What is achievement? In Minnesota, we measure achievement by testing how well students can read English, as well as their math and science skills. But surely “achievement” is far more than what can be measured with norm-referenced tests.
Is not learning to speak two or more world languages a remarkable achievement? Is being bilingual or multi-lingual not significant in a globalized economy? Yet, many of our schools are considered “failing schools” partially because a high percentage of their students are learning English as their second, third or fourth language. During a field trip to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, a suburban principal reported that some of the displays included explanations written in Arabic languages. When a student began reading these to his classmates, they were shocked: “Jamal can read!” Because he could not yet read in English, it was concluded that Jamal could not read at all. If speaking multiple languages were considered in the “achievement” definition, some of the schools in Minneapolis and St. Paul would be among the top schools in the state and some of the schools with mono-lingual students might be near the bottom.
If English-speaking students were tested after studying Spanish for a few years and found not to be proficient readers in Spanish, would we suggest their school was failing? Why then do we perceive a school as failing because it has Spanish-speaking students who are learning English but do not meet reading standards in English proficiency? One can ask the same question in relation to students whose first language is Somali, Russian or one of various Asian and other languages.
Most of the schools in the United States use the most expensive and least effective method for teaching world languages. We wait until children are too old to learn languages easily. Each of us mastered the complex syntax rules of our first language by the age of 4 or 5. Children with bilingual parents commonly have two first languages and are fluent in both; some have three. What if we used pre-K to Grade 3 dual-language programs combining two or three languages in pre-K child care as part of the school? Spanish-speaking children and adult teachers would be immersed with English-speaking children and adults; all would learn from each other. Should “Ready for K” include being bi-lingual?
Indeed, this is what some pre-K child care centers are doing. But they are rare exceptions.
What else should we do besides including world languages as part of the “achievement” definition? Thanks to the digital platform, the world of the 21st century is very different from that of the last millennium. It is far more personalized. Yet, we do not include knowing how to use the digital platform as a factor in the “achievement” definition, even though it is the library card to the world. The business community continues to tell us how important it is for employees to have problem-solving and teaming skills, yet we do not require these key skills in the “achievement” definition.
Further, even though tens of thousands of our students come from environments where there is little hope for a better life, we do not count as an “achievement” factor the evidence of having developed a “yes, I can” attitude of hope. An exception is the Montgomery, Md., district, which decided that skills such as persistence, motivation and grit were essential to success and adopted a tool to measure students improved levels of hope for their future. Joshua Starr, superintendent of the 150,000-student district, states that we need to revamp what we consider “achievement” and that it should include areas not measured by the usual tests.
Both the national Common Core standards and the Minnesota standards focus on the usual “subjects” considered in the 20th-century standards. Obviously, we all want our students to be literate and understand the core subjects. But there is a great deal more than that to consider as necessary to “achievement” in the 21st century. If Minnesota wishes to have the World’s Best Workforce, we need to think in terms of today’s global economy to, then, structure our standards and define “achievement” accordingly.
Hector Garcia is executive director of the Minnesota Latino Chicano Affairs Council. Robert Wedl, Minnesota’s education commissioner in the administration of Gov. Arne Carlson, is a senior associate at Education Evolving, a St. Paul-based reform group.