Ron Maggiano taught history and social studies in the Fairfax County (Virginia) public schools for 33 years. Along the way, he picked up many awards for his excellent teaching.
Here he reflects on why he quit a career he loved.
“Now more than three decades later, I have just spent my last day as a teacher. I resigned my teaching position because I can no longer cooperate with the standardized testing regime that is destroying creativity and stifling imagination in the classroom. I am sad, angry, hurt, and dismayed by what has happened to education and to the teaching profession that I so dearly love.
“It was a difficult decision, but I am confident that it was the correct one. For me this was a moral choice. I believe that our current national obsession with high-stakes testing is wrong, because it hurts kids and deprives students of an education that is meaningful, imaginative, and relevant to the demands of the 21st century.”
And more,
“More significantly, critical thinking skills and analytical problem solving have now been replaced with rote memorization and simple recall of facts, figures, names, and dates. Educators have been forced to adopt a “drill and kill” model of teaching to ensure that their students pass the all-important end-of-course test. Teaching to the test, a practice once universally condemned administrators and educators alike, has now become the new normal in classrooms across the country.
“If teaching to the test was wrong 30 some years ago when I first entered the classroom, it is just as wrong today as I leave my classroom for the final time. The fact is that we are not really educating our students. We are merely teaching them how to pass a test.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I thought Virginia did not adopt Common Core. So is it not that different if the states that did not?
Right. Virginia did not adopt CCSS. Supporters of the CCSS believe they do promote critical thinking and analytical problem-solving.
There are still district and state assessments to administer. Some of the most grueling assessments I ever gave were district assessment to first-graders. Someone in the chain of command thought a 30 page math assessment (numbered in Roman numerals no less!) was appropriate for six year-olds. I had children who would give up and put their heads down on their tables. It was sad and frustrating. I finally had the sense to say no to the test (I was younger then, without a mortgage and family.) I pulled the staples out of those damned tests and had the kids use the blank side for drawing on.
You are right. There seems to be more testing with CC. We had district assessments at the end of every grading period and state assessments in math, ELA, science, and social studies. It was grueling for the students and teachers.
I understand Ron Maggiano’s frustration. I explored option of trying to make a difference outside of the classroom, and in the process recognized that I was at a point where I was not certain I could continue to teach with integrity. So I took a buyout and retired in June 2012. I had my own share of awards for my teaching, but of greater importance had been the ongoing connection with the lives of former students, and the number of former students who despite my cautions about the difficulties of the profession who had chosen to go into classrooms of their own to try to make a difference in the lives of young people.
By happenstance, my first principal was involved with a group of non-profit charter schools serving high-need students that had a need for a middle school social studies teacher in November. I agreed to serve for the rest of the year, entering the classroom shortly before Thanksgiving. I thought I was prepared for what I would encounter, but I was not, as I wrote about here. I only left that position because I had to care for my spouse in the early days of her treatment for cancer.
But something had happened in the two or so months I was with those young people. My passion for teaching was reignited. I remembered what it was like to see lights go on in the eyes of young people, of being part of their excitement about learning.
I also remembered that I had found ways to be effective despite various mandates that seemed restrictive of what I could do – probably because I make clear my absolute commitment to my students, because I take the time to communicate with their families, and because I make clear to the students themselves that I am going to trust them and believe in them unless and until they give me a reason to think otherwise, and even then, we can always reestablish the relationship of working together.
At one point during my last year before retirement, when I was exploring trying to make a difference outside the classroom, Diane and I had an exchange. I was saying I was not sure that the war to save public education was not already lost. Diane responded that even were that the case, she was going to go down fighting.
I have had some impact on people’s thoughts about education through my writing, primarily online. Much of that came because I was rooted in the classroom. During the Fall of 2012, before I went to that inncr city school, an electronic acquaintance asked me to write a piece of Academe, the publication of the American Association of University Professors, of what professors should expect with the students now arriving at their institutions, students who had spent their entire school careers under the mandates of No Child Left Behind and its progeny (including Race to the Top). Academe allows its pieces to be cross-posted providing credit and a link back to the original are provided, so shortly after it went live on their website, it also appeared several other places, including in Valerie Strauss’s blog at the Washington Post. The Post version went up shortly after I had left the inner city middle school to care for my wife (who is recovering nicely) and it quickly went viral – any piece with more than 100,000 Likes on Facebook is something of a phenomenon. I wound up in multiple radio interviews, guest lecturing to faculty at an elite college, and in electronic correspondence with well over 100 people who contacted me directly.
The phenomena about which both Maggiano and I were concerned was being noticed – by parents, by school teachers, by those at universities. The concerns about the restrictions on what teachers could do and how they were being evaluated were already occurring in some university schools and departments, with as devastatingly narrowing of real learning as we were experiencing in the K-12 setting.
I had long been involved in the pushback against the conventional wisdom of the misnamed “reform” movement in education – misnamed because so much of it was recycling of and doubling down upon ideas that had been tried and failed previously. I was one of the organizers of the 2011 Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action in Washington DC, at which Diane was one of the key speakers, along with the likes of Linda Darling-Hammond, Pedro Noguero, Nancy Carllson-Paige, John Kuhn, and many more.
In part, the response to my piece made me realize that I needed to stay involved, but that my involvement only had meaning so long as I was based in the classroom, in a school.
Someone whose judgment I greatly trust, Parker Palmer, told me that I would always be a teacher, the only question would be the definition of my classroom. My writing expands the size of my classroom, but its heart remains my direct relationship with adolescents. I have been fortunate enough to find a setting that will challenge me as a teacher, fits my rather unique combinations of interests and skills, so I have committed to go back into the classroom. I will be teaching 6 classes, on an A/B day schedule – that itself is new to me, so even though half my classes are Advanced Placement U. S. Government and Politics, I have to totally rethink how I will approach the subject. The other three classes are totally new to me, and are based in the school’s STEM program.
I sometimes remark to people about a line from “Magnum Force,” a Dirty Harry movie starring Clint Eastwood. That line is “A man’s got to know his limitations.” For me my limitations require me, for better or worse, to keep being a classroom teacher pushing back on behalf of my students, for as long as I can.
I am now 67. I have no idea how long that will be. Some would say I have already earned my retirement. Perhaps. But that does not remove from me my sense of obligation to try to keep making a difference. For me to do so, I must be rooted in the classroom, one full of adolescents, preferably of high school age.
I respect Ron Maggiano’s decision. I agree with the concerns he expresses.
For me, the best way of addressing those concerns is to do what I can from within the classroom, knowing the battles I may well encounter.
I am despite the damage being done to American public education and thus to the students it is supposed to serve, more optimistic now about the future than I was several years ago. There is enough pushback coming from ordinary folk. We are now seeing not only teachers and university professors pushing back at “reform” but also parents and students.
So perhaps you could consider this my “Why I Unquit” message. I believe that those of us who understand what teaching should be have a responsibility – as long as we can do so with integrity – to offer our young people that kind of teaching.
I will respect the decision of those who choose a different path.
I quoted fictional words of Clint Eastwood before. There is another set of words, probably apocryphal, attributed to Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms. While I am not in general a fan of Luther, those words do seem applicable to the decision I have made, which is different than that of Mr. Maggiano. They are these:
Here I stand. I can do no other.
For better or worse I am a teacher, and I must with all my heart and soul be that teacher in the best way I can for the young people for whom I hope to make a difference.
Peace.
So sorry to hear that another fine educator is leaving public education. This loss is immeasurable.
I concur with Ron’s concerns. He summed up my angst with this statement …
“The fact is that we are not really educating our students. We are merely teaching them how to pass a test.”
Highly recommended for all members of the Ravitch educational community, an article from today’s UK Guardian regarding the Finish approach to education and how far and to what extremes the British/American edu-business has taken us.
It also discuss the political/business run programs like ‘race to no child left behind’ that show contempt to: minorities, the poor, teachers and unions, pupils, democracy, community, creativity, critical thinking, and equality . (Sorry for using all those dirty words ) :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2013/jul/01/education-michael-gove-finland-gcse
There are good tests and bad tests. I can imagine a well-designed end-of-course exam that would actually help me as a teacher –something akin to an AP test –because it would clarify what was to be taught, and help students see me as an ally in a struggle to learn the required material and pass the test –rather than as an adversary. From what I understand, France uses this system.
While I sympathize with Mr. M’s disgust at top-down mandates, I think his disparagement of “facts, facts, facts” is misplaced. Critical thinking in any particular domain cannot develop without mastery of that domain’s facts. How can you think well about devising a new chemical if you don’t have a vast store of chemistry knowledge in your long-term memory banks? Empty “critical thinking skills” are insufficient. Schools need to provide a strong foundation of knowledge, not just opportunities to exercise thinking muscles. The brain needs exercise, but it also needs nourishing FOOD to grow strong. Knowledge is that brain food. Too few educators, brainwashed by our ed schools, understand this basic truth.
I will not fully agree with your assessment of AP tests, and I have served as a Reader (scorer) of the Free Response Question of the AP US Government and Politics exam. I find some difficulties even with the AP approach, even thought the scoring of the constructed responses is far better and more fair than that of many state high stakes tests. We still taking an approach that requires far too much breadth and not enough depth.
1. Teachers are given x number of standards to teach in 4 weeks(on a Block Schedule)
2. Teachers must then guess what kind of questions and which of the standards will be tested on the district tests.
3. Workshop leader said..’Now all of you teachers need to take those tests you give your students so you can find any errors”…TEACHERS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO SEE THE DISTRICT TEST UNTIL THEY GIVE THEM..MUCH LESS DO THE TEST
4. The standards are so general , one could write 50,000 questions spinning from just one of the standards.
5. The tests are tricky…Tricky tests are not good tests.
6. TEACHERS DO NOT TEACH..THEY TEACH A TEST
7. Administrator gets furious when teacher is not COVERING all of the material in two 9 wks as NC requires…
8. Teachers are told that if they have negative evaas scores for 3 years in a row….hmm..hmm..hmm..hmm..hmm.
It is upsetting that the best teachers leave education over testing. I would like to know if it is in the best interest of this struggle against testing for so many experienced teachers to leave. Every time I read another teacher has left I think it is a small victory for the testing empire. How can we convert the defeat of leaving the profession into victories for public education?
When trying to comply and keep up with all the demands required takes years off your life, gives you so much stress that you develop heart disease and sleepless nights, something has to give. Most of us don’t want to drop dead teaching. Given the right administrators, things could be so different. But, even with good administrators, the stress of the AYP evaluations and possible video-taped scrutiny that teachers must undergo just wears people down. If some people feel that they are on the top of their games 24/7, good for them. I haven’t met anyone yet who was.
AMEN, Ron Maggiano, your moral choice defines your character.
Ending acedemic todyism is HONESTY at it’s finest.
Critical thinking skills and analytical problem solving will NOT preserve or enhance the
interests of Capital, or it’s proxy, the Gov.
The preservation of privilege requires the excercise of power.” The fact is that we are not really educating our students. We are merely teaching them how to pass a test.” is an
example of the excercise of power.
The Elites, that control the Gov., for their own profit and
aggrandizement have shattered any conceivable justification for their privileged
position, and no longer have any credibility among those who think at all.
What is most astounding to me in this whole new reform school movement is that administrators who were pushing differentiated instruction less than ten years ago have foisted drill and kill, one way of teaching and testing into the classroom. I very distinctly remember watching a video demonstrating teacher exemplars in differentiated instruction. Another day long professional development was spent learning about multiple intelligences (the use of which I believe many people misunderstood) in the classroom. And prior to that visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning modes… I even remember one “motivational” speaker who spent the day chastising us about using out-dated teaching modes and grading methods, the likes of which I have never in all of my 63 years experienced, even as a student. He obviously had an ax to grind. We read and learned about explosive children, about the effects of poverty on children’s ability to learn…
I do not, in general, believe that assessment is bad. No teacher does, and we learn to do it every minute of the teaching and learning day. It is how we improve our instruction and how we help children better understand what they are learning. But the goal of assessment today is to defeat teachers and learners, making way for for-profit corporation to steal education dollars. The radical shift in instructional delivery, from one that looks at how children learn, at brain and child development to the practice of ignoring everything that we have learned about how children learn is clear proof that the reform school movement (yes, “pun” intended) is not about improving education but part of a worldwide sinister plot to create disposable cogs for use by the 4% of the 1%.