By Mary Porter.
Diane Ravitch puts it this way:
The American Federation of Teachers and the Center for American Progress issued a joint statement expressing their agreement on what should be contained in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (NCLB). The key point is that the AFT agreed to support annual testing so long as it was used for information, not accountability; and the CAP agreed to using grade span tests for accountability instead of the annual tests. As the article below notes, the AFT had previously opposed annual testing. The CAP’s point person is Carmel Martin, a former assistant secretary for civil rights in the Obama administration, who is a strong supporter of testing.
Somehow, supposed defenders of Democracy have agreed that the choice for the American people comes down to, how often do we want corporate high stakes tests, as part of the accountability system of our children to the public-private partnership?
The PEOPLE don’t want a “compromise” at all. They want to be rid of high-stress mass testing, and rid of the forces that use testing to put a corporate heel on their third grader’s neck, period. They don’t want annual testing for any reason at all. They don’t want their child held accountable to Pearson or McGraw Hill or to Bill Gates or Jeb Bush or Barack Obama every year, or every third year, or AT ALL.
The goal of the corporate drive is to break public education permanently, by force of law, by compulsion, by “accountability”. Whatever compromise they make with us just diverts their drive to other “accountability” methods.
They’re in my public school building now, “building capacity” to push the accountability out every day to every child starting next term, through a claptrap of personalized cloud-based adaptive instruction that allows each child to “move forward” through their proprietary sequence only when their cloud-based algorithm allows it. The AFT and the NEA let them in. If our unions won’t stand behind us to actually defeat them, there are no more compromises to make. We lost.
Our only possible goal is their defeat. Any plan to somehow meet the aims of accountability-based-domination half way through legislative negotiation codifies their authority into law again. We need to stand up and ask, “Accountability to whom?”
The Education Reform coalition of corporate interests, corrupted media, hired political hacks, and political free-market ideologues is warring within itself for mandated market share of our children’s minds and souls. We can crack it, but only by actually defeating them.
“Accountability” has already erected its rigorous claptrap of gibberish-power and blind control right inside each helpless third grader’s daily life. It’s a 1984-level nightmare, and WE LET THEM DO IT TO THE CHILDREN. The AFT is negotiating the terms of our final surrender, where union leaders agree to force teachers to build the machine for them.
What do you think? Should AFT and NEA negotiate the terms by which teachers or schools are held accountable? Or should our only acceptable goal be the elimination of such systems?
Mary Porter teaches at a Massachusetts public high school.
wierdlmate
It seems you leave room for grade-span testing to occur. is this on purpose?
chemtchr
Who, me? I’m not clear on what you’re asking, Wierdimate. I hope I didn’t leave room for ANY testing “to occur” in the passive voice. Testing doesn’t fall like rain. I’m saying nobody has the right to mandate a testing regime and market their data-driven educational products through coercive legislation.
Can we make it clear that it matters who controls these tests children are being forced to take? Can we call down public shame on the self-promoting entrepreneurs at Pearson who have found a way to feed on children’s helplessness?
All tests are high stakes for a child. We need to assure there are caring and courageous adults in the building with all children, who will assure that ANY assessment is serving them. How many teachers are administering an experience that hurts a child in your care, and then saying you hate it but you have no choice? Because you’re being held accountable to their business plan? Refuse all of it, colleagues. It is toxic from the beginning and all the way to the Core.
wierdlmate
Once you tie your opposition to testing to corporate interests, you leave room for testing that doesn’t benefit any corporations. From the child’s educational viewpoint, the basic problem is the testing, period, and not whether it’s tied to corporate interests.
If, say, prof Ravitch declares that annual testing is bad, then she leaves room for less frequent testing. And my reading of her post is that she, in fact, does agree to grade-span testing.
Similarly, if I say, I oppose state-wide standardized tests, then I may not oppose district-wide or school-wide standardized testing.
From a purely logical viewpoint, all the loopholes in laws and rules are created by simply tying several issues together.
The clear(er) statement would be to say “I oppose any standardized tests”. This then wouldn’t leave any room for standardized tests even in an environment full of caring adults. But it would leave room for non-standardized tests.
Unfortunately, there’s a basic problem with any kind of tests that tries to measure educational performance. Yes, even in math.
Children Are More Than Test Scores
Explain to me the moral ground for agreeing to the continued annual testing of our children under with the condition testing is use for gathering information not accountability?
My walk to DC is not a compromise of punishing children with a compromise that claims it’s alright to continue this high stakes testing pain. I am walking to DC to end the pain of testing.
One Man Walking In The Name Of Love To DC,
Jesse
Bill Morrison
We teachers know that any standardized testing interferes with real education, and that we can i ll-afford the time it takes and the classroom disruptions such testing imposes on students and teachers. We are also fully aware that the use of such tests in personnel evaluations is rife with contradictions and inaccuracies, and is morally wrong in many ways. As a teacher-member of AFT-CT, I bitterly oppose my union’s support of standardized testing, and I resent the leadership at both the state and national levels for standing against the membership. We need to impeach these leaders as working for the corporate testing robber barons and against us.
Jim Mordecai
NAEP, National Assessment Educational Progress, sometimes called the Nation’s Report card limits testing to a few grade levels and doesn’t test everyone but employs scientific statistical sampling technique. It cuts cost and time spent on testing and should be employed instead of annual testing.
The controversy regarding the NAEP that changed under political pressure from using percentile reporting to reporting with arbitrary cut scores, NAEP cut scores that were designed to project the image of education system failing and needing to be “reformed”.
ira shor
The AFT under Wingarten and the NEA under Elskelsen will not risk their cherished seats at the table of the status quo. They do not represent teachers, students, or their families, not willing to fight for what our public schools need, willing to cynically bargain away whatever power demands of them. Public education will continue to be looted and undermined until new leadership takes command of the teacher unions and organizes the great mass of teachers to oppose the privatizers and testing corporations.
chemtchr
The link to Diane’s post appears to be broken. Here it is:
http://dianeravitch.net/2015/01/14/aft-and-center-for-american-progress-agree-on-nclb-principles/
Joe
I could not fathom the reason Rick Perry gutted 2 billion from the school budget in Texas while we had “some of the greatest job growth” in America, until I heard Ms. Ravtich speak at the Save our School rally. By cutting the budget, Rick ensured class sizes would rise beyond the teacher’s ability to even teach “To the test.” In addition, as a cost saving measure, districts were forced to layoff experienced, higher paid educators in exchange for young inexperienced teachers at starting wages. Without experience he single handedly ensured districts test scores would drop. Accountability! But why? To save a few dollars at our children’s future? Sounds like Rick, but no, it was much more sinister. He wanted to break the system. His agenda was Charter School takeover. It is easier to sell the public on giving public funds and infrastructure to his donor buddies if people think it is beyond repair. Devalue it before you part it out so your friends get the best bang for their buck. Gotta fund that presidential campaign. Sadly there is little hope for the future of Texas education. It seems 39th in America seems good enough for our incoming Governor, who is still fighting to suppress school funding. Keep up the fight. Public education is worth the bruises. NEVER SURRENDER!
rbeckley58
Joe Willhoft, Executive Director of SBAC, admits that these extreme and exorbitant standardized tests are not absolutely necessary:
“We could probably get students to leave high school college and career ready without any testing at all. It’s a bitter pill for a testing person to swallow, to admit that. But it is probably the truth.”
Smarter Balanced Update for the National Conference of State Legislators on February 26, 2013, on Youtube at 19:50. (You have to open his report to governors to find this report to legislators on the side. Google won’t bring this up directly.)
http://youtu.be/-tu4TAKmnQQ?t=19m45s