Pollyanna and Cassandra, Part II
By Martin Harris

Not so many years ago, high school English students were typically taught about, among other items of basic literacy,  a pair of literary figures. One was a Greek mythological figure, Cassandra, who was blessed with the ability to prophesy and cursed never to be believed. She specialized in foreseeing doom, maybe because she was a daughter of King Priam of Troy, and we know what happened there. The other was Pollyanna, an American fictional figure invented by writer  Eleanor Porter in the early 20th century. Pollyanna has come to be a synonym of excessive or blind optimism, the dictionary says. Don’t test your recent high school grads on this sort of background knowledge; most won’t have a clue. However, I did spy the intellectual descendants of both ladies at work in modern Vermont pressrooms recently, where they took the recently published annual test results for public school students but reported on them quite differently.

Pollyanna at the Rutland Herald saw —what else— a bright side. "State Schools Earn Passing Grades", her headline said. Cassandra at the Addison Independent saw  –what else— a gloomier view. " More Local Schools Fail NCLB Progress Test," her headline said. Her twin Cassandra at the Burlington Free Press also saw –what else— gloom. "More Schools Miss Test Targets."

Technically, Vermont schools did earn a passing grade by federal standards: C+.  They earned that C+ by substituting their own preferred test, the New England Common assessment program, or NECAP, for the federal National Assessment of Educational progress, or NAEP test. Vermont students also take the federal tests, but don’t have to publicize the results or be graded on them, which is just as well, because Vermont students (like those in other states) can manage to achieve only in the low 200’s out of 500 on such federal exams as math and reading. That’s probably an F.

And Vermont schools didn’t do well on "Annual Yearly Progress", which is the federal requirement that all students (some definitions say 95%) be "proficient" at their grade level by the year 2014. Since only about a third now are (which is why Vermont educators don’t like the federal tests, and have substituted their own, wherein proficiency rates seem to be much higher ) you can see why each additional year of no progress makes achieving that goal less likely.  Last year 10 schools here flunked the AYP requirement; this year it is 61.

Newsroom Cassandra’s writing about Vermont schools’ failure to make AYP aren’t real Cassandra’s in that they aren’t predicting the future, but reporting the present. Whether they will be disbelieved is likely: already educators, like the clumsy carpenter who blames his tools, are making excuses. The Herald’s Pollyanna quotes edu-crats complaining that "the testing standards are inconsistent and tend to focus on failure, if not contribute to it."  Yes, tests that reveal lack of  student preparation will do that. With no tests, there would, presumably, be no visible failures.

Edu-crats also complain about student poverty, one explaining that "what you’ve got is a system that measures poverty, not school quality."  Readers with fairly good memories will recall a few columns on this subject in this space, where it was shown that, in Middlebury for example, students from the poorer towns, median-family-income wise, didn’t typically score at the bottom on the preferred tests, and students from the richer towns didn’t typically score at the top, either. Maybe, teaching quality actually trumps student wealth? Heresy.

And one more thing: the feds are getting impatient with states substituting their own tests for the NAEP. Look for a soon-to-be-required calibration of, say, the NECAP against the NAEP. And then watch a whole new crop of excuses germinate.

– Martin Harris is the former President of Citizens for Property Rights. He writes a regular column for the Addison Eagle and Rutland Tribune.