Comment left on a post by a writer named Zachary Wright who wrote a quick little piece for Education Post. Apparently, Wright had a long career in the classroom. He was a teacher of the year… a finalist for something something…. he spent 8 years teaching in a charter school and now works as a teacher trainer for Relay (no comment). His piece wasn’t very substantial.. it was just a quick little something he dashed off, but it was comment or fold laundry. My comment is below:
Thanks for managing to “muster” as much love, honor and respect as you were able. I hope it wasn’t tough going. But, as long as we’re talking, let me just say that I’m less interested in your respect than I am in a more nuanced discussion of the complex issues around high stakes testing and who it serves. I think that calling analysis of this complex issue “moaning and griping” is a lazy characterization. I could spend several paragraphs discussing the predictable sexism of labeling well reasoned, evidence based critiques by teachers as griping, but suffice it to say that you can miss me on that underestimating stereotype of teachers.
Here’s the good news. It’s a new age for a lot of things.. and while I’m not grateful for the flawed theories of corporate reform… I am enormously grateful for teachers finally standing up for and taking positions on their own profession. No more agreeing to step out our own wheelhouse so that a privileged class of amateurs can play with public education like it’s just one of their sandboxes. Saying that we’re not going to discuss the issues around testing because “justice and oppression” is just word salad. How exactly does high stakes testing create justice? In what sense is it a remedy for oppression? And if you’re going to argue that it is… tackle the reasons that it isn’t… flat lined NAEP scores, erratic teacher or student scores, negative impacts on students and schools, questionable failure rates when using above grade level aspirational standards, flaws in the test itself, the ASA position paper on VAM, cases like Lederman v. or Canaday v., parent refusal. All of this matters to the notion that a high stakes test is any kind of remedy.
But the big gap in that logic is how it doesn’t address the undeniable fact that high stakes testing in the charters that pusue it with such vigor has not returned justice for children. One of the big success stories in state testing, the charter network Success Academy, brings home stellar scores for the 3-8 State Tests but can’t transfer that “learning” to next level exams like Regents and specialized HS exams. What’s that… justice through the 8th grade?
When Success Academy can only graduate 16 students out of a starting class of 73, it’s a policy problem. Why is this related to performance reviews or high state testing? Because… it turns out that “crushing” the 3-8 state test isn’t a metric of student performance or needs… it’s a measure of adult performance and needs. It arises out of the flawed theory that if you tie adult interests to test scores, you’ve tied adult interests to student development. It’s dumb just on the offensive assumption that adults need a cattle prod to care about the development of children but also blind on the assumption that linking self interest and public interest always works out well. If you’re doing whatever it takes to make your students “crush” the state tests every year as part of your performance review, and they don’t go on to “crush” other tests or complete college… whose needs were you serving? You get the gold star. They get the reality check.
And just a note: If you’re a professional, you don’t deride your students as “hopeless and impossible to educate.” I certainly hope that you are just indulging in another tired trope about teachers and not characterizing the kind of teacher you were for the last 10 years. Professional educators may be frustrated, but we still knows that if we have students who aren’t making progress after responses to intervention including scaffolding, relationship building, parent conferences, cluster meetings, counselor support, additional time, simplifying and checking for understanding, retake/redo, extra help, remediation, behavior plans… then we look to get additional services. We don’t deride our students; we advocate for the supports that they need to succeed.