EMPATHY V. CRITICISM: HOW TO RESPOND TO THOSE WHO THINK MORE TESTING IS NEEDED TO IMPROVE PUBLIC EDUCATION
On Sunday January 11, 2015, a group of 19 civil rights organizations released a statement that outlined their shared principles regarding the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Of the seven recommendations, there is one that has many education activists a bit alarmed by the position these groups are taking,
“Annual, statewide assessments for all students (in grades 3-8 and at least once in high school) that are aligned with, and measure each student’s progress toward meeting, the state’s college and career-ready standards…”
In 2001 ESEA was reauthorized under President George W. Bush and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was birthed. For many teachers NCLB was the starting point for testing mania that has taken over public education today. Under NCLB public schools that received Title I funding were forced to test all students each year, make public the results of those tests based on race, and make adequate yearly progress (AYP) or risk being turned into a charter school. And of course the mandate came with no funding for schools that were already witnessing declining budget allocations in many states.
Since 2001 public education has been the target of education reformers who believe that more testing especially high stakes testing, and firing teachers based on test scores is what low-income, minority, and special needs children need to succeed. Unfortunately President Obama made things worse when he instituted Race to the Top which is NCLB on steroids…more testing, more charters, and more evaluation of teachers based on their ability to increase test scores. Many teachers have publicly left the teaching profession due to the excessive testing and impossible mandates. And more and more parents are choosing to opt their children out of standardized testingwhile some teachers are refusing to administer tests they believe are not an accurate measure of what a student has learned.
Despite the growing anti-testing movement, civil rights groups like the NAACP and Children’s Defense Fund, believe that testing is needed to ensure equity and fairness for all children. This belief is perplexing to those who see the damage excessive testing has done to all children. An article by Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post criticizes this decision by asking what are all those civil rights groups thinking? What is missing in the article is an attempt to find out why so many civil rights organizations believe that yearly standardized testing is the best way to close the achievement gap. For many parents of black and brown children, they saw NCLB as the first time schools were forced to admit that they were not doing a good educating their children. The mandates required each school to disaggregate the test scores by race and gender. This made it painfully obvious which schools were not producing satisfactory levels of achievement in minority students. We always knew there was an achievement gap between black and Latino students and their white counterparts, but now we can see what the gap looks like in every school. And now these schools have no choice but to make sure these students improve their scores or risk being labeled as failing and forced into an improvement plan.
On the surface this line of thinking makes sense. Before NCLB many schools could hide the fact that some groups of students were not doing well. Many parents believed that prior to NCLB some teachers and schools did not try to educate all students, especially students of color. Given the racial history of public schools this is not an outlandish conspiracy theory. Since public schools were legally mandated to end segregated schooling, disparities in achievement and equity have plagued black and brown children. Any student of color in the U.S. can describe to you at least one racist encounter they experienced in public schools. The fact is public education in the U.S. was not designed to serve children of color well. This does not mean that all teachers are racist, but it should shed light on why civil rights groups might welcome testing that appears to hold schools accountable for the education of all children.
Yes there is racism in public schools. There will always be some type of racism in every aspect of American culture and institutions. But the solution to dealing with racism in education is NOT mandated testing. Testing shows us that there is an achievement gap but that gap cannot be closed through more testing. The results of standardized testing tells us more about the income level of families and less about what a student has learned or how good Empathy v. Criticism: How to Respond to Those Who Think More Testing is Needed to Improve Public Education - emPower magazine:
