News From The World of Non-Education

Two items popped up in the news while I was on holiday. They seemed worth writing a quick word or two about. See if you agree –

1. In the US State of New York, it has long been true that students had to pass a set of exams, known as the Regents Exams, in order to graduate from High School. The Board of Regents in New York, from whence comes the name of those exams, has recently determined that NY State high school students will no longer be required to pass five of these exams (in English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies) to earn a Regents Diploma, the standard credential for high school graduation in the state.

A member of that Board of Regents has explained why the requirement has been dropped:

New York Regents member Felicia Thomas-Williams on why she thinks students shouldn’t have to take Regents exams to graduate: “You don’t assess a fish on climbing a tree because fish can’t climb trees”

You can read the X post from which comes that quote and hear Ms. Thomas-Williams say this out loud here.

So, NY State high-schoolers will now get a diploma even if they can’t climb a tree. Or write a coherent sentence.

2. The NYT this week ran an editorial about the fact that the University of California is reconsidering its decision of some years back to stop using SAT scores in its admission process. The editorial is titled ‘This California Educational Juggernaut Doesn’t Need the SAT’ and was written by one Miriam Pawel.

Here is my favourite sentence from Ms. Pawel’s article:

Students on University of California campuses may struggle with basic math, but they are graduating at record rates.

It seems Ms. Pawel thinks the second fact she mentions is a good thing, despite the first fact.

To be fair, not all of the piece is as air-headed as that sentence, and I have written before that the idea of reinstating the SAT requirement, which originated with the faculty at these universities, is at best a highly imperfect way to deal with the real problem: public high schools in California are not educating their students. Ms. Pawel seems to get that the problem starts with the California secondary school system, although she sees the issue as one of ‘equity’ rather than competence. That usually means she thinks the schools that are doing a bad job need more money, although she does not quite say that in this article.

The hope of those who argue for reinstating the SAT is that it will provide a clear indication of which high schools are doing a bad job, and produce changes for the better at those schools. It may not work, teachers’ unions are powerful in California, and they will resist any attempt at making their members accountable for teaching high school students anything. And, the unions’ great allies are Democratic Party politicians, who are pretty much the only politicians who can get elected to any state office in California.