Taking Quantity Out of Context
Roger Takabayashi, president of the Hawai’i State Teachers Association, in a letter to the editor in the Honolulu Advertiser quoted Dick Rowland as saying:
Mr. Rowland contends we “have an abundance of highly qualified teachers who do not produce the desired results.” This could not be further from the truth.
He then goes on to tilt against a windmill not of Rowland’s making. The full quote from Rowland’s letter to the editor to which Takabayashi was referring says:
We can have an abundance of highly qualified teachers who do not produce the results desired.
By dropping the first two words of the sentence the meaning was completely changed.
The full context is as follows:
Those results are children who are prepared to excel in life. Thus, our objective should be to get effective teachers into the classrooms and the ineffective ones out. If the ineffective ones are “highly qualified,” they still need to go. The HSTA, as it does so often, is focused on the needs and wants of the HSTA instead of the students.
What is particularly ironic is that while Takabayashi says:
Fourth-grade reading scores are up 24 percent.
Eighth-grade reading scores are up 16 percent.
SAT scores are rising faster than the national average.
The proportion of fourth-graders scoring at the highest two levels in the NAEP exam is up 64 percent.
The proportion of eighth-graders scoring at the highest two levels in the NAEP exam is up 42 percent.
The Advertiser on the same day ran an article stating:
Hawai’i ranked among the bottom eight states in all test results and the state’s eighth-grade reading scores were the lowest in the nation, according to the 2005 scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal test considered the best measure of how students in every state perform on core subjects.
The results are significant because the national test is being used, more than ever, to check whether states are challenging their students.
The average reading score for fourth-graders rose 2 points from 2003 scores to 210 on a scale of 500, but was still 7 points below the national average.
Eighth-graders’ reading scores were off slightly from 251 in 2003 to 249, which was the nation’s worst.
National averages in reading were 217 for fourth-graders and 260 for the older students.
In math, scores for Hawai’i eighth-graders remained unchanged at 266, which was fourth lowest in the nation and well below the national average of 278.
The fourth-graders’ math score was 230, tied for the second lowest in the nation with Arizona, Louisiana and Nevada. New Mexico was the lowest at 224.
The national average for this year’s testing was 237 for the younger students and 278 for eighth-graders.
The Advertiser article directly contradicts Takabayashi. Who are you going to believe?
(dn)
October 19th, 2005 at 9:20 am
Just wanted to wish you epople luck with your pursuits.
I also run a small Non-government Organisation working towards raising awareness about human rights among the women in smums area in our country, and it is one uphill task!
but we have to do our bit, right?