John Kuhn is an eloquent, wise superintendent in Texas who spreads truth to power.
In this address to the Association of Texas Professional Educators, he warned that the very existence of public education was under fire by a coalition of the rich and the greedy.
He is so brilliant, so eloquent, and so on target that it is hard to excerpt his speech. I urge you to read it in full. If you know anyone in Texas, share it. Send it to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the politician who wants to monetize and privatize the state’s underfunded public schools. That’s his game. That’s his shame. Be sure to tweet JOHN Kuhn’s speech to Dan Patrick @DanPatrick and @LtGovTX
Kuhn says:
“It all really comes down to vouchers. This has been the end-game the whole time. Going back through the decades from TABS to TEAMS to TAAS to TAKS to STAAR [the acronyms for successive state tests], it was never about assessing student learning. It was always about smearing teachers and manufacturing a crisis. Vouchers were always a solution in search of a problem, and the test-and-punish industrial complex arose to create that problem. In reality, testing has always shown us the same thing, always. Well-off and middle class American public school students academically outperform kids from private schools and kids from other nations, when matched socioeconomically. And poor American kids outperform poor kids in those other countries and in private schools, when matched socioeconomically. It is only when you lump all the kids together–because we have so many more poor kids testing than they systems they compare us to–that American public school results look bad. It is a trick. We don’t have an educational problem. We have a social inequality problem that politicians and privatizers dress up as an educational problem. And this statistical sleight of hand, this deliberate misdirection has one goal: to justify the need for vouchers and the dismantling of public education as a state responsibility.
“The voucher movement is about money and adult interests. It isn’t about children. It’s not even mostly about parents who want a discount on their private school tuition; it’s mostly about the interests of other adults, very wealthy adults. It’s about the interests of tycoons and political players who are funding school voucher campaigns across our state and nation not because they want to improve schools, but because they want to engineer a cheaper education so their property taxes will go down. They want to hobble teachers’ unions and reduce wages and benefits. And on top of cheapening a system that already has one of the lowest levels of per pupil spending in the nation, Texas privatizers also want to make money on theback end, they want a piece of the education pie, which billionaire school choice advocate Rupert Murdoch said was a $500 billion dollar industry just waiting to be “transformed.” He meant to say hijacked.
“They don’t really want a piece of the education pie. They want the whole thing. They want to convert a public good into a private enterprise. They want to take this public education system that was created by wiser and more selfless people long ago as a public trust, that belongs to the people—controlled by voters engaged in the Democratic process, free to attend, and open to all children—this is the vision of public education as we know it, and this is what is facing an existential threat….
Texas voters and Texas lawmakers have rejected vouchers over and over again. But the voucher lobby cynically repackages the idea under new and confusing names. Let’s call vouchers Opportunity Scholarships. The voters figured that out, time to change the name. Let’s call them Education Savings Accounts. Let’s call them School Choice. Let’s rebrand them over and over until everyone is thoroughly confused and don’t realize they’re voting for vouchers. The Dallas Morning News had a better term for vouchers in a recent headline: “Private School Vouchers are the Fool’s Gold of Better Education.”
Fool’s gold. Pyrite. A worthless material that is just shiny enough to trick the uninformed into believing that it has value. That’s exactly what vouchers are, even if you call them something else. And why would you call them something else? Why would voucher advocates feel the need to trick people by re-branding their pet policy?
Maybe it’s because vouchers are a terrible idea. Maybe they change the name because the research is in, and it’s clear: vouchers just don’t work. In fact, research shows unequivocally that vouchers don’t just fail to make student achievement better; they actually make student achievement demonstrably worse. Vouchers aren’t the civil rights movement of our time; they’re the civil wrongs movement of our time, hurting the children they pretend to help. Three different research studies published recently have found that voucher programs harm student learning—including one study sponsored by the Walton Family Foundation and the Fordham Institute, both proponents of vouchers. Students who use vouchers underperform their matched peers who stay in public schools.
You heard me right. I’m not just saying that vouchers don’t help very much. I’m saying voucher programs result in students learning less than if the voucher programs didn’t exist. Giving a student a voucher to improve his education is like giving a struggling swimmer a boulder to help him swim. The Walton Foundation study said: “Students who use vouchers to attend private schools have fared worse academically compared to their closely matched peers attending public schools.” A study of the voucher program in Louisiana found very negative results in both reading and math. Kids who started the voucher program at the 50th percentile in math dropped to the 26th percentile in a single year. Vouchers are so harmful to children that a Harvard professor called their negative effect “as large as any I’ve seen in the literature.”
Vouchers should come with a surgeon general’s warning like cigarettes. The third study was of a voucher program involving over 10,000 students in Indiana—where our vice president was governor—and it found this: “In mathematics, voucher students who transfer to private schools experienced significant losses in achievement” and show no improvement in reading. Vouchers are not only not helpful—they’re harmful. And they are not only harmful—they are more harmful than any other educational initiative Harvard researchers have ever seen. They are the educational equivalent of smoking cigarettes to treat lung disease. And the voucher lobby treats research exactly like the tobacco lobby does, by paying think tanks to generate copious amounts of pseudo-science and internet content to try and generate support for the harmful ideology behind their business venture.
In the face of this data showing indisputably that vouchers make things worse for struggling students, why then are vouchers still the big focus this session from so many Texas and Washington political insiders? It’s simple really, and sad. It’s because the voucher push isn’t about student performance at all. That isn’t what this is about. It’s about money in the pockets of adults. Vouchers are not, never were, and never will be about kids….
So I ask what is worse? A government in 1836 so blind to the needs of its citizens that it failed to create a system of public education, or a government in 2017 so deeply held hostage by cronyism and corruption that it is actively, session after session, year after year, trying to dismantle a system of public education that has already been created, a system that was built by the treasure and efforts of many selfless generations of Texas taxpayers and teachers, a system that has expanded since 1836 to cover every square inch of the state, to educate every Texas child who wants to be educated, for free, children of every race and color and creed, regardless of ability or disability, regardless of which side of the tracks they were born on, regardless of their home language or any other personal characteristic. Public schools are for the children. Vouchers are for cronies and conmen. When rich elites refuse to invest in the education of the children of the poor, they sow seeds of disenchantment that eventaually unravel the social fabric. They don’t realize what a dangerous game they play.
The public education movement was and is and will always be about the interests of poor and middle class children and families who see education as their path to a more prosperous future. The voucher movement is about funneling tax dollars to schools that have the right to exclude kids that don’t fit their mold. Voucher schools will have academic entry requirements to keep out the riff raff. Voucher schools will have behavior contracts to keep out the riff raff. Voucher schools will have parent volunteering requirements to keep out the riff raff. The voucher schools will have fees for extracurricular activities, fees for books, fees for uniforms, fees to keep out the riff raff.
But they aren’t riff raff. They’re children, and they are all welcome in our public schools.
The voucher movement rests on a foundational lie that the free market will sort good schools from bad when parents choose. But this is smoke and mirrors, because they have no intention for the marketplace of schools to be truly free. The voucher movement wants to create a system in which public schools give STAAR tests—lots of STAAR tests—but the voucher schools give none. That’s not a free market. That’s the government picking winners and losers. And the voucher movement wants public schools graded with A-F grades based on those STAAR tests, but it doesn’t want the voucher schools graded on the same A-F scale, because A-F grades for schools are based on the STAAR TESTS that voucher schools will never ever be required to give. School vouchers are not a free market, they are the government picking winners and losers and guaranteeing that the winners will be private schools that are exempt from the crushing bureaucratic regulations that our state and federal governments have heaped upon the state’s public schools for decades.
It is a cynical ploy, a corrupt, self-serving campaign. Vouchers are not about children, they are 100% about adult interests.
And school choice is not really about giving students their choice of schools. The best private schools cost over $20,000 per year in tuition. The state is talking about giving out $5000 vouchers. That won’t get poor kids into leafy green academies, it will get them into pop-up franchises that some of the voucher lobby’s largest donors are going to launch all over the state. It will get them into online for-profit schools where one teacher at a computer will “teach” 400 kids clicking through modules online, and we will all pretend this is an education, that this clicking through modules is preparing those kids to be engaged, civically-minded, well-rounded citizens.
I’m just going to say that a real education should look a lot like real life, with flesh and blood encounters with teachers and classmates, face-to-face interactions with diverse friends and neighbors, conflicts and shared lunches, recesses and sports teams, student councils and class officers and mums and bonfires, parades down main street led by the band, and news clippings in the gas station about a buzzer-beater win. Letter jackets and class rings, kissing in the stairwell, loud stereos in the parking lot and quiet tears in the counselor’s office. This is the hum and rattle of community, the pulse, the heartbeat of our neighborhoods, this is public school.
Public schools are about the children. Public schools mold the future when they educate our kids, and they always have. When our politicians brag about how great Texas is and how strong the economy is, remind them that it was public school teachers, not politicians, who built Texas, and we built it by educating 95% of the students in this state.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane Send this to the major newspapers with your endorsement? Like the New York and LA Times, the Washington Post, etc.?
The paragraph about public schools being the “hum and rattle of the community” makes me tear up every time I read it. John Kuhn is an edu-hero.
Cross posted at Oped News https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Vouchers-Are-the-Civil-Wro-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Children_Corporate-Fraud_Diane-Ravitch_Education-170310-598.html#comment649393
with a link to Peter Greene’s look at Pennsylvania’s tactic thanks to
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2017/02/pa-senate-ed-chair-wants-to-trash.html
Embedded links at the site:
“State senator John Eichelberger has been no friend to public schools or the teachers who work in them.In 2011, when Betsy and Richard DeVos were looking to finance a push for vouchers in Pennsylvania, he was the man to take point… pushing the narrative that Pennsylvania’s schools were a terrible, failing mess. (It’s also worth noting that the DeVos push for vouchers included allies who were explicitly in favor of shutting down “government schools” entirely.)
When it comes to the pension problems of Pa Eichelberger has argued for fixed contribution pensions– you get a fixed amount of money chipped in and go play the market with your retirement fund. Good luck to you.
And most recently, Eichelberger has surfaced as the sponsor of the SB 229, a bill recycled from previous sessions and aimed at making sick days a locally-negotiated part of teacher contracts.
Yesterday Zack Hoopes at The Sentinel reported on a town hall meeting in which Eichelberger made it clear that he would like to stick it to teachers, with fire and barbecue sauce.One critic noted that the sick day policy seemed like a tax on employees, not something that would actually help students. Eichelberger doesn’t much care. He wants to penalize teachers and union members because they’re taking advantage of the system.
In other words, putting them on the table as one more thing that can be stripped from a contract. He’s also the legislator behind SB 166, the bill that would end paycheck deductions for paying union dues. Is he one of those backseat grandstanding hacks whose bills have no chance of success. Well, no. He’s the chairman of the Education Committee.
Yes, if teachers really cared about their work, they would schedule illnesses for themselves and their families during the summer. Because what every parent wants is for their child to be greeted by a coughing, sneezing, germ-laden teacher who can’t take the day off.
I forwarded link to LA Times with brief quote and comment.
Ugh. Arne Duncan is now pitching specific tech products to public schools under the guise of promoting STEM:
“To be successful in this endeavor, we need strong partners in the private sector. I joined the board at Pluralsight, a company that aims to democratize technology learning by addressing the skills gap for both individuals and corporations, for this exact reason. Our efforts at Emerson could be multiplied many times over by thoughtful and articulate policy from the White House that connects public and private efforts to provide underserved groups with tech skills training that will lead to long-term job placement.”
Schools don’t have to buy this product to teach people the math they need for computer science, or any other STEM career.
They are selling this stuff to public schools as essential and it’s just not. Please get credible and objective advice before purchasing anything. A board member of a company is not objective.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/03/02/educational-equality-and-excellence-will-drive-a-stronger-economy/
Also- how horrible is it that Brookings takes an editorial with a plug for a product?
STOP SELLING US PRODUCTS or at least identify yourselves as salespeople. Stop disguising sales pitches as expert opinion.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/03/02/educational-equality-and-excellence-will-drive-a-stronger-economy/
Chiara, about as horrible as the fact that Brookings asked Duncan to be a senior fellow, a position usually reserved for scholars, not basketball buddies of the POTUS.
John Kuhn runs an actual public school so he probably noticed that the only thing ed reform offers public schools is standardized test and garbage ed tech product.
Thanks but no thanks. Go pitch product to someone else.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
“It was never about assessing student learning. It was always about smearing teachers and manufacturing a crisis.”
“Well-off and middle class American public school students academically outperform kids from private schools and kids from other nations, when matched socioeconomically. And poor American kids outperform poor kids in those other countries and in private schools, when matched socioeconomically. It is only when you lump all the kids together–because we have so many more poor kids testing than they systems they compare us to–that American public school results look bad. It is a trick. We don’t have an educational problem. We have a social inequality problem…”
Does anyone have sources for the comparisons he references here? I don’t question the accuracy of this claim, but many others I may share it with will.
I have read on this blog that many studies support this, perhaps ed researchers here can help you. When I cross swords w/folks on comment threads to ed articles, they are usually citing PISA scores (another place where all US student achievement is lumped together, & we have always come out at or just below median of OECD countries). I don’t pretend that PISA scores reflect a true picture of ed achievement. But I always would always point them to to the wiki PISA article containing a graph called “broken down by poverty”, which precisely aligned 2009 scores with the para you cite. Unfortunately the updated versions of the wiki article do not contain that chart. But if you google “PISA scores broken down by poverty,” you’ll find a number of articles summarizing similar data. Here is one:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-jim-taylor/are-public-education-chic_b_798354.html
I think this is the article that John Kuhn was referring to:
http://blog.nassp.org/2014/02/12/pisa-its-still-poverty-not-stupid/
Thank you! This is helpful!
Everyone should know that the call for vouchers was the first racist response to the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board of Education in which the Court declared that “separate but equal” public schools are inherently unequal and ordered racial integration of the public schools. That ruling triggered “white flight” from public schools to private schools — but parents quickly realized that the tuition cost of private schools was more than they wanted to pay out-of-pocket. That realization led political and private resegregationists to the concoct the “reform” of vouchers, and to sell it to eager parents by deceptively marketing it then —and still today — as merely giving parents a “choice.” Charter schools are the profit-making part of the “education reform/choice/voucher” movement that has from its very beginnings been rooted in racism. The movement has always had resegregation of America’s schools as its core agenda.
Reports from the NAACP and ACLU have revealed the facts about just how charter schools are resegregating our nation’s schools, as well as discriminating racially and socioeconomically against American children, and last year the NAACP Board of Directors passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on charter school expansion and for the strengthening of oversight in governance and practice. Moreover, a very detailed nationwide research by The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA shows in clear terms that private charter schools suspend extraordinary numbers of black students.
The 1950’s voucher crusade faded away when it became clear that because of school attendance boundaries no more than a few token blacks would be attending formerly all-white public schools. In 1972 when the Supreme Court finally ordered busing to end the ongoing de facto segregation, the reform movement rose from its grave and has been alive ever since then trying new tactics to restore racial segregation because it’s unlikely that the Court’s racial integration order can ever be reversed. When it became clear in the 1980’s that vouchers would never become widespread, the segregationists tried many other routes to restore racial segregation, and the most successful has been charter schools because charter schools can be sold to blithely unaware do-gooder billionaires as well as to unscrupulous profiteers who recognized charter schools as a way to divert vast amounts of tax money into their own pockets and into the pockets of supportive politicians at every level of government.
An essential part of the strategy to mask their underlying motives has been for segregationists to sell the public on the necessity for charter schools because public schools are allegedly “failing.” With all manner of “research” that essentially compares apples to oranges against foreign nations’ students, and with the self-fulfilling prophecy of dismal public school performance generated by drastic underfunding of public schools, and with condemnation of public school teachers based on statistically invalid student test scores, the segregationists are succeeding in resegregating education in America via what are basically private charter schools that are funded with public money.
The Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a warning that charter schools posed a risk to the Department of Education’s own goals. The report says: “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting the goals” because of the financial fraud, the skimming of tax money into private pockets that is the reason why hedge funds are the main backers of charter schools.
The Washington State Supreme Court, the New York State Supreme Courts, and the National Labor Relations Board have ruled that charter schools are not public schools because they aren’t accountable to the public since they aren’t governed by publicly-elected boards and aren’t subdivisions of public government entities, in spite of the fact that some state laws enabling charter schools say they are government subdivisions. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A “PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL” because no charter school fulfills the basic public accountability requirement of being responsible to and directed by a school board that is elected by We the People. Charter schools are clearly private schools, owned and operated by private entities. Nevertheless, they get public tax money.
Even the staunchly pro-charter school Los Angeles Times (which acknowledges that its “reporting” on charter schools is paid for by a billionaire charter school advocate) complained in an editorial that “the only serious scrutiny that charter operators typically get is when they are issued their right to operate, and then five years later when they apply for renewal.” Without needed oversight of what charter schools are actually doing with the public’s tax dollars, hundreds of millions of tax money that is supposed to be spent on educating the public’s children is being siphoned away into private pockets.
Charter schools should (1) be required by law to be governed by school boards elected by the voters so that they are accountable to the public; (2) a charter school entity must legally be a subdivision of a publicly-elected governmental body; (3) charter schools should be required to file the same detailed public-domain audited annual financial reports under penalty of perjury that genuine public schools file; and, (4) anything a charter school buys with the public’s money should be the public’s property.
NO PUBLIC TAX MONEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GO TO CHARTER SCHOOLS THAT FAIL TO MEET THESE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE PUBLIC.
Now that forced bussing of students is coming to an end, and there will be “neo-segregation”, how will this impact the neighborhood public schools?
This is the single most honest forthright description that I have ever about the fight for survival that public education is facing. John speaks the truth that so many politicians could never look in the eye and dispute.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Even Betsy DeVos wrote in a USA Today article that we can’t just keep throwing money at a problem in education. We either need to point out the hypocrisy or clarify the matter for the general public: VOUCHERS ARE COMPLETELY, 100 PERCENT, ABOUT MONEY.
Admittedly we have a problem, which goes something like this: Some kids receive a poor education at some public schools. Everybody, including Kuhn and DeVos, would love to see this fixed. Kuhn would fix it by bringing public schools into reality; DeVos would fix it by throwing money at it in some kind of alternative-fact world.
Kuhn, I infer from this speech, would add support to better engage that struggling public school student or his family in his educational trajectory, to encourage him to become more invested in his education. DeVos, on the other hand, would give his family some money to help him pay tuition at a private school that isn’t accountable.
So … let’s be clear about this: Kuhn would improve the school system and its effectiveness, and DeVos would take funds away from the school system and give them to a family. The effects of that boggle the mind, but two big ones are: (a) It will reduce the ability of the school system to engage students and their families because they’ll have to cut programming, and (b) it will make the family work less hard on overcoming the obstacles they face.
Both of those are exactly the opposite of what SHOULD be done, but in the present administration, we can have our judgement clouded more easily than Democrats of the past sent us on a wild goose chase to figure out what percent of class time is spent on “testing” and on whether or not we teach 2nd graders to reason both sides of an argument, whether that is an “age-appropriate” objective in the Common Core.
We can’t get side-tracked in minor issues at this point. Public schools are under attack from vouchers, and it’s time to get out your best arguments. Those three studies are the linchpin.
Thanks, Paul.
Why throw money at an experiment that has failed every time? Milwaukee is the national model of the free market at work. Public schools are on life support yet they still perform as well or better than the choice schools. For be thing, they have certified teachers.
While I am in complete agreement with the sentiments expressed here, there is one thing that bothers me. Kuhn cites studies that suggest that vouchers send students to schools where their achievement is worse than their peers in public institutions. This is obviously based on test scores. I see this as a problem.
First I should admit that using the same data to refute the false claims of the voucher proponents that they use to promote themselves bolsters his argument. If their data does not back their claims, they look as bankrupt of ideas as they really are.
The problem with the argument is that it accepts as evidentiary the data which is worthless. I call to task those who say we can know what someone knows. I realize this flies in the face of much of what we do in all our educational institutions, but I am increasingly suspicious of all tests, including my own.
I also admit the nihilistic flavor of this assertion, but I cannot avoid the feelings I have about the process. I think I can determine how a student thinks about a particular idea if I talk to that student for a long time, but I am required to have a relationship with that student for an extended period that makes our conversation informal. You cannot do that in a setting now recognizable as school. I think I can read an essay someone wrote to determine a knowledge base, but there are drawbacks to this as well, including the futility of self-expression I demonstrate here as I write.
Roy,
If you haven’t read Wilson’s work on standards and testing may I suggest that you do as my summary just skims the work. There is a whole lot more to be found in the reading that what I summarized (with Wilson’s help): “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.
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.
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).
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.
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 words all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
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.
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.
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.
Another lesser known writing of Wilson is this on validity:
A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review
Click to access v10n5.pdf
A few excerpts:
“To the extent that these categorisations [from test results] are accurate or valid at an individual level, these decisions may be both ethically acceptable to the decision makers, and rationally and emotionally acceptable to the test takers and their advocates. They accept the judgments of their society regarding their mental or emotional capabilities. But to the extent that such categorisations are invalid, they must be deemed unacceptable to all concerned.
Further, to the extent that this invalidity is hidden or denied, they are all involved in a culture of symbolic violence. This is violence related to the meaning of the categorisation event where, firstly, the real source of violation, the state or educational institution that controls the meanings of the categorisations, are disguised, and the authority appears to come from another source, in this case from professional opinion backed by scientific research. If you do not believe this, then consider that no matter how high the status of an educator, his voice is unheard unless he belongs to the relevant institution.
And finally a symbolically violent event is one in which what is manifestly unjust is asserted to be fair and just. In the case of testing, where massive errors and thus miscategorisations are suppressed, scores and categorisations are given with no hint of their large invalidity components. It is significant that in the chapter on Rights and responsibilities of test users, considerable attention is given to the responsibility of the test taker not to cheat. Fair enough. But where is the balancing responsibility of the test user not to cheat, not to pretend that a test event has accuracy vastly exceeding technical or social reality? Indeed where is the indication to the test taker of any inaccuracy at all, except possibly arithmetic additions?
DuaneSwacker and Roy: I have copied below a couple of quotes from Duane’s note (I presume they are from Wilson). A VERY brief critique here of the philosophical implications of these quotes regards that Roy’s sense of nihilistic tendencies are reflected also in Wilson’s (and Foucault’s) writing. Ironically the end-run of nihilism HERE speaks to the same problems Wilson complains about THERE–about test-writers/users.
The social implications of grading are one thing (and I think he’s right–at least what’s in your note); but philosophically: NADA. He’s basically purveying a “ground” of relativism and its best-case-scenario for such a view: circular arguments (tautologies) rooted, so to speak, in arbitrary statements by test-makers and “authorities.” From that view, it’s no wonder nihilism is all there is left to think–for those who are serious about the philosophical and spiritual implications of living–which apparently Roy IS. Would that all teachers were.
Can’t cover it all here but basically it’s more of the unfinished problems from the scientific revolution and the enlightenment that are at work. Those problems leave the partially right/wrong philosopher (e.g., Kant) with a false sense of omniscience, un-grounded, outside of history, even their own, and on the trail of the Absolute. And if they cannot have the Absolute, then all that is left is nihilism. See the first quote below:
“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.”
That sounds like a deadly mix of both subjectivism and relativism to me and its philosophical and spiritual offspring: No hope (nihilism). No wonder games and game theory are so much the rage today.
Presumable, no one can ask the further questions, three of which go to the basic flaw in his argument: (1) Is the focus in the specific questions important for the student to know? (2) is the question’s knowledge content the best available presently in its special field? (is it true to the best we know?) and (3) is the question on the test formed adequately so students can understand what is being asked of them?
In brief, if its about ONLY measuring “what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures,” then indeed the whole process is defunct. All honest teachers should go home. But from your notes, it seems Wilson is saying NOT that test-situations CAN BE defunct (of course they can); but rather he is saying that tests CANNOT BE KNOWLEDGE-based on principle. They are just machinations of collusion between test-makers and test-users. Ouch . . . and really. really, wrong. (Is anyone reminded of Congress?)
The other quote from your note:
“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 . . . “;
Again, except for “those who know,” that’s a good rendition of a wholly defunct educational and social order–a “culture” that has no basis for really culturing anyone. Truth is what “those in authority” say it is. These are brief quotes, but the implications are there: That’s a pretty low horizon, don’t you think? And it’s no small aside that, from that horizon, everything becomes politicized, and nothing more. Sigh . . .(Why am I reminded of Mitch McConnell?) And really–how can anyone cheat if nothing’s true?
Roy, Kuhn (and the NYT) didn’t mention the use of data besides test scores, but it was used in at least one of the studies. The New Orleans study, in particular, looked at grit, locus of control, political tolerance, and self-esteem. Another remarkable thing about these three studies is that one came out of Fordham, which has been a significant voice FOR charter schools and even vouchers. While I agree with you that test scores don’t paint an accurate or even reasonably complete picture of student performance, as a practical matter for politicians (and others, such as NYT reporters and the general public who vote in elections), we in education have no choice but to use test scores. Look, we’re going to teach kids right, which means NOT using test scores inappropriately. But we lost the election in many ways, and we need to change our tactics so that we can cut the privatization movement off. Politicians simply don’t understand, in their alternative-fact universe, that test scores are meaningless. We educators DO understand that they are worthless in our schools, but we are playing this argument out in Washington and in our statehouses, not in our classrooms.
This is so beautifully said. This man is a hero!! Please pass this on. We have got to fight back against the forces our to destroy our public schools. They really are the cornerstone to our democracy.
Post-Script to my note on Wilson and test takers/makers: I do not advocate for over-testing or for making tests scores the only way to evaluate student progress. Roy’s rendition of getting to know the student (from his note) is ideal, at least as a part of the way towards a good education; and it’s nothing new–dialogue goes back to Socrates and is/was a foundation for education long before the US came into being.
My point was rather to focus on the philosophical implications of Duane’s quotes from Wilson.
the test-and-punish industrial complex……. it reminds me of the audiobook I am listening to about the economics of slavery! It shames America.
Have you noticed how the politicians that fight the hardest against school choice/vouchers, send their children to private schools?
see
http://mediatrackers.org/wisconsin/2014/11/20/lefts-war-children
Charles, I didn’t know that because it is not true.
Anyone who fights for vouchers and charters is ignorant of research showing they are a waste of money and children’s lives.
Reblogged this on Shanna Peeples and commented:
Thank you, John Kuhn for thundering these mighty truths!
This is a well written article. I can see both sides of this issue in that it is written by a superintendent who, many believe, is part of the public school problem, the overabundance of highly paid administrators in closely connected geographical areas. Dollars saved in this area would be significant and could be better used at the school level, I.e., county vs. city level superintendents. Secondly what no one likes to mention is the first schools were actually started by churches; with all today’s government rules/regulations, you would never have guessed that. Many parents feel their children are being disenfranchised due to “no child Left behind”, etc. There are no easy answers to this dilemma. All three of my sons were educated in public schools and turned out to be productive people. I think most parents just wish Their Voices would be heard. I applaud every teacher who manages to teach, discipline and sometimes even enjoy a classroom every single day. The superintendent mentions that vouchers are all about money. Yet not a day goes by that I don’t hear on the news what a failure Oklahoma Is in paying it’s teachers…That they can go to Kansas or Texas and make so much more. What they fall to mention is the property taxes etc. Are much higher in Texas and the cost of living in Kansas. They compare apples to oranges and at no time is the good of the children considered. Also when enrolling in college to begin teaching, I’m pretty sure average salary charts are available for anyone considering that field. To all the teachers I salute you and pray this issue will be resolved in a manner that will benefit our children and the educators without anymore name calling or public acts of proving that being I’m the classroom is not a priority.