Senator Lamar Alexander
U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C.
Dear Lamar,
I wish I could be in Washington for the hearings about the reauthorization of NCLB. I can’t make it for two reasons: I wasn’t invited, and I have a date to speak to parents at P.S. 3 in Manhattan who are outraged about all the testing imposed on their children.
I learned a lot about education policy and federalism after you chose me to serve as your Assistant Secretary of Education in charge of research and improvement and as counsel to the Secretary of Education (you). I am imagining that I am still advising you, as I did from 1991 to 1993 (remember that you and every other top administrator in the Department left a day before the inauguration of Bill Clinton, and you told me I was Acting Secretary for the day?).
What I always admired about you was your deliberateness, your thoughtfulness, your ability to listen to discordant voices, and your respect for federalism. You didn’t think you were smarter than everyone else in the country just because you were a member of the President’s Cabinet. You understood federalism. You didn’t think it was your job to impose what you wanted on every school in America. You respected the ability of local communities to govern their schools without your supervision or dictation.
NCLB was not informed by your wisdom. It set impossible goals, then established punishments for schools that could not do the impossible. I remember a panel discussion in early 2002 at the Willard Hotel soon after NCLB was signed. You were on the panel. I was in the audience, and I stood up and asked you whether you truly believed that 100% of all children in grades 3-8 would be “proficient” by 2014. You answered, “No, Diane, but we think it is good to have goals.” Well, based on goals that you knew were out of reach, teachers and principals have been fired, and many schools—beloved in their communities—have been closed.
NCLB has introduced an unprecedented level of turmoil into the nation’s public education system. Wearing my conservative hat, I have to say that it’s wrong to disrupt the lives of communities, schools, families, and children to satisfy an absurd federal mandate, based on a false premise and based too on the non-existent “Texas miracle.” Conservatives are not fire-breathing radicals who seek to destroy community and tradition. Conservatives conserve, conservatives believe in incremental change, not in upheaval and disruption.
I urge you to abandon the annual mandated federal testing in grades 3-8. Little children are sitting for 8-10 hours to take the annual tests in math and reading. As a parent, you surely understand that this is madness. This is why the Opt Out movement is growing across the nation, as parents protest what feels like federally-mandated child abuse.
Do we need to compare the performance of states? NAEP does that already. Anyone who wants to know how Mississippi compares to Massachusetts can look at the NAEP results, which are released every two years. Do we want disaggregated data? NAEP reports scores by race, gender, English language proficiency, and disability status. How will we learn about achievement gaps if we don’t test every child annually? NAEP reports that too. In short, we already have the information that everyone says they want and need.
NCLB has forced teachers to teach to the test; that once was considered unethical and unprofessional, but now it is an accepted practice in schools across the country. NCLB has caused many schools to spend more time and resources on test prep, interim assessments, and testing. That means narrowing the curriculum: when testing matters so much, there is less time for the arts, physical education, foreign languages, civics, and other valuable studies and activities. Over this past dozen years, there have been numerous examples of states gaming the system and educators cheating because the tests determine whether schools will live or die, and whether educators will get a bonus or be fired.
I urge you to enact what you call “option one,” grade span testing, and to abandon annual testing. If you keep annual testing in the law, states and districts will continue to engage in the mis-education that NCLB incentivized. Bad habits die hard, if at all.
Just say no to annual testing. No high-performing nation does it, and neither should we. We are the most over-tested nation in the world, and it’s time to encourage children to sing, dance, play instruments, write poetry, imagine stories, create videos, make science projects, write history papers, and discover the joy of learning.
As I learned from you, the U.S. Department of Education should not act as a National School Board. The Secretary of Education is not the National Superintendent of Schools. The past dozen years of centralizing control of education in Washington, D.C., has not been good for education or for democracy.
The law governing the activities of the U.S. Department of Education states clearly that no federal official should attempt to “exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, [or] administration….of any educational institution.” When I was your Assistant Secretary and Counselor, I was very much aware of that prohibition. For the past dozen years, it seems to have been forgotten. Just a few years ago, the current administration funded tests for the Common Core standards, which will most assuredly exert control over the curriculum and program of instruction. The federal tests will determine what is taught.
The nation has seen a startling expansion of federal power over local community public schools since the passage of NCLB. There is certainly an important role for the federal government in assuring equality of educational opportunity and informing the American people about the progress of education. But the federal role today is taking on responsibilities that belong to states and local districts. The key mechanism for that takeover is annual testing, the results of which are used to dictate other policies of dubious legality and validity, like evaluating teachers and even colleges of education by student test scores.
Sir, please revise the federal law so that it authorizes the federal government to do what it does best: protecting the rights of children, gathering data, sponsoring research, encouraging the improvement of teaching, funding special education, and distributing resources to the neediest districts to help the neediest students (which was the original purpose of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965).
In closing, may I remind you of something you wrote in your book of advice:
No. 84: Read anything Diane Ravitch writes about education.
—Lamar Alexander, Little Plaid Book, page 44
I agree with you.
Yours truly,
Diane Ravitch
Nice!
I drafted my letter last night, but need to review it before I send it….might still be a touch too angry. LOL
Diane, I cannot meet with the working group in NYC this Wednesday, but I did want to offer a suggestion. Can you and/or others create a slide presentation that centralizes all of the data and issues around privatization/cc/hst – and share it for free. It would be really useful to have it available for us grassroots folks to share. I would love to have data/facts/figures with vetted references available quickly. Just an idea….
Looking forward to an eventful 2015.
Well said, Diane. You have convinced me to send a letter, as well. The beginning of the end of my teaching was when I told the principal I didn’t believe all children could reach 100% by 2014, especially our special ed children. He didn’t agree with me. I ended up with a stacked class the next fall. I made it through a very difficult year with little or no help. The next year I went to another school, where I faced more problems. I guess I have more to say than I thought I did to Mr. Alexander.
Thank you for writing this letter Diane. It Lays out the arguments against high stakes testing clearly. If he has objections to your points, I wonder what they are. It would be nice to hear his response to your appeal. What is he thinking?
Jonathan, if I get a response I will let you know. The letter also is on HuffPost
My children, my family, and our country thank you for this letter – even those who don’t see what is happening will thank you when they finally get it. Fingers crossed for us all.
“If you keep annual testing in the law, states and districts will continue to engage in the mis-education that NCLB incentivized. Bad habits die hard, if at all.”
Respectfully, Diane, I think this lets states off the hook. While it is true that NCLB and RttT mandated many things, is there any possibility that some state politicians used the federal law to justify policies they supported anyway?
Didn’t the Bush/Obama approach start in Texas, under Governor Bush, and then spread to Florida under the other Governor Bush? Is that a fair read of how this happened? Texas and Florida seem to me to be the states that then justified other states adopting this approach.
As a counterpoint to “we had no choice!” I offer Governor Brown in California. He seemed to use his own judgment (to a certain extent, at least) rather than rushing to adopt everything that came out of DC. How did he pull that off when the rest of the governors were “coerced” into compliance?
Governor Kasich promotes 100% of the national ed reform agenda. He wasn’t tricked into anything. There isn’t a dimes worth of difference between the US Department of Ed plans and Kasich preferences. How much of this is finger-pointing between two sets of politicians, state and federal, who won’t accept responsibility for policies and approaches they all seem to support?
Chiara, NCLB did not propose evaluating teachers by test scores. That was Arne Duncan’s innovation, as part of Race to the Top. He has since moved on to suggest that colleges of education be rated by the test scores of students taught by their graduates, and he also has initiated a rating system for higher education.
Thanks for the response, but I think state leaders bear a huge responsibility for part of this. I think Republicans got what they wanted, which was the expansion of charters and vouchers, and Democrats got what they wanted, which was “accountability” in all it’s many forms.
I’ll see how Senator Alexander’s law plays out, but if it’s anything like the last 15 years of this it will be a trade. Public schools will get tests and “schools of choice” will get more funding and promotion out of DC. That keeps both sides, R and D, in the ed reform coalition.
I think it’s a rotten deal for public school kids, because all they get is the stick, but everyone goes home happy having achieved Job One on their respective agendas!
Arne Duncan’s relentless push to evaluate everyone up and down the ladder of education, linking human choices, life scenarios, skills, struggles, habits, etc, to mandated outcome, is such an ABSURDITY.
He is probably searching for more ‘non-correlations’ he can hang his pathological and sociopathic hat on. His inability to think intellectually and process scholarly information, is inexcusable, unexceptable and a joke.
He should go on Saturday Night Live…he could be useful in a truly pathetic SNL skit.
Get him away from children and teachers.
So good to see your reference to the federal law that prohibits exactly what USDE has been doing–including funding some not yet disclosed curriculum materials. The funding requests came from SBAC and PARCC respectively so they could move from the standards to the tests. There is a paper trail for their requests.
In any case this letter is beautifully crafted. You make it look easy. The sign of an expert. Thank you.
Why did the State of Ohio wait 15 years to evaluate how may tests they were piling on public school children? Were they forbidden to do that by the federal government? They have a state department of education. They didn’t even have to hire anyone to do the report. They’d still be adding tests if teachers and parents hadn’t finally broken through. In fact, they just added one last year- for third graders.
They waited 15 years because they swallowed the whole theory. They weren’t “coerced” into anything. They eagerly bought all of it.
“Jerry Brown is perhaps the most powerful leader in our country who actually understands what has happened to our schools as a result of standards-based data-driven reform. In a move that signals exactly what should be done with the moribund No Child Left Behind in Congress, Brown has issued a veto of a California law, SB 547, that revamped the state’s similarly flawed accountability system.
Governor Brown first made waves regarding education when, as State Attorney General, he wrote a scathing letter to Arne Duncan in response to Race to the Top.”
Brown managed to advocate on behalf of his public schools and use his own judgment. What happened to the other 49 governors? Why did some only step forward on federal overreach when the Common Core became a political issue with their base?
Where’s Governor Walker on testing and federalism? I can’t make heads or tails of this cowardly mush:
“A spokeswoman for Gov. Scott Walker wouldn’t comment on whether he supports fully funding the new assessments, saying Walker would review the budget request.
Walker has repeatedly expressed a distaste for the Common Core standards, and has in the past called for their full repeal before softening his stance more recently.”
All I can say is, Thank you for all you do and for fighting the good fight!
You said it better than most of us could say it Thank You!
Superb. Love the reasoning and the tone.
The one thing I might add is how the testing movement and evaluation system is affecting how potential teachers are reconsidering career options. I don’t think anyone can question that the Reform Movement has led to declining numbers entering the profession, and I would submit we are losing high-quality teachers.
I wish I didn’t think this is a done deal. I think Chiara has her finger on the pulse of what is going to happen. When was the last time Secretary Duncan (or should I say Bill Gates?) didn’t get what he wanted from Congress. Actually, has there been a first time that Secretary Duncan hasn’t gotten what he wanted from Congress?
No. 84….a rule everyone should follow!
Great job Diane. What I love is this is one letter he may actually read. I am still working on mine. I am also writing one to respond about higher education and I encourage everyone to make sure they write both letters. The higher education letter is due Feb. 2.
Hey, I can come up with rules too!
😏
And as a great [dis]believer in stink ranking, er, stack ranking, that #84—let’s start at the top and keep it simple and clear…
Rule #1: When it comes to education, take your cue from the postings and many of the comments on “Diane Ravitch’s blog A site to discuss better education for all.”
Rule #2: When it doubt, refer back to rule #1.
Always glad to help. And I didn’t need another 82…
😎
Oh, good grief – Mike Petrilli is spouting this all over Twitter this afternoon: http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2015/01/20-chalkboard-annual-testing-chingos-west
I wonder if he’s seen this yet? http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database/Grants/2010/07/OPP1021483
Diane, thank you for this letter to Senator Alexander. I too have written and posted my thoughts which are similar to yours. But my question is, are we going far enough? In many districts in California, there are many more wasteful, invasive and unnecessary tests than the SBAC or PARCC. There are AR tests, Class Dojo, Edmoto, Google, Moodle, district benchmark assessments, CELDT, Achieve3000, Imagine Learning, online homework like IXL, Newsela, and the Khan Academy, Gold, and surveys like Healthy Child. I am sure that other California teachers can add more. All of these have the potential to classify and identify our students, categorizing them or pigeon-holing them for future careers and/or placement in society. Is this what we really want for our kids? Not only that, but I truly believe that these online assessments and flipped classroom philosophies will make teachers obsolete and are a way to weaken our union membership. Is this what we really want for our public school teachers? I am at the end of my career as a teacher, and my own kids are grown. But my daughter is going to have our first grandchild in February, and I am desperately worried about what education is going to be like for her in the future.
Diane,
Start a GoFundMe account where we can all pledge money to get a FULL PAGE size replica of this PERFECT letter printed in the N.Y. Times. Let’s start there!!!! It’s time we awaken the masses from their Facebook Daze. What do you think?
Join the Revolution,
Thank you for your great idea. If only I had the energy to follow through.
Thank you, Diane. You are a hero for, and to, all. Your words and deeds are national treasures. Thank you, Diane.
My letter:
Dear Senator Alexander and the Members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee,
Thank you for soliciting public input as you consider renewing or revising ESEA/NCLB.
I am the mother of two public school students, a writer, a former educational publishing editor, and now I am a public school teacher. I am in my 6th year of teaching and my 17th year of parenthood.
Six years ago, I predicted that the education pendulum would swing away from NCLB and its harmful, punitive, unrealistic expectations. Little did I anticipate that the NCLB pendulum would become a wrecking ball in the form of Race To The Top and Common Core.
I teach 8th grade language arts. My students and I began the year by reading the historical novel Chains, which is set in 1776 America. The students panicked a little bit about their first test, which was to write an argument that urges people to support the Loyalists in their attempt to assassinate General George Washington.
They were upset because they really didn’t know who George Washington was.
They knew Washington was our first president, and they were pretty sure that he was a great leader, but they didn’t know why. They knew Washington died. They were pretty sure he had three wives. That was the extent of their knowledge about our country’s founding.
My students understand the difference between a short answer question and an extended response, but they do not know the difference between a verb and an adverb, nor can they explain what makes a sentence “complete.” They can explain what it means to “darken the bubble completely,” but these 13 year olds cannot sign their own names in cursive. They can’t read it, either, and their printing is atrocious.
They also know they should know these things, and they’re angry that they don’t know. They remember when their educations were derailed in third grade, in the days when they were still excited about learning. They feel short-changed, and with just cause: The education of these children has been narrowed to focus intensely on reading and math, the only subjects students need to know to pass the standardized assessments required by NCLB.
What else are our kids NOT learning while everything in their school day revolves around passing high stakes tests?
There is so much that we as adults assume that children know because we ourselves learned these things when we were in school. The fact that students are NOT being taught the basics beyond reading and math is alarming to me as a teacher and as a parent. How can we claim we are preparing our children for their lives as citizens of the United States when they don’t even know how to sign their own names?
Race to the Top and the Common Core State Standards were supposed to remedy the nightmare created by NCLB. In actuality, CCSS is making education even worse by narrowing the scope of the curriculum and learning, and we have only just begun working with those educational reforms. Everything in my school district has been retooled to fit the PARCC exams that accompany the Common Core. Our curriculum team is designing units that are modeled after a test our students have not yet taken. The tests are dictating the curriculum, because measurements dictate performance.
As a second career teacher who is a former writer, I am no longer charged with teaching my students to develop skills that will make them successful writers in high school or college. Instead, I am being directed to “teach them how to write so they will pass the PARCC” – artificial test-answer writing that looks nothing like the high quality writing we expect from our standards. The reading standards demand that students limit their reading to the “4 corners of the text,” but students don’t have the background knowledge they would have gained through studying history, science, and the arts, so they are left foundering around on a page wondering who George Washington really was.
I have been directed by administration to teach only writing that is tied to text that someone else wrote. My students are not to write creatively or think independently. Everything my students write must be tied to some kind of text written by someone else. Everything they write must be grounded in evidence generated by a third party. The ONLY reason for this is because this type of thinking and writing is not covered on the state tests, and passing the state tests is more important than encouraging any kind of original thought.
Think about this.
My students — your children, your grandchildren, your neighbor’s kids — are not allowed to and are not encouraged to develop their own ideas. They are not to think, to dream, to create unique products unless they are basing their thinking on another person’s ideas. Originality is banned.
We’re raising an entire generation of kids who are being instructed to NOT be creative in their thinking.
My hands are tied. I so badly want to cut my students looks, allow them freedom of pen and mind, and I am told I cannot do this, because, again, measurements dictate performance, and passing The Test is of paramount importance. To do anything else is insubordination, and since my performance evaluations are now tied to these test results, I am effectively harming myself as a professional by teaching what I know is best for kids.
The truly ironic thing is that teachers don’t get test results in time to actually help shape our teaching, and even if we did, the only information we receive is a numerical score that ranks the students. The data we are given is not correlated to anything other than an overall proficiency rating, which teachers discover on their own through classroom-based assessments. The standardized data is useless to the classroom teacher.
I am not opposed to accountability, and assessment is part of learning. But how many standardized tests do we need before we realize that what we sacrificed to the gods of the education reform movement? In our quest to be at number one in the world in test scores, we are failing to educate the whole child and prepare them to become citizens of the world. Instead, our children will know less about their heritage and the world they are inheriting than their counterparts in Europe, and they will sign their names with an X instead of in flowing cursive. The whole plan is backfiring.
The hours lost to high stakes standardized testing and prep cannot be replaced, but you have the opportunity now to change course before any more damage is done. Our country must put an end to the insanity of relentless and endless high stakes testing before an entire generation of children misses out on receiving the great, well-rounded education their parents received and they were promised.
I urge you to enact “Option One” and eliminate annual testing in favor of grade span testing. It is time to allow teachers to teach and students to learn.
Sincerely,
Mary Hufford, MAT
Teacher and Mother
Wow! You ARE a writer! Thank you!
Beautiful!
“The truly ironic thing is that teachers don’t get test results in time to actually help shape our teaching, and even if we did, the only information we receive is a numerical score that ranks the students. The data we are given is not correlated to anything other than an overall proficiency rating, which teachers discover on their own through classroom-based assessments. The standardized data is useless to the classroom teacher”.
AMEN!!! All I get to see is how crappy my kids with lunch smack in the middle of English classes do, or how I should have re-structured things based on the weather last semester. It helps me NADA with my kids in the classroom, and a kid’s spring semester English 1 scores when her parents were getting divorced do not help me as and English 2 teacher trying to figure out her areas of need in the fall.
I spend a ridiculous amount of time tracking their past scores and predicted because I have to. What a waste.
I wrote Senator Alexander also…your letter said it all…Amen and Amen!
Dear Diane,
I cried as I read your letter. Governor Cuomo needs to get this message as well. He, however, feels the state, HE, should override local control. His approach to making schools better for kids is to get rid of teachers based on the miserable tests. I am sad beyond measure.
I love you, Diane Ravitch. And I name you to the honor roll!
Ah, thank you, Susan Bowles!
Bravo!!! When I feel as if our voices are not being heard by those who make the big decisions, I feel good in knowing that yours most likely will be! Thank you!
For those of you that are interested in Senator Alexander’s thoughts:
From the Brookings Institute:
“As Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee, Senator Alexander is arguably the most influential person in the country in shaping the long overdue reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). His recently released discussion draft of an ESEA bill includes provisions to support charter schools, magnet schools, and school transfer for students in the lowest performing public schools. At Brookings, he will discuss his vision for the distinctive roles of the federal government vs. states and local communities in American education and school choice.”
Webcast event 2/4, 9:30 to 10:30am
Join the conversation on Twitter with #ECCI1
http://www.brookings.edu/events/2015/02/04-school-choice-lamar-alexander
Lamar Alexander is a big supporter of both school choice and local control. Look for lots of new federal money and programs to promote charters and vouchers. Will President Obama sign it? My guess is yes.
Also Brookings is pro-choice and pro-market model. The director of the education program was appointed to head federal education research in the George W. Bush administration.