There are two ways to go wrong in scoring student essays. One is to have them graded by computers. The other is to have them graded by the low-wage slackers hired by testing corporations.
There is only one way to go right in scoring student essays. That is to have them read by teachers in the building or district where the student is enrolled.
Massachusetts is pondering turning over the grading of student essays to computers. Les Perelman, a retired professor of writing at MIT, has demonstrated how dumb the computers are when it comes to understanding what students have written. The computers like long sentences; big words; and long essays. But the computers have a serious defect: They can’t tell truth from falsehood. He told a New York Times writer, Michael Winerip, that a computer would not care if a student wrote that the War of 1812 began in 1945. Computers are not fact-checkers. That is why they can score thousands of essays in less than a minute. If you happen to think that knowledge matters, don’t have essays scored by computers.
If you think that it is better to ask Pearson or ETS or any of the other testing companies to have essays graded by humans, think again. Read Todd Farley’s book “Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry,” where he describes himself as a scorer who was in it for the hourly wage, surrounded by others with little or no interest in the quality of writing or the fate of students. In recent years, we have heard of ads placed on Craigslist, seeking essay readers at $11 an hour, no experience needed. Read the last paragraph of Farley’s book to know why mass-grading of student writing doesn’t work, why parents should fight it with every fibre of their being.
Who should read and assess student work? Teachers who work in the building or the district. At least then one can be certain that teachers are doing the grading, not unemployed and inexperienced college graduates who are expected to read and grade 100 essays an hour or more.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
I’m not sure….any little dan from Texas has to say would be a close second.
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“low-wage slackers”
Ouch.
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“Who should read and assess student work? Teachers who work in the building or the district.”
NO! Teachers who have the students in class should read and assess student work. Any others not connected to the students in the class have no business whatsoever in assessing student work such as an essay.
What you are attempting to do with that suggestion, Diane, is to say that the standardized test format MUST hold sway, that it is a valid way to assess student work. It’s not. Wilson addressed the myriad problems associated with having “judges” supposedly trained by “superior judges” to be able to objectively score a student’s work, usually with some form of a rubric. The consistency and reliability not only in inter-assessor capabilities but also of a single scorer over time are not obtainable. In other words it is an inaccurate method of assessing student work. And since it is inaccurate it is then invalid.
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How did we ever get to the moon with all those cheating teachers correcting their own student tests?
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Oh, some would point out that we never got to the moon! 🙂
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Years ago, Yakima SD (WA) had a great system. There was a district wide writing assessment. Teachers met to go over the rubric, standardize the rubric (was this 3 or a 4 in voice, etc.,) It was a great learning experience for teachers and a wonderful way for teachers to learn how to teach their students.
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College entrance exams used to be read and graded by teachers and college professors. It was an annual ritual. They were replaced by the SAT.
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Those rubric sessions still suffer all the onto-epistemological errors and also, then errors in judgment that Wilson identified in 1997. Inaccuracies across graders using rubrics is well-documented. The process is no less accurate, nor valid, than most other grading schemes.
So I don’t understand how participating in an inaccurate, error filled, invalid grading scheme can be “a wonderful way for teachers to learn how to teach their students”. That doesn’t make any sense to me.
Don’t get me wrong I’ve been part of a district wide process in making Spanish finals. There were many unbridgeable gaps in what the various teachers considered as good questions, as correct answers and how to grade the tests, what to include, what not to include. What one would think would be a simple process showed itself to be damn near impossible to come to agreement other than some of us having to give up our more than valid objections and end up playing nice in the sandbox while others threw sand in our faces. I’m glad for you that your process seemed to work.
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I don’t agree, Duane. If I write an essay, I am not offended if it is evaluated by a peer reviewer who doesn’t know me. I would be very offended if it was evaluated by a computer or by someone with no knowledge or experience who has no more than 10 seconds to judge it.
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Peer review for you and me is one thing. That is what is expected at our level of education-post grad. Peer review for K-12 would be other students evaluating the essay.
Again, what I am getting at is that a standardized test, and the grading practices that are part of those tests, especially for essays, open response, etc. . . type questions are especially suspect to invalidities and unreliabilites (again, as shown by Wilson).
Why would anyone give any credence to invalid processes?
There is no putting lipstick on that standardized testing process sow!
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Duane,
Hahaha! It’s a little joke of mine! Whenever I see som ridiculous problem that could be solved easily (or other stupidity), I say to my husband, “And you think we went to the moon!!” Haha!
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California is already doing this and has been for a few years!
The way that the SBAC is graded is no points off for misspelled words or grammar.
A generation of kids who can’t spell or write.
Thanks to ETS, Rupert Murdoch of Wireless Generation, etc.
And special thanks to Michael Kirst President of the CA School Board who favors Charter Schools and doesn’t give a damn.
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Teachers interacting and observing students are the BEST evaluators. DUH…this online world has made us DUMB.
Have to place blame on the corruption of learning by money-grubbers like Gates Schmates, who does things to enhance his ego and his pocketbook. I have to laugh at Gates’ ‘ SMALL-SCHOOLS. He has NO CLUE.
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Would anyone suggest that college professors (historically men) grade the papers of their cilleagues?? Nope.
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LOL! Right on.
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actually, yes. It is called peer review.
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Peer review is reviewing your colleagues writing not grading the papers of your colleagues students. I hope you never have to do that!
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Actually, it’s only the third dumbest idea The second dumbest idea is having essay writing as part of standardized testing. The first dumbest is having standardized testing at all.
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AMEN, dienne77.
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Your number 2 and 3 are not new therefore can’t compete for dumbest idea of the month.
Writing was added to standardized tests to address complaints that multiple-choice questions can’t test thinking. But scoring essays by machine or by mass scoring dumbs down writing
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TEACHERS who are WITH students and are interacting with them REAL TIME are the BEST ones to know what’s going on with the students.
Good grief, has this country gone nuts thinking that online everything is good. We have proof that this online world has many vortex’s of EVIL and that those online educational companies are more than AWFUL and don’t hire people who know much of anything. Gotta keep those profits up, but wow … do the CEO’s make tons of $$$$$ while sending their children to hoity, toity private schools where they learn to be even more selfish and entitled. Good GRIEF. Has this country gone nuts?
When temporary workers grade students’ work, this is proof of how INSANE all the testing is. It’s just another KA-CHINGING.
So now, computers are (in the end) telling teachers what to do? CRAZY.
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My son is in a “personalized learning” section in one of his classes. The kids are tested constantly- I mean constantly- about a quarter of class time is spent answering sets of test questions. That’s where all the colorful graphs and visual representations of his “learning” come from- the responses to those questions. There can be thousands of questions over the course of a year because no one is writing the questions or grading the responses.
I wonder if there’s an incentive to test kids more when no one has to grade the tests.I wonder if there was a kind of practical limit that was in place when one teacher had to create questions and then grade answers, and computer testing lifts that limit.
The easier and cheaper we make it to test them the more they’ll be tested.
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The thing that gets lost is that writing, in whatever form, should always have a point. You write because you are trying to express an idea, muse through some thoughts, share an experience, make a point, etc. – i.e., you are trying to communicate with human beings (sometimes only yourself). The form of the writing should, like all good art, follow the function.
Making students do “essays” in this dry, rote format takes all that away. It’s just an exercise like filing your taxes that has to be done a certain way, no thought allowed. If a class is reading Hamlet, it’s great to have students write essays on their thoughts about the “To be” soliloquy, or if a class is learning about the Civil War, have them write persuasive essays about the cause(s) of the war. Those are relevant and meaningful topics. But just a random “topic” generated for testing purposes is meaningless and, hence, stilted. The only ways you can respond to such a ridiculous assignment are either (a) follow the exact prescribed format, (b) dare to rebel (which will generally earn you unpleasant repercussions) or (c) fail.
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In Todd Farley’s book, he cites a beautiful thoughtful essay that lost points b3 ause it had four paragraphs, not five
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“It’s just an exercise like filing your taxes that has to be done a certain way, no thought allowed.” – The bureaucratization of the school had started done long ago, look at worksheets that are used everywhere starting from the first grade – they are your tax forms. Students are treated as soulless junior accountants.
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Dumbest idea is to have humongous testing companies that have to deal with zillion of tests. To process them in reasonable time they mangle the tests so they can be processed by a computer.
Tests must be given and verified locally by a human, who must be easily approachable in case of a dispute. Having companies like SAT or ACT is a typical American megalomaniacal idea of a monopoly in a particular business, be it oil extraction, email, television, advertising or testing. America may be friendlier to startups and smaller businesses when you start up, but after the things get going, the ever-consuming goal is to grab all the business in the field.
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‘Todd Farley’s book “Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry,”‘
Read this now !!!!!!!!!!!!
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Terrific and alarming book.
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If school is all about preparing kids for life, maybe we should stop trying to grade writing. When else in life is your writing ever going to get graded? Evaluated, yes, but graded? Maybe the point of teaching writing should be to help kids get better at expressing and communicating their experiences, thoughts and opinions in written form, and all feedback should be with that aim, rather than ranking students?
I know, what a ridiculous idea, right? Next I’ll probably say something completely outrageous about getting rid of grades altogether….
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Hey now, don’t go steppin on my turf!
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I’m not just steppin, I’m stompin all over it!
(And you can stomp on my turf any time you’d like.)
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Agreed. Let’s quit stacking children and calling it education.
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All of the squabbling and finer points everyone is trying to make aside: the simple truth is that software and computer-grading, as well as, lets be honest, computer teaching, is the future of education. I do not say this as a tech-utopian. I do not say it as some kind of a “things are changing folks and inevitably they are better” way. I am not saying this as if it were always inevitable. It distinctly was not. However, at this moment, it is inevitable. The fights have not been fought and when some fights are not engaged, the other side wins. As of today there is no large scale opposition movement, from teachers unions to parents, to students, to “technology in the classroom.” In every classroom where students have opted-out, there are more screens and smartboards then there were last year.
I have said this for some time: the real threat against public education and unionized teachers is “technology in the classroom,” which is the broad front of the actual privatizing impulse coursing through education right now. Our side has been focused on those things that were always the temporary thrusts of the privatization movement….testing, common core, etc etc etc. We never saw the bigger picture and for the most part still haven’t. As of this moment, “technology in the classroom” is being bought, as a broad idea, by districts, parents, and teachers nearly wholesale. Teachers in my district quite literally fall all over themselves and make fools of themselves trying to be the first to get new laptops, smartboards, various and sundry software, etc etc etc. STEM and STEAM are being promoted as if these initiatives really weren’t about marketing technology and tech-utopianism at the expense of critical thought.
Its absurd that folks are squabbling over computer-graded essays, are horrified at such a thought, when the bigger picture is much darker and without much hope. HA! You are worried about computer graded essays when the humanities in public schools are being marginalized in favor of STEM…..when conversations about credit bearing classes being delivered via laptop are becoming a norm in most districts. The movement to privatize public education will not be televised. It is live. Right now. And it is happening, one brick at a time, every time a district sits down with a tech vendor, a teacher fumbles for more technology, and parents think more screens means a better school.
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But isn’t computer graded essays one faction of what you’re talking about? Can’t we be opposed to all of the above? I sure am. I do what I can by writing and talking to anyone and everyone who will listen and many who won’t. I’m not sure why we should just shrug about computer generated essays just because there are worse forms of tech invasion. Can’t we fight them all?
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dienne77,
Well absolutely. That was the point I was fumbling towards but didn’t really articulate. It’s part of a bigger thing, a bigger constellation of awful, that we need to fight broadly and in detail. If we are going to be horrified at computer graded essays, we also have to be horrified at the rest and vice versa.
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Robert Sheckley, Status Civilization: “The lessons of the closed classroom must never be consciously known by the individual. If they become conscious the human organism must perform an immediate act of self-destruction.”
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I’m not entirely against writing assessment, but at the K-12 level we ask students to submit writing that is so formulaic that a computer can “grade” it.
The big words and long sentences part isn’t unique to writing assessment either. “Reading scores” are assigned on exactly those same metrics, and around the country students are told which books they can and cannot read based on contrived metrics. These are impoverished views of language that somehow both miss the point but generate a ton of revenue.
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You are right.
Formulaic writing is bad writing.
In the David Coleman world, that’s good enough to write a memo to the boss.
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Exactly! Much of the history of literacy/writing in the US is the history of writing to superiors and being a good worker.
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That’s the goal of the Common Core.
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Another illustration of what I refer to as cosmetic literacy. So long as you look good on the surface, who cares what quality, if any, lies beneath the glossy veneer. It’s also tied to the gig economy – the search for the cheapest, fastest outcome using temporary labor and/or machines. Can you pass the mascara? I need a touch up…
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My daughter took PARCC ELA 10 (grad requirement in MD…ugh!) and had to write an essay. She said she wrote a really good essay and then her teacher told her that a computer would be grading it. She was very disappointed. I told her that I hoped that she used really big words and correct punctuation, because that is the only thing that a computer could grade. I also showed her an article about a college professor who wrote a nonsense essay using nothing but big words and proper syntax and punctuation. It was scored as a “6” but had absolutely no theme or meaning. I think that made her feel a little better?
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That was Les Perelman
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“But the computers have a serious defect: They can’t tell truth from falsehood.”
Wow, we could say the same thing about Trump’s supporters. Does that mean they aren’t human and are computers too?
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Who was the better writer? Charles Dickens ? Thomas Hardy? Perhaps Dostoevsky? Think a computer can tell? Think a teacher can tell?
The discussion of Grading of essays has filled reams of paper with essays of a sort. It strikes me that the quest for consistency in grading essays is a shibboleth. Who needs it anyway. Better that some people be able to write in concise sentences to the point and factual, while others write with feeling and flare. Who wants three kings in a hand when a full house made of twos and threes beats it?
The problem is that we are stacking children. We need to quit comparing them to each other and start comparing them to where they are and what we want them to do. When I give a writing assignment, there is usually one thing or another I am trying to get across. Perhaps I want them to write supporting sentences relating to the central idea in a paragraph. If they do it, give 100% of the credit awarded. If not either give no credit or return the paper until you can give full credit. Who has time to read 140 papers more than once a week unless you can make the judgement from one aspect of the paper.
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The future of education is being written as if technologies will be replacing the face-to-face judgments of teachers.
Certica Solutions is one example of the emerging delivery system. Certica has been on a merger and buying spree since about 2015. It has been gobbling up everything it can for the purpose of integrating programmable facets of standards-based instruction, tests, and instructional resources, and linking these into a system with multiple pathways for mastery of test-centric content and skills. See the circular diagram at https://certicasolutions.com For some recent acquisitions of this company, see http://www.kplctv.com/story/38030952/certica-expands-navigate-item-bank-partner-program
The future of education as “all about tech” is promoted by the US Office of Education. The 2017 USDE Office Of Technology Plan announces the mission of ”MAKING POSSIBLE EVERYWHERE, ALL-THE-TIME LEARNING. This means mastery of chunks and bits of computer coded content and skills, delivered in a “plug and play” one-click system for computer-centric mastery-based learning, preschool-to workforce, with badges awarded as evidence of mastery. Badges can be stacked as evidence of learning and are in lieu of grades, accumulated credits, GPAs, diplomas.
The computer coding required for this vision education is being carried out by workers on the CEDS project (Common Education Data Standards) under the auspices of the National Center for Education Statistics. The CEDS project has been envisioned as “the Rosetta Stone of education vocabulary” with computer codes for almost anything under the sun that can be put into easy-to-code assertions, stripped free of any rationale.
For example, the CEDS vocabulary with computer codes includes the Bloom Taxonomies (1956) and Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences (1983) now recast as “competency items.” CEDS includes the Common Core and the Lexile scores. The CEDS vocabulary and coding covers venues for learning and facilities descriptions, including for example, a vintage description of a photo-lab as a darkroom for developing photographic prints.
The work on CEDS is being carried out in cooperation with work at the IMS Global Consortium. IMS stands for Instructional Management Systems. The participants and funders of IMS Global are working toward a K-12 system of online education with “plug and play” features, meaning software programs are interoperable and rosters of students are uploaded with one click. The global character of this venture can be seen at the IMS Global website. Ultimately IMS Global with offer certifications that specific services and products are “interoperable.” That characteristic is viewed as essential for the marketing of products without regard to national borders. MOOGS from Kahn Academy are an example.
Of course, the future of edtech is 100% dependent on access to the Internet and online delivery systems. The Trump administration has killed the net neutrality principle, meaning that the fate of the e-rate for schools and libraries may also be in question, at least in the USA. See this https://thejournal.com/articles/2018/05/17/k12-tech-orgs-praise-senate-net-neutrality-vote-but-does-it-matter.aspx
The end of net neutrality means that major providers of internet service can soak up all of your browsing information before you even get to a website or search engine, then charge you for unbundled services including content they own, sites you can access at what speeds, data limits, and so on. (VPNs are not a perfect workaround, not routine for schools, and not in keeping with the emerging effort to make instructional delivery possible on almost any device especially smart phones.
USDE OFFICE OF TECHNOLOGY PLAN https://tech.ed.gov/files/2017/01/NETP17.pdf See p. 82 for IMS Global and CEDS references.
CEDS Elements, Alphabetical lists https://ceds.ed.gov/elements.aspx?v=7&ex=
IMS GLOBAL http://www.imsglobal.org/membersandaffiliates.html
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Good Lord, say it ain’t so. When will someone in the education department make a sensible and sound decision?? I have an idea, why don’t they cut the narrative assessment in our MCAS 2.0 which has no business being on a high stakes test? That would help. It would be a START.
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My 6th graders were forced to write about Tenochtitlan for this year’s test here in California, but the testing platform’s spellchecker did not recognize the word ‘Tenochtitlan’ or any other Aztec words. They found that frustrating enough, but if they were being scored by the computer, those words would be counted as errors. Just another of the myriad of problems with artificial intelligence. It’s artificial, not intelligence. This idea is Deasy iPad scandal dumb. I thought Massachusetts was better than that.
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I went to K-12 before anyone did much with writing beyond the ubiquitous research report. The instruction was basically in mechanical minutia like where to put periods and commas in a bibliographical entry. The little “writing” instruction I got in high school English was in writing literary interpretation. I never did get what I was supposed to be doing although I did discover that there were actual books written critiquing all the stuff I was supposed to draw out of my psyche. I suspect that some of the smarter kids spent a bit of time in Sparknotes, which were frowned upon. They could sound knowledgeable in class discussions. I just felt dumb, and developed an aversion to most of the high brow literature we were supposed to be absorbing. My older sister gave me her copy of Moby Dick that had all the religious allusions marked that the teacher had given them. For once, I got to look slightly brighter than the average light bulb. I took one English course in college–a composition course that I hated and got nothing from (or, depending on who taught you, from which I got nothing). I learned to write for a purpose in my major courses, but it was in my M.Ed. courses that I finally learned to write an argument. When I went back to full time teaching, I really began to learn how to help kids learn to express themselves. I studied harder than I ever did in school. In the few years I really got to teach, I know I learned more than the kids did.
I’m not sure what my point was although writing this synopsis was rather cathartic. I’m guessing that I’m playing around with the idea that writing, like any other ability matures with attention over time. If there is anything I am sure of, it is that a computer program cannot judge that maturity. Can anyone imagine standardized novels?
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“I’m playing around with the idea that writing, like any other ability matures with attention over time.” – along with your confession in another thread that you did not understand most of the math you studied (or “studied”) at school (presumably, you understand it now) one may posit that learning is a life-long process (whoa, a deep thought, but wait, there is more). Therefore, skills not learned at school, even as far down the road as in high school, can be learned later if needed. Which brings me to my earlier assertion that 13 years is way too much time to spend in school, especially if after all this time one still cannot read or handle percents. Thus, mandatory education should be cut to 8 or 9 years, with elementary algebra, basics of geometry and basics of physics included in the curricula. Then one would have a choice: continue in high school, which would open the path to higher education, or leave with “incomplete secondary” (does not sound nice, let us call it “basic secondary”) education with an option to enroll into a vocational school (free of charge for the first, say, two years). Then, if later in life one gets a revelation that one wants to write or do high level math, one can enroll either a night high school, or community college or even a regular college after passing placement tests, no prerequisites.
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Gosh, Back Again, your suggestion that we reduce compulsory education to only 8 or 9 years would roll back the clock almost a century. I assume this os what you want for other people’s children, not your own. Interesting that you posted this comment under “Dem est Idea of the Month.” Were you competing?
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“Gosh, Back Again, your suggestion that we reduce compulsory education to only 8 or 9 years would roll back the clock almost a century.” – Diane, do you know that in the 1950s, when the Russians launched Sputnik, they had 7-year compulsory education? Their complete secondary education was 10 years, but only 7 years were compulsory. Of course, those who made the Sputnik were serious scientists, but Elon Musk does not need millions of employees either. By keeping kids at school for 13 years we are robbing them of their lives. I understand that getting a job at 14 seems like a terrible idea to many, therefore I suggest setting mandatory education to 8 or 9 years. I think that a 16-yr old is capable of joining workforce. This does not mean that everyone will be forced to cut trees with a chainsaw at the age of 16, it just offers a choice (a tainted word on this board).
It is a fact that 20% of high school graduates cannot read. Come on, 13 years at school, and they cannot even read? Either something wrong with them or with the system.
Those who want to continue will be able to do so, for them the system will remain pretty much the same. Those who decide to return back and take courses they had not taken and now missing, will be able to do this FOR FREE. Similarly, community colleges, vocational schools, night schools will also provide high-school level education FOR FREE.
Your idea of 21st century education is basically prison – lock ’em up for 13 years no matter what. The “peak education” of 1920s-1960s when it was needed for World War II, for Cold War, for space exploration, for computers has waned. We have passed this stage, we do not need everyone to know math beyond basic algebra, and even with this we have problems. We just need to be honest with ourselves and the kids – everyone does not need AP Calc, likewise we are not able to teach it to everyone, we cannot even teach a goddamn elementary algebra.
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BackAgain (I suggest BA rename this sock puppet to DumbAgain) says “It is a fact that 20% of high school graduates cannot read.”
Hey, BA, where did you get that fact?
Here’s what I found:
“According to a study by the U.S. Department of Education, 32 million adults in the U.S. can’t read.
“The current literacy rate isn’t any better than it was 10 years ago. According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (completed most recently in 2003, and before that, in 1992), 14 percent of adult Americans demonstrated a “below basic” literacy level in 2003, and 29 percent exhibited a “basic” reading level.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/06/illiteracy-rate_n_3880355.html
Let’s crunch a few numbers (you know that dratted math that no one needs until they need it) and get closer to the truth.
Twenty-two.eight-percent of the US population of more than 325 million is under the age of 18. That means that 74.1 percent of the population is under the age of 18, and that leaves 250.9 million adults, that means only 12.75 percent of the adult population can’t read, according to that study by the U.S. Department of Education, a literacy rate that hasn’t changed in 10 years.”
That would make it impossible for 20 percent of high school grades to be illiterate unless 8-percent of them took advantage of adult literacy programs across the US to learn to read after they became high school grads.
But the high school drop out rate is about 10 percent.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045216
Here are some more numbers and facts.
“More than 30 million adults in the United States cannot read, write, or do basic math above a third-grade level. — ProLiteracy
Children whose parents have low literacy levels have a 72 percent chance of being at the lowest reading levels themselves. These children are more likely to get poor grades, display behavioral problems, have high absentee rates, repeat school years, or drop out. — National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
75 percent of state prison inmates did not complete high school or can be classified as low literate. — Rand Report: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Correctional Education
Low literacy is said to be connected to over $230 billion a year in health care costs because almost half of Americans cannot read well enough to comprehend health information, incurring higher costs. — American Journal of Public Health
https://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/education-news-roundup/illiteracy-in-america/
How do you, BA, start with an alleged claim that 20-percent of high school grads can’t read? Please support your allegations and explain why the adult illiteracy rate is 30 million or 11.9 percent of the adult population that is closer to the adults that never earned a high school degree because they dropped out?
Maybe this will help you “not” answer my question.
“We already know that children who aren’t engaged in kindergarten are less successful as they move through elementary school. Those children are less likely to read proficiently by fourth grade, and so they go on to drop out of high school at higher rates, with all that entails.”
https://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/the-link-between-reading-level-and-dropout-rates/
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“Hey, BA, where did you get that fact?”
1) One in four U.S. adults lack the basic literacy skills required for a typical job. — from http://www.education.pa.gov/Documents/Teachers-Administrators/Federal%20Programs/LiteracyLife/Literacy%20Facts%20and%20Figures.pdf, this link came up on the first page of Google search results.
2) The high school graduation rate in the U.S. reached an all-time high of 83 percent in the 2014-2015 school year. — from https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/10/17/498246451/the-high-school-graduation-reaches-a-record-high-again
3) The share of high school graduates, lacking basic literacy skills is therefore 0.83 * 0.25 = 0.2075 or about 20%, give or take, assuming that U.S. citizens’ literacy is distributed evenly among graduates and dropouts.
Or we can look at other data, like “The percentage of high school seniors performing at or above the basic level in reading on
the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) decreased from 80% in 1992 to 73% in 2005” meaning that there are 27% of high school seniors who read below basic level — from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED507600.pdf, this link came first in my search.
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I’ll stick to my sources because poverty is an indication of illiteracy and the US has the highest child poverty rate among all but one of the OECD nations and that one is Romania.
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You really need to up your research skills, BA. Being first in a Google search list is definitely NOT the way to choose sources. Using a list of unrelated statistics devoid of any context to support your argument does you no favor. The fact that your first “source” provided practically useless “citations,” if they could be called that, and no bibliographical information about themselves should tell you something. And then to go on and argue for limiting education where your random list would indicate that is the opposite of what is needed for people to be able to successfully support themselves boggles the mind.
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“Jeffrey Riley, commissioner of elementary and secondary education…. said “the technology could help the state deliver full sets of MCAS scores to districts in the summer instead of the fall. That, in turn, would enable districts to analyze results and adjust instruction before the school year begins.”
Has this guy never heard of “garbage in, garbage out”? And — even hypothesizing software capable of grading essays [!]– exactly who in “districts” is being paid during summer to “analyze results and adjust instruction before the school year begins”? Let me guess: admin will plug last year’s kids’ scores [GO] into the ‘analysis’ program, which will spit out ‘instruction adjustments required’ [GIGO] to be placed in teacher’s in-box along w/ the roster for this year’s kids. The digital brain understands kids as programmable clones w/meat-puppet delivery system as needed (i.e., not for much longer).
Here’s another gem, from Utah, under ‘transparency is key’: “Giving teachers and students an opportunity to understand how the essays are being scored [by the computers] ultimately helps students become skilled writers.” On what planet?
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it worked well in Yakima, WA, although people may consider us a different planet….
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Todd Farley also described his experience as a supervisor of “standardized” test scorers, & how (at least one) scoring essays was a person for whom English was a second language. This person had absolutely no idea of how writing in the English language should be appropriately read, let alone correctly scored. Todd had to explain our English usage, colorful phrases, idioms (there’s an amusing incident Todd describes), onomatopoeia,* similes, metaphors, etc., & this person kept arguing w/Todd as to how terrible the student’s essay was (because the scorer hadn’t a clue about the intricacies of English, just like I wouldn’t be able to adequately grade an essay written in French).
*Just reached for my 1987 Silver Burdett 7th Grade English Book to check the spelling!
(I brought home the 6th-8th Grade books when the school district was scrapping them for the new ones {they were literally thrown out}.) Great English books, those–I reference them all the time when writing.
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Love Dave Eggers’ novels and articles, especially The Circle. Here’s an eloquent one:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/02/international-congress-youth-voices-dave-eggers-introduction
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