Protests are gathering steam against high-stakes testing. Parents, students, and educators are organizing to fight the data-driven mechanistic view of schooling that is ruining education.
Politicians follow, they don’t lead. Most have no idea of the damage done by NCLB and Race to the Top. They think that “reform” is positive. They don’t know that the language has been distorted to hide the barrage of damaging policies now harming our community public schools and hurting children.
When our grassroots movement grows large enough, they will hear us. And they will rush to get in front of the parade.
This reader wrote:
“You are not overly optimistic Diane. The ground IS shifting, the tide turning! Western New York students are opting out of tests already this year. Like many other students, my kids are refusing any test used to evaluate a teacher. This is our way of protesting current education “reform.” But this battle will be won with everyone using their voice, and showing opposition, in their own way. The Partnership for Smarter Schools does not promote opting out or public protest. They are committed to bringing about real, common sense reform through legislation. They are playing an important role in the fight against the use of standardized, high stakes assessments.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“School . . . is a mere method of discipline which refuses to take into account the individual. . . . a manufactory for grinding out uniform results. I was not a creation of the schoolmaster: the Government Board of Education was not consulted when I took birth in the world.” –Rabindranath Tagore, 1927 Nobel Prize Winner for Poetry, quoted in the film Schooling the World.
Tagore was responding to the cultural imperialism of Western education in his country.
Well, we are seeing something akin to that in the current “reforms.” We are seeing a concerted attempt to standardize children—to make them into uniform products for the economic machine, for that 21st century workforce that Arne Duncan’s despotic Department of Education keeps talking about DESPITE THE ACTUAL DIVERSITY OF OUR ECONOMIES (plural) AND OF ADULT ROLES IN THOSE.
Kids differ. They differ a lot.
They are not machine parts to be identically milled by some Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth.
The invariant, totalitarian, one-size-fits-all vision of the standards-and-testing crowd is fundamentally inhumane.
Instead of seeking to build an educational system that reflects, in its rich and varied offerings, the actual needs of a complex, diverse, pluralistic democratic state, a system that recognizes the diversity of children and discovers those differences and builds upon them, the current “reforms” attempt, rather, to produce uniformity of the kind that one gets in, say, specifications for threads of bolts and screws—children as machined parts.
The new standards [sic] were created, Duncan’s office tells us, “to produce national markets for products that can be brought to scale.” Uniform markets. For the big-box providers of educational materials. The guys who write the checks to the politicians. Welcome to the Walmartization of U.S. education–as if we weren’t already well down that path to perdition.
The “reform” vision appeals to authoritarians on the right and the left, to those who can’t tolerate the notion that there are many, many roads by which one can achieve many different kinds of excellence.
Albert Einstein said, “I believe in standardizing automobiles, not people.” He said that “Standardization is a great peril which threatens American culture.”
It is quite clear what he would think of the current standards-and-testing mania. It would sicken him.
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It’s already the case that a child can go through 12 years of schooling here in the U.S. and have no one ever discover that she has perfect pitch, say.
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A child can go through 12 years of schooling and will NEVER be diagnosed as dyslexic – THE most common reason for having a learning disability.
Testing is too expensive. Ignoring dyslexia should be a NATIONAL SCANDAL.
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Great comments and yes I completely agree with you NYS teacher. That is the whole reason I’m in this fight – my dyslexic children (I have 2 of them). Pull the plug on decent public schools and there will be many more illiterate children in our country (there are already too many).
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@NYS Teacher – I am so discouraged to hear this. NYS is where I grew up. Of 2 dyslexic siblings the first went undg, but the one 7 yrs his jr benefited from SpEd law in the ’70’s, was dg early, went on to become an award-winning teacher & at 50 is an asst princ in a prestigious upstate hs. It was she who walked me thro the law in the ’90’s to make sure my 2 (of 3) LD kids got all the appropriate tests in NJ. What has so changed inNYS?
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Not in my music room! I’d find her right away. 🙂
I wonder if talk of trimming back DOE budgets will come up when our Fed government seriously tackles our debt issue.
Anyone heard of anything along those lines? I know Republicans have always wanted to trim it back.
?and if so, would it halt RttT?
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We need good diagnostics. We need teachers who listen to and observe children (and we have those). What we do NOT need–what we EMPHATICALLY do NOT need–are invariant, one-size-fits-all junk science summative tests that distort curricula and pedagogy and turn our schools into test prep centers.
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OPT OUT.
And when the test scores come in the mail, mark the letter “JUNK SCIENCE: Return to Sender” and put it back in the post.
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Thank you for this great idea.
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I’ll be labelling mine, “Attn: [Comissioner’s Name] – Invalid Test Scores Enclosed”
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Not only have I opted out my child, but I sent back her scores with the following letter to John King:
October 1, 2013
Dr. John King
Commissioner of Education
89 Washington Ave.
Albany, NY 12234
Dear Dr. King,
Enclosed please find my daughter’s recent ELA and Math NYS scores. I am returning them to you because they are invalid. The scores on these tests are invalid for a multitude of reasons, including poor test construction, cut scores that were not developed until after the tests were administered, lack of oversight and transparency in the construction of the tests and the scoring process, and most importantly, they are not reflective of my daughter’s aptitude or knowledge.
In my opinion, you should be ashamed of yourself for submitting New York State’s students and dedicated teachers to this farce. These tests are a sham.
I refuse to accept that my daughter, who was on the honor roll for the entire year last year and received awards at her school for outstanding effort and academic achievement, is suddenly in need of AIS and considered as performing below proficiency as a result of a faulty test. I also refuse to believe that her teachers did not properly educate her last year or prepare her to progress to the next grade level.
Your education policies are abysmal. Common Core is nothing more than a way to channel much needed money away from Public Education into the pockets of Big Business. Your tests are an affront to hard-working and dedicated teachers and a blatant attempt to privatize education.
You may keep your scores. They mean nothing to my daughter or myself.
(Western NY Parent)
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Robert D. Shepherd: I would add one important proviso.
What you describe is what the edufrauds and their accountabully underlings are trying so desperately—and deceptively—to mandate for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN.
For THEIR OWN CHILDREN, I provide only a select few links:
Link: http://schools.cranbrook.edu/home
Link: http://waldorfpeninsula.org
Link: http://www.harpethhall.org
Link: http://www.lakesideschool.org/academics
The champions of “education reform” think this is what John Dewey actually meant to say: “What the best connected, most famous and wealthiest parent wants for his child, that is what must be denied to all the other children of the community. Anything less makes no $ent$, and left unchecked, destroys our pocketing humongous amounts of $tudent $ucce$$.”
Only on RheeWorld can you get John Dewey saying the above. Here on Planet Reality it goes somewhat differently: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must we want for all the children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.”
Really. Not Rheeally.
🙂
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well said, Krazy
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Robert D. Shepherd: thank you for the kind words.
Delivery alert from Planet Reality.
Richard Nesbitt, INTELLIGENCE AND HOW TO GET IT (2010), just arrived.
I am looking forward to sitting down with it later today. Thank you for the recommendation.
🙂
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Krazy: Your last paragraph–short, sweet & to the point, which brings another to mind–
“Love thy neighbor (as thy would love thyself).”
As it’s been said, the rest is commentary.
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Of course, I was referring to your 11:41 AM commentary.
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retiredbutmissthekids: I am not a religious person, but there is a lot of wisdom in John 6:31: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”
I am not joking: today, this might be written as a chastising admonishment to the edubullies to “Treat OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN as you would have others treat YOUR OWN CHILDREN.”
No high-stakes standardized hazing rituals for mine, no high-stakes standardized hazing rituals for thine.
Of course, the possibility of this revelation penetrating the minds of the leading charterites/privatizers is, well—
the owner of this blog keeps reminding people that there are no panaceas, no magic feathers, no silver bullets.
Yet we don’t have to wait for the edufrauds and their accountabully underlings to come to their senses. Some good friends have in the past reminded me that “the Lord helps those that help themselves.” Amen! And even lacking divine intervention:
“I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” [Frederick Douglass]
A 75-year-old historian of American education—with an ever growing number of support crew and fellow runners—is beginning to overtake and beat the “education reformers.”
They’re entered in the Race To The Top Of The Heap [also known as Few Winners, Many Losers]. We’re in a grueling marathon that will go on and on known as “Better Education For All.”
Funny thing happened on the way to the finish line: we’re beginning to win.
🙂
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@KrazyTA… Maybe the Sidwell Friends School should be changed to The Sidwell Friends School of the 1 Percent Elite!!!
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It seems to me that the way to give everyone the possibility of making the same choices that the wealthy make in education would be to give everyone the resources to spend on education through, for example, a voucher that would pay the annual tuition and expenses of these schools.
Vouchers are generally disliked by folks here, but perhaps the problem is that they are not worth enough to make a difference. Would folks be in favor of vouchers that would allow everyone to spend as much educating their children as the parents whose children are educated at Sidwell Friends? That would seem to be the best way to satisfy Krazy TAs criticism.
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I am very happy to see NY parents, school principals and teachers this year stand up to this nonsense. I am cyber-rooting for them!
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Have you seen the White Paper report from D.C. on the high level people who do not think CC will make it and is junk? Tests are needed like they gave us in every class at least weekly so the teacher knew where we were. I think we only took one large test a year and it was maybe a day. Big deal. Without the tests weekly or so there is no way to know how a student is doing. They should not be socially promoted so as a friend says “How do you properly evaluate a high school history teacher if the students cannot read or comprehend at even the 5th grade level. This is not the fault of the high school teacher as all the problems come from elementary school as that is where the basics are taught. Have you seen finally the results of not the attendance of elementary but the ADA or who really shows up? Well, it is tragic as much of the truancy is in elementary school. If you look at the enrollment grade by grade you will not see this as enrollment is a fantasy number of those who signed up not who really comes, that is ADA. You only get paid on ADA. Is it any wonder they have been hiding this fact. The problem is with elementary schools and the lack of concern for the ability by the time they leave to go to either middle or high school depending on how that district has set it up.
No more social promotion and no more Zero Tolerance. Let’s take the problem students and put them into special schools with highly trained people with behavioral and learning problems instead of kicking them out onto the streets and ruin their lives. We at CORE-CA will take the lower test scores, bring them off of the streets as LAUSD now has over 117,000 who do not come to school everyday at an expense of a lost over $1.25 billion. We will have a better society if we concentrate on education and keeping them off the streets instead of high test scores. When you drive off the low performers you FAKE raise your scores and pass the problems off to other agencies at greatly increased costs. Like youth authority and jail, welfare, medical and such. It is about COMMUNITY not just one small world education. When K-12 fails it almost immediately ends up in the criminal justice system. The stats are there.
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Yes, if kids with problems are weeded out by the reform system, they could pose a 100K liability for 10 years in the criminal justice system. A million dollar liability per lost scholar. As usual, reformers fail to take the total picture into consideration.
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Exactly, TC! The “reforms” will create a lot of reform schools.
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Is it a sign that the tide is turning since Rhee does not have the microphone at NBC’s 2013 Education Nation Summit? Merrow may have made more of a difference than thought.
http://www.educationnation.com/index.cfm?objectid=DC2A5A96-A5D0-11E2-B3E2000C296BA163
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Excellent observation, LLC! Aww–isn’t Michele popular anymore?
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retiredbutmissthekids: good question.
As always, I rely on the soundest Cagebusting Drivel Driven Data Managing counsel that can be scoured from realms hither, thither, and yon.
“Men lie and women lies but numbers don’t.” [Dr. Steve Perry, “America’s Most Trusted Educator”]
Diane Ravitch, REIGN OF ERROR (September 2013, hardcover), info accessed 9:37 PM, PST, 10-7-13:
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #69 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#1 in Books > Education & Reference > Schools & Teaching > Education Theory > Reform & Policy
#1 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Children’s Studies
#2 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Public Affairs & Policy
Michelle Rhee, RADICAL (February 2013, hardcover), info accessed 9:38 PM, PST, 10-7-13:
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #79,064 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#54 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Educators
Please be advised that Dr. Eric Hanushek has checked this math many times over, and found that 79,064 – 69 usually equals 78,994 given some very sophisticated Value-Added Modeling that he was kind enough to share with me. You can never be too careless, er, careful when it comes to mathematical obfuscation.
Now if we convert the Amazon numbers into hours [this is not an capricious selection, or so I have been advised by Dr. Hanushek, among others] then remembering that there are 24 hours in a day, and 365 days in every three out of four years [I know this is very very complicated but bear with me; the jargon is absolutely necessary], with every fourth year having 366 days, we can arrive at some impeccably numerical conclusions.
24 x 1 = 24 [number of hours in a day]. 24 x 365 = 8,760 hours in a ‘normal’ year. 8,760 x 3 = 26,280 hours in three ‘normal’ years. A ‘leap year’ [remember, it has an “intercalary” day] has 366 days, so 24 x 366 = 8,784. Three ‘normal’ years + one ‘leap’ year = 26,280 + 8,784 = 35,064.
35,064 [four years of hours] x 2 = 70,128. Rounding off a bit the remaining 8,866 [in Ms. Rhee’s favor] gives us three more years. In other words, 8 + 3 = 11 years. RADICAL is 11 years behind REIGN OF ERROR in quality. A very significant difference. And when calculated as a measure of loneliness, REIGN OF ERROR is on pretty much everyone’s dance card while RADICAL is still waiting (years and years after the fact) for an invite to the high school graduation prom.
But I digress. So let me do so a little more…
If we were to use some of the more preferred Value-Added Modeling systems available (Tennessee comes to mind) and consider the Amazon numbers as weeks, let’s say, rather than hours, then REIGN OF ERROR is brand spanking new while RADICAL predates the European Middle Ages and may actually be considered a product of the early European Dark Ages. But let’s not rub it in; after all, VAM was never meant to punish/humiliate and reward/praise. [????]
And don’t get me started on Criterion-Referenced Loneliness—it’s a pretty scary and uncomfortable calculation, I can assure you.
As always, glad to help.
🙂
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“Politician follow, they don’t lead.” Those are wise words. We all must ask our elected officials to follow us, for we are already leading the way!
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My thoughts exactly, especially about politicians :
http://b-loedscene.blogspot.com/2013/10/dont-look-now-but-ed-reform-is-leaking.html?m=1
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