This is a sad, sad story. At the very time that increasing numbers of parents, researchers, and educators agree that testing in American schools is out of control, the caucuses in the House of Representatives representing children of color have taken a strong stand in favor of high-stakes testing.
According to the Washington Post, they want schools held accountable if children fail to meet targets two years in a row.
“Now the Congressional Tri-Caucus has sided with dozens of civil rights groups and the Obama administration. In a letter to the Senate on Wednesday, more than 80 members of the Tri-Caucus said they cannot support the bill without key changes, including a requirement that states take action at schools that are failing to serve subgroups of children, such as those who are low-income, African American or English learners, or those who have disabilities.
“Specifically, the Tri-Caucus — made up of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus — wants the federal government to compel states to act when a school fails to meet testing targets for subgroups of students two years in a row.
“That type of change is anathema to many Republicans, who see it as a federal overreach, and to the NEA, which likens it to a return to the test-centric and overly punitive provisions of No Child Left Behind. But members of the Tri-Caucus say that the requirement is key to ensuring that states do not overlook the nation’s neediest children.
“Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (Va.), the ranking Democrat of the House education committee, said he and his colleagues are seeking a new law that “honors the civil rights legacy of the law and fulfills the needs of all of America’s children.”
This is very sad. It will make the testing corporations very happy. It will not help children.
Standardized tests are normed on a bell curve. Affluent students cluster in the top half, students whose family income is low cluster in the bottom half. The bell curve never closes. Why would civil rights groups favor a mechanism–standardized testing–that by its nature will rank, label and stigmatize the children with the greatest needs?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
At least since the Johnson – Goldwater election, most Republicans have stood firmly against equity. For a time, many Democrats stood on the side of labor and civil rights. Sadly, a portion of white working class Americans shifted allegiances as Democrats slowly abandoned equity, and adopted conservative rhetoric and values in an attempt to win wider support. Now, too many Democrats stand for nothing beyond getting elected and attracting campaign donations to do so. As a result, many civil rights leaders appear to have lost all confidence in anything but the meager hope that test results will shine a harsh light on the failures of our society to deal with justice and equality. The next presidential election is an opportunity to build public support for a different kind of political alternative.
These groups may get what they want. What will they say when they are stuck with failing charter schools that do not care about their children? When public education dies these children will have the fewest opportunities available to them. They will be defined and limited by their test scores. What will their leaders say then? What do they say about Detroit? The blue print is already being displayed.
These civil rights groups are being short sighted. Public education is a much better option for minority children than the type of cheap charters than will invade their neighborhood. They will lose their voice and their democratic rights in the process. Some company far away will be in charge of their children. It is sad that these groups have failed to take a look at places like Detroit or New Orleans before taking a stand supporting more testing.
You are correct, once again, these civil rights organizations are being short sided. Most of the leaders of these organizations have no idea what they promoting…they are just clueless. I say this as an African American woman with 2 kids. Just this year I pulled my kids out of public education because I could not deal with this nonsense any more. I consider myself blessed that I have the financial means to pull my kids out of public schools. I feel an unbearable sadness for parents that do not have the same option. I see what’s happening in the public schools and it seems to me that they are intentionally trying to kill the self esteems of these kids so that they can supposedly get more money for schools that are in low income districts. But even if they get more money for those districts, it wont matter because they would have already torn down those kids with their stupid tests. The kids will be so broken that they will just drop out of school…they just wont feel like they can succeed because of those tests that keep telling them that they cant. If standardized testing was any measure of success, I would not be the professional that I am today. I’m glad that my future was not determined by how well I did on a standardized test. The civil rights leaders that are pushing this nonsense are idiots. Its a good thing that they don’t speak for most of us and the truth is, those organizations have not spoken for most African Americans in a long time. The government thinks that they speak for us but the truth is that they don’t. Today, most of those leaders are really out of touch with what minorities want and are faced with today.
Thank you Old teacher for your wisdom in the most accurate expression in the shortest paragraph, but overwhelmed with POWERFUL facts and results in our naked eyes + opened mind.
[start quote]
When public education dies, these children will have the fewest opportunities available to them.
They will be defined and limited by their test scores.
What will their leaders say then?
What do they say about Detroit?
The BLUE PRINT is already being DISPLAYED.
[end quote]
It is the old saying that IGNORANCE is the cause of sufferance. Also, GREED, EGO and LUST cause people to LOSE THEIR CONSCIENCE.
As a result, the leadership in influence of greed, ego, and lust will horribly damage a mass of people who put their trust in their BAD leadership. Back2basic
The test is merely a snapshot in time that is not an indicator of academic achievement if we take time to really understand what achievement is. The test is narrow in scope and not only judges the ability of students to respond in a simplistic manner but pulls kids away from whole child education that would allow students to create, explore and embrace the joy of learning.
The real civil wrongs are forcing kids away from empowerment, into the drudgery of being the Stepford Kids, regurgitating what they are brainwashed into believing.
In the words of Dr. Angela Dye: “Traditional school outcomes as level “B” achievement can occur in the absence of learning how to work and learn independently; (“A” level achievement includes) learning how to synthesize, transfer, and apply knowledge to the world beyond the classroom: learning how to value self as subjects not as objects; and learning how to engage in and share power in democratic spaces.”
Depending on and forcing students to solely learn “B” level achievement is not only unethical but is immoral.
However, accountability is essential in assuring all children are served well. Having said that, it is of utmost importance that a viable alternative to the antiquated and failed system of testing be implemented. A system that drives the curriculum to teach the whole child where students can see them selves as subjects, not objects. Kids are not commodities.
The first step in this is the Collins amendment to ESEA ( to read it go to http://www.wholechildreform.com ) where innovative assessment is allowed. Assessing and teaching to the whole child is the only way to assure parents that their child is being treated with the respect they deserve and are making gains in real achievement.
Continuing to force feed the “test” simply continues to take children away from learning that is valuable for their future and turns them into the Stepford Kids, robotic sameness that bleeds the soul out of them. This is not only unethical, it is immoral
“they want schools held accountable if children fail to meet targets two years in a row”
This flawed thinking is based on the false assumption of foolish and ignorant elected representatives that teachers and public schools are failing children who come to school hungry, willing and wanting to cooperate and learn. In other words, the kids come ready to learn but the teachers are too incompetent and uncaring to teach them.
But the opposite is true. Some children are arriving without the hunger to cooperate and learn. Instead of holding the schools and teachers accountable through bubble tests, schools should be getting the support they need to offer high quality programs that start as early as age two that are designed to overcome the challenges that come from living in poverty and/or living in a broken home or having a learning disability.
Testing will do none of that and in the end there will be no schools left to teach those at risk children the corporate Charters clearly don’t want.
The education RheeForm movement HAS created a double standard that only fools who are deliberately blind, deaf and mute by choice wouldn’t notice.
1. the public schools are held accountable for everything—even students who refuse to cooperate and hate to read because they didn’t receive that literary nurturing when they were pre-school children—must accept and teach every student and must be totally transparent so every flaw can be twisted and flaunted out of context in the media at every opportunity.
2. The corporate charter schools are NOT held accountable for almost everything to do with teaching children, and are allowed to be opaque. In addition, they are free to turn away or throw out students they don’t want—even when there are no public schools available to take those children without a long bus ride if one is available.
In other words, if you want to teach more than two years, avoid schools with disadvantaged students.
You got it, Mathvale.
And if you feel your place is in one of those schools, don’t be a special ed teacher!
Reblogged this on Exceptional Delaware and commented:
As a parent of a special needs child, I resent any civil rights group trying to represent my son in pushing for psychologically damaging testing that has no growth model nor has it been validated. I want the best education for my son, but this isn’t it. It isn’t the schools that are failing these students, it’s the “rigor” of the corporate education reformers who are plundering our schools, labeling and shaming our schools, pushing for damning teacher evaluations, and destroying public education right before our eyes. Now that their back is against the wall, they are using civil rights groups and playing them like a fiddle in their quest to stop parent opt-out.
We all need to wake up with education. That includes you President Obama. You spoke at Beau Biden’s funeral last Saturday in Delaware about how he was a man with broad shoulders. I am waiting for you to become that man and lead our children out of the quagmire that has become public education. You do not serve companies, you serve the people of the United States of America. Please take a look around you Mr. President. The very children these groups are attempting to represent are being subjected to assessments that are a danger to education. It isn’t that we don’t want them to succeed. We want that, but testing all students like little guinea pigs is not the answer. The proficiency march has to end somewhere. Your legacy will be if it ends in investors wallets or in true education reform where children are not tortured with this nonsense.
“Testing Does NOT Promote Civil Rights or Equity”
Neither does privatized education. Sweden’s PISA scores have plummeted since they privatized their schools and their education minister says that “Instead of breaking up social differences and class differences in the education system, we have a system today that’s creating a wider gap between the ones that have and the ones that have not.”
“It’s a political failure’: how Sweden’s celebrated schools system fell into crisis” http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/10/sweden-schools-crisis-political-failure-education
As in Chile, Sweden is very challenged in trying to rescue their public education system back from profiteers: “It’s a genie-in-the-bottle situation. How do we change a system that has gone on so long in allowing quite big profit in schools?”
The irony and hypocrisy is just overwhelming.
The deformers use accountability through testing and other data as their tool of change, yet they ignore, evade and obfuscate the tests and research data on their own tools and policies.
The deformers ignore and dismiss community and parent and teacher voices claiming they are uninformed or ill-intentioned. Yet the rising protests are coming from the exceedingly well-informed and honorably intentioned. These groups voting up deform are caught up in the debate and politics, they represent the uninformed or ill-intentioned the deformers would dis and dismiss if they followed their original playbook.
A list of the names of the individuals, their district offices, place of business and home residence would be a good place to start. These men and women are either ignorant, and need to be educated, or they are corrupt, in that they are hiding within a group in order to exact some sort of quid-pro-quo for their own financial benefit.
Once the list is compiled, the first order of business is to network and find individuals, or groups, to set up meetings with these people on an individual basis. If their excuse for pushing bad policy is ignorance, it is time to school them. If their excuse is greed and self preservation, then they need to understand that we will organize against them.
My 60 hour per week job as a public school teacher will slow down by the end of June. I will be attending a community organizing meeting in Kingston New York this evening.
Don’t mourn – organize!
Agreed, Betsy! Don’t mourn–organize!
Check into what your state’s connection to the National Writing Project is doing. We are holding an Activism Institute this summer. It’s an opportunity to meet every day, build and fortify our arguments, and logically lay out the next steps.
You should read the letter and look at the names of those who signed it, among whom are people that are so high profile as history-makers in the civil rights movement that they will be difficult for their colleagues in Congress to ignore.
At the same time, I also think it is true that they, and their staffs, have not done homework or due diligence in lending their names to this letter.
They believe that ONLY with testing will additional funds be allocated where they should be, and they want the proofs of improved test scores to come immediately (two years limit) so that teachers, principals, schools, districts, and states are penalized for failing to bring all students to a high level of performance.
The fact that this is IMPOSSIBILITY with the norm-referenced tests required by ESEA and/or most statewide tests is either not known or it is cynically ignored. Perhaps the signers of this letter do not understand that the testing game is rigged to produce winners and losers because scores are standardized to approximate a bell curve.
You’re right. “I also think it is true that they, and their staffs, have not done homework or due diligence in lending their names to this letter.”
The ignorance of these high profile names in the civil rights movement is going to make things even worse for the children they appear to want to help the most.
Tests and pressure on public schools to improve the achievement of the most at risk children will only make it worse. These tests will do nothing to change the environment of poverty that causes hunger, brain damage, and PTSD for some of these children who are exposed to violence in the home and/or in the streets where poverty rules with a cruel sledge hammer of a fist.
I’m surprised that they are that ignorant and foolish of that part of the world they claim they want to improve. They must be so removed from the harsh realities of poverty, that they either never experienced it or have forgotten what it was like.
I think they are fools impressed by their own success and influence and are out of touch with reality.
Diane you close with “Why would Civil Rights groups favor a mechanism–standardized testing–that by its nature will rank, label and stigmatize the children with the greatest needs…?
There has been a massive PR campaign from the “corporate ed reform” contingency to make sure the public-at-large believes their “snow job” and the press has been 99 percent complicit and even the courts (thinking CA). This truly is still NO EXCUSE for groups who have historically been leaders in Civil Rights. But this points to the depths of an “ill nation” totally overrun by a very self-interested and small segment of its citizens who feel that money is the almighty and allows one to buy “democracy”. In their world they buy a system with “winners and losers” and they control who wins and who loses so that they can ensure that they remain in control and in power. The PR is all about convincing the public at large of the fallacies.
The lack of “checks and balances” needs to be turned around for the sake of this nation. Money must be taken out of politics or our nation will continue to be led by those whose interests are SELF INTERESTS at the expense of everyone else. This can only lead to a population so weakened and controlled by a “few” that our nation will no longer be able to function. We are dangerously close to the edge – dangerously close. Education has been made into a hinderance to children learning and not AN ENABLER OF LEARNING (unless of course these children go to elite private schools or top of the line public schools).
The concept of winning and losing in light of the bell curve makes all the testing seem like Sisyphus.
I have observed minority parents at some state level meetings and I think their viewpoint is probably the following situation (and I am completely speculating based on what I’ve seen working in inner city urban areas and in rural areas in five states):
—integration was not handled well and left minorities struggling because they were not the priority when it came to achievement and minority teachers, who really could have helped that, were the first pushed out when schools were combined (from what I hear. . .I would actually really like to know more about that very subject).
—now, after years of battling this with progressive hearts seeing it as an equity issue and concerned minds seeing it as a standards issue, we have testing as the supposed equalizer (and testing enables the equity issue in that those schools that don’t test well will supposedly receive more resources even if it means they must come entirely from a state takeover).
I believe many minorities see the testing as the only way to make up for what was lost in the last 40-50 years. I do believe they see it as a way to “stick it to the man” and hold up a mirror to make sure teachers are focusing on the very narrow definition of achievement that testing affords. But what other definition of achievement would they use? Aren’t SAT scores what got many minorities into competitive schools in the last number of years even if they came from “the hood?”
While raising concerns about the narrowing of school focus, a teacher I respect said, “but is it going to hurt them?” Does a narrow focus hurt? Or does it just leave room for more enrichment that will have to be come up with by PTOs, teachers on their own, etc. ? I suppose many see that at the basic and mandated level, schools should be performing at certain levels to certain standards and everything else should come from a standpoint of gravy. But that by having the testing we AT LEAST know students are attaining certain standards levels and if they aren’t, that the school needs extra support. (I think the problem is that the extra support generally has come from punitive measures and that’s not good either).
Minorities don’t trust anything but data at this point. Can we blame them?
Unfortunately, the data is flawed. Putting full faith in tests to show certain levels of learning is where the civil rights groups are going awry. Adding a harsh punishment to teachers trying valiantly to raise up the abilities of disadvantaged students to the point the tests even BEGIN to measure is incentive to avoid these schools at all costs. The attempt of correcting inequality on the backs of teachers has the consequence of no more teachers. Politicians would have better success addressing disappearing jobs to overseas companies and a rigged system creating massive wealth inequality.
I think you are right. Testing seems to me like the difference between X-rays, MRIs and Cat Scans. They may show illnesses, but there are so many other ways we can tell someone is sick; something is wrong. The diagnosis and more diagnoses are not going to help the patient. In fact we know that minority/low income districts are suffering and we have known that for a long time. The problem is that the remedies – holding schools/districts/teachers accountable, school choice, charters and eventually vouchers have been, are, and will cause more harm. We need to convince these minority leaders that while perhaps well meaning, they are not helping their constituents. The evidence is overwhelming that the responses to low test scores in minority districts are not working and these districts are hurting more as more of those students move into to surrounding “choice” schools and charters. Continuing with the remedies that don’t work is the problem, not the tests. These caucus members just don’t understand.
They don’t understand because there is no viable alternative to the testing. Public schools have the most qualified teachers and they have the ability to innovate beyond the test. Assessment vs testing is the problems. With whole child assessment, civil rights groups get the accountability they are looking for while educators get to take back their profession.
The Collins amendment to ESEA allows this to happen. Instead of bashing and taking the defense, it’s time to go on offense. Demand to allow public schools to innovate! It takes quality teachers to innovate unlike teaching to the test where adequate teachers can appear to be good if the environment is manipulated to do so.
The only way to save public schools is to demand innovation and support the Collins amendment that allows for it. To read the amendment : http://www.wholechildreform.com.
We have marched, opted out and pleaded the case against the test. But how in hell will we get any credibility unless we offer real assessment to replace the test. Civil rights groups want fairness and the only option out there is the test.
VIABLE ALTERNATIVE NOW!
I agree about flawed data etc.
So, if we use data to understand sub-groups, maybe it’s as simple as taste and personal preference. Maybe minorities just LIKE testing.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/01/15/idUS149974+15-Jan-2008+BW20080115
http://targetmarketnews.com/storyid12210501.htm
The flaw in the logic here has to do not so much with tests or test results as with the idea of giving “the state” the power to solve the problem of educational inequity. There is no evidence that states know how to do this.
Well, I don’t know about “the state”, but “the feds” sure have been necessary many times to even begin to approach equity. Just when do you think the schools would have let Ruby Bridges in without the federal marshalls?
Ohio has the DeRolph decision over a decade ago. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled the states constitutional phrase “thorough and efficient” was being violated by current funding formulas then ruled unconstitutional. The legislature basically gave them the finger and ignored a court ruling. If a court ruling (several actually) could not initiate hope and change, why do civil rights groups think beating up on powerless classroom teachers will solve inequality?
Please don’t let logic interfere with the raw politics of this posture by the caucuses. The black & Latino caucuses take their marching orders from the WH. Given the WH past actions, I’d have little doubt that the administration’s strategy is to exploit the racial differences opt-out and their need for money & support for re-election in return for keeping testing mandates in the law.
They also listen to civil rights groups, who take money and their marching orders from Bill Gates: “Corporate Funding of Urban League, NAACP & Civil Rights Orgs Has Turned Into Corporate Leadership”
http://www.blackagendareport.com/corporate-funding-urban-league-naacp-civil-rights-orgs-has-turned-corporate-leadership
Thanks for posting this. A listing of the campaign donations that the specific Tri-Caucus congress members received or expect to receive, would be published by the media….. if America had not become an oligarchy.
ditto–thanks for posting the link
That August 2011 post from the Black Agenda Report explains what’s happening today. Our challenge is to educate the public—a daunting challenge to achieve this will require repetition, persistence and dedication. I Tweeted the original post out and shared on Facebook and LinkedIn. When I have more time, later, I’ll post something on my Blog too.
“Hope and Chains”
Regimes change
But core remains
To rearrange
The Hope and Chains
Instead of pouring more money into tests and test prep, how about
reduction of class size, tutorial programs for free from 1st to 12th grade,remedial
programs that seek to help not label, hookups with Community Colleges starting
in 9th grade, vocational programs to be taken with academic classes. Gates and
other “reformers” have posed as friends of poor and minority students. They
are not.
To make this argument compelling, we need data on what has been spent and what it would cost to do what you suggest.
Also, I think “conservatives” like money that goes into private enterprise more than a ballooning public work sector. Right? So they probably won’t listen if they want tighter purse strings on public money for public jobs.
Wonder if these groups are compromised by money from Gates, Waltons, and other usual suspects…
The answer is yes. Gates has provided big bucks to the Leadership Council for Civil and Human Rights and specific groups since 2008, and more recently to shore up the Common Core and associated tests. Key word Gates Foundation Database then the name of the organization.
Perhaps a “tri caucus” made up of education scholars of color could draft a letter to these groups, explaining the research behind the damage that this overfocus on testing has done to schools comprised largely of students of the global majority. This letter (which would need to happen ASAP) could include research, real stories from the educational front, and policy suggestions that may ACTUALLY attempt to achieve the parity we all would like to see. I think it would be worth a try. Any scholars of color (or others) interested in working on such a project should contact me!
Well, one person does not a caucus make, but Jesse Hagopian’s letter I think fits this bill about as well as anything. Strongly recommend everyone read it.
We can talk forever about what is wrong with the test. However, until we present a viable alternative, civil rights groups won’t and shouldn’t listen. The window of opportunity is opening a crack with the Collins amendment to ESEA. Jump on it and show what real teachers are made of 🙂
“Why would civil rights groups favor a mechanism–standardized testing–that by its nature will rank, label and stigmatize the children with the greatest needs?”
Because lobbyi$t$ have been effective at doing their job$. We hope to hold the representatives of our most vulnerable populations to high ethical standards, but it appears they have fallen prey to the reformistas and privatizers. Our president certainly has.
I don’t believe that to be the case. They support testing because we haven’t presented a viable alternative. True whole child assessment is the answer that satisfies all. And the Collins amendment to ESEA allows for that.
Low income children are primarily clustered in their low income neighborhood schools. Thus their sub-group scores are the majority scores. Underperforming schools are the first to be closed, and then there is no neighborhood school at all. Couple that with the Great Recession giving states the ability to cut school funding and the very schools that need more resources have reduced resources..
Point the congressmen and women to Newark, to see how “turnaround” destroys neighborhood schools. Their effort is terribly misguided.
“a requirement that states take action at schools that are failing to serve subgroups of children”
And what action would that be? Send more resources and advocate for higher teacher pay at low SES schools, or kick out some teachers and close the schools?
The united support of the majority civil rights community is key to building an effective coalition and movement for democratic equitable education and in opposition to undermining public education. Unfortunately, the evidence that strategies like high-stakes testing does not lead to systemic improvement is important, but insufficient. Before, the subcategory reporting that came with NCLB, racial and socio-economic disparities were ignored and swept under the rug. Doing something substantive about it is still ignored. However, from the perspective of many civil right leaders, at least talking about it, even with very weak solutions, is preferable. While there are exceptional examples of schools or districts that have had success with non-testing alternatives, there is little evidence of politicians prepared to run for office on a strong platform of real equity. We need evidence of hope.
The dilemma is that we need a diverse movement to push politicians to showcase hope and we need hope create a diverse movement to push the politicians. One strategy is to spend at least as much energy articulating what would lead to systemic change, as we do on opposing what will not. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arthur-camins/we-can-be-better-than-the-audacity-of-small-hopes_b_7284458.html?utm_hp_ref=tw
http://www.arthurcamins.com
Arthur, NCLB disaggregates state and national scores by race, gender, disability status, poverty, and language.
Why is annual testing needed? Testing is a measure not a solution. Why keep measuring the gaps over and over but doing nothing to reduce them?
If black parents knew the racist history of standardized testing, they would not support it
No argument. I am not at all arguing for continued measurement for shaming and punishment, just pointing out that in the absence of obvious alternatives many folks who are genuinely concerned about equity appear to be holding on to strategies even when they don’t work. I blame Democrats for abandoning labor and civil rights and abetting the conservative agenda of undermining public confidence in public solutions. I’m just making the case that evidence-based counter arguments against current reforms need to be complemented with building a movement around the alternatives.
You are right on target. A viable alternative to the testing fiasco is essential. It is time to start a movement for innovative assessment in lieu of the testing. Without that we have no say, our words are empty. The Collins amendment to ESEA is a good beginning.
You are right. I happen to be a Black parent and I know that most other Black parents do not have a clue about what’s happening. It does not even bother them that they are using these standardized tests to close down schools in our own communities. At a social gathering I mentioned the more than 50+ schools that had been shut down in Chicago and one parent said “they were under performers anyway.” I was totally blown away about the level of ignorance I had witnessed. I looked at the other Black parent and asked her “shouldn’t build up schools that are not performing as we would like instead of shutting them down?” She didn’t say anything further but what was more shocking was that with all of the other Black parents in the room, none of the other parents said anything. That’s the level of ignorance about the situation that we are dealing with. They don’t know what’s going on and they don’t seem to care. They won’t care until they wake up one day and their grand kids won’t be able to attend school because there isn’t a public school in their community and their parents won’t be able to afford private school.
“one parent said “they were under performers anyway.”
I’m glad you brought this up. I’ve heard this a lot. I was hearing it back in the 1980s, the 90’s and even after I retired from teaching after 30 years in 2005.
I think there is a way to respond to this foolish, lazy thinking.
For instance, “You know, that’s interesting that you should mention that, because I often ask myself who is underperformed—the teacher, the schools or the children and their parents? And when I look really close, I find that almost every time the answer is the children and their parents who are bad-mouthing teachers who are only responsible to teach. The children are the ones who are responsible to learn and their parents are responsible to support the teacher and children so learning takes place. Teachers can’t learn for the students.
If children hear from their parents that it isn’t the child fault if he isn’t learning, why should the child even try to learn? When our daughter was in grade school we told her that it was her responsibility to learn—not the teacher, and we backed that up with our parenting style. We said that we didn’t care if the teacher was boring or incompetent and that a student could still learn even in those classrooms.
And our daughter graduated from high school a scholar-athlete with a 4.65 GPA, who was accepted by Stanford where she graduated in June 2014.
After our daughter was in Stanford for a year or two, I asked her how many incompetent teachers she had K-12 (that is about 30 to 50 teachers), and after she thought about it, she said, “Two.”
Renie, I don’t think it is that different in most white communities. I was talking with one woman who had moved from Chicago to the suburbs to put her kids in a decent school. Her neighborhood was okay but she was worried about high school. She loves her new school and her kids will go to a very good high school without going through a lottery. She did not know that charters are funded by the public schools. She just knew that the opportunities were not there in Chicago unless you got into a select high school. We got into testing a little especially with reading. Her kids came out of Chicago behind the kids in her new school, and they are working to catch up. I told her not to get overly concerned about test scores and just make sure that books play a big role at home.
“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.” Thanks to Mr. Swacker
This “pin the tail on the donkey” testing game has been shown to be unreliable and
invalid.
“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”.
“High-stakes, standardized tests are, as Audre Lorde stresses, “the master’s tools.”
“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change….” Paul Thomas: High- Stake Tests are the Master’s Tools
One more time, the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.
We can mount the high horse of indignation. We can lament the invalidation of
“credentialism”. We can pretend Public Education was established by the people,
and for the people. We can continue to play “pin the tail on the donkey” (D vs R).
Heaven forbid we place the “pin” where it belongs. In the ass of the GAGA…