John Kuhn, Texas superintendent, is a brilliant orator and writer. In this article, he skewers the cheerleaders for high-stakes testing in Texas by showing how they cherry pick data to buttress their case for testing kids more and more instead of providing adequate resources for them to learn.
He begins by demonstrating how they situate their love of testing as a civil rights issue. They cite the Brown decision and in other ways claim that they love the children who are poor and needy and want the best for them. But what they never do is to advocate that the Legislature restore the billions of dollars that were cut from the schools attended by the children they claim to love.
Here is a small sample of a smartly argued and well documented analysis:
In “The Big Idea of School Accountability,” their slick apologia for high stakes testing and punitive accountability, both of which have dominated American education politics and pedagogy since the 1980s, Bill McKenzie and Sandy Kress start out on the high road. McKenzie is a high-ranking opinion-shaper at the George W. Bush Institute and a former editorialist for the Dallas Morning News. Kress was an architect of Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and, though he leaves this out of his bio attached to the essay, a long-time lobbyist for Pearson, the world’s leading vendor of K-12 standardized tests. The two edu-lobbyists begin their essay by mentioning historical moments in education policymaking and politics that would seem to appeal to a wide audience. They condemn segregation and celebrate Brown v. Board of Education. They praise the Elementary and Secondary School Act of 1965 (later renamed ESEA) and they celebrate its noble intention that “schools in disadvantaged communities would receive the resources to provide their students a decent education.”
Pay close attention to that statement, because it is the last time the authors will refer to resources as a necessary element to ensuring quality education in disadvantaged communities. Through the sleight of hand that has been perfected by the modern education reformer—and McKenzie and Kress are education reformers of the highest order—the writers deftly pivot from any and all talk of the need to provide equitable educational resources across all communities so that schools in even the poorest areas can deliver on the promise of education, and they spend the remaining pages of their article discussing something much easier on the taxpayer’s pocketbook: accountability, or the careful creation of just the right punishments to make teachers and students succeed in making learning happen, without respect to the pesky details of resources available to them (or unavailable to them, as they case may be). In the next paragraph—without establishing that the equity of resources LBJ’s law intended to guarantee was ever successfully attained—the writers begin to speak of campuses being “held responsible,” of the need to “hold schools accountable” and of “what should happen if schools do not show progress for all their students.”
Pivot complete.
The authors have shifted totally from an inconvenient conversation about fair and equitable investment in children and communities—investment that is adequate and comparable regardless of a student’s zip code or skin color—to one about holding children and communities responsible for their own outcomes. Accountability is constructed on the principle of blame and consequences as leverage to move schools and kids forward (blame and consequences, it should be noted, entirely directed at the teachers and students, with no consequence whatsoever reserved for citizens outside the schoolhouse who may or may not provide adequate fiscal supports for schools and children). At the urging of testing advocates like the authors of this essay, educational improvement via punitive test-based policies has eclipsed humane concepts of shared assistance and support for hurting American children (particularly anything resembling the investment of tax receipts) as the “civil rights issue of our time.” Educational accountability is designed as a low-cost replacement for social responsibility.
Children in America’s poorest neighborhoods lack all manner of opportunities and resources from birth that many American families take for granted. This isn’t to say they can’t learn. Of course they can learn, but there are obstacles they must overcome that society has kindly ensured do not litter the path of many other children from middle and upper class areas. From birth weight forward, all the data in impoverished zones is stacked against children, and elevating accountability for schools as our primary lever for improving these children’s lives has the effect of squelching any urgency and attention directed at efforts to feed and clothe and love and help them outside the school. We hear reformers speak of “the fierce urgency of the now” when they speak of improving schools, but we never hear it when they speak of improving lives. More than anyone in the United States, the poor child needs a hand up. More than any organization in the United States, the public school—the place where our children gather, and where they come as they are—needs support…..
Folks in the accountability camp like to say “we can’t throw money at the problem.” In fact, they apparently prefer actively pulling money away from the areas where the greatest problems exist. It is lunacy to believe that a testing program can do anything to help children who are being denied the same educational resources provided to their peers in wealthy communities. And to compare those under-funded students with their better-funded peers is nothing short of cruelty.
Thanks to the shift in focus toward testing and away from resourcing, in 2015 Texas sank to 49th in the nation in school funding (2). The accountability clique convinced lawmakers that funding was of little import; academic success could be forced upon children at a discount via test-based coercion and threats. An analogy might be if the Good Samaritan in the Bible story had stopped beside the injured traveler and, instead of lifting him out of the dirt and paying for his recuperation at an inn, had stood over him with a stopwatch and told him to hurry and get up, and assured him that he was comparing his time with that of uninjured people.
After quickly dismissing the topic of equitable funding for schools in poor areas, the authors praise bipartisanship and claim the legacy of Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert Kennedy as they discuss the debate surrounding ESEA. But even as they quote LBJ opining how his signature education law meant more “to the future of America” than anything he had signed before, they neglect to mention that what they are advocating in this essay—the continuation of required annual standardized testing in grades 3-8 and once in high school and significant punishments for schools, teachers, and students based on said tests’ results—were nowhere in LBJ’s bill.
Kuhn knows that reformers like to say that any reference to poverty means that you don’t believe poor children can learn. He knows that poor children can learn, but he also knows that poor children need at least the same resources as affluent children to learn. The “big error” of the accountability hawks is that they think that high-stakes testing is a substitute for resources. It is not. A brilliant and powerful essay.
Can’t solve a problem with money? Harvard endowment, 36B. Next question?
Harvard’s endwowment is a size 36B? Not that impressive!
Can’t solve a problem by throwing money at it?
There are so many things wrong with that snappy cliché that I don’t want to get sidetracked, but one way to approach it is to ask a simple question: when it comes to the leading edge of the self-proclaimed “education reform” movement, how important in actual practice do they consider $tudent $ucce$$? The answer:
“I want, I need, I like to get
Money, money, money, money
I want, I need, I like to get
Money, money, money, I like”
[This precious pearl of wisdom is courtesy of one of their ‘thought leaders,’ edupreneur Pitbull, from his song “Juice Box”]?
Let’s go to an exemplar rheephormista. A real life situation.
From the LATIMES, 10-16-2014, on the impending departure of a fervently Broadie Supt. of LAUSD, John Deasy:
[start quote]
As part of the departure agreement, Deasy is expected to receive about 60 days’ pay, or roughly $60,000, the sources said. His contract, which was to run through June 2016, requires a severance payment of only 30 days.
[end quote]
Link: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-1016-deasy-resigns-20141016-story.html
Getting past the distortions and mangled logic of edudephormers, let’s ask one very fundamental question: with all the money he already had, and his “passion for the kids” [e.g., this is how his LATIMES fanboys and fangirls constantly described him during his 3 1/2 year stint wrecking the second largest school district in the USofA]—
Why didn’t he simply give this money (which would have affected his lifestyle not one iota) to support arts programs or athletic activities or any number of other LAUSD functions that he had been starving of support and resources? He had a choice: keep the money for his own use or use it, finally, for some worthy purpose.
Actions speak louder than words.
Need I say more?
I let Pitbull, edupreneur extraordinaire, close out the set with the last two lines of “Juice Box”:
“Ay, oh, ay, oh, ay, oh, wah, money
Ay, oh, ay, oh, ay, oh, wah, money”
😎
The soft bigotry of low expectations. Of course poor children can learn on the same budget as rich children, and of course CEOs can perform on the same salary as a McDonalds manager. It all boils down to their intrinsic motivation and character.
I just think at some point ed reformers have to offer some benefit to existing public schools.
“Accountability!” sounds great as a slogan but in real life all it means is testing, threats and sanctions.
This is Jeb Bush:
“In 1991, Minnesota led the way on creating charter schools. Massachusetts passed a reform bill on standards, accountability and choice in 1993 and became the nation’s top academic achiever. When I was governor, Florida began grading schools on an A-to-F scale in 1999 and offered dramatic school-choice options to parents. Now, 16 states grade their schools, 19 have choice programs and all but eight have charter school laws”
I get that they’ve vastly expanded charters and vouchers, which is great for charter and private schools, but besides the grim, joyless (and unfunded) “accountability” schemes how did they “improve” public schools? They didn’t fulfill the core promise they made to people, which was not “replace” public schools but “improve” public schools.
The Feds seem to wash their hands to any problems. The allow the corporations to dictate the terms of everything, and they dare not even enforce the laws.
Can ed reformers point to something other than celebrating testing re: “improving” public schools?
“Congratulations to all of our #PARCCready students, teachers, technology coordinators, principals and others for a great job with a historic first – a multistate mostly online test administration to 5 million students. While Ohio and New Jersey had already started, as well as in smaller numbers in Colorado and Illinois, this was the week when things moved into high gear with the addition of Mississippi, New Mexico, Maryland and the District of Columbia.”
“More than a score”, my foot. It’s the one and only thing they “invest” in, and they don’t even cover the costs there.
[apologies, off topic!]
Diane, what happened to the post on the non-renewal of the two Albany charter schools?
[/apologies, off topic!]
And what about accountability for the accountability hawks?! Has Michelle Rhee been held accountable? Bill Gates? Arne Duncan? President Obama? President George W. Bush? Does anyone know who Margaret Spellings is (HINT: she parlayed her previous role into a job with Boston Consulting Group)? How about Rod Paige?
The number one constant among these individuals is that they have never paid a price for their massive educational policies failures.
Will Jeb Bush pay for his in the White House?
Here’s a link to Jeb Bush’s March 6 op-ed piece in the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/let-states-take-the-lead-in-transforming-schools/2015/03/06/0c5ecbb8-c132-11e4-9ec2-b418f57a4a99_story.html?tid=HP_opinion?tid=HP_opinion
Lots of doubletalk. Lots of false and misleading statements.
Assessment advocates: assess thy selves. I never see any evidence that assessment at any level above that of grades is effective in measuring learning. I do not believe that such evidence exists and yet assessment advocates are never called upon to measure their own policies’ effectiveness.
So true. Testing does not improve student outcomes. The money spent on testing would be better spent to contribute to public school budgets, especially since so many budgets are being starved by states that want to promote privatization.
“I never see any evidence that assessment at any level above that of grades is effective in measuring learning.”
That’s because none of these assessments, including grades, are measuring devices. Show me the measurable standard with the corresponding tolerances in measurement and then show me the measuring device that actually measures.
(silence)
I thought so, because they don’t exist and never will. The teaching and learning process cannot be measured just as many facets of life and living cannot be-kindness, hatred, love, beauty and many other realms of aesthetics.
Everyone should be loudly shouting BULLSHIT when they hear talk of educational achievement measures. THEY DON’T EXIST.
BRAVO!!
Agreed!
According to John White of Louisiana, “The education reforms that have been set in motion over the last ten to fifteen years are working.” You can hear him on this interview on Bloomberg Radio (between about 1:40 and 15:00). His manner of speaking says a lot about him, I think. Don’t listen if you just had lunch:
[audio src="http://media.bloomberg.com/bb/avfile/Bloomberg_EDU/v4bwhqWLUkEM.mp3" /]
Bloomberg is obviously still on the ed reform bandwagon. Both the interviewer and White fawn over Joel Klein, for instance.
I’ll try the link again. It shouldn’t have a bracket in front or ” /] after .mp3
[audio src="http://media.bloomberg.com/bb/avfile/Bloomberg_EDU/v4bwhqWLUkEM.mp3" /]
Oh, well. Here’s a link to the Bloomberg education podcast page:
http://www.bloomberg.com/podcasts/bloomberg-edu/
Sorry Randal. I clicked on the link but just couldn’t bring myself to actually listen to the Louisiana Boy Blunder spout his lies about the NOLA RSD Miracle.
Fullerton Joint Union High School District is looking for a NEW Superintendent and this school district would be a wonderful place for a progressive administrator to work. Great community support, wonderful parents and students, dedicated and hardworking teachers, all of whom are focused on student success and the teaching/learning collaborative climate necessary to maximize student success by providing the best possible school environment for each student’s goals. Please consider this opportunity to apply for this position. I have been teaching for more than forty years under several different Instructional Leaders and in different school districts in three states and know how important it is to have the best possible person in the position of Superintendent.
Thank you for your willingness to speak up when it is not always a welcome thing to do for a person in your position.
“Tests are necessary as the dowsing device for finding these bad teachers and schools.”
Great analogy by Kuhn!
So logical and well thought through.
Logic does not sway congressional minds in this session. Maybe tracing the money trail needs more exposure?
Loved reading the No Child Left Behind was authored by a person connected to the testing industry. I remember it being called the “Silva” law!
“Accountability”
Accountability is for students
For janitors and teachers
For those who flip the burgers
For those who clean the bleachers
For those who wash the dishes
For those who build the roads
For those who catch the fishes
And do the laundry loads
For those who build the houses
For those who fix the pipe
For those who catch the mouses
And pick the fruit when ripe
For those who do the weeding
For those who wash the dogs
For those who watch the speeding
For those who slop the hogs
It isn’t for the wealthy
Or those that they install
In LA and in DC
It’s not for them at all
….and the biggest error in this “era of accountability” (which has a certain noxious and odious air) is: THAT the grades I give during a quarter, semester, year are not valued as evidence of learning! What, learning must be demonstrated by an EOC? Not even most colleges practice that (yes, there are finals, but not life/death EOCs).
If someone would actually observe my class for over a week, they would see more learning, thinking, collaborating, synthesizing, evaluating, creating, etc., as compared to the little “slice of data” that an EOC measures. My quarter grades are a more valid and reliable measure of chemistry learning and competence, than any EOC can measure. My quarter grades are probably a better predictor of “future success” than any EOC can predict (IMO). I “shake it off” all the slander and hate the “ex-spurts” throw at me/us, in insinuating and demeaning our teaching, by implicitly believing our quarter grades are of no value in “proving learning”. “Oh, you can’t teach, because the grades you give don’t reflect learning, and your students need the medicine/pill of an EOC to really demonstrate competence”, said Cat in the Hat to Thing 1 and 2.