Proficiency: A Word to be Banned from the Educational Lexicon

Definitions

Proficiency: [noun] The fact of having the skill and experience for doing something:

The job ad said they wanted proficiency in at least two languages.

Photographs entered in the contest will be judged on originality and technical proficiency.

Taken from: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/proficiency

Usually when we speak of proficiency the assumption is made that we are speaking of people with a very high level of skill. This assumption is not embedded in the definition. We know it is not embedded in the definition because we often talk about different levels of proficiency. We talk of students having Limited English Proficiency and we talk about students having a High Level of Proficiency. Both students are Proficient to different degrees.

I think Dictionary.Com comes closest by providing the options of skilled/expert on one hand or competent on the other. This can be found at https://www.dictionary.com/browse/proficient .

Use of Proficient in Public Policy

Expert versus (minimally) competent are two completely different things. These represent very different skill sets. There are many competent swimmers, who can swim a lap or two, who would not consider themselves expert. One of the greatest injustices done in education in recent time was the No Child Left behind Act of 2001 where this ambiguous word was chosen to define the goal of the Act.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB): A Description

An act to close the achievement gap with accountability, flexibility, and choice, so that no child is left behind. Taken from https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/PLAW-107publ110

The act required all students to reach Proficiency by 2014. By the way, in case you blinked, it did not happen. Student Achievement cannot be legislated. However, because of the different interpretations of the word Proficient different states created different content standards with peculiar performance standards and a range of different cut scores for the associated proficiency levels. Standards and scores were all over the map, literally.

Unfortunately, I have noticed that some people think that their understanding of any term is the universal understanding of that term. These peopled are puzzled when the behavior of others belies their truth.

 It was generally accepted that by and large New England states had much more rigorous content and performance standards than southern states.  I would argue that the leadership in the New England states were leaning toward the expert interpretation of Proficient whereas the leadership in the Southern states were leaning more to a minimal competency approach. Interestingly neither side saw the perspective of the other side as both sides assumed that their interpretation of Proficient was the correct interpretation. So, the northern leadership felt the southern leadership were lowering standards to get over and the southern leadership thought the northern leadership were just trying to impress everyone with their northern erudition.

So great was the patchwork of standards and performance metrics that eventually it gave rise to the call for, and the development of the Common Core State Standards with their associated assessments. However, that is another story.

The point of this post is the confusion caused by using an ambiguous term, proficient, as the goal of the legislation.

An Interpretation from One of the Architects of NCLB

When I was a graduate student at Harvard, I had the opportunity to speak to Margaret Spellings who was one of the architects of NCLB and George Bush’s Secretary of Education. I asked her something about which I had always wondered.  My question was: Why was such an ambiguous term used in the legislation? While it was clear to me that the goal of 100% Proficiency was only achievable if Proficient meant minimally competent that same interpretation was not shared by everyone and some States were setting themselves up for failure by expecting 100% of their students to be experts.

Her response was “The states should have understood what we meant.”

Interesting response.

To those of you who are about to claim that I am advocating for lowering standards nothing could be further from the truth. Neurodiversity has been one key to the success of the human race. Some students will be expert writers, others expert mathematicians, others expert scientists, lawyers, doctors, engineers, comedians, musicians, artists, chefs, religious leaders, and the list goes on. Creating a goal that all students should be experts in math and reading denies the reality of the diversity of humanity. The diversity of human achievements, human interests, human needs, and the richness of the human experience. I am advocating for supporting students in developing ALL of their gifts. Celebrating their gifts and not punishing them because they may not have one or two select gifts that some people think matter more than others.

Back to the point of this post.

How should we interpret Proficient?

Educational leaders who want to sound as if they are current like to use the word Proficient. The meaning has not changed. Proficient means anything from minimally competent to expert. Teachers are therefore free to interpret Proficient as any grade from a D, minimally competent, to an A, expert. If leaders want to be more specific, they should be!