Michael Beyer, a principal in Illinois, was invited to participate in a task force on assessments for the State Board of Education. As he put it:
“I pose this question with absolute seriousness. I was invited to participate on a task force for the Illinois State Board of Education to review the assessments currently mandated across the state. I originally assumed this would be a group pulled together to serve as a political charade during our municipal election period. My cynicism proved wrong when, at our first meeting State Senator Lightford herself described the statewide discomfort with PARCC. It was evident this task force will be able to share authentic input on informing the state legislature. This is hopeful.
“What concerns me is how we spoke of education. The rooms, one in Chicago and one in Springfield, meeting concurrently and in real time linked via a webcast, were filled with real stakeholders and experienced educators representing the P-20 spectrum, including parents, teachers, superintendents, deans and principals like myself. There was not a single person representing what has become known as the ‘corporate reform’ agenda.”
Eventually the task force asked, “Who are our masters?” The Federal Department of Education, of course. And the Illinois State Legislature.
Beyer notes:
“The fact is the Illinois State legislature, and I would venture to say every legislature, doesn’t know much of anything about effective education. It was laid bare when it was revealed key lawmakers didn’t know the difference between interim, formative and summative assessments, yet have passed laws mandating high-stakes assessments that have been highly questioned as to their validity.”
And then he had a radical idea: everything was upside-down:
“We need to flip on its head our notion of who controls education. We need a libertarian movement in education. The real reform has to happen in who we perceive our masters to be. Our masters need to be our students and teachers. That is where all decisions need to begin and end. Not at the district, state or federal level…
“We need to stop asking how we serve our masters and recognize that teaching and learning begins with the teacher and the student. We need to scrap all of our systems and begin by asking our students and teachers what they need. This is a radical proposition, but it is also simple and the most effective. Instead of disentangling the ball of yarn and deciding which assessment and curricula vendors will receive our millions of dollars, and billions of dollars nationwide, let’s build a system using backwards design that begins with the classroom and enables teachers to receive the support and professional development they need. We can continue to hold teachers accountable, and we don’t need high-stakes, highly-questionable assessments to do so. Let’s make sure we begin to serve our true masters, which are our students and teachers, not the countless assessments and legislative bodies.”
Radical idea? Or one that has always existed but that has been so TWISTED and turned around under NCLB/RTTT/Common Core etc as to not even be recognizable… but then this has been the “corporate ed reform” plan…. control of education by those invested only in the profits it can make – not control of education by those who actually want to teach or to learn! God forbid education be real!
Exactly, but prepare to be engaged in an ongoing game of whack-a-mole, beating back the monied interests and their bought politicians wherever they pop up, because they will not relinquish their control over public education without being absolutely forced to do so on many battlefronts.
BRAVO! On That Last Paragraph
If this comes true…all my Christmas wishes would be answered. The last time any real money was put into professional development Clinton was in office. To constantly push down mandates without any real PD. Trust me what I’ve been sitting through from one company after another…mostly Charlotte Danielson..has not been helpful in any way. Most of it has been CYA lessons. Teach this way and you might keep your job, your students might pass their tests. None of it lessons we can use in the classroom, none of it helpful in differentiation, none of it student directed…all of it assessment directed. All of it leading to more data for someone else, not the teacher and certainly not the student. Please give us back the power to teach to the student…not the test.
This post was the best holiday present anyone could have received!
All of the participants need to ask for Chris Koch’s immediate resignation as a first step. 10 to one he will be working for Pearson next month anyway. He certainly is now.
Chris Koch, our state superintendent, has not exactly been the cheerleader of local leadership. Pushback is growing; perhaps this group represents a recognition of growing rebellion. People are investigating ways to opt out of PARCC without bringing down the wrath of the Illinois DOE. At this point I think there is more of an interest in staying under the radar in any subversive activities. It is not good to be living in the state from which both the President and the Secretary of Education claim roots.
As to your last sentence, 2 old, definitely. It’s the reason as to why Koch & the ISBE stubbornly insists upon keeping the PARCC alive, all the while erroneously threatening Illinois parents & schools that it’s “illegal” & that “funding will be lost” should their choice be to opt out (people can go to the Mpre Than a Score website to verify the falsity of Koch’s threats). Ill-Annoy is one of only 6 or 9 states still signed on to this mess (I’m not sure of the number, & I think that Missouri just dropped out, as well.) A letter of concern signed by a number of state legislators has recently been sent to the ISBE.
But–as aforementioned–it would just make Koch look SO bad to disagree with Obama/Duncan.
So, therefore, the children of ILL-Annoy MUST suffer the consequences of such puffery.
Governmental oversight of education has the duty to provide funding and ensure equal access. Beyond that it oversteps its bounds.
Alas, in Illinois, it doesn’t even do that.
What we are seeing from our state and federal governments today amounts to dereliction of duty.
I first read “a task force on assessments for the State Board of Education” as someone coming up with the good idea of assessing the board itself.
I hope to read that story in the future.
Love your take on the task force title. A good idea to assess the board and every legislator.
It has been said, you may fool all the people part of the time and some of the people all the time but not all the people all the time.
Again, ignorance is as bad oftentimes as real directed tyranny. Ignorant people are very easily manipulated, they really do not know better. Otherwise good, well intentioned people do bad things.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. An aphorism well worth keeping in mind. Tyranny from manipulated minds, tyranny of tyrants, bad results can be expected.
This is worth keeping an eye on. This post needs to be sent to every politician, state board of education, and superintendent in the country.
The fact that the question of masters was asked indicates that teaching is not a profession. It would never have occurred to doctors, lawyers, or accountants to even think that way because they are autonomous to a much higher degree. This is one reason that Bill Gates has had the success he’s had: teaching is not a profession and does not have the mentality to be one.