Boys are faring worse than girls on the 10th-grade Washington Assessment of Student Learning test they will have to pass to graduate from 12th grade starting in 2008, and the gap is especially great in writing.
At many schools, the gender gap is wide - with as many as 40 percent more 10th-grade boys failing the writing exam than girls. In the reading section of the WASL, boys' test scores this past spring were lower than girls' at 85 percent of high schools. Girls and boys were neck-and-neck with their math scores, the newspaper found....The (Everett Herald) newspaper was granted access to individual WASL results for more than 76,000 10th-grade students statewide. Although names and other identifying information were removed, the test results showed the students' gender and school. The analysis found that overall, 60 percent of the boys in Washington's high schools failed the WASL, compared with 54 percent of girls.
A closer examination revealed that one in four boys failed all three sections of the test - reading, writing and math. Statewide, about 4,000 more boys than girls failed all three key sections of the WASL, the Herald reported. The gender gap on the writing portion of the test was the most stark, with about 16,800 high school boys failing compared with about 9,300 girls.
Public officials are reacting with their usual purposeful befuddlement. According to one news report today, state legislators are disturbed by the Herald's findings and making noises about doing something: these guardians of educational excellence should keep their powder dry. The solution for semi-literate high-schoolers begins with public school parents who are looking for more than advanced daycare. They must better foster the development of their kids' core academic skills at home and in family life. They must pressure local school officials to get principals and teachers to focus on those same core skills more in school, to boost college preparedness. Finally, parents must organize to fight for pay, retention and promotion of teachers based on merit - actual performance - rather than union-mandated seniority standards which protect and reward the burnt-out and incompetent.
Naturally, as the mandatory passage of WASL draws closer, the race-obsessed board members of Seattle Public Schools are again considering WASL alternatives. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports, today. Perhaps to prepare for their own alternative state assessment tests, they'll make like Baltimore, and adopt the loopy "Studio Course" writing curriculum, also used (to poor effect) in Denver. Verbs are defined in one lesson as "stuff," and students use as inspiration articles on making out and flirting. I think this Mobile, Alabama area school's writing "boot camp" is more on point.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at December 06, 2005 04:59 PM | Email ThisAlso curious that Matt started out talking about how Washington State's schools seem to be failing boys, but loses focus to rant about how it's all the parents' fault, and they should rally around the NEA.
I'm really troubled about you Matt. You are just not making sense... at least I don't understand why you are associated with Sound Politics, or why Sound Politics is associated with you. Can you make this make sense?
Posted by: huckleberry on December 6, 2005 05:26 PMWhy not just give everyone a "diploma," and give something additional to those who can demonstrate on the WASL that they can actually do the work?
Posted by: Micajah on December 6, 2005 05:29 PMTake boys out of public schools and create places where there will be education for humans (home schooling, private schools, and charter schools).
Encourage parents to remove their female children from public schools also so they can be educated like decent humans as well.
Fu@k Public "Education" (indoctrination) and the liberal communist institution it represents.
Posted by: Amused by liberals on December 6, 2005 07:14 PMThere's nothing wrong with alternative assessments just like there's nothing wrong with assessments. But you have to have a good testing instrument or it's worth nothing. But we all know folks who could never test worth a damn - everyone deserves some other method to show they have got the stuff. I don't think combining a GPA or SAT score with a WASL score is dumbing down anything. Nor is an expectation of a full portfolio of work demonstrating mastery. But parents are the third rail in education. You all spend a lot of time ranting over teachers; there are parents out there - a lot of them - who, for various reasons, are just not watching over their kids. Teachers are not all to blame. That's just too easy an out. But again, except for non-religious homeschooled kids, there is no proof that, overall, private school kids are better educated than public school kids. And public schools have to take on all comers,no matter their abilities or disabilities.
Posted by: westello on December 6, 2005 07:28 PMMore than 50% of the kids fail!
Ahhh! Blame the test, that's it.
What a pile of manure!
Posted by: Fed Up on December 6, 2005 07:37 PMYour actual statement was Finally, parents must organize to fight for pay, retention and promotion of teachers based on merit - actual performance - rather than union-mandated seniority standards which protect and reward the burnt-out and incompetent. I think I stopped reading clearly when I hit the words "fight for pay...", coupled with your earlier statements blaming the parents. I ought to have read more carefully and responded more thoughtfully. A Howard Dean moment, if you will...
More money is not needed. You won't get uninvolved parents more involved. Depending on "the parents" of Puget Sound to solve the education problem is like depending on "the voters" of King County to solve the county executive problem. As with property rights and use, let Seattle have what Seattle wants and let the rest of us have what we want. Right now, we are joined at the hip, and the relationship grows weary.
Posted by: huckleberry on December 6, 2005 07:57 PMback to basics--national (TOUGH) standards on math and reading & science; comparable results statewide;
you think our "friends" in Asia or elsewhere worldwide are watering-down THEIR tests to be nice to us? nope--you will work for THEM soon...
Posted by: Jimmie-howya-doin on December 6, 2005 08:27 PMso---how does that help us build bridges, solve math equations and create quake-resistant structures? those topics are noble--don't get me wrong--but are they VITAL??!!!
and how about school districts and unions VOLUNTARiLY coming forward with true performance audits so we can see if they walk the talk?
performance metrics--are they THAT scary? industry uses them all the time; if you are good, what's the worry?
Posted by: Jimmie-howya-doin on December 6, 2005 09:16 PMI’m sorry I keep popping up and criticizing your commentary Matt. But, once again, I think you are missing the key point. And we are all too woosified to stand up and blame the real source of the problem. Especially the media.
In fact, parents are no better or worse than they were in the past. Some care, some don’t. If parents were worse now than before, that would affect boys and girls equally. But, oddly, boys are doing much worse than girls.
Actually, it’s not so odd. Anyone in the public education bureaucracy, legislature, governor’s office, or local government, that suggest “befuddlement” at the fact that boys are doing so badly in school is, simply put, full of crap. In reality, they are scared that the rest of us are going to see what the results of their “gender normalization,” “girl power” obsession, and feminization of the public school system.
They have been drugging boys with powerful stimulates because they act like boys (but, for these PC idiots, being a boy is called being ADHD). They’ve been hammering these boys with the message that they will grow up to be wife beaters and therefore they should be full of self-loathing.
Really, it couldn’t be much more obvious. It’s amazing that the parents of every boy (or at least those parents that care about their boy’s education) are not crashing down the entire state education bureaucracy.
What a mess. And, worse, what a shame that they have ruined a large percentage of this generation of boys. Why put Saddam Hussein on trial – the real crimes against humanity occur in our public schools on a daily basis.
Posted by: BananaLand(aka Iguana) on December 6, 2005 10:19 PMDead on here. I've already begun schooling my 3 year old daughter at home in addition to the private preschool she attends. Children's success is mostly a function of how much the parents are involved.
My nieces and nephew are home schooled through high school and part of the Hall Program in Gig Harbor that allows home schooled kids access to public school facilities for one day a week. These kids are some of the best behaved kids I have ever met. And they relate to adults very well, because they were not taught that they were kids to be sent away each day. They've been exposed to plenty of extracurricular activities as well and have lots of friends. It's an infinitely more positive experience than the nightmare our public schools have become. And it gives the kids a good moral compass early on. None of these kids is in to drugs or any of the other negative influences that have become all to common in our public high schools.
And, really, is there any other qualification other than merit on which we should judge anything? As long as there are teachers unions, the quality of Washington education will continue to decline. It's not that I don't think teachers should be paid well. I think they should be paid a lot more, but only if they merit that pay, and only by private entities that have proper merit based evaluation that encourages teachers to become part of a lucrative merit based career instead of a union that strongarms taxpayers into giving raises to all teachers, even the one's who deserve to be demoted or fired.
If public schools were run like the typical private technical and vocational schools where there is a small admistrative staff and it's mostly about the teachers, there would be a much higher level of quality and plenty of money leftover to pay teachers well, thus creating a competitive environment that raised the overall quality of education.
But who am I kidding, the whole point of the public school system isn't even to serve low grade union teachers, but to create a wing of government for indoctrination of kids with the typical leftist, PC curricula that is the primary component in demotivating kids and making sure that "Johnny Can't Read."
Posted by: Jeff B. on December 6, 2005 10:26 PMSecond of all - I've noticed a disturbing pattern this year and last in the way that teachers are teaching boy vs girl students. One class room, in a bizarre experiment in behavior modification, a teacher was punishing the boys in her classromm for petty and minor infractions and rewarding the girls as part of the boys punishment! She would give the girls popcicles and candy and have them sit in cozy beanbag chairs and eat them in front of the "bad" boys! This was in a 4th grade class! This was happening daily - during the first 2 weeks of school! This teacher was reported to the princple - but she's still teaching her class....
Another example is in a secondary school (middleschool) where teachers are giving female honor's students high grades and the boys low grades when they are producing the same quality of work! The boys become angry and blame the girls and the girls eventually begin to produce better work because their selfesteem is elevated by their false high grades...The boys begin to lose interest in their studies because they know they will never get the grades they deserve...They begin to fail...
Just another sick public school psyc-experiment....(ball-busting..) Expect the results to be published in a few years in the Journal of Psychiatry.......sigh...
It's not the parents.
Posted by: Deborah on December 6, 2005 11:17 PM1. How do you measure teacher competence? By how students score on standardized tests? How do you compensate for teachers in schools with low performing students? In Bellevue (the school district with which I am most familiar) all teachers would want to teach at Medina Elementary and not at Stevenson Elementary. Do you measure improvements in test scores? Then teachers will teach to the test, not necessarily the best approach. So that leads us to subjective teacher evaluations, and the second problem.
2. Having seen, first hand, the way that Bellevue administers evaluate teachers, I don't trust the administration. They play favorites, target older teachers (look at the successful lawsuits) and reward the teachers they beat into submission. I've seen teachers go from stellar evaluations for 20 years to one year of bad evaluations because the administration chose to target that teacher. Don't expect the school board to intervene; they love the number of students taking AP classes and the high ranking that BSD gets in the national media.
Sad, but true. Adults looking out for their careers, not for the students.
Posted by: fearful of reprisal on December 7, 2005 02:42 AMThe "beautiful people" who control the media and the educational system are obsessed with feminizing our culture to the point that boys cannot be boys. They would rather see agressive females bashing mindless metrosexual men into submission so women can take their rightful places as US senators and governors.
Boys mature later than girls, hence boys' distain for the banal, insipid school system we subject them to. Algebra, Geometry and trigonometry seemed pointless to me in high school. A few years later, while taking college classes as a machinist apprentice, math had much more meaning. The meaning revolved around what one could do with such knowledge.....like make a living. Schools and parents) need to address and challenge each student as an individual, looking for motivational factors. Not all students want or need a 4-year college degree to become successful.
Posted by: Saltherring on December 7, 2005 06:05 AMPosted by Andy at December 6, 2005 10:53 PM
Andy you hit the nail right on the head, why compete when there is no support for the male counterpart. If the women want the job to rule the world, hell the male can stay at home and take care of the little ones with third grade education. Maybe they can do a better job and live a lot longer. Check out Western for male students and minorites who graduate from that institution. Mostly female?
http://www.athenalctr.com/Current%20Web/productpagesandimages/books/booksnewa.htm
They channel dead people and actually use the advise of the dead spirits to influence their goals in education. I know this all sounds bizaar, but read the book and then ask yourself, what the hell are these two doing in charge of our kids and how did we let them have control over our children?
The WASL is looking for students' "Processing" skills, not knowledge.
2+2=?? Explain your answer
The child can write 5 as the answer but still be marked affirmatively if the scorer likes the "thought Process" that the child describes in their answer. 60% of the WASL is assessed this way.
The WASL identifies if the educators have been able to elevate our kids "conciousness" to the level they think it needs to be in order to indoctrinate them and have our kids move into adulthood with this way of thinking and transform the world.
This is not just my opinion but 2 years of deep investigation of OSPI documents and background research on these two woman in charge. Get your kids out of public schools is my best advise.
Posted by: Susie on December 7, 2005 08:54 AMOTOH, I have personal knowledge of how corrupt the court system is when it comes to domestic violence, so I will comment on that. In addition to the theme of "All men are batterers and all women are victims" that is put forth by various Women's Advocates groups posing as feminists. These women are NOT feminists and true feminists distance themselves from these groups.
Starting in 1995 I had one restraining order after the other for FIVE YEARS, all of them false and ALL OF THEM filed by an ex-girlfriend who had a complete mental breakdown.
The same story was told to the judge at every hearing; I had broken her jaw, I had knocked the fillings out of ALL her teeth, and I had broken 7-8 of her teeth by grinding her face in into a mirror that caused a wound to her lower lip requiring eighteen stitches to repair.
My response to all of these accusations and to the judge(s) was, "Your honor, nothing this woman has said is true, nothing she has listed in filing for a restraining order(s)is true, and nothing she has ever testified to in court is true".
After the first restraining order had expired I was relieved, but after a couple of months I started getting a gut feeling she might reques another restraing order and filed a request with the court, can't remember what the actual filing was, but it was to prevent her from EVER filing another false restraining order against me. The judge denied my request, stating, "Denied, she is no danger to you!" I was then served with ANOTHER restraining order by a police officer as I left the court.
There IS no epidemic of domestice violence as the media would have you believe. However there IS an epedemic of FALSE AGGEGATIONS of domestic violence that is promoted by the domestic violence INDUSTRY, and it IS an industry! At the top of the heap are the judges that fear for their jobs because of the influence of the various coalitions for the prevention of domestic violence in the U.S. Put a STATE in front of "coalition for the prevention of domestic violence" and you will have the name(s) of the organization(s).
Whose fault is it that false allegations are allowed? You can START with the U.S. Congress that passed VAWA(Violence Against Women Act) and fund it to the tune of billions of dollars, followed by gutless STATE LEGISLATORS that pass dometic violence laws, plus the MEDIA that dances to the tune of the various coalitions for the prevention of domestic violence.
I have read the tripe these various organizations put out in addition to NOW and various WOMEN'S ADVOCATES GROUPS and they are constgantly wringing their hands over the violence done to women, but I
never see them say ANYTHING about the VIOLENT WOMEN and the violence done to MEN. The lack of any focus by thee groups on ALL violence leads me to suspect their motives.
I have one question for these groups; "You claim to be against violence but all I ever hear you address is violence against women. What is the reason for that?"
If these people were truly against violence they would address ALL violence. but if they leave out half the popoulation tht suffers from violence, if they force MEN to attend programs addressing their violence even men who have had false allegations of edometic violence them, but make excuses for the violence of WOMEN I can't take them seriously.
This has gotten long so I will close with a final question/statement. WHY is the CRIME of domestic heard in civil court instead of criminal court? If requests for restraining orders were heard in crimninal court or there were severve penalities for perjury the CRIME of domestic violence would diminish.
The domestic violence laws need to bhe removged from the books. ASSAULT(domestic violence) is a CRIME and is covered under the criminal justice
system and should be addressed in the CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM, not CIVIL COURT.
Back on topic for education. Outside of the hard sciences, most college degrees are worthless (well then there's the ambulance chasers) and I'm wagering that in 10 years we will still see a "wage gap" WRT to gender even though 2/3 of college freshman are female. Some subjects are interesting (history, geology), but a lot of it was just a waste of money (health, writing courses, most of the literature courses).
I suspect in the years to come we will see more males rising to the top of the business world outside of the traditional paths. They will start out as small business owners, sole proprietors who grow to multimillion dollar ventures and other highly motivated individuals who make their own way. They learn what they need to make things happen- the John Carmack types.
The response of course will be that we need even MORE programs for women to start their own business and government contracts reserved for businesses owned by women and minorities.
Whether people like Westello recognizes this factual disparity is irrelevant because regardless of the facts, he would never speak against the well-spring of ignorance and stupidity (public schools) that nurtures and vindicates his own degenerate liberal creed. He is content with his own limitations and through his indolence perceives them as universal bounds. I pity any child raised by someone of his ilk because they will be utterly incapacitated to cope with reality. Others' children are not so boorishly indisposed by parents who understand what is at stake.
In all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is on law there is no freedom. . . The power, then, that parents have over their children arises from that duty which is incumbent upon them, to take care of their offspring during the imperfect state of childhood. To inform the mind, and govern the actions of their yet ignorant nonage, till reason shall take its place and ease them of that trouble . . .
But if through defects that may happen out of the ordinary course of nature, anyone comes not to such a degree of reason wherein he might be supposed capable of knowing the law, and so, living within the rules of it he is never capable of being a free man, he is never let loose to the disposure of his own will; because he knows no bound to it, has not understanding, its proper guide, but is continued under the tuition and government of others all the time his own understanding is incapable of that charge. And so lunatics and idiots are never set free from the government of their parents [today, the liberal socialist state].--John Locke, Concerning Civil Government Ch 6, 57, 60 ser.
As Westello exhibits so aptly, a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Save your children from intellectual laziness, despair, and the confusion of mere opinion. Comparing boys with girls only to divide the source of their succor is a design of the left who wants children’s hearts and minds for their own devices. Take them out of the public schools and provide them a real education where they can learn to take charge of their own minds and lives, and thus became the hope of the future.
Just curious...
Posted by: huckleberry on December 7, 2005 01:50 PMWhat I am concerned about is people who decry having high stakes tests and teaching to the test. Personally, if every teacher in Issaquah School District high schools focused on preparing students for scoring well on the SAT, I would consider that a good thing.
The idea behind the WASL was that we needed a of and state-wide standard definition of essential learnings, and a test to measure mastery of those learnings. In other words, and achievement test. There were no standards on how school districts were to respond to those standards. If your school district is responsing poorly, it is due to incompetence in your school district, not to the standards themselves.
So what is your complaint, exactly? Should we not require essential learning before awarding diplomas? Should we scrap the WASL? Should we replace the WASL?
I propose replacing the WASL with the SAT or ITBS. Map our states essential learnings to the replacement test suite to determine a line that must be crossed to demonstrate mastery of essential learnings. What do you want to be done?
Posted by: huckleberry on December 8, 2005 12:27 PM