Our compatriots in Australia are watching the growing rebellion against high-stakes testing with interest and hope.
They are impressed by the courage and unity of teachers at Garfield High School. They are also encouraged by the Republican opposition to testing in Texas.
They are watching events here closely.
They know what happens here, for good or ill, will affect their schools.
The world is watching and hoping for better ideas to come from our shores.
Pearson has a contract with the state of Texas for five years that is worth close to $500 million.
That ought to bring gold-plated service and products to the children of Texas, right?
Wrong.
Pearson is advertising for test graders in Texas on craigslist!
The graders need only a bachelor’s degree, and they will be paid $12 an hour.
They will be “trained,” of course, but think of it. Their snap decisions will decide the fate of students, teachers, and schools. If they aren’t that good at what they do, children will fail, teachers will be fired, and schools will be closed. Because of decisions made by a temp worker.
Shocking as this is, it is nothing new. Todd Farley wrote a book called Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry, in which he described his many years inside the testing industry.
For a quick read right now, be sure to open this article, Dan Dimaggio’s horrifying account of his experiences as a test grader.
Here is a sample:
“Test-scoring companies make their money by hiring a temporary workforce each spring, people willing to work for low wages (generally $11 to $13 an hour), no benefits, and no hope of long-term employment—not exactly the most attractive conditions for trained and licensed educators. So all it takes to become a test scorer is a bachelor’s degree, a lack of a steady job, and a willingness to throw independent thinking out the window and follow the absurd and ever-changing guidelines set by the test-scoring companies. Some of us scorers are retired teachers, but most are former office workers, former security guards, or former holders of any of the diverse array of jobs previously done by the currently unemployed. When I began working in test scoring three years ago, my first “team leader” was qualified to supervise, not because of his credentials in the field of education, but because he had been a low-level manager at a local Target.”
So Texas spends nearly $500 million to hire an army of low-wage temps to make fateful decisions about the future of students, teachers, and schools. And of course it is not just Texas. It is every other state in the nation.
Why trust the judgment of a fallible teacher or principal, when you can rely on the judgment of a $12 an hour temp, supervised by a Target manager?
This is crazy.
A reader from Wisconsin points out that Governor Walker’s reforms are not intended to improve the schools, but to turn schooling into a free-market activity:
Thank you Diane for highlighting yet another unproven attempt to inject free market ideology into Wisconsin public schools.
The recent recall attempt exposed the forces supporting Gov. Walker and how they wish to dismantle public education and fill the void with free market principles. Walker rolled out phase two of his anti-public education plan in his State of the State address with more promises to “transform education” and “expand the number of choices for families in Wisconsin—be it a traditional, a charter, a voucher, a virtual, or a home school environment.”
The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute–which provided the first critique you mentioned– is in the same camp (or a suburb) of the MacIver Institute–which sponsored Operation Angry Badger designed to “document the shortcomings of public schools in Wisconsin.”
WPRI, MacIver, Citizens for Responsible Government (CRG), and the Tea Party forces supporting Gov. Walker have no intent to improve public education or provide support for our neediest students. A successful public education system with an extensive support network works against the lassez-faire capitalist ideology of these free marketeers.
I think the Garfield High teachers are a model for teachers across the nation.
They show that collective action works. If one person speaks up, he or she gets fired.
When an entire faculty resists, together their voice is heard around the world.
Not everyone agrees, of course. Mike Petrilli of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute (where I was a trustee for many years but am no longer) strongly condemns the Garfield teachers. He thinks they are shirking their duty. He thinks they are trying to avoid being held accountable. He thinks they should not compare themselves to Martin Luther King Jr.
I disagree with Mike.
Martin Luther King taught the nation–and the Garfield teachers–about the power of collective action against injustice. He showed them that the powerless, acting in concert, have power even if they don’t have money.
Teachers know better than think tanks that testing has become obsessive and pointless. President Obama has frequently inveighed against teaching to the test. The teachers are exercising their conscience, are manifesting professional responsibility, and are supporting what they believe is right for their students.
Dr. King taught them the power of the boycott. He taught them to stand firm against what they know is wrong. He taught them to have courage regardless of the odds against them.
And lest we forget, Dr. King did not fighting for privatization of public services; he did not demand high-stakes testing for children. He demanded equality of education opportunity, not a regular application of the bell curve. Dr. King demanded an end to poverty and war. He died helping the sanitation workers of Memphis organize a union.
Chicago Teachers Union Launches Campaign Against ‘High-Stakes’ Standardized Testing, Supports Seattle Teachers Boycott
CHICAGO—The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU has launched a campaign in support of local and nationwide efforts to eliminate standardized non-state mandated tests—also known as “high-stakes testing”—from public schools. Test scores fail as measures of learning when high-stakes testing advanced by corporate education reformers dominates curriculum, and also fail to consider non-classroom stimuli that affects school-age children, especially in urban areas.
Children who do not have access to health care, who are hungry, who are fearful of violence in their communities, who do not have books or access to other informal learning at home, whose parents have limited education, and whose families are constantly stressed by economic problems are at an extreme academic disadvantage. These factors are highly related not only to testing outcomes, academic achievement, future education and socio‐economic success, but also to the racial, ethnic and class origins of individuals.
The inequitable history of American society, politics, institutions and economic relations are at the root of these outcomes. As a result, when academic outcomes are averaged across subgroups such as race and class, glaring gaps appear.
“These issues are the things that are important to our families, not performance on standardized tests,” said CTU President Karen GJ Lewis. “I think it’s important for us to go on record about this because we are likely to start seeing a more active anti-testing movement in Chicago.”
“The U.S. has gone far overboard in the overuse and misuse of standardized tests,” said Monty Neill, Ed.D., Executive Director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest). “Now, teachers, parents and community activists are pushing back in places like Chicago and Seattle and even in Texas, where the testing craze began.”
Teachers at Garfield High School in Seattle are currently boycotting the district-mandated Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) standardized test. A group of teachers at Curie Metropolitan High School in Chicago successfully boycotted and ended a district-mandated test a year ago. Teachers, parents and students throughout Chicago and the U.S. have serious concerns about a number of aspects of standardized testing, including cultural bias, the disruption of early childhood learning and day-to-day classroom routines, and the lack of accommodations for special needs students.
“We see all these actions around the country, from resolutions to strikes to other kind of protests as linked to the loosely-knit resistance of people saying, ‘Enough is enough,’” Neill said. “It’s time to get back to real teaching and learning.”
CTU research reveals a few quick facts on standardized testing:
CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey and his wife, Julie Fain, have delivered a formal letter (Full text below) to the principal of their sons’ school exercising their right as parents to opt their children out of all non-state mandated tests for the current school year. In correspondence to Dr. Joenile Albert-Reese, principal of Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS) AN Pritzker School, Sharkey and Fain declared that testing is not in the best interests of their children’s education, and will no longer allow them to participate.
“I’m a CTU officer, but before that, I’m the father of two school-age children and to that end, I’m against the misuse of standardized tests and support the efforts of teachers, school administrators and other parents to resist the standardized testing insanity,” Sharkey said.
_ _ _
Joenile S. Albert-Reese
AN Pritzker School
2009 W. Schiller Ave.
Chicago, IL 60622
January 15, 2013
Dear Dr. Reese,
We are writing to inform you that we are exercising our right to exempt our children, Leo Sharkey and Caleb Sharkey from all non-state mandated tests for the current school year. This includes, but is not limited to: NWEA/MAP, REACH, DIBELS, and mCLASS. We will permit Caleb to take the ISAT. In addition, please do not place the grades, ISAT scores, or results of previous standardized tests of either of our children on display in the classroom, hallway, or other public place.
During whole class standardized testing we understand that our children will be provided with appropriate accommodations in order to engage in quiet, self-guided activity like silent reading, drawing, writing, or other appropriate activities so as to not disrupt the classroom in any way.
We do not take this decision lightly given the high stakes attached to performance on these tests for everyone involved-our children, our school, and our teachers. Unfortunately we do not believe these tests to be in the best interests of our children’s education and cannot continue to allow them to participate.
We have become alarmed at the incredible increase in high stakes standardized testing at CPS. This year our kindergartener is scheduled to take fourteen standardized tests. Our fourth grader is scheduled for twenty-four tests, including the ISAT, which is spread over 8 sessions, and REACH assessments in PE, library, music and Spanish. It’s simply too much, and too much of a drain on scarce resources at our schools.
These tests carry significant consequences for students, teachers and schools, and we see the effects of this. The curriculum becomes narrowed to cover what is on the tests. Teachers and students become stressed and demoralized. Ceaseless testing is driving out creativity, curiosity, and independent thinking.
We note that elite private schools have no use for standardized tests of any kind. They trust their teachers to assess students’ progress with authentic, multiple measures and intense attention given to each student. We are concerned that CPS is going in the opposite direction-towards larger classes with more standardized testing. We also do not support a competitive culture around testing where prizes are given for results or students’ scores are posted in public (a clear violation of their privacy).
We look forward to the time when our schools can nurture the natural inquisitiveness and love of learning all children should have instead of seeing them as data points on charts and spreadsheets. We are proud, grateful members of the Pritzker community. We look forward to many years of working together to improve our children’s education.
We are happy to discuss this matter further.
Sincerely,
Julie Fain and Jesse Sharkey
There was a time in my life when I would have been opposed on principle to the sentiments expressed in this article. The author talks about how schooling has become a way of destroying childhood. I used to scoff at articles like this.
But no more. I see my grandson come home with the results of his spelling test. He has math homework. He is only in first grade. He goes to a wonderful public school in Brooklyn. He seems too young for the pressure. What’s the rush? He’s now doing what children in second or third grade used to do. Is this necessary? I wonder if the pressure will get stronger every year. I wonder. I wonder if schooling has changed or I have changed. Or maybe both.
Responding to a post about a test question for second-grade students, which assumed they knew the words “commission” and “Mozart,” this parent replied:
My second-grader defined “commission” without needing the
multiple choice prompts this morning, but her school has a really
strong music program.
She credited her music teacher for having
taught her the term–which was done in the context of an annual
all-school field trip to a local Symphony Orchestra concert. (This
is not district-wide; our PTA fundraising pays for the cost of the
buses necessary to take all the kids. I don’t know of another
public school in the district or in the area that has all of its
kids at the concert every year; most take only one or two grades,
if they participate at all.)
Before they go to the concert, our music teacher gives the kids the elementary-school equivalent of a pre-concert lecture–which is to say, it takes place over a few
weeks and isn’t a lecture, but they come away with much of the same
information.
My daughter has also played violin since she was 4,
and her public school has a fabulous strings program that she’s
been in since kindergarten, also thanks to our fabulous and amazing
music teacher (who, it might be noted, belongs to the union and
runs the entire strings program during her free periods).
Our school is also blessed with amazing parents, and several of them
attend each and every orchestra rehearsal to help the kids tune
their instruments and set up music and stands. And in the spirit of
full disclosure, my daughter has a musicologist for a mother.
Do I think most second-grade students could define this term? Probably
not, especially with so many schools cutting music and arts
programs. Unfortunately, putting terms like this on a test will
likely have the effect of extending vocabulary lessons and cutting
into time that would otherwise be used for music or art or
P.E.
This comment from a Puget Sound parent hits the nail on the head about both the strategy and goal of corporate reform. First, create dissatisfaction, then turn us into shoppers, choosing a school while destroying our attachment to our community schools. In time, we discover that it is the school that chooses, not the shopper.
One of the objectives of the privatizers is to reinforce the “Mall Mentality” that so many of us just act on, unconsciously. The entire goal is to get us to see education as a “product” to “choose”—like we would with a new pair of sandals at a giant retailer.
What’s MY “return on investment” for MY kid? How come I’m paying for YOU, “teacher”, and I can’t just “can you, like my boss can can ME, anytime, for any reason?”. What am I getting for MY money?”
And the reason that the privatizers are trying to drill this into us with words like “choice” and “investment” and “accountability” is that they realize that community, cooperation and mutual support are CRITICAL if a public school is to survive, let alone thrive.
Privatizers WANT people to be suspicious of the people running their schools and ultra-competitive with each other. They want people looking for advantage and focused exclusively on self-interest, resulting in an obsession with “MY KID!”—and implicitly “NOT YOUR KID!”
Privatizers live for the image of parents bickering, breaking into factions, and running for the exits after they maliciously pay someone to yell “FIRE!” in the equivalent of a very crowded theatre.
Like the crowd during the bank run in “It’s A Wonderful Life”, will we panic and sell out to Potter, “for at least HALF of MY MONEY” or will we stick together, realizing that our strength comes from standing WITH one another, united for ALL of “OUR KIDS”?
A reader, Jill Koyama, calls attention to an important topic:
I actually conducted a 3-year study of private tutoring companies in NYC. Here is the link to my book, Making Failure Pay: For-Profit Tutoring, High-Stakes Testing, and Public Schools, published in 2010 by the University of Chicago Press:
http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo8917055.html
Anyone who attended public schools knows there was plenty that was wrong with them.
I grew up in Texas and attended segregated schools. That was wrong then, and it is wrong now, even though it is no longer mandated by law.
I had some great teachers and some awful teachers.
Over the years, in my studies of American education, I have documented the rise and fall of reform movements. Some were more successful than others, but one thing is certain: Public schools must constantly get better, and they should today.
In this article, Marion Brady explains what he thinks was better about the era before today’s test-driven, data-driven, privatization-friendly reforms. He thinks the drive for standardization is a big mistake.
What do you think?
