Children Psychologically Imprisoned?: Whistleblower Reveals High-States Testing Preparation
I’ll admit it. When A Terrifying Report about Child Abuse in Texas Schools–and in Your State Too first ran about a month ago on Diane Ravitch’s blog— it flew under my radar. The post detailed the allegations of child abuse for the purposes of high-stakes testing at an high-minority, Title I East Austin elementary school near downtown. ThenAngela Valenzuela, a UT-Austin Professor and longtime crusader against the abuses of high-stakes testing, brought it back into the public discourse via an public email recently (Check out her blog Educational Equity, Politics & Policy in Texas). So what has Austin ISD promoted as test preparation in many of its high-minority, Title I elementary schools? Here are some excerpts from Ravitch’s original blog:
Re: Report of Psychological Abuse in An AISD Elementary SchoolDear Senator Nelson & HHS Committee,I am writing to report my observations of psychological abuse in a public elementary school in AISD. I am providing this report to your committee as my professional responsibility and according to the Texas Family Code. The conditions and methods described in this report can be confirmed by mental health experts as factors which are known to contribute to mental illness and criminality when used for conditioning and shaping behavior in young children…The New 3 R’s System was designed by a former structural engineer who became a principal in AISD. He designed his own program of behavioral engineering and experimented on the general elementary school population of minority students ages 4 – 11. It was a successful and efficient method of getting high performance on tests, and led to his school receiving an Exemplary performance rating on statewide testing and national recognition for his school. This high performance recognition led to the