Heads in the Sand

Abstract

THERE ARE some teachers returning to their classrooms this fall who need to shake the sand out of their heads as well as to clear the cobwebs out of their closets. They the ones who approved the resolution at this past summer's convention of the National Education Association (NEA) that supports parents who boycott standardized tests and at the same time orders the NEA's legislative staff to oppose the testing provisions that both the House and the Senate passed when they voted to renew K-12 education programs. First, the teachers' alarm comes a bit late in the day. Large-scale assessments here to stay, and if the states don't do a better job of crafting high-quality and fair systems, the burden will eventually become a federal one. Second, by hiding behind the parents' skirts and waging their quixotic legislative battle on Capitol Hill, the teachers, once again, abdicating their professional responsibility to be assessment and to provide leadership on policy. Despite all the mistakes that have been made, large-scale assessments go to the core of public education's biggest flaw: low expectations for students and teachers in thousands of schools. Politicians and policy makers using a top-down system to expose that flaw and to target attention and resources. The fact that the politicians and policy makers not testing experts is painfully clear, but there is no other way to get at the problem without condemning another generation or two of our children to less than full participation in American society. The teacher who sponsored the resolution couldn't have illustrated the problem better. Poor working-class kids, she said, are going to do poorly on standardized No wonder the NEA felt the wrath of commentators from the Left and the Right for their action! A centrist-to-liberal Democrat, writing in the Wall Street Journal, scornfully noted that, if the American Medical Association were facing a plague affecting our most vulnerable citizens and yet advocated abolishing - or at least boycotting - the tests needed to detect the disease, there would be a public outcry. More than silly, however, the NEA action gives teachers around the country permission to dodge the hard work of studying the research on principles of good and their use in classrooms. Naysayers don't get respect - especially if their heads stuck in the sand. By the way, being literate does not mean improving one's ability to to the test - at least not to teach to the tests currently in use in many states. On that point, the boycotting parents have a good argument. But the primary reason teachers and principals panic about state tests and spend an inordinate amount of time prepping students to take them is because they not in charge of the process. They have turned it over to an infrequent, external testing system, while continuing to limp along with inadequate classroom-based testing that rarely reflects what is now known about how students learn and how to measure it. Instead of letting uninformed parents lead the cause, teachers ought to become the experts themselves. Perhaps it is daunting to take on large- scale assessments, considering the power wielded by the testing industry and policy makers. But teachers ought to speak out with one powerful voice about the appropriate use of such tests. If the tests being used to assess schools or programs, for example, then they should be based on sampling rather than on individual student results. An even more important contribution that informed teachers could make to policies would be to use research-based practices - those that truly get at the dynamics of learning - in their own classrooms. …