Wonderful news from Charlotte-Mecklenbug, North Carolina!
The superintendent of schools has spoken out forcefully against the flood of testing.
Because of this great news, I happily add Heath Morrison to the honor roll as a champion of American public education.
Morrison is superintendent of schools in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina. He is also highly respected among his peers nationally. He was elected president of the American Association of School Administrators for this year.
Morrison is taking a courageous stand against high-stakes testing.
He called the huge number of new state tests “an egregious waste of taxpayer dollars” that won’t help kids.
According to the story: “I am very troubled by the amount of testing we are being asked to do,’ Morrison told The Charlotte Observer editorial board. ‘We can teach our way to the top, but we cannot test our way to the top. We’re getting ready in the state of North Carolina to put out 177 new exams.'”
And here is even more exciting news: Heath Morrison is working with several other superintendents, including Montgomery County’s Joshua Starr, “to try to counteract the national testing craze.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Capitan Typo's Adventures in Education and commented:
Where are the senior educational executives in Australia standing up for education?
This is really great news! I needed some good news today. The amount of money that is spent on testing could be applied to so many more salient issues. It gets so discouraging at times.
Marge
Yes! We can no longer ignore the influence of for-profit reform on policy and practice.
Students are not gadgets, and teachers are not robots. US, FInland and Mexico.
Well, Diane, and here in Mexico we are going frantic into this frenetic world testing. An new National Constitutional amendment is on its way to create a National testing and assessment agency with unlimited power for assessment and education policy. All federal and state governmental agencies will have to follow the guidelines issued by this new-to-be-agency. And a new teaching professional civil service, will be set up to assess teachers under standardized tests for entering into teaching or rewarding their performance, based mainly on their pupils’ tests results. And the problem here, with a very centralized education and very powerful oriented political system, what one person thinks is what all people do. If you are bad, we are worse. This is why we have consistently performed at the bottom among all OECD’s PISA contesters; compared to Finland that has consistently played at the top. Finland and Mexico are the two opposites. The study of both make extraordinary lessons for all in a shocking contrasting way! But our policy makers are so influenced by the US federal policy makers and the OECD’s policy transmitters, than there is no way, that we from the academia, or the more scientific means of looking at things, can teach them otherwise. They of course are joined by influential and “successful” businesspeople, who think that schools can be run the same way as car or gadget factories. Students are not gadgets. And teachers are not robots. EA
Just curious —- are the tests that are being used in Mexico published by Pearson Publishing? I have serious Ethics issues with that if that is the case. I am so concerned about the dumbing down of children worldwide.
Marge
Marge,
Good question, see comments below, I am virtually sure Pearson has got both hands and feet in Mexico as well as the US. Geographic boundaries do not stop avarice and greed.
Maureen
Stand tall superintendent Morrison! Your courage is a threat to many interests.
Very encouraging news on the testing front, how does Superintendent Morrison feel about privatization of our public school systems? Hopefully, he will be speaking to the testing hand that feeds the privatizers’ mouth.
As I understand it, 39% of 1.7 billion dollar testing contract industry in the US involves Pearson, the conglomerate which also owns Power School and Inform Data base warehousing systems. I also have heard rumors that Pearson is gearing up to open their own line of charter schools.
For some of our number crunchers, it would behoove us to follow the trail of Pearson political PAC contributions state by state, rep by rep, senator by senator, and of course, governor by governor and in our US Congress as well.
There is bound to be evidence just waiting to be brought to light that illuminates carefully crafted collusion between our state legislatures, the corporate testing industry and the “fake for-profit education reform” of the privatizers.
Maureen Reedy
Maureen,
I know that a Brookings researcher estimated the testing industry as being $1.7 billion but that was a very low figure and I doubt it reflects the true cost (or revenues) of the industry. Texas alone is paying Pearson $100 million a year. And there is the cost of pre-tests, interim tests, test prep, plus test security. Plus, plus, plus. $1.7 billion looks very low indeed.
Diane
Well, this just adds an entire new section to our agenda for a potential summit…. Preserving Public Schools Across America.The amount of public $ money being siphoned off to feed the testing industry and ultimately privatization is too massive to conceal.
During tough economic times and the lingering recession, this is a way to get through to people whose wallets are their first front line/bottom line.
And what about the return on the investment for those who rest upon “the dollar is the bottom line?”
The country spends something on the order of 519 billion (2008-9 figures) dollars on K-12 education. Even if we double the 1.7 billion dollar estimate, the testing industry takes in a little more than 1/2 of a percent of total spending.
These figures would be very interesting to watch. Are we considering lost instructional time as a cost of testing? How about the costs of proctoring? The technology costs? The decreased access to facilities during testing (closed media/resource centers, computer labs)? Administrative costs? I’m sure others can easily add to the list.
I don’t know what the costs cited include. I just took Dr. Ravitch’s numbers and doubled them. You are right to think of costs as opportunity costs, but they are notoriously difficult to measure.
“‘We can teach our way to the top, but we cannot test our way to the top.”
A great quote … T-shirts anyone?
Hoe about bumper stickers, to be applied to the cars of our representatives at our state capitols?
That first word should, of course, be HOW!
Yes, bumper stickers on elected representatives cars are even better.