.g. student) will be flawed.

No whining or finger pointing or saying that scores are lagging what we did earlier.  These are children today who deserve to learn what they need to excel in the world.  With those crappy scores they won’t get into the college of their choice.  Without that college they will get the same old job the rest of us have working for the smart folks.  This is real important, and it is time everybody (including parents) start pulling on the oars together to fix it right dang now!

Don’t worry about other state programs that get money (no matter how silly they seem).  Don’t worry about budget shortfalls.  Test scores have gone down steadily while the education costs have risen steadily.  This is not a money problem.  Teaching is one person passing knowledge to another.  It only takes a willingness to teach and a willingness to learn.  We have smart dedicated teachers that are up to the task.  Fix the curriculum and stay out of their way, and their dedication, skill, and ingenuity will propel us up the ranks.