Re: The "darkest underbelly" of testing

[aburke5054@aol.com]

 NCLB says that states should improve their schools unitl all their children are proficient, including poor children, minority children, children with special needs, and children who are just learning English. The teacher quoted below says he teaches at a school where 40 percent of the students have special needs. He's kicking against the fact that the school was identified for improvment because students with special needs did not make adequate yearly progress on the state tests - claiming that it is somehow unfair to the school to identify it as needing improvement on the basis of the achievement of 40 percent of its students. It seemingly never occurs to him that students with special needs and their parents might welcome the benefits that identifying the school for improvement is supposed to bring to them and that figuring out what to do to help those students and how to do it is what school improvement should be all about. 
 
 I think that NCLB, for all its loose ends, is one of the best things our nation has done to promote equity and I think that it is both terribly sad and terribly revealing that educators are fighting it tooth and nail. If anything is going to drive parents and kids to charter schools, private schools, or vouchers it is nonsense like that coming from Tyrrell and people like him.
 
 Art 
 
  -----Original Message-----
 From: jhorn@monmouth.edu
 To: arn-l@interversity.org
 Sent: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 12:26 PM
 Subject: [arn-l] The "darkest underbelly" of testing
 
  In moving toward the negotiating table for reauthorization talks, Bush

and Spellings have shown zero interest in acknowledging the

impossibility of children reaching their 100% proficiency target in math

and reading by 2014. To acknowledge reality would require change, and

that, in turn, would shake loose the linchpin of the Right's school

privatization plan that requires a steady stream of public school

failures in order to undercut public support and, thus, get traction for

the voucher and charter alternatives intended for those who don't have a

choice in the matter.



In the meantime, of course, there are the millions of children, parents,

and teachers who are being sacrificed each year in order to attain the

assured failure that has been planned for them. The choking canaries in

this dark poisonous mine are, of course, the poor, the disabled, the

immigrant, the minority--the ones supposedly for whom the title of this

legislation was stolen from the Children's Defense Fund. No Child Left

Behind, indeed.



Here is a commentary from science teacher, Robert Tyrrell, on what is

happening to the children at his school, children who are being ground

up in this cruel crucible--and what is happening, too, to the attitudes

of the survivors who now see the test failures as the "dumb ones" who

stand in the way of success:



Campus West School is a kindergarten through eighth-grade Buffalo public

school that has had a long and proud tradition in its association with

Buffalo State College. The staff is highly trained, motivated and

constantly involved in professional development.



Our school is a site for training student teachers, with many

professionals using our school for educational research. Our scores for

eighth-grade general education students on the 2006 English language

arts, math, social studies and science exams are the second- or

third-highest in the district for nonselective schools. The scores

surpass some suburban schools. 



Campus West, however, has been listed as a "school in need of

improvement" for a number of years by the State Education Department, as

was reported in The Buffalo News on Jan. 11. How could this happen? 



Campus West has, throughout its existence, been a wonderful learning

center for special education students. At this time, about 40 percent of

our student body is special-needs students. One part of the No Child

Left Behind Act requires special education students to meet the same

benchmarks as their counterparts in general education. 



A little-known aspect of this policy is that a school can be judged

deficient solely on the basis of the Education Department's judgment

that special education students are not successful on state assessments.

This indeed is the mechanism by which Campus West was designated as

needing improvement. The policy of judging an entire school program by

measuring special education student achievement on standardized testing

precipitates much more negative fallout than the simple label implies.

First and foremost, parents and community and media people are not able

to see real successes in the school program. 



For example, the percentage of Campus West general education students

who passed the eighth-grade English language arts test has increased 20

percent in the last two years. The eighth-grade general education

students of Campus West are almost 25 percent above the city average on

all state tests. 



It also undermines the professionalism of special education teachers who

traditionally have judged the success of special education students

based on their individual learning plans. 



Lastly, and the reason for this explanatory piece, the policy of judging

a school by the success of its special education students on

standardized tests affects student responses to their educational

program. One bright student, perhaps reflecting her parent's comments,

was recently overheard: "Campus West is a "bad' school because we have

"dumb' kids taking these [standardized] tests." 



Much more could be said, but to me, this statement reflects the darkest

underbelly of the unwarranted use of standardized testing and provides

its own commentary. 





Robert Tyrrell is a science teacher at Campus West School in Buffalo.

   
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