Popular backlash against high stakes testing grows stronger, but the Senate doesn't appear to notice (with video)

See the video below of the rally on Wednesday of the Seattle Garfield high school teacher boycott of the MAP test, with teachers, parents and the local NAACP speaking up about the waste of time and money and invalid teacher evaluation metrics that result.  They also read statements of support from other groups around the nation. (Many of them are posted here)  Here are just a sample of stories  from the past week, thanks to Monty Neill of FairTest.

Has Testing Reached a Tipping Point?
USA Today on Growing National Resistance
Seattle Teachers Lead Day of Action Against Standardized Tests
New Wave of Teacher Unionism Focuses on Standardized Testing 
Providence [RI] Students' Strong Op Ed Opposing High-Stakes Testing
Portland Students Push Standardized Test Boycott
Chicago Parents' Petition Seeks Limits on Testing
New York Principals Continue Campaign Against High-Stakes Testing Misuse
Key Texas Legislator Proposes Standardized Exam Requirement Rollback
State, Local Officials Call for "No Child Left Behind" Overhaul
Opposition to Standardized Testing & Common Core Assessments Grows Across Political Spectrum
If Testing Makes for Better Education, Why Are Obama Girls in a School thatDisagrees?
E-mails Link Bush Foundation with Corporations and State Officials in Pushing Test-Driven "Reform"
Testing Insanity Kills the Joy of Teaching and Learning
 
Yet on Thursday, the very next day, the Senate held hearings on the US Dept of Education's NCLB "waivers"; with all five witnesses, including Arne Duncan, uncritically supporting the corporate reform agenda of test-based accountability; with no mention of the grassroots backlash that is growing in strength each day.  Though Duncan claims the NCLB waivers are more "flexible" in many ways they are even worse than NCLB by requiring teacher evaluation be linked to test scores.  (See video of the hearings and links to the testimonies.)

The only skeptics were Sen. Bernie Sanders (VT) and Sen. Pat Roberts (KS), who  mostly focused on how the "Race to the Top" competitive grant program granted funds only to 11 states and DC, and discriminated against small and rural states like theirs without vast bureaucracies able to complete the grant proposals. Roberts also mentioned the briefly the importance of local control rather than top-down heavy hand of the feds. Sen. Rand Paul (KT) pointed out there is a growing coalition of the left and the right against federal mandates, but then went into a paean for vouchers.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (TN) argued against the notion that the federal government should be so prescriptive, when NY State Education  Commissioner King urged the federal government to absolutely require that teacher evaluation be linked to student /achievement  (which they have done already through the waivers) .  "Adults must be held accountable for student learning and outcomes." [You see he as well as other corporate reformers use these words interchangeably and reduce student performance/achievement/learning/outcomes with test scores.]

"Why do you need me to come from Tennessee to tell you what to do? Can't you do it on your own?"  gently scoffed Sen. Alexander, who needled him by mentioning Bloomberg's disdain for the teacher evaluation systems that New York state had agreed to.  But not one of the Senators present actually confronted how test scores are an unreliable, unfair and invalid way to measure teacher quality, and how all over the country, parents and teachers are rejecting the  increasingly oppressive effect of testing on our schools.

The women on the committee were nowhere to be found; neither Patti Murray (WA), now the two new appointees:  Elizabeth Warren (MA) and Tammy Baldwin (WI).  Particularly disappointing was the performance of Sen. Al Franken (MI), who praised computer-adaptive tests, like the MAP tests that the Garfield teachers are boycotting.

In response,  Duncan said "There are schools in NYC where every single day teachers get real life feedback on how much their students learned; the goal of teachers is not to teach but to have students learn. In NYC, every single day, using technology, teachers understand what their children learned." 

Does anyone know what he is talking about?  The School of One program, that has had disappointing results and was dropped by two out of the three schools that tried it?  Once again, the Congress shows how they are trapped in a bubble, isolated from reality, their constituents and the rising popular revulsion against these damaging policies.

If they had been more in tune with what is happening in their communities, they would have invited the Montgomery Co. Superintendent Starr, who has called for a three year moratorium on high stakes testing, the Portland Oregon students who are boycotting their state tests, or the Seattle Garfield teachers and parents, speaking out below.

The testing rebellion & opt-out movement in NYC has a supporter -- inside Tweed

Lisa Nielsen

A nationwide backlash has erupted against the obsession with standardized testing.  In February 2012, the Texas Commissioner of Education, Robert Perry, announced that testing had become a "perversion of its original intent.” Over the last year, 86 percent of Texas school boards representing 91 percent of the state’s students, have passed resolutions against the use of high stakes testing. The view is now so mainstream that in his introductory remarks before the Legislature, Joe Straus, the new, conservative GOP Speaker of the Texas House recently announced,

"By now, every member of this house has heard from constituents at the grocery store or the Little League fields about the burdens of an increasingly cumbersome testing system in our schools…Teachers and parents worry that we have sacrificed classroom inspiration for rote memorization. To parents and educators concerned about excessive testing: The Texas House has heard you."

Joining the movement is Joshua Starr, the superintendent of Montgomery County, Maryland, who has called for the nation to “stop the insanity” of  evaluating teachers according to student test scores, and has proposed a three year moratorium on all standardized testing.  Starr has joined forces with Heath Morrison, the newly-appointed superintendent of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, a Broad-trained educator no less, who calls testing “an egregious waste of taxpayer dollars” that won’t help kids.  

Then last week, the movement jumped into the headlines when teachers at Garfield High School in Seattle voted unanimously to boycott the lengthy computerized MAP exams, which take weeks of classroom time to administer; the teachers were supported by the school’s PTA and the student government.   Other Seattle schools have now joined the boycott, and yesterday, more than sixty educators and researchers, including Diane Ravitch, Jonathan Kozol, and Noam Chomsky, released a letter of support for the boycott, noting that "no student's intellectual process can be reduced to a single number." [Full disclosure: I was among the letter's signers.]

Even before this, more than one third of the principals in New York State had signed onto a letter, protesting the state-imposed teacher evaluation system, which will be largely based on test scores, and Carol Burris, a Long Island principal and the letter’s co-author, has more recently posted a petition that has now over 8200 signatures from parents and educators, opposing all high-stakes testing. 

Though many NYC teachers and principals have spoken out against the particularly onerous brand of test score-based accountability imposed by DOE, with decisions over which children to hold back, what schools to close and which teachers to deny tenure to, based largely on the basis of test scores, no one inside the halls of Tweed, DOE’s headquarters, has up to now been brave enough to speak out publicly against the system.

Until now.  As reported in yesterday’s NY Post, Lisa Nielsen, the  newly-appointed digital guru at Tweed, has not only stated that she believes that high-stakes testing is severely damaging our children and schools, she has also offered creative suggestions of activities that parents can offer their children rather than allow them to be subjected to the state tests.  On her personal blog, the Innovative Educator, she writes:    “There are so many ways kids can learn on opt out of state standardized testing days.  All it takes is community coming together to take back our children’s freedom to learn.”

Lisa also runs the Facebook NY State Opt out of Testing page, and has pointed out the “12 Most Unconventional Reasons to Opt Your Child Out of Standardized Testing,” including the fact that they are a “horrific waste of money”, and cause unneeded anxiety and stress.  She adds: 

“Instead of spending billions of dollars on funding testing this money could go toward providing resources for children or lowering class size. Let the teachers do what they were trained to do — teach and assess. Keep big business out of the equation. Keep the billions of dollars out of the pockets of publishers and let it remain in the classroom.”

We now have our own anti-testing advocate at Tweed, and  we should all celebrate Lisa’s honesty and her courage in speaking the truth. 
 

Pasi Sahlberg, expert on Finland’s renowned educational system, had said that if his government decided to evaluate their teachers on the basis of test scores, the “teachers would probably go on strike and wouldn’t return until this crazy idea went away.” 

It’s time for all our educators to join the movement, follow the inspired leadership of Lisa Nielsen and the teachers in Seattle, go public with their opposition, and refuse to participate in this oppressive system any longer.