The public is getting an overly rosy picture of American schools from standardized achievement tests that allow most districts to claim their pupils are above average, a top Education Department official said Tuesday.
Chester E. Finn Jr., the assistant secretary for educational research and improvement, said most test-makers and test experts who attended a closed meeting at the Education Department agreed that the tests have exhibited a "Lake Wobegon effect."
He was referring to humorist Garrison Keillor's mythical hometown "where all the children are above average."
By definition, half the children in the United States are above the national average and half below it.
But John Jacob Cannell, a crusading West Virginia doctor, recently canvassed every state and did not find a single one that reported its elementary pupils were below average on any of the six major commercial tests.
—Christopher Connell, "Education Official Says Achievement Tests Paint Unrealistic Picture," Associated Press, February 9, 1988
This phrase (sent my way by subscriber James Callan) was inspired by Garrison Keillor's 1985 novel,
Lake Wobegon Days, which described life in fictional Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, where "all the children are above average."
This effect is most often seen in educational test scores, where some teachers, schools, or school districts claim that all of their students score above average, a mathematical impossibility.
