In the past few days, education officials in New York have made some breathtakingly hostile comments about children.
Merryl Tisch, the chancellor of the New York Board of Regents, responded to reports about test anxiety by saying that it was time to jump into the deep end. By that, she meant that it was time to throw these little children in grades 3-8 into the deep end, as I presume she will not be jumping in with them.
Dennis Walcott said with relish that it is time to rip the Band-aid off. Is that something that a caring adult does to a child?
Why the fierce urgency to inflict pain on children?
I am not suggesting that students should not take tests. Of course, they should take tests.
But before they are tested, they should have the opportunity to learn what will be tested. Their teachers should have the opportunity to learn what they are expected to teach.
The test should not fall out of the sky on unprepared students and teachers, like a scythe intended to mow them down.
Our state officials should be held accountable for rushing students, teachers, and schools into tests for which they have not been prepared.
And they should be ashamed by the rhetoric they use, in which they express indifference to children and a barely disguised glee about the harm they are inflicting by tossing kids into the deep end whether or not they know how to swim and, to add injury to injury, “ripping off the Band-aid.”
This is a classic case of what the noted psychoanalyst Elisabeth Young-Bruehl called childism.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ripping off band-aids and jumping into the deep end. Such nurturing could only come from a privatization mindset.
Quality control time. Toss out the unacceptable.
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“Ripping off band-aids”. Who can forget Michelle Rhee JOKING about putting tape on her students mouths when she was a TFA teacher 18 years before becoming Chancellor of Schools in Washington D.C.?
Listen to the audio at the top, right side:
http://www.rheefirst.com/duct-taping-students-mouths-and-their-consequences
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I’m thinking that perhaps they’re closet sadists and masochists. One can just hear the glee in their comments. Nah, that might be misinterpreted. The real problem is that they are not, nor will they ever be true educators. As my students would say, they are just frontin’.
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These are the things public officials say when they’re forced to defend policy. The rhetoric is a detail. The policy is the problem. And we knew these tests were coming for years. Presumably we’ve also known for years that curriculum wouldn’t be aligned with the tests in time. Where was the outrage back in 2010 or years earlier?
My daughter goes in tomorrow morning to sit for the first day of her test on math for which she wasn’t prepared and for which she wasn’t even given a textbook that would allow her or me to get a sense of the boundaries of the material. All she was given was a series of printouts, received throughout the year on a “need-to-know” basis. I had to research and purchase “textbooks” (i.e. test prep books) on my own. She’s nervous, but at least she’s a gamer and she tests well. I feel awful for some of the boys in her class. Not nice or fair at all. But the 11th-hour wailing doesn’t help any of us.
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Tomorrow through Thursday are ELA. Math is next week. Good luck.
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Damn it, she’s screwed!
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My son will not be contributing a dime to Pearson. Who were the publishers of the “textbooks” you purchased? Can we hear a ka-ching!!!! My son will be refusing the test and reading a good piece of literature instead.
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What do you mean by “11th hour wailing?”
Don’t you think that parents and teachers have a right to protest educational malpractice? Are you suggesting that time is up and everyone should accept the intolerable?
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Time’s certainly up for those of us who aren’t opting out this year. And looking ahead, I think it’s very difficult to stop a machine that has years of work and lots of money behind it. What I’m saying is that the outrage about the poor planning behind the Common Core implementation would have been much more useful if it happened a few years ago, when this machine was being set in motion.
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No one was listening a few years ago. Time’s up only when you give up. It ain’t over till it’s over. It ain’t over.
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I’ve read three of your books and just about every post on your blog since you started. You’ve been taking a stand for quite some time against the things in NCLB once you saw what was going on. I’ve been wailing about it since 2002 when NCLB became a law. I’ve been wailing about it since Obama was my Senator and he gave me the old “you don’t fatten a pig by weighing it” line right to my face when I asked him his position on all of the testing. Then the CC national standards (let’s call them what they are) came along. It is difficult to wail against something that is created the way the CCNS were created. It just seems like 11th hour wailing because of the methodical, scheming method by which they crept up on us…kind of like the frog in the kettle type thing.
Dr. Ravitch keep up the great wailing…as I always say, “it’s never to late to wail.” starting now I always say it.
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Jim, you are exactly right. You wail loudest when the pain is real, not when it’s just theory or speculation.
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What difference does it make when we start “wailing,” especially for parents? We have always rightfully trusted our local school boards to act in the best interests of our children. Many of us are only now learning that NYSED has taken control of local boards of education and that they are mainly concerned with corporate interests. For many parents, the fight is just beginning.
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That’s the best news I’ve heard today.
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dianerav:
Contempt won’t win the war to bring a better education for all. Courage will.
You will hit four million views soon. You will achieve this great milestone, in part, because you had the courage to stand up and speak out when so many man remained silent.
Props to one KrazyHistoryLady.
🙂
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“It ain’t over till its over”-a true Yogiism! (from wiki: “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” In July 1973, Berra’s Mets trailed the Chicago Cubs by 9½ games in the National League East. The Mets rallied to win the division title on the final day of the season [what’d you expect, it was the Cubbies])
And the fact is “the fat lady hasn’t sung yet” on all this rheephormy nonosense.
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Diane, you’re a true peaceful warrior for justice!
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You’re a hypocrite: two years ago you were making snarky, trolling comments about opponents of the testing and privatization regime on Gotham Schools, and now you criticize those who are trying to do something about it.
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Mike, maybe Crazy TA has had a change of heart. . . maybe he/she has done a 180????
Diane did. No on is immune to being enlightened. And look what had grown from Diane’s insights.
I don’t like inconsistency any more than you do, but maybe we stand to be more united. . . . ?
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For whatever reason – probably a mistake on my part – my reply appeared to be directed at Krazy TA. It was not: I was pointing out flerper’s hypocrisy.
Sorry, Krazy.
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I don’t know what specific comments you have in mind, Michael, but I accept the charge. (It would a truly stunning amount of cowardice to not be able to concede one’s own hypocrisy on an anonymous message board.) I’ve never reacted positively to bad writing or bad reasoning. I don’t react well to preachers, especially when I’m not part of their choir. And the refusal to acknowledge the extreme and worsening financial stress that public education is under frustrates me, to put it mildly. But I’ve learned a lot in the past couple years, often in spite of myself.
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Flerper may well have done a 180 also. . . . for the better. Anything is possible.
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From the mouths of babes-
So, slightly off topic, but relevant nonetheless. My wife, who’s a TA is going over some last minute prep with one of her 4th graders today. This little girl has a wicked learning disability in ELA.
She asks my wife, ” Will you be able to read the passages to me tomorrow?”
My wife replied, “No.”
To which the student replied, “I’m screwed.”
True story.
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Agreed, and sadly she speaks for many students and teachers.
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She is right! Why isn’t she permitted to have that accommodation per an IEP?
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That seems to be an issue throughout the country. In DCPS many students had testing accommodations during the school year, but not during the DC-CAS. It made and makes no sense. Especially when a system is sued so often and under a special education consent decree.
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Sounds like lawsuit or threat of one time!
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Kay- As Mark Collins notes, in NY, kids w/ an IEP cannot be read to during the State assessments. Setting them up for failure once again.
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When tests are normed with a particular set of accommodations, no others changes can be used without invalidating the child’s score. There are approved accommodation lists that accompany each standardized test and teachers are not permitted to deviate from the approved list. This practice alone indicates that the high stakes tests are not being used diagnostically. If the intent is to diagnose learning problems, the states & districts would exempt those test takers’ scores from the aggregate. Failure is a feature not a bug, sensitivity to kids be d@#ed.
Why does our corporate culture revere such cruelty?
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Reading actively is not the same skill as listening to text, which is a relatively more passive endeavor.
However, the test of one’s comprehension does not depend on either. Comprehension is comprehension, and if one has a profound LD, it is diabolical to not have the test read out loud. This student’s parents should look into a suit.
I am curious as to what the specific disability is, as much of a “label” we could put on it.
If such a student were to learn how to read well, it might take longer to do so because of the developmental disability, and to force her into the time frame the system wants is not honoring her needs.
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Kids can be exempt from the tests, I have one in my class this year. Basically it means they have to get a label stating they are mentally retarded, which isn’t the case. Thank you NY.
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For all our lofty rhetoric about what a “gift” children are, we, as a society, are remarkably hostile to children. We want them to shut up, do what they’re told and make us look good. Just take a good gander through the parenting section of your local bookstore sometime – you’ll see row after row of books advising parents how to control their children (of course, usually the euphemism “discipline” is preferred). And if you really want to see how child-friendly we are, just try stepping on board an airplane with your infant and your two-year-old.
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What an important highlight of language and metaphor use. I think they are unaware and don’t care. Down here in Georgia, the big thing lately seems to be all about “RIGOR.” Curriculum must have RIGOR and teaching will be evaluated for RIGOR and the common core is going to increase the RIGOR and so on. It is a buzzword for the corporate reformers, I believe.
Rigor means “harsh inflexibility in opinion, temper, or judgment: severity” and “the quality of being unyielding or inflexible: strictness.” Yeah, that is just the approach I want you to take with my bouncy five year old daughter, my reserved ten year old daughter, and my mild-mannered 13 year old son. Yeah. Just.
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Whenever you hear the word RIGOR, think RIGOR MORTIS.
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Exactly! A death sentence.
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Rigor may be the wrong word; maybe “robust” and “well rounded” and “engaging” are better terms.
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RR,
But “rigor” is the term the rheephormers like to use.
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Ripping off a bandaid hurts for a short time (an instant) and the pain goes away. Test/math anxiety doesn’t go away, especially when we continuously put them in test mode. To make things worse we attach high stakes to the tests. The sustained levels of stress never allow the brain to come back to a non-heightened state. The brain can only take so much of the cortisol at high levels for so long until it begins to damage the brain leading to psychological problems such as depression. I am sometimes tempted as a mandated reporter to call DCFS on the powers that be for abusing these kids. I can’t help but think of that poor young girl named Devin who committed suicide over a low math test grade in the “Race To Nowhere” movie by Vickie Abeles.
We are literally killing our kids by what we are doing to their brains.
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My math score on the FCAT was 4 points shy of passing in 10th grade. I wouldn’t have graduated high school with this score. I had to go to mandated tutoring sessions for a year. After that year, they lowered the passing score, and my score was fine. I didn’t have to take the test again.
But the anxiety stayed with me for years, and in my first year of college I ended up with anxiety attacks before tests. I needed therapy to cope. I still struggle with anxiety. All of this because of 4 points on a test I passed a year after I took it. Maddness.
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Kinder,
Your story is a poignant example of the unintended consequences of what we are doing. Hopefully you can embrace what happened to you and turn it into a positive to make a change for the better by impacting students in a better way. I like a quote I read recently on one of the many blogs I follow but can’t remember who to give credit to. “The person you will become is more important than your score on the test.” It reminds me of a saying I’ve been using when I pass out report cards…”The letters that make your name are far more important to who you are than the letters on that piece of paper. Don’t let them define you.”
Thanks for posting…Tell your story often!
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New York education officials want to wage war on the students and give them arbitrary and capricious tests. How does that improve anything?
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It doesn’t. That’s why our only option is to opt-out.
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For some reason, there seems to be a desire to “prove” that teachers aren’t teaching what they are supposed to be teaching. What better way to exhibit this than to force students to take tests that are nearly impossible to prepare for but for which time must be allotted to help give students “possibilities” as to what might be on the test? After all, they will have to read passages and answer questions about topics they might or might not find interesting or that have vocabulary that they may or may not have been exposed to. To act as if these tests are in any way “definitive” of a child’s true learning progress and, therefore, indiciative of the success of a teacher is more than appalling.
I do understand that the curriculum needs to be “stepped up” and to include more critical thinking skills (which, by the way, are difficult to evaluate). Education needs to include an introduction to and a proficiency with using computers. But, to be sure, computers are expensive (until recently) and need constant technical trouble-shooting. Macs seem to need to be wholly replaced because they can only be updated so many times. Programs that students use are relegated to a number of site licenses, so scheduling time using the progams limits the availability for all students. Expenditures for wiring and airports and other technical upgrades are high and often financed by applying for grants. However, given the fact that many schools cannot afford to do this, yet will receive the same testing procedures, it makes success that much more difficult.
In the meantime, the powers that be continue to insert curricula from the standards into the district curricula, and it doesn’t seem to matter … at all … that students may have insufficient backgrounds, may transfer in and out of the school, and are doomed to fail … even if the teacher spends hours and hours trying to help the student find success.
So, indeed, it seems that this is not treating students favorably.
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More and more, I feel like I’m being told to abuse children. I teach kindergarten. We test them twice a month. They get tested in the second week of school. Pearson told us to do this, so we do. When are we ever going to “just say, ‘no’?”
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Key Word..”Pearson”-$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
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Why are you all surprised with these comments? These people don’t care. And teachers have been complaining for years about the CCS and what it would mean. We complained years ago against NCLB. So we called “lazy”, “union supporters” “mediocre”. The educrats and rheeformers want Deltas, not Alphas in their work force.
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“childism”
Thank you, Dr. Ravitch, for giving a name to the institutional abuse of children.
This description of childism particularly struck me …
“One of the essential ingredients of childism is a claim by adults to the effect that children are ours to do with exactly as we see fit, or children exist to serve, honor and obey adults.”
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Thank the author cited. She wrote a book with that title.
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Yes, thank you. I should have been more specific. My thanks to psychoanalyst Elisabeth Young-Bruehl for identifying “childism” and to Dr. Ravitch for this most informative post.
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Amen
Sent from my iPhone
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Simply, if these birds feel this way about children, they should not be in education
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They aren’t. They’re in business.
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Thought you all would like to know what state and city reps are up to–preaching CCSS tests in church. Now that is something new.
http://gothamschools.org/2013/04/15/king-and-walcott-take-their-common-core-message-to-church/#more-103107
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That is one of the most appalling things I have ever seen. Propaganda in worship services. What is the country coming to?
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“Why such hateful talk about children?”
Perhaps because these are hateful people, doing hateful things.
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Thank you Diane. Your position in this blog entry is identical to where we stand on tests occurring in NY this week. It’s not the test, it’s the timing. It isn’t teachers not wanting to be accountable, it’s teachers not wanting students to be harmed.
Dick Iannuzzi, President, NYSUT
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Mr. Ianuzzi,
CYA as much as you want but it IS the test.
The tests are not accurate measures of a teacher’s effectiveness, and YOU of all people should have been oppositional and confrontational about tying test scores to teacher effectivenss.
Your rhetoric in your small comment here on this blog is politicized, but I don’t suppose you recall speaking to me at the One Nation rally in D.C. in which you succinctly stated, “NYSUT is not a petition based organization. We cut deals behind closed doors because otherwise, NOTHING would ever get done between schools and NYSED!”
At least you were honest then.
You and NYSUT have shot off the canons by cooperating with NYSED, and now, just like Ms. Weingarten, from whom I received direct, personal correspondance several weeks ago, you dress up like Clara Barton and go out into the fields and attempt to nurse our wounds with the “Tell it like it is” tour.
Your recent memo of what and how to talk about opting out DELIBERATELY dd not spell out the indispensable variety of explicit, specific scenarios in which we could speak out as private citizens. By limiting the green lights in your communication, which you probably have already researched with counsel, you once again encourage passivity vs. active leadership. This is clearly your model, and I’m neither misguided nor misinformed. You could have illustrated specific examples in greater detail as to how teachers can speak out as private citizens.
I am going to pose one such example to all readers on this blog, and I pose it as a result of fortitude and critical thinking, not politicization:
If teacher X is a teacher of school X and is off the premises of school X during non-employment hours and teacher X is talking to their neighbor parent X, who is not employed by the district but whose children attend school X, over the fence of their backyards and both people live in the municipality of the school district, then teacher X as a private citizen has every first amendment right to opine to parent X that their child should opt of standardized testing and apply for some kind of alternative assessment path and teacher X explains why. Parent X acknowledges that teacher X is talking as a private citizen and not as an employee of district X because teacher X explicitly prefaced the conversation with, “I am speaking strictly as a private citizen outside the scope and premises of my employment . . . ”
Under those circumstances, a teacher should be safe to speak. But don’t believe me. Speak to a seasoned attorney who specilaizes in constitutional law. I did.
You need to assume leadership like Karen Lewis, take bigger risks, and stop triangulating. You’ve already been “found out” and your rhetoric aimed to please NYSED will not fool any teacher in NY state. Your memo that encouraged us to never sign the NY Principals’ Petition was disgraceful. Instead of joining in the solidarity of parents, administrators, teachers, and students, you backed away in a move thought to appease NYSUT.
And in that specific move, you reduced your credibility 10,000 fold.
Fool us once, and it’s your fault. Fool us 200 times more, and it’s our fault.
With regard to the Taylor and Triborough components of the law, you have to let the house burn down before you can build a stronger mansion and fortress. You latch onto teachers’ fears of job and income loss, but we’re already facing that AND our mischaracterization by standardized tests as a result of tying scores to our evaluations. Such a move is pure educational fascism and malpractice.
You can say we are up against immeasurable forces of money and power in NY state.
So what! We can look to other people in the last 100 years throughout the world who did not militantly oppose oligarchies and fascism, and look at what became of them.
You have little critical time to do a 180 and become the un-Weingarten, but time will tell who you decide to be . . .
Disenfranchised and disenchanted,
Robert Rendo
Nationally Board Certified Teacher
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De acuerdo.
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Well stated Robert. Unfortunately I fear Mr. Ianuzzi is caught up in the black hole that Albany has become, and where doing the right thing happens more frequently by accident than by design.
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Tuppercook,
Ianuzzi CHOSE to become caught up . . .
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I don’t go in for conspiracy theories…But given the corporate dominance in this most recent “reform” effort, it does make sense that teachers weren’t prepared to teach what will be on the tests, so that children haven’t adequately learned what will be on the tests and that, as New York’s Education Commissioner King has promised, test scores will be much lower in New York State this year. Those low scores will lead to an (unquestioning, superficial) media feeding frenzy, followed by public outrage. That will serve the corporate interests of Pearson and others in selling their “solutions” to our public schools. Or at least the ones that survive the next round of new charter schools run by corporate interests. Yeah. Perfect. So a question from a newbie. Is there a book or comprehensive article that details this wedding of corporate interests and education policy at the national level? Besides Pearson, who else is involved? How does the College Board tie in to the Common Core (or does it)? Thanks.
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Jlorax, of course the College Board is connected to Common Core. David Coleman, the architect of Common Core, is now president of the College Board.
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Is he not also on the board of Students First, Michelle Rhee’s outfit? Or maybe he was.
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They are pushing my students in the deep end. They wouldn’t be so hurtful if they knew and loved the children – it is so easy to hurt ID #s on a page. I really hope my students, who have only been in the U.S. for one year are sleeping right now and not up worrying about the test. I wish the powers that be could have seen where they were last year – brand new, with limited literacy in their first language and no understanding of English words. I wish the powers that be could see my students where they were today – reading and writing analysis of a poem independently, then excitedly sharing their thinking in a group of proficient English speakers. Their hard work has paid off and progress has been made, even if passing a fifth grade test is not likely this year. I really hope they ignore their scores, and all the “you can’ts” they will hear and remember my words about college, about how their hard work will allow them to catch up. I hope they believe me that their test scores don’t matter. If I lose my job someday because I choose to teach at a school with a newcomer program, it will be worth it. I hope the anxiety I saw in their eyes today has passed, and that they are now asleep.
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I teach kindergarten “regular ed.”. We have ELD (English Language Development) rotations. I had a 5 year old student last year whose first language was Philipino. She was placed, not by me but by her CELDT score, in an ELD class with 3-6 grade moderate/severe special ed. students. There were no other kindergarteners in the class. When I told my principal that this was not a good placement for her, I was told that I need to “let go” and that she, the 5 year old kindergartener, needs to “buck up”. Nice, huh? Does compassion exist anymore?
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That principal needs to be fired…today.
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Perhaps we should ask why the state and federal governments are putting band-aids on kids when we know the children are not the ones who are broken.
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