John Thompson: Oklahoma's Chief for Change Barresi in Trouble With Voters
Guest post by John Thompson.
When I attended last year's Oklahoma Department of Education Vision 2020 annual conference, I put on a brave face, suggesting we were enduring the darkness before the dawn. We had just started enforcing the graduation law requiring high school students to pass four End of Instruction (EOI) tests, and the 2013 dropout rate in Oklahoma City had immediately doubled. This upcoming year (2014) we would start requiring 3rd graders to pass a reading test, meaning that thousands of young children would be retained. The new A-F Report Card would soon declare 2/3rds of urban schools as "D" or "F" schools.
The political domination of State Superintendent "Chief for Change" Janet Barresi and the Republicans who controlled the legislative and executive branches was unassailable.
I honestly believed that Oklahoma's decision to withdraw from the Common Core PARCC testing consortium was a big deal, but there was no denying that it was the Tea Party, not educators who drove that victory. A year ago, there was no way of knowing that coalitions of teachers, superintendents, liberal faith organizations, bloggers, and unions would join the battle.
PARCC's replacement, "Common Core-type" tests could be just as destructive. For instance, because the college readiness version of the Biology EOI was not yet ready, and because blood-in-their-eyes reformers demanded more rigor, the advice of experts was ignored. An artificially high passing score was set, arbitrarily increasing the failure rate, sending the message that the Barresi administration was chomping at the bit and willing to take its pounds of flesh out of students when implementing its test and punish regime.
This month, after the national NEA and AFT conventions, I also saw the glass as half full. In fact, I saw it as 2/3rds or 3/4ths full. Both produced significant and incremental victories, challenging Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Common Core, and testing. I knew that President Obama wouldn't fire Duncan. I knew that the testing moratorium supported by the Gates Foundation would be used by them to reorganize and continue to fight for corporate reform. But, the same applies to us - the teachers known as "the Resistance." We should proclaim our recent victories as we gird for a battle to the end against high stakes testing, competition-driven reform, and the elites who profit from market-driven reform.
I certainly claim no omniscience, especially in terms of national political strategy. I know that we teachers who oppose corporate reform must remain united. However, my experience this week helps explain why I believe we must take more time to celebrate our victories. If we can win in John Thompson: Oklahoma's Chief for Change Barresi in Trouble With Voters - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher: