A recent Herald article ("First-years ‘somewhat prepared' for Brown," Nov. 11) reported that nearly half of Brown faculty members find first-years to be "somewhat prepared" for Brown, and 11.4 percent considered them to be "somewhat unprepared." This may not sound dire or even particularly surprising to most. After all, some of these students are probably just getting used to not being the big fish in a small pond anymore. But when you consider this school's steep acceptance rate and the underlying assumption that all those who make it are supposed to be fully ready to tackle college-level coursework, it strongly suggests a greater problem within the institution that was supposed to prepare them for college: high school.
More specifically, public high school. Over half the students here come from public schools. Problematically, American public schools are far from top quality. According to the triennial Program for International Student Assessment, which is supposed to compare the knowledge of 15-year-olds in 70 countries around the world, American kids rank average in reading skills and science and below average in math. Doesn't quite match up with what you would expect for a first-world country, even one in a recession.
To say there is a clear reason for this deficit would be a dramatic oversimplification. But I can point to one key factor: low standards in the form of statewide minimum-competency tests.
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 mandated these tests in an effort to equalize the playing field for students everywhere. The idea is that if students reach a minimum level of achievement — in the form of a passing score on their state's standardized test — then their school will receive funding as a function of student progress. In America, with exceptions like the New York Regents exams, we mainly do minimum-competency testing: "Can you find the main idea? What was the author's purpose? Can you read a graph?" While setting baseline standards is good, chances are the test your state required you to take did not measure how well you could synthesize new ideas, make inferences about relationships between different concepts or generally do much creative thinking.
Unfortunately, these kinds of higher-level thinking are what you use in higher education as well as in real life — whatever that means. These baseline standards are far too low. The reality is that when you set a minimum standard in a strained situation — for example, one sprawling education system — the minimum is what you get. I can speak only for my state here (and, admittedly, Florida tends to focus more on standardized tests than other states), but a ridiculous amount of class time was spent teaching to our state's exam, taking away from time spent learning history, music or art — to limit myself to one grievance. Moreover, teachers in states that implement low standard tests report feeling pressure to give better grades than warranted and maximize scores through test-taking shortcuts. These are hugely damaging practices if you believe that one of the goals of schooling is to truly learn.
Admittedly, I am speaking from the privileged perspective of someone who did not have trouble figuring out the main idea. But I believe that if you treat the children moving through your system as if they have the ability to go farther than that, they will. Achieving any sort of change in public schooling takes a long time and requires a whole mess of interested parties — taxpayers, educators, officials, teachers' unions — to agree, but in this economy it's more necessary than ever.
You can't just pour money into a highly flawed system, though. You have to restructure it with higher standards, support for teachers and the belief that students of all demographics are capable of thinking for themselves instead of just regurgitating facts. If you must measure achievement by test scores, which is an inherently debatable practice, make sure the tests demand creative thinking. These are sweeping demands, yes, but necessary ones.
To sound like an absolute liberal arts student, we as a nation need to shift our paradigms of thinking about public schools. Figuring out a concrete policy will be a long and challenging process, but that's all the more reason to start as soon as possible.
Camille Spencer-Salmon '14 is a product of the system. She can be reached at camille_spencer-salmon@brown.edu.
