Will HB3162 Improve Education?

I doubt it. Rob Kremer thinks so and he tackles the CIM/CAM and pushes HB 3162 as the cure for the failure of ed reform. We do need a discussion about the CIM/CAM and the tests as to whether they can be the means to reform of our public schools. But the discussion needs to focus on whether any standardizing and testing can served as the road to reform. Why would changing the tests matter? The strategy hasn't changed. HB3162 doesn't change or improve the existing strategy of reform. It retains the false hope that testing somehow matters. HB3162 only replaces "their" tests with "his" tests. It doesn't change the system.

Standards and testing aren't a strategy for reform. They only describe the performance of the system. And they reveal the massive failure of the system. Of the 75% of our kids who graduate, only 1/3 achieve the CIM. That means the system has a sucess rate of only 25%. That dismal performance should be intolerable and cause for dramatic responses. We have known about this dismal performance for the last 20 years but the legislature is still avoiding the problem. It has no response, no theory of action for how it will bring about rapid, significant change and improvement.

So my criticism of CIM/CAM does not concern the quality of the tests. It lies with the absurd notion that we can make schools change by putting standards and testing in place. Testing more, or differently, or uniformly, is not a strategy for change. It's only measurement. The fundamental inertia and resistance to change that is built into the system by its very design will continue to give us the stable,dismal performance we have known about for the last 20 years.

The tests are irrelevant to change. They are not the problem or the cure. It is the system design that is bad. It is the means of delivery. Until the legislature honestly admits that trying to use tests, any tests, to force the schools to improve is not a strategy for change, we will not have a strategy that produces significant change and improvement in our schools. We must understand and change the design of the system, the means of delivery of education.

Standards and tests, whether flawed or not, are only the messenger of the bad news. The means we are trying to use to deliver public education services is a dynsfunctional system, an old public utility model of a government bureucratic organization with a protected exclusive franchise over all public education services and money that we hope will somehow respond to the need for dramatic change merely because the tests once again show it to be increasingly costly and consistent in its poor performance.

We need to focus on the system design, the fact that the legislature has created a design that guarantees the public schools their revenues, jobs, benefits whether the kids learn or not. The kids' failure to thrive is irrelefvant to the adults' success. The kids are hurt. The adults are rewarded, and HB3162 changes that immoral state of affairs not one whit.