William Marvel: Educating Buffy, Part 3

One of the most aggravating aspects in the management of our public schools is the continual stream of self-congratulatory twaddle. School board members will insist that our students receive an “excellent education,” and many students do, but the better ones usually absorb much of their education at the kitchen table. Every class has kids who will flourish anywhere, especially with close parental support, and their achievements are the perennial subject of administrative boasting. Their awards, their advanced-placement courses, and their acceptance at better colleges are regularly cited as evidence of Kennett’s scholastic superiority. This has been less obvious since the new principal arrived at Kennett High, but evidently it’s going to be the district’s main strategy for counteracting bad news from plunging assessment test results.

Now that our scores are in the toilet, we hear a great deal of complaint about the inequity and inefficacy of standardized tests. Those complaints are not without some merit, but their volume increases whenever scores plummet. COVID paranoia prevented most school districts from testing students at all in 2020, which may have been the least effective year yet in American education. Soon thereafter, social-justice hysteria prompted many universities to abandon consideration of the best known of the standardized tests — the SAT — and as of last August New Hampshire’s own university system was no longer requiring them.