“White Girl” Kati Haycock Takes On Marc Tucker and His Dissing Annual Testing
On May 28, 2015, National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) president Marc Tucker wrote a piece for Ed Week in which he argued against the utility of annual testing. Below is an excerpt from his post:
…The data show that, although the performance of poor and minority students improved after passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, it was actually improving at a faster rate before the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act. Over the 15-year history of the No Child Left Behind Act, there is no data to show that it contributed to improved student performance for poor and minority students at the high school level, which is where it counts.Those who argue that annual accountability testing of every child is essential for the advancement of poor and minority children ought to be able to show that poor and minority children perform better in education systems that have such requirements and worse in systems that don’t have them. But that is simply not the case. Many nations that have no annual accountability testing requirements have higher average performance for poor and minority students and smaller gaps between their performance and the performance of majority students than we do here in the United States. How can annual testing be a civil right if that is so?
In order to prove Tucker wrong, all one must do is refute the claims he makes based upon testing data available pre-NCLB and then during NCLB.
One could also attempt to show that some other nations without annual testing, their minority children demonstrate “achievement gaps” on international tests or based upon some other outcome, such as secondary school graduation.
But Education Trust president Kati Haycock chose another route in contesting Tucker’s claims:
The daytime television route.
In her June 4, 2015, Education Post rebuttal, Haycock jumps out of her daytime-TV chair, knocking it back as she rushes forward to get in Tucker’s face while declaring that she, “even a white girl,” can register what is Tucker’s obvious insult: That the civil rights community could possibly be injuring children by insisting upon annual standardized testing.
No such drama was necessary. All Haycock had to do was refute Tucker’s evidence.
She did not.
Instead, she goes on to write (in the $12 million, Walton-Broad-Bloomberg-funded, corporate-reform Education Post) that she– the white girl– is there to call Tucker out on behalf of a group of 12 civil rights organizations that she admittedly did not join with in their May 5, 2015, formal declaration against opting out.
In her Education Post entry, Haycock states she could refute Tucker’s evidence but that the real issue is his insult to those civil rights orgs that may or may not speak up for themselves:
If it mattered, I would refute Tucker’s assertions one by one. That would be easy, for the “evidence” he puts forth is weak. His suggestion, in particular, that these organizations are blind to the problems inherent in standardized testing should give pause to any knowledgeable reader, for these very organizations have fought against the misuse of tests for decades.
If test results are really what matters, why not present the evidence? Are the only “knowledgeable readers” the ones that already agree with Haycock– and therefore do not need to see any pesky evidence?
And actually, it is possible for an organization to “fight against the misuse of tests for decades” and not succeed in such a fight. But this concept, Haycock dismisses out of hand.
Continuing:
Instead of providing evidence of other nations that have successfully used annual