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| The reality of many American families...and do you realize how this affects our schools? |
The LA Times jumped on the trendy bandwagon of bashing teachers through its publication of its article on standardized testing and publishing names of teachers in LA Unified by ranking based on current standardized testing.
The article is here: http://projects.latimes.com/value-added/
Of course teachers fought back against such one sided bias against them, as I said already, it’s the newest trend in education, among the administration and administration ass-kissers. Teachers are now being ranked according to test scores that were viewed as anathema by the educational institution a decade ago. This same educational system now touts these tests as a verifiable way to make themselves look good. We need a history lesson about standardized testing.
It wasn't that long ago that standardized testing was ridiculed by minority groups as unfair and biased against non-whites. These tests were recognized as not being representative of what a student actually knew. Standardized tests were regarded as biased in favor of white middle-class students. This up roar also coincided with the African-American push in California
The real problem remained undiagnosed or at least wasn't brought to the forefront of the debate about standardized testing. First of all, standardized tests are generated with the assumption that all students, regardless of geography, socio-economic status or race, were taught the exact same curriculum content and that all students have equal ability to learn. This is the area that bias flags were waved with great rigor.
It was soon recognized that students in inner city schools and schools that existed in poverty riddled communities weren't getting the same access to core curriculum in history, math, English, science or the performing arts due to lack of funds, staffing troubles and just general community struggles. Communities with socio-economic struggles came with societal problems that were an additional burden on the local classrooms: violence, broken homes, unsafe neighborhoods and likely inept administrators staffing their schools with less experienced teachers or teachers who hadn’t yet finished their teacher training.
The focus began to shift away from the testing bias when NCLB, introduced under former President W. Bush, began to control school funding and gained acceptance by administrators. The push for “test prep” began in earnest. You see, that was the answer: Test Prep. Teaching students “test readiness” is actually education lingo-jingo for “teaching to the test.” So, instead of dealing with the real issue of tests being unfair evaluations of all students’ learning, the answer was promised in the acceptance of the ideology that kids were just poor test takers and needed some extra “test taking skills.” This is utter and complete bullshit.
NCLB is a federally funded program that holds a lofty goal of pushing schools to get all students to proficient and advanced levels as defined by the test administrators’ themselves. Because federal funding is tied to NCLB funding and harsh penalties loomed as realities for some schools in the form of federal or state takeovers, schools opted to teach to the test through the thinly veiled guise of “test prep.”
This turning point caused by NCLB’s goals led to the singling out of schools by ranking and consequently, entire districts by rank. It’s not surprising that the schools which suffered from the former testing biases were the same ones that were now identified as low performing. Whatever bias had been present a decade earlier was still there. But, as certain schools now had a “numerical” ranking system that gave them bragging rights, these same standardized tests moved into the acceptable mainstream by those who benefited. Surprised? Not me. Standardized testing, once the demon of education, is now accepted as a valid measure of student and school success. To keep the scores up and to compete with each other for rank, school districts developed the new weapon: TEST PREP. This is where your child’s education goes…into the test prep classes for CAHSEE and CSTs.
Now these tests are being used as a measure to rank individual teachers. You have got to be kidding me! One test to measure what happens in any given classroom. All the problems that plagued standardized testing still exist and have a direct correlation to what any given teacher is able to do in any given class. Tests don’t filter out poverty, unsafe neighborhood, lack of parenting, and the general culture of poverty. Now, it is convenient to blame teachers for poor test scores. These “number” rankings label teachers as good or bad. There is only once measure that doesn’t account for all the emotional and social work that goes into a classroom, nor can any test. Until our nation and our state recognize that community and familial foundations affect classrooms there will be no fairness in education. Rankings will be biased. And teachers will continue to lose heart in an already stressful and heart-breaking career. Oh wait, the teachers of the rich don’t get heart-broken. Just the rest of us.
