High School Flunks in Florida But Aces the Ivy League
If these were graduates of Boston Latin, Thomas Jefferson, or another top public high school in the nation, the announcement would not be much of a surprise. But the 17 seniors who are going to Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, and other Ivy League schools in the fall are graduates of Hialeah High School, a school in south Florida that received an F rating from the state for its dismal test scores.
Check out this news story that shows the students celebrating and the school's principal pointing out a major inconsistency of test-driven state accountability systems. His point seems to be that you can't judge a school on test scores alone. Instead, a better way of measuring success should be how well a school's graduates perform in college. Maybe Harvard, Yale, and the other Ivy Leagues should answer that question for Hialeah High next year.
Tags: Florida | high school | standardized tests | Ivy League
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Standardized Tests
I am not surprised by the news that a "flunking" high school sends students to some of the best colleges in the country. It's just more proof that standardized tests, not teachers and students, are what's flunking. Standardized tests typically test low-level skills and an narrowed curriculum. Doing well on them is not necessarily any indication of intelligence or competence. Neither is "flunking" a true indication of so-called poor teaching and low ability. These tests offer a mere portion of the overall picture of what the student is capable of; a snapshot taken at one particular moment in time which does not give the whole picture. Factors influencing scores are numerous: nutrition, emotional and mental state, cramming for the test, amount of sleep, health, poor test questions, poor scoring practices, to name a few. Kudos to the principal for getting the bigger picture: you CAN'T judge a school (or teacher, or student) on test scores alone. Too bad for our students that our education secretary, Arne Duncan and the NCLB proponents don't get it.
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