I hate to say it, but we told you so.
For years, I’ve listened to and met with teachers and parents who poured their hearts out, telling me horror stories about the effects of overtesting and its high-stakes consequences.
Parents like Christine McGoey, who organized an opt-out movement at her son’s school because she was so frustrated by high-stakes tests that weren’t age-appropriate or aligned with the curriculum — like many parents in New York, where nearly 1 in 5 opted their children out of standardized tests this year.
Teachers like Daniel Santos of Houston and Sheri Lederman of Great Falls, N.Y., who won awards one year and were marked ineffective the next — based on standardized tests that didn’t even align with the curriculum.
Teachers like Susan Bowles of Gainesville, who risked her job and refused to administer Florida’s tests rather than lose up to six weeks of instructional time.
Teachers and their unions have been telling policymakers that the testing fixation is educational malpractice, but they got nowhere for years.
I’ve been telling these stories from every soapbox I could find. Yet, when it mattered, lawmakers either paid lip service to the concerns or out and out rejected them. Instead, they listened to the billionaire hedge fund managers, Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs and wealthy foundations that pedaled a combination of austerity and testing, arguing that teaching can be boiled down to an algorithm based on a child’s math and English standardized test scores.
But now, it’s not “just” teachers. The 47th annual poll from Phi Delta Kappa and Gallup — the gold standard for public opinion on education issues — was just released. And Americans are pretty clear about what they want and don’t want from their policymakers when it comes to education.
The question now is will policymakers listen to people’s voices? Will the need to invest in education and common sense trump the test-and-sanction ideology fueled by money and marketers?
Sixty-four percent of Americans believe too much emphasis is put on standardized tests, according to the latest annual PDK/Gallup poll. In no uncertain terms, Americans are saying it’s time to end the obsession with — and misuse of — testing. And if the Every Child Achieves Act makes its way through Congress, we might just be able to end the worst of those practices.
But the fight won’t be easy.
Over the past 20 years, “reform” proponents — led by familiar names like Jeb Bush, Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein — have sold the snake-oil idea that we can measure teaching and learning with a standardized test and fire our way to great schools. And from the media to statehouses to the halls of Congress, it seems like the farther people are from the classroom, the more I hate to say it, but we told you so. — Schoolhouse Voices — Medium:
