Re: Carl Chew chews up the WASL

[aburke5054@aol.com]

Introducing Nuremberg, "body counts," and slavery into discussions of 
reading and math tests in the public schools demonstrates only a moral 
compass badly askew.  How low and desperate can you get?

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: GERALD BRACEY <gbracey1@verizon.net>
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:04 am
Subject: [arn-l] Carl Chew chews up the WASL


It is gratifying to see so many resonating to the trials of Carl Chew.  
The
following has been posted at www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-bracey.


Chew on This

One seldom hears about The Nuremberg Precedent in education except in 
history
class discussions of the post-World War II trials of Nazis.  Some Nazi 
leaders
said they could not have known the consequences of their policies and 
orders and
others said they were just following orders.  Their judges said “that’s 
not good
enough.”

The body count from No Child Left Behind grows daily and one wonders 
when the
perpetrators will be called to account.  In a decent nation, the larger 
society
holds the government accountable.  In a program like NCLB, the 
government holds
the citizenry accountable.

Now comes Carl Chew, a 6th grade science teacher in Seattle to say 
“enough.”
That last sentence might at some point be altered to read “former 6th 
grade
science teacher.”  On April 15, Mr. Chew refused to administer the 
WASL, the
Washington Assessment of Student Learning, which serves to satisfy the 
NCLB
testing requirements.

Administrators tried to dissuade Mr. Chew from his act of civil 
disobedience,
then escorted him from the school.  Three days later, Superintendent 
Maria
Goodloe-Johnson sent Mr. Chew a letter that began, “This letter is to 
inform you
that I have determined that there is probably cause to suspend you from 
April
21, 2008 through May 2, 2008 without pay for your refusal and 
insubordination to
your principal’s written direction to administer the WASL at Eckstein 
Middle
School.”  What happens May 5 is not clear (May 3 is a Saturday).

In writing to explain his action, Mr. Chew expressed his love for 
teaching, for
his students and for his fellow teachers, and expressed sorrow that his 
act had
cause pain for some people, but added “I could no longer stand idly by 
as
something as wrong as WASL is perpetrated on our children year after 
year.”

This indictment was not a general statement or an impetuous one.  It 
was
followed by a list of 24 thoughtful reasons why WASL is bad kids, 
parents,
teachers and schools and nine reasons why it is “just bad.”  One can 
only
imagine that the perpetrators of WASL—and its many look-alikes, like 
the Nazis
at Nuremberg, knew what the consequences of their policies and actions 
would be.
A few examples:

Bad for kids:  “There is no middle ground—children either pass or fail 
which
leaves them confused, guilty, and frustrated” (this is one of the grand
absurdities of NCLB—you’re either proficient or left behind.  Learning 
doesn’t
occur in such either/or dichotomies.  It occurs in continua, in all 
likelihood,
multidimensional continua; Chew later observes that many students who 
were
simply told that they had failed were, in fact, very close to the 
passing score
and that many of these children cried on receiving the results).

Bad for teachers:  “A majority of teachers loath the WASL, but feel 
unable to
speak out freely against it due to their fears of negative consequences 
for
doing so” (many, many examples show that these fears are real; they are
reinforced in many cases by principals’ contracts which mandate 
specific
increases in test scores each year as a condition of employment).

Bad for parents: “Most parents are misled by official statements about 
what the
purpose of the WASL is” (it is the academic equivalent of saying we’re 
going to
war in Iraq to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction).

Bad for schools: Washington State will spend $56 million in 2009 just 
to have
the damn things graded by a private corporation.

I can only hope that people will one day look back on high-stakes 
testing the
way they now look back at slavery—in disgust and a with sense of 
horrified
wonder: what were they thinking?  To mix metaphors, you don’t build a 
house with
a wrecking ball.