Archives for category: NCLB (No Child Left Behind)
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

A Néw Bill to Abolish Annual Testing

By dianeravitch
January 20, 2015 //
32

Legislation will be introduced to end annual testing and to replace it with grade span testing. This is a bipartisan bill. For those sick of the money and time wasted on annual testing, support this legislation.

FOR PLANNING PURPOSES ONLY
January 20, 2015

Gibson and Sinema to Host Joint Press Call on Reintroduction of Grade Span Testing Bill

Washington, D.C. – Representative Chris Gibson (R-NY-19) and Representative Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ-9) will host a joint press call to announce reintroduction of their legislation, the Student Testing Improvement & Accountability Act. The bill will be reintroduced on the same day that the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee holds a hearing focused on federal testing requirements under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

The Student Testing Improvement & Accountability Act amends the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), replacing current federal yearly testing requirements for math and language arts/reading with the exact same grade span testing requirements that are in current law for science. This returns federal requirements on testing frequency to pre-No Child Left Behind standards.

Date: Wednesday, January 21

Time: 11:30AM – noon

Location: Dial-in: (712) 775-7031, meeting ID 493-479-058

Speakers: Representative Chris Gibson and Representative Kyrsten Sinema

Media Note: Speakers will start promptly at 11:30AM. Media will have the opportunity to ask questions following remarks from the Representatives.

Matt Sheehey
Press Secretary
Congressman Chris Gibson (NY-19)
1708 Longworth House Office Building
Office: (202) 225-5614
Cell: (802) 598-1156

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Testing

A Teacher in New York Writes Senator Lamar Alexander: Annual Testing is Destroying American Education

By dianeravitch
January 20, 2015 //
63

Dear Senator Alexander:

I am a middle school English teacher for grades 6–8 at a small public school in the Hudson Valley. We’re a good school, no doubt about it. In 2010 my school was awarded Blue Ribbon status for the strength or our program and test scores. You would think that we would be in a great place in terms of the yearly testing that the NCLB and RTTP programs have required, but let me assure you that the truth is very different.

As I mentioned before, my school is quite small, and I am the only English teacher in the middle school. The students’ English education is my responsibility, and mine alone, something I take very seriously. Yet this mission is constantly being thwarted by federal testing mandates. A true English education would mean that kids get a great exposure to complicated, challenging, and interesting texts, yet the need to do test prep pushes me in exactly the opposite direction. Instead of classic literature, I am forced to give my students short essays, dozens and dozens of them, and then make them answer questions about them. My students hate this. They’d rather be learning poetry, or sailing with pirates, or crafting short stories, or strutting across Shakespeare’s stage. Yet NCLB has created just this, test preparation instead of a rich curriculum.

The critics may counter with, “No! That’s not how it’s supposed to be! You’re supposed to integrate the test prep within the curriculum!” True, there’s only a certain amount I can organically integrate test prep. After a point, I need to Xerox those hated essays and drop them on my kids’ desks. I estimate something like 10–20% of my year is engaged in test prep skills. This is the reality that NCLB has created. It’s made these tests so important that they dominate my curriculum like nothing else. Truly, was that the goal of NCLB?
Let us not forget that every student’s test score is also a measure of me. I am now evaluated by this one test, as if this is the very best way to know what I do in my classroom. How about that Shakespeare play I do every year? Sorry, that’s not on the test. What about the colonial era party, where every student makes a dish from the Revolutionary War period? Nope, not tested either. What about my journey through Ancient Greece through myths or leaping through space in my science fiction unit? Should I stop these? The testing regimen forced upon me seems to say that I should, because all that content doesn’t count anymore. My students and I are only measured by that score.

And what shall we do with the students who don’t do well, the ones who struggle? I can control, mostly, what happens in my classroom, but what about at home? I can’t force a kid who doesn’t study to put his nose to the grindstone. I can’t heal a child whose family life is chaotic, whose emotional turmoil prevents him or her from learning well. I can’t finance a family that’s stressed by poverty, who isn’t eating well and can’t focus. NCLB seems to insist that I employ god-like powers to fix these children so they do well on the yearly tests. It will even punish me with low evaluations if I don’t fix these children. How is this fair to my students or me? How is this even rational?

A testing moment I’ll never forget happened in the spring of 2013. One of my best students, let’s call him “Sam”, was taking the new Common Core tests for the first time. Sam was a student who wanted to do well, who always did well. His average for me was over 95 for three years straight. After the second day of testing, Sam came to me in tears. He pleaded for more time on the test because he hadn’t been able finish. My heart sank, because that was impossible. All I could do was say to this child, one who painstakingly wrote essay after essay for me, was “I’m sorry.”

If you want to use annual testing in a sane and meaningful way, you must take away its stigma. If you must test, give them in the beginning of the year and give teachers results in a timely manner to see what deficits that child has and help him/her. Right now we receive results about five months after they are given. It’s such a long period of time that the kids have already graduated to the next grade. What good is a test where you don’t get timely results? My tests evaluate what my students have learned and what I still need to teach them. The NCLB results come so far after the actual test that they are meaningless in terms of helping that child.

Even more importantly, you must remove the “high-stakes” part of the testing. Punishing kids, teachers, and schools for low test scores is damaging. It doesn’t help kids, or teachers, or schools. We are all trying our best to help children. We want to help kids no matter what his/her ability. Every child deserves our best efforts. Unfortunately teachers are now being punished for not being perfect. Who among us is that? Who among us can heal every wound? Who among us can lift up every single child? We do our best, of course, but that perfection is denied us. We are human. Yet NCLB demands my perfection, and my students and I will be punished because of low test scores. How is this ethical?

It needs to be said too that in my high-end public school I am shielded from many of these problems. Those who work in poverty-stricken or stressed neighborhoods are under much more stress from NCLB. These true heroes of education, those that spend their lives helping disadvantaged kids, are now failures because of low test scores. Their students too are punished. They must attend remedial class after class in this quixotic quest for high numbers, denying these needy kids art, music, and creative expression. How is this improving education? But of course, according to NCLB this enrichment is no longer important. It doesn’t measure a child’s musical ability, or verbal expression. Only test scores matter.

Please consider how damaging NCLB is to public education. It hurts rather than helps. It punishes children in poverty, stress, or those who struggle in a subject as well as their teachers. That said, if you truly want to design an effective education policy, please speak to teachers. We in the trenches of education are the experts in this matter, and we can help you. Too much education policy is designed by those who are not teachers, and this is one reason why it has gone so wrong. Listen to us. We speak the truth because we care very deeply about the children of America. So when we say high-stakes NCLB testing is destroying American education, we say this because that is the truth.

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Testing

Arnold Dodge: “Reformers” Threaten Democracy and Creativity

By dianeravitch
January 20, 2015 //
5

Veteran educator Arnold Dodge warns that the corporate reform movement, led by the U.S. Department of Education, threatens democracy and creativity. In its quest for data and standardization, the DOE will crush imagination and innovation. Standardized tests reward right answers, not original thought.

Not content to standardize children and their teachers, the DOE now wants to control teacher education by collecting test scores of students and linking them to the institutions that prepared their teachers. Test scores above all!

Dodge quotes John Dewey, who wrote:

“”Were all instructors to realize that the quality of mental process, not the production of correct answers, is the measure of educative growth, something hardly less than a revolution in teaching would be worked.”

“Lack of the free and equitable intercourse which springs from a variety of shared interests makes intellectual stimulation unbalanced. Diversity of stimulation means novelty, and novelty means challenge to thought.””

Categories Corporate Reformers, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Standardized Testing, Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations

From Diane Ravitch to Senator Lamar Alexander: Don’t Forget Rule #84 in the “Little Plaid Book”

By dianeravitch
January 20, 2015 //
35

Senator Lamar Alexander

U.S. Senate

Washington, D.C.

 

Dear Lamar,

 

I wish I could be in Washington for the hearings about the reauthorization of NCLB. I can’t make it for two reasons: I wasn’t invited, and I have a date to speak to parents at P.S. 3 in Manhattan who are outraged about all the testing imposed on their children.

 

I learned a lot about education policy and federalism after you chose me to serve as your Assistant Secretary of Education in charge of research and improvement and as counsel to the Secretary of Education (you). I am imagining that I am still advising you, as I did from 1991 to 1993 (remember that you and every other top administrator in the Department left a day before the inauguration of Bill Clinton, and you told me I was Acting Secretary for the day?).

What I always admired about you was your deliberateness, your thoughtfulness, your ability to listen to discordant voices, and your respect for federalism. You didn’t think you were smarter than everyone else in the country just because you were a member of the President’s Cabinet. You understood federalism. You didn’t think it was your job to impose what you wanted on every school in America. You respected the ability of local communities to govern their schools without your supervision or dictation.

 

NCLB was not informed by your wisdom. It set impossible goals, then established punishments for schools that could not do the impossible. I remember a panel discussion in early 2002 at the Willard Hotel soon after NCLB was signed. You were on the panel. I was in the audience, and I stood up and asked you whether you truly believed that 100% of all children in grades 3-8 would be “proficient” by 2014. You answered, “No, Diane, but we think it is good to have goals.” Well, based on goals that you knew were out of reach, teachers and principals have been fired, and many schools—beloved in their communities—have been closed.

 

NCLB has introduced an unprecedented level of turmoil into the nation’s public education system. Wearing my conservative hat, I have to say that it’s wrong to disrupt the lives of communities, schools, families, and children to satisfy an absurd federal mandate, based on a false premise and based too on the non-existent “Texas miracle.” Conservatives are not fire-breathing radicals who seek to destroy community and tradition. Conservatives conserve, conservatives believe in incremental change, not in upheaval and disruption.

 

I urge you to abandon the annual mandated federal testing in grades 3-8. Little children are sitting for 8-10 hours to take the annual tests in math and reading. As a parent, you surely understand that this is madness. This is why the Opt Out movement is growing across the nation, as parents protest what feels like federally-mandated child abuse.

 

Do we need to compare the performance of states? NAEP does that already. Anyone who wants to know how Mississippi compares to Massachusetts can look at the NAEP results, which are released every two years. Do we want disaggregated data? NAEP reports scores by race, gender, English language proficiency, and disability status. How will we learn about achievement gaps if we don’t test every child annually? NAEP reports that too. In short, we already have the information that everyone says they want and need.

 

NCLB has forced teachers to teach to the test; that once was considered unethical and unprofessional, but now it is an accepted practice in schools across the country. NCLB has caused many schools to spend more time and resources on test prep, interim assessments, and testing. That means narrowing the curriculum: when testing matters so much, there is less time for the arts, physical education, foreign languages, civics, and other valuable studies and activities. Over this past dozen years, there have been numerous examples of states gaming the system and educators cheating because the tests determine whether schools will live or die, and whether educators will get a bonus or be fired.

 

I urge you to enact what you call “option one,” grade span testing, and to abandon annual testing. If you keep annual testing in the law, states and districts will continue to engage in the mis-education that NCLB incentivized. Bad habits die hard, if at all.

 

Just say no to annual testing. No high-performing nation does it, and neither should we. We are the most over-tested nation in the world, and it’s time to encourage children to sing, dance, play instruments, write poetry, imagine stories, create videos, make science projects, write history papers, and discover the joy of learning.

 

As I learned from you, the U.S. Department of Education should not act as a National School Board. The Secretary of Education is not the National Superintendent of Schools. The past dozen years of centralizing control of education in Washington, D.C., has not been good for education or for democracy.

 

The law governing the activities of the U.S. Department of Education states clearly that no federal official should attempt to “exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, [or] administration….of any educational institution.” When I was your Assistant Secretary and Counselor, I was very much aware of that prohibition. For the past dozen years, it seems to have been forgotten. Just a few years ago, the current administration funded tests for the Common Core standards, which will most assuredly exert control over the curriculum and program of instruction. The federal tests will determine what is taught.

 

The nation has seen a startling expansion of federal power over local community public schools since the passage of NCLB. There is certainly an important role for the federal government in assuring equality of educational opportunity and informing the American people about the progress of education. But the federal role today is taking on responsibilities that belong to states and local districts. The key mechanism for that takeover is annual testing, the results of which are used to dictate other policies of dubious legality and validity, like evaluating teachers and even colleges of education by student test scores.

 

Sir, please revise the federal law so that it authorizes the federal government to do what it does best: protecting the rights of children, gathering data, sponsoring research, encouraging the improvement of teaching, funding special education, and distributing resources to the neediest districts to help the neediest students (which was the original purpose of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965).

 

In closing, may I remind you of something you wrote in your book of advice:

No. 84: Read anything Diane Ravitch writes about education.

—Lamar Alexander, Little Plaid Book, page 44

I agree with you.

 

Yours truly,

 

Diane Ravitch

 

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Parents, Students, Testing, U.S. Department of Education

Jeff Bryant: Making Sense of the Testing Debate

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2015 //
14

Jeff Bryant analyzes the debate about the federal testing mandates and concludes it’s all about politics, not education.

By now, it is obvious that the testing required by “No Child Left Behind” did not leave no child behind. Child poverty, which is the root cause of low test scores, has increased, and testing does nothing to reduce it.

Bryant writes:

“How is the debate going? See if this makes sense to you:

“Conservatives want to let states have potentially more options for wasting taxpayer money on wayward attempts in “accountability,” and liberals are insisting on continuing measures that have been mostly bad for the education of black and brown students.

“Huh?”

According to the Southern Education Foundation, 51% of public school pupils–a new majority–are poor. More testing does not reduce poverty.

Bryant writes:

“Tests do uncover disparities in our education system, as the National Assessment of Education Progress has revealed for many years long before NCLB. Gerwerz, again, at Education Week, notes about NAEP, “When I look at it, I see the absence of nearly every single trigger point in today’s testing debates. Every kid required to sit for hours and hours of tests? Nope. Here we have only two hours of testing, given to a sample of the school’s students. Weeks of test prep? Nope. Students tied in knots over potentially bad test scores? Nope.”

“Further, as [Bruce] Baker concludes in a subsequent post, if the federal government really wanted to do something about inequities in our education system, it would develop policies that gave states more incentive to correct what’s really causing inequities: the ways “in which our schools are organized and segregated.”
Why isn’t anyone talking about this? Because the discussion over testing, at least how it’s being carried out in Washington, DC, isn’t really about education. It’s about power politics. Seen in this frame, it’s really hard to believe the Democrats are going to win.”

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Testing

Carol Burris Writes a Letter to Senator Lamar Alexander

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2015 //
13

Carol Burris, high school principal in Rockville Center, Long Island, Néw York, wrote a public letter to Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. Senator Alexander is the ranking Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Conmittee. He has said that he will press for a reauthorization of No Child Left Behind.

Sen. Alexander released a draft of his proposed legislation. It includes two options for testing. Option 1: let the states decide. Option 2: retain the status quo, with a federal mandate for annual testing in grades 3-8.

Burris, who supported NCLB when it passed in 2001, explains how NCLB has failed. She reviews the negative consequences of high-stakes testing and offers her suggestions for fixing the law.

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Testing

Petrilli and Hess: Democrats “Play the Race Card” in Debate Over Federal Role

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2015 //
30

The most contentious issue in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (currently named No Child Left Behind) will be the federal role in mandating annual testing. The latest polls show that it is opposed by a majority of parents and educators, but Secretary Duncan has staunchly insisted it is necessary; 19 civil rights groups endorsed his position, even though the children they represent all too often are negativrly afrcted by such tests. Since minority children, English learners, and children with disabilities are disproportionately stigmatized by standardized tests, it is bizarre to assert that standardized tests are guarantors of civil rights.

So here comes an interesting debate in the conservative National Review. Michael Petrilli of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute and Rick Hess of the conservative American Enterprise Institute take issue with Jonah Edelman of the corporate reform Stand for Children.

Stand for Children is an active and politically savvy opponent of teachers and teachers’ unions. A few years ago, Jonah Edelman boasted at an Aspen Ideas Festival about his role in buying up all the best lobbyists in Illinois so he could ram hostile legislation down the throats of teachers across the state and make it near impossible for the Chicago Teachers Union to go on strike. He was wrong about the latter, because the CTU garnered overwhelming support for a strike and followed through in 2012. Edelman pulled a similar stunt in Massachusetts, having collected millions of dollars from hedge fund manager to make war on teachers and their benefits and job security.

In the present case, Petrilli and Finn chastise Edelman for supporting an expansive federal role in education.

They write:

“In the piece, Edelman denounces efforts to shed some of No Child Left Behind’s more onerous and unworkable provisions as a “threat” to “your kids’ future.” He then recounts a parade of horribles from the last century. “Linda Brown was denied the opportunity to attend a nearby public school because she was black,” he reminds us. “Black students were denied access to a public high school by segregationist Governor Orval Faubus.” And states and districts weren’t meeting the “special needs” of students with disabilities.

“This is a shopworn parlor trick — equating conservatives concerned about federal micromanagement of schooling in 2015 with the “states’ rights” segregationists of two or three generations past (who, for what it’s worth, were overwhelmingly Democratic)….

“But this sort of rhetorical sleight-of-hand has not held up particularly well. Debating whether the federal government should tell states how to label, manage, and “improve” schools (all on the basis of reading and math scores) is a far cry from debates over whether states should be allowed to deny black students access to elementary and secondary schools. Moreover, those who, like Edelman, celebrate Uncle Sam’s expertise and the effectiveness of federal bureaucrats fail to acknowledge how often federal bureaucrats have gotten it wrong — and put in place laws and regulations that have gotten in the way of smart, promising reforms at the state and local level.

“What are the issues that have Edelman so worked up? Republicans on Capitol Hill make no secret that they envision a reauthorization of No Child Left Behind that will significantly reduce the strings attached to federal education dollars. Among the possible actions: Allowing states to test students every few years rather than annually; getting the federal government out of the business of telling states how to design school-accountability systems or address low-performing schools; and making clear that (contrary to the Obama administration’s designs) the federal government should have no role in dictating state reading and math standards.

“Casual followers of the education debate might notice that these changes seem both modest and sensible. Yet Edelman insists that if Congress dares to go down this path, “disadvantaged students will lose out, and millions of young people who could have become hard-working taxpayers will end up jobless, in prison, or worse.” (Worse?)….

“The deeper problem is that Edelman and his allies fail to grapple with the very real harm that federal education policy has caused, especially in the past decade. This is baffling, given his own admission that No Child Left Behind is “deeply flawed” and that “federal interventions don’t always work as intended.” But his solution — to simply update the law more regularly — indicates a misunderstanding of the realities of the legislative process (Congress updates laws when it will, not on the schedule of us pundits) and of the root problem. The real issue is not just that specific provisions of NCLB are problematic (though they are); it’s that the federal government is destined to mess up whatever it touches in education. That’s because it’s three steps removed from actual schools, with states and local districts sitting between its good intentions and its ability to ensure good results.

“All the federal government can do is pass laws telling federal bureaucrats to write rules for the states, whose bureaucrats then write more rules for school districts, which in turn give marching orders to principals. By the time this game of telephone is done, educators are stuck in a stifling, rule-driven culture that undermines the kind of practical discretion that characterizes good schools.

“During the Obama years, this problem has only grown worse. Convinced of their own righteousness and brilliance, Obama’s education officials have pushed all manner of half-baked ideas on the country (especially the demand that states evaluate teachers largely on the basis of test scores); helped turn potentially promising ideas into political hot potatoes (see Common Core); and embarked on ideological, deeply harmful crusades (using legal threats, for example, to discourage schools from disciplining minority students)….”

What Secretary Duncan has achieved in his six years in office is to persuade many liberals and conservatives that the U.S. Department of Education has abandoned any sense of federalism and has assumed far too much control. While liberals are uneasy about trusting either state or local government with the future of education, they are just as wary (or warier) of the heavy-handed power of the federal government. Duncan himself has become a symbol for many of the federal government’s abandonment of public schools and its commitment to privatize public schools “with all deliberate speed.” Duncan’s demand for annual testing and his determination to evaluate teachers based on students’ test scores–practices not found in high-performing nations–has put him on the wrong side of history. He simply ignores the failure of his pet policies, as well as the protests of parents and educators. His self-righteousness is no substitute for evidence and democratic governance.

Categories Democrats, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Republicans, Stand for Children, Testing, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. education

Elliot Self: Time to Revise NCLB

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2015 //
11

Veteran educator Elliot Self says it is long past time to revise No Child Left Behind, and he urges everyone to make their voices heard.

My first recommendation to Congress would be to restore the original name of this landmark 1965 legislation, whose primary purpose was equity for poor children and districts, not accountability: the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), not President Bush’s colorful NCLB.

Self offers nine recommendations in this article. The balance of the article explains each recommendations.

“I believe that we need a new National policy that supports a 21st century education for our children. I am suggesting nine broad changes to the law that would help schools and teachers across the country better meet the needs of diverse students and schools in a complex 21st century world. The recommendations suggest a very different type of law that, instead of a set of top down mandates, emphasizes collaborative working relationships with states, schools and districts and local flexibility, creativity and innovation. They suggest that NCLB should be focused around a 21st century education mission statement and set of goals and should support the development of high quality standards that make significant learning possible.

“The recommendations promote a broader view of accountability and assessment policies and practices, emphasize the development of a rigorous, expansive, high quality curriculum and school programs, and promote the use of powerful instructional strategies. They are designed to address the deep-seated problems with the current law.

Self’s nine recommendations are the following:

“Create a law designed to encourage and guide states, districts and schools to develop 21st century schools, rather than coerce them into submission.

Create a 21st century education mission and vision statement to focus the law.

Encourage the development of high quality state standards.

Support the development of curricular programs that are consistent with high quality standards.

Reduce the amount of standardized testing and encourage the use of multiple types of assessments to measure success and progress.

Encourage districts and schools to develop and implement benchmark and graduation projects.

Encourage districts to provide a variety of elective courses and comprehensive extra-curricular activities and programs.

Encourage professional development that supports the use of powerful instructional strategies.

Create the means for greater collaboration and sharing among states, districts and schools.”

What are your recommendations for the federal role?

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Standardized Testing

Teacher: What Makes a Good School? How Should We Judge?

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2015 //
23

New Hampshire teacher Shawna Coppola wonders how to define a good school. She explains why the school she teaches in is an excellent school that defies all the current reforms and educates all children to meet their needs, not to raise their scores. The school may be closed because of the cost of renovations; besides, it does not have the cachet of the districts with high scores. This crazy notion that beloved community public schools should be closed is recent in our history, dating only to No Child Left Behind. That now discredited law decreed that schools must be subject to a cascade of sanctions, including closure, if their test scores don’t move towards 100% proficiency in grades 3-8. Never before in our history were public schools closed except for shrinking enrollments or consolidation of facilities—but not for test scores. Many states have adopted A-F grading systems, but those are overly simplistic and they rely too much on standardized test scores. How should we judge a school?

 

Here are Shawna’s thoughts on what makes a good school:

 

Recently a news item came out on our local NH station, WMUR, which listed the top 50 elementary schools in the state of NH. Previous to this, Newsweek had published their 2014 list of America’s Top High Schools. Both times, the district in which I live made the list. Our local high school was listed as the one of the best high schools in America, while our two elementary schools ranked near the top in the state of NH, respectively. You can find Newsweek’s list here (http://www.newsweek.com/high-schools/americas-top-schools-2014) and WMUR’s list here:http://www.wmur.com/news/30456516.

 

Over ten years ago, my husband and I moved to this highly-rated district so that our children could attend the schools here, which we had heard wonderful things about. By most accounts, the schools in the district are “excellent” schools. What people tend to mean by this is that the students in our district perform well on state-wide standardized assessments and on AP exams, graduate from the high school, and tend to matriculate at college immediately following graduation.

 

This used to impress me–at least, it did when I was still a wide-eyed classroom teacher only a few years out of college. With each passing year, however, it impresses me less and less.

 

The reason for this is because over the years, and through my experience as an educator, I have come to understand what it really means to be a school of excellence versus a school that is merely good at playing the game (or is lucky enough to be situated in an involved, highly literate, financially stable community). I do not believe ours is a bad or a poor district–far from it–but is it excellent? Does it deserve its place at the “top?” The short answer for me, as a parent to two students in the district, is…well, no. (I would be happy to elaborate further if you are interested.)

 

Alternatively, I believe that the school I work in now, Rollinsford Grade School, is one of the most excellent schools in which I have ever worked–even ever set foot in. If I were not here, working as a literacy specialist in grades K-6, I likely would not be working anywhere (in public school, that is). We have a long way to go, and can always improve, of course, but in all essence, Rollinsford is my dream school. At Rollinsford, we truly attend to the whole child. The social, emotional, and physical development of our students is just as important, if not more important, as their academic growth. We have worked hard to incorporate a sense of authentic inquiry into everything we–and our students– do. Our students have a voice, and their voice is heard and acted upon. We believe that there are a myriad number of ways that students can–and do–succeed. Each member of the faculty and staff identifies as a learner herself. Each of us goes above and beyond what is expected.

 

And yet, Rollinsford Grade School placed 130th out of 243 NH schools–in the bottom half. When I dug into the methodology used to complete these rankings, I wasn’t surprised to learn that it was highly flawed (you can find my somewhat detailed analysis here: http://mysocalledliteracylife.com/2015/01/04/unique-insight-into-schools-um-no/). Flawed not because of the science used, but because of the factors that were analyzed. Not one factor that went into ranking NH’s elementary schools included the factors that I, and most of my fellow educators, value– classroom pedagogy, school culture, student voice and choice, community outreach, etc. Sure, the rankings included analysis of surveys that were sent out to students, parents, and alumni of each school, but a district only needed 11 completed surveys per district to have its results counted toward the ratings. I’m sure it’s no surprise that the most affluent districts in the state, and the ones most likely to have more highly educated parents, fewer transient families, and less poverty (including the one in which I live), came out on top.

 

And now, with our enrollment decreasing each year and the need for minimal renovations that would bring a 78 year-old building up to code, Rollinsford Grade School is in the position of potentially being shut down, our students shipped off to a mediocre school district in the next town over. My colleagues and I–and many of our parents, whose children thrive here–are heartbroken. Not because we could potentially lose our jobs, but because one of the best schools with some of the most thoughtful, knowledgeable, progressive-minded educators may, someday soon, no longer exist. Because we have worked so hard to honor all of our students, not just those who fit the mold of the “typical” student. Because the children of this community will no longer have an alternative to the traditional, testing-focused, CCSS-centric types of schooling they will get in most other schools.

 

What I often write about–and what I think there needs to be a lot more conversation about, not only within the wider community, but within the world–is what truly makes a school “good” (or even “excellent”). (And is this the same everywhere?) Not for the sake of ranking schools, which is not something I believe does anyone any good, but for the sake of identifying those factors that make a school one in which both teachers and students are happy, safe, and engaged in the joy and the challenge of learning. So that schools that are not excellent can aspire to something–can make positive change toward excellence.

 

I think that in today’s educational culture, it is more important than ever to talk about what truly makes a good school vs. one that is only good at “playing” school. I would love to hear your ideas for how to make this happen.

 

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

 

Best,

Shawna Coppola

Literacy Specialist, Rollinsford Grade School

Rollinsford, NH 03869

Categories Closing schools, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), New Hampshire

Doug Garnett: The Absurdity of Testing Every Child Every Year

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2015 //
70

When I spoke to the Texas School Boards Association a few years ago, a member of the audience got up and identified himself as a school board member and an engineer. He said that he didn’t understand why the government tests every child every year. He said that in the industry where he works, it is customary to test the products periodically, on a sampling basis. I will never forget what he said: “If we tested every product, we would spend most of our time testing the product, and we wouldn’t have time left to manufacture or to improve the product.”

 

I was reminded of that statement when I received this comment from Doug Garnett, who is a specialist in marketing, advertising, branding, communications, and technology. Garnett wrote, just minutes ago:

 

Where I’m mystified is this belief that in order to have “accountability”, EVERY child has to be tested in the entire nation.

 

In business, we rely heavily on statistical sampling because it’s flat out too expensive to measure every item. Sampling in manufacturing, sampling in store satisfaction, sampling in purchasing, sampling in advertising impact, sampling, sampling sampling.

 

The NAEP relies on sampling…because it’s EFFECTIVE!

 

Imagine this: IF we shifted to a sampling test approach an amazing array of issues would be mitigated. The tests would lose their intensely punitive nature – and evolve toward being instructive and enlightening. They would lose the “high stakes” and become simply learning that informs. And, WE could use their reduced presence to focus on the totality of education instead of creating testing farms.

 

So…why don’t these so-called “business people” behind reform endorse smart business approach like sampling? Mind boggling…unless we embrace the conspiracy to redirect all of that government spending into the profits of private corporations.

Categories Accountability, NAEP, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Testing
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »