Half of Detroit’s Adults are Functionally Illiterate – So Now What?
Matt Yglesias points to this study (PDF) from the Detroit Regional Workforce Fund that shows that nearly half of Detroit’s adult population is functionally illiterate. That’s close to 200,000 people – about half of whom have high school diplomas or GED’s. Matt writes:
Under those circumstances, I find it difficult to be seized with worry that schools are going to be ruined by teachers “teaching to the test” too much. It is true that school districts that have started taking testing more seriously now need to step up and also take the possibility of outright cheating more seriously. But the fact that huge numbers of kids are passing through school systems and not learning basic literacy drives home the fact that districts also need to take checking to see if the kids are learning anything more seriously. That means tests, and since it’s good to be able to compare different schools to one another that means standardized tests. It’s a limited tool, it shouldn’t be the sole criterion on which the effectiveness of anything is measured, but it’s also an important one.
I’m fine with using tests to measure improvements, literacy, and so forth. The problem is when those tests become high-stakes and yes, when teachers begin “teaching to the test”. When you teach to the test you end
