Ok, I had a story to post on the blog, I was going to send you to links and everything, but I went to the online version of the paper and the story is missing. I will continue to try to find it. It is in the September 15th issue of the paper. It is a small story on the left hand side of the front page called—“SATs Decline at County Schools.” It is not posted online (!?!?!?!).
The sum and substance of the article was that the SAT scores in the 16 public school districts in Lancaster County had dropped slightly from last year. This is bad news for everybody. Too often, parents who make the sacrifices to send their kids to private schools or Christian schools can be congratulatory when stats like this come out—“See that is why we made the decision that we did.” Of course, I am for sending kids to Christian schools. I am for it even if things like SATs did not exist. The problem with being self-congratulatory, however, is that we are still bound together as a community. Problems in one school—or in one part of the community—means problems, eventually, throughout the community. A disease in one part of the body can (and often does) destroy the rest of the body if left untreated. We can salve our consciences perhaps by hoping that our kids will—like spores from a giant dandelion—float off to some other community and not have to pay for the problems of our community. This, however, is not a happy thought for me—I would love it if my kids lived close to me. I want to see my grandkids. Also, I think that there is little hope that our kids—wherever they would move—that they would move to any place better than Lancaster County. So, I am happy to simply take the problems of this place as my problems. By this all, I am saying is that when Jesus asked the Pharisee, “Who is your neighbor?” the right answer certainly was not “Hey, wait I did all that I was supposed to do in my little neck of the woods and if everyone behaved like me there would not be crime or people beaten and laying on the side of the road.” Bad news for our community is simply bad news for us. The problems of our community and its schools are our problems—this does not mean that I can or will agree to the mind numbing fixes that are normally foisted on us concerning problems in our schools. These fixes usually involve some new program that will “make tomorrow bright and shiny” or simply applying more money to the problem.
Anyway there are a couple of clarifications that I need to make that make the story horrifically more frightening than it seems at first blush. First, one point of clarification: often at Veritas Academy we mention SAT scores and they are usually in the neighborhood of 1300. Some of the schools were advertizing scores or 1500. One difference, we generally just advertize the Math and Verbal scores. You can see earlier posts on this blog for why the writing section of the SAT is presently fairly meaningless and will be for the foreseeable future. Veritas Academy’s scores are 1300 out of 1600. The top public districts scores are 1623 out of 2400 for Manheim Township (sadly, the worst public district is 1270 out of 2400 at McCaskey). This, however, is not the most frightening stat. At Veritas our 1300ish average is the result of testing 100% of our seniors. On average the public districts are only reporting scores for 59% of their students (at McCaskey it is only 44%). Now, before you start thinking about conspiracies and doctoring the numbers. This is not as dubious as it might look at first blush. The SAT is a test for students going on to college. Not all students in all schools are going on to college. Not all students need to take the SAT. It is, however, the most well-recognized standardized test and is a benchmark for educational competency (whether it should be or not). This is all that I am saying: What would the averages be if 100% of the students were tested. If this were to happen, I believe that we would see more clearly that all the money, effort (good hearted effort) and thought that is being poured into education in our community is failing and failing abysmally. We are at best producing mediocre students who will not be able to compete with their peers overseas at worst we are with 13 years of mandated education producing people who are unemployable and barely literate.
The most frustrating part of this educational cataclysm is that the papers seem complicit in hiding rather than exposing the truth. Go in to www.lancasteronline.com. Try a search on SAT scores. Note that most of the stories are empty—they have probably timed out. Also note, the little rosy ellipses that pull the one remaining quote form the story. They are comically sad. Here’s an example:
County's average SAT score shows little change
Of the 16 public school districts, seven see improvement from 2006, nine see decline.
The paper consistently downplays problems and fails to see that a car wreck—and an expensive one—is happening. When people and communities fail to take stock of the educational problems of their children, they should not expect their community life to be healthy or even to continue on into the future.
