Teaching High School: A Nice Analogy: Dental No Child Left Behind

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Wednesday, November 26, 2003

A Nice Analogy: Dental No Child Left Behind

I received this as an email forward from a friend who is also a teacher. I'm sure many have seen it, but I wanted to post it here just in case. A good point is made.

**************
The Best Dentist---"Absolutely" the Best Dentist

My dentist is great! He sends me reminders so I don't forget checkups. He uses the latest techniques based on research. He never hurts me, and I have all my teeth, so when I ran into him the other day, was eager to see if he'd heard about the new state program. I knew he'd think it was great.

"Did you hear about the new state program to measure effectiveness of dentists with their young patients?" I said.

"No," he said. He didn't seem too thrilled. "How will they do that?"

"It's quite simple," I said. "They will just count the number of cavities each patient has at age 10, 14, and 18 and average that to determine a dentist's rating. Dentists will be rated as Excellent, Good, Average, Below Average, and Unsatisfactory. That way parents will know which are the best dentists. It will also encourage the less effective dentists to get better," I said. "Poor dentists who don't improve could lose their licenses to practice."

"That's terrible," he said.

"What? That's not a good attitude," I said. "Don't you think we should try to improve children's dental health in this state?"

"Sure I do," he said, "but that's not a fair way to determine who is practicing good dentistry."

"Why not?" I said. "It makes perfect sense to me."

"Well, it's so obvious," he said. "Don't you see that dentists don't all work with the same clientele; so much depends on things we can't control? For example," he said, "I work in a rural area with a high percentage of patients from deprived homes, while some of my colleagues work in upper middle class neighborhoods. Many of the parents I work with don't bring their children to see me until there am some kind of problem and I don't get to do much preventive work. Also," he said, "many of the parents I serve let their kids eat way too much candy from an early age, unlike more educated parents who understand the relationship between sugar and decay. To top it all off," he added, "so many of my clients have well water which is untreated and has no fluoride in it. Do you have any idea how much difference early use of fluoride can make?"

"It sounds like you're making excuses," I said. I couldn't believe my dentist would be so defensive. He does a great job.

"I am not!" he said. "My best patients are as good as anyone's, my work is as good as anyone's, but my average cavity count is going to be higher than a lot of other dentists because I chose to work where I am needed most."

"Don't get touchy," I said.

"Touchy?" he said. His face had turned red and from the way he was clenching and unclenching his jaw, I was afraid he was going to damage his teeth. "Try furious. In a system like this, I will end up being rated average, below average, or worse. My more educated patients who see these ratings may believe this so-called rating actually is a measure of my ability and proficiency as a dentist. They may leave me, and I'll be left with only the most needy patients. And my cavity average score will get even worse. On top of that, how will I attract good dental hygienists and other excellent dentists to my practice if it is labeled below average?"

"I think you are overreacting," I said. " 'Complaining, excuse making and stonewalling won't improve dental health'...I am quoting from a leading member of the DOC," I noted.

"What's the DOC?" he asked.

"It's the Dental Oversight Committee," I said, "a group made up of mostly laypersons to make sure dentistry in this state gets improved."

"Spare me," he said, "I can't believe this. Reasonable people won't buy it," he said hopefully.

The program sounded reasonable to me, so I asked, "How else would you measure good dentistry?"

"Come watch me work," he said. "Observe my processes."

"That's too complicated and time consuming," I said. "Cavities are the bottom line, and you can't argue with the bottom line. It's an absolute measure."

"That's what I'm afraid the parents of my current patients and prospective patients will think. This can't be happening," he said despairingly.

"Now, now," I said, "don't despair. The state will help you some."

"How?" he said.

"If you're rated poorly, they'll send a dentist who is rated excellent to help straighten you out," I said brightly.

"You mean," he said, "they'll send a dentist with a wealthy clientele to show me how to work on severe juvenile dental problems with which I have probably had much more experience? Big help."

"There you go again," I said. "You aren't acting professionally at all."

"You don't get it," he said. "Doing this would be like grading schools and teachers on an average score on a test of children's progress without regard to influences outside the school, the home, the community served and stuff like that. Why would they do something so unfair to dentists? No one would ever think of doing that to schools."

I just shook my head sadly, but he had brightened.

"I'm going to write my representatives and senator," he said. "I'll use the school analogy- surely they will see the point."

He walked off with that look of hope mixed with fear and suppressed anger that I see in the mirror so often lately.

Wednesday, November 26, 2003 at 03:20 PM in Teaching | Permalink

Comments

EXCELLENT analogy. I posted this to my pre-service teachers bulletain board and will likely get some strong responses to it. Thanks for sharing!

Posted by: Ms Lauren | Wednesday, November 26, 2003 at 03:52 PM

Lauren,
If you could post the link to the pre-service bulletin board you posted this to, I would enjoy reading their responses as well. Thanks!

Posted by: Butterfly Gemini | Wednesday, November 26, 2003 at 08:59 PM

Why do states have this kind of testing? To take a phrase for the terror-apologists, 'WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND THE ROOT CAUSES'

1. school districts have been amazingly unresponsive to improving a dismal educational record.
2. Unions make it so hard to get rid of dead wood, that districts here in Florida often PROMOTE the bad teachers to get them out of the classroom.
3. Students have taken advantage of lax discipline.
4. Parents no longer give a united front with teachers, but are either neutral, absent or hostile to teacher and administrative discipline of their child.

SOOOOO, testing attempts to do the following...
1A – put the fear of vouch... er, um, God in sluggish districts (sorry- almost slipped and said the v-word)
2A – score points against their political opponents - union supported Democrats
3A – force students to focus on classwork out of fear of being held back or not graduating
4A – not much can be done to obstinate parents. Hopefully the shame of an underachieving student will help, but people are pretty shameless these days.

Oh yeah, BTW, I am a government school teacher. I know because I see it daily.

Posted by: DP | Tuesday, December 02, 2003 at 10:22 AM

A nice piece of writing, but...dental care in the U.S. works reasonably well. The public schools don't. If half the people who went to dentists wound up getting worse instead of better, I bet we'd all be lobbying for a measurement program.

You're certainly correct that different schools have different "clienteles" which can't be expected to all immediately achieve the same performance, but this isn't an argument against measurment, merely an argument for doing the measurement intelligently...for example, "before" and "after" testing for the same class.

Posted by: david foster | Tuesday, December 16, 2003 at 07:08 PM

great article! i'm a teaching intern for ninth graders, so i'm drowning in all of this testing business...

Posted by: nora | Thursday, January 22, 2004 at 07:12 PM

Decent analogy...being a student that actually wants to *cough* be challenged in my education, I do believe that this act is simply another way to water education down... it's pretty much all centered around standardized testing which, to put it lightly, is of the devil...I believe students will rise to what is expected of them- at least those who have some form of ambition. Today, education is made too easy. No child gets left behind *laughs* those who are getting left behind are choosing to be left behind. What about those who want to keep going?

Posted by: Tiffany | Friday, January 30, 2004 at 07:32 PM

I just saw that you requested the bulletain board. Alas, it'a gated community. But luckily, many of us are participating in a blog project this semester.

http://englished.blogs.com

See you there!

Posted by: Ms Lauren | Sunday, February 01, 2004 at 11:02 PM

Thanks for discussing it with us but the thing which is wrong with me is that I'm very much careless when it comes to health. I don't really feel like going up for routine check ups. I've not been caught by freaky disease fluently. This could be one reason I don't really bother going up to doc.

Posted by: Keith | Saturday, February 18, 2006 at 03:40 PM

Posted by: joe | Monday, June 25, 2007 at 08:33 AM

DP, your comment is noted, but when teachers get paid to work with one student at a time like dentists do, you would see and expect much better results.

Posted by: Eric | Tuesday, May 20, 2008 at 07:59 AM

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Teaching High School

...the funny things kids say (which is better than chronicling all the stuff that makes you mad)...