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Gary K. Clabaugh, Emeritus Professor of Education, La Salle University

Way too much is made of standardized test scores. Parents worry about them the way hypochondriacs fret about their bowel movements. Politicians refer to them as if they were scriven on stone and handed to Moses. School officials anticipate their public unveiling in the same way a murderer awaits the verdict.
All of this is more than passing odd. Standardized tests measure relatively trivial things. They tell us nothing about whether schooling is having a positive impact on the way children will actually live their lives. Worse, they tell us nothing about whether a student is learning how to be a wiser, more compassionate human being. 
Many admit the weaknesses of high stakes tests, but still argue for their administration. They say: “We need some measure of school effectiveness.” Humbug! There already are widely available indices that offer a much better measure of educational progress. All we need do is notice them. Departing from my customary humility, I propose we call this compilation of measures: Clabaugh’s Index of Leading Educational Indicators, a preliminary list:

Social Media Submissions

Here is a truly powerful index of schooling’s effectiveness. Tabulate the number of adults entering ignorant, singularly hateful drivel on Twitter, for example, and we’re counting people that schooling somehow failed. The same applies to the rest of social media. The greater the number of entries of this type, the gloomier we should be about our nation’s schools.(Any school system graduating more than two dozen, (an admittedly somewhat arbitrary figure), of these morons should be indicted for fraud.   

The Top 40 Billboard Albums

We should keep tabs on the sales figures of various musical artists and genres. Like the popularity of paintings of Elvis on black velvet, it reveals a great deal about schooling’s success or failure. We could, for example, compare gangsta rap music sales with classical music sales. Our schools surely have failed miserably if most consumers prefer Young Thug to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or Cardi B to Frederick Chopin. 

Cult Membership

Every Jonestown resident who swigged that lethal Cool Aid represents a schooling failure. So did the men in David Koresh’s cult who allowed the self-proclaimed prophet to sexually service their wives and daughters because, as Koresh patiently explained to them, he was the only man holy enough to do the job. And what about that Heaven’s Gate crowd, the males of which had themselves castrated to conform with “Bo” and “Peep’s” teachings, then eagerly “left their containers” to rendezvous with a space ship concealed behind the Hale-Bopp comet. These folks were obviously deficient in those critical thinking skills that school systems say they develop.

Supermarket tabloid sales

The sales figures of these grotesque gazettes provide a far more valid measure of educational progress than anything ETS could dream up. I’m talking about papers that headline things like “Woman commits suicide in dishwasher!”, or “Half boy, half dolphin washes up on beach!” Tabloid sales figures are an inverse measure of educational progress.

The Popularity of Televangelist Con-artists

The income figures of these carnival barker charlatans, available from the IRS Tax Exempt Branch, are a sure measure of schooling’s effectiveness. The more money these auctioneers for Jesus make, the less well our schools are doing. Conside the Reverend Benny Hinn’s television ministry. Hinn, the subject of a devastating CNN expose, is the sacerdotal chap who lapses into “trances” while conducting worship services. The Holy Spirit then allegedly uses Hinn’s vocal apparatus to speak directly to the congregation. Hinn, by the way, alleges he has no idea what God says through him. He says he has to ask the congregation after he remains consciousness. The income of Holy Joes like Hinn is another inverse measure of school effectiveness.

The Number of People Who Still Think Trump is Telling It Like It Is

The number of people who still think the Donald tells the truth, vividly demonstrates how badly our schools are failing to teach observational skills, much less critical thinking. There are people out there, for instance, who still have faith in his promise to actually build an impenetrable wall stretching the equivalent distance of NYC to Phoenix, Arizona (including a 1,000 mile stretch that follows the deepest channel of the Rio Grande) AND force Mexico to pay for it. (Although that last promise seems to have gone with the wind.)

Then there are the true believing, self-proclaimed Christian fans of the Donald who believe God favors a thrice married man who separates kids from their parents who ruthlessly pursues worldly riches, who defrauds his own fake charity and who turns Jesus’s teachings utterly upside down. Apparently they have never even considered Trump’s pathological boasting and chest beating, and compared that to this teaching by their lord and savior: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

Of course any teacher who passed a future zealous Trumper should spend at least five years as a penitential hermit. And any still-surviving Wharton professor who passed the Donald should spend the remainder of their lives in sack cloth and ashes, scourging themselves nightly.

The Quality of School Reform

Recent efforts at school reform constitute irrefutable, if unintentional, proof that our schools aren’t getting it done. Let’s keep tabs on these ludicrously overpromised proposals. No Child Left Behind and Every Student Succeeds, come to mind. When it becomes clear to all that these supposed reforms were a crock of crap, we’ll know our schools are improving. In the meantime, these politically motivated “school reform” measures only prove that our “public servants” can continue to depend on American’s ignorance and gullibility.

Conclusion

Yes friends, this is the way we should actually measure school effectiveness. Such an index would be much more powerful than anything Educational Testing Service or Psychological Corporation could possibly contrive.

Some of you may be thinking that schools are not exclusively, even mainly, responsible for the dismal state of affairs these alternative measures reveal. So what? Educators aren’t chiefly responsible for crappy high stakes test scores either. They are largely a product of non-school factors such as the home environment, poverty, the maldistribution of the nation’s wealth and how smart people are to begin with. (Remember, 49% of the population is below average in intelligence.) But politicians can hardly acknowledge any of this and still blame everything on educators, now can they? So we’ll blame the whole mess on educators too. It’s a time-honored tradition.

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