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testing thus ending NCLB’s mandates that require yearly testing, and to lift mandates requiring states to administer outdated tests that are not aligned to school curricula.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.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I highly recommend that you all read “Fred Klonsky’s Blog” for updated information and honest (yes, how unusual!) and amusing reporting. He’s attending as an IL EA-Retired delegate, & is giving us up-to-the-minute news. Just the other night, he posted about his dinner with Barbara Mandolini–a must read!
retired but miss the kids: is this the site you mean called “preaprez” at word press?
quoting preaprez: “The leadership has created a winning strategy of tough talk on testing and building a protective wall around Common Core. The leadership doesn’t want to lose what little influence they have left among the Democrats in Washington by opposing Common Core. And the delegates are not ready to oppose leadership on this question.” I’m trying to find out what happened after Fred spoke…. will keep looking. but I think he describes accurately what the “leaders” are conveying — if they have any influence????? at all????? in the A. Duncan policies ….. I’m glad Fred is there to express the views of so many .
You are absolutely right, Jean. This is not a progressive resolution, it’s just a retrenchment of the failed (and in many cases lame duck) sold-out leadership.
We, in our individual states, must fight for the clarity to fight. We will use whatever parts of this resolution we can, to stop all centralized corporate “accountability” in its tracks in every state.
Retiredbut miss: be ready for the big guns to come out now that we hear from NEA. Fordham I. will be on the attack , the anti-unions will up the speed and the volume on their microphones…. Jay P Greene in his punditry of sports metaphors and his superiority in his league, is calling it “betrayal” on the part of the teachers unions and using the Nixon metaphors.
quoting Greene: “The entire Common Core enterprise has been characterized by shocking political naivete and over-reach. Despite investing a fortune in political operatives and holding weekly conference calls “directed by Stefanie Sanford, who was in charge of policy and advocacy at the Gates Foundation,” the folks pushing Common Core did not anticipate that the Unions would betray them and oppose the implementation of Common Core as soon as it suited their purposes. ”
there is more at jaypgreene.org
cx. “Common Core Political Naivete and the Enemies List” from JPGreene blog
Now that the demise of the public school system is NEAr, is the monster beginning to wake up?
Indeed. This is a first. Where has the leadership of NEA been for 10 years? Playing a game of CYA?
An education group growing up and doing what it should be doing? Refreshing if true.
Reblogged this on seldurio and commented:
Now let’s hope for action.
I’ll believe that the NEA is really against this toxic testing when they dump their support for Common Core, which has INCREASED testing nationwide. Until then, the NEA is simply blowing smoke.
NEA will never dump their support for Common Core:
“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.”
NEA leadership are on Gates’ payroll, period.
I wonder if NEA leadership will drop their support for Common Core when they see that shrinking budgets are allocating money to Common Core testing but the schools have no nurses, larger class sizes, no arts programs, no guidance counselors or social workers, no libraries or librarians. There comes a time to say which side you are on.
Diane, as they used to say on L.A. Law, “Asked and answered”.
“I wonder if NEA leadership will drop their support for Common Core when they see that shrinking budgets are allocating money to Common Core testing…”
They have seen all this and have not dropped their support for Common Core.
“There comes a time to say which side you are on.”
That time has long since come and gone and they have repeatedly told us exactly which side they are on.
If they keep defending Common Core while it sucks up more school budgets, and more teachers are laid off, they won’t have membership in the future. It would be their own death warrant. Gates did not give them enough millions to commit suicide.
Hey now, Diane, don’t go giving Billy the Gatesy any ideas!
Dump CC. If you want to stop over testing, keeping CC is not the way. It promotes private business to keep reaching for Federal dollars through software, hardware, etc. to implement the program.
Reply to Jean, et.al.–Sorry I took so long–just opened this. Yes, “Fred Klonsky’s Blog” is preaprez@word press. Any problems w/that, simply Google “Fred Klonsky’s Blog. That’ll get you there. As to your question, Jean, Fred’s reporting what happened after he spoke & all else, so everyone will be informed. And…keep on reading him–it’s a daily habit with me! And–oh, of course the “big guns” will come out–were they ever put away?! For those of you in Illinois–you know about the ruling in terms of health benefits ordered not to be rescinded. Many are commenting that this means inevitable death for our pension busting bill, SB 1. Not a foregone conclusion–not by a long shot. As Jean describes, the “big guns” on that one are already aimed & cocked.
We can always “hope for the best” but we must, without a doubt, ALWAYS “prepare for the worst.”
“Whatever valuable information testing mandates provided. . . ”
Yeah, whatever. (said with the most blase attitude imaginable)
Because further on: “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. . . ”
CCSS and the accompanying tests PROVIDE NO “VALUABLE INFORMATION” whatsoever due to the myriad epistemological and ontological errors identified by Noel Wilson that render the whole standards and standardized testing regime COMPLETELY ILLOGICAL, INVALID and the uses of results UNETHICAL.
To understand why read his never refuted nor rebutted TOTAL DESTRUCTION of those EDUCATIONAL MALPRACTICES in “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.