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Show Your Patriotism! A Reminder to Sign the Petition for Gus Morales in Holyoke

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2014 //
5

I signed the petition to support Gus Morales, who was unjustly fired a few weeks after he was elected as head of the union in his school in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Gus spoke out vigorously against high-stakes testing and privatization. He opposed the posting of student scores on a public “data wall,” which he thought was humiliating. Let’s help Gus get at least 3,000 signatures, then aim for 5,000.

 

Here is the message I received after I signed:

 

Thank you for signing my petition, Teachers’ Voices Must Be Heard – Support Gus Morales.

As of now, the petition has received 2325 signatures! To really make a difference, we need a lot more people to join in. Can you share this petition with all your friends?

Click here to share it on Facebook:

Share on Facebook

Then, forward the email below to everyone you know.

Thanks!

—Erin DuFresne
Here’s a sample message to send to your friends:

———————————————————————————-
Hi,

Gus Morales was a highly rated teacher for two years. Then on February 3 he spoke out to the School Committee about data walls, many of which listed students by name along with their scores on standardized tests and many of which were posted in areas accessible to the public (illegal under FERPA). After speaking out at the School Committee meetings, Gus was observed and given his first problematic evaluation. These observations and negative evaluations escalated after Gus was elected president of his local.

Gus grew up in Holyoke and graduated from Holyoke High School. He is a veteran, bilingual, and a teacher who has the support of students and parents. He is one of the few Puerto Rican teachers in Holyoke even though the student body is over 75 percent Hispanic. Gus is a male role model for many students. In May, Gus was elected president of the Holyoke Teachers Association with overwhelming support from his fellow teachers.

Gus is being non-renewed because he is a leader in the union and a leader in speaking out in support of students and the schools they deserve.

That’s why I signed a petition to Holyoke School Committee, which says:

“To the Holyoke School Committee:

We urge you to investigate the non-renewal of the contract of Gus Morales. Gus received strongly positive evaluations until he became a leader in speaking out against illegal posting of student scores on standardized tests. Since then, and especially since he was overwhelmingly elected president of the union local, Gus has been targeted. He was given highly dubious negative evaluations and has now been told his contract will not be renewed. Gus is an asset to Holyoke and should be retained. He should not be punished for speaking up for students and the schools they deserve.
“

Will you sign the petition too? Click here to add your name:

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/teachers-voices-must-1?source=s.fwd&r_by=9722215

Thanks!

Categories Education Reform

Jefferson on the Need to Diffuse Knowledge to the General Public

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2014 //
21

Thomas Jefferson advocated for a system of public education. He proposed “A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge.”

Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth, that, possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes; And whereas it is generally true that that people will be happiest whose laws are best, and are best administered, and that laws will be wisely formed, and honestly administered, in proportion as those who form and administer them are wise and honest; whence it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those person, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or other accidental condition or circumstance; but the indigence of the greater number disabling them from so educating, at their own expence, those of their children whom nature hath fitly formed and disposed to become useful instruments for the public, it is better that such should be sought for and educated at the common expence of all, than that the happiness of all should be confided to the weak or wicked:…

Note that one of the chief functions of education was to arm the populace with knowledge to protect themselves against the potential tyranny of the powerful. Note also that he recognized that most parents would not be able to afford to educate, and that education “should be sought for an educated at the common expense of all…”

Jefferson had his limitations. He was a slave owner. He did not advocate for the education of black children. But he understood that education is a fundamental institution in a society that hopes to be democratic and that it must be public education, paid for by all.

Categories Education Reform

What Dennis Van Roekel Said in Denver

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2014 //
94

I just received a copy of Dennis Van Roekel’s speech to the NEA RA in Denver. 

 

It is his last, as he is retiring as President.

 

He waxed nostalgic but he hit out appropriately at the toxic culture of the corporate reformers. He lambasted NCLB. He is a mild-mannered and kindly gentleman, so it is hard to imagine him getting really angry.

 

He said:

 

In all of our history, we have always advocated for ways to improve education, but now we had to fight for the very existence of public education. As public education policy shifted from leveling the playing field into turning education into a competition with winners and losers, we needed to become the champions of equity, to define solutions that drive excellence and success for all students. The report “A Nation at Risk,” was the beginning of an attempt to totally redefine America’s system of public education. First, they labeled public education as a failure, a liability. And then in 2002, they lowered the boom with No Child Left Behind. Now, this was passed with overwhelming support from both Democrats and Republicans, but No Child Left Behind became an insidious tool used to undermine and attack public education. It’s been driven by mandatory high-stakes testing in grades three through eight. It became the mechanism for labeling and blaming public education, and by establishing a flawed measure of success–Adequate Yearly Progress, politicians created the means, the opportunity for corporate reformers to remake public education into a whole new source of profits that would be gathered at the expense of students.

And so now, 12 years after No Child Left Behind, where are we? These politicians and their policies have created a difficult environment for students and educators, delegates. You know clearly the issues that have become part of our daily lives and discussions: intense dissatisfaction with the conditions of learning and teaching, the need for more time in almost everything we do, time to teach, time to learn, time to plan, and time to collaborate with colleagues as we deal with all of these new demands placed upon us. The issue of privatization of more and more jobs of our education support professionals. The intrusion of for-profit players, both in higher education and K-12. Especially troubling is the increasing influence and control of huge corporations like Pearson and others. And the incredible onslaught of corporate reformers like Democrats for Education Reform, Michelle Rhee, and the like. Attacks on educators’ rights and even attempts to silence our voice. And if that were not enough, our lives revolve around testing–the overwhelming amount and the offensive misuse of scores from high-stakes standardized tests. For the delegates in this hall, for our members back home, the feelings generated by these and other issues are strong and they are real. I’ve seen them. I’ve heard them from you. And I share them with you. Feelings of anger, frustration, disappointment, and unrealized expectation of the Department of Education. Whether student, active, retired, whether higher ed, ESP or teacher, it doesn’t matter. We are all impacted and demoralized by these attacks. And your feelings are totally justified. I mean, really, 12 years is plenty long enough to evaluate their strategy of mandatory testing and test-based accountability. Plain and simple, their strategy has failed America’s students, especially students who are poor and students of color. And I say to you that it is simply not acceptable to continue down this path. The direction must change? Am I right? Am I right?

As an organization, public education, we’re at a critical point. We’re at another milestone in our history. You know, I guess getting older does have some advantages. It has allowed me to see and to experience many different things. And I can tell you that living through “A Nation at Risk,” No Child Left Behind, and the increased intensity of corporate reform, I have seen so many examples of injustice in our systems, and the negative impact on students. When I think of the 10 years preceding No Child Left Behind, I wish I could go back and do things differently. If I had only understood then what I understand now. You see, all of us in the education family–all of us–we knew the system was not fulfilling the promise, not fulfilling the promise for all of its students, not doing what they needed, and we allowed the politicians of the day, Congress, to define the solution, and their solution was No Child Left Behind. Now, I want to state something very clearly. We, the NEA, cannot allow politicians to define the terms of change and accountability for yet another generation of students. We cannot let that happen again!

 

That is strong stuff coming from a kindly man like Dennis. But notice what he did not say. He did not mention Race to the Top, which mandated the idiotic program of evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students. He did not mention “value-added assessment,” which has forced teachers to teach to the test. He did not mention Arne Duncan, the worst Secretary of Education in our history, who supports toxic testing in every form. He did not mention the Vergara trial, which challenges the due process rights of teachers.

 

I do not mean to be unkind to Dennis, who is leaving the presidency of the nation’s largest teachers’ union and who was generous enough to name me as NEA’s Friend of Education in 2010, a memory I will always treasure.

 

But I wish, I wish, I wish that he and Randi and every teacher leader would shout from the rooftops that what is happening now under the misguided “leadership” of the Obama administration will not stand! I wish they would recognize that Arne Duncan is a tool of DFER, and that the Obama administration has outsourced American education to the Gates Foundation. I wish they would issue a call for teachers to stand together to say NO to policies that hurt children, such as the Common Core tests that last for 8-10 hours. I want them to be angry and determined and proud and determined. I wish. I wish.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Unions

A Reading List on Testing

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2014 //
13

Bob Shepherd posted this reading list on testing.

The list was compiled by Alfie Kohn.

I have a few additions:

Todd Farley, Making the Grades

Banesh Hoffman, The Tyranny of Testing

Phil Harris, The Myth of Standardized Testing

Jim Horn and Denise Wilburn, The Mismeasure of Education

Daniel Koretz, Measuring Up

Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education

Richard Rothstein, Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right

For a short online version of the Rothstein critique that is very powerful, read “Holding Accountability to Account”

Here is Alfie Kohn’s list:

The “five fatal flaws” of the Tougher Standards movement are adapted from Alfie Kohn’s book THE SCHOOLS OUR CHILDREN DESERVE, from which a shorter book called THE CASE AGAINST STANDARDIZED TESTING has been spun off.

You may also be interested in a list of essays about standards and testing available on this website.

Other resources:

Two books on standards: WILL STANDARDS SAVE PUBLIC EDUCATION?, a short essay by Deborah Meier followed by comments from other thinkers, published by Beacon Press;

ONE SIZE FITS FEW: The Folly of Educational Standards, by Susan Ohanian, published by Heinemann.

A collection of essays about the destructive effects of (and dubious intentions behind) NCLB: MANY CHILDREN LEFT BEHIND (Beacon Press), with contributions by Meier and Kohn as well as Ted Sizer, Linda Darling-Hammond, George Wood, Stan Karp, and Monty Neill of FairTest.

Also on NCLB: WHEN SCHOOL REFORM GOES WRONG by Nel Noddings (Teachers College Press); and ENGLISH LEARNERS LEFT BEHIND: Standardized Testing as Language Policy by Kate Menken (Multilingual Matters).

Also see NoChildLeft.com and this excellent summary of the law and its effects.

Other books about testing:

– Phillip Harris et al., The Myths of Standardized Tests (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011)

– Sharon L. Nichols & David C. Berliner, Collateral Damage: How High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America’s Schools (Harvard Education Press)

– Sherman Dorn, Accountability Frankenstein: Understanding & Taming the Monster (Information Age, 2007)

– M. Gail Jones et al., The Unintended Consequences of High-Stakes Testing (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003)

– Linda McNeil, Contradictions of School Reform: Educational Costs of Standardized Testing (Routledge, 2000)
–

Marita Moll, ed., Passing the Test: The False Promises of Standardized Testing (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2004)

– Kathy Swope and Barbara Miner, eds., Failing Our Kids: Why the Testing Craze Won’t Fix Our Schools (Rethinking Schools, 2000)
–

Gary Orfield and Mindy L. Kornhaber, ed., Raising Standards or Raising Barriers?: Inequality and High-Stakes Testing in Public Education (Century Foundation Press, 2001)

– Peter Sacks, Standardized Minds (Perseus, 1999)

– W. James Popham, Testing! Testing!: What Every Parent Should Know About School Tests (Allyn and Bacon, 2000)

– Gerald Bracey, Put to the Test: An Educator’s and Consumer’s Guide to Standardized Testing (Phi Delta Kappa, 1998).

A book about Nebraska’s recently aborted attempt to build assessment from the classroom up, thereby challenging the top-down premise not only of NCLB but of the whole “accountability” movement of which it’s a part: Chris W. Gallagher, Reclaiming Assessment: A Better Alternative to the Accountability Agenda (Heinemann, 2007)

Information from and about FairTest, the leading national organization offering a critical perspective on standardized testing. Its website, http://www.fairtest.org, includes an evaluation of every state’s testing policy and links to a listserv called the Assessment Reform Network. A related group, the Coalition for Authentic Reform in Education (CARE), which opposes the new testing program in Massachusetts, has drafted an alternative assessment proposal — a very useful document for anyone who wonders (or is asked), “If not standardized tests, then what?” For a more recent answer to that question, see Ken Jones’s article “A Balanced School Accountability Model: An Alternative to High-Stakes Testing” in the April 2004 issue of Phi Delta Kappan.

A remarkable collection of examples of, and essays about, the destructive effects of standardized testing and related policies at http://www.susanohanian.org.

A list of state and national websites devoted to challenging the tests can be found about halfway down the page devoted to practical strategies. Note in particular a new (2011) group called “United Opt Out National,” with a website and Facebook page, devoted to organizing people to refuse to take the tests.

Audio- and videotapes of presentations by Alfie Kohn on these topics: http://www.alfiekohn.org/tapesdvd.htm

A powerful study that finds no evidence of improvement on national exams (such as the NAEP and the SAT) for states that use high-stakes testing. Rising scores on state tests appear to reflect only training to do well on those particular tests; indeed, by some measures, students in high-stakes states actually fare worse on independent measures of achievement.

Beardsley and Berliner on “High-Stakes Testing, Uncertainty, and Student Learning” http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/297/423

A devastating analysis, based on the high-stakes TAAS test in Texas, of how efforts to raise scores effectively undermine the quality of teaching and learning — and how this effect is most pronounced in schools that serve poor and minority students. This chapter, by Linda McNeil and Angela Valenzuela, is included in the book mentioned above, Raising Standards or Raising Barriers?. For the most comprehensive analysis of the effects of testing in Texas, click here to be linked to a lengthy article by Walt Haney.

Research demonstrating that when teachers are held accountable for raising standards and test scores, they tend to become so controlling in their teaching style that the quality of students’ performance actually declines:
Flink et al., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 59, 1990: 916-24.
Deci et al., Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 74, 1982: 852-59.
Pelletier et al., Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 94, 2002: 186-96.

Copyright © 2007 by Alfie Kohn. This article may be downloaded, reproduced, and distributed without permission as long as each copy includes this notice along with the author’s name. Permission must be obtained in order to reprint this article in a published work or in order to offer it for sale in any form. Please write to the address indicated on the Contact page at http://www.alfiekohn.org.

Categories Accountability, Testing

Lloyd Lofthouse: Public Schools Made America Great

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2014 //
47

Reader Lloyd Lofthouse submitted this comment:

“The U.S. public schools are part of the infrastructure of the country. They are as vital—if not more so—than the highways, bridges, waterways, airports, electric grid, water and gas lines, etc.—-infrastructure built mostly by hard working Americans and not by billionaires, who often take credit for what they never sweated or toiled to build.

“Regardless of the cherry picked misinformation and lies of the greedy, power hungry fake education reformers and the fools who believe this swill, history and facts prove that the public schools were the foundation and are still the foundation, the first steps in life of almost every citizen, that made the United States the wealthiest and most powerful country on the planet, the country that helped tip the balance in World War I and win World War II.

“And those public schools have improved steadily for more than a century as they evolved along with the country into a super power.

“In fact, the only way the fake education reforms could make the public schools appear to be failures was to pass unjust, impossible laws that demanded the schools be successful with 100% of the children—something no other country on the planet in recorded history and into the future has ever or will ever achieve. To make sure the new private sector Charter schools would look successful, they created a double standard where only the public schools were transparent and had to achieve the impossible. The new charters hide behind an opaque wall and are not held to the same impossible standards, but even then the failure and fraud of these new Charters is so obvious that they can’t hide the truth and it is coming out—-the word is spreading. In time, there won’t be enough fools left in the country believing the fake education reformers for them to continue their charade.”

Categories Education Reform

Peter Greene: I Will Not Quit; They Will Not Win

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2014 //
46

Peter Greene, a high school teacher in Pennsylvania, describes the present moment–in which powerful people are tearing apart public education and attacking the profession of teaching–as either a passing storm or the apocalypse.

“A far-reaching network of rich and powerful men is working to take the public education system as we know it and simply make it go away, to be replaced by a system that is focused on generating profit rather than educating children.

“Teachers have been vilified and attacked. Our professional skills have been questioned, our dedication has been questioned, and we have been accused of dereliction and failure so often that now even our friends take it as a given that “American schools are failing.”

“One of the richest, most powerful men on the planet has focused his fortune and his clout on recreating the education system to suit his own personal ideas about how it should work and what it should do. He’s been joined in this by other wealthy, powerful men who see the democratic process as an obstruction to be swept away.

“We have been strong-armed into adopting new standards and the programs that come with them. These are one-size-fits-all standards that nobody really understands, that nobody can justify, and that are now the shoddy shaky foundation of the new status quo.

“And in many regions, our “educational leaders” are also part of the reformster movement. The very people on the state and local level who are charged with preserving and supporting public education are, themselves, fighting against it.”

Despite the powerful forces determined to crush and privatize public education, Greene says, he will not quit.

He writes:

“Someone has to look out for the students. Someone has to put the students’ interests first, and despite the number of people who want to make that claim, only teachers are actually doing it. The number of ridiculous, time-wasting, pointless, damaging, destructive policies that are actually making it down to the students themselves is greater than ever before. Somebody has to be there to help them deal with it, help them stand up to it, and most of all, help them get actual educations in spite of it.

“I don’t want to over-dramatize our role as teachers, but this is what professionals do. Police, lawyers, doctors, fire fighters– they all go toward people in trouble. They run toward people who need help. That’s what teachers do– and teachers go toward the people who are too young and powerless to stand up for themselves. And for professionals, the greater the trouble, the greater the need.

“The fact that public education is under attack just means that our students, our communities, need us more than ever.”

Is there hope? Yes. None of the reformer ideas actually works. They will get bored. They will move on.

“The reformsters are tourists, folks just passing through for a trip that will last no longer than their interest. They’ll cash in their chips and move on to the next game. But we’ll still be here, still meeting the challenges that students bring us. They’ve committed to education for as long as it holds their attention and rewards them; we’ve committed for as long as we can still do the work. They think they can sprint ahead to easy victory; we understand that this is a marathon.

“I don’t care if this is a passing storm or the apocalypse. I choose not to meet it huddled and hoping that I’ll somehow be spared. And while we keep defaulting to battle metaphors, I’d rather not get into the habit of viewing every other human as an enemy that I have to combat with force of arms. I learned years ago that you don’t wait for everything to be okay to do your dance and sing your song; you keep dancing and singing, and that’s how everything gets closer to okay.”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Teachers and Teaching, Testing, US Education

Be a Patriot: Support Gus Morales!

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2014 //
7

Defend a brave teacher! Defend students! Sign the petition to reinstate Gus Morales!

Gus Morales was elected head of his school union in Holyoke, Massachusetts, as an outspoken opponent of high-stakes testing and privatization. Children’s test scores were posted in a data wall. Morales objected.

Only weeks after his election, he was fired.

“As I started speaking out, I was targeted with negative observations. One can infer that the negative observation was meant to quiet me. As long as I kept my mouth shut, everything was good, and then when I started speaking about what was happening to my students, I was let go,” says Morales, one of only a handful of Puerto Rican teachers in a school district that is nearly 80 percent Hispanic.

“Morales’ anti-privatization platform also called for a revitalization of the teachers’ union. “In the past, the union had defended its teachers, but it did so in a way that was not out in public. I want to be a teacher advocate where I attend school committees and speak on behalf of teachers,” he says….”

“A key factor in Morales’ decision to run was the massive expansion of high-stakes testing in the classroom. “My kids spend between 25 and 28 days per year just doing tests. The administration is obsessed with increasing reading and math scores, so their answer to that is to increase instruction time in those areas,” he argues.

“As a result, he says, local students are losing valuable learning opportunities in non-tested areas. “The effect is that kids in the suburbs where test scores are higher are getting a well-rounded education, and kids in Holyoke are not,” he says.”

Barbara Madeloni, the new president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association promised to fight for Morales.

Please support Gus Morales by signing this MoveOn petition.

Categories Massachusetts, Privatization, Testing

Joseph Stiglitz: Inequality Is Not Inevitable

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2014 //
35

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at Columbia University, writes that the increasing inequality in the U.S. is neither inevitable nor necessary. Other nations have experienced economic growth while assuring greater equality. We could as well, but the super-rich have managed to capture control of enough politicians to prevent any legislation that might increase their tax rates and assure a fairer society “with justice for all.”

Stiglitz writes:

“So why has America chosen these inequality-enhancing policies? Part of the answer is that as World War II faded into memory, so too did the solidarity it had engendered. As America triumphed in the Cold War, there didn’t seem to be a viable competitor to our economic model. Without this international competition, we no longer had to show that our system could deliver for most of our citizens.

“Ideology and interests combined nefariously. Some drew the wrong lesson from the collapse of the Soviet system. The pendulum swung from much too much government there to much too little here. Corporate interests argued for getting rid of regulations, even when those regulations had done so much to protect and improve our environment, our safety, our health and the economy itself.

“But this ideology was hypocritical. The bankers, among the strongest advocates of laissez-faire economics, were only too willing to accept hundreds of billions of dollars from the government in the bailouts that have been a recurring feature of the global economy since the beginning of the Thatcher-Reagan era of “free” markets and deregulation.

“The American political system is overrun by money. Economic inequality translates into political inequality, and political inequality yields increasing economic inequality. In fact, as he recognizes, Mr. Piketty’s argument rests on the ability of wealth-holders to keep their after-tax rate of return high relative to economic growth. How do they do this? By designing the rules of the game to ensure this outcome; that is, through politics.

“So corporate welfare increases as we curtail welfare for the poor. Congress maintains subsidies for rich farmers as we cut back on nutritional support for the needy. Drug companies have been given hundreds of billions of dollars as we limit Medicaid benefits. The banks that brought on the global financial crisis got billions while a pittance went to the homeowners and victims of the same banks’ predatory lending practices. This last decision was particularly foolish. There were alternatives to throwing money at the banks and hoping it would circulate through increased lending. We could have helped underwater homeowners and the victims of predatory behavior directly. This would not only have helped the economy, it would have put us on the path to robust recovery.”

Educators see the results of what Stiglitz describe in the unwillingness by politicians to provide equality of educational opportunity. Our Secretary of Education is a champion of privatization who prefers competition to equity and doesn’t care about segregation. State legislatures are cutting school budgets. Class sizes are growing. Teachers pay for school supplies. Public education is dying in urban districts like Philadelphia and Detroit, as rich white bankers pump money into privatization. Some see public education as a sector ripe for profit and plunder. In some states, such as Ohio, Michigan, and Florida, the for-profit charter industry has captured control of the government and suffers little or no regulation.

Stiglitz concludes:

“The problem of inequality is not so much a matter of technical economics. It’s really a problem of practical politics. Ensuring that those at the top pay their fair share of taxes — ending the special privileges of speculators, corporations and the rich — is both pragmatic and fair. We are not embracing a politics of envy if we reverse a politics of greed. Inequality is not just about the top marginal tax rate but also about our children’s access to food and the right to justice for all. If we spent more on education, health and infrastructure, we would strengthen our economy, now and in the future. Just because you’ve heard it before doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try it again.

“We have located the underlying source of the problem: political inequities and policies that have commodified and corrupted our democracy. It is only engaged citizens who can fight to restore a fairer America, and they can do so only if they understand the depths and dimensions of the challenge. It is not too late to restore our position in the world and recapture our sense of who we are as a nation. Widening and deepening inequality is not driven by immutable economic laws, but by laws we have written ourselves.”

Categories Economy, Poverty

NEA Endorses National Campaign Against “Toxic Testing”

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2014 //
18

NEA delegates approve creation of national campaign for equity and against “Toxic Testing”

Campaign to focus on assessments and developing real accountability systems

DENVER—The National Education Association (NEA) will launch a national campaign to put the focus of assessments and accountability back on ensuring equity and supporting student learning and end the “test blame and punish” system that has dominated public education in the last decade. The average American student and teacher now spend about 30 percent of the school year preparing for and taking standardized tests. NEA’s nearly 9,000 delegates voted today at its 2014 Representative Assembly for new measures to drive student success.

“The testing fixation has reached the point of insanity,” said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. “Whatever valuable information testing mandates provided have been completely overshadowed by the enormous collateral damage inflicted on too many students. Our schools have been reduced to mere test prep factories and we are too-often ignoring student learning and opportunity in America.”

The measure approves the use of NEA resources to launch a national campaign to end the high stakes use of standardized tests, to sharply reduce the amount of student and instructional time consumed by tests, and to implement more effective forms of assessment and accountability. The impact of excessive testing is particularly harmful to many poor, minority, and special needs students.

“The sad truth is that test-based accountability has not closed the opportunity gaps between affluent and poor schools and students,” said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. “It has not driven funding and support to the students from historically underfunded communities who need it most. Poverty and social inequities have far too long stood in the way of progress for all students.”

The anti-toxic testing measure calls for governmental oversight of the powerful testing industry with the creation of a “testing ombudsman” by the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Consumer Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission. The position will serve as a watchdog over the influential testing industry and monitor testing companies’ impact on education legislation. NEA will continue to push the president and Congress to completely overhaul ESEA and return to grade-span testing thus ending NCLB’s mandates that require yearly testing, and to lift mandates requiring states to administer outdated tests that are not aligned to school curricula.

“It is past time for politicians to turn their eyes and ears away from those who profit from over-testing our students and listen instead to those who know what works in the classroom,” said Van Roekel.

NEA delegates also reaffirmed their commitment to high standards for all students and committed to further working with states that adopted the Common Core State Standards to ensure they are properly implemented and that educators are empowered to lead in that implementation process.

Delegates also passed new language on improving accountability systems, pushing for implementation of systems providing “real accountability in our public education system,” said Van Roekel. Delegates agreed to convene a broad representative group of NEA leaders from the national, state and local level to develop plans for public school accountability and support systems.

“Educators know that real accountability in public schools requires all stakeholders to place student needs at the center of all efforts. Real accountability in public schools requires that everyone—lawmakers, teachers, principals, parents, and students—partner in accepting responsibility for improving student learning and opportunity in America.”

Van Roekel insists that in order for real, sustainable change to occur in public education, major work must be done to provide equity in our schools and address the growing inequality in opportunities and resources for students across our nation.

The group will examine what steps NEA can take to build further on the components of excellence in teacher evaluation and accountability identified in NEA’s Policy Statement on Teacher Evaluation and Accountability, which was approved at the 2011 Representative Assembly in Chicago.

The accountability group will engage stakeholders in the education and civil rights communities to help respond to the growing inequality in opportunities and resources for students across the nation. Inequality must be addressed in order for real, sustainable change to occur in the public education system.

To follow floor action at the NEA 2014 Representative Assembly, please click here or follow @RAtoday on twitter at twitter.com/RAToday.

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Testing, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. education, Unions

New Mexico Okays Pearson Contract for PARCC

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2014 //
3

New Mexico’s purchasing agent approved the award of a contract to Pearson to develop the Common Core PARCC tests, despite the absence of competitive bidding. AIR had lodged a complaint against the process since Pearson was the only bidder. The New Mexico contract covers testing of 6-10 million students in 14 states. It is worth about $1 billion to Pearson.

“Last December, the Washington DC-based American Institute for Research filed a protest with the state purchasing agent arguing that the bid for the contract was written favorably for Pearson. Namely, AIR’s takes issue with how the bid required the winner of the contract—whether it was Pearson or a different company—to use Pearson’s online testing system for the first year of testing.

“Such requirements were uncompetitive to other companies, AIR argued. Indeed, only Pearson responded to the request for proposal for the PARCC contract.”

AIR is deciding whether to appeal the decision to the judicial system or drop their appeal.

Categories Common Core, Education Industry, For-Profit, New Mexico, Pearson, Testing
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