Cruel and Unusual Punishment: Testing Kindergartners

Kindergarten Entrance Exam (image from Flickr, by emrank)

It is already crazy how much we test high school students. In addition to the usual internal quizzes and exams used by teachers to assess whether their students are grasping the concepts and skills being taught in their classes, there are increasing numbers of high stakes standardized state and federal exams like No Child Left Behind and high school exit exams.

The teacher-initiated exams generally take up less than a class period and are a useful self-check of learning and teaching. The high stakes exams, on the other hand, take up days or weeks of instructional time and have little or no benefit to students or teachers. They are almost entirely a manifestation of right-wing paranoia that teachers are spending instructional time teaching communism and the homosexual lifestyle to children instead of the 3 R’s and thus need some sort of tool (regardless of whether it works) to hold them accountable for teaching what really matters (bubbling in multiple choice answers to math problems and vocabulary questions).

In reality, student test scores are a measure of what students know, not how they learned it, and are therefore meaningless as an accountability tool. The high stakes test scores correlate far more strongly with students’ socioeconomic backgrounds than with their teachers’ skill.

Of course the testing mania is also terrible for children. High stakes tests are extremely stressful for students. Their teachers and administrators need them to perform well so their schools do not get closed down, converted to charters or have to fire everyone. Even when not intended, the stress and anxiety of the adults is often passed on to the children, who want to make their teachers and parents happy and do well on the tests. The tests themselves take away instructional time that could be used for real teaching and learning, rather than data collection. Furthermore, the high stakes involved compels many schools and districts to slash even more instructional time and replace it with test preparation. Consequently, many districts no longer offer science, art, music or physical education.

There is also a question of age-appropriateness. Are K-3^rd graders really capable of reading and understanding multiple choice questions and accurately bubbling in their answers? And is it fair to the kids to be put under this kind of pressure and have song-, play- and inquiry-based learning replaced by rote memorization, drills and testing? Yet, if a district is requiring teacher evaluations to be based on these tests, then even kindergarteners would have to take the tests so that kindergarten teachers would face the same level of pseudoscientific scrutiny as their colleagues.

Unfortunately, more and more school districts are testing earlier and more often. WHTC.com reports that at least 25 states now require at least one formal assessment during kindergarten, while many local school districts now implement their own tests starting just a few weeks into the academic year. The Obama administration’s Race to the Top program has offered $500 million competitive grants to promote early childhood education. In order to win these grants, though, states must pledge to assess all kindergarteners. 

Waiting for sanity in education reform

This is a reposting of an article by George Wood in Valerie Strauss' Answer Sheet

By George Wood

This fall brought not only the start of another school year but plenty of noise about schools as well. A movie, a manifesto, and a mayoral election in Washington D.C. all amplified the ongoing debate about who the real education reformers are. Noise and more noise.


Thank goodness for the sane voices that arose in the midst of all this. There is Diane Ravitch with her continued campaign that brings us back to what is really at stake when filmmakers try to bend public opinion. And Mike Rose, always close to the ground, reminding us of what school reform really involves.

Now comes the news that, in light of whatever is going to happen on Nov. 2nd, the Obama administration is looking for ways to work with the next Congress and has targeted, among other things, No Child Left Behind.
Yikes.

With the level of animosity and acrimony currently filling the airways it is hard to imagine that Congress and the president will do anything together, let alone the long overdue overhaul of NCLB. I worry about the common ground they might actually reach: grading teachers by student tests scores, breaking unions, putting every kid in a charter school. None of these strategies has been proven as a recipe for the schools our children need and our communities deserve, but lack of evidence has never stopped us before.

With all of this in mind I have decided to trek off to Washington this weekend and join Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity. Why? Because I want to talk to some folks and see if they might accept a few basic principles around what it would take to shore up our public school system. I want to see if they are willing to take seriously the Jeffersonian ideal that public education is vital to a healthy democracy, and the notion that now, as much as any time in our history, we need such a system of public schools.

I haven’t been invited to speak at the rally, but if Stewart calls, here is what I might say:
“America’s public schools are a national treasure and it is past time that we started treating them as such. Every one of you here today probably has a schoolteacher to thank for the fact that you can read, add, and think rationally. A teacher who opened your mind to new ideas, who helped you speak that mind and listen when others spoke theirs. It’s a great system, and it opens its doors to every kid no matter their race or nationality, no matter what language they speak or if they can speak at all, no matter rich or poor, motivated or not, whole or impaired.

“We have spent too much time the blaming our schools for all that ails us. Sure schools could do better—but so could the banks, big business, and Congress. Schools, our teachers, and our kids, are not responsible for the economic strains our nation feels; or for the loosening bonds that threaten the civil discourse our republic requires. They are, however, part of the solution to these threats to our social security. But only if we come together on a few things in the name of a saner approach to making sure every kid has a good public school to attend.

“First, we have to admit that as much as schools can do, they can’t do it alone. It is hard for a child who is homeless, hungry, or in pain to heed the lessons of her teacher. America should, as part of education policy, work to see that every child is safe and secure, has good medical care, a roof over her head, and food in her stomach.

“Second, we must all admit that there is no doing a good school system on the cheap. America is 14th among the 16 industrialized nations in how much we spend on our kids’ education. But it is not just how much we spend, it is where we spend it. In the Harlem Children’s Zone, a project that considers all of what it takes to raise a child, the charter schools are spending one-third more than the public schools in the city, and they still are struggling.

"This is not a condemnation of that important work—it just means we should admit that we are going to have to invest heavily and in a targeted way if we want our schools to work for all our kids.

“Third, over 90% of our schools are good old regular public schools—not a charter or a choice, just where kids go to school. If we are serious about every child having a good school, it won’t be by creating a few fancy alternative schools. It will be by improving all of our schools.

“Fourth, we already know what works. All our schools--charters, magnets, public--have had successes, but we don’t seem to learn from them. Successful schools are places filled with good teachers who are well supported, where strong connections are built with students and families, where kids do real work not just read textbooks or listen to lectures, and where kids are evaluated by what they can do not by what test question they can answer. They also are places not segregated by social class.

“So what would a sane person, perchance a sane Congress, do to help and support our kids and schools? Hate to be simplistic, but here you go—We have to shore up our safety net for all kids to have access to health care, food, and shelter; use federal resources to get dollars to kid in the most need; and focus on all schools using the lessons learned from our most innovative and successful schools and getting the regulations and rules that prevent this change out of the way.

“This is what I wish for my school, your school, all schools. We don’t need Superman. We just need some sanity.”

No Capitalist Left Behind

On August 2, the California Board of Education approved Common Core Standards (CCS), aligning our standards with 33 other states. The vote barely beat a deadline to adopt CCS or lose federal “Race to the Top” (RTTT) funds worth $700 million. On the surface it seemed like a smart move: reform education and win much needed funds. In reality, the plan weakened education in California, as we already had some of the toughest standards in the nation. Furthermore, implementation of CCS is expected to cost taxpayers $1.6 billion for new textbooks, according to EdSource, an independent, non-partisan education research group.

So why would the Board of Education commit tax payers to $1.6 billion in order to dumb down our schools? The math makes no sense for kids or taxpayers, but it does make sense for the big education publishing houses that have been lobbying hard for the adoption of CCS across the country. While CCS currently only covers math and reading, these two subjects account for over 70% of the textbook market. According to The Education Business Blog, the Common Core will drive text book sales in coming years. “Common Core Standards (CCS) will have a profound impact on the instructional materials market. The big players like Pearson and McGraw-Hill are on-board as endorsing partners. . .” Pearson had a 46% jump in profits in 2009 ($648 million) due in part to the adoption of CCS by other states.

CCS is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of corporate educational plunder. In nearly ten years, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has funneled approximately $250 billion to textbook and test publishers, says Jerry Herman, director of Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. Inc., a St. Louis-based investment firm. In addition to publishers, many other private, for-profit businesses have used NCLB to take tax dollars earmarked for public education. For example, every school that fails to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for three years in a row must offer Supplemental Educational Services (SES), such as tutoring and after school support programs. Most schools lack the funding to provide these services directly and subcontract out to private SES providers, a taxpayer giveaway worth $2 billion a year to tutoring companies, according to Corey Murray, of eSchool News. In the mad scramble to take advantage of this federal handout, education researcher Gerald Bracey reported that Newton Learning, a Supplemental Services provider, recruited students by offering free VISA gift cards. Platform Learning, which handed out free Walkmans, saw their enrollment jump from 12,000, in 2003-2004, to 50,000, in 2004-2005.

After four years of failure under No Child Left Behind, schools must restructure by replacing teachers, implementing new curricula, appointing outside experts, or converting to a charter school. Many charter schools (including nonprofit charter schools) subcontract to for-profit Educational Management Organizations (EMOs). In 2001-2002, when NCLB began, there were only 36 EMOs operating in the U.S., managing 368 schools. By 2008-2009, there were 95 EMOs, managing 733 schools. EMOs operate using public school funding, but they spend considerably less on instruction and student services than traditional public schools and keep the difference as profit. Imagine Schools, Inc. the nation’s largest for-profit EMO, spends only 40-45% of its revenues on classroom instruction, including teacher salaries, according to Policy Matters Ohio. They also earn money by flipping real estate and charging high rents to their schools. In general, charter schools perform no better than traditional public schools and tend to be far more segregated. They also tend operate with less local oversight than traditional public schools hire non-unionized teachers.

Advocates of NCLB believe that its strict regimen of testing and sanctions increases accountability and forces schools to improve, and see no harm if some businesses make a profit in the process. Some supporters argue that it is precisely the competition for profits by the education industry that creates the better quality education. The problem is that NCLB has not improved education. Instead, it has set schools up for failure. Failure is built into NCLB’s design. Under NCLB rules, all subgroups (e.g., gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, special education status, English Language status) must meet their group’s Adequate Yearly Progress goals. If one subgroup fails, the entire school is deemed a failure and faces sanctions, even if other subgroups improve. AYP is also a moving target. If scores go up at one school, but improve even more at another, the first school may be still be punished. As a result, NCLB has created a growing market of failing schools and districts, a virtual gravy train for textbook publishers, private tutoring services, and EMOs. According to the Public Policy Forum, nearly every school in California will be failing by 2014. Even Minnesota, one of the country’s top scoring states, is expecting 80% of its schools to fail by 2014.

Rather than abolishing or reforming NCLB, the Obama administration has embraced it and hastened the transfer of wealth from tax payers to business through Race to the Top, which requires states to adopt Common Core Standards, ease restrictions on charter schools and adopt merit pay for teachers in order to be eligible for limited federal grants. With most states struggling under staggering deficits, this is like tossing crumbs into a crowd of starving people. Governors and many teachers unions are tripping over each other to meet the demands of RTTT in hopes of winning one of the limited competitive grants, despite the devastating costs to kids, taxpayers and teachers. Indeed, all states that have won RTTT grants have had some support and collaboration by their unions. While the California Teachers Association has consistently opposed merit pay and RTTT, they did jump onboard the Common Core bandwagon.

Arne Duncan, Obama’s Education Secretary and architect of Race to the Top, has called himself a “portfolio manager” of schools. When he was CEO of Chicago Public Schools he claimed, "We're trying to blur the lines between the public and the private." Not surprisingly, the district failed to meet its AYP from 2004 to 2008, though he did manage to convert many underperforming schools into profitable charter schools through an initiative called Renaissance 2010, which was supported by the Commercial Club of Chicago, representing many of the city’s biggest businesses. Most of the new charter schools eliminated the teachers union. (Duncan has accused unions of hindering business-led reform.) Many were run as military academies and most of these were located in low income neighborhoods. Expulsion rates also skyrocketed with Duncan at the helm.

The California legislature has cut $17 billion from education over the past two years, while the state has failed to win any RTTT grants. Parents and community groups that want to help their struggling schools by having bake sales may be out of luck, as many school districts have signed contracts with food management companies giving them monopoly control over food concessions and banning any type of competitive food sales, including bake sales and all food-based fundraising by students. Twenty-five percent of all public schools nation-wide have out-sourced their cafeteria concessions to food management giants like Aramark, Sodexo and Compass. Sodexo, alone, earns profits of over one billion dollars per year, though some of this comes from their hospital, hotel and military catering services. Some districts even guarantee profits to these companies, promising to pay the difference if food sales do not meet expectations. There are about 29 million children nation-wide who participate in the National School Lunch Program, at a total cost to tax-payers of $6 billion per year. An audit by the USDA in 2007 found that the National School Lunch Program was paying hundreds of thousands of dollars more than it should because these companies kept “kickbacks” from the vendors, many of whom are commodity food giants themselves (e.g., Tyson, Kelloggs, Coke).

The federal government gives $6 billion a year to schools for the free lunch program and they provide 1 billion pounds of surplus food to schools through the federal commodity food program. This includes flour, raw meat, fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables and dairy products. Because school budgets are so low, many districts can no longer afford to hire cooks to prepare this food. The feds have provided schools with a way out of this bind known as Commodity Processing, which allows schools to divert their government cheese to processed food manufacturers who produce pizzas, hamburgers, chicken nuggets and fish sticks to resell back to the schools. According to the USDA, thirty percent of federal commodity food is diverted in this way.

Those who were counting on Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign to replace corporate junk food in schools with locally produced, sustainable, healthy foods will be disappointed to learn that she has partnered with many of the nation’s largest producers of processed foods. Let’s Move! recently got a letter of support from the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), which represents more than 300 commodity processed food manufacturers. The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation (members include Kellogg, Pepsico, Mars, Nestle, Hershey, Sara Lee, Unilever and Coca-cola) has also signed on as a supporter. The First Lady has argued that it would be impossible to feed America’s children without the help of processed food giants. Her views may have been influenced by her term on the board of directors of Tree House Foods, which produces jams, jellies, pickles, salad dressings, pie fillings and other processed foods for the food service industry. In exchange for her two years of service, the First Lady earned over $140,000 in stock options and close to $100,000 in salary.

Most of the important developments in education policy over the past twelve years have had the effect of transferring tax dollars away from public schools and into the pockets of private, for-profit corporations, yet there is no evidence that schools have improved in the process. A class-based achievement gap persists. Growing numbers of schools are failing under No Child Left Behind. The quality and safety of school lunches has deteriorated. Indeed, two years ago a supplier for the federal lunch program was discovered selling meat from “downer” cows. Teachers are losing benefits and pay as more and more get pushed into nonunionized charter schools. Nurses, librarians and other essential support personnel are being eliminated to help make up for budget shortfalls, while increasing portions of our dwindling education budget get skimmed off the top to cover the profits of the private education industry.