Littleton Public Schools, Colorado: Will You Stand on the Right Side of History?
Last Thursday night I addressed the Littleton School Board. See video here. Here are my comments.
My name is Peggy Robertson. My son, Sam, is a sophomore at Littleton High School. I am a teacher in the Aurora Public School District and I am also one of the founders of United Opt Out National, an activist group which works hard to end the privatization of public schools. I want to thank all of you tonight for doing your civic duty to support public schools and to support children, teachers, and the communities within the Littleton School District.
Tonight I want to talk about the truth. I want to talk about what is really happening in our public schools today and I am going to ask that everyone here consider this truth, and consider our civic duty, our moral obligation, to expose this truth and educate the Littleton school community.
The truth is this. The truth is that our public schools are using high stakes testing to punish students, school communities and now, under SB191, the testing will punish teachers. The testing creates an environment that is fear-based, shaming, and demands teaching to the test. In Aurora, where I work as a literacy coach at an elementary school, I have had only 4 weeks of the year which were uninterrupted by testing. The tests consume our year and create a system which develops compliant test takers. These tests deny our children authentic learning experiences. They deny our teachers the ability to teach.
I would ask that the school board and the administrators take a lead in exposing this testing profit machine for what it is. It is a system that profits corporations on the backs of children and teachers. The common core standards and the national tests are a cash cow for the corporations. The profit of the testing industry has increased 57% in the last three years. Under SB191, this system will demand teaching to the test like never before. These high stakes testing mandates reward only the very privileged – yet even these rewards are hallow – as these test scores simply point to zipcode.
Littleton Public Schools has done quite well under this high stakes testing regime. Children from affluent neighborhoods often do well on these high stakes tests. It doesn't mean that these children are smarter than other children, it simply means Peg with Pen: Littleton Public Schools, Colorado: Will You Stand on the Right Side of History?: