'...test takers needed to consider not the best answer, but the best answer that someone dumb wrote'... A Forum sponsored by More Than a Score continues public protest against mindless testing
"Change the Stakes on Testing!", an April 29, 2014, forum at Union Park in Chicago, drew a lively group of parents, teachers, students, and community members. Teachers comprised most of the audience for the 6 p.m. event. The agenda invited �parents, students, teachers, and community members, who are frustrated with the scale, expense and consequences of the testing regime.� Other participants, like this reporter, came to get an idea what Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) are all about and why they are using these particular tests on our children.
Panelists at the April 29, 2014 forum hosted by More Than A Score. Substance photo by Jean Schwab.Chris Ball, who spoke first, said that at best, the answers are ambiguous. One of the test questions was directed to third graders with an illustration. The question was, �What�s happening?� followed by three possible answers. The forum participants were to pick the correct answer. All of us got them wrong. The illustration and answers did not really go along with the story or the picture. Ball recommended that test takers needed to consider �not the best answer, but the best answer that someone dumb wrote.�
Ball�s presentation was followed by a panel discussion.
Testing and school closings were discussed by a CPS parent who opted out of the ISAT, Sherise McDaniel, who stated, �I have two children in the Chicago Public School system. I have a 15-year-old daughter who is a freshman at Lincoln Park High School and a 9-year-old son who is a 3rd grader at George Manierre Elementary School.
�The reason I opted my children out of testing this year and I will continue to opt them out of this excessive high- stakes testing is because they turn around and use the tests against us! �In February of 2013, my son came home from school and handed me a letter that his teacher told him was very important. When I read what the letter said, my mouth fell to the floor and I became short of breath. This letter stated that my kid�s school would be closing at the end of the year. My family and so many other parents, students and teachers alike were devastated.
�We wanted to know why this was happening to us. We were told that it was because we had low enrollment, low test scores, and it was just too expensive to keep running our building. However, their solution was to cram all of our students into another homogeneous school having all of the same so-called problems we were having; only now they had to cross gang territory to get there.
�Let me tell you that the fight to save my kids� school was a hard one. It forever changed my life. We saved George Manierre. So many other families lost their schools. That�s why, a few months later, the mayor and Barbara Byrd Bennett (BBB) slashed budgets of schools because the city opened 13 new charter schools, if not nearby, right on top of closing schools. Just recently they turned around three schools, two on the West Side and one on the South Side, firing all of the African American faculty and staff. Once again disrupting our children�s education and what kind of message does that send to our children? It is that African American professionals can be easily disregarded, that they themselves are just pawns in a game of chess?�
McDaniel closed by saying, �High Risk Test gives CPS a reason to close schools and all of this to keep their pockets lined with money and send their kids to the best schools�. All this sends a message to me. The mayor and his appointees don�t really care about our children. These excessive high stakes tests give them a reason to:
Disinvest in our communities... Disinvest in our children and forever keep us at on or below the poverty line!� Michelle Strater Gunderson, a CPS early childhood teacher asked, �Privatization is a scheme. What are we going to do about it?� Gunderson said that, in her class, children are busy building towns with blocks, cross stitching and waiting patiently to work with the teacher on a book project.
Gunderson stated that teachers are �now given a script to follow. In the last four years there has been a drastic increase in top-down, data-driven, let�s assess children and use the test to change what is going on in the classroom.� Gunderson noted that the NWEA is run on a bell curve and keeps moving the goal post. As soon as the students start to answer the questions, they increase the difficulty of the test. Gunderson watched CPS tear down the library and throw away children�s art work at Whittier Elementary School. She has �watched CPS take over a school and fire teachers who are part of the community. They are doing all this because they can.� Gunderson says she is able to teach as she does because she is a member of the Chicago Teachers Union and follows the contract, which protects teachers. �Please join the teachers in this struggle.�
Paul Horton, University of Chicago Lab School Teacher, spoke next.The Chicago Lab School was founded by Thomas Dewey. The original mission was to train teachers and send them out to the public schools. Recently the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT)was rewritten by the same person who wrote the common core standards.
�As a teacher of 32 years,� Horton said, �some of my students have been in the top tenth of 1 percentile of the SAT. It does not tell how smart a student is. The best assessment of a student is the History Fair Project and having students do research.� �Pearson Education produces a shoddy test (PARCC) and the state of Illinois has spent $773 million to write and grade these tests,� he added. The head of the Illinois School Board took three free trips paid for by Pearson. Our kids are being used as guinea pigs.
Even BBB, CEO of Chicago Public Schools, says scores will go down 30%. These tests are created to destroy teaching as a profession. Most students will fail these tests. �Even Huberman was heard to say that new teachers were better than teachers that have taught over 3 years. Data-driven is about profit. Look at the cohort of kids that graduate in charter schools and say they have 100%. Then look at the original class and see that 50% have dropped out. Public schools are doing better than private schools. This is a corporate takeover of education. The media will not report what is happening. I�ve written about this and submitted it and the media refuse to print it,� Horton said.
By: Theresa D. Daniels
Testing Scam Info Always Appreciated
Great article here. Made me wish for a transcript of that event--the details here were so rich.
Terry