The AFT is Finally Fighting Testing (Not)

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is expanding its drive “against excessive testing” with a pithy and pathetic new campaign called “Learning Is More Than a Test Score.”

AFT President Randi Weingarten said the campaign is intended to de-emphasize testing and bring back arts and physical education. However, according to the Washington Examiner, she conceded (as she has always done) that testing has a crucial role to play. Indeed, Weingarten has supported legislation and helped broker contracts with school districts that promote the use of student test data to evaluate teachers (see here, here, here, here and here).

The AFT is not really opposed to high stakes tests. The name of the campaign, “Learning is More Than a Test Score,” implies that the union accepts the tests as one aspect of learning, while its reference to “excessive” testing implies that it simply wants less of it. Either way, the union has accepted the inaccurate and discredited assertion that high stakes tests improve learning outcomes and capitulated to the corporate education “reformers” attempt to rationalize and profit from public education (i.e., testing is big business for the test and textbook publishers).

From a purely selfish perspective (the only perspective a fighting union should take since its purpose is supposedly to improve the working and living conditions of its members), all high stakes tests should be opposed since they can only tell us how well students answer multiple choice questions compared with their peers, under timed and stressful conditions—not where, when or how they learned to do this. The fact that test scores (and student achievement) correlate more strongly with students’ socioeconomic backgrounds than with teaching ability (see here, here and here) should draw into question their validity as a measure of teacher skill in the classroom. Furthermore, the data show that the tests cannot an accurately or consistently measure performance for the majority of teachers and may only be accurate for those at the extremes, and only if averaged out over three years—something that is rarely done.

However, even from the perspective of a public servant (the perspective usually taken by the unions, since they are terrified of being accused of putting their own wellbeing above that of their students), the tests should be opposed. Test administration takes considerable class time away from actual learning (as much as 2-6 weeks, depending on the school). The drastic consequences for schools compels many to sacrifice even more class time for test preparation, sometimes even to the extent of slashing entire programs (e.g., physical education, art, music, science). The tests are stressful and anxiety-provoking for children, yet serve no educational purpose (i.e., children cannot learn anything useful from the tests). They also make school seem even more boring and meaningless, contributing to students’ sense of alienation from learning and disdain for school.

Even from a taxpayers’ perspective all tests should be opposed, as they cost billions of dollars and suck revenue out of the classroom, where it can benefit children, handing it over to test and textbook publishers. In California, alone, it is estimated that the new Common Core Standards (CCS) exams will cost $1 billion to implement (most of it going toward new books, test design, and computers and software to administer the tests). Yet there is no evidence that any high stakes standardized test has improved learning.

Indeed, the real impetus behind the testing mania is corporate profits, not improving the learning or wellbeing of children. In California, where $20 billion has been slashed from K-12 education over the past 4 years, the state Board of Education voted to adopt the CCS two years ago, knowing even then that it would cost more than $1 billion and that the state would have to borrow or slash further to get the money. Yet California already had among the toughest standards in the nation. There was no educational benefit from changing the standards, no potential for it to significantly improve learning, graduation rates or the achievement gap.

To a rational, fiscally conservative person, no need plus no money should have equaled no new test. Instead, heavy lobbying by the educational publishers convinced the board to spend money it did not have on a test it did not need, thus further impoverishing California’s schools. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, with Governor Jerry Brown’s supposedly balanced budget and promise not to make any further cuts in K-12 funding. (Proposition 30, while doing nothing to restore the $20 billion cut over the past 4 years, was supposed to hold K-12 funding steady, but it is not yet clear whether the cost of CCS has been factored in).

More is Less?

Rather than opposing more testing, AFT and NEA have come out in support of CCS (see here), arguing that the CCS tests will be better and more meaningful than the previous ones, even though the tests have not yet been created and it is impossible to know how they might differ. By most accounts, though, the new CCS exams will not significantly decrease the amount of class time lost to testing, anxiety for children, pressure on schools to improve at all costs, or cuts to “nonacademic” programs.

To be fair, the AFT has made a statement in support of Seattle’s Garfield High School teachers who are boycotting Washington’s MAP test. This is a unique and positive step, as neither the AFT nor the NEA have supported this kind of teacher civil disobedience in the past. The unions’ historical perspective has been that this is tantamount to insubordination and failure to fulfill one’s job responsibilities—thus administrators would be justified in disciplining them. On the other hand, the AFT is not providing any material, logistical or tangible support, nor are they promoting similar boycotts or civil disobedience elsewhere—actions that would be necessary if they really want to see an end to the testing mania.

It May Be May Day, But My Students Trump All Else!

Today Fred Klonsky wrote, “It may be May Day, but I’ve got kids to teach.”

He admitted that he could have used a personal day to join the National General Strike called by OWS for today, but insisted that “I’ve got kids to teach.”

He admitted that he will take the day off later this week to go to Springfield to lobby on behalf of his union, but today he has 4^th grade paper mâché projects.

I don’t begrudge Fred for blowing off the General Strike. After all, it was poorly conceived and organized and is unlikely to achieve any concrete demands for workers. As has become typical of the OWS movement, they glommed onto an idea and decided that all they had to do is put out a few Tweets and Facebook calls to get people to show up, without doing the time consuming and difficult one-on-one organizing that is usually required to accomplish such a grandiose goal as a nationwide General Strike (especially when the unions are terrified of being busted for violating Taft-Hartley).

On the other hand, this country needs strikes, lots of strikes, strikes on a daily basis, especially teacher strikes and especially General Strikes. The past few years have seen the fewest strikes of any time in the past 100 years. Strikes are one of the most effective ways for workers to improve their pay and working conditions, far more effective than lobbying. I truly hope that hundreds of thousands of people stayed home from work today if for no other reason than to put a little fear in the bosses’ hearts. If teachers really want to see an end to the wave of repressive “reforms” that have plagued the profession over the past decade (e.g., high stakes testing, NCLB, evaluation and pension “reform,” charter schools, privatization), they need to be willing to strike in large numbers and to participate in statewide and nationwide strikes.

Yet teachers often shun strikes and give reasons similar to Fred’s: “it hurts the children,” or “it takes away learning time,” or “it’s not fair to the students,” or “I’m a professional and I need to be in the classroom, with my students.”

While this may sound compassionate and professional, it actually is not. If teachers really want to be taken seriously as professionals, they cannot continue to accept every meritless “reform” shoved down their throats by non-education professionals, pundits, and corporate raiders. By doing so, they send the message that they are not professionals and do not take themselves seriously. If they really want to help their students, they need to take a principled stand on policies that negatively impact them and they need to back up that stand with effective actions. Lobbying against high stakes tests won’t make them go away, nor will complaining, letter-writing or voting. Refusing to comply with the tests or refusing to go to work during testing days, however, might.

Taking job actions might indeed harm students in the short term, just like nursing strikes temporarily reduce the quality of patient care. However, if nurses do not strike, they see increasing caseloads, which institutionalizes the harm to their patients. Likewise, when teachers accept larger class sizes, punitive testing regimes, or longer school days, they accept permanent long-term destruction of the quality of education, which is far worse for students than being without their teacher for the duration of a strike.

Ohio To Retest Teachers for Low Student Performance

The Beatings Will Continue Until Test Scores Improve

In yet another idiotic attempt to force teachers to make poor kids excel on their exams, Ohio will start requiring teachers of core subjects at the lowest scoring 10% of schools to retake their licensing exams, according to Cincinnati.com. The move seems to be purely punitive, as the licensing exams provide almost useful no data on how well a teacher will perform on the job.

Scores on standardized tests are most strongly influenced by students’ socioeconomic backgrounds, with teachers accounting for as little as 7.5-30% of student achievement. (See here, here and here) Indeed, virtually every one of the schools in questions is located in a low income community.

Yet even if we ignore the socioeconomic factors influencing student achievement, as most politicians, pundits and administrators have done, and focus only on what the teachers contribute, forcing them to retake their licensing tests is still a waste of time and money. If a teacher truly isn’t any good at their job, it is most likely due to weaknesses in classroom management and discipline, developing positive relationships with students, designing good curriculum, or the ability to modify teaching to meet unique student needs, rather than a deficiency in content knowledge.

The teachers’ union has estimated that the testing will cost the state $2.1 million a year, money that would be much more effectively spent on professional development and peer mentoring.

Gov. John Kasich argues that retesting teachers will hold them more accountable and give districts and charter schools the ability to get rid of the ineffective ones. Yet if only teachers at the bottom 10% of schools are tested, then ineffective teachers at the other 90% of schools will remain. More importantly, most low performing schools are also low income, which means that teachers who happen to be at these schools will be much more likely to lose their jobs or face punitive and burdensome testing than their colleagues fortunate enough to work at more affluent schools.

Occupy DOE—Opt Out of High Stakes Testing

United Opt Out National is calling for the occupation of the federal Department of Education  next year, from March 30 to April 2, to bring an end to high stakes testing and corporate profiteering from public education. The movement encourages parents to use “opt out” rules (available in many school districts) to keep their children home when standardized tests are given.

Unlike the Occupy Wall Street movement, United Opt Out has a concrete list of demands. Furthermore, unlike the occupiers’ nebulous desire to “make the rich pay,” United Opt Out’s demands are relatively modest and could actually be achieved quickly with the right pressure by parents, students and teachers.

Some of their demands include

• An end to high stakes testing and punitive policies (particularly when they punish students or influence teacher pay and job security)
• An end to corporate interventions in public education and education policy
• An end to corporate run for-profit charter schools that divert public funds away from public schools
• Restoration of librarians to all schools and communities
• Student-to-teacher ratio of 25 to one (or lower)
• Increased nursing and on-site health services
• Free daycare and preschool     
• Fully funded arts and athletics programs

How Can Opt Out Win Its Demands?
The most effective way to end high stakes testing is if no (or very few) high stakes exams are given. Having students and their families opt out is one means to this end and this has been the emphasis of the Opt Out movement.  However, teachers could also refuse to participate. Considering how many fewer teachers than parents would need to be organized to achieve the goal of no (or few) tests given, this seems like a much more effective approach.

Of course teachers could face reprisals for insubordination and failing to do their job, which is one reason the unions have not backed this tactic. However, teachers risk reprisals for most job actions, including strikes, a risk they were once more willing to take over issues concerning student safety and wellbeing, pay and working conditions. Furthermore, when large enough numbers of teachers or any other group take a collective risk, it is much harder for the authorities to punish them. A few teachers refusing to give the test could easily be reprimanded or fired, but 80-90% of teachers doing this in a given district are unlikely to be fired, as it would be impossible to replace them all.

When one considers how devastating high stakes exams are to both students’ wellbeing and teachers’ working conditions, it would seem like an obvious cause worth fighting for and worth taking risks for. High stakes exams take away class time from content standards, critical thinking and real learning. Many schools and districts have replaced arts, music and even science with test preparation and reading and math support classes to help struggling students meet the demands of the tests. And despite this, increasing numbers of schools are still being deemed failures under NCLB.

Schools that have been deemed failures are under phenomenal pressure to improve test scores quickly. Consequently, teachers are saddled with reforms that require them to work longer and harder, without extra pay or any evidence that the reforms will solve the problem. At the same time, schools have been downsized due to budget cuts, forcing teachers to do even more to cover for the decreased staffing, often at lower pay.

High stakes testing is certainly not the only factor devastating teachers’ working conditions, but it is a significant one. And it is one that the teachers’ unions should be fighting through concrete and coherent job actions, like strikes or simply refusing to participate.

What Is The Connection Between Occupy Wall Street and High Stakes Testing?

The Opt Out movement has endorsed the Occupy Wall Street movement. They have called for an end to the Wall Street occupation of public education. While their website does not list specific influences of Wall Street on public education, there are ample examples (see here, here and here). Bottom line: Wall Street bankers, hedge fund managers and financial speculators have been investing heavily in private, for-profit charter schools, education management organizations (EMOs), and curriculum and textbook publishing.

However, like the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Opt Out movement has obscured the actual economic relations in this country, and the world, by focusing on Wall Street. Capitalists in general (not just Wall Street) have been attacking the public sector in part to weaken the last remaining stronghold of unionism (36% of public sector is unionized vs. 7% of the private sector, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics). This is another reason why the unions should be much more active in resisting high stakes testing.

Capitalists are not only interested in destroying the unions. They are also always on the lookout for untapped (or moderately tapped) sources of profits, which is exactly what the private sector is. Rather than the government monopolizing the public sector, capitalists want to control it and profit from it. The consumers (i.e., taxpayers) and their demand for public services are not going to go away. In fact, they are obligate consumers and the government could even coerce them to pay more in taxes, which would mean even greater potential profits for the private companies that run “public” sector enterprises.

High stakes testing and NCLB are part of the overall strategy to increase the profitability of public schools for private business. Schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress on their test scores for three or more years can be compelled to purchase tutoring services from private companies, convert to charter schools (that can be run by private, for-profit EMOs), and purchase canned curriculum from big publishing houses (see No Capitalist Left Behind). This does not even take into account the hugely profitably testing industry.

It also doesn’t take into account the numerous other ways that corporate profiteers are skimming off tax dollars from public education in order to turn huge profits. School cafeteria concessions, for instance, are dominated by a few large transnational corporations like Sodexo and Aramark. Seed, candy and tchotchke companies exploit student fundraising needs by offering overpriced, mass-produced junk that students can sell to parents, neighbors and teachers and keep a portion of the sales income for their clubs, bands or travel plans. Tech companies are selling districts millions of dollars’ worth of assessment, management and accountability software.

Obama Concedes Part of NCLB is Unenforceable

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Conceding that a key provision of NCLB is unenforceable, the Obama Administration has backed off the requirement that schools in the transformation model must tie student test scores to teacher and administrator evaluations, Topics in Education reported today. The U.S. Department of Education has sent letters to every state inviting them to apply for waivers from the requirement and still remain eligible for School Improvement Grants (SIG).

Transformation is one of the four school improvement models required under NCLB for repeatedly failing to meet Adequate Yearly Progress. Schools in the transformation model are eligible for School Improvement Grants to assist in their reforms. They also must replace their principal, increase learning time and develop an evaluation plan that incorporates student test scores. Alternatives for failing schools include closing the school, restarting it as a charter or replacing the principal and at least half its staff.

Deborah Sigman, Deputy Superintendent of the California Department of Education, said that less than half the schools in the transformation model have met the timeline for establishing the teacher and principal evaluation system, according to Topics in Education. Thus, the Obama Administration, like so many other government agencies, has accepted reality and lowered the bar on an ill-conceived reform. Except in this case, lowering the bar will actually reduce the pain somewhat for teachers misfortunate enough to be working at transformation schools.

Homework and Student Stress

The following was submitted to the San Francisco Chronicle in response to their Sunday opinion piece on student stress and homework on 8/14 and printed in their Sunday paper on 8/21.

Thanks for drawing attention to the issue of student stress and homework. I’ve been teaching in the Bay Area for 14 years and the problem does seem to be getting worse. The main causes, however, are structural and political, not teachers assigning busy work.

The high stakes testing mandated by NCLB, for example, takes class time away from content, increasing pressure on teachers to cram more content into fewer days. Combined with the overwhelming number of standards teachers must cover each year, students often have to pick up some content at home through reading and other assignments. Sadly, some schools now require test preparation and homework for kindergartners, thinking this will prepare them for the ensuing 12 years of testing and standards overload.

School structure can also exacerbate students’ work and stress loads. High schools, for example, typically have six or seven periods, each with daily homework. In contrast, some schools offer block schedules, with classes that meet three or four times each week, with homework only assigned on days classes meet.

Another stressor is the intense competition for admission to top universities. Many now look for students with grade point averages (GPA) that surpass a perfect 4.0. This leads many students to take multiple Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate courses which are worth more toward GPA than standard college preparatory classes, but which also require considerably more homework and studying. This competition also leads many to add extra-curricular activities like school government, drama, athletics or internships to their already overloaded schedules, adding to their stress and exhaustion.

Students who are reading well below grade level or learning English as a second language might spend two or three times longer on a reading assignment than peers. Some students have poor time management skills or have trouble following directions, thus increasing time on assignments. I have been shocked to hear students complain about spending hours on an assignment that should have taken 15 minutes, only to realize that they had not followed the directions.

Use A Test, Go to Jail

Thanks to Robert Skeels, from the Solidaridad Blog for posting this report from Fairtest: NCLB Fuels School-to-Prison Pipeline: New Report.

According to the report, NCLB’s emphasis on test scores and its consequences for failing to meet them, puts phenomenal pressure on schools to raise test scores by any means necessary. One of the ways schools are trying to boost their scores is by removing “problem” students who are not performing well on the tests. This has resulted in increasing expulsion rates and greater reliance on the criminal justice system to deal with disciplinary matters. The report says that expulsion rates are now at an all-time high and much higher than they were in 2002, when NCLB first started. Furthermore, NCLB funds can be used to hire school-based law enforcement personnel, thus encouraging the use of the juvenile justice system to solve disciplinary problems that would have traditionally been resolved by the school.

There are also much less sinister and more prevalent ways in which NCLB funnels children into the criminal justice system. The heavy emphasis on testing has taken away much of the creativity and inquiry from learning, while also putting considerable pressure on teachers to move more quickly through their curriculum. This can contribute to disciplinary problems for students and provide the rationale for implementing zero-tolerance and other heavy handed disciplinary policies that push kids out of the schools more easily and for minor offenses. NCLB has also lowered graduation rates. Young people who lack high school diplomas have higher rates of incarceration than those who complete high school.

To read the full report, click here.

To visit Fair Test, click here.

Boycott High Stakes Tests!

What if teachers refused to teach to the test? Answer: students would learn more and probably do better on the tests.

The following is a reposting from This Week in Education:

Thompson: What If They Gave a Test and Nobody Came?

from This Week In Education by john thompson

Kelly Gallagher's Education Week Commentary, "Why I Will Not Teach to the Test,"  reviewed the harm done to students when teachers capitulate, and "sprint and cover" all of the material that is on the end-of-the-year standardized tests.  What would happen if educators who believe that teach to the test is educational malpractice refused to comply?    Teachers and principals, who do not have a moral objection to this test craze, need not be pressured to change their beliefs.  Principals, who conscientiously object to the scripted instruction that results from excessive testing, should merely be asked to not punish teachers who act on their shared beliefs. Even if it was only a tenth of us who were willing to risk our careers, would they fire us all? - JT

Will Students Save Our Schools?

Thanks to Schools Matter for finding this video: