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Schooling in Orange Jumpsuits
The image that flashed into my mind was: schools in orange jumpsuits.
Something has broken apart in our society - an unspoken agreement about sanity, a truce between play and order. The authoritarian strain, always present, of course, has been ratcheting up to ever more absurd levels for a decade now.
It's as though, as the American political class has watched its real control over the course of events slowly ebb, a collusion of desperation has broken out among them: "The time of fun and waste is over," as the 9/11 terrorists put it. As our problems get increasingly complex, the solutions we implement get more and more simplistic. Results don't really matter, just the appearance of holding someone accountable.
In our foreign policy, this axis-of-evil insanity has been all too obvious. On the domestic side, in our relationship with ourselves, much of the up-tempo repressiveness - homeland security overreach, the USA PATRIOT Act - is driven by an alleged fear of terrorism. That is not true, however, of No Child Left Behind and the high-stakes, high-stress testing mania that is running amok in our schools. I have yet to encounter a teacher who has anything good to say about the phenomenon, which I now see as hysteria's beachhead on the home front.
"Each bar-coded booklet must be guarded before the tests and accounted for afterward so the questions aren't compromised. Schools have to provide a written statement to explain why even a single booklet is missing."
This is my local paper, the Chicago Tribune, gleefully and uncritically updating me on ISAT testing time across the state of Illinois. This is how we're wasting $45 million: scraping the brains of the state's third- through eighth-graders in order to assess whether their schools will stay open, whether their teachers will keep their jobs. The stakes are so high that security measures dominate the process. How far away, I wonder, is Blackwater (I mean Xe) from getting the contract to curb cheating?
"Educators say they walk a careful line, asking students to take the tests seriously without making them anxious about grown-up problems, such as the threat of closing schools that repeatedly fail to meet expectations.
"‘You don't want to scare the kid to death.'" So the assistant superintendent of a school district west of Chicago told the Trib reporter.
I read these words as the parent of a grown child, as one who remembers the struggle of putting a kid through the public schools. One of the worst things about the school system even before No Child Left Behind was how my daughter's teachers were forced to teach to the often preposterous and learning-antithetical requirements of the standardized tests. And it has only gotten worse, with the force of top-down authority becoming ever tenser and more demanding.
While testing and evaluation are reasonable components of the education process, pretending that evaluation is a hard science, that you can reduce a child's mental growth to a statistic, is not. Yet the authority of the standardized tests, such as the Illinois Standards Achievement Test that is now sending stress waves through the state's school systems (some schools even allow gum-chewing during testing weeks to help kids stay relaxed, the Tribune reported) is seldom challenged by the mainstream media - any more than they challenged the authority that declared, and continues to declare, war.
As I say, high-stakes testing is all about holding someone accountable. Diane Ravitch, writing last week on HuffingtonPost about the recent firing of all 93 teachers, administrators and support staff at the "underperforming" high school in Central Falls, R.I., commented, quoting a blogger called Mrs. Mimi, that "we fire teachers because ‘we can't fire poverty.'"
The "underperforming," low-testing schools - the ones that get shut down, emptied out, metaphorically forced to don the orange jumpsuits - are always in low-income communities, where children struggle against enormous obstacles, at home and on the streets, that schools cannot control. Rather than take a holistic approach to the educational challenges of these communities, rather than mandating smaller class size, the equitable allocation of resources and other changes that would do immediate good, test-pushing pols seek to punish convenient scapegoats, start over and change nothing.
But my most serious complaint against the mania for standardized testing is the way it straitjackets education itself, converts classrooms, in the words of Bill Bigelow, writing a decade ago for the Rethinking Schools website, "into vast wading pools of information for students to memorize without critical reflection."
Education that joyously encourages creativity and discovery is out of the question. The exaltation of the standardized test, however flawed, to the status to supreme authority, breaks the connection between teacher and student. Suddenly school is just another battleground - us vs. them - with Blackwater security guys guarding the right answers.
- Posted in
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Show AllOn Friday, Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez interviewed Diane Ravitch on Democracy Now! The interview is worth the time! I have some other relevant comments, but I have to help an older friend get safely to the doctor -- another issue -- about which I am also passionate. Therefore, my comments will have to wait until later. Living in East Harlem, I have witnessed some very disturbing situations, between students and cops.
If you haven't already watched Amy and Juan's interview with Diane Ravitch, you can go to:
www,democracynow.org
Standardized testing is just an expression of Taylorism, the early twentieth century view that efficiency was the standard by which all actions are to be measured. It exalts what educationists call "achievement," jargon for how many questions students get right on high-stakes tests. Test scores are to education what money is to the capitalist system: the final measure of worth. Of course, they miss other factors some deem important: reflection, enthusiasm, written and oral expression, love of learning, the social learning that goes on in schools, artistic expression, and more.
Testing by itself is not wrong. In fact, it is necessary to improve the teaching/learning process; after all, it is feedback, a necessary element in finding out what is successful. The problem lies in the narrowness of the feedback being obtained through standardized testing as well as how test results are being used. In general, they are not always being used to improve schools in a broad sense--and often prove harmful to what schools are trying to do.
It is noteworthy that the impetus behind such testing programs comes from politicians and businessmen, almost never from educators. It is as if medical doctors were constantly being told how best to practice medicine by persons unacquainted with medicine. They would not tolerate such imperiousness and neither should the educational community when it comes to prescriptions for education reform.
"It is as if medical doctors were constantly being told how best to practice medicine by persons unacquainted with medicine."
Insurance company claims adjudicators do exactly that. And to a large degree, USan doctors DO tolerate it.
>>USan doctors DO tolerate it.<<
And the alternative is? Not get paid?
Gary
"Modern cynics and skeptics... see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing."
-- John F. Kennedy
How true!
As an educator for 9 years I completely agree with your comment. I have always argued that education is the only industry that others believe they can do better then educators themselves because at one point or another they were in school. It is the equivalent of a person entering the cockpit of an airplane and instructing the pilot on the best landing methods because they have taken hundreds of flights or a patient instructing a doctor on how to best diagnose a problem because they have been to the doctor hundreds of times. Educators need to demand the same respect that all professionals receive otherwise education will continue to be just another political tool for politicians to make a name for themselves and our youth will be the ones to suffer.
At a High School in Detroit the reading of Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible' was replaced with a course on how to fill out a Wal-Mart job application.
I kid you not.
This is the utopian vision of the forces who wish to privatize our school system....Replacing reading, writing and arithmetic with programming to turn our children into obedient worker-bee zombies.
You must read this amazing investigative piece:
http://dailycensored.com/2010/03/06/corporate-barbarians-at-the-gate-wal-mart-internships-at-detroit-schools/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Dailycensored+%28Daily+Censored%29
(If this link is unworkable go to www.dailycensored.com and click on 'Corporate Barbarians at the Gate' at the bottom of the page.
Your note on the high school in Detroit says it all.
Education inevitably requires a bit of both the training and conditioning/utilitarian side, as well as the mental-spiritual and imagination growth/nurturing. With the latter, the former comes easy ...but not vice versa.
A young person who has read and thought about The Crucible and/or other such literature is probably less likely to apply to work at a place like Walmart; and, if they did, they'd have little trouble filling out the application.
A young person who, instead, went through the motions of filling out Walmart and other such applications, his/her mind nipped in the bud, is destined and doomed to land in Walmart.
This has always been the game only now they are more openly craven about their goals. There is a reason we had summers off; So we could work the fields. There was a reason we switched classes every hour at a bell; it was to get us used to the stations and pace of an industrial assembly line. Curriculum didn't need any depth We needed to know the "where's" and "how's" but never the "why?" And now we have NCLB; because with even as little as they pay in taxes the "elite" still rankle at "their" tax dollars helping those undeserving poor children. They are above the "public" and they will never let you forget it and they're taking the ladder with them.
"Minor" MANIFEST INSANITY!
First thing learned at school.
Shut up and get in line.
Then they pledge to cloth that represents a democracy,
oops, a republic.
Well I did learn to eat anything. and I can drink Tap Water and not die :)
There is one very sinister aspect of standardized testing which, in my recollection, has not been discussed on this site.
As many of us here have pointed out, the goal of NCLB is not to improve schools but to close as many public schools as possible. It is one of the mechanisms developed by the corporate right to shrink public educaiton.
Stalin said something to the effect that counting votes is more important than the voting itself.
An obvious 'educational' corollary to that principle would hold that grading tests is more important than taking them.
When the leaders desire to close schools in a certain area, it would be a simple matter to engineer failing test scores to justify those closings.
No Child Left Behind is the right's most serious assault on public education. The first step in fixing our schools must be the dismantling of this monster.
q
Excellent point.
Power is pressing down, pressing down, distressing, alarming, terrifying, crushing, destroying ... killing.
Standardized testing is becoming the norm as "elite" colleges and universities phase out standardized tests as a criterion for admission (bye,bye SAT).
I moved to a top school district in upstate NY where my kids were handicapped by an extremely irrelevant Regents system. Teachers taught to the test, which means education was strictly controlled and censored by NY State.
With standardized education teachers cannot teach the "truth". They get bored, get tenure, and end-up teaching the stae provided curriculum. What a waste of teacher talent, what a waste of student talent.
It's no wonder that Obama's kids go to Georgetown Friends where they are not restricted by government mandates.
In California thousands of teachers have been laid-off (fired) and thousands more will receive pink slips in the coming months. Yet, prison guards and administration have not had hours cut and new prisons are being built.
Let's just cut the charades and shut down all public high-schools. The kids can be given two choices: join the military or go to prison. It fits in very well in our neo-Fuedal society. That way we can get rid of all those over-paid teachers who have cushy jobs, and then cut taxes for corporations and super rich.
Our school system is NOT about empowering our children and youth to become engaged citizens with a deep understanding about the world, a critical mind, the ability to think for themselves and a life long love of the enjoyment of self learning. If it was it would be quite different.
No. Our school system is about making nice little subjects who do what they're told, don't question authority, know how to show up at work on time and spend all day doing something they despise and KNOW that meaning can't be found in learning/work but must be found only in the mindless entertainment they use to escape from their school day (work day.)
Our school system is modeled on a factory. Our children and youth are seen as the bottles and the factory pours in the product. Who cares what the bottle thinks or cares? Schools are about killing freedom. Remember the basic idea of school "discipline" is authority harshly interrogating children starting at age 5 about why they aren't WHERE they've been ordered to be and doing WHAT they've been ordered to do for hours each day.
Yes, it IS just like prison. And now we're trying to take away more freedom from teachers who in this horrid system try to make learning what it is supposed to be. "Submit to the Factory Model or we'll fire you."
One of the greatest ironies and disappointments of my adult life is that Home Schooling, originally a movement by Progressives (John Holt) to break out of this factory model and give kids freedom to be kids and explore their own interests was co-opted by Religious Conservatives as their solution to the school system not being enough like a prison factory. argghhh
Your John Holt reference triggered a memory from high school in the early 1970s.
I was assigned a term paper topic that amounted to Education 101, probably because I was (am) a born iconoclast and existential critic of the institutions that intersect with my life. The teacher might well have been deliberately trying to focus my lazy-like-- er, I meant "laser-like"-- intellect beyond my general assertion that School Sucks.
Even though I had no interest in pedagogy or becoming an Education major, I must say that that lost and probably worthless "term paper" really put me on a tear of reading several books that I later noticed in university bookstores. I really got into it.
This just to say that I still remember preaching up a storm about the Open-School Utopia described in A.S. Neill's "Summerhill" to my fellow freaks. (If anyone is unfamiliar with the idiomatic use of the term, "freak" was the shortened version of "hippie freak" found in Philly PA-area high schools at the time; it's not pejorative.)
I was stunned, then pissed off, when a couple of my Woodstock-generation, dope-smoking, intellectual and spiritual searcher friends gave me a thumbs-down on the prospect of Summerhill-style schools becoming universal.
I can still picture my good buddy R., then a cigarette-smoker too, removing a flake of tobacco from his lip and saying, "Unh-unh". Oh, sure, it was all well and good to wish that everybody could be ACTUALIZED and achieve personal growth and freedom and find their True Niches in Society in the process-- but SOMEBODY had to be fit to do all the shit work around!
We argued about this, but I don't remember resolving the conflict. They really were trying to be pragmatic, and didn't feel particularly hypocritical in suggesting that after all, there's surely a pyramid of human talent, potential, capability, etc. They didn't see how an "all-intelligensia" society could function.
I've lost touch with them, but they were definitely on the right side of History. ;)
Yes, we had "Freaks" in Fairfax (Va.) High School. We even had a designated cigarette smoking area, where pot smoking was widespread and practically tolerated by the teachers and administration too.
Along with the Jocks, Band Wallys, and the brainy kids who may have been called "nerds" even back then. We also had "Speds" which referred to special educaton, but also, quite derogatorily and snobbishly (Fairfax, Va is rich and white), referred to kids taking the vo-tech-track instead of college-prep-track.
In Illinois where I live they have some grand old school buildings that are 100 years old. The architecture is stunningly beautiful. Unfortunatley, the buildings are in poor neighborhoods and have fallen into disrepair as local residents refuse (or can't afford)to pay higher taxes needed for renovations.
On the other hand, in more well-to-do school districts where new schools are being constructed the edifices are uninspired, plain buildings that are constructed with the cheapest materials available. The buildings have few windows and the buildings are locked down during the day. They look like prisons without the razor wire. I think the government wants to prepare the youth for the regimentation of the authoritarian government that is evolving in the US.
I know what you mean. A turn of the century elementary school in my Pittsburgh neighborhood is slated for closing. In a big sandstone lintel over the front entrance is carved the now rather weathered statement: "Dedicated to the Cause of Public Education - A (something) of Democracy". If only we were still as "socialist" about education as in the robber Barron days when the school was built.
Lately I've been trying to figure out which has been the most utterly failed US bank. Can't tell if it was Goldman Sachs. Must not have been because they're giving their chief, Lloyd Blankfein, a $9 million bonus this year. Maybe it was J.P. Morgan Chase because they needed a multi-billion dollar taxpayer bailout. But it couldn't be them because their headmaster, Jamie Dimon, is due a $17.9 million bonus. Wells Fargo will give their CEO John Stumpf $21.3 million so I guess they're out.
But whichever banks it was that nearly plunged this country into an economic Stone Age and martial law in October 2008, they seem to have gotten a pass. Their excuse, "to big to fail", has actually been bought. There has been no "reconstitution" or "turnaround" for anybody at Goldman, J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, BOA, Wells Fargo, and their gambling buddies at AIG. What a strange form of accountability!
And even stranger, there are about a hundred teachers at this poverty-ridden community school in Rhode Island and if you added their salaries together and multiplied by a hundred you would not be even close to a banker's bonus. And even after the school's parents and the teacher's families and loved ones turned out in huge numbers to plead for justice at a school board meeting. And even after it has been established beyond all doubt that a perfect correlation exists between a child's economic station and academic achievement as it is measured by standardized tests, these teachers are going to be destroyed.
Destroyed is a strong word but suggest another one for arbitrarily and unfairly taking a working mother or father's livelihood, men and women without stock options and investment portfolios to tide them over until another job comes along. The school's students are living in the most desperate circumstances Rhode Island has to offer. But no excuses, dammit! Accountability will be served, as long as you don't summer in a Swiss chalet.
As a teacher in a "failing" inner city high school for 27 years now, I'm as powerless and vulnerable as my brothers and sisters in Rhode Island, but a warning to those hurting people whose only sin is to teach the children of the working poor. If you are making these decisions President Obama, then be warned. If you are making these decisions, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, then be warned. If the oligarchs, Gates, Broad, Bloomberg, are making these decisions, be warned. If the banks on welfare or the men of the Business Roundtable are making these decisions, be warned.
History is replete with instances of empires, nations and civilizations turned upside down one day. When that happens the social order that shields the decision makers from their victims evaporates overnight. Suddenly humble working people like those at Central Falls High are able to reach out and touch their former overlords. Under this new set of circumstances you can expect to face a simple and straightforward examination of your own. The setting will probably look a lot like the Nuremberg Trials.
The economy of the United States is now fully devoted to war and no longer has the capacity to maintain a functioning public school system. Last night half the public schools in Kansas City were shuttered. Every state in the Union faces a deepening hole in their budgets. The reason is simple. Unemployed people stop paying income taxes. Foreclosed upon people stop paying property taxes. No wealth is created in this country today so there's nothing to tax. Nothing of value is made in the United States anymore!
Nothing that is except weapons of war. War making is the only "healthy" sector of the US economy left, which is why were staying in Iraq, escalating in Afghanistan, and expanding the fight to Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. But an ability to deliver bombs from drone aircraft on people around the world will not rescue a broken economy.
Whatever real wealth hasn't been turned over to the banks or earmarked for keeping our Chinese creditors happy is devoted to war making and the weapons trade. The steadily accelerating destruction of public education in the United States is one of the results.
I need something clarified about "standardized tests" and "teaching to the test".
First of all, isn't a "standardized test" simply a test with the same or similar questions given to all students? Professional engineer, medical board and bar exams, the SAT and GRE, and the "E" and "O" levels in the UK, which may have the best public education syatem in the world, are standardized tests too. Yet nobody assumes there is anything sinister in them.
Secondly, why should standardized tests imply "teaching to the test". Obviously, a good teacher should be simply teaching sufficient mastery of the subject and thinking process so they can pass the test without having worked or answered the actual test problems. If there is "teaching to the test" going on, it suggests to me the teachers themselves might not have sufficient mastery of the subjects they teach.
Ah, but how and by whom are those test written? And for what purposes?
The test writing industry -- and that is what it is -- is notorious for producing rather idiotic and very limited questions. Or questions even a college grad might stumble over. The tests lack the real flexibility to allow for differences in teaching methods and subjects -- often aiming for the LOWEST common denominator in the questions. Or questions that otherwise would be outside the actual syllabus the teacher sweats over and often must be approved before the teaching begins.
Rather than let the teacher design the questions to fit the individual class and students, these tests create a mythical "average student" to be queried. And you can surely can imagine how well such an approach works.
Test writing is a tricky art and rarely is it improved by being done by a faceless committee working for a big business. Professional test-writers never seem to have any real experience in the classroom and no grasp of the dynamics involved.
If you'd read many standardized test questions in these oh so secret booklets, I'd bet you'd be appalled. But students have to be taught to take those damned tests rather than in the subjects themselves, many of whom have aspects that do not fit into a one size fits all straitjacket.
Gary
"If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 40 people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn't want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher's job."
~- Donald D. Quinn
Currently, I live in NYC, and your article, Schooling in Orange Jumpsuits, reminded me of an incident I witnessed when I was walking on the sidewalks in my neighborhood of East Harlem. I work as a researcher, and usually, during the day, I'm at NYPL, or at the Municipal Archives, or somewhere digging up facts about some subject. However, a few months ago, during an afternoon in the fall of 2009, I had some errands to do, and happened to be walking in my neighborhood when school was dismissed for the day. The sidewalks were filled with young teenagers, and I noticed a cop car, with two white cops in it, sitting on 119 and 1st Avenue, on the south side of the street. The cops were chowing on McDonald's -- I saw the sacks and the burgers being eaten. Suddenly, one of the white cops yelled something at a group of 6 or 8 kids, male and female, walking south on 1st Avenue. I didn't hear the kids say anything to provoke the cops, but the young people seemed aware of the cops, looking over their shoulders as they crossed the street. I was sort of caught off balance, but not for long. I soon realized that the cops were there to WATCH the kids. One of the girls turned around and said something back to the cop. I shuddered at that moment, knowing that these kids were far too young, maybe middle school, to have the life experience to completely understand what one wrong move, and/or one wrong word, might create -- the lives of the young people could change forever in the flash of an instant, and quite honestly, none of them were guilty of anything. (I still remember Kent State.)
As I walked on the sidewalk, I began to question why the cops were there in the first place -- they must have been assigned -- and since one of the cops was the first to make a smart and loud remark to the kids, I asked myself, "Are these cops mature enough to be carrying guns?" Or, are they purposely trying to provoke the kids? Cops are supposed to be adults, aren't they? Of course, NYPD does NOT have a good record on these issues/civil liberties.
I wrote a letter about this incident to my City Council person, but I didn't ever hear anything back.
♫ Gee, Officer Krupke,
Krup you! ♬
Most drive for testing allies with the idea that schools function to produce little gimcrack corporate androids--"pass on our culture," some put it, or "provide skills to compete for high-paying jobs."
My banking colleagues did not consider college graduates more intelligent or better trained than anyone else. They hired them because they expected them to be more obedient: graduation implied a history of compliance.
"If they survived schooling, they have the character to be leaders," they would say, concluding: "We can expect them to adapt to company policies."
For these execs, schools do not serve as education, then, but as giant filtering systems to keep the independent from positions of trust and power. Such institutions see prolonged babysitting punctuated by random tests as pretty satisfying.
Cheney said "The time of fun and waste is over" ?