Teacher: Kids are judged by their test scores — not by their character
It has become a common refrain among school reformers that annual standardized testing equals civil rights. In the last few years, some civil rights groups have sided with those reformers who see standardized tests as a singularly legitimate way of assessing student growth, and they have criticized parents who have refused to allow their children to take such exams.
Last year, for example, a dozen civil rights group, including The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, released a statement opposing Common Core testing opt-out efforts by parents and others, saying that the tests are valuable to students of color and those from low-income families who have been ignored in the past by school systems. The statement said in part:
Data obtained through some standardized tests are particularly important to the civil rights community because they are the only available, consistent, and objective source of data about disparities in educational outcomes, even while vigilance is always required to ensure tests are not misused.
A number of organizations — including other civil rights groups — came out against the statement, noting that it is the high-stakes tests and the misuse of the results that are harmful, not parents who are opting their children out of taking these exams. They also noted that there is no evidence that high-stakes tests improve the quality of education or help close achievement gaps. Yet the notion persists that the civil rights of minority and low-income students will be violated if standardized tests are not used as one — if not the — key measure of student growth.
As the country is about to mark a national holiday to honor civil rights hero Martin Luther King Jr., here is a piece on this testing-equals-civil rights issue. It was written by Steven Singer, a veteran Nationally Board Certified Teacher in Pennsylvania with a masters degree in education. He is a husband, father, blogger and education advocate who teaches eighth-grade Language Arts at a suburban school near Pittsburgh. He gave me permission to republish this post, which first appeared on his GADFLYONTHEWALLBLOG. Singer’s classes are made up of roughly 70 percent minority students, and an even higher percentage of his students come from low socioeconomic status Teacher: Kids are judged by their test scores — not by their character - The Washington Post: