A group of teachers in New York City
wrote an impassioned plea against the market-based reforms of the Bush-Obama
era. It has since been signed by parents and educators from across the nation.
It takes a strong position against high-stakes testing and the standardization
of the Common Core. Read this letter and
consider signing it.This is the beginning:
We have neglected an important debate on
the purpose and promise of public education while students have been subjected
to years of experimental and shifting high-stakes tests with no proven
correlation between those tests and future academic success. The tests have
been routinely flawed in design and scoring, and do not meaningfully inform
classroom instruction. Test scores have also been misapplied to the evaluation
of teachers and schools, creating a climate of sanctions that is misguided and
unsupportive.
“In your first speech as Chancellor,
you spoke of the importance of critical thinking, or a “thinking curriculum” in
education. We know you to be a proponent of critical pedagogy, part of the
progressive education tradition. As teachers, we hold critical thinking and
critical literacies in highest regard. As professionals, we resolve to not be
passive consumers of education marketing or unthinking implementers of unproven
policy reforms.
We believe critical thinking, artistry, and democracy to be
among the cornerstones of public education. We want creative, “thinking”
students who are equipped to be the problem solvers of today and tomorrow;
equipped to tackle our most vexing public problems: racial and economic
disparity, discrimination, homelessness, hunger, violence, environmental
degradation, public health, and all other problems foreseen and unforeseen.
We
want students to love learning and to be insatiable in their inquiries.
However, it is a basic truism of classroom life and sound pedagogy that
institutional policies should reflect the values and habits of mind we intend
to impart on our students. It becomes incongruous, therefore, to charge our
students to think critically and question, while burdening our schools with
policies that frustrate teachers’ efforts to implement a “thinking curriculum,”
perpetuating historic inequalities in public education.
“The
“Crisis of Education” and a Crisis of Pedagogy
“Business leaders and economists
have used reductive arguments to identify a “crisis of education” while
branding educational success words such as achievement, effectiveness, and
performance as synonymous with standardized test scores. The majority of
education policy decisions are now guided by test scores, making standardized
tests an indispensable product.
Market-based reforms have been an excellent
model of corporate demand creation–branding the disease and selling the cure.
Stanford education professor Linda-Darling Hammond described policymakers’
mistaken reliance on standardized tests when she wrote, “There is a saying that
American students are the most tested, and the least examined, of any in the
world. We test students in the U.S. far more than any other nation, in the
mistaken belief that testing produces greater learning.”
“The narrow pursuit of test results
has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity
in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science,
the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum
development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy,
a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising”
instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and
our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we
are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer
resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical
decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.
For-Profit
Standardized Tests as Snake Oil
“The keystone of market-based
reforms–highly dependent on the mining and misuse of quantifiable data–has been
the outsourcing of standardized test production to for-profit education
corporations. In New York State, a single British-based corporation, Pearson
PLC, manages standardized testing for grades 3-8, gifted and talented testing,
college-based exams for prospective teachers, and New York State teacher
certification exams. Contracts currently held by Pearson include: $32.1 million
five-year contract, which began in 2011, for the creation of English Language
Arts and Math assessments; $6.2 million three-year contract in 2012 to create
an online education data portal; $1 million five-year contract, which began in
2010, to create and administer field tests; $200,000 contract through the
Office of General Services for books and materials.
“Pearson’s management of testing in
New York has resulted in a series of high-profile errors. In 2012, questions
pertaining to an 8th grade ELA passage about a pineapple and a hare had to be
thrown out after they were found to be nonsensical. It was also discovered that
test questions had been previously used by Pearson in other state exams.
In total,
29 questions had to be eliminated from the tests that year, prompting New York
State Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch to comment, “The mistakes that
have been revealed are really disturbing. What happens here as a result of
these mistakes is that it makes the public at large question the efficacy of
the state testing system.” That same year, 7,000 elementary and middle school
students were banned from their graduation ceremonies after they were
mistakenly recorded as having failed their state tests…….