Tom Ultican has noticed a strange phenomenon on billionaire-funded websites, particularly The 74: Praise for the justly-reviled No Child Left Behind.
Teachers hated it because of its warped emphasis on standardized test scores. Students hated it because they were cheated of a real education, they lost civics, the arts, and recess, and the tests assumed more importance than they deserved.
But Ultican writes, Chad Aldeman of The 74 is nostalgic for the good old days of NCLB.
Neoliberals joined with libertarians to “reform”public education. Their tools were big money and propaganda distributed by media outlets like The 74, support by The Walton family (EIN 13-3441466) and Bill Gates (EIN 56-2618866). This year, regular columnist for The 74, Chad Aldeman, is trying to claim that lifting No Child Left Behind (NCLB) school accountability sanctions is responsible for the public school testing “data decline”.
In a recent article in The 74, Aldeman complained of widening achievement gaps in Indiana, but Ultican can’t find the source of Aldeman’s data.
Ultican notes that NCLB interrupted a long period of academic improvement.
From 1970 to 1992, America’s schools showed slow but steady improvement in education-testing outcomes but since the era of standards, testing and accountability, improvement basically stopped. Education, run by billionaires and politicians instead of educators, failed to improve testing outcomes.
Alderman stated in his latest article that it is not just an Indiana problem but that “49 of 50 states, the District of Columbia and 17 out of 20 of the large cities that participated in NAEP … saw a widening of their achievement gap over the last decade.” He did not share which tests showed widened achievement gaps nor which cohorts were compared. NAEP reports on reading scores for 4th and 8th grade do not show a significant change in scoring gaps between Black and White students and comparisons in other ethnic groups also were steady.
After asking what has caused this (non-existent) achievement gap increase, Alderman posited several possible reasons: Common Core state standards (CCSS), per-pupil spending, technology and social media. He said the timing for CCSS fit but did not explain why states where CCSS was never adopted had the same problem. For per-pupil spending, he claimed that more money was getting to classrooms, which defies education-spending reports, making his claim a little shady. For technology and social media, he said other countries with similar problems, did not see testing declines … a declaration made with no evidence cited.
If this decline were real, wouldn’t the privatization of public education be the most likely culprit? Charter schools came first followed by vouchers and more charter schools. Data clearly shows that vouchers harm student-testing performance. Furthermore both charter schools and voucher schools leech money from public education budgets.
He finally made his real point, “I argue that the weakening of school accountability pressures after the No Child Left Behind Act was passed is responsible for a large portion of the drop.” Those of us, who were in classrooms and witnessed the test-and-punish philosophy damage to public education, disagree. How many great public schools were labeled “failures and closed” because they existed in low income zip codes?…
Ultican concludes:
The 74 was founded in 2015 by former CNN news anchor, Campbell Brown, along with Michael Bloomberg’s education advisor, Romy Drucker. Its original funding came from the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, Doris and Donald Fisher Fund and Bloomberg Philanthropies. Since then, it has been the vehicle for spreading the billionaire message of privatization and undermining public schools.
Some billionaires see the non-sectarian nature of public education as a threat to their dreams of a Christian theocracy. Others are libertarians that oppose free universal public education, believing everyone should pay one’s own way and not steal people’s private properties using taxation. The Neoliberals are convinced that education should be run like a business and react to market forces.
Responding to the mission of The 74, Chad Aldeman’s series of articles, like those of many of his colleagues, are pure propaganda, shaping data to support his neoliberal ideology instead of honestly reporting facts. Unfortunately this kind of fake “journalism” is flooding email boxes and web pages throughout America every day.
The “reformers” are just nostalgic for the days when everyone but a few curmudgeons was gushing over their magical miracle ideas. But that was a couple of decades ago, and if those magical miracle ideas have transformed and revolutionized education as everyone promised, it’s not evident. Now they’re all jumping on the “science of reading” fad, but there aren’t too many other places for them to go, so they just have to look backward.
Want to dramatically improve American education? Just sprinkle on a little Magical Reform Fairy Dust.
The “reformers” are just nostalgic for the days when everyone but a few curmudgeons was gushing over their magical miracle ideas. But that was a couple of decades ago, and if those magical miracle ideas have transformed and revolutionized education as everyone promised, it’s not evident. Now they’re all jumping on the “science of reading” fad, but there aren’t too many other places for them to go, so they just have to look backward.
Strange phenomenon indeed, the continued preaching of test score dissent BUT practicing test score obedience (giving tests and using scores as a point of proof.) Libraries full of tears don’t end the crying anymore than following orders provides exoneration. The make me stop ploy doesn’t decrease the wrong doing. The “devil” made me do it, helps no child. Shifting blame doesn’t stop the test bullet after YOU pulled the trigger. So kids follow the leaders. Success is knowing who to blame for your failure to stop wrong doing.
So, is it your recommendation, then, that teachers start refusing to give the tests, which will mean that they will be fired and unable to support their families? Inquiring minds want to know.
YES! It’s called civil disobedience. If enough teachers refuse, the Unions will have no choice but to take a stand against the testing madness. It could easily have been nipped in the bud 10-12 yrs ago when Arne Duncan was insulting Moms and most parents (at that time) were siding with their beloved teachers(BATS). Nope, instead it got pushed to the back of the line and the politics got nastier and the parents got tribal and meaner. The Genie is out of the bottle and there is no easy way to put it back into its bottle without some BIG help from those who let it out to begin with.
If a teacher decided to take a stand and refuse to give the test one day, that very day, he or she would be fired and escorted out of the school, never to be seen again. How is this effective Civil Disobedience? The ONLY result of this would be that the teacher would lose his or her job and possibly his or her certification and not be able to feed his or her family.
right before I retired, we got a new superintendent of schools. I was talking to her one day when she was inspecting our school. We had just agreed that testing was a negative influence on education, so I suggested that we get our entire county to systematically violate all the rules handed down by the state outside around the flag with the news teams looking on to protest what was obvious moral bankruptcy. She got this panicked expression before I assured her I would not go it alone.
But aren’t teachers leaving in droves anyway? Might as well have a “cause” attached. And where are all those teachers electively leaving the profession going? They’re making due and feeding their families.
One thing that was remarkable to me when I pulled my 2nd child out of public and put him into a private HS?…..how many teachers were former public school teachers! Of course they said that they didn’t get paid as well, but their happiness and autonomy was more important than staying in the broken public system. And most everyone on this blog doesn’t understand WHY parents want vouchers….give me a break! Fix the system and people/parents will want to return to public schools. Right now, all that it looks like to unhappy parents is that “the system” is being protected at the expense of their children.
And personally, if testing companies want to push their S—, they should be responsible to send in their own proctors for those students whose parents sign a waiver for them to take their stupid data collection test!
Sorry, very touchy subject for me because of how many letters I had to write and how much time/energy it consumed to REFUSE the tests for my kids. We have NO Opt-Out in MD and we have numerous tests that MUST be passed before a kid graduates out of our public schools….regardless of grades or classes taken. Leaving the public system saved me from having a stroke or a heart attack!
If every teacher in the country refused to give the tests, the effect would be similar to the pandemic. The testing companies would just take a hit one year and come back the next. There would have to be widespread, deeply painful, prolonged strikes to accompany the proctoring refusal for it to work. Alternatively, we would all have to refuse to give the tests permanently. I don’t even want to think about how that could backfire down the road. Better to use our words in this particular fight.
The only way this will end is if the freaking teachers’ unions call a strike. They have the power to end this. They refuse to do so. F them.
Lisa, I would guess that you’re not a teacher. Districts do NOT listen to teachers. Even a large number of teachers getting fired because they refused to give the Big Standardized Test would NOT make a wave at the district and state level. What you envision would probably require at least 50 percent of teachers to get on board, and there are NOT that many willing to sacrifice their careers.
The only way, practically, that this can happen is if the major teachers’ unions call for a nationwide testing strike. Until they do this, for they alone have the power necessary, they are complicit in child abuse. I am looking at you NEA and AFT. It is utterly sickening that you have not done this. YOU ARE COMPLICIT. You might as well be on the Gates payroll. Oh, yeah, sometimes you have been, you freaking Vichy collaborators with the deformer occupation of our schools.
So kids, follow the leaders. Success is knowing WHO or What to blame for your failure to stop wrong doing.
Once you’ve painted yourself into a corner of debt, you become a victim of circumstances. You harm the kids because you have kids. It’s for the kids after all. Victims trade in harm all the time to feed their families. It’s still harm but the do unto the other kids as you would have done to your kids is just an axiom like reap what you sow. When the harvest comes in, blame the union…
These responses just keep getting nuttier and nuttier. I give up.
Bob, I find it sad (not surprised though) that you can’t understand what NoBrick is saying.
Duane, I find it sad that you find it sad.
Actually, I didn’t find that. I had it all along. ROFL.
Reform has lost its new car smell as more communities catch on to the fact they have been snookered by billionaires and their toady politicians. Billionaire backed “research” will never tell the truth. Their spiel will always ignore any outcomes related to privatization and imposition of technology on public schools. Their goal is always to gain access to the public funds that support the public schools and transfer those funds to into private pockets, and the wealthy continue to manipulate political levers to drain public school budgets. They will continue to do so unless the public stands up and defends the right of children in this country to get a free public education free from outside interlopers that want to monetize our schools and young people. The human engaging, critical thinking kind of education that most of us received in the 20th Century, gets the best results.
Their goal is always to gain access to the public funds that support the public schools and transfer those funds to into private pockets.
Thank you. That is exactly the case. THIS is the succinct summary of all these decades of school “reform.”
Endless test prep is no substitute for a comprehensive education. A narrow curriculum leads to a narrow mind. Public education was far superior in preparing young people for the future than the test and punish agenda of NCLB.
It is darkly humorous that these people, the Education Deformers, who claim to be all about data and accountability, totally avoid any accountability for the utter failure of NCLB and totally ignore the data that show, definitively, that by their own preferred measure, test scores, exactly zero statistically significant increase has occurred because of NCLB and subsequent Deform measures.
Hypocrites. It’s possible that they aren’t also complete fools only on this reading of their behavior: they really do not believe in all the bullshit they have promoted: the Common [sic] Core [sic], the invalid federally mandated testing, VAM, Race to the Bottom, and so on but do think that it will hasten the end of teachers’ unions and of public schools AND create enormous opportunities for entrepreneurs/scam artists to sell charter schools, virtual schools, private schools, online “instruction,” and so on. Ofc, all the while, the children of the Deformers will go to expensive private schools with small class sizes, human teachers, and limitations on students’ screen time.
Mental health problems are on the rise for young people is on the rise. While poverty and the impact of the pandemic play a role, students feel the stress of performing on the standardized tests. When schools are closed due to test scores, schools double down on test prep as in Texas where my grandson goes to school. They know the privatizers waiting in the wings like vultures, and Abbott would be happy to liquidate them. Once the schools become a charter and get a D rating, the governor will leave them alone because they are making money for donors. The system is corrupt!
cx: Mental health problems are on the rise for young people.
Rate them, rank them and sort the prized ones out like show ponies….the rest?… Screw them! Kids know this and it really affects how they feel. Education should not be a contest.
Rate them, etc
Well said, Lisa M!
Claiming there are declines in the quality of education without citations, when data do not support such claims, is fraud. It’s also slander. Since I teach in one of the 49 states being slandered by Chad Alderman, I am one of his victims. The 74 is not a social media platform; it endorses the content it publishes. The 74 is, therefore, the perpetrator of this crime against my students and me. That low down propaganda outlet was named for 74 million students purportedly being wronged. Apparently, The 74 owes those 74 million students — and their teachers — a retraction, an apology, and a monetary settlement to take the place of a lawsuit. I’ll take a few bucks from them just for the physical dehydration resulting from my eyes excessively watering after hearing nostalgia for the disastrous NCLB. Honestly, getting schmaltzy about a disaster… unbelievable. I suppose that next they’ll be wistful about Hurricane Katrina and wish there’d be another flood. Oh wait, corporate reformers already said that too. Criminal.
Well Bob, you call testing child abuse….and I agree! I used that line when I Refused testing for my kids. If it’s child abuse, then why should teachers keep committing these acts upon their students? The testing starts in K now and lots of states want preschool programs. Do we then start testing 3 yr olds? And is that child abuse? I will NEVER advocate for public schools the way that they are right now and I really don’t blame parents for wanting something better for their children.
Would you have refused the testing if it meant that you and any other adult in your household who earns money would lose his or her job AND the ability to apply for another one in the same field? That’s what a teacher who refuses to give the tests faces.
Your position is an adminimal one.which demonstrates what Thoreau had to say about those who do the bidding of others without thinking:
“The mass of men [and women] serves the state [education powers that be] thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, [administrators and teachers], etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.”- Henry David Thoreau [1817-1862] [my additions
As a Spanish teacher, you did not have to give these tests. So, it’s easy for you to say. Are you claiming that if you were asked to proctor an exam by your administration, you would have refused, despite the fact that they would have fired you? Noble.
Yes, I did have to monitor those tests. And yes, I did refuse and also fought against them enough so that I was chased out of one school, having to take a $20,000 decrease in salary. Had adminimals on my ass all the time. I have fought those battles, and lost. . . .but at least I have a clear conscience.
NoBrick and LisaM have it right!
Yes. Every progressive teacher should get himself or herself fired. That makes so much sense.
You can’t understand.
No. Must be my limited intelligence and compassion and insight.
A list of the consequences for testing of individual teachers refusing to give the test:
The End
Well said, Caroline. The part I don’t understand is why they don’t give up on failed “miracles.” High-stakes testing, charters, vouchers.