The Degeneration of American Education

The high-stakes testing mania in general and No Child Left Behind in particular have reduced too much of public education to a system to be games. Some people play the game sincerely and seriously. The teachers and principal in Linda Perlstein's Tested are such players. They have doubts about the value of the state test, but they strive mightily to get their impoverished students over that barrier. After the test is given in late spring, they start acting like real teachers in a real school -- they take the kids to museums and aquariums and to watch the Blue Angels perform. They make art and write poetry. But only in the short time between the state test and the end of the school year.

Some people play it cynically, doing whatever it takes to get children close to the passing score -- the bubble kids -- off the bubble and into the magic kingdom of "proficient." The "sure things" and "hopeless cases" are ignored. Or emphasizing the increasing passing rates on a required test as students enter their senior year, not taking into account the massive dropouts that have occurred along the way. Or establishing "leaver codes" in sufficient number that a school can have over 1000 9th-graders, fewer than 300 12th-graders and zero dropouts.

Some play it as if they have lost all sense of proportion and common sense. The Texas Education Agency refused to grant a waiver from the state test for a young woman hospitalized after a serious automobile accident that killed her brother and left her memory impaired. Her school dispatched an assistant principal to administer the test in the hospital. Fortunately, one of the girl's teachers overheard what was up, got to the hospital first and told her to refuse to take it. In Colorado, a father, a teacher himself, sought to opt his daughter out of the state fifth grade test. Fine, said the superintendent, but she won't be promoted to sixth grade.

In Washington, a willing testee who simply couldn't think of how to respond to a writing prompt was harangued by his teacher, then by his principal and then by his mother. Unable to respond, he was forbidden to attend a post-test party at which pancakes were served and the movie Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events shown. He was told he had ruined everything for everyone else at the school and suspended for a week.

And some play it desperately. On March, 27, 2008, the Houston Chronicle reported that a middle school principal told a group of teachers that he would kill them and kill himself if the school's science scores did not improve. He was not, the teachers said, joking. "You don't know how ruthless I can be," he is alleged to have said. The incident is being investigated as a "terroristic threat."

At this point we should be asking HAVE WE GONE COLLECTIVELY MAD?

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities," said Voltaire. In a world that contains Clear Skies, Clean Waters, Healthy Forests, an Axis of Evil, Iraqi Freedom, Family Values, Patriot Act, and No Child Left Behind, it is a good reminder for our time.

If readers have other examples of absurdities, I would love to hear about them. You can write to the blog or to me directly at gbracey1[at]verizon.net

Comments

[Gma11]

My daughter teaches in an elementary school in Maui. Testing time is so traumatic for the children - they catch the tension of the teachers and administators - that therapists are called in to help them. Schools there are incredibly diverse - and with many economic and social problems. NCLB is devastating for them. Their principal says they need a new program named No School Left Behind instead.

A good question to always consider: "Who benefits?" In this case, it is the textbook manufacturers, testing companies, and testing experts - many good ole friends of the former governor of Texas!! Surprise, surprise . . . And, of course, those who intend to privatize schools.

[tbone99]

Actually the presidents brother Neil Bush ( yeah, the felon) not only has a company that sells those tests he also has some kind of educational "cow" ( and I mean its an actual cow shaped box stocked with patented materials that he leases or sells to schools.) I saw Barbara Bush pushing it on some news show. he must have been inspired by the phrase "cash cow." i think the whole family is.

[WIpatriot]

Coincidence?

This tin foil hatter thinks not.

[dalton]

Neil Bush, the dyslexic felon, bought a software company, named it "IGNITE!", and has sold it to many states at $40 per pupil. He has also sold this program, which includes American Social Studies in cartoon format to China, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc. Of course he was uniquely positioned to purchase this software and market it since he had a clue that NCLB was about to be inflicted on American teachers and schoolchildren. Very few parents are even aware that their child has access to this "resource", the password for access is not given to the student. I learned of it the end of my daughter's 7th grade (her last year in public schools).

[jrldev]

NCLB is another alphabet government-sponsor promotion to avoid responsibility from parents and teacher alike. As a counselor(now retired) of "drop-outs" and "on-legal probation" teens ages 14 to 17 I have found very little indication that the program did any good to the particular group I was "trying" to
work with. Most of the kids were on probation for everything from petty crimes to felony. Less than 10%
were at the time attending a regular school. When I visited the "special alternative" school they were attending what I encounter was what I would discribe as "juvenile Hall annex" - a day-care program to
keep them off the street between 8:30am and 3:30pm. Very little attention was given to teaching basic
school curriculum. Of course the assigned "teachers" could not set "rules of conduct within a classroom environment" because the discrict was receiving government funding base on attendance and nothing that will "upset' the student (grown teens at times twice as big as the instructor).
Within the period I was involved with the program (4 years) not less that 3 teens per year died from
drug overdose or car accident when they were intoxicated.
Only two (2) of over 200 kids I knew personally within those 4 years made a success of the program
One became an undertaker assistant and another a California Park Ranger.

[Rule Of Law]

Gerald, read:

"The Crisis in Democracy" paper, written for the Trilateral Commission, 1975, New York University Press Michel Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington and Joji Watanuki.

It outlines how the oligarchy can regain its power. One, is lowering the standards of education, a surfeit of which, they felt, was responsible for the social uprisings of the Sixties; women's rights, civil rights, and the anti-war movement. Soon all we will be required to do is simple addition and subtraction and sign our names with an X.

The second tactic, reign in the Press, which they felt, again, was too free and added to the climate of rebellion by daring to print the truth. Look at the consolidation in all forms of media today and their Corporate Ownership, and they have accomplished that, handily.

Third, the growing wealth and political power of the middle class, especially home ownership, wasTHE real threat, so they put into play several economic programs. These led directly to the subprime meltdown, the negative growth in wages for workers, and the offshoring of our industry, destroying unions and the power of workers. With no job, no home, and no hope, people have no power and don't see the inexorable destruction of our Constitution and way of life.

Which of these is the most crucial? My money is on education, precisely because the founding fathers placed so much value on it as the one thing that would make our country great.

[WIpatriot]

Rule, people who read this are going to shake their heads, perhaps not collectively, and look at you as a tin foil hatter.


Those people who wear tin foil hats are giving us a bad name.

[Rule Of Law]

Gotta tell you, buddy, I'm going for full on kevlar hat status. I post something this inflammatory, and the only response I get is from someone already in the choir? This country get more amazinger every single day. You know the school of art, pointilism? These folks are right up on the painting looking at their particular dot, and be damned if they aren't missing the big picture by choice or ignorance, or maybe fear? I'm fast coming to the belief that you couldn't get 5 people to stand up for the Constitution without appropriately place cattle prods.

[Mormondude]

The biggest absurdity of all is what happened in Kansas City.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-298.html

[January]

Yes, teaching to the test is crazy. But the problem is that teacher's unions that block dismissal of incompetent teachers is also crazy. Choosing one side of the craziness over the other is also crazy.

[mentelibre]

Teacher unions don't block dismissal of incompetent teachers. This is an old wives tale promoted mostly by right-wing opponents of unions.

Teacher unions have an interest in seeing incompetent teachers leave the field- they make the rest of us look bad. The only thing teacher unions do is make sure that due process is followed.

In my district, teachers have three years on an "annual contract." That means that for your first three years, the principal can simply not hire you back. No explanation requred. Nothing could be easier than dismissing a teacher during their first three years. After that, the teacher has "tenure," but that only means that there is a process that must be followed to dismiss them. If the teacher is incompetent and the principal follows the procedure, the teacher will be dismissed. The union can't block it. When the teacher is incompetent, the union has no interest in blocking it.

That's the real world. I hope you'll stop repeating this old saw about unions keeping incompetent teachers on the job. In fact, my active involvement in my union has made me a much better teacher and much more well informed citizen. That's what teacher unions REALLY do.

[tauna]

Some states (Virginia, Arizona, Minnesota) are considering opting out of NCLB but if they do it will cost them dearly in terms of needed funding - thus states are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

It is a sad state of affairs that the federal government, which arguably has no constitutional right to dictate education policy, can withhold desperately needed funds to schools if they do not comply with an Orwellian education policy that harms children (especially our nation's most vulnerable and impoverished children) and is literally destroying public education while diverting hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars to business interests in the name of "failing" public schools.

[Clinton]

This is the real American nihilism, and what it is doing to our children will haunt us if we don't change it.

[Clinton]

A new word for 'teaching to the test' needs to be invented. Because that emphatically is not an education. And there's no way we do anything other than betray the principles this country is founded on if all we can manage for our children is to pigeon hole them into a cubicle for some faceless corporation and say that we have educated them. We are supposed to be teaching them how to think critically about the history of their world. How to be free, independent citizens who preserve their liberty and help others obtain theirs. How to choose what is best in life, how to know what that is, to be exposed to everything good, true and beautiful. Clearly, something is wrong, and we neglect it at our collective peril.

[Moose49]

No Child Left Behind is a scam. It turns children and their teachers into political pawns to be manipulated in a cynical game of stat-rigging. It has nothing to do with improving the real quality of the education children receive or providing them with the knowledge and skills they will need to succeed in the 21st century economy.

But it's worse than that. Consider that it was devised by disciples of Grover Norquist, who promised to shrink government to the size where we can "drown it in a bathtub." Their definition of government most definitely includes the public schools. The entire structure of the law is designed so that eventually, a large majority of public schools will be designated as "failing" in order to create a political outcry that eventually enables Norquist and his gang to finally achieve their dream of private school vouchers. The fact that NCLB's draconian sanctions became law without providing schools the resources they need to meet its onerous requirement is further proof that this is part and parcel of a conspiracy to destroy the public sector in education, as well as every other sphere in which it operates.

[Clinton]

Agreed. It is part of the neocon war on the poor.

[NoMoFearNoMoHate]

and you didn't even mention how the testing companies have lobbied for their billions in handouts on their monopolized, mandatory tests.

[Moose49]

True, true. Every Bush-era right-wing scam, err, policy, has to have its hand-out to crony contractors, whether NCLB, Iraq or the Katrina pseudo-cleanup.

[WorkingClass]

You got it right Moose. NCLB is designed to destroy public schools.

[1dogs2]

Remember that NCLB was strongly supported by, among others, Ted Kennedy, for all the right reasons (e.g., pumping much-needed money into our seriously under-funded inner-city schools). Remember the media hoopla over the bi-partisan support of the bill. Remember Kennedy's fury when the first thing Bush did was to break his personal promise to Kennedy to fully fund the program. I think your analysis of the motives of the neo-cons is correct; but what rational person (as opposed to tin-foil hatted conspiracy theorists) would have believed such an evil motive at the time that the legislation was written, debated and passed? Now that the sad truth has emerged, it is time to trash the entire program and try again to write legislation whose purpose and EFFECT is to further the value shared by all decent Americans: a free, quality education for all American children, who are, after all, our future.

[WIpatriot]

My tin foil hat fits just fine, thank you. I really don't have one, but being rational and a realist, it is I who am here to tell you "I told you so."

One day, when it is too late, you will wish you had listened.

[WIpatriot]

Beware the metrics, it drives the behavior.

[desmirl]

When performance on standardized tests replaced real learning in the classroom, America became the poster child for NO NATION LEFT BEHIND. As long as no child left behind is the standard for American schools, the stories and event of weird behavior will only get worse.

[Clinton]

HAVE WE GONE COLLECTIVELY MAD?

Of course, long ago.

[philistine]

Testing mania is truly abhorrent. Pressure does NOT improve productivity. Why do so many people insist on using it to "motivate" people?

"Beatings will commence until attitude improves." Thanks, but no thanks.