Remediation & Belief

On Monday I finish the American History remediation course for the fall. Retakes are this coming week. I’ve spent the last 8 weeks teaching a year-long course, as well as modeling analytical (and other) test taking skills and strategies. In our last meeting, I’ll teach the entire course one more time as a refresher. I’ve thought about recording this last session to underscore the utter absurdity in attempting to remedy issues on an assessment with short-term courses. Where we should be developing meaningful opportunities for students to connect to content in order to make sense of their place in the world, we instead make the goal a 400 on an End of Course assessment, whatever that means.

On the one hand we want students to explore academically to discover interests and talents so they can make an informed career decision, and on the other we are asking for success on a standardized assessment. Remediation exemplifies the painfully obvious contradiction in these two goals. It’s role in the process requires both student and educator to seek the path of least resistance. In 8 weeks, with 2 sessions per week of an hour or two apiece, with a year’s worth of material to cover, it is impossible to create meaningful experiences, difficult enough to raise a score.

So, I’ve spent these weeks trying to travel the distance between A and B, or between a 392 and a 400 (depending on the individual), trying to create a tolerable experience for students more consumed by the unsettling prospect of not graduating than any real possibility of connection to content or consideration of what they might do after high school.

Fortunately, I’m hearing far fewer policy-makers in Columbus suggesting that the solution to our assessment problem as it relates to graduation is simply to provide remediation. Now, perhaps this is still being said and I’m just not there to hear it, a tree falling in the woods kind of thing. I’m choosing to be optimistic on this one, though, and believe that the powers that be have begun to realize that the problem is in the assessments themselves. 

Having written the members of the House and Senate Education Committees and the State School Board last month, I received some positive, if minimal, feedback. House Ed Committee Chair Andrew Brenner called to voice his agreement on some issues and suggest that there is a path forward. Several members of the State Board also responded in support of finding a better system. I have included those messages below.

So, I guess I’ll continue to believe. It is a season of belief. If I made a Christmas List, a permanent solution to the Graduation Problem would be at the top of it. 

As it stands, I have one more remediation class in which I’ll review an entire course. I’d better rest up.