Sent to the Los Angeles Daily News, January 10
The move to all-computer testing (“State schools chief proposes replacing paper Scantron tests with computer-based ones,” January 8) is the start of a huge boondoggle. After every student is connected, the set-up will be declared obsolete and need to be upgraded or replaced. The schools will cheerfully pay up, eager for the "newest" technology, and computer companies will cheerfully accept their money.
I have nothing against private enterprise making an honest profit for providing a needed service or useful product. But in this case there is no evidence that the product is needed or useful. We are about to waste a gigantic amount of money that is badly needed elsewhere, and where it can be put to much better use.
Stephen Krashen
Original article: http://www.dailynews.com/ci_22333360/state-schools-chief-proposes-new-statewide-testing-system?source=most_emailed
HT: Anna Koval (hat-tip)
Friday, January 11, 2013
Thursday, January 10, 2013
When will testing fever end?
Sent to Education Week, January 10, 2013.
“Testing group picks ‘college readiness’ exam” (January 9) announces yet another test to add to the staggering pile of tests our students must take. When will this end?
Because there is no evidence that adding more tests helps students, and plenty of evidence that increased testing will be very profitable for those who sell the tests and supply the infrastructure for the required on-line testing, the obvious answer is that testing fever will end only when the greed of the standardized-testing-industrial-complex is satisfied.
In other words, never.
Stephen Krashen
Original article: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/01/09/15parcc.h32.html?qs=testing+group+picks
“Testing group picks ‘college readiness’ exam” (January 9) announces yet another test to add to the staggering pile of tests our students must take. When will this end?
Because there is no evidence that adding more tests helps students, and plenty of evidence that increased testing will be very profitable for those who sell the tests and supply the infrastructure for the required on-line testing, the obvious answer is that testing fever will end only when the greed of the standardized-testing-industrial-complex is satisfied.
In other words, never.
Stephen Krashen
Original article: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/01/09/15parcc.h32.html?qs=testing+group+picks
Math Lessons for Compromisers
Many in debates, especially the education debate, call for honoring "both sides" of issues and seeking compromise. For those let me offer some basic math lessons:
The Compromise Formula:
Truth + Lie = Lie
The "Fair and Balanced" Formula:
Both Sides - Lie = Truth
Now, Compromisers, please study because there will be a test every day from now on.
The Compromise Formula:
Truth + Lie = Lie
The "Fair and Balanced" Formula:
Both Sides - Lie = Truth
Now, Compromisers, please study because there will be a test every day from now on.
“One of the violences perpetuated by illiteracy is the suffocation of the consciousness and the expressiveness of men and women who are forbidden from reading and writing, thus limiting their capacity to write about their reading of the world so they can rethink about their original reading of it.” Paulo Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers
Cornerstone Academy Embroiled in Child Abuse Charges in Memphis
In order to encourage charter schools to "innovate," almost all oversight and regulations have been removed, so that now these corporate reform schools operate with impunity, free to pay school CEOs hundreds of thousands of tax dollars each year to run total compliance chain gangs for children, where teachers are more prison guard than educator. The only innovation we see from these one-size fits all behavioral neutering factories is in the punishment techniques devised to break children down in order to make them entirely compliant.
Such is the case in Memphis, which is now Ground Zero for the corporate charterization movement in U. S. urban schools. With millions in Gates money funneled to corrupt politicians and church leaders, Memphis City Schools are being turned into a system of primarily apartheid corporate charter reform schools with large numbers of white missionaries from Teach for America hired to grind out test scores and to maintain total control of the children.
An outbreak of the new cancer growing in Memphis schools can be found at the Cornerstone Academy, which has just completed a hastily-arranged "audit" related to child abuse charges by children and parents. Following the Rhee model of investigating yourself, the school prison hired an "independent" auditor (an accounting firm, no less!) to ask the prison guards if they had been mistreating the prisoners who were complaining. No problem, said the prison guards. End of audit. No interviews of the prisoners or their families, or no other semblance of a real investigation.
This should be a wake-up call to Memphis parents. Who knows what the fact are, since the story comes to us from Gates stooge, Jane Roberts, who also draws a check from the Memphis Commercial Appeal:
An investigation of practices at Cornerstone Preparatory School by an outside auditor finds no ground to substantiate numerous allegations of child abuse at the Binghamton campus.
Parents and community leaders are incensed, saying the audit is meaningless because Cornerstone hired the investigator and then excluded them from participating.
"How independent is it when you are the one that hired them?" asked Chan Douglas, one of several community supporters organizing neighborhood meetings and acting as intermediaries between parents and Cornerstone, which is operating the school as part of the state's Achievement School District for low-performing schools.
"If it was a true investigation, they should have reached out to the community. They have not spoken with the parents that complained. If you are not doing that, what are you basing your findings on?
Executive director Drew Sippel said parents were not included because the audit was over internal school processes.
"We voluntarily put it together in response to concerns we heard expressed at the meeting," Sippel said. "It's part of a three-pronged approach to the concerns. We also self-reported to the Department of Children's Services and we expect to hear from them in a couple of business days."
....
"My question is why didn't they reach out to me, the community leader and organizer, to find out who they needed to talk to from the community perspective?" asked Marty Merriweather
Anger first boiled over in a meeting Dec. 19 at the Lester Community Center. One little girl told the crowd of 120-plus people in a three-hour meeting that her teacher refused to let her use the restroom or get her fresh clothes when she wet her pants. She also said the teacher took her shoes, apparently because she was slow tying her laces. Other parents said teachers twisted their children's arms or took their shoes as punishment. . . . .
Make sure the common core doesn’t get credit for test score inflation
Make sure the common core doesn’t get credit for test score inflation
S Krashen
Please don’t get too excited when initial common core tests appear to produce low scores. New tests typically result in low scores, and then scores rise for the next few years as teachers and students get used to the test format and content, and teachers learn how to teach to the test (Linn, Gaue and Sanders, 1990). I predict that the Common core will get credit for this bogus “improvement.” The improvement will stop after a few years, but by then the apparent success of the common core will be considered “proven.”
This is exactly what happened after California dismantled bilingual education. In 1998, the same year Proposition 227 passed, a new test, the SAT9, was introduced. Scores went up for everybody the first year, and 227 got the credit. Unnoticed was the fact that scores also went up by the same amount for districts that kept bilingual education, and after two years, there were no more gains for anybody. And all the controlled studies showing that bilingual education was superior to all-English for English literacy development was ignored.
Common Core Standards: Early Results From Kentucky Are In http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2012/12/04/common-core-standards-early-results-from-kentucky-are-in
Scores Drop on Ky.'s Common Core-Aligned Tests, http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/11/02/11standards.h32.html
Linn, R., Graue, E., & Sanders, N. 1990. Comparing state and district test results to national norms: The validity of claims that "everyone is above average." Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice 10: 5-14.
Krashen, S. Why Did Test Scores Go up in California? A Response to Unz/Reinhard. http://www.languagepolicy.net/archives/Krash10.htm
S Krashen
Please don’t get too excited when initial common core tests appear to produce low scores. New tests typically result in low scores, and then scores rise for the next few years as teachers and students get used to the test format and content, and teachers learn how to teach to the test (Linn, Gaue and Sanders, 1990). I predict that the Common core will get credit for this bogus “improvement.” The improvement will stop after a few years, but by then the apparent success of the common core will be considered “proven.”
This is exactly what happened after California dismantled bilingual education. In 1998, the same year Proposition 227 passed, a new test, the SAT9, was introduced. Scores went up for everybody the first year, and 227 got the credit. Unnoticed was the fact that scores also went up by the same amount for districts that kept bilingual education, and after two years, there were no more gains for anybody. And all the controlled studies showing that bilingual education was superior to all-English for English literacy development was ignored.
Common Core Standards: Early Results From Kentucky Are In http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2012/12/04/common-core-standards-early-results-from-kentucky-are-in
Scores Drop on Ky.'s Common Core-Aligned Tests, http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/11/02/11standards.h32.html
Linn, R., Graue, E., & Sanders, N. 1990. Comparing state and district test results to national norms: The validity of claims that "everyone is above average." Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice 10: 5-14.
Krashen, S. Why Did Test Scores Go up in California? A Response to Unz/Reinhard. http://www.languagepolicy.net/archives/Krash10.htm
Wednesday, January 09, 2013
The obsession with teacher evaluation
The obsession with teacher evaluation
Sent to the Seattle Times, January 9
The publicity given to the latest Gates Foundation report on teacher evaluation (“Gates: Test scores not enough for teacher reviews,” January 9) adds strength to the common view that there is something very wrong with American teachers. There is, for example, no pressing concern about how we should evaluate nurses, carpenters, doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers, plumbers, butchers, newspaper reporters, etc.
Every profession has some inferior practitioners, but the available evidence says that American teachers as a group are excellent. When we control for the effects of poverty, our international test scores are very good, ranking at or near the top of world.
There are two major factors preventing teachers from being even more effective: (1) The high level of child poverty in the US, 23.1%, second among high-income countries; children who are hungry, have poor health care and little access to books will not do well in school regardless of teacher quality. (2) The unreasonable demands of the Common Core: a tight, inflexible curriculum that crushes creativity, designed by elitists with little idea of what goes on in classrooms, and a massive amount of testing, more than we have ever seen on this planet.
Stephen Krashen
Original article:
http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2020087148_apusgatesfoundationteachers.html
Sent to the Seattle Times, January 9
The publicity given to the latest Gates Foundation report on teacher evaluation (“Gates: Test scores not enough for teacher reviews,” January 9) adds strength to the common view that there is something very wrong with American teachers. There is, for example, no pressing concern about how we should evaluate nurses, carpenters, doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers, plumbers, butchers, newspaper reporters, etc.
Every profession has some inferior practitioners, but the available evidence says that American teachers as a group are excellent. When we control for the effects of poverty, our international test scores are very good, ranking at or near the top of world.
There are two major factors preventing teachers from being even more effective: (1) The high level of child poverty in the US, 23.1%, second among high-income countries; children who are hungry, have poor health care and little access to books will not do well in school regardless of teacher quality. (2) The unreasonable demands of the Common Core: a tight, inflexible curriculum that crushes creativity, designed by elitists with little idea of what goes on in classrooms, and a massive amount of testing, more than we have ever seen on this planet.
Stephen Krashen
Original article:
http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2020087148_apusgatesfoundationteachers.html
National Boycott of MSNBC
From Tim Slekar:
January 7, 2013 by Timothy D. Slekar
Why in the hell would MSNBC’s morning joe prominently feature Michelle Rhee and her ridiculous state report card? Why does this woman continue to get media attention? Every reform that she either implemented or advocates for has been demonstrated to lead to deceitful behavior or simply not work! She advocates an ideologically driven, corporate-based reform movement that puts money first—not students.
Corporate based education reform is killing the American system of public education and eroding any democratic tendencies left in the public sphere. After spending more than $1 trillion dollars on 10 years of No Child Left Behind and four years of Race to the Top we have successfully 1) sent poor and minority students to a failing system of privately managed charter schools, 2) defunded and closed community schools, 3)defiled professional teachers, and 4) harmed our most vulnerable children. However, to me, the biggest crime is that the media remains silent or serves as a mouthpiecefor the people responsible for the damage and harm.
In the past I wrote a letter to Ed Shultz asking for his help. Ed seems to be one of the few hosts in the national media that occasionally attempts to expose the corporate education reform disaster. However, he just never takes it to the next level. My guess is that this is not a character flaw of Mr. Shultz but rather the reality of the situation he finds himself.
He works for MSNBC. And as much as MSNBC tries to “Lean Forward” their hosts can only lean so far—MSNBC is a corporate-owned media conglomerate. The hosts’ freedom to report has a limit and right now for some reason (Bill Gates maybe?) the only time a semi critical look at corporate education reform occurs is when the blame can be easily ascribed to a Republican.
I hate that I am suggesting this but I believe the time has come.
- If the one media outlet—MSNBC—that claims to be “progressive” continues to fawn all over the likes of Michelle Rhee,
- If the hosts on MSNBC fail to unveil corporate education reform as an attack by the wealthy to destroy American public education,
- If MSNBC continues to ignore the informed voices (professionals with legitimate education credentials),
Then I can think of nothing else to do other than launch a boycott of the most popular shows and hosts on MSNBC—The Ed Show, The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, and The Rachel Maddow Show.
Why these? Why not? Obviously writing letters, sending emails, tweeting, and posting to the Facebook pages of these MSNBC hosts results in nothing but crickets. If you’re an individual or a group please push this boycott announcement to your friends and members.
Extreme? Only if you think shuffling our most vulnerable children off to for-profit charter schools that practice prison style behavior management and employ the least qualified teachers is how you put students first.
Follow Timothy D. Slekar on Twitter: www.twitter.com/slekar
Better Schools = Stronger Communities
“One of the violences perpetuated by illiteracy is the suffocation of the consciousness and the expressiveness of men and women who are forbidden from reading and writing, thus limiting their capacity to write about their reading of the world so they can rethink about their original reading of it.” Paulo Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers
Common Core Announces New High School Leaving Exam (Or Entrance Exam)
Instructions: Read each question thoroughly. Answer all questions. Time limit - four hours. Begin immediately.*
History
Describe the history of the Papacy from its origins to the present day, concentrate specifically but not exclusively, on the social, political, economic, religious, and philosophical impact on Europe, Asia, America and Africa. Be brief, concise and specific.
Literature
Compose an epic poem based on the events of your own life in which you see and footnote allusions from T.S. Eliot, Keats, Chaucer, Dante, Norse mythology and the Marx brothers. Critique your poem with a full discussion of its metrics.
Music
Write a piano concerto. Orchestrate it and perform it with flute and drum. You will find a piano under your seat.
Art
Explain the Mona Lisa's smile. Relate all interpretations associated with it.
Religion
Assuming the Judeo-Christian moral structure, take the stand for Adam and Eve, and the eating of the forbidden fruit. Explain your position fully to a Chassidic Rabbi, and answer his arguments. An Anglican bishop will moderate this debate.
Logic
Using accepted methodology prove all four of the following: the universe is infinite; truth is beauty; there is not a little person who turns off the light in the refrigerator when you close the door, and that you are the person taking this exam. Now disprove all of the above. Be specific; show all work.
Philosophy
Sketch the development of human thought; estimate its significance. Compare with the development of any other kind of thought.
Epistemology
Take a position for or against truth. Prove the validity of your position.
Medicine
You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a bottle of Scotch. Remove your own appendix. Do not suture until your work has been inspected. You have fifteen minutes.
Biology
Create life. Estimate the differences in subsequent human culture if this form of life had developed five hundred years earlier, with special attention to the probable effects on the English Parliamentary system. Prove your thesis.
Psychology
Employing principles from the major schools of psychoanalytic thought, successfully subject yourself to analysis. Make appropriate personality changes, bill yourself and fill out all medical insurance forms. Now do the same to the person seated to your immediate left. Also, based on your degree of knowledge of their works, evaluate the emotional stability, degree of adjustment, and repressed frustrations of each of the following Alexander of Aphrodisias, Rameses II, Gregory of Nicea, Hammurabi. Support your evaluations with quotations from each man's work, making appropriate references. It is not necessary to translate.
Sociology
Estimate the sociological problems that might accompany the end of the world. Construct and experiment to test your theory.
Economics
Develop a realistic plan for refinancing the national debt. Trace the possible effects of you plan in the following areas Cubism, the Donatist controversy, the wave theory of light. Outline a method from all points of view. Point out deficiencies in your argument as demonstrated in your answer to the last question.
Computer Science
Define computer. Define Science. How do they relate? Why? Create a generalized algorithm to optimize all computer decisions. Assuming an 1130 CPU supporting 50 terminals, each terminal to activate your algorithm, design the communications to interface and all the necessary control programs.
Management Science
Define Management. Define Science. How do they relate? Why? Create a generalized algorithm to optimize all managerial decisions. Assuming an 1130 CPU supporting 50 terminals, each terminal to activate your algorithm; design the communications interface and all necessary control programs.
Public Speaking
2,500 riot-crazed students are storming the classroom. Calm them. You may use any ancient language except Latin or Greek.
Physics
Explain the nature of matter. Include in your answer an evaluation of the impact of the development of mathematics on science.
Modern Physics
Disprove Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Construct an experiment to prove your position.
Engineering
The disassembled parts of a high-powered rifle have been placed in a box on your desk. You will also find an instruction manual, printed in Swahili. In ten minutes a hungry Bengal tiger will be admitted to the room. Take whatever action you feel is appropriate. Prove your assertions, and be prepared to cost- and motion- justify your decision.
Agricultural Science
Outline the steps involved in breeding your own super high yield, all weather hybrid strain of wheat. Describe its chemical and physical properties and estimate its impact on world food supplies. Construct a model for dealing with world-wide surpluses. Write your Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
Comprehension
Three minute time test. Read everything before doing anything. Put your name in the upper right hand corner of this page. Circle the word name in sentence three. Sign your name under the title of this paper, after the title write yes, yes, yes. Put an X in the lower left hand corner of this paper. Draw a triangle around the X you just put down. On the back of this paper multiply 703x668. Loudly call out your name when you get to this point. If you think you have followed directions carefully to this point call out "I have." Punch three small holes in the top of this paper. If you are the first person to get this far, call out "I am the first person to this point, I am leading in following directions." On the reverse side of this paper add 8950 and 9850. Put a circle around your answer and put a square around the circle. Now that you have finished reading carefully, do only sentence two.
Political Science
There is a red telephone on the desk behind you. Start World War III. Report at length on its socio-political effects, if any.
Jurisprudence
In Part 2 of Shakespeare's "Henry VI", Jack Cade, the leader of the Populist revolt, proposes that the first order of business following a successful coup d'etat could be to "kill all the lawyers". In light of the present populist mood in the United States, assess the utility and any potential impact of such a policy today.
Foreign Affairs
It has recently been suggested (especially after Black Monday) that only a foreign war can restore America's lost national consensus. Propose the ideal opponent(s) for the US in such a war, and how the conflict might be engineered so that US would seem not to be the aggressor in the situation. Discuss the pros and cons.
Mathematics
Give today's date, in metric.
Chemistry
Transform lead into gold. You will find a tripod and three logs under your seat. Show all work including Feynman diagrams and quantum functions for all steps. You have fifteen minutes.
General Knowledge
Describe in detail. Be objective and specific.
Extra Credit
Define the Universe. Give two examples.
*This "ultimate exam" has been circulating for about 20 years. Origin unknown.
Tuesday, January 08, 2013
Conflicting Responses to Testing Abuses
Thanks, Nancy Flanagan, for resurrecting so many contradictory feelings – and thoughts that I do not want in my head as I return from the holidays to the classroom. Seriously, Flanagan tackles the question that many teachers, including me, would like to dodge. She quotes a comment that should make all of us recoil. Roseanne Eckhert asks, “If you would take a bullet for a child, then why would you keep them from recess and PE or impose homework that consists of mind-numbing drill sheets for your paycheck?”
Flanagan restates the question about teachers, “Why do they let clueless, aggressive "reformers" capture the bully pulpit on ed policy? Why are they so spineless?”
My first response was to take a dive on that issue and I continued to surf the Internet. But, then I found Gary Rubenstein’s Teach for Us. Rubenstein features a blog post, by KIPPster Chris Low, describing the pain that testing imposes on his special education students. One student protested a failing score by fashioning his two-page score report into ice skates. “Sliding around the back of the room, he declared, ‘I don’t care about this stupid test! I don’t care!’”
My inner city high schools students, regardless of whether they are on IEPs, are equally eloquent in expressing their anguish, and anger. They are virtually unanimous in protesting humiliating way that testing robbed them of the opportunity to learn anything “real.” Being a teacher, I have to hear them out, respectfully, commit to offering as much engaging instruction as I am allowed, and then exhort, “Ok, now, back to work.”
And that brings me back to Nancy Flanagan. She writes, “I don't know a single teacher who fetishizes data or puts their mandated and paced, standards-linked goals on the board in the happy delusion that their students will learn more.” We are aghast at the “enforced chipping away slowly at the ideals that make learning and life worthwhile: curiosity, motivation, a sense of worth and purpose.” So, why do teachers often limit ourselves to “small, covert rebellions,” such as complaining in the teachers lounge?
Flanagan explains that there is a value to a “more modulated response to ill-advised reforms.” Veteran teachers are loath to be marginalized as mere complainers, or even as “uppity.” She observes, “Reflexively rejecting reforms--without evidence--is as bad as advocating for reforms without proof that they work.”
And Flanagan added the emphasis to the following:
Teachers do what they're told to do for a more important reason than losing gainful employment. They do it because they may never be able to teach again, a fate far worse than being fired from a single job. The goal is to change the system, not to elevate your personal viewpoints.
I would only add one point to Flanagan’s wisdom. For worse or for better, most teachers teach the way that we were taught by our favorite teachers. While we must worry what happens when a generation of teachers without memories of the pre-NCLB era takes over, we must retain our faith in the great chain of mentorship. We who were inspired by teachers who turned us on to the clash of ideas can’t now say “it’s our way or the highway.” We must persuade our colleagues to do something that does not come natural to us and become more forceful than we would like in fighting test-driven “reform.” If teachers model the wisdom of Nancy Flanagan, then this “accountability” mania should also pass.
Neither can I deny the truth of P.L. Thomas’ metaphor. Teachers are like the people who were frantically trying to save babies being washed down the river. They were horrified by the lawyer who quit the effort. He explained, however, that someone needs to go upstream and stop the person who was throwing the babies into the water.
But, frankly, I worry about using Thomas’ metaphor, just like I was afraid to address Flanagan’s question. I do not want it to sound like I am comparing “reformers” – who I know to be sincere – to people who kill children. Neither do “reformers” want to kill the values of public education or to use testing to degrade students.
Advocates of standardized testing believe that they are useful tools, just like I believe that teachers are not suffering from a mass hallucination. We continually witness the cruelty and the disgusting consequences of data-driven “reform.” On the job, we must do a better job of speaking “truth to power about what we're doing to kids.” Teachers must do a better job of discussing issues that we typically would prefer to avoid. And, we must also pay our union dues and pressure our leadership to send the lawyers upstream to fight standardized testing.
Flanagan restates the question about teachers, “Why do they let clueless, aggressive "reformers" capture the bully pulpit on ed policy? Why are they so spineless?”
My first response was to take a dive on that issue and I continued to surf the Internet. But, then I found Gary Rubenstein’s Teach for Us. Rubenstein features a blog post, by KIPPster Chris Low, describing the pain that testing imposes on his special education students. One student protested a failing score by fashioning his two-page score report into ice skates. “Sliding around the back of the room, he declared, ‘I don’t care about this stupid test! I don’t care!’”
My inner city high schools students, regardless of whether they are on IEPs, are equally eloquent in expressing their anguish, and anger. They are virtually unanimous in protesting humiliating way that testing robbed them of the opportunity to learn anything “real.” Being a teacher, I have to hear them out, respectfully, commit to offering as much engaging instruction as I am allowed, and then exhort, “Ok, now, back to work.”
And that brings me back to Nancy Flanagan. She writes, “I don't know a single teacher who fetishizes data or puts their mandated and paced, standards-linked goals on the board in the happy delusion that their students will learn more.” We are aghast at the “enforced chipping away slowly at the ideals that make learning and life worthwhile: curiosity, motivation, a sense of worth and purpose.” So, why do teachers often limit ourselves to “small, covert rebellions,” such as complaining in the teachers lounge?
Flanagan explains that there is a value to a “more modulated response to ill-advised reforms.” Veteran teachers are loath to be marginalized as mere complainers, or even as “uppity.” She observes, “Reflexively rejecting reforms--without evidence--is as bad as advocating for reforms without proof that they work.”
And Flanagan added the emphasis to the following:
Teachers do what they're told to do for a more important reason than losing gainful employment. They do it because they may never be able to teach again, a fate far worse than being fired from a single job. The goal is to change the system, not to elevate your personal viewpoints.
I would only add one point to Flanagan’s wisdom. For worse or for better, most teachers teach the way that we were taught by our favorite teachers. While we must worry what happens when a generation of teachers without memories of the pre-NCLB era takes over, we must retain our faith in the great chain of mentorship. We who were inspired by teachers who turned us on to the clash of ideas can’t now say “it’s our way or the highway.” We must persuade our colleagues to do something that does not come natural to us and become more forceful than we would like in fighting test-driven “reform.” If teachers model the wisdom of Nancy Flanagan, then this “accountability” mania should also pass.
Neither can I deny the truth of P.L. Thomas’ metaphor. Teachers are like the people who were frantically trying to save babies being washed down the river. They were horrified by the lawyer who quit the effort. He explained, however, that someone needs to go upstream and stop the person who was throwing the babies into the water.
But, frankly, I worry about using Thomas’ metaphor, just like I was afraid to address Flanagan’s question. I do not want it to sound like I am comparing “reformers” – who I know to be sincere – to people who kill children. Neither do “reformers” want to kill the values of public education or to use testing to degrade students.
Advocates of standardized testing believe that they are useful tools, just like I believe that teachers are not suffering from a mass hallucination. We continually witness the cruelty and the disgusting consequences of data-driven “reform.” On the job, we must do a better job of speaking “truth to power about what we're doing to kids.” Teachers must do a better job of discussing issues that we typically would prefer to avoid. And, we must also pay our union dues and pressure our leadership to send the lawyers upstream to fight standardized testing.
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