Jeff Bryant analyzes the debate about the federal testing mandates and concludes it’s all about politics, not education.
By now, it is obvious that the testing required by “No Child Left Behind” did not leave no child behind. Child poverty, which is the root cause of low test scores, has increased, and testing does nothing to reduce it.
Bryant writes:
“How is the debate going? See if this makes sense to you:
“Conservatives want to let states have potentially more options for wasting taxpayer money on wayward attempts in “accountability,” and liberals are insisting on continuing measures that have been mostly bad for the education of black and brown students.
“Huh?”
According to the Southern Education Foundation, 51% of public school pupils–a new majority–are poor. More testing does not reduce poverty.
Bryant writes:
“Tests do uncover disparities in our education system, as the National Assessment of Education Progress has revealed for many years long before NCLB. Gerwerz, again, at Education Week, notes about NAEP, “When I look at it, I see the absence of nearly every single trigger point in today’s testing debates. Every kid required to sit for hours and hours of tests? Nope. Here we have only two hours of testing, given to a sample of the school’s students. Weeks of test prep? Nope. Students tied in knots over potentially bad test scores? Nope.”
“Further, as [Bruce] Baker concludes in a subsequent post, if the federal government really wanted to do something about inequities in our education system, it would develop policies that gave states more incentive to correct what’s really causing inequities: the ways “in which our schools are organized and segregated.”
Why isn’t anyone talking about this? Because the discussion over testing, at least how it’s being carried out in Washington, DC, isn’t really about education. It’s about power politics. Seen in this frame, it’s really hard to believe the Democrats are going to win.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am so glad to see Jeff Bryant put the word “accountability” in quotes. Yes, “accountability” testing is a political hoax, and it is about power, not justice.
I just resubscribed to the Education Opportunity Network.
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For Reformers, “accountability” = retribution for the act of being a teacher.
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Education has been about adults, not children, for quite some time and RttT only exacerbated this. Lowering our goal to “college and career ready” from “lifelong learners” did a disservice to our youth and our future.
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While I much appreciate the attention being bringing to a good piece by Jeff Bryant, I refer viewers to six days ago, here on this blog, ‘NCLB Architect Defends NCLB”:
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2015/01/13/nclb-architect-defends-nclb/
Read the last paragraph. Then pose the question: what do allegedly “practical” people who want to get “practical” things done do in order to achieve “practical” goals?
Hint: don’t do what the mainstream politicians [whatever their labels] did with NCLB and RTTT, i.e., they tied impossible-to-achieve feel-good aspirations with an impossible-to-achieve time frame and impossible-to-achieve numerical goals, the very vagueness of the big stuff tied to very specific legally binding mandates that brought very few rewards and a great many punishments.
One way to look at it: they made all the “little people” [shades of the Queen of Mean Herself, Leona Helmsley!] aka “teachers” responsible for everything while absolving themselves [again, without regard for political labels] of responsibility for providing the means necessary to achieve those goals.
Another way to look at it: they focused on the seeming objectivity of test scores to confuse and mislead the general public into thinking that labeling, sorting and ranking students, teachers and schools—again, along with very few rewards and many many punishments—would somehow force somebody to something to somehow improve things.
The failure of “measure and punish” [thank you, Audrey Amrein-Beardsley!] was manifest right from the beginning.
So let’s get practical. Really. Not rheeally. You want civil rights? Voting rights for women? End to chattel slavery? Workers safety protections?
Want a “better education for all”? That’s what you go for. No gimmicks. None of the “misleads” and “decoys” and “distractors” [borrowing from the lexicon of the test makers for the ‘not best answer’ answers] but right to what is required to solve the actual problem. And whatever it takes to make it happen—absolutely, positively, NO EXCUSES.
Kings and queens used to be the norm. Not any more. Democratic ideals were completely and totally impractical—according to the royalists. Turns out they were wrong.
😏
The equivalent of royalists in education are with us today. They’re just thinking of new ways to rebrand and resell tired out ideas and plans for the education of OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN. But when it comes to THEIR OWN CHILDREN, there’s Lakeside School and Delbarton School and Cranbrook and Sidwell Friends and such…
So how’s about what sauce for the wealthy geese is sauce for all the ganders too…
Just sayin’…
😎
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That’s how “they” sell school choice to the masses: You, too, can have what we have if you just choose to.
Except that it’s a lie, a very expensive lie effectively disguised as cake.
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Thanks Diane!
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Reblogged this on onewomansjournal and commented:
Jeff Bryant analyzes the debate about the federal testing mandates and concludes it’s all about politics, not education.
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I agree with him that it’s political, but I think it’s pretty clear there are different factions in ed reform and the “accountability” people and the “choice” people have all the power and drive every decision.
The “liberals” in ed reform never get any of their priorities. They got nothing in NCLB and they’ll get nothing in NCLB II. They’ll get LESS in NCLB II than they did in NCLB because now that Democrats have adopted the GOP position on privatization Republicans don’t even have to give them anything in return for charter/voucher promotion and funding.
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In my work fighting Common Core (and all the other insane RttT reforms), I spend a lot of time with conservatives and especially those in the real Tea Party (not the charicatures funded by the Kochs and pedded on Fox). Since I voted Green in 2012 and Democrat for the 25 years until then, it’s been an interesting expereince in “multi-partisanship” given that we also include Dems and non-aligned as well. My view is a bit different from those in Mr. Bryant’s post.
My own view is that the Reagan-era conservatives simply didn’t want to acknowledge poverty and racism in American society. The real problem was moral—society had become too permissive and Americans (the Reaganites excepted of course) had gotten too lazy. To them, testing had to be hand-in-hand with any federal aid as way to ensure “quality”. Along with this came the idea of using the “self-policing market” as a means to fix the quality problem while eliminating federal involvement. Over time, the Democrats came around to this thinking too, as the Clintonp-led DCC emphaized the academic élitism of the Baby Boomers. Remember, it was Bill Clinton who eded “welfare as we know it.”
The problem was that these ideas created a private-enterprise behemoth, especially when Silican Valley and their armies of scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and most of all “entrepreneurs” realized they could sell all of their technologies to support testing, virtual schools,. and social services. Parents and too many teachers rushed to jump on the bandwagon of “21st Century Education”. Now, after decades of policies—from both Democrats and Republicans—that have supported the billionaires in Silicon Valley and Wall Street, we find that the behemoth runs the government. We can’t change course easily, since everyone in D.C. and in most of the state houses and departments of education is on the payroll of the rich.
The rich want all of this, just as their forebears did in the early 20th Century, as a means for providing cheap labor while keeping them and their children in charge. Those who support these fixes, thinking that somehow test scores will shame these people into doing something about poverty, are just fools. As Diane’s recent posts about the real purpose of the PISA and OECD being to destroy cultures and ethics to form a “capitalist paradise”, so these projects are just furrthering that goal.
The only way to get free is to fight this. There are no compromises. Fiddling about with technical discussions about testing or wasting money is useless. To the 1% who are pushing this crap, any money spent on their projects isn’t wasted.
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I looked at the witness list for Congress, too, and it doesn’t reflect who is actually setting the policy for k-12 public schools in this country. It’s academics and a teacher.
If they really want to have an honest congressional debate on public school policy, call Eli Broad, Bill Gates, the Netflix guy, the Wall Street funders, and representatives from each of the 5000 “orgs” promoting privatization as witnesses. Make it public. A real debate.
It’s fake.. None of the genuinely influential (money) people are invited, but we all know they’re furiously lobbying in the background.
I want to hear from the people who are actually making decisions 🙂
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The “accountability” craze is counter productive to addressing the real issue, the disparity in funding in school districts and poverty. I disagree with the assertion that most liberals want to retain the status quo. The current funding system creates districts of “haves and have not.” The have nots are districts with students that require a lot more services so it does not make sense. If the federal government were working to reduce segregation, it would help with this issue, but they seem to ignore their responsibility. I think in the future we need we should look for creative solutions to encourage all socioeconomic levels learn together. All students should attend a safe, clean, well maintained school with adequate resources and a well trained professional staff. If we can reduce the number of rich schools and poor schools, we can teach our citizens to embrace individual differences and our sub groups to be less defensive and angry. This is the promise of democracy. Our society will be healthier and more equitable as a result.
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Take the politics out of it. Have retired teachers do assessments and make them fair, on a level playing field and with the intent of supporting teachers in their effort to provide quality education to all students.
When that happens, then their is automatic due process as no one wants poor teachers with our precious kids. However, we must not continue to hang teachers out to dry. Teaching is a complex profession.
To provide quality learning to a wide diversity of students requires a lot of planning, thus quality and quantity planning time.
To reach every student we must have small class size. How else will we reach everyone? 40 students and the 8 or 10 or more who need the attention, simply don’t get it.
To take every child from where they are, forward, we must develop a plan that quashes our ridicules failure system that drives kids out of school.
Envision a school where assessment is not cheapened with a narrow scope and the convenience of a test but broadened with assessment of the whole child. Make it real.
Change is a process. It’s time to change it forward, leaving the comfort of the 18th century design of education and designing one that recognizes the purpose of education is learning, not winning.
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To DC, It’s definitely about power politics. To Wall St. And Silicon Valley, it’s totally about the blood sports of money and big data and the egos of the miseducation specialists and dilettantes in those places. Throw in all the theocrats including those who are also politicians and sprinkle with some Libertarian anti-gummint privatizers and you have one of the worst parties of the season. Serve with a side dish of cash fattened lobbyists.
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HT to moosesnsquirrels for beating me to it on the 3 major centers of power in the USA and their effect on policy.
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