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We need to be united in the fight against fascism and repression.
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We need to be united in the fight against fascism and repression.
In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together.
We need to be united in the fight against fascism and repression.
In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together.
FILM: Documentaries are alive and well at Sundance.
Tony Kushner, Native Son
By Barry Joseph
INTERVIEW: The playwright on America, Israel and terror.
February 1, 2002
Test Unrest
California teachers are leading a backlash against high-stakes
exams.
by David Bacon
Oakland, California
Remember spring fever? The slow time at school, when sleepy students looked
out the window after lunch, waiting for the bell?
"Teaching is a combination of a science and an art," says Berkeley teacher Barry Fyke.
pring has become a more serious season these days. As warm weather arrives
in California classrooms, schools have gone test-crazy as students prepare for
the state-mandated STAR (Standardized Testing and Reporting) exam. Teachers
begin teaching the test, as they call it, although many do so with
great trepidation.
When the results finally come in, every school in California gets rated and
ranked. Then the state begins handing out cash awards to teachers and school
personnel based on the test scores. In October, California gave financial bonuses
to teachers at 304 schools. Some received $5,000 apiece, a smaller number $10,000,
and an even more select group $25,000 each. But instead of being overjoyed by
the largess, many educators felt as if they were being bribed.
Reva Kidd decided to use her award for a purpose not intended by the state.
The English-immersion teacher at Berkeleys Cragmont School donated some
of her $10,000 to a fund that is redistributing awards among all Berkeley teachers
and some for a field trip for one of her colleagues classes. But she directed
the rest of her money to Cal CARE, an advocacy group that organizes parents
and faculty against high-stakes testing. Its dirty money,
Kidd charges. Weve had to fight hard for adequate salaries, but
this money is a bribe to make us complacent in the face of changes that are
hurting students and teachers alike.
The testing juggernaut has swept aside concerns over developing curricula that
value a diversity of cultures and encourage critical thinking among students.
Yet behind the conservative rhetoric of high expectations and accountability
is the fact that schools in poor communities simply do not provide an education
equal to those in affluent neighborhoods. Now President Bush has made standardized
testing the centerpiece of his new education bill, which mandates nationwide
exams for grades three through eight. Instead of channeling the enormous resources
those schools would need to make up for social inequality, Washington has linked
federal education funding with improved test scores, further punishing those
schools that underachieve.
Kidd isnt alone, and her doubts are commonly heard from parents and educators
nationwide. Students at schools in New York and Massachusetts refused to take
mandated standardized tests, risking their academic futures. Backlash from Wisconsin
parents forced the state legislature to kill a proposed high-school graduation
exam. In Cleveland, the NAACP filed a lawsuit charging that the Ohio Proficiency
Test is racially biased, one of many such legal challenges. But the actions
in the Bay Area mark the first time teachers themselves have taken such an active
role in challenging the exams.
These educators argue that the tests are biased against the poor and minorities
and transform education into a kind of testing Olympics. High-stakes tests
force us to teach in a way in which high scores become the most important goal,
explains Terry Fletcher, a third-grade teacher from Thousand Oaks Elementary
School. Teachers are forced to cram information into students, but not
to encourage critical thinking or broader knowledge. Theres no emphasis
on art or music or even social studies. Testing really turns us into worse teachers.
n California, the individual Certificated Staff Performance awards (like Kidds)
are supplemented by the Academic Performance Index awards, which were sent to
4,800 schools across the state that made the largest increases in STAR scores.
The API awardswhich totaled $350 million statewideare divided among
all school personnel, from the principal to the janitors. In announcing the
awards programs, Gov. Gray Davis implied that the most deserving schools would
be those in the poorest communities. The theory went that teachers there, presumably
motivated by cash prizes, would inspire pupils to make big jumps in test scores.
Instead the money has gone to places such as San Franciscos Lowell High
Schoolthe citys premier elite campuswhere students are selected
based on their previous high academic achievement. Yet the teachers at Lowell,
who each received $591 under the API program, were some of the first to voice
opposition to the awards. Lowell teachers decided to encourage voluntary donations
to a scholarship fund for students at schools that didnt receive the award.
Ken Tray, the schools union representative, says teachers supported the
idea because the awards seem like a backdoor merit-pay system. Even
Lowells principal contributed his award to the fund. Dont
get me wrongweve got great faculty here at Lowell, and as teachers
we certainly deserve more money, Tray adds. But our friends and
colleagues at Balboa High, for instance, also work their tails off. The awards
are a slap in the face for them, not recognizing the hard work they do.
In Berkeley, teachers went even further. The Berkeley Federation of Teachers
won an agreement from the district that teachers would be allowed to indicate
on a payroll form their preference for using their money as Reva Kidd didredistribution
to all teachers, a field trip fund, or donating it to Cal CARE. Berkeley teachers
have turned in about $20,000 so far. The union then drew up a petition opposing
the use of standardized tests entirely. Nearly half of Berkeleys 600 K-12
teachers signed on. Among other objections, the petition declared that the test
is racially, culturally and socio-economically biased, unfair, and inappropriate
for our students.
I think some appreciate the money in a profession in which we arent
paid as professionals, says union leader Barry Fyke. But a majority
of teachers dont think testing and prizes are a very effective way to
ensure accountability. Teaching is a combination of a science and an art, and
should be evaluated in the classroom, rather than using money as a bribe to
get kids to perform well on tests.
hats driving the relentless push for standardized testing? There are
numerous factors, ranging from political ambition to genuine frustration of
parents and teachers with the failures of the public school system to educate
its students. Also backing the growth in testing is the so-called standards
and accountability movement. This is not a grassroots effort, but the work of
organizations like the Pew Charitable Trust, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson
Institute and corporate CEOs such as IBMs Lou Gerstner. Big corporations
like IBM, Proctor and Gamble and Eastman Kodak are very up-front about their
agenda, says Mary OBrien, an Ohio parent who led protests against
standardized testing in her state. They want schools to educate students
to their specifications. They want education centered on testing, and curriculum
aligned to the tests.
But testing gets a big boost from another important and often overlooked source:
the testing companies themselves. School districts and state governments are
spending huge sums on testing and standards. Test publishers divide a testing
market that was estimated at $218.7 million in 1999 by the Association of American
Publishers. Dominating the field are three big publishers: McGraw-Hill, Harcourt
and Houghton-Mifflin. Rising profits for these companies are practically guaranteed
under Bushs education bill, which makes use of their products mandatory.
Test contracts are lucrative. California, for example, granted Harcourt a 5-year,
$60 million contract to administer and score the STAR tests in 1997. In doing
so, then Gov. Pete Wilson cut short a process in which state educators had spent
years developing a set of core curriculum standards. The so-called CLAS test,
designed to assess knowledge of that curriculum, was attacked for efforts to
incorporate cultural diversity and dumped. To force the legislature to immediately
adopt an off-the-shelf test, Wilson withheld $200 million in school funding
until lawmakers agreed.
Twenty states already work with publishers to come up with standards for what
students are expected to know. Its a wise state that seeks the advice
of a publisher when formulating standards, to ensure theyre rigorous and
not too vague, explains Maureen DiMarco, the former California secretary
of education under Wilson, whos now vice president for education and government
at Houghton-Mifflin.
The company that helps develop the standards has a better chance at getting
the bid for the testand an advantage in selling more textbooks. Beginning
in 1985, for instance, Harcourt developed the now famous Texas Academic Assessment
Skills (TAAS) test. Texas currently contracts for test development with National
Computer Systems (NCS) for $20 million a year. NCS in turn subcontracts to Harcourt,
which gets another $2.8 million a year for developing TAAS study guides. Harcourts
textbooks were marketed to local districts around the state with a flier stating:
Why choose Harcourt Brace for your math program? ... [It is the] only
program to have texts written by the same company that helps to write the TAAS
tests. Harcourt later discontinued the promotion. But according to the
Texas Education Agency, the company sold $25 million worth of elementary school
math textbooks to the state in 1999.
Test-scoring is also a growing source of revenue. NCS scores Ohios tests
for about $10 million a year. But Ohio parents got a surprise in 1998, when
they discovered that ninth- and 12th-grade students had their essays graded
by a subcontractor, Measurement Inc. For $1.4 million a year, the company employed
temporary workers at close to minimum wage in a North Carolina strip mall. These
workers, who had no teaching experience or education credentials, spent about
two minutes looking over each paper.
Back in California, Harcourt was penalized $1.1 million in August 1999 for
late reporting of test results and 100,000 mistaken reports, which had to be
recalled after being sent to parents. Last fall, Harcourt again botched scoring
of the STAR exam in eight districts. By using norms from the wrong period, student
scores were artificially elevated.
Technical errors arent the only problems with the tests. In Cleveland,
the NAACP charged the Ohio Proficiency Test with being racially biased after
no student in five schools in poor urban areas passed all sections. Two Harcourt
tests were recently charged with being discriminatory to African-American students,
when they were used as a basis for admission to a New Orleans high school. For
the 1997-1998 school year, 763 students took the tests, of whom 44 percent were
black and 42 percent were white. Of the 347 who passed, 27 percent were black
and 59 percent were white. The school district was suedan increasingly
common experience for districts and states using standardized tests. DiMarco
says, Its hard to have a test that doesnt get sued.
But its the state or school district that has to mount a defense and
bear the legal costs, not the publisher. Yet DiMarco admits that the tests do
measure social and economic conditions. Children from poor communities
go to schools which dont have resources and use less effective methods
of instruction, she says. The implications of whats being
measured are very deep. Poor kids can learn just as well as higher-income kids.
Theyre just not getting the resources they need.
ut California teachers say greater resources should be going to the schools
themselves, not the testing companies. We need more than just a gimmick,
says Fyke, the Berkeley teachers union president. What people want is
accountability from both teachers and students, and thats good. But what
we have is a method designed by people far from the classroom.
Cautious in the way he frames the reasons for opposition, Fyke also proposes
an alternative. We have to identify what the expectations really are,
he says. These should be developed by teachers, parents and researchers.
We need to assess more difficult thingsthe ability of students to solve
math problems and write creatively, their knowledge of social studies, their
highest thinking skills, their ability to take initiative and accept responsibility,
and their emotional intelligence. We expect teachers to be able to impart all
these things, and so we should. But I would welcome a process of assessment
which actually measured this.
Many students are even more direct. We know what needs to be done to
make our school better, and the test doesnt help at all, says Fadeelah
Muhyee, a 12th grader at Oakland High School. We dont have enough
books. There are no counselors. Theres a lot of unevenness among teachers,
and theres no ethnic studies. Now they just want teachers to teach to
the test. We dont need a test to show us that were at the bottomwe
already know that.
These sentiments could lead to a boycott of the test this springas has
happened in other parts of the country. If that happens, Berkeley and Oakland
will be a likely point of origin. Naomi Katz, whose child goes to Oaklands
Crocker Highlands Elementary School, works part-time for Cal CARE and hopes
to organize a mass opt-out in Oakland in the spring. The test just highlights
the inequity of resources, she charges. It absorbs huge amounts
of money we need to fix deteriorating schools, to hire and train fully credentialed
teachers, and for developing a meaningful curriculum.
Maureen Katz (no relation), mother of a third-grader at Berkeleys Rosa
Parks Elementary, says the only reservation she has about that prospect is the
fact that Rosa Parks teachers donated their prize money this year to the school
itself. The school, rebuilt as a result of parent pressure, is the only elementary
school in Berkeley west of San Pablo Avenue, in one of the citys poorest
communities. As parents, its hard to say we dont want that
money, she says. But if that were out of the equation, Id
like to see parents organize a boycott.
Turning in the award money is just one indication that many teachers are likely
to support such a move. They are already notifying parents in a number of East
Bay classrooms that they can fill in forms which allow their children to opt
out of the test. Gail Mendez, a teacher at Bayview Elementary School in Richmond,
says that despite some of the lowest teacher salaries in the state, she couldnt
in good conscience accept her $591. I tell my fourth graders that you
have to stand up for what you believe in, she says. How could I
face them if I took this money?
We need to be united in the fight against fascism and repression.
In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together.