Minnesota educational standards require the teaching of critical thinking skills. It is particularly important in today’s world. We are barraged by claims of organizations, industries, and individuals. It clearly requires critical thinking skills to sort through the often contradictory claims that face us. For example, last week Education Week published a report claiming K-12 education in Minnesota deserves a C.”  Critical thinking skills are needed to analyze the claims and data provided by Education Week.

 

The Education Week report claims that Minnesota’s P-12 educational system rates a D+ on a scale that is supposed to be criteria-based. So part of our critical thinking analysis should explore the validity of the assessment. If we accept the assumption that the quality of education is a predictor of academic achievement and social welfare, then perhaps we should compare our score on the Education Week assessment to other data.

 

• Minnesota ranks seventh nationally on composite scores on the ACT test, a measure of academic achievement, and rates first nationally in composite ACT scores among states where more than half of the students complete the ACT.
• Minnesota ranks in the top three states nationally in terms of the percentage of students who earn a high school diploma.
• Minnesota ranks 8th among states in median income for 2006 dollars.
• Minnesota has ranked either 1st or 2nd in the last ten annual analyses of “Most Livable States.”

 

These observations are not a full application of critical thinking skills and they do not support a definitive conclusion about Education Week’s assessment. But, perhaps it offers a beginning point to encourage critical thinking.

 

Another approach to analyzing the Education Week claims is to deconstruct the overall assessment and analyze their data. Several indices are used to generate Education Week’s grade. Minnesota ranks 8th out of all states in their state achievement index, yet only earns a “C” on that index. This emphasizes that Education Week is using a criteria-based approach instead of a normative approach to assessment. But if the final grades are then used to compare states with each other, we need to analyze our state values and how we would choose to weight an index such as this.

 In contrast, Minnesota ranks 42nd on the Standards, Assessments, and Accountability index and earns a “C”. Colorado, by contrast, ranks 28th and earns a “B-“ on that index. Yet Colorado does not have any “state standards that are clear, specific, and grounded in content.”  This discrepancy generates questions about how the data are weighted in the report. The report also uses data that claims Minnesota does not provide any assistance for low-performing schools. Thinking

critically, we ask ourselves, “Is this true?...What is Education Week’s definition of ‘assistance?’...and What additional information do we need to know?”

 

MN ranks 39th and gets a “D+” based on the data used in the Teaching Profession index. On the other hand, South Carolina ranks 1st with a grade of “A.” We know other accountability and accreditation standards look at student performance as a primary measure of the quality of the teaching profession. On K-12 Achievement index South Carolina ranks 41st, with a grade of “D.” Critical thinking encourages us to ask why there is such a discrepancy our students’ achievement and the quality of our teachers as measured by the Education Week index.

 

Critical thinking may not lead to quick analyses or answers. But it does lead to useful results. Let’s take the time to employ a critical thinking approach to the claims of Education Week. MACTE and BOT are committed to continual improvement of education in Minnesota. Perhaps together we can find value in the data they have collected and the claims they have made.