The big "debate" going on in anti-reformy ed circles seems to center on whether to embrace child abuse by standardized testing every year (as we have now) or, as Ravitch and Tucker prefer, child abuse by standardized testing "every couple of years."
And even though the corporate foundations have obviously conceded the point by allowing the Senate ESEA version to pass out of the Senate with child abuse testing "every couple of years" intact, the continued "debate" is just the kind of bad theater that anti-reformyists hope will allow AFT/NEA/NPE/FairTest (and Hillary's advisor, Marc Tucker) to claim a big victory, when child abuse by testing "every couple of years" becomes the new ESEA law of the land.
With apologies to the Bard, a turd by any other name would smell as awful.
There is no standardized test that is not high stakes, not even the vaunted NAEP, with its cut scores designed by Ravitch's old pals to make American schools look bad.
And we know that concept and practice of high stakes is both racist and classist, since the poor and brown are the ones who suffer most from the outcomes (labeling, sorting, and segregation). Bobby Kennedy's pipe dream of using testing accountability to make sure poor children got what they needed to be educationally successfully, has always been chimerical since it was first dreamed up in the 60s.
As long as the testing shell game continues, so will the continued oppression of the oppressed in the name of educational equity.
And as the anti-reformy crowd continue their kabuki based on industrial strength testing or testing-lite, the real debate on the planned charter takeover of public schools remains off the radar.
After all, AFT/NEA/NPE/Fairtest all know they can protest and resist only as much as the corporate foundations allow.
And even though the corporate foundations have obviously conceded the point by allowing the Senate ESEA version to pass out of the Senate with child abuse testing "every couple of years" intact, the continued "debate" is just the kind of bad theater that anti-reformyists hope will allow AFT/NEA/NPE/FairTest (and Hillary's advisor, Marc Tucker) to claim a big victory, when child abuse by testing "every couple of years" becomes the new ESEA law of the land.
With apologies to the Bard, a turd by any other name would smell as awful.
There is no standardized test that is not high stakes, not even the vaunted NAEP, with its cut scores designed by Ravitch's old pals to make American schools look bad.
And we know that concept and practice of high stakes is both racist and classist, since the poor and brown are the ones who suffer most from the outcomes (labeling, sorting, and segregation). Bobby Kennedy's pipe dream of using testing accountability to make sure poor children got what they needed to be educationally successfully, has always been chimerical since it was first dreamed up in the 60s.
As long as the testing shell game continues, so will the continued oppression of the oppressed in the name of educational equity.
And as the anti-reformy crowd continue their kabuki based on industrial strength testing or testing-lite, the real debate on the planned charter takeover of public schools remains off the radar.
After all, AFT/NEA/NPE/Fairtest all know they can protest and resist only as much as the corporate foundations allow.
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