| Test Anxiety, Part 2 | for everyone |
So whose fault is it that testing is destroying the promise of public education, forcing schools to neglect their best and brightest to focus on "leaving no child behind," even if they were left behind at birth.
I stipulate that there's plenty of blame to go around. Certainly the law of unintended consequences comes into play, especially in the responses of the NEA and AFT to the various efforts at reform.
But in Missouri the testing/accountability movement really gained steam when Governor Mel Carnahan pushed through SB 320 which dramatically increased funding for education. The political price he had to pay for that (Law of Unintended Consequences) was more testing. My perception (as a public school teacher) was that the demand for increased testing was retribution by the right for having lost the battle to keep taxes down. "If you're going to raise taxes to spend more money on kids then we're insisting that you prove it's not going down a rat hole."
No argument, there are some rat holes out there (the City of St. Louis Public Schools certainly comes to mind; thank goodness the state of Missouri is going to save the kids in Wellston by having them go to NORMANDY!). But even there heroic teachers struggle valiantly, every day, trying to overcome enormous odds to reach their students. And they do reach some. Just like we did at Hancock. We didn't face the same odds, but it was no "gimme putt," either. But we were able to focus our limited time and limited energy on kids who were going to escape, who could succeed. We were trusted by our principals (even the ones who weren't all that fond of us) to work hard for the benefit of our students.
In this brave new world of teachers as interchangeable parts, administrators can't (perhaps can't afford to) trust the technicians they're creating to meet global test standards. I'm sure there's testing at The College School. I know there's testing at Schechter. But the purpose of that testing is not to meet some arbitrary average, but to help us assess student needs, to help us better educate individual students.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT out to get you, and I know there are people on the right who want to dismantle public schools (at least in part to emasculate the teachers unions), but I don't believe that was the goal of this absurd overemphasis on testing. I do, however, believe that's the result, again demonstrating the power of the Law of Unintended Consequences.
At least I'm pretty sure it wasn't the goal. If it was, then they're way more devious than I ever imagined and they'll achieve their goal, sooner rather than later, and under the radar. Sigh.
In this brave new world of teachers as interchangeable parts, administrators can't (perhaps can't afford to) trust the technicians they're creating to meet global test standards. I'm sure there's testing at The College School. I know there's testing at Schechter. But the purpose of that testing is not to meet some arbitrary average, but to help us assess student needs, to help us better educate individual students.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT out to get you, and I know there are people on the right who want to dismantle public schools (at least in part to emasculate the teachers unions), but I don't believe that was the goal of this absurd overemphasis on testing. I do, however, believe that's the result, again demonstrating the power of the Law of Unintended Consequences.
At least I'm pretty sure it wasn't the goal. If it was, then they're way more devious than I ever imagined and they'll achieve their goal, sooner rather than later, and under the radar. Sigh.
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