Practical Strategies to Save Our Schools
|
Whenever something in the schools is amiss, it makes sense to work on
two tracks at once: protect students from the worst effects in the short
term and work to change or eliminate that policy in the long term. Let's
begin with some short-term responses where testing is concerned:
First, teachers should do what is necessary to prepare students for
the tests -- and then get back to the real learning. Never forget
the difference between these two objectives. Be clear about it in your own
mind, and whenever possible, help others to understand the distinction.
For example, you might send a letter to parents explaining what you are
doing and why. ("Before we can design exciting experiments in
class, which I hope will have the effect of helping your child learn to
think like a scientist, we're going to have to spend some time getting
ready for the standardized tests being given next month. Hopefully we'll
be able to return before too long to what research suggests is a more
effective kind of instruction.") If you're lucky, parents will call you,
indignantly demanding to know why their kids aren't able to pursue the
more effective kind of instruction all the time. "Excellent question!"
you'll reply, as you hand over a sheet containing the addresses and phone
numbers of the local school board, state board of education, legislators,
and the governor.
Second, do no more test preparation than is absolutely necessary. Some
experts have argued that a relatively short period of introducing students
to the content and format of the tests is sufficient to produce scores
equivalent to those obtained by students who have spent the entire year in
test-prep mode.
Third, whatever time is spent on test preparation should be as
creative and worthwhile as possible. Avoid traditional drilling whenever
you can.
Fourth, administrators and other school officials should never brag
about high (or rising) scores. To do so is not only misleading; it serves
to legitimate the tests. In fact, people associated with high-scoring
schools or districts have a unique opportunity to make an impact. It's
easy for critics to be dismissed with a "sour grapes" argument: You're
just opposed to standardized testing because it makes you look bad. But
administrators and school board members in high-scoring areas can say,
"Actually our students happen to do well on these tests, but that's
nothing to be proud of. We value great teaching and learning, which is
precisely what suffers when people become preoccupied with scores. Please
join us in phasing them out."
A group of educators in Florida took advantage of their
school's privileged status to make a powerful statement. That state not
only grades schools but then hands out money to those with the highest
scores - in effect making the rich richer and the poor poorer. In a bold
public protest, six teachers and their principal went to the state capital
and handed back the bonuses. (Click here to read
their statement.) In North Carolina, teachers pooled their bonuses to
create a foundation that would provide funds to the schools that needed it
most.
Finally, whatever your position on the food chain of American
education, one of your primary obligations is to be a buffer - to
absorb as much pressure as possible from those above you without passing
it on to those below. If you are a superintendent or assistant
superintendent facing school board members who want to see higher test
scores, the most constructive thing you can do is protect principals from
these ill-conceived demands to the best of your ability (without losing
your job in the process). If you are a building administrator, on the
receiving end of test-related missives from the central office, your
challenge is to shield teachers from this pressure - and, indeed, to help
them pursue meaningful learning in their classrooms. If you are a teacher
unlucky enough to work for an administrator who hasn't read this
paragraph, your job is to minimize the impact on students. Try to educate
those above you whenever it seems possible to do so, but cushion those
below you every day. Otherwise you become part of the problem.
*
As important as I believe these suggestions to be, it is also critical
to recognize their limits. There is only so much creativity that can be
infused into preparing students for bad tests. There is only so much
buffering that can be done in a high-stakes environment. These
recommendations merely try to make the best of a bad thing. Ultimately we
need to work to end that bad thing, to move beyond stopgap measures and
take on the system itself.
Unfortunately, even some well-intentioned educators who understand the
threat posed by testing never get to that point. Here are some of the
justifications they offer for their inaction:
"Just teach well and the tests will take care of themselves."
This may be true in some subject areas, or in some states, or in some
neighborhoods. But it is often a convenient delusion. Often, to prepare
students for the tests in the most effective way is to teach badly - to
fill them full of dates and definitions and cover a huge amount of
material in a superficial fashion. Conversely, to teach in a way that
helps students understand (and become enthusiastic about) ideas may
actually lower their scores.
"This too shall pass." Education has its fads, and standards on
steroids may be one of them, but there is no guarantee that it will fade
away on its own. Too much is invested by now; too many powerful interest
groups are backing high-stakes testing for us to assume it will simply
fall of its own weight. In any case, too many children will be sacrificed
in the meantime if we don't take action to expedite its demise.
"My job is to teach, not to get involved in political
disputes." When seven-year-olds can't read good books because they are
being drilled on what Jonathan Kozol calls "those obsessively enumerated
particles of amputated skill associated with upcoming state exams," the
schools have already been politicized. The only question is whether we
will become involved on the other side - that is, on the side of real
learning. In particular, much depends on whether those teachers,
administrators, and parents who already harbor (and privately acknowledge)
concerns about testing are willing to go public, to take a stand, to say,
"This is bad for kids." To paraphrase a famous quotation, all that is
necessary for the triumph of damaging educational policies is that good
people keep silent.
"The standards and tests are here to stay; we might as well get
used to them." Here we have a sentiment diametrically opposed to "This
too shall pass," yet one that paradoxically leads to the identical
inaction. Real children in real classrooms suffer from this kind of
defeatism, which can quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy: assume
something is inevitable and it becomes so precisely because we have
decided not to challenge it. The fact of the matter is that
standardized tests are not like the weather, something to which we
must resign ourselves. They haven't always existed and they don't exist in
most parts of the world. What we are facing is not a force of nature but a
force of politics, and political decisions can be questioned, challenged,
and ultimately reversed.
Thus the need for us to organize in order to fight the tests
themselves. Some states are already organized, even to the point of having
websites. Check these out -- or, if you live elsewhere, use them as models
for constructing your own:
|
|
CO: www.thecbe.org
MA: www.parentscare.org
OH: www.stophighstakestests.org
NY: www.timeoutfromtesting.org
National websites:
www.unitedoptout.com [new in 2011]
www.fairtest.org
www.susanohanian.org
www.pencilsdown.org
www.nomoretests.com [student site]
|
Together with other educators and parents, consider taking these actions:
Talk informally to friends and acquaintances -- at the supermarket
and the hair dresser, at dinner parties and kids' birthday parties --
about these issues. Help your neighbors understand that an emphasis on
Tougher Standards and test scores makes it harder for children to learn
and to care about learning. Suggest that if a school official brags
about the latest scores, we ought to reply, "If this is what matters to
you, then I'm worried about the quality of education my child is getting
here."
Write a letter to the editor of your local paper -- or, better yet,
an op-ed article. Three examples dealing with the MCAS test in
Massachusetts are available: "Tougher Tests = Lower
Standards," offering a general analysis; "A Set-Up to
Tell You You're Stupid," focusing on students whom the test has
failed; and "Turning the
Tables," a satirical essay in the form of a test that state
education officials would fail. For good measure, a sample is also
included from the Greensboro [N. Carolina] News & Record
titled "The
Insanity of Testing Mania."
Write to -- or visit -- your state legislators about the issue.
Attend -- and speak out at -- school board meetings and other
community forums on education. If you are a parent who is concerned that
too much time and attention are being focused on test preparation, make
your views known to the principal and/or superintendent. (Click here for a
sample letter.) Better yet, persuade administrators to refuse to let test
preparation squeeze out real learning -- and encourage them to make a public
statement explaining why silly, test-based ratings may give the appearance
of failure. (Read about a
Virginia school that did just this.)
Communicate the same message to real estate brokers who sell
neighborhoods on the basis of those scores. (Click here for an
example of how to frame the message for this audience: a short article
published in Realtor Magazine.)
Form a delegation of parents and educators and request a meeting
with the top editors (and education reporters) of your local paper. Tell
them, "Every time you publish a chart listing schools' standardized test
scores, you unwittingly make our schools a little bit worse. Here's
why..."
Challenge politicians, corporate executives, and others who talk
piously about the need to "raise the bar," impose "tougher standards,"
ensure "accountability," and so on to take the tests themselves -- and,
perhaps, even to allow their scores to be published in the newspaper.
This is especially important in the case of high-stakes exit exams,
which are increasingly being used to deny diplomas to students who don't
pass them, regardless of their academic records. The reality, of course,
is that few adults could pass these tests. Therefore, public officials
should be prepared to justify their demand that teenagers must do
something that they, themselves, cannot. And if they refuse this
challenge, they should be called upon to defend that.
Print up bumper stickers with slogans such as "STANDARDIZED TESTING
IS DUMBING DOWN OUR SCHOOLS" or "SUPPORT BETTER EDUCATION: Boycott the [name
of your state's test]."
For every seminar or in-service telling teachers how to meet the new
state standards (or boost kids' scores on standardized tests), we should
be offering three that talk about how to fight these standards and phase
out these tests.
Parents need to become actively involved -- and, fortunately, that
has been happening in some states. For inspiration and practical ideas,
take a look at how a grassroots parent group in Wisconsin
managed to overturn a high-stakes testing plan. Other parent-led groups are mobilizing in Ohio, Virginia, Massachusetts, and other
states.
Commission a survey and then release its results at a press
conference. One group of researchers suggested including these
questions:
"Do the tests improve students' motivation? Do parents understand the
results? Do teachers think that the tests measure the curriculum fairly?
Do administrators use the results wisely? How much money is spent on
assessment and related services? How much time do teachers spend preparing
students for various tests? Do the media report the data accurately and
thoroughly? Our surveys suggest that many districts will be shocked to
discover the degree of dissatisfaction among stakeholders." [Source: S. G.
Paris, et al., "A Developmental Perspective on Standardized Achievement
Testing." Educational Researcher, June-July 1991, p. 17]
Sponsor a conference on these issues. Make sure to
alert local reporters ahead of time to maximize press coverage. This can
help you locate still more people in the area who are willing to become
active.
Finally, both educators and parents can simply refuse to participate
in state and district testing programs. Many states have opt-out
provisions (though they're not widely publicized) by which parents can
request that their children be exempted from taking standardized tests.
Investigate to see whether this is available where you live and, if so,
do everything in your power to make that fact widely known. (Read a compelling
statement by a Mom and Dad explaining
"Why We Opt Out," which contains the letter they submit to their daughter's school politely insisting that
she be "engaged in learning activities during testing times.")
Some parents and students are, in effect, boycotting the tests even where opt-out
provisions don't exist. For example, two-thirds of all families with eighth graders
in Scarsdale, NY refused to participate in the state's middle school tests
in the spring of 2001. (Read more about
the Scarsdale boycott.)
Teachers, too, might think about organizing acts of civil
disobedience. In Japan, as Catherine Lewis reports in her book
Educating Hearts and Minds, "Elementary achievement is high
because Japanese teachers are free from the pressure to teach to
standardized tests." Until they get to high school, there are no such
tests in Japan -- and the reason there are no such tests is that
teachers (through their union) simply refused to administer them because
of their destructive educational effects. Boycotts have also been
effective in England and Australia.
Closer to home, Jim Bougas, a middle school teacher in a small town
in Massachusetts, grew increasingly frustrated with how the state test
was forcing instruction to become more superficial. He informed his
principal that he could not in good conscience
take part in administering the test and was reassigned to the library
during that period. The next year, following a denial of a similar
request, he agonized about what to do. Finally, he decided that if the
test was just as unfair and destructive as it had been the preceding year,
his response could not be any different - even at the risk of suspension
or dismissal. Besides, as he told a reporter, if the test continues, "I
have no job because they've taken it away from me as long as I have to
spend my time teaching to the test. I can't do that anymore. So I have
nothing to lose."
Don Perl, a teacher in Colorado,
engaged in a similar act of conscience, commenting, according to a newspaper
article, "I have to look at myself in the mirror, and I know these
tests are wrong. Frankly, I'm not a teacher when I teach to a test like
this, [or] when I administer a test like this." Perl is no longer in the classroom but
has been active in opposing his state's test, collecting about 12,500 signatures in an
ultimately unsuccessful effort to let voters decide whether to get rid of the CSAP test,
and then raising money to pay for ads on bus benches that invite parents to visit www.thecbe.org
to obtain letters advising school officials that their children will not be taking the exam.
A dozen Chicago high school teachers got together and refused to administer the tests
being used in that city. (Read more about
the Chicago boycott.)
Such protests are not only inspirational to many of us but an
invitation to ponder the infinitely greater impact of collective action.
Imagine, for example, that a teacher at any given school in your area
quietly approached each person on the staff in turn and asked: "If ___
percent of the teachers at this school pledged to boycott the next round
of testing, would you join them?" (The specific percentage would depend
on what seemed realistic and yet signified sufficient participation to
offer some protection for those involved.) Then, if the designated
number was reached, each teacher would be invited to take part in what
would be a powerful act of civil disobedience. Press coverage would
likely be substantial, and despairing-but-cowed teachers in other
schools might be encouraged to follow suit.
Without question, this is a risky undertaking. Theoretically, even
an entire school faculty could be fired. But the more who participate,
and the more careful they are about soliciting support from parents and
other members of the community beforehand, the more difficult it would
be for administrators to respond harshly. (Of course, some
administrators are as frustrated with the testing as teachers are.)
Participants would have to be politically savvy, building alliances and
offering a coherent, quotable rationale for their action. They would
need to make it clear - at a press conference and in other forums - that
they were taking this action not because they are unwilling to do more
work or are afraid of being held accountable, but because these tests
lower the quality of learning and do a serious injustice to the children
in our community.
The bottom line is that standardized testing can continue only with
the consent and cooperation of the educators who allow those tests to be
distributed in their schools - and the parents who permit their children
to take them. If we withhold that consent, if we refuse to cooperate,
then the testing process grinds to a halt. That is what happened in
Japan. That is what can happen in the United States if we understand the
urgency of the situation. Discuss it with your university students, your
staff, your colleagues, your neighbors: What if they gave a test and
nobody came?
Have other ideas? Leave us a message at the e-mail address listed for questions & comments on the
Contact page.. |