We were fortunate to have Dr. Tisch come and visit our school recently to talk with our teachers, administrators and community members about policies that impact schools and their stakeholders in New York State. She was very gracious in her remarks and engaged with us. While there continued to be areas of disagreement, there was a sense that there may be some rational minds up in Albany looking at how to revisit the malicious reform policies that are distracting sincere efforts to improve public education in our state and in our country. I read the following statement to her:
Dr. Tisch, I want to thank you for coming to visit us. My name is Audrey Hill. I’m a very committed 7th Grade ELA teacher in this district, I have 24 years of experience and I work very hard for my students. As I say this to you, I am mindful, and I would like you to be mindeful as well, that it speaks to a culture of slander and scapegoating of public education in America that I feel the need to preface my remarks with that disclaimer. It speaks to an erosion of public trust. I’d like to tell you why and ask you a question.
Everyone in this room understands that school improvement is a worthwhile cause in itself… that some schools are in deep need of improvement (as well as equitable funding), and that some communities are without the strong parent, teacher and community support that we enjoy… Nonetheless, none of it justifies a policy designed to orchestrate system wide failure or sacrifice a generation of the state’s children.
You mention the state tests as having an “aspirational bar.” I am familiar with that term. I have had the opportunity to speak w Peter Cunningham, Exec Dir of Edu-Post and former Asst Secy of Education under Arne Duncan. He also refers to the tests as “aspirational”– we aspire: in essence asking for more than is reasonable or right in order to see what more you can get without any real notion of whether what is asked for is attainable. Yet, the stakeholders (students, teachers, schools and communities) experience very real consequences for not meeting these hypothetical bars that are both several years above level and require students to make more than a year’s growth each year in order for their teachers to be rated effective.
Some will argue that parents need information about how their children are doing, but what information can a parent get from a test with an aspirational bar that is both arbitrary and untested? It not only doesn’t provide parents with information about how their children are doing, it actively deceives them about how they are doing. Put plainly, it is engineered failure. The impact of that failure should shame all participants.
It is not only a false measure, it is experimental in terms of its impact on the intellectual and emotional development of children. It erodes the teacher student relationship. (I could spend a lot of time talking about that.) Add to it that they have unreasonably high stakes but are not transparent in their entirety nor open to critique. And, even though students and parents are told that “these tests only impact adults,” the tests invariably may impact students directly as one of the data points that will be used in making decisions about them. It impacts them indirectly through a constrained curriculum and a school culture of pernicious anxiety which is a reasonable consequence of institutionalizing a purely speculative bar that even as it provides no actual incentive for students, may influence their placement, hurt community reputation, undermine local control of schools and have a career stopping impact on teachers. The misuse of testing to achieve other ends has called the very act of testing itself into serious question in some quarters. It is evidence of a cynical business model that makes unreasonable demands with high consequences for all local stakeholders and no consequences to speak of for its designers and supporters. It risks our entire education system.
It should be of no surprise to you, then, that the public trust is collapsing. Just as it should be of no surprise that a grass roots, parent led, bi-partisan optout movement has been born out of these attempts to engineer the failure of our children, teachers and schools. Private citizens are putting pressure on extremism not folding under it. They are literally being forced into civil disobedience as a check on an immoral practice by government and its agents. It is the only rational response to being ignored by elected officials who barrel on and ignore all reasonable arguments. Seven Regents [in New York] concurred and have responded with what can only be seen as a vote of no confidence to New York’s evaluation plan. Several others have signed on with regret to something they don’t even believe in. Parents all over the State are already talking about opting out in September so as to mitigate the impact of testing upon their children’s curriculum next year.
I won’t lie to you, the fact that you are here listening to us makes a lot of us hopeful that we might be heard in Albany. So I want to ask you what do you have to say to parents and education activists who have not been heard in Albany (or Washington, for that matter) who feel that it is not only their right but their responsibility to opt out of a high stakes toxic test culture in their schools? As Chancellor and as a public leader, what are you going to do to address the just issues that are fueling the opt-out movement?