Teacher Nora De La Cour writes on her blog that it is time to restore the joy of teaching and learning by abolishing high-stakes testing. She writes that candidate Joe Biden forcefully promised to get rid of standardized testing and restore teacher autonomy, but Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona seems unwilling to commit to granting states a waiver from the mandated federal testing. He did not seek a waiver for Connecticut when he was state commissioner there, and he was noncommittal at his Senate hearings.
She writes:
While NCLB and RTT were marketed as efforts to strengthen public education for disadvantaged students, the overwhelming action of these reforms has been to redirect funding away from normal school operations in under-resourced districts, impose state takeovers and other dehumanizing restructuring plans, and replace community schools with privately run charters. The rampant school closures precipitated by NCLB and RTT have mainly impacted schools attended by the poor black and brown students who are used as mascots by those pushing these neoliberal “equity and accountability” measures. Researchers have documented links between high-stakes testing and high incarceration rates. Test scores have been used to limit opportunitiesfor students with disabilities, another group hailed as primary beneficiaries of test-based reforms.
The obsession with standardized testing has drained K-12 public education of the vibrant, joyful things that make kids want to be in school. Districts have been forced to cut art, music, extracurriculars, and recess in order to save time and money for tests and test prep.
The Bill Gates-funded Common Core Standards that drive the current tests have undermined teachers’ creative autonomy, stripping us of our ability to shape instruction around what motivates our students. Instead of teaching whole novels and plays, language arts teachers are pushed into teaching mainly “informational texts” (as though fiction doesn’t contain information) and decontextualized literary excerpts. My students experienced Frankenstein, for example, not as a gripping monster story that prompts questions about what it means to be human, but as a lifeless fragment on a practice test, from which they were required to extract and regurgitate specific information that corporate test-makers deem important.
She adds, quite accurately:
Standardized tests do not measure teaching. Indeed, the premise that poor children struggle because their teachers are lazy is both racist (teachers of color are more likely to have low-income students) and illogical (why on earth would lazy people pursue positions in underfunded schools?). Contrary to claims, standardized tests don’t measure the skills needed for fulfilling jobs requiring complex problem-solving (although the curiosity- and criticality-punishing accountability system unquestionably prepares kids for drudgery under capitalism). Standardized tests cannot account for the myriad forms meaningful learning can take. The only thing these assessments reliably measure is poverty.
Despite Biden’s promise to get rid of the test-driven policies of the past 20 years, the jury is out on whether he will follow through and he is being pressured by Gates-funded groups to hold fast to the testing regime.
It’s true that some high-profile civil rights groups continue to push for standardized testing–a fact that is reported everywhere privatizers have clout. These civil rights organizations use the same “guideposts for equity” logic Cardona invoked in his statement on 2021 testing for Connecticut students. Unfortunately, many of these groups rely on funding from Gates and other pro-privatization philanthropists and corporations. This funding can mean a variety of things, but it’s reasonable to surmise that some degree of political alignment occurs.
If standardized tests were actually about ensuring equity, they would not have triggered the closure of schools attended by low-income students of color. If the reforms that spawned these tests were actually about increasing accountability, they would not have occasioned the transfer of power over classroom learning from teachers and publicly accountable officials to hedge fund-backed charter-boosters and profit-hungry edu-businesses.
Nora De La Cour has some smart observations about testing and equity, as well as the political forces compelling teachers to do what they know is not in the best interests of their students. This post is well worth a read!
Too bad Cardona doesn’t listen to public school teachers. SAD.
Wow, Ms. De la Cour NAILS IT.
And she lives up to that beautiful last name of hers!
It is a powerful composition!
I think it was such a mistake for Biden to lead with testing. Why kick it off with a wholly negative agenda?
These people don’t think they have to offer anything positive to public school students. They take public school students and public school families for granted. They simply don’t see any need to offer anything positive or beneficial to our students. It is ALL downside.
Maybe it doesn’t matter that they have no positive agenda for public schools. The public school where I live is already holding planning meetings for post-Covid, so we’ll be moving on. Ed reform is all but irrelevant to public school students at this point, other than testing.
I was hoping that the new Sec of Ed, coming from an actual public school experience, would recognize how horrible this year has been for students and address that in some real way.
Very disappointing that he’s sticking with the 20 year old ed reform playbook which is wholly negative as far as impact on students in public schools. In a normal year it wouldn’t matter as much- this has been the agenda their entire time in school so they’re used to it- but THIS year? Wow. Just clueless.
I hope individual school districts do better than our lousy political and policy leadership has done.
The new Secretary of Education has not yet been confirmed. He is not making decisions. Apparently Ian Rosenblum, testing advocate, made the decision. If he didn’t, he should tell us who made the decision. It directly contradicts Biden’s strong promise on the campaign trail. Was he lying? Rosenblum came to the job from a pro-testing organization headed by Mr. High-Stakes Testing himself, John King.
“She writes that candidate Joe Biden forcefully promised to get rid of standardized testing and restore teacher autonomy, but Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona seems unwilling to commit to granting states a waiver from the mandated federal testing”
The buck stops with Biden.
If Cardona is unwilling to grant waivers, Biden should find someone who is.
Biden made the promise so he should be held accountable for a policy which contradicts it.
I don’t know about other people but all I’ve heard has been the usual scolding of public schools, threats of sanctions and anti-labor union politicking.
I’m at a loss to see what any of these people actually contribute to any public school, anywhere. We’re paying 5000 professional, full time public school critics. Couldn’t we outsource that to the private sector?
Imagine spending the time spent READING for Pleasure rather than being tested.
http://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.com
Reading for Pleasure should be a #1 activity in school. There are so many benefits of Reading for Pleasure.
Krashen’s research on the value of sustained recreational reading found that students gain as much from this type of reading as they do from reading instruction. It is also the way to support life long reading habits. Ms. De La Cour’s boss should know better.
“The results of the exams could actually help drive more funding to schools, added Ethan Hutt, an education professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Schools could make a better case for summer school funding, for example, if they can show certain groups of students are struggling more than others, he said.”
Ah, the perennial ed reform promise. Test all the kids and ed reformers will come through with support.
They renege on this every single time, but for some reason people who are smart enough to be professors still believe them.
The benefit is always JUST past the horizon. Jump through enough ed reform hoops and eventually public school students will get the benefits. Twenty years later? They’re still sitting for these stupid tests and still waiting for the promised upside of taking them.
One more set of tests and maybe, maybe public school students will prove themselves worthy of support from our elite political and policy members. Any day now!
Low test scores do not send more funding to schools with low scores. They are a step on the road to shaming and closing the school.
Diane My question still stands: Congress needs to answer: Why the disparity of accountability between public schools on the one hand, and on the other, charter/voucher/ private schools and education-earmarked State grants?
I can think of no other reason for mandated Federal testing that give no immediate teacher-access to answers or grades . . . besides some (skewed) idea of accountability for administering public funds? OR for reformers/oligarchs putting their finger on the scales of equal treatment where accountability is concerned and giving false credence for those “bad” public schools.
What a boon for (1) privatizers/reformers with their dark-money oligarch funding, and (2) the predatory mis-directors of funding at the State level. CBK
Supporting your thesis, it’s my understanding that Ted Kennedy walked away from his handshake deal on NCLB with GWBush in disgust when Congress passed it only after deleting the additional funding that was to be targeted to schools with low test scores. No targeted funds to improve ‘failing’ schools, since the start. The only ‘extra funding’ I’ve heard of was to develop test&punish systems [RTTT], and to start up privatized alternatives for closed [‘punished’] schools [CSP].
Ted Kennedy didn’t walk away from NCLB. He took credit for it. More Democrats voted for NCLB than Republicans.
oops.
We have been a “failing” school for several years. No extra funding our supports have come our way. We have too few teachers with too little experience, no funding, overcrowded classrooms and a building that is falling apart.
Ah, TOW, isn’t the point of testing to find schools in need and give them more money? Sarcasm. Not.
Yep. That’s EXACTLY what they do (also sarcasm)!
Advice from North Carolina, huh?
North Carolina, the state that drove Bernie from the Dem Primary.
Thanks, Rep. Clyburn for “delivering” the votes to J.B.
Your constituency sure won’t benefit from this in the education arena.
In fact, the kids will continue to suffer.
“The buck stops with Biden.
If Cardona is unwilling to grant waivers, Biden should find someone who is.
Biden made the promise so he should be held accountable for a policy which contradicts it.” Amen to all of this. And never should we assume that because someone’s been a teacher once, or is married to a teacher now, that he is listening to all the wisest voices of educators about the madness that is public school curriculum and testing.
My son is participating in a research project to look at the affordability of public colleges.
I encouraged him to do it- they’re conducting interviews with incoming freshman over Zoom. If it doesn’t benefit him I hope it benefits younger kids coming up by lighting a fire under our clueless political leaders. We were shocked at how much tuition has gone up just over the last ten years. I don’t know how any middle class family affords this without borrowing at least 50,000. For many of them that will equal the value of their home.
It is unaffordable for working and middle class here, just as a financial decision. They have managed to price out the entire working/middle class from public colleges. How in God’s name is that working for “equity”? It’s gotten worse just in the last decade.
It is important to distinguish between the “sticker price” of tuition and what students actually pay in tuition. Colleges and universities engage in what is known as first degree price discrimination, that is they can charge each student a different tuition based on the institution’s estimate about willingness and ability to pay. See this article about tuition discount rates: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/05/21/tuition-discount-rates-continue-rise-while-enrollment-stagnates-report-shows
TE, your link is about private colleges, not state colleges. Maybe the discounts help them get within range of lower state college costs. But to Chiara’s point: “The average in-state [nationwide] student attending a public 4-year institution spends $25,615 for one academic year.” That’s over $100k per state college diploma. If you’ve got “2.5”-3 children, college cost is equivalent to the value of a median price home in the US.
I read an article by someone who put 3 kids through college [total bill $296k] on a middle-class income. His advice was to save 5% net income per kid per year from the time they’re born. That’s 15% net income… Let’s say 25% tax bracket, you need to save minimum 18-19%. Any less, count on substantial student debt and/or years of children living at home after graduation.
Can a middle-income family afford to salt away retirement income on top of that? To fund retirement appropriately, save another 12% before-tax income. So you’re looking at saving about 30% gross pay for kids’ college and retirement. But the usual recommended budget for housing/ food/ utilities/ transportation = 75% of budget. Oops. And nothing left for entertainment, vacation, or extras of any kind.
An unsustainable model.
bethree5,
There is very little difference between private and public universities and colleges. They both price discriminate.
If it is unsustainable, that is a self correcting problem. If there are no students, there will be no colleges or universities.
Tell it, Chiara. My three sons were in college between 2005-2014. They were all in specialized career-oriented programs at small local private colleges where tuition/rm&bd were pegged to at or less than area state colleges. That averaged $25k/yr back then. Just 10 yrs later, the ave cost of those 3 colleges is $35-$40k/yr.
So obvious, it’s all about $$$. What they have is a bunch of data wonks salivating at the chance to get their hands on that rare, elusive covid-flavored test data that shows HUGE gaps. Then they can turn around and monetize the whole thing to get everybody “caught up”.
Thank you for this excellent article. Ms. De la Cour demonstrates that she really understands the negative consequences of high stakes standardized testing that reinforce a deficit model of education. Weaponized standardized testing has been used against poor students, teachers and schools for twenty years. It has been used to label students, fire teachers, close public schools, justify state takeovers and transfer public funds to private charter schools.
The Biden Administration has the opportunity to abolish the old, failed test and punish syndrome. Biden promised a new day for pubic education, but this will not happen in the Gates Foundation and TFA alumni are dictating the policies. Change is long overdue.
Let me get this right about Federal money spent on education with regard to accountability in (1) charter schools and voucher programs; in (2) grants to States earmarked for education; and then again in (3) public education with its standardized testing.
(1) Funding of charter/voucher programs (little or no accountability)
(2) State funds earmarked for education (apparently little or no accountability/Texas?)
(3) Public schools with a requirement for standardized test results, as a form of guarantee (accountability) that students are actually getting an education (via the William Gates idea of what that means).
What’s wrong with this picture?
In my view, the below paragraph should be expanded and pasted to the side of the building facing Bill Gates’ suite of offices:
“The Bill Gates-funded Common Core Standards that drive the current tests have undermined teachers’ creative autonomy, stripping us of our ability to shape instruction around what motivates our students. Instead of teaching whole novels and plays, language arts teachers are pushed into teaching mainly ‘informational texts’ (as though fiction doesn’t contain information) and decontextualized literary excerpts. My students experienced Frankenstein, for example, not as a gripping monster story that prompts questions about what it means to be human, but as a lifeless fragment on a practice test, from which they were required to extract and regurgitate specific information that corporate test-makers deem important.”
Just think of the term information. What kind of mind could even THINK that classical novels could or would NOT substantially IN-FORM students’ character, inspire reflective thought, and enable them to raise questions about themselves and others around them . . . though of course it won’t help them learn to code. Oh, well, . . . there goes the value of novels and plays, etc., etc., etc. . . . .
Also, did we hear someone here say they were glad to have private schools because then her child wouldn’t have to suffer under the pressure of standardized testing? So now the reformers have another tool in their toolbox to wave at parents? Whatever happened to the “even playing field”? CBK
The Superintendent of the State of MD is plowing ahead with the tests K-8 and HS and the school systems have not even opened for hybrid learning yet. 7 hours of testing and no one will be allowed to Opt-out (MD doesn’t have an opt-out clause…..we have to refuse and fight like hell!). The kids should “feel lucky” that the science and government exams are being cancelled this year. 7 hours of math and ELA exams!
https://wtop.com/maryland/2021/02/md-students-to-sit-for-up-to-7-hours-of-standardized-tests-this-spring/
So glad I’m done with public schools!
Ridiculous!
How exactly do they plan to enforce all-remote testing for 95% of school kids?
I don’t know how they plan to do it. I got tired of fighting the State and send child #2 to private HS a few yrs ago. MD doesn’t have an Opt-out clause so parents have to REFUSE and let me tell you, it’s a nightmare of bureaucracy to deal with. They make it so hard that many parents just give up and let their kids take the tests. At the local level, admin has been known to threaten with “sit and stare” or tell kids that they won’t get promoted to the next grade. Non test takers have been isolated from “test parties” of extra recess given to the test takers. It’s awful here.
I remember another presidential candidate in 2008 who told the NEA Conference that standardized testing was a waste of time time, but then turned into a testing monster the moment he became president-elect. They run from the left and govern from the right. That is to say, they campaign as upstanding gentlemen and govern as subordinates to billionaires. It is such malarkey.
I was talking to an educator on the phone about testing a few minutes ago. We were commiserating about the undue stress on students and teachers placed by the interim standardized tests we are giving online this week. (If you look up “LeftCoastTeacher” on a search engine, you’ll find posts about how I was previously able to opt my students out of interim tests, but my district stopped accepting waiver applications for giving teacher-created alternate interim assessments when the pandemic hit.)
The educator on the phone stopped short of complaining about the stress too strongly, though, and gave tongue to the old saying, don’t bite the hand that feeds you. I take issue with that stance. President Biden is not the hand that feeds me. He is not a monarch. He is an elected official. I do not work for him. He works for me!
The school in which I teach is in that position now. High poverty, high minority rates for my area, very high mobility rates. A “failing” school, which might be closed this year or have all of us fired because we will “fail” those stupid tests this year. Several of out subgroups have huge numbers taking really inferior online classes, but they’re still on our rolls, meaning we have high absentee rates and not 95% testing in some subgroups. One whole department was already fired last year. We are doomed.
There’s a funny thing about the standards/aligned testing accountability systems that make them “bipartisan.” Same policy miraculously meets two opposing goals!
Dems sell it as data we collect that shows us where to target extra funds for needy students. (Hint: “the check is in the mail.”). Reps sell it as a way to rein in excess ed spending by ensuring accountability (Hint: these systems cost more, subtract nothing).
As I always say, when govt policies make no sense, follow the money.