Maine shoots the messenger

After 78 percent of eighth-graders fail to make the grade on the state writing test, officials toss the results

More than three-quarters of Maine's eighth-graders performed below standard on the state writing test for 2007-08, prompting education officials to toss the results and try to figure out why so many students missed the mark.

State Education Commissioner Susan Gendron and her staff say the one-question test was somehow flawed because 78 percent of the estimated 14,900 eighth-graders who took the exam failed to write a persuasive essay as required. That's a 50 percent increase, over 2006-07 in the number of eighth-graders who failed to meet or only partially met state writing standards.

In a rare move, Maine's Department of Education found the test results inconclusive, and withheld them from school districts and the media when it released the latest Maine Educational Assessment scores in July. The department's decision surprised even longtime educators like Tom Lafavore, director of educational planning in Portland Public Schools, Maine's largest district. "I've never seen test results pulled like this," Lafavore said.

The department provided overall Grade 8 writing results to the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram only after the newspaper requested the information under Maine's Freedom of Access Act. "It is our responsibility to ensure the validity of test data," Gendron said. "It would be irresponsible for us to release data if that performance is based on a question that was unreliable." Gendron and her staff say parents shouldn't worry. Students are learning to write. The test triggered false results. Still, they say, they don't know exactly why.

The 45- to 70-minute test, administered last March, asked students to support or refute the following statement, known as a prompt: "Television may have a negative impact on learning." Instructions outlined how the essay would be scored and listed 20 writing skills students should demonstrate, from identifying a logical position to using correct punctuation. The test included two lists of facts, pro and con, to use in the essay.

"Kids got ticked off at the (question)," Gendron said. "In many cases, it was an emotional response rather than the intellectual exercise we were seeking, so it was not an accurate reflection of their writing skills."

One student's essay began: "These facts are lies. I do my homework and get good grades even though I watch TV." This example came from an e-mail to Susan Smith, Maine's MEA coordinator, from Julie-ann Edwards, a staff member at Measured Progress, the state's testing consultant based in Dover, N.H. The newspaper obtained the e-mail through its request for records and internal communications related to the test question. "This year, students often took issue with the prompt and fact sheet," Edwards wrote. "They reacted emotionally, spouted a bit, and did not use the fact sheet information to support their argument."

Edwards noted that eighth-graders who took the writing test in 2007 were able to draw from their own experience to sustain arguments for or against the following statement: "Rather than maintaining separate teams for boys' and girls' sports, a high school is considering combining teams and having a completely coed sports program." "That did not appear to be the case this year," Edwards wrote.

Patricia Ross, spokeswoman for Measured Progress, referred questions to state officials. Overall, less than 23 percent of eighth-graders who took the test last spring met or exceeded state writing standards, down from 48 percent in 2006-07, indicated a report from Measured Progress. That's a 52 percent decrease. The marked difference surprised education officials because the television prompt had done well when it was field tested in 2005-06, Smith said. The state started administering writing tests as part of the MEA in 2006-07. The MEA assesses reading and math skills

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Why we should teach the Bible in all our schools

Comment from Australia -- a much less religious place than the USA

Fewer and fewer people know the Bible, even among those with religious commitment. The latest National Church Life Survey of 500,000 people across 22 denominations, reported in yesterday's Herald, shows a whopping 59 per cent of respondents read the Bible only occasionally, rarely or never at all. But why would you bother reading it if you didn't have some belief the words of the good Book were true? What could motivate you to wade your way through those strange, cigarette-paper pages?

To my mind, there are still plenty of reasons to bother with the Bible. But at least one is indisputable, and it reveals a gaping hole in the Australian educational experience. You need to know the Bible in order to understand the history, literature and arts of Western culture. In fact, it is an educational and cultural tragedy that the Bible has quietly disappeared from the schooling experience of many Australians.

In the US, a major project to restore biblical literacy is under way, called the Bible Literacy Project. It is a joint venture of Jewish and Christian educators intended to "encourage and facilitate the academic study of the Bible in public schools". In a country where religion and public education mix like oil and water, it is no mean feat they have got their textbook, The Bible And Its Influence, into the curriculum in 40 states, and counting.

The project had its own statistical grounding. A Gallup Poll for the project found only 37 per cent of American high school students could recognise any of Jesus' words from the Sermon on the Mount (Australia would have to be worse). And yet 98 per cent of English teachers surveyed agreed knowing the Bible delivered a distinct academic advantage in the study of English literature.

I know it firsthand. I was the only one in my first year tutorial who understood what the title of John Bunyan's book, Grace Abounding To The Chief Of Sinners was about. (You need to be familiar with the first letter to Timothy, chapter one, verse 16, to get it.) And I laughed alone at the joke in Waiting For Godot when one of the tramps says, "One of the thieves was saved. It's a reasonable percentage." (See Jesus' crucifixion in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 23.) Two ticks to the boy with the Sunday school upbringing.

We need something similar to the Bible Literacy Project, something that enables the teaching of the Bible in the English, art, music and history classrooms. An Australian version of the project would see discussion of Les Murray, Tim Winton and John Coburn in place of Emerson, Melville and Abraham Lincoln. But the backbone is there in the American work: a textbook that respects the content and structure of the Bible, Hebrew and Christian, and then seeks to communicate to students its vast significance for understanding the Western tradition, and more.

There's no need to be sidetracked by six-day creationism, or Zionism, or the subtleties of denominational differences. This is about teaching the Bible in the same way that you teach scales for learning a musical instrument, or the colour palette for painting. It's necessary to the whole task of understanding what is going on in our culture, literature, and history.

I have a vested interest in biblical literacy; after all, I'm a Christian and I think there's something to the big, unfolding story it tells. But I'm also a literary academic, and I can't bear the biblical ignorance students display. Regardless of whether you find something alive and kicking in the Scriptures, there is a strong argument it should be somewhere near the foundation of Australian education.

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