Score conversion: Smoke and mirrors

Score conversion: Smoke and mirrors

Patrick Guntensperger, Jakarta

Indonesia suffers internationally from bad press. We all know
that foreign companies refuse en masse to invest here because of
her status as one of the world's most corrupt countries.
Indonesia is known as a haven for video and music piracy. The
Bali and Marriott bombings have done little to encourage tourism.
Indonesia has a reputation for selective enforcement of
environmental laws, resulting in massive pollution.

Indonesia's national educational system is seen as substandard
anywhere outside of the Third World. Clearly, Indonesia would do
well to make every effort to try to develop a more positive image
for the rest of the world. Perhaps that is the thinking that
attempts to justify the harebrained decision to "convert"
students' scores on national examinations.

By manipulating the statistics to reflect a fiction, some
people seem to believe that the perception of our educational
system will be improved. Perhaps a more clear-thinking government
will see that this misguided kind of deception will have
precisely the opposite effect. There are so many things wrong
with the idea of score conversions, that it's hard to know where
to begin.

In the first place, no one will be fooled. The implementation
of score conversions, far from convincing people that, on
average, our students are doing better than they really are, will
merely cause all their scores to be dismissed as false.

Our scoring system is already considered questionable as a
result of inconsistencies in testing methods, the perceived
availability of higher scores to those who can afford a bribe and
rampant cheating. If we add to that the fact that the government
will adjust the results in order to obtain a prettier bell-curve,
the whole exercise of imposing national exams becomes a pointless
waste of time and money.

What do our students learn from the policy of score
conversion? Well first of all, they learn that intellectual
effort in order to get good grades is futile. Better results may
be reduced and poor results enhanced to conform to a fiction;
scores don't reflect one's mastery of the subject but rather
someone's idealized vision of our educational system.

They also learn that truth is not a particularly valuable
commodity. When their educators create statistical fictions to
support a false image of their success or failure at their jobs,
how can we ever expect to instill concepts such as integrity and
honesty in our children?

False statistical reports of our students' mastery of the
curriculum make it next to impossible to improve the curriculum,
the syllabus or our teaching methods. If we don't know how we're
really doing, how can we possibly make any improvements? And if
we make changes, how can we know if they are working? To choose
to manipulate the results is to accept failure, to decide to
perpetuate it and to try to sell everyone a lie about it.

If observers of our troubled educational system are
unimpressed by the current standards, their impressions will soon
deteriorate even further. It will be clear to any thinking person
that there hasn't been a sudden improvement in our student's
performances just because the statistics suddenly become more
flattering to the Department of Education.

What's more, they'll know that the likelihood of any
improvement in the future has just been significantly diminished,
because our ability to monitor our actual, real performance has
just been hamstrung. In yet another transparent attempt at
deception, a government scheme will have accomplished little more
than shooting themselves in the foot.

The effort to convince observers and interested parties that
our educational system is better than it actually is will have
had the effect of convincing everyone that it is, if possible,
worse than it is.

So Indonesia's reputation suffers, the accuracy of our
understanding of our educational system suffers, the poor
education of our graduates causes business and industry to suffer
and, most important, our children suffer. Their poor education
will deny them acceptance at reputable institutions of higher
learning, they will be unprepared to compete with graduates of
educational systems with integrity and good standards and they
will have been taught that mediocrity is acceptable as long as
you lie about it.

Here's a radical idea! Let's improve the education of our
children rather than just adjust their marks to pretend they're
learning something they're not. Let's address the reality rather
than just the image. Perhaps a new government might divert some
funds from the streams of graft flowing into the private accounts
of corrupt officials and invest them in our educational system.

Recruit professional teachers and pay them a good wage. Impose
high standards, research and deploy the most effective teaching
methods, upgrade teaching facilities, improve curricula, build
libraries in schools, update reading lists and the books
themselves. Nothing would be more effective at convincing people
that we have an effective education system than actually having
an effective education system. Perhaps to those who would prefer
simply to practice spin control, these seem like outlandish
ideas.

The writer, social and political commentator, can be reached
at ttpguntensperger@hotmail.com