Fwd: [oaklandteachers] Fwd: [arn-l] Fear Based Education as the Testing Season Starts

[Susan Harman <susanharman@igc.org>]

Brilliant article. Claudia says it all.
Susan

> Published on Sunday, March 16, 2008  by _the Santa  Cruz Sentinel
> (California)_ (http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/ci_8593594)
> Fear-Based Education as the Testing Season Starts
> by Claudia Ayers
>
> Next September, teachers like me will face hours of meetings 
> considering
> mountains of data, derived from rounds of testing that our students — 
> and we —
> must now endure. In the fall, we will no longer have the students 
> whose scores
>  we will analyze, but what else are you going to do with the data, 
> besides
> publish it in the local papers and wonder why the mathematically 
> challenged
> gloat with the up-ticks, and feel shamed by the downturns?
> The confused and erratic sophomores we now attempt to teach have had 
> scripted
>  education since first grade, when whole language reading programs and 
> "fuzzy
>  math" were rejected and all too often replaced with worksheets that 
> were
> guided  by scripts that teachers simply read. Additionally, since the 
> 2001 No
> Child Left  Behind Act, these students have had endless practice 
> rounds for
> standardized  tests. They know how to bubble in answers, but have 
> limited ability
> to ask  questions, and seem so much less interested in understanding 
> their
> world than  the students who preceded them.
> All school children and youth now carry many burdens: content 
> standards,
> measurable objectives, rigor, accountability, school-wide pacing, 
> subject
> breadth [mile wide, inch deep], proficiencies in bunches-of-facts, 
> homework in  the
> primary grades, skills drills and practice tests, fewer high school 
>  electives
> but more math support classes, heavy backpacks and exit exams. These 
>  are the
> fruits of fear.
> Gone are the days of true engagement and authenticity, when emerging 
> goals
> included such things as integrated- and systems-learning, concept 
> development
> and global citizenship. Other things being left behind: field trips, 
> democracy
>  in action, age-appropriate curriculum [everything is hurried], project
> choices,  recess, problem solving, team building, discussion, 
> teachable moments,
> student-taught lessons, inquiry, discovery, inductive thought, art, 
> music,
> teachers teaching to their strengths, freedom, or even … joy.
> No wonder kids are dropping out in record numbers. The kinds of things 
> that
> lead to wisdom and ideals are steadily being eradicated, and if the 
> people who
>  should know better don't start standing up, valued public education 
> will,
> simply, be irrevocably lost. Private school enrollments steadily 
> increase.
> Kids were prompted to think in the "fuzzy math" days; the math skills 
> were
> embedded in rich problems [not on drills and work sheets]. Whole 
> language
> sought  to offer children the rewards of rich literature — public 
> confusion about
> imaginary battles between phonics and sight-word advocates aside. 
> There is a
> difference between authentic reform efforts and the so-called reforms 
> that
> NCLB  has wrought [or is it rot?].
> Should every high school student really be required to take three 
> years of
> college preparatory high-school courses in order to graduate [as is 
> required in
>  many local schools]? Or is this just another way to force kids with 
> lower
> testing abilities to drop out so those who remain will produce higher 
> Academic
> Performance Indices?
> When your school administrators and board members keep telling you 
> their main
>  goal is "improving student achievement," that is the first clue they 
> have
> uncritically accepted fear-based education. The joy of learning and 
> creativity
>  are not measurable.
> Granted, true graduation rates and satisfaction surveys could give some
> useful data. But basing "achievement" almost exclusively on 
> standardized test
> scores is astonishingly nearsighted.
> Honestly, I have seen hundreds of standardized test questions, and 
> educated
> people would be appalled by their quality. That the testing companies
> regularly  rack up errors in scoring is also a little known facet of 
> the industry that
> is  taking hundreds of millions of dollars away from U.S. classrooms.
> The High School Exit Exam [HSEE] has just been given to all of 
> California's
> 10th-graders [March 11 and 12]. Most of our students will "pass." The 
> ones
> who  do not pass are likely to have a different first language, have 
> testing
> anxiety,  or have a learning disability. Sure, they have more chances 
> to pass,
> but anxiety  cranks up with each "try." Each year there will still be 
> thousands
> of great kids  in California who will not receive a diploma and will 
> not walk
> at graduation.  Sadly, these are the students who will be most 
> devastated by
> the missed  opportunity.
> Then in April, all students from second through 11th grades take 
> another
> enormous battery of California Standards Tests [CSTs]. The dollars and 
> hours
> thrown at this enterprise is insane, especially given that 20 percent 
> of the
> school year remains, yet students are evaluated on how they did for 
> yearlong
> course standards.
> My college-age daughters were not subject to the HSEE and I opted them 
> out of
>  the CSTs. They tell me that were they still in high school they would 
> not
> take  the HSEE as a form of civil disobedience, even if it meant they 
> could not
> walk  at graduation. They say they wouldn't want to shake the hands of 
> adults
> with  hardened hearts who did nothing to prevent this test from 
> devastating
> the lives  of our most vulnerable students.
> While I love the idea that students would seek justice by protesting 
> the
> HSEE, it is the appropriate role of adults to protect children from 
> poor policy
> decisions by standing up and unconditionally loving children, not only 
> their
> own, but all children. Tax dollars are precious; they should not be 
> used to
> make  profits for test companies. Nor can we afford the countless 
> hours and
> dollars  devoted to prepare for and administer these pathetic tests.

> Claudia Ayers is a teacher at Aptos High School.
>
> Given the existence of an idealized vision of the community, 
>  movements of
> protest are likely to occur within the political nation when the 
>  discrepancy
> between the image and the reality comes to seem intolerably  wide.
>
> --   J.H. Elliott
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