A Lesson on Failing

This summer at the SOS March & National Call to Action, I was pleased to see some young and enthusiastic, but independent-minded and healthily skeptical teachers. Among them was DCPS elementary school teacher, Olivia Chapman (on twitter: @sedcteacher). Olivia dual-majored in special and general education at The College of Saint Rose in her native upstate New York  and then worked for a year as a substitute teacher in Albany, New York, before accepting her current position. I was so impressed with Olivia (plus I'm always looking to feature the voices of teachers and education professionals who are on the ground) that I solicited a guest post from her. If she is symbolic of the young, smart, dedicated, and energetic teachers that neo-liberal reformers so often talk of attracting and keeping in the teaching profession, from Olivia's account below, they're not doing a very good job. Who, especially with all those qualities, lasts long in a stifling and absurd environment such as Olivia describes? For our nation's sake, I pray that Olivia and so many of the discouraged newer teachers I've talked to in recent years stick it out. We need you! As one of my children's teachers told me as we talked about the limitations of standardization and high-stakes testing were doing, "The pendulum is always swinging; I'm just waiting for it to swing in the other direction." In too many schools and systems, teaching rich, meaningful, and varied content and leading our children to embrace the beauty of the life of the mind has become an act of defiance when it should be an ethos. Here is Olivia's piece:

A Lesson on Failing

We hear a great deal these days from the media and education reformers about our “broken” public school system and about “failing” public schools. While I certainly haven’t been to all public schools and seen them for myself, I see and read about success in public schools often enough to know that not all public schools are “failing.” Unfortunately, though, Ihappen to work at a school that is failing and I used to be part of the reason for that failure.

Just to be clear, I'm not referring to a label of “failure” often placed on schools due to their failure to meet No Child Left Behind's lofty and unattainable AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) requirements. My school is failing because of what NCLB’s mandates have done to the students, teachers, and to the community. My school is failing because morality, honesty, compassion, and values have been replaced by an obsession with data, accountability, standardized testing, and evaluations.

Authentic, creative, and innovational learning experiences have been replaced by practice tests, overwhelming amounts of interim assessments, multiple choice drill and practice sheets, and an inundation of mandated programs and paper work that have little impact on real student learning.  I have seen genuinely good, veteran teachers lose touch with their morals out of fear. I have seen children bow their heads in shame upon the revelation that their test scores labeled them below basic in reading or math. I have had parents refer solely to their children’s test scores to describe their abilities, telling me that their children are good at math, but bad at reading and vice versa. I have witnessed cheating and lying to save careers. I have witnessed the stealing of materials and resources because budget cuts have allowed for very little funding for what our students really need. This is the harsh reality and this is failing. We are failing ourselves and we are failing our students. We are neglecting to truly educate our students because teachers aren’t allowed to be innovative and creative. Instead, we are overwhelmed by the task of producing robotic test-takers rather than thoughtful, lifelong learners.

When I was hired at DC Public Schools I was told that if I couldn’t get the students' test scores up, I was dispensable. Teachers who have students with high test scores are put on pedestals and those without are stigmatized, humiliated, and downright disrespected by the administration. This was the culture that I was thrown into as a first year teacher. At first, I was determined to succeed at attaining this highly esteemed respect from my colleagues and my principal.

I spent my first year teaching relentlessly chasing this prize. I drilled, I practiced, I taught test-taking strategies. I made the students want to stay in for recess to practice testing by rewarding them with dollar store surprises and animal crackers. I begged and pleaded for parents to get their kids to school early and stay after for more standardized test review. I thought that if my students had awesome test scores, I would earn the veneration I had yearned for. More importantly, I thought that this would prove that I was a good teacher. In reality, I lost sight of who I was and why I had become a teacher. Oh, and my students test scores turned out to be pretty low, despite my sixty-hour work weeks and endless nights spent grading bubble sheets. In addition, at the end of the school year I was rated "minimally effective" due to my students’ low test scores.

I spent the summer after my first year reflecting on why I had become a teacher and thought about quitting and traveling the world. But I soon realized that it wasn't teaching that was the problem, it was the environment I was teaching in (not to mention I didn’t have enough money saved to even travel locally)--the high-stress intensity of the testing atmosphere, the "walking on eggshells" feeling that you get when you know something bad is going to happen despite any precautions you may have taken. I decided to scrap the entire test prep regimen that I thought, and was told, was crucial to student success. I figured I had one more year to improve my rating before being terminated, so why not teach the way that I thought would be most effective, most compelling, and most beneficial to my students? Why not teach my students the way that my best teachers had taught me?

Last year, for my students' sake as well as for my own, I took the focus off of testing. I told my students that standardized testing was something that we had to do in order to prove to the city and to the nation that they have good teachers and that they are learning at school, and my head-strong group of fourth graders was determined to prove themselves. I reassured them regularly that I would not refer to them by a label determined by their test scores and that they were so smart and had so much knowledge that they did not need to worry about taking the silly old test. I treated the test as if it were just another thing on our fourth grade “to do” list. This constant reassurance gave them confidence to take on the test, but it also took the emphasis off of the end-all-be-all aspect of high-stakes standardized testing.

With this weight off of our shoulders, I moved my students on to more authentic learning. Genuine, meaningful learning cannot prosper when the burden of bubble sheets, arbitrary teacher firings and terms like “below basic” are clouding our brains. For the most part, I replaced weekly multiple-choice assessments with projects that met the standards as well as met the students' interests. We read materials that sparked intellectual curiosity, debates, and critical thinking.  I stopped using the “preferred” textbooks and found ways to fund class sets of books and magazines that were engaging and appropriate for my demographic. In the end, their test scores were fine. No, I didn’t produce any miraculous increase in proficiency levels, but these kids now know how to think, they gained content knowledge, they know a few things about the world around them, and they genuinely care about learning more.  

Critics of my anti-teaching-to-the-test approach often ask, “Well, how do you know that the students actually learned without looking at data from their test scores?” I look at tons of data! I listen for conversation skills, I review projects, I read reports, I observe debates and discussions, and I use rubrics to assess skits and videos. Sure, I throw in some multiple-choice style tests when appropriate and yes, I look at that data too. More importantly, I know that these students learned because they left my class with authentic means to express and apply their knowledge. These students still stop by my room to tell me what they are learning and doing in school. They value what I taught them because they see the importance of each lesson in their everyday lives. Furthermore, they look to deepen their understanding of topics of interest. They still ask me for help selecting books that will interest them and help them expand their knowledge. Some of my former students still check our class facebook page for extra learning activities to do at home. They ask me questions like, “Ms. Chapman, do you have any friends who are doctors/lawyers/engineers/authors that I could write to about how they got their careers?” Their fifth grade teacher informed me that during the earthquake, my previous students climbed under their desks because they had learned what to do during natural disasters by becoming “meteorologists” and writing live weather reports in class last year. 

I read somewhere that teachers whose students do not excel on high-stakes standardized tests are probably the best teachers.  I don’t necessarily agree with that. However, I do believe that teaching to the test makes children dislike school and makes teachers loathe teaching. I have realized in my first three years of teaching that the aspects of public education that are “failing” are our current education policies, reforms, and those who are pushing them, those who think that spending large sums of money on testing and teacher evaluations will make children smarter. Then administrators continue the “failing” by pushing these policies onto teachers, and in turn, so do the teachers who reluctantly choose to go along with them.

My school did not make AYP again this year. We now have a new principal who never ceases to express his endless devotion to getting an 80% pass rate on this year’s tests. I'm sure that my defiance of his test-prep regime, of his mandated ten multiple-choice question bi-weekly formative assessments, and of his failure to see the students he is supposed to educate as anything more than test scores will cause great controversy. I have been warned that I walk on thin ice because of the test scores that are tied heavily to my evaluation. In spite of this, what I fear most is not a poor rating based on a single test. What I fear most is failing my students and their community again by believing that my students' success and my own is based on teaching to that single test.

Bridging Philosophical Differences

Yesterday evening I posted on twitter a link to this post in Bridging Differences by Diane Ravitch, saying that I thought she made very compelling arguments against Parent Trigger-like legislation, that it's bad for democracy.

I got some push back on that. One of my favorite push-backers said that a) Teacher Trigger laws existed first and that b) Diane's post was "pure ad hominem."

Normally I don't mix my tweeting and my blogging. I generally think it's silly when people blog about what people say on twitter. Blogs and twitter are two very different mediums--I have different expectations and standards for each of them. That being said, I want to respond to what my critics said and I want to explain what I found so compelling; twitter is a terrible place to try to accomplish this.

First of all, I'd have to learn more about the particular ones being referred to, but I can't imagine that "Teacher Trigger" laws would be a good idea, either.

Second of all, "pure adhominem" (emphasis mine)? I don't see it, not purely. I can see why someone might find that in the piece, but it's certainly not the only thing there. Several months ago (see here and here) I decided that unless they are blatantly stated, divining people's motives is impossible. It's also not productive or often relevant to any given problem. I also, frankly, have a hard time getting through the day if I look at the world through such a dark lens, so though I don't always succeed, I try really hard not to, at least not publicly.

But what I found compelling in Diane's post was not who's doing the Parent Trigger and for what reasons, but rather, the philosophical arguments. Here's what I found compelling (emphasis mine):  

"To me, a public school is a public trust. It doesn't belong to the students who are currently enrolled in it or their parents or to the teachers who currently teach in it. All of them are part of the school community, and that community needs to collaborate to make the school better for everyone. Together, they should be able to redesign or create or discontinue programs and services. But collaboration is not the same as ownership. The school belongs to the public, to the commonwealth. It belongs to everyone who ever attended it (and their parents) and to future generations. It is part of the public patrimony, not an asset that can be closed or privatized by its current constituents.

If a school is dysfunctional, those who are in charge of the district are obliged to find out why and to do whatever they can to fix the problems. If the principal is incompetent, he or she should be removed. If there are teachers who are incompetent, they should be removed. If the school is doing poorly because it lacks necessary resources, the district is obliged to do whatever it can to improve the school.

But giving the current parents the power to close the school or to hand it over to a private management company is akin to saying that whoever uses any public facility should have the same power, the power to transfer control to a private entity. It means if those who use Central Park in Manhattan don't like the way the city of New York takes care of it, they should be able to sign a petition and privatize it. If a majority of those who patronize a national park sign a petition, they should be able to hand control of the park over to private managers. This makes no sense."

I agree philosophically with what Diane is saying here. I value public democratic institutions and I want to see them preserved. I agree that democratic public institutions are in a tenuous state right now and I agree that they belong to the public: to past, present, and future generations. Maybe others don't agree with this. Maybe they think I over-value public democratic institutions or that they've failed. Maybe they think the free market can do better. But I don't think so. I'm certainly not anti-commerce, but I don't think free market mechanisms work in every context, particularly not if the markets have been rigged. That's not an ad hominem attack, that's expressing a philosophically different way of looking at the world; it's expressing a different value system.

So let's protest what we see as ad hominem and address its wrongs specifically, or, even better, let's minimize their distraction by brushing them aside, and instead focus on the philosophical (and yes, factual) heart of our common ground and differences.

Viable ed policy? Yes. But let's design it for people, not outcomes.

During the recent SOS March & National Call to Action event in DC, Mike Klonsky presented the idea of an SOS think/do tank. This is a fantastic idea--we need to present both policy critiques and alternatives, in addition to taking political action.

This was also very timely in light of a discussion that has had the blogosphere aflutter for the past few weeks. I am not qualified to comment too extensively on it with my limited background in political theory (I could barely follow it, save Kevin Drum’s contribution and I only have but so much patience for theoretical bullshitting even if it's really smart bullshitting), but it seems that it’s essentially an argument about theory versus action, and policy versus politics. Some seem to be saying, as much as they might wish otherwise, that given our current political system, there’s no real political solution for achieving progressive goals. Others counter that this amounts to an abdication of truly progressive ideals. If you're interested in reading more about this, posts (with great links!) by Erik Kain and his thoughtful and well-read co-bloggers at The League Ordinary Gentlemen are a great place to start, in part because they're politically unaffiliated.

I had been heretofore staunchly anti-neo-liberal, as I dismissed it as conservatism in progressive packaging, but I've come to realize that: a) it's not that simple, b) their stance on education reform is ideological, not a power grab--they are true believers c) there's generally more common ground than I had realized, for example on matters such as gay rights and tax policy. That being said, I am still not in the camp of let’s do neoliberalism even though it sucks because it’s the best thing around.

In this context, wonky Education Week blogger and DFER board member Sarah Mead endorses the same technocratic, neo-liberal solution for education reform that Matt Yglesias offers those searching for the next best progressive hope, charging with a similar version of edu-nihilism that Yglesias often does anyone who might disagree with her. She says:

"This all sounds to me a lot like contemporary education policy debates: Education reformers put forward a series of-yes, let's be honest-largely technocratic and market-minded strategies to try to make our public education system work better to serve the needs of students, and to increase the supply of higher-performing schools and teachers. Critics counter that these policies can't possibly fix the problems they're purported to solve-mediocre overall performance and glaring student achievement gaps-because they don't address the underlying causes of economic inequality, poverty, inadequate health care, broken families, etc. (It's worth noting that 'neoliberal' is frequently a term of derision directed at the education reform movement by its foes.) No one, to my knowledge honestly disputes that those issues are real problems that do impact the outcomes of educational systems. The problem is that critics of education reform also don't put forward any compelling and remotely viable proposals to solve the problems they argue must be solved before we can improve school performance [even if we embarked on a massive campaign of economic redistribution--assuming that's possible and designed in a way that doesn't create other problems--does anyone think that fix mental health issues or ensure that all kids have 'good' parents?]. Nor do they offer any alternative strategy for, in the absence of such sweeping and improbable solutions, getting the best we can out of our public schools given current realities. Essentially, they're offering an argument for throwing up our hands and saying 'tough cookies, kids,' to the tens of millions of low-income American schoolchildren who have only an 8% chance of ever earning a college diploma."

Later she offered a similar, if more jarringly catty, critique that was specifically aimed at the SOS March & National Call to Action where she accuses its participants of demanding a "pony."

Besides assuring Ms. Mead that we have no interest in taking her pony, to these sentiments, I'd say that yes, there are certainly a few lefties who say that we can’t fix education until we fix poverty. When people retort, well then go work to remedy poverty and get out of education, they have a point. Poverty exists, learning disabilities exist, English Language Learners exist, trauma exists, and aliteracy and illiteracy exists; yet, we must still work to best educate our nation's children. Once we are all honest about our exaggerations (and really, we should either abandon them or get out of the conversation), then we can sit down and talk about the in-school and systemic solutions.

At the same time, education policies and practices don't exist in a vacuum--economic, housing, and social policies all affect educational outcomes and affect how education policy works. Though many of the neo-reformers have come around to admitting that poverty affects how students do in school, some do continue, indeed, to say poverty doesn't affect student performance. Furthermore, plenty of us who are sympathetic to the SOS movement acknowledge the role education can play in alleviating poverty, but we want reformers to recognize the deep and profound effects of the income gap on the achievement gaps. Teachers and education alone can not end poverty.

There is a place for technocratic and policy-oriented actors and solutions, but just because the neo-liberal ed policies are "viable," i.e., they can be implemented, doesn't mean they work to improve the quality of education in our schools. In fact, many of those policies, including high-stakes testing, higher pay for higher test scores, and an unrelenting focus on practices of public education systems' human resources departments haven't worked. Among other flawed initiatives, the accountability structures they push undermine the basic tenets of quality education: solid pedagogy and rich and meaningful curriculum. You can't expect a three- or even two-star meal if you're using a McDonald's model.

Furthermore, no matter how nicely and wonkishly you say it, saying, there’s my solution and there’s non-viable ones is just another way of saying, my way or the highway. Just because people like Mead are convinced of the efficacy of the policies that they endorse, doesn't mean that there aren't, in fact, other "remotely viable" policy alternatives. True, most teachers want to have a conversation about best practices and pedagogy (how to teach) and about curriculum (what to teach). Beyond that, to say that people like me or like any of the Accomplished California Teachers or like Diane Ravitch or like John Thompson or like Nancy Flanagan or like Jose Vilson or like Linda Darling Hammond or like Mike Rose or like Sabrina Stevens Shupe or like any number of education experts and practitioners have proposed no viable solutions and are:

”throwing up our hands and saying 'tough cookies, kids,' to the tens of millions of low-income American schoolchildren who have only an 8% chance of ever earning a college diploma" 

is insulting and it's lazy. If you pay any attention at all, you know that most of us are asking for policy that encourages good practice or at least doesn’t harm it. And there are policy-oriented organizations out there that most of us endorse. To name a few there's the Economic Policy Institute, NEPC (National Education Policy Center), The Albert Shanker Institute, and The Century Foundation. (UPDATE: I can't believe I forgot   School Finance 101!)

But as Ta-Nehisi Coates points out in series of posts ("Our Technocratic Overlords") about gentrification in DC, there are actual human beings behind all of those charts and numbers with actual thoughts, feelings, and knowledge of their own. Coates says here, 

"The bugbear of reformers has long been an inability to see humanity in the actual humans they would have reformed." 

In the next post on the topic he reminds us that, 

"Policy without politics is an abstraction. This is a feature of democracy, not a bug." 

Finally, here he talks about how his experiences as a journalist have shaped him as a writer to consider the human beings behind the numbers:

"Looking back on this, the thing that strikes is the importance of journalism. I think it's really easy to become the sort of writer who reads reports from Brookings and analyzes charts and graphs, without ever having to talk to the people captured in the numbers. People are scary in a way that think tanks are not."

TNC put words to exactly what I find so problematic with a strictly technocratic approach: The technocrats and policy analysts such as Mead and Ygelsias refuse to consider what the policies they endorse actually do in schools and how they affect the practices of educators and the experiences of the students. The poor practices those policies cause is what motivated many of the practitioners and parents (the very people Mead denigrates and mocks) to get involved in the SOS March. The technocrats have become too hung up on being technically right, on being right according to some set of data or another; if only they were a a bit more hung up on being human.

Neo-liberals like Mead accuse their critics of "magical" thinking. So I say, agreed, we need to bring more policy critiques and alternatives to the forefront. But if they think that paying teachers extra for higher student test scores, getting rid of due process rights for teachers, flooding the system with charter schools, offering vouchers, and believing blindly in the free market is going to somehow lift "tens of millions of low-income American school children" into college and out of poverty, then I'd say they've got a magical wand problem of their own to consider. Lastly, no policy solution can work without consideration of the perspectives of those on the ground, of the very people those policies affect. Otherwise we are left with wonks insisting that their graphs and charts and clipboards represent a deeper truth than the actual experience of thousands of teachers, administrators, parents and students. 

Want to read my full remarks to CNN regarding the SOS March?

Today, my perspective (as well as those of Sabrina Stevens Shupe and Amy Valens) on the SOS March & National Call to Action was featured in a CNN.com article by Sam Chaltain. I'm famous! (hahaha)

I was honored when he told me about the project and asked if I would answer some questions. Of course, he couldn't possibly include my responses in their entirety, especially since as you've probably noticed, brevity isn't exactly one of my talents.

Sam did a fantastic job of editing and consolidating my remarks, but in case anyone's interested in any elaboration, I wanted to share here my remarks in their entirety:

1.  What were the main reasons that brought you to DC?

As a former (and hopefully future) public school teacher and current public school parent, I am disillusioned with most of the education policies that are part of NCLB and RTTT. These policies encourage and incentivize poor practice and they narrow curricula. These policies have failed to improve the quality of education, to meaningfully reform systems in need of reform. Dysfunction and inconsistent practice in schools and systems targeted by these policies has been replaced by dysfunctional and ideological rigidity and consistency of poor practice (or what I like to call a McDonald’s-alization of public education)—that’s not progress, it’s just another version of bad.

I grew up in DC proper with activist parents who were both civil rights lawyers. We regularly went to marches, parades, and protests and talked about politics and social justice issues. My mother spent her law career involved in civil rights as it relates to public education. My parents both attended public schools and universities. My sister and I attended the DC Public Schools.  Both of my parents have intellectual leanings. I guess you could say I was born into a religion of civic activism and public education.

As such, I also deeply value our American public democratic institutions and don’t see evidence right now that President Obama and Arne Duncan share that. I believe that right now we have a real crisis, perhaps the largest issue of this era, of democracy. A healthy, vibrant American democracy cannot exist alongside the plutocracy that is rapidly developing in our country. In order to maintain our democracy, we have an obligation to participate in it. A patriotic citizen is a critical, informed, and active citizen who holds their political leaders accountable and pushes them to be responsive to the people they represent and lead. I was marching because I care about our country and I care about our public institutions, especially about public schools. (In case you didn’t guess, I was a Social Studies teacher.)

2.  Did the march fulfill your expectations?

I thought it was a powerful, inspiring event. I was glad to hear of the SOS protests and events in state capitols, but I would have liked to have seen more people at the main event in DC, especially from nearby states. I live relatively close to DC and close to my state capitol. That means I have an obligation as a citizen to take advantage of my proximity to political power and to decision makers. Why were there not more public education stakeholders there from DC, Maryland, and Virginia? This goes back to the concept that a strong American democracy requires an informed, active, and critical citizenry (I’d also add educated!).

3. What needs to happen next?

I think we all need to look at the SOS March & National Call to Action’s “Guiding Principles” and then think about how we can work to maintain and promote those principles given the educational systems and political realities that exist in our individual states and local communities. Some of us may even find we need to re-consider or add to some of those principles. We’re all affected by NCLB, but beyond that we need to act locally and partner with our local decision makers, educators, and community members.  Quality public education isn’t an ideological concept; it’s an American and democratic concept.

While continuing the political activism, we also really need to focus on policy critiques and on advocating for concrete and viable policy alternatives--I can't stress enough the importance of this.

4. Based on your experiences, what does the ideal learning environment look like—and require?

Honestly, I try to avoid thinking in terms of “ideal” worlds, as there’s a thin line between ideal and fantasy, but I’ll take a stab at talking about what I think are the important aspects of a healthy but realistic learning environment. 

I think we have to start with what we value in education, what we think the goals of education should be.  What does it mean to be an educated American? I define an educated American as: having a broad and meaningful base of content knowledge, including currently neglected subjects of social studies, science, the arts, and foreign language; having competency in basic skills, complemented eventually by the beginnings of mastery in some chosen subjects; and as having a curiosity and a love of learning.

How do we design our learning environments to reflect those goals? First, encourage rich and broad curricula. Second, encourage dedicated practice. Third, give teachers enough freedom and independence to cultivate curiosity and love of learning in their own classrooms. Fourth, optimize or improve teaching and learning conditions for teachers and students.

Such an environment should be knowledge-based, pedagogically sound and appropriate, as well as evidence-based. This means having a varied, content-rich curriculum, using the best but also the most appropriate teaching practices, and at least considering the social-emotional development of children as well as their intellectual development. The environment should be orderly and ethical, but completely free of rigidity.

A fruitful learning environment also depends on strong and caring, but professional and appropriate, relationships between educators and students. A good teacher-student relationship can fit many molds, but there should be a connection and the student should be able to trust and respect their teachers and vice-versa. Furthermore, knowledge of students' educational background, aspirations, and family situation (without, of course, overstepping boundaries or violating students' privacy) can really help to inform teaching. In turn, educators should be well-educated, supported, and trusted by their colleagues and their supervisors. While I did mention “evidence-based” before, I also think that both teachers and students need some room to experiment, to make mistakes, to fail, even. It is from mistakes and failure as well as from successes that we learn and grow. 

I think some education leaders have done a real disservice to the improvement of teaching and learning by trying to quantify it to the extent they have. At the same time, I don’t agree that teaching is entirely an art. Rather, it’s a craft that one gets better at with practice, consideration of evidence, further learning, and experience. A healthy learning environment is led by such practitioners.

Finally, while standardized tests can give us useful information, a fertile leaning environment is one that does not equate quality teaching and student achievement with standardized test scores. When people do that, they set the bar way too low for too many of our students. In focusing on standardized-test expressed “achievement” our decision and policy makers have forgotten the significance of curiosity and have forgotten the human drive to explore, build, create, and interrogate. Certainly, most knowledge is not innate and must be taught, but curiosity, creativity, and inquiry are all part of the human spirit. Such qualities are key to learning and teaching. Unfortunately, our current education policies and education reform strategies do little to promote acquisition of meaningful knowledge or to nurture those qualities and arguably do much to hamper them.

5. Why did you leave teaching?

I wouldn't say I left teaching, but I did take a break from K-12 public school teaching for two reasons: 

1) I was wasting far too much of my and my students' time trying to please the testing and data collection gods rather than providing the education I describe above. 

2) I had young children and eventually felt I wasn't being the teacher or parent I wanted or needed to be.

Restrictive and Inappropriate: How High-stakes Testing & NCLB Abuse Sped Students

Friends of the the SOS March & National Call to Action blogged all this month about why they were marching in DC July 30th. And, today, we marched! I never wrote a post of my own, but this guest post by Chaya Rubenstein provides at least one reason for why I marched today and why I will continue to fight for real reform: federal education policy under Presidents W. Bush and now Obama such as NCLB and RTTT, and particularly high-stakes testing, are undermining quality public education. The effects of these policies on special education students are especially harmful and the special ed community has been especially under-represented (I, for example, have not blogged much at all about sped issues). 

Chaya is a retired special education teacher, and is a vice president of Professionals in Learning Disabilities & Special Education. In 1985, she was named Blue Island Teacher of the Year and, as such, was nominated for Illinois Teacher of the Year.  In 1999, her principal nominated her for a Golden Apple Award. Chaya is also a friend of the SOS March. Here's her post:

Not so long ago, teacher Paul Karrer's letter to President Obama in Education Week brought me to tears. Now here's another situation that brings me to tears: special education students who are forced to take high-stakes tests.

In Illinois, these tests are known as the ISATs. At the annual dinner for Professionals in Learning Disabilities & Special Ed., a colleague told me about a student in a self-contained classroom who eats paper. During the high-stakes testing of this past March, this student ate his test. In my experience, students hid under their desks, shaking, refusing to take the test. One student threw his three pointy and perfectly sharpened #3 pencils into the ceiling while loudly proclaiming, "Not taking this, not taking this, not taking this. . ." thus disrupting the other five students in the room, who then lost their concentration. The principal had to be buzzed to come and remove him, but brought him back to the room ten minutes later, saying he was now ready to test; the student repeated his previous behavior. Yet another student returned home from a vacation at 12:00 AM the morning of the test, not having gone to bed until 1:00 am. Her parents were called and yes, they insisted that she take the test; she fell asleep after the first fifteen minutes and continued to sleep throughout the rest of the testing that morning. Another student used her highlighting pen to fill in the bubbles on the answer sheet (remember, #3 pencils only!). One of MANY students with Attention Hyperactivity Disorder NOT on medication got up and wandered about the room during testing. These are but a few--I can assure you, there is no end to these stories!

The misery caused to many sped students (not to mention the loss of REAL education time spent otherwise on test preparation) aside, because they may comprise a subgroup large enough to be counted in the testing results, an entire school may not make average yearly progress. One of the most exceptional and high-performing schools in the country--New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois—was the subject of a Chicago Tribune editorial, "New Trier Gets an F." Why? New Trier did not make AYP this year because the sped subgroup had only 68% (the Math & Reading averaged together) “meet” or “exceed.” (& that percentage is undoubtedly one of the highest in the country for SpEd.—but not, according to the Feds—high enough.) At the middle school where I taught, our sped subgroup made AYP only one year out of six, but that year the English Language Learners (ELL) subgroup did not make it. The Illinois State Board of Education had been told to come up with a better form of testing within a certain time period, which it did not. Therefore, a month before the ISATs, though the ELL teachers had been given an alternative test—the Logaramos, I think—all of the bi-lingual teachers were told that they had to give their students the ISATs! All of us had been giving these tests for years, and we had begun prepping in September, using books and materials we'd already had. We, as Resource Teachers, scrambled, trying to help the teachers prep their students as best they could under the circumstances.

The result? A restructuring of our school, at a great loss to our children--a large number of teachers were sent to other schools, for example: the very dedicated and experienced art teacher (when told she was leaving, the kids asked, "What does art have to do with test scores?"); an extremely talented math teacher who had won a teaching award--sent to the Alternative Learning Center (and his kids had consistently earned the highest ISAT Math scores of the three grade levels!); the sixth grade social studies teacher who was sent to second grade (she tried, but she has been having a very difficult year, as she was a middle school expert and had never taught in the lower grades--now her job is in jeopardy); and, the learning disabilities resource teacher (whose students consistently scored well on the tests) was sent to be a fourth grade teacher. Feeling she could not successfully teach in that capacity, she resigned.

So, I ask: what was the gain here? The students lost many, many experienced, well-liked, respected and highly caring teachers because a small number of students--who shouldn't even be tested on these particular tests in the first place--did not make the grade. Many people do not understand that the alternative assessments are only given to those students who are “developmentally disabled” (the old classification was “mentally retarded”). Therefore, even if students have severe learning disabilities with social/emotional disorders, even if students have Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity (even just Attention Deficit Disorder is debilitating) and are not on medication (tending to be the case in low-income areas, where test scores tend to be lower), if the subgroup is large enough, test scores are counted, and the entire faculty is held accountable for them. (Our wonderful principal lost his position, as well.) Teachers who stayed on at the school do not think that the sped population's test scores improved this past year. (It has been said that the school did not pass this year, as well.) In fact, one of the sped teachers who was hired to replace another was recently fired for continual verbal abuse and for pushing a student. The learning disabilities resource teacher hired to replace another (this teacher not trained in specialized reading programs such as Wilson) is being re-placed into general ed reading and language position for next year.

But here is an even worse scenario: the new measure for determining learning disabilities (and it is supposed to be only for diagnosing learning disabilities, not for other learning problems) is now something called Response to Intervention (RTI), an agonizingly slow and often questionable (districts all over the country are utilizing/interpreting it in may different ways, with various, lengthy timetables) method. RTI is being used as an excuse to keep students from receiving sped services, thus accomplishing two things often beneficial to a school district, but not to the children: 1) the sped subgroup can be kept under the number that would make it eligible to be counted in the test results, and 2) school districts save money by not having to service these students.

Besides Mr. Karrer’s letter, Arne Duncan's recent dialogue in April with the Council for Exceptional Children, prompted me to write this. In it, Secretary Duncan acknowledges that sped students are testing behind the general population, and yet, even though the kids are not reading/working at grade level, they still need to be involved in this testing and must be tested at grade level in order to “raise the bar” and have high expectations set for them, so that they will be able go to college! Having been a sped teacher for thirty-five years, every dedicated teacher I know has the highest expectations for his/her students. I, for one, expected that ALL my students could succeed in college (I taught LD resource) and always told these middle school students--as well as their parents--to start researching colleges.

Yet, I ask, what does that have to do with this ludicrous testing program?! How does this help them go to college? A highly touted school here in Chicago, Urban Prep, had 100% of its students accepted to college; however, the school's test scores have been poor: the school has not made A.Y.P. It serves as proof that students can and will do well in their studies, even if they don't necessarily test well.

Finally, some time ago, I had read in the National Education Association Advocate about a group of special education teachers who did not administer state tests to their students as it was believed (as per school board policy &/or by union contract) that parents could refuse to have their children tested. As the teachers were charged to do so, they asked all the parents if they wanted their children tested. The parents said no, and the testing day(s) came and went with the teachers actually teaching and not testing their classes. Subsequently, the teachers were reprimanded for this, having letters placed into their files, along with other sanctions.

In conclusion, it is my hope and the hope of my colleagues that the mandated testing of all sped students will stop this year. Some sped students should be tested, of course, but that needs to be determined on a case-by-case basis (to be written into the I.E.P.) by teachers and parents. This is but part of a greater solution to repair our federal government’s damaging, restrictive, and inappropriate education policies, but it will help enormously. Our students deserve no less.

Save Our Schools & the Future of Our Democratic Society!

Just as our country is now suffering from the effects of disaster capitalism, our public schools are suffering from the effects of disaster education reform. Although President Obama recently sounded impressive on education policy, his Secretary of Education Duncan continues to plow ahead with anti-democratic, anti-intellectual, and faith-based education reforms, which leads me to believe that Obama's recent comments were merely part of a good cop-bad cop routine. Veteran teacher and Education Week blogger Anthony Cody has a must-read series of blog posts featuring questions about the Obama administration's education policies in the context of the President's recent remarks as well as DOE's responses to the questions.

My state of Virginia did not "compete" for Race to the Top funding and has not signed on to the Commmon Core Curriculum and Standards. (In fact, Governor McDonnell said the standards were why Virginia would not enter the competition.) In theory, I am in favor of a basic national curriculum and standards. We desperately need to establish as Robert Pondiscio of the Core Knowledge Foundation says, "what it means to be a well-educated American and a realistic and nuanced concept of how to achieve it."

But I share California teacher David Cohen's skepticism of the current core curriculum and standards initiative because I believe it will come with all kinds of strings and high-stakes standardized tests attached. In fact it seems that the standards are being developed not to improve the quality of education US students would receive, but to develop corresponding, profit-making tests. Given the poor quality of so much that is coming out of DOE (Race to the Top, anyone?) and given who is behind those initiatives (oligarchs and disaster capitalists, anyone?) I have little trust that the quality of CCSA will be very good. Moreover, why should states sign on to standards before they've been finalized, before they've been shown any evidence that they'd meaningfully improve student learning, or if the national standards are inferior to what a state already has in place? (I'm thinking specifically about the debate over lowering standards in Massachusetts and, if I recall correctly, how NCLB requirements serve to undermine the quality of terrific ESOL programs such as in Fairfax and Arlington, Virginia.)

Virginia adopted their Standards of Learning even before No Child Left Behind was enacted. There are SOLs for English, mathematics, science, history/social science, technology, the fine arts, foreign language, health and physical education, and driver education with corresponding tests in reading, writing, math, science, and social studies. On the one hand, this means that topics beyond reading and math skills don't get neglected, just as NCLB assures that demographic sub-groups aren't neglected. Plus, it's good to have a basic curriculum and standards in place, especially for those who need guidance (and see above), but there are two problems with the SOLs.

For one, my experience as a secondary social studies teacher was that the Social Studies Standards of Learning for each class cover so much that the teacher can not stray or go in depth. It's like travelling around the world and visiting one city per day, when it would be a far superior educational experience to spend more time in a few countries, and study them in depth. Also, all tests except for the writing one are multiple choice; there's a lot of valuable content and skills that are not tested, and hence not often taught. Now, this doesn't affect as much those students in higher level classes such as honors, IB, or AP classes since their curricula are often much more rigorous, but students who don't take those classes are getting the shaft. For an elaboration on this, I refer you to this excellent article by Richmond-based education journalist Chris Dovi and to the post I wrote about it.

Although I can't stand the anti-worker, pro-corporate, anti-woman, anti-LGBT, anti-environment mainstream politics in Virginia, this is at least one time I'm glad for pro-local control. For the most part, decisions about human resources, curricula, instruction, assessment, and school reform should be made at the state, district, and school levels, and not at the federal level (again, I am theoretically in favor of basic common core standards). The Department of Education should be there, for example, to ensure equality of funding, to ensure non-discriminatory practices, as well as to conduct research and evaluate the efficacy of federally-funded programs. Although Virginia has made some valiant efforts to shake free of NCLB's and DOE's micro-managing and disastrous policies, NCLB still lowers the quality of education in Virginia that I as a teacher was forced to offer and that now my children's teachers are forced to offer.

I am all in favor of education reform, but I want it to be thoughtfully done with its goal being to address the whole child and to bring more meaningful learning and higher quality teaching to classrooms. And this is what is so wrong with the disaster education reformers: They put ideology and politics before all else--before research-based results, before cost-efficiency, before best practices, before expertise, before communities, and before children's need for a rich and meaningful education. Certainly, we should each be allowed a modicum of ideology, and politics are part of life, but when they undermine all that is reasonable, practical, and meaningful, I say: Enough.

For that reason I am headed to the SOS March & National Call to Action taking place this July. I urge parents, educators, and concerned community members across Virginia, and America, to sign on. It's one thing for lawmakers and the Department of Education and to ruin careers, but when when they start ruining the education and future of my children and of America's children, when the existence of the vital democratic institution of public education is threatened, the line must be drawn.

I'm looking for an ethos and a philosophy of education to stand behind, not an ideology. I think people subscribing to all philosophies of governance can find common cause here. For the future of our children, we demand:

Equitable funding for all public school communities

·        Equitable funding across all public schools and school systems

·        Full public funding of family and community support services

·        Full funding for 21st century school and neighborhood libraries            

·        End to economically and racially re-segregated schools

  End to high stakes testing for student, teacher, and school evaluation

·        Multiple and varied assessments to evaluate students, teachers and schools     

·        No pay per test performance for teachers and administrators

·        End to public school closures based upon test performance

    Curriculum developed for and by local school communities

·       Support teacher and student access to a wide-range of instructional programs and technologies

·       Well-rounded education that develops every students’ intellectual, creative, and physical potential                  

·       Opportunities for multicultural/multilingual curriculum for all students

·       Small class sizes that foster caring, democratic learning communities    

                              

Teacher, family and community leadership in forming public education policies

·       Educator and civic community leadership in drafting of new ESEA legislation

·       Federal support for local school programs free of punitive and competitive funding

·       End political and corporate control of curriculum, instruction and assessment decisions

For More Information, Contact

SaveOurSchoolsMarch@gmail.com

Save Our Schools March

6470 Freetown Rd. Suite 200, # 72

Columbia, Maryland 21044

Or Visit Us At

www.SaveOurSchoolsMarch.org