Barbara Madeloni, the president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, comments here about the “bittersweet victory” associated with Senate passage of the Every Child Achieves Act.
She writes:
“The bill continues yearly testing in grades three through eight and once in high school, but leaves it to states to determine how to use those tests for school accountability. It removes the authority of the federal government to demand that teacher evaluations be connected to student test scores and gives more authority to states to determine specific standards and curriculum.
“In giving more authority to states, the bill loosens constraints on how funds will be spent, though fortunately the Senate rejected a voucher amendment. The Senate measure now goes to a conference committee, where senators and members of the House will mesh their bills and develop a final piece of legislation. If approved, that bill will have to be signed or vetoed by President Barack Obama. If Obama vetoes it, Congress would have to override the veto for the bill to become law.
“It is a bittersweet victory to applaud the power of school accountability going back to the states, should this bill become law. While it would allow us to organize locally and make the demands we want for our students and our schools, others have noted that it would mean we have 50 battles to fight instead of one – and that some states are especially weak in their readiness to fight.”
Unfortunately the bill does nothing to alleviate poverty and racism, which are the root causes of low test scores. Instead, many of the senators wanted to push some of the most punitive aspects of testing that were embedded in George W. Bush’s failed No Child Left Behind act. The most outspoken proponents of the Bush accountability, unfortunately, were Democrats, who have bought into the fiction that closing schools and firing teachers will help poor children.
That was not the vision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act when it was passed in 1965. At that time, President Lyndon Johnson and the Congress recognized that poverty hurts children and gets in the way of academic success. Today’s Democrats think that testing and accountability are necessary to combat poverty; they have bought the NCLB rationale hook, line, and sinker.
Madeloni continues:
“Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren co-sponsored an amendment that 41 Democrats supported to essentially continue the most punitive aspects of No Child Left Behind, as the current version of the ESEA is known. The amendment proposed a change in what student test scores are used for accountability, from all students to subgroups, but retained the use of test scores as a basis for labeling and punishing schools. In my conversation with Warren, her concern for traditionally underserved students, which is noble, was distorted by a seeming unwillingness to accept what so many teachers and parents are saying: that the use of testing for accountability is narrow-minded, undermines meaningful teaching and learning, and shifts the focus from the real issues our students and communities face.
“The amendment failed and was not included in the final bill, but Senator Warren’s vote against the final bill was based in large measure on her concerns for what assurances there would be that funds would go where they are most needed. Fellow Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey joined Warren in supporting the amendment, but voted in favor of the final bill. In the end, Warren was one of only three Democrats to vote against the ECAA.
“Now that the Senate has passed the ECAA, we need to talk about resources and about the larger issues of race and class. But we need to acknowledge that our efforts must focus on Democrats as well as Republicans. Indeed, some of the worst excesses of corporate “reform” have been supported by elected officials who call themselves our allies.”
Why did the Network for Public Education offer a qualified endorsement of ECAA on July 10th — when there was no indication that it would limit standardized testing? I’ve been trying to figure that out … maybe you can help me.
I have great respect for Barbara. She is trying to undoing the destruction that our previous Union administration has done. I felt like she was being very measured in her criticism of Warren and Markey. The reality is MTA is pushing for a moratorium on standardized testing in Mass. The MTA heavily supported both of these candidates. I hope that they have been put on notice that the MTA will not fall in behind this abandonment. As a teacher and parent, I will not forget it.
Amen! to focusing on Democrats. They must be our next target. They have gotten away with pro-charter and pro-testing positions for years, having been given cover by the Washington-based “civil rights” lobbyists. Time to let them know that if they want the Democratic “base” to stand with them, they have to show us that they will not continue in the path Obama followed, which was totally ignoring our pleas and reasoned arguments. The Dem’s — presidential and congressional — need an enthusiastic turnout in 2016 in order to win enough votes to win the presidency and take over at least one house of congress. They will NOT have an enthusiastic voter base if they continue to whistle while they contribute to the destruction of public education. No one should get a pass in 2016. This should be our litmus test for ALL congressional and presidential candidates.
It was hugely disappointing to see Warren’s vote on this. I can only hope a bunch of her former colleagues at Harvard would troop in with the data showing how wrong-headed this accountability fetish has been for the children she cares about. The pendulum shift to states rights dominating policy decisions means that the feds lose any leverage to provide incentives or sanctions on states who shortchange those kids most in need. Like voting rights battles, this will have to become a civil rights issue to regain any traction. And we can see that too many of the civil rights groups have drunk the Koolaid.
You mean colleagues like Friedman and Chetty?
🙂
…and Roland Fryer.
“Enhancing the Efficacy of Teacher Incentives through Loss Aversion: A Field Experiment”
loss aversion—teachers are paid in advance and asked to give back the money if their students do not improve sufficiently
Harvard is not a teacher’s friend in this fight. They mostly love this testing nonsense. They are rightfully afraid that the schools where students of color go won’t be services adequately. They are, and have been, wrong on the approach.
So what does this mean regarding CC? If states have more control over their own curriculum, does this mean we can dump common core? I hope so.
Does the federal government say how long the tests have to be? How about a two hour math test and a two hour English test and call it done.
That’s what we had. It was disruptive, but it wasn’t the focus of most instruction. There was no crooked VAM score to try to eliminate jobs.
I don’t think the length of the test matters especially if it is used for punitive high stakes decisions. We have NAEP that provides the data necessary to redirect our resources to those communities who need extra support. No one should ever have claimed that classroom teachers would be receiving useful data to inform instruction. That kind of information is best obtained through classroom assessment.
I agree the length isn’t the issue. In our state, the tests for third grade are 3 hours (most children finish in 1.5-2 hr). The issue is the stakes and therefore, the gross amount of time spent prepping for these tests.
Concerned Mom,
When the tests last 8-10 hours, length is an issue.
Of course, the high stakes makes them the driver of instruction, which is backwards.
My reason for saying that I didn’t think test length was the issue was that it doesn’t matter how long a high stakes standardized test is. Whatever the length of such an instrument, it is badly flawed. The NAEP really meets the need for demographic data that identifies who we are not serving well. Test and punish is never going to improve education. The last 20 years ought to tell us that.
With apologies to another Warren (no relation)
Well I met a girl in the Senate, lord
I ain’t namin names
She really worked me over good
She was just like Jesse James
She really worked me over good
She was a test and VAM defender
She put me through some changes lord
Sort of like a Warren blender
You got me on that reference. I was thinking the words were from a L Ronstadt tune. Help me out!
What’s Elizabeth Warren’s thinking on saving the poor scorers? The stick for the supposedly underperforming staff, and the offer to eat a piece of tree bark to entice new staff?
The most undesirable jobs, with the added bonus of getting blamed for the socio-economic conditions of the students, and a new extra bonus of potentially getting fired for it? Yum, yum.
Where’s the carrot?
Like,
Attracting teachers to failing schools with double pay and a golden parachute of a years pay in case of another “turn around”. It’s the golden recipe to attract the best talent in business, right?
Why have Democrats been supporting a process that is tearing the heart out of public education? There seem to me to be two critical answers. First, the Democrats are very attached to the views of the mainstream civil rights organizations, which have continued to back high-stakes testing. Perhaps those organizations believe that high-stakes testing, reporting of “failing” students and teachers, closing down of schools, substitution of profit-making charters for public education, and the rest will somehow transform the segregated, feeble education provided in most schools of poverty. One would think that after all these years of “No Child Left Behind—Except Ours” they would arrive at another agenda: like joining activist students in demanding full-funding of public schools, enabling them to continue as community centers, supporting (and decently paying) teachers, and the like. Is it cynical to ask whether the organizations pay too much attention to those, including those in the federal government, who fund the attacks on public education?
Second, the Democrats, for good historical reasons, have been too attached to establishing policy priorities through national elections and legislation, and federal agencies. After all, “States Rights” for years cloaked racist and retrograde local policies. Civil Rights activists therefore tried to move court cases from state to federal jurisdictions; appealed to federal farm bureaus to challenge racist state and local policies regarding support of black and Hispanic farmers and farm workers; and opposed efforts of states like Texas to impose backward ideas on nationally-circulated textbooks (think the Texas Book Depository), and the like. And they have turned to the federal government to fund schools of poverty functionally abandoned by state and local governments. So it’s no surprise that Democrats have paid far more attention to presidential races and too little to local politics; the results of the 2010 and 2014 elections show what a disaster that has been. What, then, to do?
Republicans are, on the whole, clearer about their policy priority: substitute private for public education. That has the virtue, from their perspective, of getting rid of experienced (aka “expensive”) teachers and their unions, utilizing the idealism of Teach for America and other short-term recruits, and—above all—providing opportunities for entrepreneurs to turn schools into profit centers. And it fits the Reaganist—and quite stupid—ideology that says government is always the problem and never the solution. One would like to be able to turn from that agenda to positive alternatives fostered by Democrats; instead of which we get Murphy, Cuomo, Rahm and Arnie.
So, yes, good schools, schools as centers for learning and community, will have to be fought for locally and regionally. With the support of institutions like this blog, and other organizations. And, one would hope, eventually politicians who have detached themselves sufficiently from the past to create a future.
Too many Democrats today are professional politicians. They forget be cause they never knew. And Republicans? Trump is surging in the polls and “I dunno” Walker fumbles the easy questions. Maybe we need more of the “best and brightest” on public office? An opportunity to VAM politicians?
This dismal ECAA spectacle shows we lack the power to control or even educate hospitable figures like Warren and Sanders, whose votes are stinging disappointments. We lack the power to discipline the two major parties into passing legislation good for our kids, schools, teachers, and communities. With so little leverage at that level, we exhaust ourselves trying to find positive tweaks in this phrase or that to hang our hats on.
It might be healthier to simply ignore the ECAA, which is beyond our current powers to fashion into meaningful improvements. ECAA is drawing the map for the next phase of the private war on public education, with great disregard for what public schools and kids need.
For now, the best tool for building democratic power is Opt-Out. Parents are key stakeholders with much to lose or gain. While teachers are held in thrall by innumerable regulations, threats, and punishments, including from national union leadership, parents’ positions are simpler and less restricted, with no powerful organizations silencing them. It’s hard for teachers to defy their national leadership and their local boards and superintendents by going on wildcat strikes; it’s easier for parents to refuse the standardized testing which abuses their kids and makes family life harder.
ECAA and that level of policy is not yet a place we can gain traction. If we build power from below, we will compel the top to move in democratic directions, as did gay and lesbian folks who built power that won Marriage Equality, as did Black folks whose Civil Rights Movement won voting rights and other advances. Build from the bottom up and the derelict top will come around.
Ira,
Excellent analysis, and I like your suggesting that the way to fight back is the same bottom up way that real civil rights movements have fought back in the past.
…. I like your suggestion that …
You’re right. I just hope states don’t start some anti-Opt Out legislation.
Part of the problem is that the sleeper cells of TFA and other reformy groups are now entrenched inside the corridors of power in education. Senator Warren’s advisor on education is a TFA and TeachPlus alum, Josh Delaney. Naturally, he’s also a Harvard Grabby School of Ed alum as well. This is who whispers in the ears of our elected officials, and sometimes their intern salaries are paid by these orgs. It’s a problem.
It would be great if someone could do some research on the Dem Senate staff members who were TFA. Let’s “out” them to their bosses and tell them that “the people” are not in agreement with their positions. I think we need to think a bit like the single-issue folks (like the ProLifers) about our point of view on education policy. EVERY Dem elected official or candidate needs to be looked at very carefully. We should figure out the wording of our litmus test and send it to all of them. Anyone who doesn’t sign on does not get our support. In a tight race, our organized lack of enthusiasm will be a big drag on the Dem. Time to reject being taken for granted and then screwed!
Barbara- I greatly appreciate your post. What we need and have needed is an honest dialogue about “public education” in America. The ECAA and SSA are about nothing more than Republican control and an indictment of abusive and misused tests. Personally, I don’t believe the premise of standardized testing is wrong. I believe the current cadre of state assesments are poorly designed, misused and abused. Michigan gave an un-field tested, one and done assessment this year only to secure our Title ! funding. I pushed back hard against this and urged every parent to opt out. Tests should be used to inform teacher instruction and alllow children to demonstrate knowledge. No test in existnce permits that. Going on, I believe in national standards and have for decades. I don’t belive in Common Core and simply because Corporate America and Toxic Philantrhopy has no place in “public education.” This nation has not been willing to hae the “real” dialogue. The dialogue on “what public education is and needs to be.” We have people who profess to cherish public education but believe in local control. I am not one of them. I have an intractable belief in public education. I believe public education necessitates federal oversight. I will never believe that America’s children are served at the whims of 14,000 (or however many districts there are) school districts, counties and states. This has never created the equitable educational conditions or delivery of instrution that our children deserve. Nothing about the ECAA and SSA resemble the ESEA or its intent to be the great equalizer for students living in poverty, at risk or with disabilities. The saddest part of the 17 no votes on the Senate’s version of the ECAA is that there was no consensus on the “no’s.” Americans who are not well informed and watch far too much cable TV and read too many “opinion” pieces on this reauthorization are making decisions and creating alliances based upon a mountain of disingenuous and inaccurate sand. I have never felt more hopeless about public education and our nation’s children.
“Personally, I don’t believe the premise of standardized testing is wrong”
Well, Marcie, you SHOULD BELIEVE the premise of standardized testing IS WRONG. The complete destruction of the premise(s), and yes there are more than one, of standardized testing and it’s flip side of the same coin-educational standards has been available for almost twenty years now (and for the last couple of years here on this blog-ha ha ha). Read and comprehend that never refuted nor rebutted treatise on those educational malpractices in Noel Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine.
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. 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”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
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.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Thank you for posting this Diane. I just wanted to draw attention to the last paragraph in my piece, which speaks in part to Ira’s comments:
“And at all levels, let’s pick up the new business item passed at the NEA RA and the ones we passed at our Annual Meeting in which we develop our knowledge and activism around the effects of racism and poverty on our students and our communities. Let’s take control through supporting the opt-out movement, and let’s work with parents, students and communities to demand the schools every child deserves.”
Yes, good ideas, many thanks to Barbara for repeating them, exactly where we should begin. Leaders like Barbara are the ones trying to steer NEA or AFT in democratic directions, like linking with opt-out parents, an historic coalition that can win this war.
Professor Shor, thank you for posting your thoughts!
Would you not agree that ‘this war’ extends far beyond the scope of K-12 education in the United States, though? Your/our answer to this question will inform the strategies we pursue, and ultimately determine whether or not we succeed in meaningfully addressing educational inequity. After all, if we conclude that the issues plaguing American education are caused by underlying economic forces and/or the pervasive influence of a particular political ideology then this should impact our approach.
In light of their (relatively) impressive size and influence, steering the NEA and AFT in a democratic direction is undoubtedly important. It is, however, likely only one step along the way in an extended battle to combat neoliberalism. If we are genuinely serious about rectifying social problems, we cannot discuss poverty, racism, and inequality in the context of American K-12 education alone. Pasi Sahlberg’s notion of a global education reform movement (GERM) may be useful when thinking about this topic. In a similar vein, we must call attention to the structural economic flaws that are shared by developed countries around the world.
On a fundamental level, we have to focus on the critical link between the aspirations/practices of our education system and the general direction of our society.
Barbara,
Thank you for supporting parents in their quest for opt- out.
Yet, also, thank you just as much for NOT just leaving it at that, and, rather, for focusing on the main issues of poverty and inequality.
I love Liz and have supported her career for years, but sincerely doubt her ability to really understand the nuances of teaching and learning. She wants so much to take down the big banks, but does she really understand their connections to ALEC and how ALEC impacts education policy?
If you next speak to her, please help her to try and connect those not-so-hard-to-connect dots . . . .
This opt-out parent is ready to go at it again this coming school year. I would love to see some high-octane, high profile support from the MTA.
NPR did an interview with Sandy Kress where Kress defends testing and NCLB and NPR never revealed to readers that Kress was once a lobbyist for testing companies:
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/07/17/423582338/stop-picking-on-no-child-left-behind-says-one-of-its-parents?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social
I mean come on. Kress’ role in this has been extensively covered in Texas media. Why don’t they say up front that this guy lobbies for testing companies?
Kress was Pearson’s lead lobbyist in Texas.
To answer your question Chiara: Because NPR is paid to obfuscate those connections, not to illuminate them.
Time to leave the Democratic party. I have been saying it for years, but waited to vote for deBlasio. And lo and behold, after the contract that gives ATRs no due process, and a chancellor who is still following Klein’s policies, I am truly disgusted.
As a CA parent and a progressive Dem, I can promise there is a FUNDED Opt Out Campaign movement underway. This one will hit from another angle due to proof of how the testing, which is now about to make its way into Early Childhood Ed, is rolled into a more specious agenda that targets poor and low income folks.
Diane, I am happy to fill you in. Sorry to be coy, but can’t let this cat out of the bag yet though I can say the campaign will be national.
I hope it comes out soon. We need it NOW.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.