The Yoke of Constant Testing

If our elected officials were interested in listening to anyone outside the Business Roundtable or the US Chamber of Commerce, they might see that constant testing has no advantage over beating children into a submissive acceptance of their third-world-in-a-first-world fates. In fact, I think you would find large numbers of children quite willing to forego occasional floggings if they could find relief from the drudgery that has turned their schools into militaristic exercises in futility and failure.

It looks as though the British are on the verge of withdrawing here, too:

Thursday, 01 Mar 2007 09:40

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) has called on the government to remove the "yoke" of national tests.

Commenting after the publication today of the results for key stage three national tests, general secretary Mary Bousted said: "This latest round of yet more statistics from the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) does not help solve the fundamental problems with schooling in England."

She added: "We have become wearily accustomed to this government's 'never mind the quality, feel the width' approach to education."

A review of the curriculum is taking place and government ministers argued it will improve attainment and close the gender gap

Dr Bousted said: "The key stage three review, if allowed to blossom freely, will make schools more interesting for pupils, but would do it far more successfully if the government removed the yoke of constant testing."
Thursday, 01 Mar 2007 09:40 The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) has called on the government to remove the "yoke" of national tests.

Commenting after the publication today of the results for key stage three national tests, general secretary Mary Bousted said: "This latest round of yet more statistics from the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) does not help solve the fundamental problems with schooling in England."

She added: "We have become wearily accustomed to this government's 'never mind the quality, feel the width' approach to education."

A review of the curriculum is taking place and government ministers argued it will improve attainment and close the gender gap

Dr Bousted said: "The key stage three review, if allowed to blossom freely, will make schools more interesting for pupils, but would do it far more successfully if the government removed the yoke of constant testing."

"blackmailed by the federal government"

Resist the educational genocide or go along with it in order to keep the school doors open? These are the decisions faced by poor school districts such as Manasssas, Virginia, where school boards must choose whether or not to advocate for children's rights or to accept the money that assures the crushing failure that Spellings's institutionalized child abuse offers these children. From WaPo:

Thursday, March 1, 2007; B05

The Manassas City School Board, which oversees a small system with a large concentration of students who have limited English, this week reluctantly abandoned an effort to defy a controversial federal rule for testing those students.

On Tuesday, the board agreed to comply with the mandate of the No Child Left Behind law to give grade-level reading tests to about 350 elementary- and middle-school students who are not yet fluent in English. Previously, the board had considered resisting the rule through a resolution similar to those adopted recently by school boards in Fairfax and Arlington counties.

Manassas officials said they were swayed by a federal threat to cut off aid for disadvantaged students, a loss that could have been nearly $700,000 in the next school year, according to a U.S. Education Department letter made public yesterday.

"We are being blackmailed by the federal government," Manassas School Board member Curtis W. Wunderly said. Like many other Virginia education officials, Wunderly said that students should not be forced to take tests they can't understand and are all but certain to fail.

U.S. Education Department spokesman Chad Colby replied that the testing is necessary to help teachers identify the academic needs of students with limited English. Most school systems across the country, federal officials say, are following the law.

The action in Manassas was notable because about 35 percent of the estimated 6,500 students in the city's public schools have limited English proficiency. Only Harrisonburg, in the Shenandoah Valley, has a higher percentage of limited-English students among Virginia public school systems, state data show.

A letter from U.S. Deputy Education Secretary Raymond Simon, released by Virginia officials, spelled out how much federal aid for disadvantaged students school systems might lose if they fail to comply with the law: about $2.6 million in Arlington; about $3.1 million in Alexandria; about $1.3 million in Loudoun County; about $6 million in Prince William County; and about $17.5 million in Fairfax County. So far, only Fairfax and Arlington have declared their intention to resist the federal rule. Prince William has said it will reluctantly comply. Loudoun and Alexandria have not taken action.

Is Dying a Legitimate Excuse for Failing?

Can't let a little tooth infection get in the way of your impossible demands for all children, right, Ms. Spellings? (Photo by Linda Davidson, WaPo)

(From WaPo:

Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache Sunday.

A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.

If his mother had been insured.

If his family had not lost its Medicaid.

If Medicaid dentists weren't so hard to find.

If his mother hadn't been focused on getting a dentist for his brother, who had six rotted teeth.

By the time Deamonte's own aching tooth got any attention, the bacteria from the abscess had spread to his brain, doctors said. After two operations and more than six weeks of hospital care, the Prince George's County boy died.

Deamonte's death and the ultimate cost of his care, which could total more than $250,000, underscore an often-overlooked concern in the debate over universal health coverage: dental care. . . .

Poverty and Neglect? No Excuses!

(Photo by Kevin Clark, WaPo)

Just down the road from the White House, the "no excuses" hardball of NCLB plays out in schools attended by the Capitol's bumper crop of impoverished children. These are the children who are commanded to perform on tests at the same level as Caitlin and Seth out in the rich suburbs of Alexandria. To expect less simply because of lead-laced drinking water, crumbling school buildings, and lives seared by poverty, would be to engage in the "bigotry of low expectations." A clip from WaPo:

Syreeta Williams, a parent at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Southeast Washington, puts bottled water in her children's backpacks rather than let them drink from the thin trickle that gurgles out of the school fountains.

Her son, Auvoen, 12, a fifth-grader, complains that the restroom near his third-floor classroom smells so bad that he walks to the second floor, a trip that keeps him out of the classroom longer, Williams said.

As a parent who also serves as a school volunteer, Williams said she wants to trust that school officials will treat King "like one of the best schools." . . .

Not the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations, but, Rather,

. . . the case-hardened racism of unattainable demands:

School districts in North Carolina have a compelling opportunity to do the right thing for children by joining the protests in Virginia against No Child Left Behind legislation that requires all students, even those new to our country and culture, to take the same high-stakes tests.

Children who've moved to our country and are struggling with learning how to ask where the bathrooms are or how to find the music room are being asked after only one year in this country to take a reading test that requires not only literal understanding of text but high-level thinking skills and complex comprehension strategies.

To require that students new to our language take this test does not, as U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings asserts (Feb. 20 news story "Schools balk at testing"), counter the "soft bigotry of low expectations." Instead, it sets them and their schools up for failure.

High expectations are indeed necessary for all students. But expectations that are unreasonable and contrary to research regarding the length of time required to become proficient in another language assault the dignity and rights of these students.

Frances Fincher

Raleigh

NCLB, er, Iraq

I hope Josh Marshall will not be offended if I use his comments about Iraq this morning to make the same points about NCLB--my brackets, not his:

"The reason our [NCLB] mission in Iraq has proven to be so disastrous and corrupt is very simple -- the advocates and architects of that [education policy] war are completely corrupt, inept, and deceitful." The words are Glenn Greenwald's. And though many others have said the same thing in slightly different words, it bears repeating again and again. The corruption and ineptitude aren't unfortunate add-ons to the effort. They're at the heart of it. It's a stain like original sin. And the same goes for the democratizing element of the [NCLB] mission. Even among critics of [NCLB] the war, it's often accepted as granted that a key aim of this effort was [closing the achievement gap] democratization -- only that it was botched, like so much else, or that the aim of [closing the achievement gap] democracy, in a crunch, plays second fiddle to other priorities. Not true. The key architects of the policy don't believe in [closing the achievement gap] democracy or the rule of law. The whole [testing scheme] invasion was based on contrary principles. And the aim can't be achieved because those anti-democratic principles are written into the DNA of [NCLB policy] occupation, even as secondary figures have and continue to labor to [close the achievement gap] build democracy in the country.

Next Phase: Killing Off Thinking in College

John Young of the Waco Tribune-Herald has a fine op-ed on what is quickly emerging as the corporate socialists' first big move in Texas (where else?) to kill higher education the same way they are destroying K-12 education--with an anti-intellectual testing blitzkrieg and a bullying buyout of administrators who are willing to sell their integrity and trade their ethics for a wad of dollars. First though, a clip from Wikipedia on anti-intellectualism:

Anti-intellectualism describes a sentiment of hostility towards, or mistrust of, intellectuals and intellectual pursuits. This may be expressed in various ways, such as attacks on the merits of science, education, or literature. Anti-intellectuals often perceive themselves as champions of the ordinary people and egalitarianism against elitism, especially academic elitism. These critics argue that highly educated people form an insular social group that tends to dominate political discourse and higher education (academia).

Anti-intellectualism can also be used as a term to criticize an educational system if it seems to place minimal emphasis on academic and intellectual accomplishment, or if a government has a tendency to formulate policies without consulting academic and scholarly study.

John Young's op-ed from the Dallas Morning News:

Warning to students at Texas state colleges: You are about to get used again.

Students got used four years ago when, to reduce its share of college funding, the Texas Legislature deregulated tuition. College administrators then jacked the cost through the roof.

It was another hurtful wrinkle by which lawmakers could balance the budget with "no new taxes." But it was a tax on students.

Now with a new Legislature, colleges stand to play the foils again, and students stand to be on the receiving end of a royal scam.

Gov. Rick Perry has proposed to spend $362 million more on higher education, with conditions, including standardized exit-level tests. He wants to tie funding to test scores and graduation rates. He also proposes an initiative to move students through college faster.

The idea of new dollars tweaks college administrators' salivary glands. New tests? Where do we sign? We'll just make students pay for them, $25 a pop.

But college faculty members have raised an alarm.

Texas Faculty Association president Charles Zucker told the Web site Inside Higher Ed: "We've had massive amounts of teaching to the test in public schools. ... Now there's a consensus that that has failed, the governor wants to institute the same plan for higher education."

His use of "consensus" is open to debate. If education's quest is to roll out drones who, when drilled under threat of retention, will do certain state-assigned tasks, maybe Texas' "accountability" is a success. But we all thought higher education was, well, higher.

As proposed, the plan would not require college students to pass the state exams to graduate. A no-stakes test. So, no overemphasis, right?

Listen, if money is attached, those tests will be high-stakes faster than Deutsche Bank can convert rubles to yen.

What kinds of tests are we talking about?

Let's ask Education Testing Service, the General Motors of school accountability. It has exit-level tests for college seniors in several disciplines. But a host of disciplines don't have any. Sounds like new business.

Standardized testing has become a dead weight on our nation's schools with far less benefit than anyone wants to acknowledge. It is a particular drag on children at or above grade level. Meanwhile, those in the bottom reaches of achievement are subjected to stifling repetition and test prep.

With Texas leading the way, states have shown they can increase test scores, but not necessarily produce thinkers or innovators.

Speaking to Inside Higher Ed, Bob Schaefer of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing warned that with state-imposed standardized testing and with economic incentives attached, colleges would "narrow their curriculum to test preparation for the exit exam."

"Test scores may soar, but education quality will be undermined."

One of two things will happen under this proposal:

1. Time and money will be spent on tests that students know don't matter but which the state says are important in "rating colleges."

2. The state would impress on colleges how important the tests are, and more and more classroom content would be dictated by some far-off test maker.

Presto. You have homogenization and standardization of a once-vibrant creature, American higher education, long the envy of the world.

John Young is opinion page editor of the Waco Tribune-Herald. His e-mail address is jyoung@ wacotrib.com.

The Beautiful, the Bad, and the Pretty Just Got Ugly

This past week McClatchy Newspapers and the New Republic reported that 16,000,000 Americans live in severe poverty and that the rate soared by 26% between 2000 and 2005. Numbers living in the upper echelons of poverty have also increased as working people experience the full force of the "Sinkhole Effect"--or the Third-Worlding of America. The conservative solution: Close down the office at the U. S. Census Bureau that compiles these embarrassing numbers. Here is TNR's take:

So the reporters at McClatchy snapped on the rubber gloves, plunged into the dark cavities of the Census Bureau, and pulled out a stunning statistic: "Nearly 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty"--a category that includes individuals making less than $5,080 a year, and families of four bringing in less than $9,903 a year. That number, by the way, has been growing rapidly since 2000. The article itself hits the usual refrains--noting that the United States spends less on anti-poverty programs than any other industrialized country outside of Russia and Mexico--but I found this bit near the end quite striking:

The Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation shows that, in a given month, only 10 percent of severely poor Americans received Temporary Assistance for Needy Families in 2003--the latest year available--and that only 36 percent received food stamps.

Many could have exhausted their eligibility for welfare or decided that the new program requirements were too onerous. But the low participation rates are troubling because the worst byproducts of poverty, such as higher crime and violence rates and poor health, nutrition and educational outcomes, are worse for those in deep poverty.

I doubt those are the only reasons for the low participation rates. As David K. Shipler reported in The Working Poor, welfare agencies spend a great deal of effort dissuading people from applying for assistance. They'll ask single mothers who come in a few perfunctory questions and then--illegally--refuse to give them an application. Or they'll design "Kafkaesque labyrinths of paperwork" that turn any attempt to obtain benefits into a full-time job. Anything to ease pressure on state budgets. Luckily, the Bush administration has taken note of all this and proposed to... eliminate the Census's Survey of Income and Program Participation, so that nosy researchers can no longer figure out how many eligible families are receiving assistance. Problem solved!

It was at least good to see that 7 of the 10 states with the highest poverty are already using high school exit exams to make sure that their citizens can compete in the global marketplace. Two others have exit exams proposed.

In the meantime, the Wall Street Journal reports this past week that bonuses for top Wall Street hustlers last year jumped 15-20%. With 2007 totals expected to exceed $26 billion, this year the average bonus will be between $2 milliion and $4 million. From the survey conducted by Prince & Associates (how appropriate), 14% of those millions paid out to the real men of Wall Street admittedly go toward " 'other' -- a category that includes hobbies such as horses and flying lessons, as well as 'mistresses and other lovers'."

And in a growing show of solidarity for the next generation of the hard-working men of Wall Street who deserve to be treated right by their women, Sam Dillon has a fascinating story on a college sorority that could represent a new national Greek strategy to weed out the brown, the black, and the heavy in order to keep their pledge numbers high and to make their coeds competitive in the local and global marketplace of highly-placed, unquestioning sluts that Wall Streeters prefer.

Perhaps these corporatist coeds will win future slots on the Fox Business News, a venue that will doubtless offer a whole new slant on the old term,"boobtube." Or at least there is the more realistic hope of sharing some of that 14% of the Wall Streeters' "other" spending that is not given over to horseback riding lessons:

GREENCASTLE, Ind. — When a psychology professor at DePauw University here surveyed students, they described one sorority as a group of “daddy’s little princesses” and another as “offbeat hippies.” The sisters of Delta Zeta were seen as “socially awkward.”

Worried that a negative stereotype of the sorority was contributing to a decline in membership that had left its Greek-columned house here half empty, Delta Zeta’s national officers interviewed 35 DePauw members in November, quizzing them about their dedication to recruitment. They judged 23 of the women insufficiently committed and later told them to vacate the sorority house.

The 23 members included every woman who was overweight. They also included the only black, Korean and Vietnamese members. The dozen students allowed to stay were slender and popular with fraternity men — conventionally pretty women the sorority hoped could attract new recruits. Six of the 12 were so infuriated they quit.

“Virtually everyone who didn’t fit a certain sorority member archetype was told to leave,” said Kate Holloway, a senior who withdrew from the chapter during its reorganization. . . .

Oh yeah, order your own t-shirt here while supplies last.

Homegrown Terrorism and the School Privatizers

First it was the Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, referring to the NEA as a terrorist organization. Then came Reid Lyon wanting to blow up colleges of education. Now we have a local brown shirt in Minneapolis who suggests burning down a public high school. HT to Media Transparency--article from Star-Tribune:

Last update: February 17, 2007 – 7:11 PM

Samuels fans flames of public school bonfire

Don Samuels has apologized for his words, but not his views. And he isn't likely to. For the Fifth Ward City Council member from Minneapolis who suggested burning down North High School is not just one man with an opinion.

By Nick Coleman, Star Tribune

Don Samuels has apologized for his words, but not his views. And he isn't likely to. For the Fifth Ward City Council member from Minneapolis who suggested burning down North High School is not just one man with an opinion.

He is a stalking horse for a movement that wants to torch public schools. It has gotten frighteningly close to its goal.

The Center of the American Experiment, a local conservative think tank, is renewing the push for school vouchers, and it tapped Samuels to endorse its position paper. In his foreword to the recent publication, Samuels again displays a flair for the dramatic, writing that he wonders "how many future murderers are in the first grade classes of the four elementary schools within a mile of my home?"

Officer, arrest those first-graders!

But if you take Samuels seriously, it is not just his language that is lousy. It is his policies.

Samuels has become the darling of a coalition of mostly conservative, mostly suburban groups involved in a coordinated assault on "government monopoly schools." These groups are pushing hard in Minnesota for expanded tax-credit or tuition vouchers to allow public dollars to be spent on private schools. It isn't just people in the North High neighborhood who should worry about that.

Some groups pushing for vouchers have fought to outlaw gay marriage or to keep children from receiving sex education or learning about evolution. They have a right to send their kids to religious schools. They don't have a right -- Article XIII of the State Constitution bars public funding for "sectarian" schools -- to subsidize such schools with tax dollars.

Nevertheless, the crusade is on. And Samuels is its hero.

Other black leaders are being lobbied to convert to the vouchers cause. One, NAACP President Duane Reed, says he recently refused requests to testify on behalf of a vouchers/tax credit bill in the Legislature. He says the request came from a group affiliated with the Libertarian Party, whose platform praises tax credits and charter schools as "interim measures" that will help kill the public schools.

"This is not about Don Samuels," Reed said at Thursday night's public meeting at North High with Samuels. "This is about ... tax credits. Which is just a code word for vouchers. This is just teeing up a sensational issue."How many black leaders support vouchers?" he said to me later, proceeding to tick off a long list of black groups, starting with the NAACP, that oppose them. "Now Don Samuels all of a sudden is an expert, and he is going to speak for us? I don't think so."

Charter schools, funded with public funds, were supposed to help produce new teaching methodologies and education strategies. Other states limit their number. New York has a limit of 100. Iowa has a limit of 10. Minnesota has no limit. Today, we have 131 charter schools, with 23,600 students. At least 19 more charter schools are on the way.

How much is too much?

The largest sponsor of charter schools, Friends of Ascension, has ties to former state Republican chairman Bill Cooper, who has served on the group's board of directors. Friends of Ascension has 16 schools with 2,800 students (12 percent of charter school enrollment). Nor is Cooper the only former Republican Party chair to have found a keen interest in the inner city.

Former GOP chairman Ron Eibensteiner and his wife are the founders of KidsFirst Scholarships, which award privately funded vouchers to children (650 this year) to attend private schools. Those scholarships are funded by grants from right-wing billionaires such as Ted Forstmann and the late John Walton of the Walton Family Foundation. Critics such as the liberal People for the American Way point out an obvious motivation: By handing out private vouchers in the inner city, conservatives hope to create political momentum for state vouchers that will damage public schools.

Not to mention the teaching of evolutionary science.

The fire has been set. Public schools have lost thousands of students to charter schools and open enrollment, and that exodus has been folded into "drop-out rates" that have been recklessly exaggerated by radical opponents of public education, including Don Samuels.

This is not just an intramural squabble in the black community. All supporters of public education should be worried. It is not just North High that is under assault; it is the very idea of public education.

As an inner-city politician with friends in high places, Samuels didn't set the schools ablaze. He just fanned the flames. But his friends are dancing around the bonfire.

Nick Coleman • ncoleman@startribune.com

On a National Day of Teacher Conscience

In an America I never knew that I could know, teachers quiver and quake for their jobs as national policymakers demand of them actions that, in fact, assure the destruction of children, of public schools, of their own profession. They cower in teacher rooms and whisper about getting fired for signing a petition that calls for the repeal of the Big Lie, No Child Left Behind. They move from class to class with their idiotic slides and "dittos" and mastery motivational talks provided by the testing/textbook company chosen for its willingness to pay the most to get the business. They angrily proclaim over lunch how they have learned years ago to keep their mouths shut and to do what they are asked to do (anger is always the self-selected moral choice when cowardice is the only perceived alternative).

They grind from one school day to the next, cajoling and saluting and marching their children along shiny hallways like prisoners at the correctional facility. They are preoccupied by the bonus pay they could earn from higher test scores, as they shop the real estate ads for an affordable gated community carved into some barren red hillside in South Carolina, a place where they may retire in peaceful repose, knowing they served well--knowing that the next generation will be in good hands.

What will you do on a National Day of Teacher Conscience? Go the Walmart? Walk out? Stand up for the Code of Ethics that your professional organization has apparently forgotten they adopted?

They may have something specific that is emerging in Virginia. Could it be, conscience? Will you support them?:

. . . . Denunciations of the No Child Left Behind law's testing rules are multiplying in immigrant-rich Northern Virginia. In Fairfax and Arlington County, educators are preparing to defy the rules even though they are at risk of losing federal aid; other area officials are moving more cautiously.

Federal officials have said repeatedly that grade-level testing is needed for immigrant students after they have been in U.S. schools for one year, a requirement they say will help hold schools to high standards. Most states, including Maryland, are following the rules. So are D.C. public schools, officials say.

U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has criticized Virginia educators who are resisting. "It's time to remember that yes, Virginia, there is a Standards Clause," Spellings wrote recently in a caustic open letter.

Fairfax, with the region's largest school system, has led the state's rebellion. The county School Board voted in January to continue giving proficiency tests to immigrant students who have not progressed enough to take grade-level tests that assume language fluency. Fairfax school officials appear to be standing firm even though the U.S. Department of Education has threatened to withhold $17 million in aid if the county follows through with its plan. . . .