Georgia’s recently elected State Superintendent Richard Woods wrote a terrific letter to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, explaining patiently why federal testing mandates are defective. The letter was printed in Maureen Downey’s blog at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Superintendent Woods sounds like a veteran educator, which he is. He pulls no punches. This is what he wrote:
Dear Secretary Duncan,
With the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) comes an opportunity to address the valid concerns of students, parents, teachers, and communities regarding the quantity and quality of federally mandated standardized tests.
As Georgia’s School Superintendent, I have a constitutional duty to convey those concerns and provide ideas on how to move my state and our nation forward. Georgia recently entered into a $108 million contract to deliver federally mandated standardized tests to our students. That figure does not include the millions of dollars spent to develop and validate test questions and inform the public about the new tests.
This adds to the need for an audit to provide information on the number of tests and loss of instructional time our children endure, as well as a cost/benefit analysis on our current national testing model. As a nation, we have surrendered time, talent, and resources to an emphasis on autopsy-styled assessments, rather than physical-styled assessments. With the reauthorization of ESEA comes an opportunity for a real paradigm shift in the area of assessment.
Instead of a “measure, pressure, and punish” model that sets our students, teachers, and schools up for failure, we need a diagnostic, remediate/accelerate model that personalizes instruction, empowers students, involves parents, and provides real feedback to our teachers.
We need greater emphasis for a federally supported but state-driven formative assessment model that identifies the strengths and weakness of students, coupled with a less intrusive, student-sampled or grade-staggered summative assessment model for the purposes of state-tostate comparisons and world rankings.
Our broken model of assessment is too focused on labeling our schools and teachers, and not focused enough on supporting our students. Our current status quo model is forcing our teachers to teach to the test. We need an innovative approach that uses tests to guide instruction, just as scans and tests guide medical professionals. Oftentimes, we hear teachers called professionals because they have the knowledge and skill set to reach the needs of their individual students, yet in our accountability measures we have not supported or given value to diagnostic tools and tests that teachers need to fully utilize that knowledge or those skills. We must find a balance between accountability and responsibility.
We must give our teachers the tools and trust to be successful or our current path to hyper-accountability will continue to set our students and teachers up for failure. Teachers should not view tests as tools that tie their hands as professionals, but as tools that help them grow in their profession. Students should not view tests as tools that can strengthen barriers to be promoted or to graduate, but as tools that help them overcome those barriers. Schools should not view tests as tools that can doom them to failure, but as tools that serve as a compass pointing them down the path of success.
Testing must be a tool in our toolbox, but we need more rulers and fewer hammers. As Georgia’s School Superintendent, but more importantly as someone with 22 years of Pre-K through twelfth grade experience in education, I strongly urge you to take this moment in history to listen to the concerns of your constituents – parents, teachers, and community members – and reform the federal standardized testing requirements for the betterment of our children. I look forward to working with you to move education forward.
Reblogged this on Exceptional Delaware.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
Richard Woods is a true champion of education. I wish that the MA Commissioner of Education, who has been tone deaf about the problems with Education Reform, had the Georgia state superintendent’s perspective and was willing to stand up for children and teachers in this way.
What can one expect from a Bacon Hill appointment?
Or the president of PARCC?
Hopefully this guy doesn’t have any reform skeletons in his closet and this is the real deal!
I suppose my comment was premature, people can learn from past mistakes. I guess I just hope that if Superintendent has anything to atone for, he has done so or will.
Wonder I’d he’d like to apply to be Commissioner of Education in NY? Job’s open!
The down to earth educator needs to come to work in New Mexico so we can get rid of our Secretary of Education Designee Skandera. His comments are right on the mark.
PLEASE SEND HIM TO DELAWARE !! Our Secretary of Ed. is destroying everything in his path…
Someone needs to send this to Governor Cuomo!
Oh, please listen.
“we need a diagnostic, remediate/accelerate model that personalizes instruction, empowers students, involves parents, and provides real feedback to our teachers.”
This isn’t fewer high stakes tests. It would MANDATE instead a continuous online testing and moonitoring of each individual child, with an algorithm that claims to be able to predict the child’s discipline problems, and control each step forward through its scripted personal education wasteland. It is beyond 1984.
Is that what we want? You will be sentencing children to live under the daily heel of a “a diagnostic, remediate/accelerate model that personalizes instruction”. The test-masters have built the personal accountability instruments already in Massachusetts.
http://www.doe.mass.edu/edwin/analytics/
They’ve pulled in all actual public information about the project since the aborted roll-out last year, and you now need “authorization” to even see the site, but you can access screen captures.
Diane, you are a historian of education. How can you recommend this madness if you won’t even open a site and download the documents and study them?
We have the public momentum now to end the era of corporate regulatory control through proprietary tests, at any level. Just repeal NCLB! The only “urgency” to put a new system in place is to keep the momentum of their bribery and political corruption.
It is Save Our Schools and the Network for Public Education that have claimed the mantle of leadership, then decided to collaborate in snatching defeat from the jaws of the people’s victory.
Very excited to read this. I followed the race closely, and the AJC was very much in favor of his Common Core Obama-Duncan (Democrat) acolyte. During the campaign, I found 90% of his statements to be in line with what most of us believe in. To see him actually put this into words for the DOE is fantastic, IMO.
Still way to much nodding to the idea that we need tests as a “tool in our tool belt” to “inform instruction”, yada yada. No one has yet told me what it is that we supposedly learn about children from standardized testing that could “inform instruction” any better than simply getting to know the children as individuals, listening to their interests, observing their work in class, etc. The main thing standardized testing tells us about children is who is “better” than whom (better at taking tests, anyway), and I have no idea why we need to know that.
I agree. The letter is from a superintendent who probably knows he will be dismissed out of hand if there is no concession at all to the idea of testing. USDE is always promoting tool kits for “technical assistance.” The prospect of teachers and students being monitored via “a diagnostic, remediate/accelerate model that personalizes instruction, empowers students, involves parents, and provides real feedback to our teachers” is offered up as a proxy for real professional judgment. This proposal sounds like a surveillance system with formula-based “recommendations” for teaching based on some programmer’s idea of a best practice.
I long for the days when tools meant implements that helped one do physical labor.
Thank you, Dienne! Did you find any other functioning human minds on your way here?
Wonderful!!!!Hope we all share and share.. Exactly how we feel. True words were never spoken.
It’s interesting to see how different (reasonable) people have lines in such different places. As a teacher, I’m thrilled to see someone who both understands how the tests have negatively impacted schools and has the guts/fortitude to actually say something about it. I don’t know if we’ve always had standardized tests, but we certainly had them when I was in school. They had minimal impact on the education I received.
Have we seen any words from any state superintendent as rational as this? I recall a state superintendent maybe in New England (Connecticut? Maine?) saying something reasonable, but individuals in these positions are almost entirely adjunct members of the Gates Foundation. Diane recently noted that Indiana’s is on our side. Any others?
I’m as cynical and pessimistic as they come with regards to statements on education policy by policymakers, but I see this one as excellent. Quibble with details if you like, but recognize that there are very, very few people in power on our side.
I’ve just learned the hard way to pay very close attention to the details of what people say. Far too many times I’ve gotten caught by what sounds like a reasonable statement, only to realize that once you get passed all the carefully parsed, legalistically phrased feel good jargon, it doesn’t really say anything different from the status quo. I mean, even Duncan and Obama have said there’s too much testing. That doesn’t mean they’re not fundamentally aligned with the rephormers. I think the line that chemtchr picked out is very telling.
Absolutely pays to be wary. Senator Patty Murray was recently quoted in an article about the great things happening in Washington as if she were in tune with what is happening when, in fact, she backs the Obama-Duncan regime in its entirety. While I don’t agree with everything Secretary Woods has stated, from following his race closely, I can assure you that he does legitimately take issue with many of inanities of the Common Core and the testing regime. Btw, in the GOP primary, he shockingly defeated the Gates-Duncan Reform candidate in a very close vote. Though underfunded and undermined at every turn by the Atlanta Journal Constitution, he won fairly convincingly (55%?) in the general election over a candidate that was a hardcore Common Core believer who also supported annual tests for all grades and all subjects. Yes, any policy can be contorted by an unfavorable Governor and legislature (and Georgia’s have both proven to be unfavorable), so I find the concerns noted by you and chemtchr to be more than legitimate. But I am going support any nomination of Secretary Woods for Diane’s Hall of Honor.
Referring to Washington state in regards to Senator Murray. I’ll believe it when I see it regarding anything good coming out of DC with education policy.
Will Georgia’s elected State Superintendent Richard Woods end up being stripped of his power by Georgia’s governor the same as the Common Core, corporate loving Charter governor of Indiana is attempting to do with Glenda Ritz?
Since taking office, Ritz has drawn significant attention for her often unconventional leadership tactics and disagreements with Gov. Mike Pence (R) on how best to run the State Department of Education. As superintendent, Ritz chair’s the State Board of Education; as governor, Pence appoints its members. Her engagement in a power struggle with Pence over control of the State Board is already a theme of Ritz’ term.
Ritz received more votes than either Governor Mike Pence or Senator Joe Donnelly and won many traditionally conservative areas. She ran what was seen as a grassroots campaign, relying on support from the Indiana State Teachers Association and local teachers unions. She is the first Democrat to serve in the office in 40 years and the first Democrat to win any down ballot race in the state since 1996.
When it comes to Common Core and corporate Charters where does Nathan Deal, the governor of Georgia stand? This piece reveals the answer: “Georgia’s Republican Governor, Nathan Deal, seems poised to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by strong-arming the legislature away from pushing a bill to withdraw completely from imposing Common Core education standards on the state’s schools and toward implementing most of the Common Core policies this year.”
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/03/11/georgia-legislature-suddenly-goes-from-repeal-of-common-core-to-its-implementation/
Cross posted at
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Georgia-s-New-State-Superi-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Diane-Ravitch_Education_Georgia-Politics_State-Governor-150129-995.html#comment530760