How to Evaluate Schools

PISA rankings of education systems by scores on standardized tests. Green is top third.

A lot of our opinions on what schools and school systems are best are based on the results of standardized tests. This is true of the PISA rankings of OECD countries, currently treated as the gold standard. On this measure, East Asian schools do particularly well.

But critics point out that this is artificial. Standardized tests are not real life. Striving for high test scores can mean teaching and studying to the test, and this may steal time and effort from more valuable learning.

Chinese and East Asian schools have their critics. Some complain that the Chinese method, heavy on memorization, which works so well for standard tests, does not teach independent thinking or creativity.

I agree with these criticisms. Standardized testing is a factory method. The acquisition of skills is not the primary goal of education. Traditional education has always considered it more important to teach morality, character, good judgement, and the ability to think independently.

But how then do we measure this?

There is actually a good and simple measure available: graduation rate.

The schools considered most successful should be those that have the fewest students dropping out short of completion.

To begin with, this is a measure of the value the actual consumer finds in them. We sell students outrageously short if we imagine they do not have any interest in or ability to evaluate their own education.

You might argue that it is easy enough for any school to lower academic standards so that nobody fails and everyone finds it easy and fun; and so everyone stays in school.

But I doubt this would work in practice. I did say dropout rate, not failure rate. I warrant that few students drop out because they find a school too tough academically. If they do, arguably, that school is not doing a good job of educating, only of weeding out. It would be like a doctor who accepted only healthy patients. In my experience, students drop out because they find school boring, or corrupt and dishonest, or disrespectful, or a waste of time.

But even if this issue of logrolling or grade inflation is a consideration, it is easily met by controlling for student scores on the standardized tests. Given, then, two groups of students who score in the same range on these tests, coming from different schools, which group has the better retention rate?

Surely, after all, a large part of a school’s or teacher’s job is to inspire.

And producing students who stick to the task of getting their high school graduation is a good quick measure of their morality, character, and good judgement.

Compare schools on this metric. The school that comes out higher is a better school.

Not incidentally, private and charter schools consistently score better than public schools on this metric.

How to Write Good

Just uncovered a cache of my old writings from high school, ages 12-16. Some good bits, but the prose was embarrassingly purple at times. And too much reliance on cheap thrills: sex and violence.

I could have used some guidance.

But I also noticed that, whenever there were markings in red from some teacher’s hand, they were wrong.

For example, I began one story:

“Mr. Bones watched the violent plaid socks silently follow each other down the stairs. He was in the habit of wearing socks to bed …”

And the teacher writes:

“opening is misleading at first reading – would be improved by changing the to his.” (Meaning the socks—“his violent plaid socks.”)

And that would 1) kill the little surprise or puzzle that lures the reader into the story; and 2) remove the introduction to the theme of the story--which is the protagonist’s detachment.

And wouldn’t anyone of average intelligence be able to grasp that I must have deliberately avoided “his”? And that there must be a reason?

And wouldn’t anyone of average intelligence have been able to work out what was actually happening by reading the second sentence? Did that really involve a great mental challenge?

Next teacher’s note: I had written

“He sat down in front of the window and placed his victim, a jar of pickles, on the counter before him.”

The teacher’s red hand had struck “victim” and inserted “target.”

That ought to do it—authors should always strive for the blander word, right? Avoid anything that might spark any mental images?

Exactly wrong, of course.

As a matter of accuracy of meaning, too, “target” is incorrect. You do not need to take aim to get a pickle in a jar. The image is absurdly wrong, like that of shooting fish in a barrel.

And “victim” foreshadows what happens next—looking through the pickle jar, Bones witnesses a rape outside the window—as if it were happening in the jar. So “victim” here conveys the idea that the rapist is treating his victim just as Bones does the pickle. “Target” breaks this careful thread.

All frustratingly lost on this reader.

I can only remember two teachers at any level who ever gave me useful guidance in writing. I adored both of them, perhaps for this reason.

Dr. Smith, in grad school, caught me mixing metaphors.

Mr. More, in grade 6, wrote “stop using big words just to show you know them.”

Great advice, which I have never forgotten, and which I still struggle to follow.

But there is obviously something fundamentally wrong here. We are hiring people to teach our children to write who instead mislead them. It is like hiring French teachers who cannot speak French.

But then again, come to think of it, I had that too.

This is a notorious problem among editors, who spend much of their careers fixing the result. There is a stock phrase among editors, also the title of a book, “Miss Thistlebottom’s Hobgoblins,” to describe the many writing “rules” people are taught in school that make their writing bad.

We need to do a better job at hiring teachers.

In the meantime, as the reader has perhaps also noticed, there is a huge market for remedial writing courses.