Can education pass the common sense test?

There's lots of discussion about testing in education. Tests are required to be fair, legally defensible, and unbiased. Debate rages about No Child Left Behind and its testing requirements. Legislatures debate the use of statewide testing for graduation from high school. Packagers debate if they dare to test their workforce at all. PMMI is struggling with the psychometric requirements for their certificate program in mechatronics. Companies question why they should train at all if they can't evaluate the results. Education and training is bogged down, and the one test that can't be passed is the Common Sense Test.

As I write this piece, regular TV programming was interrupted for President Obama's press conference to appoint Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. As soon as the announcement concluded, the top issue identified for debate in the nomination process is Judge Sotomayor's role in a ruling involving a test used by the New Haven Fire Department. Does it make common sense that the wording on a fire department test should be discussed by the Supreme Court? Don't they have more impactful issues to consider?

Two weeks ago, the governor of Pennsylvania announced the awarding of a $210 million contract to develop tests to determine if students were ready to graduate from high school. Are we the first nation in the world to establish such requirements? Haven't any of the other 49 states in the USA developed such questions? My grandmother taught in a one room school. She could have developed that test. This doesn't pass my common sense test.

I'm no historian of education, but my experience tells me that this all began in the late 60's and early 70's as folks began to understand the role of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). As the result of fear of possible non-common-sense EEOC enforcement actions, many companies closed down established training programs. The word "validation" entered our vocabulary and every training exercise focused not on what needed to be taught but on whether the need for teaching it could be validated and whether any testing that might be used could be defended in court. If companies chose to teach anything at all, it was the least common denominator of the knowledge used.

Over the next 35 years, the skills gap in industry grew wider. This gap has been recognized as one of the principal reasons that companies move operations overseas. Voluntary training programs have become more popular as both labor and management have come to understand that this is an issue of survival. But voluntary programs can take us only so far. Companies need and deserve a means of identifying and promoting people with skills. Enter the New Haven controversy and the Obama administration's announcement that they are increasing EEOC enforcement funding by 34%.

This is a pathetic situation. I'm all for fairness, but let's look at the real situation. Is it really wrong to promote someone who has too much knowledge? Should each state really have to spend $210 million to make sure that we ask the right questions in the right way of high school students? The same standards don't apply to college testing or to employee selection based upon requiring a college degree. Should trade associations and corporations have to jump through hoops and hire psychometric experts to validate basic manufacturing skills that should be taught in middle school? And in the end, are we improving our society as a whole or are we facilitating mediocrity?

We have lots of laws and policies on the books involving testing. Why can't we pass a law that requires our education policies to pass the common sense test?

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Comments I am 100% in agreement with You. The thing is we have too many educated idiot running the country and have no idea what is really going on. We have people that can't tell what is right from wrong? How difficult it is to tell what is right to do and what is not right to do. Plain simple yet we have so many educated idiot running around complicating issue everyday. How can anyone fund a dead company. Just like riding on a dead horse. We need to find a new horse and ride it not stick to a dead horse. Duh!! We not only have no common sense but we have people that have no ethics and sound priciple to abide by. We can appoint the Secretary of Treasury that himself is confused filing his personal income tax and allowing him to head that department??? Where do we stop here???? What an OBAMINATION!!!!! Posted by: Edmond Soo on May 29, 2009 Agree. Posted by: James C. Smith on May 29, 2009 RIGHT ON Posted by: Anonymous on May 30, 2009 Post a comment (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.) Name: Email Address: URL: Remember personal info? Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style) Type the word 'packaging' (required):