North America
America - Andrew Stephen denounces US education
Published 28 March 2005
Britain should stop copying everything American. Its schools are actually better than those in the US, and the idea of switching to the US college entry system is a terrible one
Britain, I am convinced, is now hurtling towards becoming an American protectorate. I am talking not just of Tony Blair's political capitulations, but of the British surrender to the cultural and educational values of the US. Michael Jackson's trial gets more publicity in Britain than it does in America. The antics of B- and C-list American "celebrities" dominate British front pages. A sleazy, downmarket American talk-show host named Jerry Springer is given his own ITV show and celebrated as a cultural icon of Britain.
Maybe some of this is forgivable, given that previous generations lapped up gossip about Hollywood actors and actresses. But I have been watching with dismay from across the Atlantic the growing British crisis of self-confidence, which is leading to a pervasive belief that everything is done better in the US - and that Britain should discard tried-and-tested British traditions and replace them with much younger and less proven American ideas and traditions.
When these philosophies spread to the field of education, you know this has gone too far. British schools are actually better than American schools. The UK usually fares much better than the US in international comparisons of academic progress. But now, I gather, Britain is seriously interested in introducing American-style standardised testing of pupils to assess their fitness for colleges and universities.
This all comes, predictably enough, at the very time when America's SAT (the test used in the US for university entry, not to be confused with the Standard Assessment Tests, taken in English and Welsh schools at younger ages) is in crisis. Hundreds of colleges have dropped it as a requirement, saying that pupils' achievement at school is a much better indicator of their academic prowess than a standardised test. Four years ago, the president of the University of California, Richard Atkinson, threatened that his university would drop the SAT as a requirement. In response, the College Board, the organisers of the SAT, this year introduced the biggest changes in the SAT's 79-year history.
It used to be called the "Scholastic Aptitude Test", but for more than a decade its official title has simply been its original acronym. It was introduced in 1926 to replace a series of essays in nine subjects that 12 colleges required as entrance exams, and has consisted mostly of multiple-choice questions in verbal and maths sections. This year, prodded by Atkinson's threats, the College Board expanded the test to last three hours and 45 minutes and inserted a brand new feature: a 25-minute essay, which has been much dreaded and anticipated by the more than two million high school pupils taking the test this year.
The first batch of kids - around 300,000 of them - sat down at their desks to take the test on the morning of Saturday 13 March. I talked to a couple of them in DC after the test, and studied the first essay topic that asked: "Is the opinion of the majority - in government or in any other circumstances - a poor guide?"
A guide to what? And what are "other circumstances"? We will never know. But it was the advice given to the pupils by the College Board that most fascinated me. "Guess smart," one piece of advice on the SAT began, unpromisingly. "If you can rule out one or more answer choices for a multiple-choice question as definitely wrong, your chances of guessing correctly among the remaining choices improve."
And the essay? "Even with some errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar," says the College Board, "students can still get a top score on the essay." The board stipulates that, if a pupil writes: "Over the years it has been pointed out to me by my parents, friends, and teachers - and I have even noticed this about myself, as well - that I am not the neatest person in the world", this is merely deemed to be "okay". But it would be "better" to write: "I'm a slob."
The essays are currently being marked by teachers (and some non-teachers who have applied for jobs), who earn up to $22 (about £11.50) an hour. But they are expected to get through 220 essays in a single eight- to ten-hour shift. The essay can be judged "outstanding" and the taker achieve a 100 per cent score if the essay is free of "most" errors "in grammar, usage and mechanics".
The college that lies a stone's throw from me, Georgetown University, has said it will disregard the essay section of the test. The dean of undergraduate admissions, Charles Deacon, says: "It is still highly coachable. The richer get richer, if you will." Indeed, there is hardly a middle-class kid in America taking the SAT who will not receive private coaching this year; one of the two leading "prep" companies, Kaplan, says that there has been a 78 per cent increase in pupils taking their free practice test. Annually, the SAT tutoring business is worth the equivalent of a third of a billion pounds, with some companies guaranteeing that scores will improve with coaching (a proposition that is difficult to prove). Even the poorest have SAT costs, though: children or parents must now shell out $41.50, a 41 per cent increase from last year, just to take the test. The College Board is a non-profit institution, but in its last reported financial year its president, the colourfully named Gaston Caperton - a former governor of West Virginia - received $478,547 in salary, $76,806 in benefits and a $110,000 expense account.
I heard something this week that fills me with even more trepidation about the SAT. My discovery this time was triggered by something that Caperton had said. Marking the essays, he thought, would be challenging: "But thanks to technology, particularly the internet, we feel comfortable that we will easily be able to do that."
Technology? The internet? Yes. They are the coming thing in the SAT here; computers have long since marked the multiple-choice questions, which form the bulk of the test. But for the GMAT, a standard entrance exam for graduate business schools, a computer in Newark, Delaware is now grading essays; after being perused by a teacher's assistant, essays are scoured by a software program called "Easy Reader" that is supposed to read handwriting and look through exam papers for good vocabulary, grammar and themes. I am told it has marked millions since 1999.
There are many excellent things about America, and some things that it does better than Britain. But Britain now seems unable to avoid being drawn inexorably to those that are done worse in the US, and to the practices of a country that not only has inferior education but higher infant mortality rates and lower life expectancies, too.
In the latest figures from the International Reading Literacy Study, the US came well behind Britain and countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Latvia, Canada, Lithuania, and Hungary. But how long will it be, I wonder, before Britain introduces computer-marked essays and SATs consisting almost entirely of multiple-choice questions?
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