Rigor

I don’t read the New York Times for education news. I don’t read them for anything. I don’t subscribe to them – TNYT is functionally a PAC masquerading as journalism, pushing war, market reform, anti-progressivism, anti-socialism, and polite racism (in other words, a PAC for the NYC and DC centrist Democrats). Why should I give them money. No question mark there. It’s obvious.

But The Empire Report – a great news aggregator – go visit them – they update at least every 24 hours – you could also subscribe and get an email once a day – The Empire Report links unlocked articles, and sometimes I click them. That’s how I stumbled on today’s New York Moves Away From Regents Exams in Graduation Overhaul. From The New York Times. And I noticed in a short article three repetitions of one word.

Rigor. What does The New York Times think “rigor” means? Or do they just repeat education reformers without paying attention to the words?

Tests are rigorous? Graduation standards are rigorous? And there is something called “academic rigor”? Hmm.

The tests are lousy. I’m not sure what “rigorous” was supposed to mean here. But I’m pretty sure lousy ≠ rigorous.

“In a state long held up as a model of rigorous graduation standards” Passive voice? “…long held up…” How long? By who? I’d love to see the article from Massachusetts: “If only we Bay Staters had RIGOROUS graduation standards like those stable geniuses in New York.” If you find an article like that, send it to me.

And then ‘academic rigor”? It doesn’t mean anything. (What does mean something is Chin pushing standardized exams.)

What is meaningful is how the article is littered with forms of “rigor” without any clear meaning attached. Jargon. Catch phrase. Buzzwords as Social Currency (in anti-public education circles). Meaningless expressions to indicate which side of the standardized testing monster you stand on.

I should look more closely at the changes in New York State – dropping the Regents as a graduation requirement is good, but keeping them to create data that does not help the students forced to take the exam? Painfully ridiculous.

I’m done for now… but I can’t help making one last point. OK – not about “rigor.” This one is about mathematics, about careful rounding. Or perhaps about careful writing. The opening sentence of the article is

“For more than 30 years, the path to high school graduation in New York State has required Regents exams, the rigorous end-of-year tests that have determined whether students receive a diploma.”

If you are younger, or newer to New York, you would probably miss this. But for those of us who have been around… How does The New York Times take “25 years” and round it to “more than 30 years”?

(The answer comes from the blurry line between agenda-driven ‘journalism’ and functioning as an all-out PAC for centrist Democratic causes, including education reform. They are often more careful on getting facts right, but for The New York Times, the cause, not the writing, is primary.)