The PARCC Test: Exposed

The author of this blog posting is a public school teacher who will remain anonymous.

I will not reveal my district or my role due to the intense legal ramifications for exercising my Constitutional First Amendment rights in a public forum. I was compelled to sign a security form that stated I would not be “Revealing or discussing passages or test items with anyone, including students and school staff, through verbal exchange, email, social media, or any other form of communication” as this would be considered a “Security Breach.” In response to this demand, I can only ask—whom are we protecting?

There are layers of not-so-subtle issues that need to be aired as a result of national and state testing policies that are dominating children’s lives in America. As any well prepared educator knows, curriculum planning and teaching requires knowing how you will assess your students and planning backwards from that knowledge. If teachers are unable to examine and discuss the summative assessment for their students, how can they plan their instruction? Yet, that very question assumes that this test is something worth planning for. The fact is that schools that try to plan their curriculum exclusively to prepare students for this test are ignoring the body of educational research that tells us how children learn, and how to create developmentally appropriate activities to engage students in the act of learning. This article will attempt to provide evidence for these claims as a snapshot of what is happening as a result of current policies.

The PARCC test is developmentally inappropriate

In order to discuss the claim that the PARCC test is “developmentally inappropriate,” examine three of the most recent PARCC 4th grade items.

A book leveling system, designed by Fountas and Pinnell, was made “more rigorous” in order to match the Common Core State Standards. These newly updated benchmarks state that 4th Graders should be reading at a Level S by the end of the year in order to be considered reading “on grade level.” [Celia’s note: I do not endorse leveling books or readers, nor do I think it appropriate that all 9 year olds should be reading a Level S book to be thought of as making good progress.]

The PARCC, which is supposedly a test of the Common Core State Standards, appears to have taken liberties with regard to grade level texts. For example, on the Spring 2016 PARCC for 4th Graders, students were expected to read an excerpt from Shark Life: True Stories about Sharks and the Sea by Peter Benchley and Karen Wojtyla. According to Scholastic, this text is at an interest level for Grades 9-12, and at a 7th Grade reading level. The Lexile measure is 1020L, which is most often found in texts that are written for middle school, and according to Scholastic’s own conversion chart would be equivalent to a 6th grade benchmark around W, X, or Y (using the same Fountas and Pinnell scale).

Even by the reform movement’s own standards, according to MetaMetrics’ reference material on Text Complexity Grade Bands and Lexile Bands, the newly CCSS aligned “Stretch” lexile level of 1020 falls in the 6-8 grade range. This begs the question, what is the purpose of standardizing text complexity bands if testing companies do not have to adhere to them? Also, what is the purpose of a standardized test that surpasses agreed-upon lexile levels?

So, right out of the gate, 4th graders are being asked to read and respond to texts that are two grade levels above the recommended benchmark. After they struggle through difficult texts with advanced vocabulary and nuanced sentence structures, they then have to answer multiple choice questions that are, by design, intended to distract students with answers that appear to be correct except for some technicality.

Finally, students must synthesize two or three of these advanced texts and compose an original essay. The ELA portion of the PARCC takes three days, and each day includes a new essay prompt based on multiple texts. These are the prompts from the 2016 Spring PARCC exam for 4th Graders along with my analysis of why these prompts do not reflect the true intention of the Common Core State Standards.

ELA 4th Grade Prompt #1

Refer to the passage from “Emergency on the Mountain” and the poem “Mountains.” Then answer question 7.

7. Think about how the structural elements in the passage from “Emergency on the Mountain” differ from the structural elements in the poem “Mountains.”

Write an essay that explains the differences in the structural elements between the passage and the poem. Be sure to include specific examples from both texts to support your response.

The above prompt probably attempts to assess the Common Core standard RL.4.5: “Explain major differences between poems, drama, and prose, and refer to the structural elements of poems (e.g., verse, rhythm, meter) and drama (e.g., casts of characters, settings, descriptions, dialogue, stage directions) when writing or speaking about a text.”

However, the Common Core State Standards for writing do not require students to write essays comparing the text structures of different genres. The Grade 4 CCSS for writing about reading demand that students write about characters, settings, and events in literature, or that they write about how authors support their points in informational texts. Nowhere in the standards are students asked to write comparative essays on the structures of writing. The reading standards ask students to “explain” structural elements, but not in writing. There is a huge developmental leap between explaining something and writing an analytical essay about it. [Celia’s note: The entire enterprise of analyzing text structures in elementary school – a 1940’s and 50’s college English approach called “New Criticism” — is ridiculous for 9 year olds anyway.]

The PARCC does not assess what it attempts to assess

ELA 4th Grade Prompt #2

Refer to the passages from “Great White Shark” and Face the Sharks. Then answer question 20.

Using details and images in the passages from “Great White Sharks” and Face to Face with Sharks, write an essay that describes the characteristics of white sharks.

It would be a stretch to say that this question assesses CCSS W.4.9.B: “Explain how an author uses reasons and evidence to support particular points in a text.”

In fact, this prompt assesses a student’s ability to research a topic across sources and write a research-based essay that synthesizes facts from both articles. Even CCSS W.4.7, “Conduct research projects that build knowledge through investigation of different aspects of a topic,” does not demand that students compile information from different sources to create an essay. The closest the standards come to demanding this sort of work is in the reading standards; CCSS RI.4.9 says: “Integrate information from two texts on the same topic in order to write or speak about the subject knowledgeably.” Fine. One could argue that this PARCC prompt assesses CCSS RI.4.9.

However, the fact that the texts presented for students to “use” for the essay are at a middle school reading level automatically disqualifies this essay prompt from being able to assess what it attempts to assess. (It is like trying to assess children’s math computational skills by embedding them in a word problem with words that the child cannot read.)

ELA 4th Grade Prompt #3

25. In “Sadako’s Secret,” the narrator reveals Sadako’s thoughts and feelings while telling the story. The narrator also includes dialogue and actions between Sadako and her family. Using these details, write a story about what happens next year when Sadako tries out for the junior high track team. Include not only Sadako’s actions and feelings but also her family’s reaction and feelings in your story.

Nowhere, and I mean nowhere in the Common Core State Standards is there a demand for students to read a narrative and then use the details from that text to write a new story based on a prompt. That is a new pseudo-genre called “Prose Constructed Response” by the PARCC creators, and it is 100% not aligned to the CCSS. Not to mention, why are 4th Graders being asked to write about trying out for the junior high track team? This demand defies their experiences and asks them to imagine a scenario that is well beyond their scope.

Clearly, these questions are poorly designed assessments of 4th graders CCSS learning. (We are setting aside the disagreements we have with those standards in the first place, and simply assessing the PARCC on its utility for measuring what it was intended to measure.)

Rather than debate the CCSS we instead want to expose the tragic reality of the countless public schools organizing their entire instruction around trying to raise students’ PARCC scores.

Without naming any names, I can tell you that schools are disregarding research-proven methods of literacy learning. The “wisdom” coming “down the pipeline” is that children need to be exposed to more complex texts because that is what PARCC demands of them. So children are being denied independent and guided reading time with texts of high interest and potential access and instead are handed texts that are much too hard (frustration level) all year long without ever being given the chance to grow as readers in their Zone of Proximal Development (pardon my reference to those pesky educational researchers like Vygotsky.)

So not only are students who are reading “on grade level” going to be frustrated by these so-called “complex texts,” but newcomers to the U.S. and English Language Learners and any student reading below the proficiency line will never learn the foundational skills they need, will never know the enjoyment of reading and writing from intrinsic motivation, and will, sadly, be denied the opportunity to become a critical reader and writer of media. Critical literacies are foundational for active participation in a democracy.

We can look carefully at one sample to examine the health of the entire system– such as testing a drop of water to assess the ocean. So too, we can use these three PARCC prompts to glimpse how the high stakes accountability system has deformed teaching and warped learning in many public schools across the United States.

In this sample, the system is pathetically failing a generation of children who deserve better, and when they are adults, they may not have the skills needed to engage as citizens and problem-solvers. So it is up to us, those of us who remember a better way and can imagine a way out, to make the case for stopping standardized tests like PARCC from corrupting the educational opportunities of so many of our children.

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“This is Stupid!”

All we need are higher standards and harder, better tests to miraculously solve all our student achievement problems…from those caused by learning disabilities to the economic and racial achievement gaps.

STANDARDS

Feds: IEPs Should Align With Grade-Level Standards

The US Department of Education came out with new Guidance.

In guidance released Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Education said that all IEPs should conform to “the state’s academic content standards for the grade in which the child is enrolled.”

Do the unqualified and inexperienced non-educators who run the USED (yes, I’m talking to you, Secretary Duncan and your Gates Foundation cronies) understand what IEP means? Of course the goal should (and always has been) for students to learn as much as they are able, but the /I/ in IEP stands for individual. Standards which are intended as a one-size-fits-all guide to learning ought to be adjusted for individual goals.

There are caveats, however, for the “very small number” of students with the most significant cognitive disabilities, write Michael K. Yudin and Melody Musgrove from the Education Department’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services in their seven-page “Dear Colleague” letter. States are allowed to establish “alternate academic achievement standards” for these students.

We learned last year that the attorney-not-educator Yudin, seems to believe that higher expectations will yield the miracle which will equalize all students’ learning capabilities. Nothing has changed, according to the USED.

The guidance does not impose new rules on states or school districts, but offers information to assist those entities in meeting their obligations under existing law, the Education Department said.

But teachers still don’t have high enough expectations.

To help make certain that children with disabilities are held to high expectations and have meaningful access to a State’s academic content standards, we write to clarify that an individualized education program (IEP) for an eligible child with a disability under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) must be aligned with the State’s academic content standards for the grade in which the child is enrolled.

Apparently Yudin and Musgrove, writing for USED, don’t believe that teachers have high enough expectations for students in special education. We need to raise the bar higher, call for tougher, one-size-fits-all standards, add more high-stakes tests, and “accountability.”

Because that has worked so well for general education since the 2001 adoption of No Child Left Behind.

TESTING

Politicians give lip-service to “there’s more to school than testing,” but no one seems to be willing to remove the high-stakes from testing. Accountability, it seems, is still only measured by test scores…and if “the test” can’t measure everything, then we need a new test, not a new acknowledgement that high-stakes testing is destroying our schools, teachers, and students.

Other, higher achieving countries, seem to survive with fewer tests, but the excuse that “those countries are different” comes from the no-excuses crowd and drowns out what is often the big difference in our societies – the percentage of children who live in poverty.

In a 1989 interview, Dr. Carl Sagan discussed our child poverty level.

…we have permitted the amount of poverty in children to increase. Before the end of this century [20th] more than half the kids in America may be below the poverty line. What kind of a future do we build for the country if we raise all these kids as disadvantaged, as unable to cope with the society, as resentful for the injustice served up to them. This is stupid.

Dr. Sagan’s prediction about child poverty has come closer to being fulfilled. As of 2013, more than half of all public school children in the United States live in poverty. Nearly half of America’s children live in low-income families, and half of them, live below the federal poverty level.

The correlation between achievement and poverty is well known. More testing doesn’t help. More high-stakes tests and higher cut scores don’t help. Tougher standards don’t help. What children need instead of more accountability is for us to provide the schools our children deserve. The Chicago Teachers Union provided research and information on how to do this in their publication, The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve.

• Recognize That Class Size Matters

• Educate The Whole Child. We need to stop eliminating non-tested subjects from the curriculum. Children need the arts and Physical Education, Vocational Education, Social Studies, hands on Science, and recess in addition to Reading and Math.

• Create More Robust Wrap-around Services. Counselors, nurses, social workers and psychologists are part of a completely staffed school building.

• Address Inequities In Our System. Only three nations spend more money for their wealthy children’s education than for their poor children’s education. The U.S. is one of those nations.

• Help Students Get Off To A Good Start. Early childhood education needs to be funded and supported.

• Respect And Develop The Professionals.

• Teach All Students. Public schools accept all children. Funding needs to be available to support the staff and materials needed to meet the needs of all students.

• Provide Quality School Facilities

• Partner With Parents

• Fully Fund Education

All that’s missing is the determination to do what needs to be done…the money backing up our up-till-now false claim that the education of our children is important to this nation.

Behind in assessment and losing the shame game

Why do we just throw out soundbites about how we’re so far behind other nations? Why don’t we spend time analyzing what successful nation’s do?

Instead, we double down on high-stakes tests and blame students for not working hard, teachers for being lazy union do-nothings, and schools for “failing.”

When we talk about the relationship between poverty and achievement we’re told not to make excuses – although lately more and more “failing” charter schools have caught on that you can’t eliminate the high national poverty level from within the classroom.

When students struggle we respond with harder standards. When students do well on tests we raise the cuts scores to increase failure.

Are we trying to make our schools fail? I think the answer is, “yes.” Failing public schools means more privatization which means more charter and tax supported private schools. It means weaker unions which means lower wages, which means more profit.

… most Americans are generally satisfied with their local schools and dismally uncertain about all the others.

…it seems to me if we really wanted the public to look closer and try to understand why PISA, NAEP, and other kinds of assessments are important, we would need to do more than just shame public schools. We’d need to have a thoughtful and nuanced conversation about why some education systems have been able to improve student performance and others haven’t. We’d have to look at culture, resources, leadership, teacher training, and national sentiment. We’d have to analyze gaps of all kinds, not just achievement. And we’d have to use the information to help teachers and education leaders understand why others are making progress without humiliating them in the comparison.

… comparing tests scores among students and nations offers little value if shame is the only thing that comes of it. If we don’t extract some information about how to improve our own unique education system and acknowledge that real and significant differences exist among all systems, then why make the comparisons in the first place?

…In recent years, education policy has shifted toward high-stakes accountability based almost entirely on test scores. Yet the path toward a larger, more strategic investment in education that includes strategies and incentives to promote the social and emotional success of students is virtually untrodden.

It’s the money. We’re moving towards a profit centered education system where low overhead and profits are the goals instead of higher achieving students.

What kind of future are we building for our nation?

As Sagan said, “this is stupid.”

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Support Teachers of Conscience

The narrow pursuit of test results has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science, the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising” instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

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A Manifesto for a Revolution in Public Education
Click here to sign the petition.

For over a decade…“reformers” have proclaimed that the solution to the purported crisis in education lies in more high stakes testing, more surveillance, more number crunching, more school closings, more charter schools, and more cutbacks in school resources and academic and extra-curricular opportunities for students, particularly students of color. As our public schools become skeletons of what they once were, they are forced to spend their last dollars on the data systems, test guides, and tests meant to help implement the “reforms” but that do little more than line the coffers of corporations, like Pearson, Inc. and Microsoft, Inc.

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2015 Medley #20

Privatization, Poverty, Teachers, CCSS, Support for Public Education, End High Stakes Testing

PRIVATIZATION

Does the average American really understand what’s happening to our system of public education? The common knowledge portrayed by the media and corporatizers is based on myths and outright falsehood. Such as…

• …the growth of charter schools and vouchers are necessary because public schools are failures. People believe this since the media blasts it out every chance it gets…the media supported and paid for by the privatizers, of course. The truth is that American public schools are not failing. American society is failing to deal with the level of poverty in our nation.

• objections to privatization from teachers are suspect because teachers unions are “only in it for the money.” The fact that states with strong unions have higher achieving students than states with weak unions doesn’t get mentioned. Is it coincidence that lower achieving states, with weak unions, also have higher levels of poverty? Teachers and their unions aren’t the problem. Poverty is.

• teaching isn’t really that hard to do…with short days, high pay, and summers off. No mention is made of the extremely high turnover rate in teaching (due to the difference between its perceived simplicity and its actual difficulty), the length of time teachers actually work on any given day, and the amount of work done during “vacations.”

See (Myths and Facts)

• K-12 tenure means that people believe teachers continue to teach even after they are past their prime — and have a job for life no matter how ineffective they are. Tenure, in K-12 education, is simply “due process” which isn’t explained well and is commonly misunderstood. Privatizers encourage this misunderstanding.

• standardized testing is necessary to hold teachers and schools accountable. The fact is that tests are misused by people who should know better. Those who do — the testing companies — aren’t going to cut into their profits by telling states and school systems to use fewer tests. No one admits that the tests are invalid for evaluating teachers and schools. Privatizers gloss over the fact that poverty level is the single most important factor in a child’s score on a standardized test.

These myths are ubiquitous. How can we help people learn the truth beyond the corporate party line?

State throwing good money after bad

Privatization in Indiana continues. More and more money is being diverted from public education into a growing number of charter schools and the state’s voucher program. Charter schools in Indiana, for example, got a raise this year including the opportunity to use $50 million in loans…on top of the $90 million of forgiven loans from 2013.

As the Indiana legislative session for 2015 entered its final hours, a last-minute gift was thrown into the budget for the state’s 79 charter schools. They were given a boost of $500 per pupil in new funding, along with the ability to tap into $50 million in loans for capital projects. The addition was made without discussion, without a hearing, without public input, and obviously without concern for the taxpayers.

Gov. Mike Pence has made it his mission to “improve” education in the state by taking money away from the public school system, rearranging funding to benefit suburban, affluent, predominately Caucasian schools, and otherwise bending the system to the advantage of those most likely to vote for him next fall. Meanwhile, public schools serving those students most in need of resources continue to struggle and are encouraged to compete against one another for the high-achieving students who bring with them the promise of greater funding via performance incentives.

Indiana: $50 Million Loan Program for Charters Needs Scrutiny

“The main concern: Who will be on the hook if charter schools don’t repay the loans?”

The usual answer: the taxpayers of Indiana.

“In 2013, the state forgave and paid off more than $90 million in charter school loans. The move drew protests from traditional public schools whose loans were not forgiven and consequently charter schools were no longer given access to the loan money.

“Kenley said Pence and House Speaker Brian Bosma plan to do the same thing again with the new loan program — an assertion that neither denied outright.

“It’s always a possibility in the future,” Bosma said.

Report: Cost of school vouchers jumps from $16M to $40M

Indiana taxpayers are supporting religious schools…and that support (as well as support for secular private schools accepting vouchers) has increased from $16 million to $40 million in one year. The state supreme court has ruled that vouchers are not “tax supported religion” which would be disallowed by the state constitution, so the church (and synagogue and mosque) coffers continue to swell with our tax dollars.

The cost of Indiana’s private school voucher program jumped from $16 million to $40 million during the past school year, according to a new report released Tuesday by the Department of Education.

Critics of the voucher program say the report proves that subsidizing private education is costly and unsustainable. But supporters say the new figure is misleading.

At issue are publicly funded vouchers that families who meet certain income requirements can use to send students to private schools.

More than 29,100 students received vouchers during the recently completed academic year, up from about 19,800 the year before. Those numbers make Indiana’s program one of the largest in the nation.

What are the privatizers motives? For some, it’s simply money. Textbook and test publishing companies like Pearson are reaping huge profits from the privatization of public education and the myth of public school failure.

For other privatizers the motive is ideological. Friedmanesque privatizers are true believers when it comes to the marketplace. They believe that the “free market,” and only the “free market,” will provide good results. My interpretation of what they understand as “good results” is “Them that’s got shall have…Them that’s not shall lose.”

Religious privatizers believe that public schools teach communism, atheism, secular humanism, and other blasphemous philosophies. These theocrats want a church controlled nation with church controlled education.

Peter Greene gives us a good overview of the privatization movement focusing on the money motive…

Privatizing Primer

You may wonder how this is sustainable. It isn’t, and it isn’t meant to be. Charters routinely drop out of the business, move on, dissolve and reform under new names, getting out of Dodge before they have to offer proof of success. This churn and burn is a feature, not a bug, and it is supposed to foster excellence. To date, there is no evidence that it does so.

But in the long term, we get a two-tier system. One is composed of private, profit-generating school-like businesses that will serve some of the students. The other is a vestigal public system, under-funded and under-served, but still serving as “proof” that public schools are failure factories and so we must have a state-run system.

POVERTY

Poverty matters. Two more articles reminding us that the problem with America’s public education system is not bad teachers or low test scores, but the fact that nearly one-fourth of our children live in poverty.

Stress in low-income families can affect children’s learning

Children living in low-income households who endure family instability and emotionally distant caregivers are at risk of having impaired cognitive abilities according to new research from the University of Rochester.

Poverty’s enduring hold on school success

…poverty remains a frustratingly accurate predictor of how well schools will perform. Schools full of middle-class kids rarely perform below average on state tests; schools made up of low-income kids rarely score above.

In fact, test score data in Illinois indicate that the degree to which poverty is tied to school performance is slightly stronger than it was a decade ago—despite reforms that have included school re-staffings, closures, consolidations, new state standards and more stringent guidelines for evaluating teachers. 

FEWER TEACHERS ENTERING…MORE TEACHERS LEAVING

More and more teachers in Indiana opt for early retirement

The privatizers’ plan for the teaching profession? Make teaching unattractive so professionals will leave or not even start. Lower standards to include inadequately trained personnel. Hire temps (TFA) at lower costs.

Not only are schools of education enrolling fewer teacher candidates, but more and more current teachers are leaving the profession early.

While some would argue this is only a short term problem, others say this makes teaching less attractive and creates another long term problem.

“They’re going to have to find a way to make the profession attractive again for new teachers to say in the profession and for teachers who are experienced to stay in the profession until retirement,” Lynn said.

COMMON CORE TESTING MACHINE

Can We Rescue the Common Core Standards from the Testing Machine?

The Common Core is money machine…driving up profits for Pearson.

Well, if I am enriching above and beyond the CCSS, what do I need the CCSS for? If the CCSS is not laying out a path for a full, quality education, what path is it marking?

It’s laying out the path to the test. The CCSS are just the largest scale test-prep guide ever created. The CCSS tell us what we need to cover for the test, and the test tells us how well we covered it. If there were no test, the CCSS would not matter.

The CCSS are also, of course, about making money. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) also wanted to bust into the big piggy bank that is public school funding, but NCLB was a big, blunt hammer; CCSS is a more sophisticated machine with many interlocking parts.

In fact, the biggest reason that CCSS cannot be rescued is directly related to the difficulties those of us who write about education have had in explaining the problems with CCSS. And it is probably the biggest lesson that the powers that be learned from NCLB.

BLOGGERS: SUPPORT FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION

Teachers: Who’s on your side? Where can you go for people dedicated to truth-telling for democracy?

Here is where you can get information about the privatization movement and its impact on public education. Read and learn.

There are times when a teacher needs to have the facts, simple or complex. For complex information, very often there are multiple facets that need to be examined from different points of view. Who can you turn to when faced with the overwhelming problems that surround you? Who has no personal power base or money to gain from the information? What group of people will offer you unbiased facts and their experienced perspectives for you to consider?

The EduBloggersNetwork, a group of over 200 individual bloggers with solid education backgrounds and unique perspectives from schools across the country, are respected for their varied experiences and focus. They do not march in lock-step nor are they paid by billionaires and their tax-free mega-wealthy foundations which are heavily invested (for profit) in corporate education reform.

During one of the online conversations that questioned each blogger’s reasoning for blogging in support of teachers against incredible pressures backed by billionaire investors, one blogger’s comment in particular touched the heart of the subject.

OPPOSE HIGH STAKES TESTING

NPE Forms Coalition of Education and Civil Rights Groups to Oppose High-Stakes Testing

We, the below undersigned organizations, oppose high-stakes testing because we believe these tests are causing harm to students, to public schools, and to the cause of educational equity. High-stakes standardized tests, rather than reducing the opportunity gap, have been used to rank, sort, label, and punish Black and Latino students, and recent immigrants to this country.

We oppose high-stakes tests because:

There is no evidence that these tests contribute to the quality of education, have led to improved educational equity in funding or programs, or have helped close the “achievement gap.”

High-stakes testing has become intrusive in our schools, consuming huge amounts of time and resources, and narrowing instruction to focus on test preparation.

Many of these tests have never been independently validated or shown to be reliable and/or free from racial and ethnic bias.

High-stakes tests are being used as a political weapon to claim large numbers of students are failing, to close neighborhood public schools, and to fire teachers, all in the effort to disrupt and privatize the public education system.

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Support Teachers of Conscience

The narrow pursuit of test results has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science, the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising” instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

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Vermont State Board of Education: Statement and Resolution on Assessment and Accountability, Adopted August 19, 2014

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Advocacy, Article Medleys, CCSS, Charters, NPE, poverty, Privatization, Teaching Career, vouchers,

2015 Medley #19

Privatization, NEA, Kindergarten,
Poverty, CCSS, Teachers

PRIVATIZATION

The Public’s Choice

The current trend in right-wing America (which each day seems to be more and more of the country) is to denigrate any and all government involvement in our lives. Our Founding Fathers, however, were not all anarchists and many of them believed that government has a legitimate purpose in building a better nation. One of those purposes is promoting the general welfare which, for most of our history, has included supporting an education system to benefit everyone (with notable exceptions…another topic altogether).

Providing schools supported by the general population — as a public good —

Put another way in “Choice or Commonality” by Martha Minow, a law professor and inspiration to a young Barack Obama,

“if educational responsibility remains solely on the immediate family, ‘choice’ may take place in a world of insufficient numbers of quality schools, inadequate information about the stakes and alternatives, and large numbers of people unable to use the choice system effectively. This state of affairs means choice for some and not for others, and whether a child’s educational needs are met will depend on her parents’ ability to choose.”

So with federal education law originally meant to support the public education system in order to break the “poverty-ignorance-ignorance-poverty cycle” by providing ALL children with quality education, we know “choice” cannot logically get us to equal educational opportunity.

See also
Arthur Camins on Choice: a Letter to the Editor

John Oliver, Bail Bonds, Charter School Owners, ALEC and Privatization

Instead of investing in and fixing America’s public schools we’re moving slowly but surely to a system of privately run charters and schools which operate with little or no public oversight. The overreaction to “government interference” is driving this in part, as is the religious right’s fear of anything not based on conservative Christianity. Jeb Bush regularly uses the term “government schools” instead of “public schools” because he wants to get the vote of those who hate everything “government” — an ironic position from someone who comes from a family of government workers and who wants to run the government.

The debate today is over “big-government” vs. small or no government. That’s the wrong focus. The debate should be over “good government” vs. “poor government.” Big-government is not necessarily bad by definition if it serves the people well. Neither is privatization, by definition, good or bad, as long as the people are protected. Governments were developed so people wouldn’t have to live in an “every man for himself,” chaotic society. Working together we can accomplish more than fighting each other.

Charter schools are not, by definition, bad, however, public money does need public oversight…and that’s missing in the charter industry right now. See also: Nonpartisan Report on Charter Schools: No Difference in Test Scores.

When I write about charter schools, which is often, BASIS is a regular part of the conversation. I think it helps us understand the underpinnings of the BASIS system to know something about its founders’ ideology and affiliations. Michael Block’s early associations with ALEC and his endorsement of privatization in the area of bail bonds give us a taste of what his views are concerning district-run, “government” schools and his vision for the future of education in the country. The ALEC/bail bond association makes his statement on the subject of schools and privatization in 2012 all the more telling. In a column by Robert Robb in the Republic, Block commented, “I would privatize the entire government school system.” Here’s the entire quote:

“I would privatize the entire government school system. I don’t think you can actually run schools today with the amount of disagreement we have over the fundamental mission of schools. Is it social welfare? Is it academic excellence? Is it social justice? You can’t possibly have an educational system if you have this amount of disagreement, so privatize it.”

Along with privatizing, Block, like the bail bond industry, also believes in profitizing. Though the individual BASIS schools are nonprofit, BASIS.ed, which sucks up most of the taxpayer money that goes to the schools and runs their basic operations, is a for-profit enterprise. Much of what happens at BASIS is hidden behind BASIS.ed’s for-profit fire wall. How much do Michael and Olga Block make each year? We have no idea. How much taxpayer money drawn up to the for-profit makes it back to the schools? Again, no idea. Did any taxpayer funds help subsidize the building and operation of the BASIS private schools in Silicon Valley, CA, and Brooklyn, NY (tuition: $24,000 per year)? No idea there either because the private, for-profit BASIS.ed operates without public scrutiny. And that’s just how Michael Block likes it, both personally and philosophically.

NEA

At this year’s Network for Public Education Conference in Chicago, Diane Ravitch asked both Lily Eskelsen Garcia and Randi Weingarten if their unions, the NEA and AFT respectively, would stop taking money from Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation. Both said yes. Mercedes Schneider writes about how Lily Eskelsen Garcia is backpedaling from that promise.

I understand Lily’s point…the NEA Foundation (which Lily said will continue to take money from “foundations”) is not the NEA…they are two different, though related organizations. I think Lily would have done better to say something like, “I can’t answer that question because, while I speak for the NEA, I don’t make all the decisions on my own. I would have to check with the Executive Board (or the Representative Assembly, or some other group within the union).” That would have made more sense and been something I could accept.

But she didn’t. She said yes.

Keep in mind that NEA under Lily and her predecessor, Dennis Van Roekel, 1) supported and still support the Common Core and 2) came out in support of Barack Obama in 2012 early, even after they had called for the resignation of Arne Duncan, and after four years of the disastrous Race to the Top. Endorsing President Obama was a mistake. Selling out for a “seat at the table” was a mistake.

NEA’s Lily Eskelsen Garcia Remains Faithful to Gates Funding

[Quoting Diane Ravitch from the video, included] The Walton, Gates and Broad Foundations are at the forefront of the privatization movement. Will you commit not to accept funding from them and not to collaborate with them? [56:56]

She then asked for their “yes or no” answers:

Lily?

Garcia: Yes.

A clearcut answer. Both presidents of the two largest national teachers unions said “Yes,” their organizations would stop taking money from the billionaires.

A few days/weeks later Lily backpedals…

But Lily Eskelsen Garcia is willing to defend NEA’s continued receiving of Gates funding on a technicality:

NEA doesn’t directly receive the Gates funding. The NEA Foundation does.

And she completely glosses over her verbal agreement at the NPE conference to no longer even collaborate with Gates.

Nothing doing.

Her version of Ravitch’s question is botched on her blog, but the point of her unswerving Gates allegiance is clear:

I was asked at the NPE conference to give a simple answer to a question that is not so simple: Would my union, the NEA, accept Gates grants? The fact is that, no, NEA does not directly take funds from the Gates Foundation. … Our union organized an independent foundation for the very purpose of connecting philanthropists with the creative work of our member practitioners in classrooms across the country. … And in service to those members and those students, we will continue to work with powerful partners, foundations and institutions dedicated to educational innovation, educator empowerment, student health, and parent engagement. Over the years, we’ve helped educators connect with many donors, including the Gates Foundation….

KINDERGARTEN, POVERTY, AND THE CCSS

Kindergartens Ringing the Bell for Play Inside the Classroom

Play is children’s work and it should be pervasive in kindergarten…not work sheets, reading tests, and math facts.

Using play to develop academic knowledge — as well as social skills — in young children is the backbone of alternative educational philosophies like those of Maria Montessori or Reggio Emilia. And many veteran kindergarten teachers, as well as most academic researchers, say they have long known that children learn best when they are allowed ample time to go shopping at a pretend grocery store or figure out how to build bridges with wooden blocks. Even the Common Core standards state that play is a “valuable activity.”

TEACHERS UNDERSTAND THE PROBLEMS

National Survey of American Teachers by Communities In Schools

[Read a summary of findings at Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet, Student poverty, lack of parental involvement cited as teacher concerns.]

Teachers are united in their understanding of what is getting in the way of student learning in America…the fact that nearly one-fourth of our children live in poverty.

The key findings demonstrate that poverty and the manifestations of poverty are a critical impediment to education. In addition to the student impact, we have learned that teachers spend considerable amounts of time and personal resources to address these impediments. Teachers are also nearly unanimous in their preferred solution to addressing these challenges: a dedicated person to work with these students and their families.

What Poverty Does to the Young Brain

It’s true. Poverty matters.

In a longer-term study published two years ago, neuroscientists at four universities scanned the brains of a group of twenty-four-year-olds and found that, in those who had lived in poverty at age nine, the brain’s centers of negative emotion were more frequently buzzing with activity, whereas the areas that could rein in such emotions were quieter. Elsewhere, stress in childhood has been shown to make people prone to depression, heart disease, and addiction in adulthood.

Is the Common Core killing kindergarten?

Questions: How many early childhood experts were on the team that developed the Common Core State Standards? How many people on the team had experience working with young children? How many people on the team understood child development from birth to age 5? In how many locations were the Common Core State Standards field tested for accuracy and appropriateness?

Answer to all questions: Zero.

Another Boston-area parent, Jennifer Debin, saw similar academic pressures put on her son’s kindergarten class in the Sherborn public schools. “It came as a surprise to me, during my observations of the classroom. There were a lot of work sheets, a lot of seat time, and it was all very teacher directed,” says Debin who volunteered as a class parent. “There wasn’t as much joy in learning, laughter, excitement, and just the noise and playfulness you’d expect in a place trying to get kids excited for that first voyage into school.”

BASHING TEACHERS

Why so many teachers leave — and how to get them to stay

Teachers have a difficult job and most parents understand that, but many folks look at it from the outside and don’t get it. The misunderstanding is epitomized by the contrast between this article and one of the commenters. First, the article — click the link above, read the whole thing and then come back…

On paper, teaching seems like the perfect job. Summers off, a workday that ends at 3 p.m., time off when the students are off — and the daily opportunity to work with children all day long. What more could one possibly want? As with life, things are not always what they seem. Teaching is hard. Parenting is generally deemed the hardest job in the world — but teaching runs a close second. Teachers continue to leave the profession in droves because all of those “on paper” benefits aren’t the reality.

Next, the comment…Here is someone who believes, like Chris Christie (without the obvious bullying) that teachers are well-paid (#1) and underworked (#2) with huge pensions and six-figure salaries. She believes that experience and training doesn’t count (#3) and that teachers use their advanced degrees only to “extort” more money. The big problem is evaluation, however. The current trend is towards evaluating teachers using test scores. The commenter extols inspiring teachers, but how do we measure inspiration (#4)? Is it like good art where “I’ll know it when I see it?” How do you measure the influence a teacher has on his or her students? (See the section titled EVALUATE THAT, here.

Finally, the commenter tells teachers to be happy because parents praise them and buy them lunch “for goodness sakes.” That, apparently, makes it all worth it. I wonder if private sector workers — you know, the ones without the huge pensions — would be happy with praise and a sandwich…

Virginia SGP

The idea of pairing junior teachers with senior ones and providing more collaborative lesson plans are very good. But the rest of this article is nonsense.

1. Teachers are paid well despite what they want you to believe. Teachers receive ~20% of their pay via a pension that virtually no private sector worker receives. They conveniently like to leave that out. In Loudoun County just outside DC, a masters degree teacher makes the equivalent of $64K-$130K/yr to teach. That is not “drastically underpaid”.

2. Teachers work 200 days per year when other workers spend 235 days in their jobs. Just ask the school administrators who have to work 235 days if they would rather work a teacher schedule. If teachers don’t think that matters, let’s have teachers report for an additional 7 weeks (35 days) in the summer to have some real professional development.

3. The reason nobody respects the masters education degrees is because they have absolutely zero effect on student outcomes. Virtually no study has ever shown a masters degree helps a teacher. The dirty little secret is these are 1) easy to obtain and 2) a mere credential to receive more pay. Yet teachers brag about all of their degrees. Folks in other fields often don’t get masters or doctorates because they are unnecessary and they can’t extort extra pay from their employers with them.

4. Yes, we want teachers to inspire kids and not just be good in a theoretical classroom. Maybe that’s harsh. But since we know some teachers are effective at communicating and inspiring kids to be interested, that is the benchmark for the best. Some quarterbacks have a lot of talent but for some reason can’t perform well. They don’t get a pass. Teaching is critical so we will continue to search for the most effective ones.

Teachers receive more praise than any profession. Parents bring you lunch for goodness sakes. We want great teachers and are determined to find the best ones for our kids.

America, Meet @GovChristie: Teacher Bashing Hypocrite

The king of teacher bashers is New Jersey governor, Chris Christie. Here, Jersey Jazzman provides an article and video showing the good governor at his best. I would just add a couple of things from the video which aren’t fully covered…

At 1:50 in the video Christie says,

“It’s the same as it was in the 1800’s for God’s sake…It’s a row of desks facing forward to a black board or a white board…a person standing in the front of the room…talking to the people at the desks…

“And they do so from roughly 8:30 to roughly 2:30 or 3 o’clock, and they’re off four months a year.”

It’s clear that Christie is either lying or doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The average teacher works longer than six hours a day…even if that’s all he or she is paid for. There’s preparation and grading for example. As a teacher I normally had several hours of work each day evaluating the work of students…I stayed late after school or took it home. I’m pretty sure I was not the only teacher who did that. Granted, I can’t speak for every teacher in America, however, studies have shown that teachers generally work more hours than they’re paid for each day…which more than makes up for…

…the time off in the summer. Maybe it’s different in New Jersey, but here in Indiana (and in Illinois where I grew up) the “summer vacation” is between 8 and 10 weeks long, not four months. Next year (school year 2015-16), for example, my local school’s year ends on May 27. The 2016-17 school year beings on August 8. A quick glance at a 2016 calendar puts that at 10 weeks and it doesn’t include classes teachers must take to keep their licenses current, independent study and reading, summer jobs to supplement their income, and other school-related work. Even so, it’s not 4 months as Governor Christie states. Maybe New Jersey needs to check its calendar. Liar? Bully? or just misinformed?

At 2:52 in the video he ups the ante…

“Why don’t we have it? we don’t have it because the teachers union likes to be off 4 – 5 months a year…they like to get a full time salary for a part time job…and the fact is they don’t want to work longer hours either unless they get paid more even though they’re getting paid essentially a full time salary for a part time job…so our k-12 education system is built for the comfort of adults rather than to exploit the potential of children.”

With this the governor expands the summer break to four or five months and, of course, blames it on the teachers union. If teachers unions are so bad why do students in states with strong teachers unions (like New Jersey) consistently score higher on national tests than students in states with weak or no unions?

Finally, at 6:20 he says…

Imagine that we have all these old books that we’re using in schools…lot of them…old…four years old, five years old…when we have available to us now the technology at a relatively same cost…why doesn’t every kid have an ipad? Why doesn’t every kid have an ipad and then you can download the most recent type of materials and use the technology…

Interesting question Governor. Where is the financial support for your schools going? You claim that the state is spending so much money on education, yet it can’t seem to provide current and appropriate materials. Why not?

Jersey Jazzman takes over…

We Jersey folks have become used to this: after all, Christie has compared teachers to drug dealers, told students their teachers don’t care about their learning, and excoriated teachers for using pronouns to describe their students.

…he has a personal beef with the New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teacher union. The NJEA has not backed down to his bullying, and that pisses him off to no end…

Second, Christie needs a scapegoat for his many, many failures as governor. He has a terrible job creation record, a terrible tax record, a terrible record of management, a terrible environmental record, a terrible public health record, and a terrible disaster recovery record. Plus Bridgegate. And the ARC tunnel. And our tanking credit rating. And housing. And his personal greed….[see original for several embedded links]

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Support Teachers of Conscience

The narrow pursuit of test results has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science, the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising” instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

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Vermont State Board of Education: Statement and Resolution on Assessment and Accountability, Adopted August 19, 2014

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Read Aloud…Just Because

READ-ALOUD

Sometime after 1979, while teaching third grade in Monroeville, Indiana, I ordered a book from the Weekly Reader Book Club titled Read-Aloud Handbook for Parents and Teachers. I had been reading to my classes since I started teaching…but I bought the book because it included a “Detailed guide to more than 150 read-alouds” and I welcomed the list of more books to read.

The Read-Aloud Handbook for Parents and Teachers started me on a career-long fanship of Jim Trelease and Read-Aloud. I not only read to my students, I became an active advocate of Read-Aloud. I gave presentations on Reading Aloud, I talked to teachers and parents about Read-Aloud, and I began the tradition of giving a copy of the Read-Aloud Handbook for Parents and Teachers (which has since been expanded and gone through 7 printings) to colleagues when they (or their spouse) gave birth to their first child.

RESEARCH BASED

Reading aloud to children helps improve reading.

In 1985 the report of the Commission on Reading, Becoming a Nation of Readers, had this to say about reading aloud (p. 23)…

The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children.

Teachers know that motivation to read is self-perpetuating. Once you get someone hooked on reading, they teach themselves.

And how exactly does a person become proficient at reading?…

• The more you read, the better you get at it; the better you get at it, the more you like it; and the more you like it, the more you do it.

Better readers learn better, do better in school, and yes, even get better scores on tests. Reading aloud to students motivates students to read more, and it’s corollary, SSR (Sustained Silent Reading)  gives them the opportunity to read just for fun, with no strings attached, no consequences, no book reports, no tests…just to read for pleasure. Both, in combination, contribute to improved reading and increased learning.

Is it ok to teach while you read aloud? to ask questions? to have students predict what will happen next? to do all the things that teachers do to help students become better and more efficient readers (or in the case of read-aloud, listeners)? Of course.

However, reading aloud doesn’t always have to be connected to the curriculum or for some academic “purpose.” Trelease makes a point to mention this in Ch 4 of the Read-Aloud Handbook, The Dos and Don’ts of Read Aloud.

• If you are a teacher, don’t feel you have to tie every book to class work. Don’t confine the broad spectrum of literature to the narrow limits of the curriculum…

• Don’t impose interpretations of a story upon your audience. A story can be just plain enjoyable, no reason necessary, and still give you plenty to talk about. The highest literacy gains occur with children who have access to discussions following a story…

Discuss a book after it’s finished…but don’t interrupt the flow of the reading to ask questions. Let the students ask questions during reading if they want to…the teacher’s job in reading aloud is to…Read. Aloud.

IS THIS A “MAJOR SHIFT” BROUGHT ABOUT BY CCSS?

Reading aloud for pleasure is important so I understand why Nancy Bailey is outraged at an article in Education Week about reading aloud. In Stealing the Joy of Reading—How Common Core Destroys Reading Pleasure she comes down on the side of research-based reading for pleasure.

Education Week is having a webinar on new approaches to reading aloud in K-2nd grade (New Strategies for Reading Aloud to K-2 Students, Thurs. June 18, 2-3 p.m ET). The underwriting for the webinar is through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and with Common Core the idea is that you must move away from the “cozy” reading gatherings to “crafting questions that guide children back to the text to build vocabulary, content knowledge, and evidence-based understanding of the text.”

What a complete lack of trust in children! To manipulate this sacrosanct process in honor of Common Core programming is nothing less than heresy!

As a parent and teacher I am here to tell you the most important thing anyone can do with a young child (and even an older one) is read aloud to them. It’s so simple—so pure in its intent and approach! Teachers, parents and librarians have been thrilling children for years by simply reading aloud. Questions flow naturally. It needs no fine tuning!

To make educators and parents feel like they must subscribe to constructing questions, and emphasizing vocabulary and content knowledge as they read, is harmful. To imply you require evidence the child obtained knowledge from the book destroys the sheer beauty of reading for pleasure.

There is a time and place for analyzing text—especially as children get older—but not during story hour. No way!

Sometimes teachers read aloud to their students for a purpose — to introduce a theme, or to support curricular areas like science and social studies. But the true value of reading aloud is that it motivates students which encourages them to read more. That is what the research shows.

The article in Education Week, written by Catherine Gewertz, says this…

New Read-Aloud Strategies Transform Story Time

What’s happening in Ms. Landahl’s classroom at Ruby Duncan Elementary School reflects a major shift in reading instruction brought about by the Common Core State Standards. In place in more than 40 states, the standards expect children to read text carefully and be able to cite evidence from it to back up their interpretations. That approach requires teachers to pose “text-dependent” questions—those that can be answered only with a detailed understanding of the material, rather than from students’ own experience. And it’s not just for complex high school books; it’s increasingly being used in reading stories aloud to young children…

Reading aloud to children has a long history as a powerful classroom technique to build foundational literacy skills. It exposes children to different kinds of text structures and language, builds awareness of how sounds are connected to words, and demonstrates phrasing and fluency. Most importantly, in the eyes of many educators, it can foster a loving—and they hope lifetime—relationship with reading.

Increasingly, K-2 teachers are using new questioning techniques as they read aloud to their students. They’re designed to focus children on the meaning of the text, rather than their personal reactions to it.

Some experts worry, however, that an approach like RAP’s can undermine the joy of the read-aloud.

“We have to be very careful that we don’t turn them off more than we turn them on,” said Jim Trelease, the author of The Read-Aloud Handbook. It’s important to prepare children for a challenging book by acquainting them with its new vocabulary, he said. But “breaking up the story constantly with, ‘Let’s talk about this,’ and ‘What about that?,’ Well, gee, how about the plot? All that stopping and starting can become an impediment.”

Is this a “major shift in reading instruction brought about by the Common Core State Standards?”

No. Absolutely not. Unless you call taking credit for something that teachers have been doing for years a “major shift.”

Others noticed this, too. Take a look at a couple of the comments after this article…

“Early childhood teachers have been doing interactive read-alouds, with lots of time for discussion and deep comprehension, for years. Why this is being presented as a new and innovative thing is curious. It has nothing to do with Common Core, and everything to do with good teaching.”

and

“Teachers have been using these strategies for years; the Common Core may have caused some school systems to focus on them, but they are hardly new or innovative.”

The Common Core didn’t introduce “‘text-dependent’ questions” or a quest for “detailed understanding of the material.” Fact-based questions have been part of reading instruction and reading tests since I was a student in the 50s and 60s…and most likely earlier.

There is, however, something in the Education Week article that I object to…

…”text-dependent” questions—those that can be answered only with a detailed understanding of the material, rather than from students’ own experience. [emphasis added]

and

They’re designed to focus children on the meaning of the text, rather than their personal reactions to it. [emphasis added]

I find this to be very disturbing, and perhaps this is what angered Nancy Bailey, as well. “Bringing personal reactions to [text]” is important. A “student’s own experience” (aka prior knowledge), which Education Week seems to denigrate as not necessary, is vitally important to an individual’s understanding of text. It’s possible just to regurgitate facts from text — answering “text-dependent” questions if one reads the text carefully — but for a deep understanding one must react to the text.

I like to think that a good book is more a conversation with the author, rather than a lecture. In a conversation both parties participate. If you just want to learn facts to vomit back on some standardized test (pun intended) then participation is irrelevant. If you want to understand, then you need to be involved in the text, and that means you bring your own experience and reactions with you into the story [This also means that teachers when reading aloud, ought to bring their own experiences and reactions with them into the story as they read]. What Education Week appears to be suggesting is that the focus should only be on learning facts — answers to “‘text-dependent’ questions.” Higher level thinking through inferring, evaluating, comparing, etc., is not necessary.

My hunch is that this article in Education Week and the webinar that accompanies it are mostly about providing positive press about the Common Core to teachers. The webinar is, after all, underwritten by Bill Gates who has almost single handedly underwritten the Common Core itself (see HERE, HERE, and HERE).

Unfortunately, the Common Core is flawed...

Two committees made up of 135 people wrote the standards – and not one of them was a K-3 classroom teacher or early childhood education professional. When the CCSS were first released, more than 500 early childhood professionals signed a Joint Statement opposing the standards on the grounds that they would lead to long hours of direct instruction; more standardized testing; and would crowd out highly important active, play-based learning. All of this has come to pass.

JUST BECAUSE

Teachers (and parents) ought to read aloud to their students.

They ought to discuss the books after they finish. They can use books in different ways to benefit their students. They ought to also activate prior knowledge before they start reading. They ought to encourage their students to bring their own feelings and experiences with them when they listen. They ought to — and they have been — for a long time.

Sometimes, however, it’s nice just to read a good book together.

Just because.

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Support Teachers of Conscience

The narrow pursuit of test results has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science, the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising” instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

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Vermont State Board of Education: Statement and Resolution on Assessment and Accountability, Adopted August 19, 2014

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