Re: A change of direction for FairTest?

[Peter Farruggio <pfarr@UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU>]

I agree with Dave on this, and I hope he's right about FairTest's change of
direction.



At 01:11 PM 2/14/02, you wrote:

> Hi, everyone--
>
> I was very pleased to see the preferred course of action against the
> standards movement which Monty recommended recently on the ARN list, that
>
> "People see through [the corporate push for tests], organize and mobilize,
> connect it to other powerful issues... "
>
> I hope that Monty's words here suggest a change of direction for FairTest
> and CARE, which have long been working in the opposite direction:
>    --FairTest and CARE vigorously promote "high standards," the
> conceptual underpinning for high stakes testing, through the "Alliance
> for High Standards NOT High Stakes" which they organized and to which
> they provide ideological leadership.
>    --FairTest and CARE refuse to expose the corporate backers of high
> stakes testing. People need to know who is behind the tests and standards
> and why, but one would search in vain for any mention in the voluminous
> CARE and FairTest literature for any suggestion that these tests are
> promoted by the most powerful corporate forces in the land, or that the
> intentions of these forces might be to lower educational attainment
> rather than to raise it as they claim. The business organizations which
> are the principal backers of MCAS in Massachusetts--MassInsight, the
> Massachusetts Business Roundtable, the Mass Business Alliance--seem not
> to exist as far as FairTest and CARE are concerned. When CARE leaders
> talk publically about why these tests are being imposed, they attribute
> them to the right-wing Pioneer Insititute or to ex-BoE chair John Silber,
> never to the corporate forces behind them.
>    --FairTest and CARE assiduously avoid examining the relationship
> between education reform and corporate attacks on people in other areas
> of their lives. Rather than "connect it to other powerful issues," as
> Monty now suggests, instead they limit discussion of education reform to
> high stakes testing, and then limit opposition to high stakes testing
> merely to high stakes testing as a graduation requirement, rather than to
> MCAS (the HST in Massachusetts) at all levels. Indeed they speak as if
> MCAS were merely a flaw in an otherwise positive 1993 Education Reform
> Act, rather than the centerpiece of an act which promotes charter schools
> and school choice, attacks the seniority and tenure rights of teacher and
> leaves principals unprotected, promotes School to Work and Gifted and
> Talented programs, provides for tiered diplomas, pits schools and school
> staffs against each other in a struggle for survival in the face of
> threats of state takeover, and in other ways intensifies competition and
> inequality in the schools.
>
> New Democracy has long argued that, if we wish to oppose high stakes
> testing effectively, we must understand it in its context in the standards
> movement and the broader corporate-led education reform movement. Our
> problem is not only high stakes testing but a panoply of reforms all of
> which serve to intensify competition and inequality in the public
> education system.
>
> To limit discussion and analysis on their web sites and public
> announcements to testing alone and then to endorse the standards movement,
> as FairTest and CARE do, undermines the movement against testing or
> standards. To refuse to expose and analyze the role played by the Business
> Roundtable and other corporate forces in promoting testing and education
> reform allows the corporate enemies of public education to pretend to
> occupy the moral high ground, as if their critique of the schools is true
> and it is they who have the welfare of the community at heart while
> we--teachers and parents--are mere "special interests." Not to examine the
> relationship between the corporate attack on public education and the
> corporate attack on other aspects of our society is both to waste an
> important means for building our movement and to leave people in the dark
> about some of the most troubling developments in the history of American
> society.
>
> Monty and FairTest have made significant contributions to the anti-testing
> movement by maintaining these listservs and providing useful technical
> information about testing. But much more is required for us to succeed.
> The change of direction which Monty's words here imply is much needed and
> can have very positive effects on our movement.
>
> Dave Stratman
> Editor, New Democracy
> <newdemocracyworld.htm>www.newdemocracyworld.org
> 5 Burr Street
> Boston, MA 02130
> 617-524-4073
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