Wis. Teacher Protests No Child Left Behind Law by Sitting Out Testing; Discipline Threatened
MADISON, Wis. - A middle school teacher is protesting the federal No Child Left Behind law by refusing to administer a standardized test to his eighth-grade students.
David Wasserman, a middle school teacher in Madison, began his protest Tuesday. Instead of giving students the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Exam, he sat in the teacher’s lounge, leaving his colleagues to oversee the test.
He said he has moral objections to the federal law, President Bush’s signature education policy. The state test is used to measure whether schools are meeting annual benchmarks under the law. Schools that do not meet goals can face sanctions.
Like many teachers, Wasserman said he believes the test is a poor way to measure student progress, takes up too much class time and is used unfairly to punish schools. So after years of growing frustration, he said he decided to be a “conscientious objector” this year.
Wasserman said he originally planned to resume his protest on Thursday, the second day of testing, and through four more days of testing next week. But he said Wednesday he would likely back off and give the test after Superintendent Art Rainwater told a teacher’s union official that Wasserman could be fired if the protest continued.
“I can’t jeopardize health insurance for my family,” said Wasserman, 36. “I want to still hold by my morals, which I feel very strongly about. But I have a family to think about.”
In a statement released to The Associated Press on Wednesday evening, Rainwater noted the district was required by state law to fulfill the federal requirement.
“It is part of every teacher’s duty to administer the test,” he said. “Any failure to fulfill this required duty would be considered insubordination and subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination.”
Robert Schaeffer, a spokesman for FairTest, a national group that opposes the overuse of standardized tests, said he was unaware of any other teachers who have refused to administer tests to protest No Child Left Behind. Other teachers have boycotted high-stakes state tests used for graduation or promotion, he said.
“It is an act of moral courage, and it certainly helps call attention to the widespread misuse of standardized testing,” he said. “The natural bureaucratic reaction is always to threaten people with severe sanctions. That’s why people have to have the moral fiber to put themselves at risk.”
Wasserman, who has taught in the district for six years, said he is being treated unfairly because his colleagues at Sennett Middle School could administer the test without him.
© Copyright 2007 Associated Press
While they may be being used in a pernicious way in the NCLB Act. I think national standardized testing of some sort is great idea.
One of the great ephiphinies on my life - the one that shattered my personal mythology of “everything is the best in America”, was going overseas and working in a technical field with people from other countries - notably the UK. I was shocked and shamed by the superior education that British techncinans and engineers had. A bachelor’s degree there is at least equivalent to a masters degreee here. Later, an Australian mathematician girlfriend made the same observation. Children from good US public schools are usually set back 2-3 grades when they go the the UK or Australia. And, the heart of their education system is their “E-levels” and “O-levels” - i.e. standardized testing.
I believe most European countries use a similar system.
This is an act of genuine heroism, and a protest rooted in a clear understanding of the teaching and learning process. Mr. Wasserman correctly points out that the testing craze in general, and the NCLB specifically, are immoral policies. Why? Because this unconscionable and irresponsible reliance on tests, without regard to developmental and contextual realities, defies the accumulated wisdom about teaching,dating back to Plato, and then on through Aeneas Silvio, Luther, Locke, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Mann, Dewey, Montessori, Counts, Scheffler, Gardner, Kozol, Nieto, Darling-Hammond and so many more educators.
We have replaced educators’ understanding of the complexities of the teaching and learning process, of the knowledge we now have of social and psychological development, of the role of students’ socio-economic contexts, and of the discrepancies in funding formulas, with a simplistic and anti-intellectual fraud. We have gone down this path for reasons of political convenience, avoidance of genuine funding formulae, and racist disregard for millions of students.
As to testing itself as a pedagogical device–Alfred North Whitehead put that notion into perspective in 1929: “And I may say in passing that no educational system is possible unless every question directly asked of a pupil at any examination is either framed or modified by the actual teacher of that pupil in that subject.”
jpa
jameer,
But that Whitehead quote is manifestly false. While this may be true of utterly subjective things, certianly, scientific and mathematic princples, and an understanding of them, and ability to apply them, have nothing to do with the teacher who who uttered them.
Oh yes, let’s argue among ourselves. That’s the Progressive way, isn’t it?
Look to the US Constitution. The Feds have no legal right to dictate educational policy to the States. Period.
Kudos to Wasserman — the great Wisconsin tradition of dissent lives on! These tests in themselves are frauds, but the idea of education they presume is itself also a fraud. Why, I ask my students, are you getting an education? “To get a better job,” they say — or “to better myself,” which seems to be the same thing to most of them. That we push an idea of education where students think of themselves as commodities to be sold to employers is hardly commented on anymore. Employment seems to be the only purpose of education that’s ever seriously discussed in public. I am still shocked to hear various administrators talk about how to market “our product.” That my work is perceived and applauded as creating a product that will be sold (or will sell itself) to employers is disgusting. Testing is largely about product differentiation. I think what PJD is refering to is called “training” — good for soldiers and order takers in firms, but hardly good for creating an independent citizenry. Certainly, scientific and mathematic principles are pretty universal, but any “understanding of them, and ability to apply them” is quite subjective and has everything to do with the way they are taught. They are applied in human communities. Thus, the mathematic and scientific principles behind rocketry, for instance, can only be “understood” and “applied” in a world of contending interests. Of course, some mush-minded robot who “knows” these principles can use them to murder millions without question, but I would not call that person educated. And we should argue over this — certainly, one tactic in ending this should be to point out that the Federal government should not have the power to impose these tests, but that hardly ends the argument about the tests.
re skeezyks 2:36 pm
remember the 55mph federal speed limit? states could adopt it or not, but federal funding for road projects was cut off for those states not in compliance. same deal with education—”it’s not a diktat, just a suggestion.”
We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers, leave them kids alone
Hey, Teachers, leave those kids alone
All in all its just another brick in the wall
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall
Korn
exeflyer,
That was Pink Floyd who wrote that song…
parsons1,
NO! I was NOT referring to “training”.
I was referring to the knowlege necessary for a citizen in a democratic society being able to distinguish real ideas from snake-oil and mumbo-jumbo. This requires universal education in science, mathematics, history, societies and culture, economics (including Marx), political science, and logic and discourse. And testing is part of this. This is why the old turn-of century school building in my old neighborhood had carved in it’s stone roof fascia - weathered and barely legible: “Dedicated to the Cause of Public Education - A cornerstone of Democracy” Pretty communistic sounding by todays standards, isn’t it?
Like I wrote, go to Europe - or even Chavez’s Venezuela - or India, everyone is stunned at how stupid Americans are.
And, last I checked F=ma and f=(Gm1M2)/r^2 is the same for “rocketry” as it is for baseball…
There are a whole lot of teachers who object to this overemphasis on testing; it’s become an industry all of its own, far outweighing any considerations of what is best and most productive for students. Most importantly, to clarify for PJD, the NCLB dictates low-level, basic testing which has nothing at all to do with excellence and everything to do with the current vogue for “data-driven decision-making” (just another brick in the wall that separates kids from real learning).
The more advanced learning that PJD refers to as the standard in Britain and elsewhere is more analogous to International Baccalaureate or Advanced Placement testing, which does drive kids to a level of specific excellence on specific subjects. The numbers of these tests, especially those available to minority students, has been the factor used to distinguish “best high schools” by Newsweek and education commentators.
However, our national policy (i.e. NCLB) puts the attention squarely on the most basic functions of which students are capable, not, as alleged, on helping them improve, not on helping them become excited about school, not in helping them discover and expand their talents. It’s all part of a century-old Industrial Revolution model of school as a factory that puts out standard-issue humans to fill the slots that society has prepared for them, all in the interests of stolidly maintaining the status quo.
Even a Harvard drop-out like Bill Gates knows there is more to education than that and has funded more personalized, technologically savvy, more hands-on and more collaborative schools for kids, from Philly to LA (and please believe me when I say it’s NOT about making more money for Microsoft, but it MAY be about rescuing the much-maligned American Dream). High-stakes science and math tests are not for every kid, but an Education ought to be, including how to jump into the Information Revolution with well-honed thinking skills, learning skills, and the ability to manipulate and utilize information to produce and accomplish something–even a painting that expresses a spirit, a book that argues a case, a discontented rock lyric, a social movement, an environmentally sound design.
There are few who have accomplished any of the above who will say that school helped them do it. We simply aren’t giving kids what they need–connections, concepts, culture–and the droves of drop-outs (did you see the item about ‘drop-out factories,’ how aptly put?) prove that every day.
I’m all for EXPLODING that paradigm and making the national policy one of a small, personalized school for every child all the way through high school, by dismantling the bureaucracy, flattening the hierarchy, training teams of teachers to ‘coach’ academics and produce real-world results (what can kids DO), and providing social/emotional support in a ‘family’ context that will allow even the most downtrodden children to grab onto their own talents and use them. Don’t think that’s necessary or feasible? Read all about it at www.changetheschools.com.
In some ways, we talk past each other on this issue. This is why argument is good. It’s wonderful that PJD is not referring to training. My mistake. I, too, want folks to distinguish real ideas from snake oil mumbo jumbo. And yes, F=ma and f=(Gm1M2)/r^2 is the same for rocketry as for baseball. My point was that “F=ma and f=(Gm1M2)/r^2″ is not education — it’s downloading, ala neo in the Matrix plugging in and “knowing” karate. More relevant to my part of the world, learning that the Civil War ended in 1865 is not education either. Plenty of people know all sorts of historical facts, but can’t distinguish real ideas from snake oil mumbo jumbo. That testing is somehow going to make schools more accountable, whatever that means, or Americans smarter, is snake oil mumbo jumbo. Assuming that tests are great at everything folks claim — that the equation “works” — we still have the problem that the equations are used by the militarists and not the baseball analysts. How national standardized testing will contribute to the Cause of Public Education - A cornerstone of Democracy is quite unclear to me. How it contributes to destroying the project of public education and democracy seems pretty clear.
Go David! You have my total support in resisting the current “no child allowed to think” educational agenda.
In my humble experience…
Two new children showed up the day that testing started (5th graders in a K-5).
These were children who learned elsewhere (if at all-who knew?)
Their test scores influenced the numbers that would compare my school’s quality with other schools.
Although no numbers of this kind were kept, I estimated that 25-30% of the student population changed during the school year before testing.
How can that possibly tell the quality of my school? Meeting benchmarks!?
A significant part of what my school was graded on was based on the quality of other schools.
Generalized testing leads to untrue results if the school has turnover in population. Yet copious time is consumed by students, teachers and schools preparing for these tests and doing all the paperwork. Time that could be spent learning things other than how to take a test.
Generalized testing is used because it’s easier and cheaper than actually putting people into classrooms to judge quality by ‘meeting benchmarks’.
As a special education high school level teacher I see that we are devoting every minute of every day to trying to force feed the answers to the “high stakes” tests into kids who have a multitude of educational and other needs that are now not being met due to the testing frenzy and the severe “punishments” that schools face if they don’t meet AYP. How can any educated person believe that we can make every child “proficient” aka “average” by 2014 whether or not they speak English or have an average IQ and the mental capacity to understand the concepts required by state standards. Anyone with any knowledge of statistics knows everyone can’t be average. How did this law ever pass? How can politicians not face the reality that in the rush to bring all kids to an average level we are now cutting the higher level courses that allowed the above average kids to excel and enjoy their education- these kids are being put aside because they are capable of passing the tests and the teachers who used to teach the upper level classes are being reassigned to the lower level classes. And the kids who deserve hands on job training and life skills so they can be productive members of society aren’t getting it because that kind of training does not meet the new state standards. Every day I feel like I am in the middle of a horrid experiment on our kids. The bottom line is that we are not meeting individual student needs but rather trying to turn out a standardized product. Sad.
Parsons1,
I am more reacting to the general opposition to testing in general among lots of “progressives” - their view is that children should just do whatever they feel like, forgetting that any learning process, like athletics, yoga, Buddist practice, requires discipline.
But all I hear here is opposition to the tests because thay are “standardized”. I have trougle beliving any test can be useful at all unless it is “standardized”. SAT’s, EIT and professional engineer exams, medical boards and bar exams are all standardized. No one is proposing getting rid of them.
Is the problem that the students themselves aren’t being rewarded for good performance on the NCLB exams. Or not given the results at all? Or is it that they are too easy and fail to challenge or even insult the children? Is it the content of the exams? Is it that they are multiple choice and should be more essay and short answer type tests?
beckyb,
How often are these tests given?
pkokinos, you said:
“the NCLB dictates low-level, basic testing which has nothing at all to do with excellence and everything to do with the current vogue for “data-driven decision-making” (just another brick in the wall that separates kids from real learning).”
No, NCLB says that the states should disaggregate the data and make public the data that it collects from administering the tests that states were already required to administer before NCLB became law. These are state-determined tests based on standards set by the states with state-determined levels for proficiency. Some states have low standards, some have high standards.
The tests are a bottom line, not the pinnacle of achievement to which schools are restricted. Also, what have you got against data? It’s way better than belief, as in “I believe that your child is doing very well” from a teacher when you know that your child is not learning how to read. For many of us who are actually going up against the schools, the data is the only way that we can get them to see (and get them to be accountable) that their methods are inadequate.
Data is not antithetical to learning. Data is a bunch of stuff and learning is a process. I hope my kids learn how to use data rather than just learning to believe something.
Each state is allowed to create their own tests, Ohio made theirs rather difficult, other states made theirs more moderate. Some states have all multiple choice tests which cost less to grade, Ohio has multiple choice and short response questions on all of the tests, reading, writing, math, science and social studies. The high school level tests are started in the spring of the sophomore year and are then given 2 more times each year to students who haven’t passed the tests. Special test prep classes are offered to the kids who don’t pass their sophomore year. I read a study that said that states brag about the rise in their test scores but when a nationalized test is given there has been no significant increase in scores. I never thought I would live to see the day that we are being told to “teach to the test” but that is exactly what is being said on a daily basis. Schools whose “subgroups” ie special ed, ESL, economically disadvantaged, ethnic groups etc are not meeting AYP, adequate yearly progress, can be sanctioned and fear is driving decisions now in education.
Unless a test is standardized, it cannot be used for any analysis or comparison. If your school makes up a reading test and my school makes up a reading test and your students all look like geniuses and mine look just average, have we proved anything? These are non-standardized tests.
If your school judges students based on low expectations and mine judges students based on high expectations, then could it be true that your students are not really geniuses compared to mine?
If we agree upon reading standards, i.e., what we would like a student at a particular grade level to be able to do (expectations), and then devise a test to verify these expectations and give the exact same test to students at both schools we might be able to make a comparison, such as the comparison between students at high poverty schools (where teachers are less qualified, less experienced and less retained) and wealthy schools where there are more highly qualified, more experienced teachers with longer tenure.
Standardized tests are not evil. Civil rights organizations are supporting improvements in NCLB that retain standardized tests as a measure of accountability. Traditionally, many schools have maintained that everything was fine, but now because of NCLB we can see that things are not, have not been fine for many subgroupings of students. Some schools can complain all they want about the tests, but it may be that their persistently poor results and their inability to improve them may be the real culprit.
becky,
my son is in special education. He has a common type of learning disability that can be remediated with proper instruction with which he was not provided.
Before NCLB (and before we filed for due process) our school told us that “everything was fine” even though his special education teacher had no credential of any kind (really!)
We use the data from the state standardized tests and other standardized, normed tests to monitor our son’s progress and keep the school district honest. It’s not easy and takes a lot of effort on our part, but it’s way better than having no recourse when they deliver the “everything’s fine.”
susanh- what you just described is what is happening from one state to the next. The tests are NOT nationally standardized. We are not measuring a child’s progress, we are measuring one class of students as compared to the class before regardless of the composition of the students in that class. We all agree that we need to have students who can read, write and do math but because of the severe sanctions involved, school districts are making decisions based on fear not based on what is best educationally for students. If the district is rated low based on test scores then raising the scores is more important than truly educating children. Every minute of every day is now devoted to making sure kids pass tests. This is not conducive to exciting learning situations for kids- school is becoming rather like a high speed factory, not a nourishing educationally exciting place where kids can reach their potential. Creativity is definitely not nourished, critical and creative thinking is certainly not encouraged in this kind of environment.
becky, you said:
“How can any educated person believe that we can make every child “proficient” aka “average” …… Anyone with any knowledge of statistics knows everyone can’t be average.”
Actually, proficient doesn’t mean average. It’s a set bar, a goal achievement level (set by the states.) The proficiency level doesn’t change based on how other people perform (like grading on a curve.) In other words, setting the goal for universal proficiency (which may not be possible) is not the same as setting the goal for every student to be in the, say 90th percentile or something.
Sorry susanh, I keep lagging behind your posts. Don’t rely on state tests to judge your child’s progress. These are NOT diagnostic tests. Many school districts are now doing progress monitoring of special ed students in reading and math ( there are no progress monitoring tests available in math at the high school level though). Insist that your district progress monitor your child. If reading is the problem, then make sure they are offering reading remediation. I repeat, don’t rely on state standardized tests. Multiple choice tests are no indication of your child’s progress.
States are setting the proficient level at a certain percentile from past testing.- Each state’s test is different and it is not a test that determines individual student progress. If we really want to show that each child is making advances then we need to do individual progress monitoring that shows increases in each individual’s level of skill. That is NOT what NCLB is all about. Some of the new modifications proposed for the reauthorization of NCLB put more emphasis on progress monitoring. Just remember that there is a whole new crop of testing companies making an awful lot of money off of the testing frenzy. There are many more ways to look at education than the almost total reliance on standardized testing. In Ohio the only other indicators of success for a school are attendance and graduation rates. I may be forgetting one more thing involved because I am getting rather tired.
becky, I know you must work really hard and be under tremendous pressure in a difficult situation, but I respectfully disagree with you that the way many schools respond to the pressure to raise performance is THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE.
If “school districts are making decisions based on fear not based on what is best educationally for students” then they have to take a deep breath and get organized and do what is right for the students even if it’s not that convenient for the adults. There are effective methods and practices that are working in some high poverty schools and with learning disabled students. www.achievementalliance.org/news/
“If the district is rated low based on test scores then raising the scores is more important than truly educating children.” If a district is truly educating children then they should be able to demonstrate that on the tests.
If “Every minute of every day is now devoted to making sure kids pass tests. … Creativity is definitely not nourished, critical and creative thinking is certainly not encouraged in this kind of environment” then there is surely no creativity or critical thinking going on in the leadership of the school or district in how to get out of this mess.
This may seem harsh and may seem too demanding, but the stakes are very, very high. Those kids who drop out, or who graduate with low literacy and low numeracy, or who suffer silently…these kids deserve more from the adults in this country. My own kid has suffered way more than he deserves and I know that he’s not the only one.
hi, becky.
Thanks, I appreciate your advice. We use a lot of different tests for diagnostic purposes, but also use the state tests as an on-going indicator of progress. We think that our bright, learning disabled son should be able to test proficient w.r.t. the state standards (I think our state’s are not bad.)
Fedral laws designed to “improve” our children’s education have plenty of strings attached. Stuck into the No Child Left Behind Act is a requirement that all schools must turn over the names, addresses and phone numbers of every student to the military recruiting agencies. This is a flagrant violation of your children’s privacy. If a school refuses, it loses all federal funding. This way every school is intimidated into cooperating. However, this Act does allow parents to go to their school and sign a statement that they don’t want their child’s records given out. The school must comply in each individual case and is exempt from Federal penalties. However, how many parents know about this?
Hi susanh- LD kids are bright- that is part of the definition of learning disabled, they are of average or above intelligence and with state allowed accommodations on the tests they can almost always pass. I also work with cognitively delayed students who are being held to the same testing standards even though they are of “below average” intelligence and many simply don’t have the ability to master the required concepts. These are the kids who are losing out completely. Their education is NOT benefiting them as individuals, they need reading and math remediation, life skills and work skills so they can participate in society. There are also many kids who are not identified as special education who are so frustrated with the standardized testing that they are dropping out because of the tests- they see no other option.
School districts do not have the choice to fix the situation they are in, it is federal law and that is why decisions are being made out of fear of the sanctions that are involved in NCLB. I see my district scrambling for solutions and making some decisions that may not be the best, there isn’t time to make good solid educational decisions because of the ticking AYP clock.
Tests have their place of course but they should not be the whole story which they have now become.
As dolphin330 just said there is a lot in NCLB that would amaze people. Our school sends a letter to parents allowing them to opt out of giving their child’s info to recruiters (myself and another teacher had to bring this to the school district’s attention before they started sending the letters) but i have now heard that this does nothing and the recruiters can still get all student information.
There seems to be basic misunderstanding about the testing program under NCLB. It is most definitely NOT standardized. Each state runs its own testing program so that some, like California, require rather stringent exams while others, like Texas (my home state), dumb down the exam until they get it low enough so that almost anyone can pass it. In addition, there is absolutely no requirement that the tests in any way show that they are actually measuring anything worthwhile. Just as “there are lots of numbers” doesn’t make it a budget, so having lots of equations doesn’t make it a test of mathematical ability or lots of words make it a test of English comprehension. It has to be validated so that we can be sure that the results correlate strongly and positively with knowledge of the subject being “measured.” You would be surprised and disgusted to know how few of the tests meet these criteria.
Yes dkm, this is the problem. Each state’s test is different and as I said when students are tested on a national test the scores aren’t going up even though each state may be bragging about all the advances being made in their scores. They are either teaching to the state test or lowering the level of the test or both. You are absolutely right that the tests don’t meet the criteria of being “valid” tests that are actually measuring anything. I am sorry susanh, look at your own child’s progress as measured over time with a reliable, valid set of tests, not your state tests. Good luck and keep your child’s teachers accountable by being an active part of the IEP process as I’m sure you are. Also remember that many districts are unable to offer everything you may want due to financial restraints. If all the war money were being put into education and health we would certainly be living in a different world!
I would hope that educators would be the ones that we would listen to on this subject. Unfortunately, George Bush and the administration do not know how to teach or how children retain learning. No Child Left Behind is a joke. Among many it is rightly called Every Child Left Behind. The tests require that a teacher follow a strict time line of “teaching to the test” that does not allow for making sure that the students have actually learned the material before they move on to the next subject. It also doesn’t leave time for each child or classroom to go through all the material that is supposed to be covered on the tests so the teachers have to pick and choose. Therefore, only a cursory overview is achieved. The children are the ones that lose out and educators know this. Teachers that have been teaching for many years, before NCLB, have either left or been forced to give in to the system. There is no room for new innovative teachers because they learn quickly that their enthusiasm and creativity cannot be used in this system. Most teachers only last about 6 years before complete burn out. I applaud David Wasserman. Unfortunately his protest will not work until every teacher does the same thing. Thank you David for bringing this to the attention of the public. We are raising a generation which memorizes and don’t learn critical thinking techniques.
People like our President believe that anything can be quantified. Unique subjective individuals are reduced to objects, no longer people but entities identical with their role in society.
An engineer or teacher or weaver can be evaluated according to her job performance which equals her worth as a human being. The minimum standard of competence to which everyone must conform is always outrageously mediocre.
Totalitarian states have always adopted this model. If George has seen the movie “Brazil” he apparently has missed the point.
I thought this might lighten things up a bit. But pleased be forewarned……adult language.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccYoVnBc_fk
The older I get, and the more I learn, the more I detest the entire concept of coercive learning. *sighs* It’s just thought control under another form.
Suggested reading for forms of alternative education:
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paolo Friere
Education and Ecstasy, George Leonard
Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich
Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks
Teaching to Transform, bell hooks
Walking on Water, Derrick Jensen
Mass dumbness is vital to modem society. The dumb person is wonderfully flexible clay for psychological shaping by market research, government policymakers; public-opinion leaders, and any other interest group. The more pre-thought thoughts a person has memorized, the easier it is to predict what choices he or she will make. What dumb people cannot do is think for themselves or ever be alone for very long without feeling crazy. That is the whole point of national forced schooling; we aren’t supposed to be able to think for ourselves because independent thinking gets in the way of “professional” think-ing, which is believed to follow rules of scientific precision.
Modern scientific stupidity masquerades as intellectual knowledge - which it is not. Real knowledge has to be earned by hard and painful thinking; it can’t be generated in group discussions or group therapies but only in lonely sessions with yourself. Real knowledge is earned only by ceaseless questioning of yourself and others, and by the labor of independent verification; you can’t buy it from a government agent, a social worker, a psychologist, a licensed specialist, or a schoolteacher. There isn’t a public school in this country set up to allow the discovery of real knowledge - not even the best ones - although here and there individual teachers, like guerrilla fighters, sabotage the system and work toward this ideal. But since schools are set up to classify people rather than to see them as unique, even the best schoolteachers are strictly limited in the amount of questioning they can tolerate.
The new dumbness - the non thought of received ideas - is much more dangerous than simple ignorance, because it’s really about thought control. In school, a washing away of the innate power of individual mind takes place, a “cleansing” so comprehensive that original thinking becomes difficult.
http://www.spinninglobe.net/condunces.htm
As George Carlin says…..”no one seems to notice, no one seems to care”!
You are absolutely correct restive and it makes me sick to my stomach! I have seem what it has done to my son and he is brilliant.
Just tonight we had a conversation. We are fighting like hell because he is raising my grandson like that. He is only 11 months old and this so difficult for me to sit back and watch.
susanh,
My son was evaluated, his IQ is extremely high. They don’t teach so that they learn and then call it a learning disability. I went through 12 years of fighting with the school system and they won. They ruined his future. But I am going to tell you the scariest thing of all, I found out that a school counsilor was trying to break his defense system. He said right out to my Educational Advocate that he wanted to break him.
He is my only son. He is the absolute world to me and we now don’t see eye to eye at all. The school tortured him and because of the treatment he got he is preparing his son for it. It is killing me.
No one has any idea how much I wish I could take my son’s family and move to another country. I actually spoke to him about it tonight, but he will not even hear of it.
I tried protecting him in school and they punished him for it. Now he works against me. He wants no part of who I am.
“No child left behind” is the Bu$h/neocon effort to fail, destroy, and close public schools and replace them with religious and business owned schools. The tests are COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE, a waste of education time, and a malicious effort to fail and destroy public schools. Hooray for Wasserman. May his courage prevail, but the government system and facism will win in general.
There are many escapees of the conditioning network in place, I know and watch over them. Strangely they are not the home schooled, ones. Who seem doubly sidelined in this signposted world. It is the anarchistic “sociopath’s” who have gone through the grinder of public schools, medicatons,”rehabilitation” and operant conditioning, and have come out sideways who have the angry vitality to fight the brainwashing.
Of course you know them as “punks” and outcasts. But it takes a certain narccism and sense of personal mission to stay locked out of a world promising every kind of pleasure and trinket in exchange for the bland compliance of the commercialised landscape. Yeah there pissed off, hungry, co-dependant, and usually pretty confused by the daunting task of having to invent their whole world fresh every day.
It is these misfits who are certainly the true warriors and intellectuals of the future, oops I forgot you knuckleheads didnt give us one of those either.. Thanks mom.
This is the sort of protest which may prove most effective: when professionals who occupy positions of responsibility, however large or small, “insubordinate” when they see bad ideas.
Refusal in the face of bad ideas is an act of genuine leadership. I hope we see more of it. Professionals of all stripes need to assert their knowledge set, their training, certifications, etc. do what they think is right. After all, who knows more about education: a certified teacher or politicians who’ve been spoonfeeding us disinformation the past few decades?
I constantly hear this “teaching to the test stuff”. But, I assume the children are tested for knowlwege and abilities that should arise from normal, competent teaching, right?
I doubt the problem is the tests being too difficult (I sure like to see a sample test). So, might it instead be a teaching competence and teaching resources problem - a result of inadequate funding and salaries? In particular, there is horrible race-and-class based inequalities in school funding, especially here in Pennsylvania, where instead of countywide scool systems, there is a patchwork of neighborhood-sized school districts funded largely by a local school RE tax. If you live in a neighborhood of dilapidated houses with litle assessed balue - tough luck - the only place your black face belongs is behind bars anyway! Live in a lily-white neighborhood of McMansions? Good for you kid!
So it is this this racist, classist, inadequate and unequal funding that NCLB does absolutely nothing about, not the “standardized testing” that is the problem . It is the professed scheme of the those in power to do away with universal public education and take us back to a class-stratified robber-baron era private education system.
toylit,
Very moving statement, Thanks.
We can’t throw out the baby with the bathwater, it is not public schools themselves - it is schools that fire teachers for merely saying they honk for peace, much less teachers who mention the ideas of Marx, Proudhon, Emma Goldman, Joe Hill, or Howard Zinn in the classroom.
It wasn’t always quite so bad. When I was in high school, a couple of our techers spoke openly against the Vietnam War without getting in trouble, and English teachers assigned us to read novels by Keroac, Keysey, Vonnegut, Heller and others who would be quite subversive by todays standards.
At my highschool a bunch of teachers were against the standardised testing, but instead of not administering the tests, they told us we could just answer all of the questions with the letters a, then c, then d, then c… the whole test all the way down was acdc acdc acdc…. we all thought it was funny!
Hooray to David Wasserman, we should be singing his praises and support his protest. We need more teachers with the conviction to stand up and lead against what is wrong instead of rolling over the face of an uninformed challenge. As Maggie Kuhn said, “Speak you mind even if your voice shakes!”
Don’t be fooled by the reported benefits of standardized testing. Testing, as it is employed in America, is used more as a means of penalizing students then anything else. The politicians then use the testing data to penalize schools. As a result, the schools waste valuable education time teaching the test instead of teaching our children.
The concept of standardized testing came about because parents demanded political accountability for little Janie and Johnny’s failure, but accountability is not quantifiable unto itself, some manner of collecting data and measuring results had to be created. So, unimaginative as American institutional education can be, they turned to Asia and Europe for answers. Thus was born the concept of standardized testing, the benchmark of NCLB — better known in some circles as “No Child Left Untested.”
Many Americans live with the delusion that Asian and European education is far better because they constantly test their kids, and their kids test better than ours in all subjects. What many Americans fail to understand is that ALL of our kids are tested whereas the Asian and European countries ultimately test only the top 25-30 percent of their students. By the time Asian and European kids are tested in high school, the vast majority of the students (usually by sixth-grade) have been culled from the herd and sent on to “garbageman” school.
In America we live with Public Law 94-142, originally known as the Education of All Handicapped Children Act, now codified as IDEA, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. In essence what PL 94-142 states is that all children in this country have a right to an education regardless of their abilities and their challenges. This also includes children with problems like dyslexia, a learning challenge that hampers learning under America’s cookie-cutter approach to education.
Just as a point of reference, no other country on the face of the earth has this same guarantee.
So if you want to live by testing then allow us to at least level the playing field, only compare out top 30 percent with the rest of the world and see how the results shake out.
But that’s only a tactical answer to a larger strategic problem: as an adult are we constantly tested to see how we match up with our peers? Some might say we are by how we match up in business and education in a global market. But that’s not testing in the sense of what we learned in school these past few weeks, months or years, that’s testing us on our abilities to think creatively and problem solve — something lost when we employ an educational system such as what we have in place since the formation of NCLB.
“no child left untested”—or undrugged.
For those of you wanting to see released test questions from past tests for grades 3-10 in the state of Ohio here you go
http://www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEPrimary.aspx?page=2&TopicRelationID=1070
While you are there, look at the state standards, or try taking the test yourself. I’m sure that most state education departments have sample tests on their sites and released materials- check them out so you all know what is happening. The passing score for the OGT math test last year was 42% I believe- which would of course be a horrible F in a class. I have spent hours and hours in meetings this week analyzing the questions, how the kids did on the questions and best ways to constantly expose the kids to the types of test questions. We have a new program in place teaching a formulaic way to answer the short response questions too.I have not had time to do my normal classroom lesson plans, think of creative ways to teach the standards etc because of all these meetings about tests. I really believe that NCLB is an effort to narrow the focus of teaching, create people who can’t think so that the government can continue getting away with unspeakable actions. It also seems to be a deliberate effort to label almost every school in the country as failing as 2014 gets closer and not every child is proficient due to many factors. Teachers have NOTHING against being certain that every child is learning, for heaven sakes that’s why we are teachers- but what are they learning and what is the environment in which they are learning it? Something is very wrong. Continuous testing is just that - continuous testing. I just had some upper class students miss a whole week of Alg class because they were taking the OGT tests they didn’t pass last year. Teachers know something very basic is wrong with all of this. If I were a farmer raising cattle I don’t think I would spend all my time weighing them over and over, If I want healthy cattle I would probably spend my time and money finding the best conditions for them to grow and flourish in, not spending all my money on the best scales. Enormous amounts of money are being made by companies cashing in on the testing craze. Something is wrong!
What we need is a 55 MPH speed limit, good idea skee!
Thank-you David Wasserman!
NCLB is horrible. I have three special needs children, who will never reach these bench marks. It is unfair to push special needs children to set the bar so high that they can never reach the goal. You can’t take away a child’s disability with pushing math and science. You can’t blame the teacher for my child’s disability. You can’t hold the school accountable for my child’s special needs. As a parent we have to come to tearms with the disability are children are faced with. Every child is not created equal, its just fact. My son will never master these unrealistic skills, and holding a teacher accountable, and a school accountable is unfair. It’s not the end of the word for my son to not learn math. He is specail, we get exited over the little things he masters. We set the bar for him high, but based on his needs not what the government feels he can master. Special Educators are being fired for their children not meeting these bench marks, and then who is going to be there to teach my children. They are being told they are bad teachers because special education students can’t master these objectives. Its a sad fact, that angers me. I am sad for my children that they have to live with the disability that society wants to wash under the rug and pretend they don’t have. I am angry that nobody considers how it impacts our children. Every thing has come down to this one test. The joy of learning has been taken right out of our schools.
www.yestheirmine.blogspot.com