Atlanta’s schools were held up as a example for the nation, showing how to turn students from low income families into high achievers. Just look at those test scores! Until . . .
Here’s a segment from this month’s “Education: The Rest of the Story” where I try to put a human face on the Atlanta test cheating scandal.
This article appears in Sep 11-17, 2014.
This is a terrific piece on why high stakes testing should never be used as a major criterion in evaluating teacher performance. We have seen this same carrot dangling strategy result in gaming the system at the Veterans Administration with administrators willing to cook the books while workers feared coming forward as whistle blowers.
Teachers have more than enough on their plates as it is; throwing them into a moral quandary where survival is tied to student achievement on standards based exams (that have never been tested for reliability or validity) will further degrade the perception of teaching as an attractive career choice … and that would be another nail in the coffin of public education.
The New Yorker article is excellent and should be read by everyone who cares about education policy.
Good idea to discontinue, at least temporarily, coverage of the TUSD board elections — no hearts and minds were being won in that misguided campaign.
After the dubious quality of the TUSD board candidate coverage, I’ll continue to read Safier’s columns and watch the Pedersen & Safier videos, but always with an eye on what the real motive may be. This is what happens when members of the press / blog-o-sphere get caught using their voices in highly selective and transparently partisan ways in election campaigns: trust is damaged and a permanent measure of doubt is introduced in the minds of readers who pay close attention and want coverage that can help them make fully (not partially) informed choices when they vote.
An example of how this damaged trust operates: a month ago I would have watched this piece and thought, “How fortunate it is that we have well-informed commentators like Ann-Eve and David keeping an eye on education policy and helping the public understand where students’ best interests really lie.” Now I am much more inclined to shrug the content off and guess that the motive in presenting the piece is to change the subject and regain some lost credibility. Is making the liberal portion of the electorate more disillusioned and more cynical a good thing to have achieved?
It will be interesting to see what decision is made this evening by the Pima County Democratic leadership. If they endorse candidates, they will, in this Democrat’s opinion, be seriously undermining the local party’s credibility and its legitimate policy interests.
There may be a temptation to blame this overuse of standardized tests on Republicans, particularly President Bush. But the reality is that the overuse and abuse of standardized testing has been promoted as much, and probably more, by Democrats than Republicans. We can all agree that the over-reliance on standardized test results began with the passage of No Child Left Behind. It is true that President Bush strongly supported this law. But is also true that there were twice as Republicans in Congress voting AGAINST NCLB than Democrats. The bill belonged to Senator Ted Kennedy and Congressman George Miller (both Democrats) as much as it did to President Bush.
The use of student test results in teacher evaluations was never a part of NCLB, and its widespread use to evaluate teachers can only be blamed on the Obama administration. States changed their policies about using test results in teacher evaluations due solely to the coercion of the Obama Administration. No states could qualify for Race to the Top Grants from the US Department of Education unless they incorporated student test data into teacher evaluations. No states could hope for a waiver from any of the rigidity of NCLB unless they incorporated student test data into teacher evaluations.