Choice Theory (39 page)

Recently I had my driver’s license renewed in California. I studied the booklet, but when I took the test I had difficulty with a lot of the questions and I had to guess. I barely passed. I missed six (out of thirty-five) questions, the limit you can miss and still pass. They kept my test so I had no chance to learn what I missed, and I left feeling that the test did not accomplish what it set out to do. There are important rules of the road I don’t know, and the next time I will even think about learning them will be four years from now. This, like most of the tests we take in school, was not a learning experience.

Even though all the licensed drivers on the road eventually passed this test, many, like me, don’t know and perhaps will never know the answers to the questions they missed. And since the test does not cover more than half the questions in the booklet they give you to study for the test, I think it is safe to say that most drivers do not know more that three-quarters of what they should know. This is a perfect example of a nonlearning or
schooling
test. I suggest that California use a longer test with a question covering every point in the study booklet, maybe as long
as sixty questions. To pass, you would have to get every question correct.

Under the present system, it would be impossible to institute these requirements because very few would pass. As in the schools, what needs to be changed is the system. The change could be simple, like making it an open-booklet test. There would be no excuse for not passing; people would just sit there and keep studying the booklet until they answered all the questions correctly. To check if what I am suggesting is valid, two things could be done. One, give the applicants the choice of the old way, in which they could fail, or the new way, in which they couldn’t fail. My guess is that most of the applicants would opt for the longer open-booklet version. Two, give an oral test six months later to two randomly selected groups, those who took the short version and those who took the long version, and check which group knows more. I’d bet heavily on those who took the long version.

This is the kind of learning test that is used in a quality school, where children are always tested for their ability to use knowledge. There is no schooling in a quality school, so there are no schooling questions on the tests and all tests are open book. These tests require the students to do much more than remember; they require the students to think. However, most tests are short and are given frequently. A test in math, science, history, or English literature might have one question, but the answer would have to demonstrate competence. No credit is given for anything less than a competent answer.

To demonstrate competence, the answer usually has to be written, but beyond that, at the teacher’s or student’s request, the student would be asked or given the opportunity to explain to the teacher or a teacher’s assistant why she chose to answer a certain way. By doing so, the students get ongoing practice in speaking, listening, and thinking about what they write, and the teacher checks students personally to make sure they understand what they have answered. The skills of speaking and listening have the largest payoff of all we learn, and the present schooling schools do next to nothing to teach this important skill.

For example, a history question might be, “Why did George Washington turn down the offer to become king after we won the War of Independence, and how do you think his decision has helped our country?” A science question might be, “Why are scientists worried about Earth warming?” A math problem might be, “Your father is painting the house. He tells you to go to the store and get enough paint for the first coat. You have to figure out how much paint to buy.” In English literature, a question might be, “What problems did each character in the story have, and how would you have solved them?” For each question, the student would have to write a competent answer or solve the problem.

If the work is competent, the student is finished. If the work is not competent, the student is told, “Keep working until we are both sure you are competent.” The teacher may ask competent students to continue and improve what they did to the point of quality. The students may also do so on their own, and this is what good students usually do. But no student would be coerced to try for quality.

If there is a sure way not to get quality, it is to use coercion. Therefore, in a quality school such as Huntington Woods, there is no enforced competition, but there are many incentives for students to do their personal best. The students can compare what they did with what other students did, but what other students do cannot affect anyone’s grade. The teacher not only checks the work but encourages and gives thoughtful feedback so the student can get a better grasp of what he or she is learning. This need-satisfying intellectual interaction creates a powerful learning climate. The students are busy thinking, speaking, listening, and solving problems at Huntington Woods.

In our present schooling schools, students memorize enough to pass or to do well, but there is no competence or quality in memorizing. When the usual test is finished, it’s over, whether the student did well, barely passed, or even failed. The students rarely learn the basics of quality, which is continual improvement based on feedback. They settle for good enough, as the young man from Alma, Michigan, did. It was good-enough A work, but he recognized
it was far from the best he could do and always did on the basketball team. In a quality school, students compete against themselves. They can never lose and often help each other because what they do for someone else has no effect on their grades. This is much closer to the way the real world works; no business can survive unless the workers are competent, cooperative, and moving toward quality. Our present schools are filled with students doing C and D work, cooperation is rare, and quality is an endangered idea bordering on extinction. We owe our students more.

People ask, “What if the students never do competent work?” The answer is that they never get credit. They are helped, encouraged, and allowed to take the tests home. But to get credit, no matter how long it takes, they have to do a good job. If this approach is started in kindergarten, there is no problem. Students like to do good work, and given time, they all do it easily. Although we started later at Schwab Middle School, most of the students caught on and did the work to get into high school. The ones who refused were held back to try next year. But 148 out of 170 did more work than they had done in years, maybe more than they had ever done in school. The old system of one shot at a test and failure if you don’t pass had led to their giving up in school. Think of this: If you were a student, would you like to be given a longer time to do good work with no schooling or would you like to be flunked quickly if you did poor work and given no chance to improve? Students are no different from you.

Another question is, “I have thirty students in my class. Where can I find the time to go over all their work?” In practice, since they are all working, there is usually time. You go around and spend a little time with individuals as they do the work. You can quickly find out who needs you and who doesn’t. You have no disciplinary problems to contend with. Discipline became much less of a problem at Schwab when the students buckled down and did what was needed for entering high school.

In a quality school, the proficient students are offered jobs as teacher’s assistants, and they love to do them. If TAs are routinely accepted in college, why not in public schools? The TAs do quality
work on the tests and then help the teacher check what other students are doing. They learn more in the process than they could possibly learn by just doing a good job on the tests. One of the teacher’s jobs is to help the TAs when they get stuck. In this quality system, in which there is no failure but all must be competent, to get credit is so motivating that teachers are free to teach; they no longer have to police.

Another question is, “The problem with this system is they all do good work. How do we rank them?” The answer is, you don’t. The present ranking based on schooling is phony. If principals tell the colleges what is required at their schools, I assure you that any student who had a record of being a TA would be looked at closely even by competitive colleges. The students who memorize and calculate well now rank high, but if you follow them to college and out into the real world, they don’t do nearly as well as students who are asked to think and use knowledge. Anyone who thinks that the real world is like school doesn’t know the real world. Using knowledge cooperatively is the only payoff in the real world. A quality school prepares students for the real world, in which you get paid only for good work. You usually get more pay for quality work and a pink slip for poor work.

We do not pay students in schooling schools, but we accept low-quality work and do not insist on good work. We do expel students, but rarely for poor work. In a quality school, unless the students do enough competent work to pass a course, nothing is recorded on their transcripts. This is what the real world does; for example, a bank does not keep a record of the money you don’t have. There may be students who don’t do enough work to graduate, but this system graduates many more students than the present system and the students who graduate are competent. The present Cs and Ds produce incompetent students, many of whom think they are competent because they got credit. To give credit for incompetence is phony, and the students are cheated. What makes the quality system work, as it has begun to do at Schwab, is that students know exactly where they stand. They are in control of their own destiny, which means they can blame only themselves
if they don’t choose to do competent work, and there is no way to cheat.

The final question is, “How do we cover all we have to cover if we have to wait for slow students to do competent work?” The question I have to ask in return is, “When you cover more ground, are all the students with you?” You know that the faster you go, the more students you leave behind. It doesn’t matter how much or how fast you teach. The true measure is how much students have learned. Would you rather be operated on by a slow, competent surgeon or a fast, incompetent one? The way our schools work now, a lot of students don’t get anywhere, they don’t know what’s going on, they often don’t even know where they are supposed to go. Many don’t get there, and many C and D students who think they are there don’t even know where
there
is.

One essential requirement in a quality school is writing, and learning to write takes time. Every year, all year long, the teachers work with students to improve their writing. Since almost all the short tests are written—a few are oral—they continually teach writing and the grammar that is needed to express ideas clearly. This is always actual context teaching and is always useful. By the end of the year, all the students have to demonstrate high-quality writing or improvement in their writing from the beginning of the year.

They can demonstrate that they have improved in any way they see fit. Some use their improved tests, the ones they followed through to quality, to demonstrate that they can write well. Others embark on a writing project like writing a book. Others use the writing they do for extracurricular activities like the school newspaper. Anytime during the year, they can ask their teachers to check them off if they believe they are writing well. It is up to them to evaluate their writing, go to their teachers with it, and ask if the teachers agree.

All students in a quality school also do a special project of their own choosing, which may or may not be based on what they are assigned to study. Anything the students suggest that they can justify as useful before beginning, is eligible. A science project, a
book, a song or a video, a community service project, anything the students figure out that can be recognized as quality is fine. The students make informal monthly progress reports, so the projects are not left to the last minute. No prize is given for the best project unless the students want to be competitive. It is up to the students to figure out the best way to show their work to the school and to others. Students love this opportunity to use their creativity, and doing these projects gets the idea of quality across to them better than anything else they can do. The projects are theirs. When we own something, we put our best efforts into it.

I used to think that the state proficiency tests were unfair and inaccurate, but I don’t think so anymore as long as the students are allowed plenty of time and the tests are not focused on memorizing and calculation. There are at least two reasons why many students do badly on these tests now.
First, they don’t read the questions very well. Second, they haven’t enough experience taking these kinds of tests.

To read the questions well, students have to learn to read better than most do now, and the way to help them do so is to give them more experience with writing. Writing is the best preparation for good reading. That is why there are few objective tests in a quality school. Writing, problem solving, and explaining are the best preparation for these tests. But the main reason that students don’t do well has to do with the myth that learning can be transferred. It may a little, but for most students it does not transfer as much as most educators think.

If you want to do well on the basketball court, you don’t play baseball or football; you play basketball. If you want students to test well on multiple-choice tests, they need to practice on these exact tests. You can’t assume that the teacher-constructed tests they are given in most classes will prepare them adequately for the state tests. Practice tests are available, and they should be used.
No students will complain if you ask them to answer one question a day and teach them how to answer it if they have difficulty. Start in the fall, and by Christmas every student should be able to answer correctly all the questions on one seventy-five-question state test and understand why the answers are correct.