BOARDWATCH: Absurdities of continuing failed retention policy and destructive early childhood standardized testing challenged again...
Cassie Crestwell making her presentation to the May 25, 2016 meeting of the Chicago Board of Education. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.[Editor's Note: The following remarks were prepared for delivery to the Chicago Board of Education's May 25, 2016 meeting. They were provided to us by the speaker and are reprinted here as she provided them to Substance for publication. George N. Schmidt, Editor, Substance].
The district is in dire financial straits. There will be $24 million on hand after June 30th if there’s no legislative progress. You are proposing drastic cuts to the classroom. And yet, you, the Board of Ed, and CEO Claypool continue to refuse to make some basic, sensible, evidence-based policy changes that could save the district millions of dollars on summer school.
First: the promotion policy. Another school year has gone by and the CPS promotion and retention policy remains unchanged. Retention is incredibly damaging; a study more than a decade ago by the Chicago Consortium on School Research showed that retention increased a child’s chance of dropping out by 26%. Retention is also incredibly expensive: the full cost of education for an additional year for every child of the thousands who are held back each year.
Chicago Board of Education member Mark Furlong engaged in a dialogue with Crestwell about the Board's policies of testing early childhood children. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.Parents who met with Chief Officer of Teaching and Learning Annette Gurley were told that the promotion policy could not be changed given the longer term uncertainty about which tests would be used as district wide assessments.
This makes no sense. Retention should be discontinued altogether and replaced with a system of supports---not attached to yet another standardized test.
In the current financial climate, it is beyond crazy to continue a policy that is both damaging, racially discriminatory and expensive. Second: standardized testing for K-2. On the agenda today is another $3.5 million for standardized testing for Kindergarten through 2nd grade from NWEA and Amplify. Standardized testing in neither valid nor reliable in early childhood. And in fact, the MAP for Primary Grades test was so terrible, you announced that it was being eliminated...three years ago due to “concerns raised by teachers, parents, and principals during focus groups and online survey responses about the additional time spent on computer-based assessments by our youngest students at the expense of having direct interaction with their teachers.” This will be added to the more than $80 million spent on standardized testing companies since FY2013. And the $70 million spent on ed tech & test prep software in that same period. I stated this one year ago and I will say it again: These numbers may sound small compared to the billion that’s needed to patch the CPS deficit, but when every school in this city stands to lose a half million to several million dollars, we need to ask: who really needs these scarce resources? NWEA, Amplify, the venture capitalists funding ed tech startups? Or the students in schools around the city that are starving for teachers, librarians, counselors, nurses, coaches and even copy paper and hand soap?
