"Withering test prep regimens" Continue in New York Despite New Law

With absolute fealty to Wall Street and the vulture philanthropists who pay for the Governor's allegiance to New York's 21st Century segregated cultural sterilization testing camps, Cuomo dares not touch the urban sprawl of charter school programs for the poor, which are based, of course, on round the clock test prep.  After all, how else, without test scores, could these dehumanizing hellholes produce the numbers that are used to justify the rampant human rights abuses and behavioral neutering that occur, Orwellian-like, in the name of educational equality.

As a bone thrown to parents fed up with the miseducative and abusive testing practices, Cuomo signed a law earlier this year to limit test prep everywhere except charter schools, even as he and the Legislature doubled down on the rotted Common Core as the next testing delivery system for the predatory test industry led by Pearson.  The question now becomes how do policymakers break the  habit of these hooked users of this new e-cigarette of the toxic testing business.  It will certainly take more than unmonitored statutes of sweet sounding words by New York City's new Chancellor of Schools.

Story in the Times by Al Baker has details of the habit hardest to break.

Money, Test Prep, Money,Exams,Money

Guest Post: 

Robert Rendo

Nationally Board Certified Teacher,

New York 

Public education has long become a billion dollar industry, according to a report put out way back in 2007 by Thomas Meldon, professor in the Benerd School of Education at the University of the Pacific in California, and editor of Teacher Education Quarterly, and Bruce A. Jones, professor and director of the David C. Anchin Center at the University of South Florida.

In their fact finding, they state that companies that produce educational materials and supplies were (then) over the billion dollar threshold, with product lines rapidly expanding.

Fast forward almost 6 years later and in the perfect storm of NCLB and Race to the Top, profits are at a record high while teacher's pedagogical autonomy and basic job rights remain at an all time low.

Ultimately, children absorb this "system" as they're being jam packed into assembly line style teaching with frequent and numerous tests. The extent of testing narrows the curriculum by paying far less attention to the arts, foreign languages, athletics, and civics.

The high stakes testing culture created by the ruling power elite, most of whom are not educators or cognitive scientists, stands only to de-prioritize any discipline not measured by a standardized test. And it stands to reason that among the cruelest ironies of all is that standardized tests, which are empirically full of flaws and distortions, can never capture the truest, most accurate picture of a child's abilities. Yet, they dominate the landscape of a student's and teacher's worthiness. For now, the testing companies conjure up the imagery of a crass monster, a hideously writhing, wounded dragon that refuses to expire, thrashing its psychometric tail in a frenzy of might and will.

Upton Sinclair's "The Concrete Jungle" described the horrible working conditions inside Chicago's Meat packing industry, but the educational testing complex is fast producing the same tone of darkness, productivity, and obedience inside public schools. The love of learning is left to fester in the thick and grimy heat generated by the sweatshop of test-to-death academics. Such vapid curriculums will only dumb down future generations, marginalize labor rights, and fatten the pockets of upper end executive of these so called "education products and service" industries.

For fiscal year 2011, Pearson alone pulled in over one and a half billion dollars in income from its testing and publishing services. Add Pearson to other educational service companies, and one can realize an industrial complex that costs taxpayers several billion dollars annually while compromising the quality of education for the masses.

Public education is supposed to promote democracy, but as it becomes adulterated by pecuniary interests, it is undoing democracy. Ultimately, it will be alliances between parents and teachers only, and not government or the anemic education unions, that will, to some degree of hopeful probability, reverse the trends in education policy. While there is hope for real change and an expansion of equality, there is also the inevitability of a long, drawn out fight.

And as with any battle, one is not immune to the consequences of excellent teachers being faultily measured and characterized by a hastily thrown together and overly polticized system. Equally bad are the consequences of a poorly educated society. Catalyzing those unthinkable consequences are many corporations and "think tanks" that have jumped on the "reform" bandwagon to fulfill agendas that have little or nothing to do with equalizing educational opporutnity. The very factions that purport to defend the poor and vulnerable, like the Walton family and Eil Broad to name a few, are the same ones who advance class stratification. Is this class warfare? You decide.

In the meantime, we natives - who pay taxes, send our children to public schools, and educate - are getting very, very restless. . .

Robert Rendo can be reached at: artwork88@aol.com

Turnaround Corporate Education Reform

Dear Ms Tisch,


I heard you speaking last week on NPR and defending what's going on in NYC around the massive investments  in testing and companies like Pearson. I'm afraid to tell you, what needs to be turned around is the stupid is as stupid does education materials so Pearson and the others can make billiions more.


Perhaps some of those billions spent in testing  kids to death might be better spent on programs like Tae Kwon Do, music, dance, art, field trips, you know the kind of education the privileged get because their parents can pay for it and the type of education we had when access to the most basic  things in life were seen as investments in "the common good" of all children.  I'll send you a book by Congress Ryan of Ohio titled, A Mindful Nation which would lead to A Mindful Education and A Mindful Education policy. I hope you will read it.


That pineapple question was a huge gift because if more of the materials produced saw the light of day, even more people would be outraged to know what their children are wasting their time on in school. I now love pineapples more than ever before. Oh and btw, your quote in the New York Times article today is so incoherent you might find better and more lucrative opportunities writing test questions for Pearson. Then again, we know it's not all about the money, it's about public service.


Merryl H. Tisch, chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, said Friday that she thought the pineapple question made sense in context, but that in hindsight, the passage should not have been used because it added fuel to arguments by those who oppose using testing in teacher evaluations.


Yes, Ms. Tisch, you got something right. There is a reason people oppose using standardized tests in teacher evaluations and if you would open your mind to what teachers are saying, look at the facts and do your homework, you might learn something.


Afterall, with all this accountability for test scores, teachers, students in order for the U.S. to stay competitive in a global economy, most thinking people see that Pearson, McGraw Hill and Harcourt are actually dumbing down and undermining our future and costing taxpayers billions of dollars that could be put to better use. 


Then again, there are always the expensive, exclusive private schools, like the one in my town that are busting out at the seams and look like country clubs for those who are running from public schools because they don't want their children to be subjected to the stupid tests.  Meanwhile, the civil rights of those left behind in the test prep factories are being violated, but then again who cares Brown vs. Board of Education or Chief Justice Earl Warren, a "mindful" judge anymore when the Supreme Court has paved the way for giant mega education corporations to do as they please with our nation's children.


Good luck at your new job at Pearson, obviously you need improvement and the Board of Regents leadership needs to be turned around, quick, before more damage is inflicted.