David Gamberg recently retired as superintendent of schools in two adjoining towns on New York’s Long Island—Southold and Greenport—where he was beloved for his child-centered approach to schooling. In this article, he calls for new thinking and the courage to break free of the obsession with standardized testing and punitive accountability. He announced his retirement in January, not knowing what was about to happen to schools across the nation and the world.
He understands that the status quo of high-stakes testing and demoralizing punishment has failed.
He writes:
I argue that the emphasis must be on capturing the hearts and minds of our students, and not primarily seeking to make up for lost ground academically as noted by education author Alfie Kohn. We must abandon any pretense that the metrics used in recent years to judge, sort, and separate students, teachers and schools through a ranking system based on data that focused on math and ELA standardized testing will serve them well in the near future.
Therefore, the first step is an immediate cessation of the current accountability system, based primarily on the use of high stakes, standardized testing in grades 3-8 that has preoccupied students, teachers, administrators, Boards of Education, families, and school communities since the No Child Left Behind legislation of 2002.
Will our educational leaders have the courage and wisdom to change their focus to students, not their test scores? To humans, not rankings?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Punitive, high stakes testing is denigrating our public schools. Standardized testing and its misapplication have dominated public schools for the past twenty years. Scores have been misused to close schools and fire teachers. Standardized scores are not useful to teachers and students. So-called proficiency levels of standardized testing are a man made construct that can be manipulated in order to determine how many students “pass” and how many “fail.” Standardized testing has been used to unfairly privatize our public schools. This is a rigged system, not one that helps students and informs teachers.
Rigged standardized testing is more political than academic, and we need to change course as there are many more ways to access students that provide more useful information for teachers and students. ““Public Education is the cornerstone of our community and our democracy.” We need to unburden our schools from this testing yoke so that our teachers have the freedom to teach and our students may learn without punitive consequences.
KEY word: Rigged
cx: assess instead of access
For over twenty years I have been writing about a new vision for public schools. As I completely agree that we must seek out this new vision, it’s more difficult to describe what this new vision looks like. It is a good start to eliminate the big test, that is essential. However, we must recognize that as soon as we do that, the dominioes will begin to fall.
First we must realize that letter grades are a lie. They tell the student and parent absolutely nothing about what a child has learned. And average varies from city to city, school to school and classroom to classroom.
Then we design a MAP ( My Action Plan ) that takes kids from learning one skill directly to another. Sort of like IEP for all.
As we realize kids are all over the spectrum with their skill levels, then grade levels become moot. They can exist but never based on achievement becuase now they are also a lie. Could someone pass with a D and be on the same grade level as someone who passed with an A?
Once we realize the wide variety of skills that exist in a grade level, we may no longer teach everyone as an extension of tnhe same person. All kids are different. No longer may we lump everyone into a single category. When we compare kids because of their zip code, we allow the racist belief to exist that all students in that zip code are the same.
The system of failure is devastating to kids that don’t move forward at the same time on the same page of the same text taking the same fake standardized test. When someone is behind in learning especially due to childhood stress and learning a new language etc. do we pass them with a D or do we fail them into the school to prison pipeline.
And what about graduation. In my fully public Milwaukee Village School, sudents walked across the stage, handed us their completed portfolio (MAP) and we in turn handed them a diploma.Just imagine them taking a portfolio to the University or potential employer to show what they really know. And if the University or employer requires more skills, they take their MAP to a community college or a trade union and get the skills. Once in place, hope stays alive for all kids for a change.
I have written four books on the topic for details. http://www.wholechildreform.com
I taught in a diverse suburban New York City school district. We were working on implementing portfolio assessments in the late 1990s’. We had Bank St. consulting with us. Then, the NCLB “accountability pandemic” hit schools like a ton of bricks, and all the work was shelved as schools, fighting to survive, got on the testing treadmill.
one more thought. With such a variety of skills in a grade level we may no longer teach all the kids the same. Projects, community experience, the arts are all ways for kids to connect to learning. So much can be integrated into an arts curriculum. Arts are a communication skill and can teach most anything including the joy of learning.
This is a powerful letter.
From reading this blog, and all the many articles recommended within the blog, and seeing first hand the political dynamics of local school boards, administration and the power of tech companies etc. in public education – I have lost faith that the ‘powers that be’ would read a letter like this and be moved to take action.
“Change” can be just words and very superficial. For example, a system that retains the test and accountability framework and adds something like a STEM lab, SEL programs or an outdoor classroom could say they are responding to the need for change teachers and parents are asking for. But those new elements are extras and can’t really be fully integrated if the underlying system is one that values test and accountability.
It will take new leadership at the very top, a strong knowledgable team setting the tone, to really make a difference.
To have meaningful change in education requires one of two things: either a new mindset at the federal level, one that recognizes the failure of the NCLB paradigm; or a state commissioner who courageously said, “what we have been doing for 20 years has failed. I reject the federal mandates and we won’t comply until they change.”
And which state commissioner is likely to assume that stance at the risk of losing federal funds, even if those are 12% or less of the state budget?
I do not know, but the first option would be better.
Changing the Congressional mindset to one that rejects testing as proper and valid “accountability” is a huge lift especially because so many profit from tests, and the data they produce, depend on tests to justify their jobs and agendas, and so on.
It is a big lift and the Biden ticket and Democratic party is not clearly in favor of making that effort.
I hope Jill Biden will bring her experience to the table and advocate for the needed change.
My view has been that so many cannot differentiate between education and instruction. I listed three things in the hierarchy:
• Instructors teach 2 + 2 += 4 [memorization to pass tests?]
• teachers teach 2 + 2 = 4 but open minds as to WHY that is so
• educators teach 2 + 2 = 4 but along with it the beauty of mathematics, concepts of the search for truth.
The people who would improve education have lost sight of the goal; to lead the child to be the best HUMAN being to which the child is capable, not as an “it” who can be stuffed full of things those people who have not worked with children and love them as HUMAN beings but supplant that supplant that with their very limited concepts and stricture true educators hands. Some even see the system as a way to make money, prioritize that as number one goal.
SAD!