MEDIA WATCH: 'We are alarmed at the negative impact of excessive school testing mandates, including your Administration�s own initiatives, on children�s love of reading...' Maya Angelou's denunciation of high-stakes testing craziness ignored by corporate media, White House in eulogies' hypocrisy
Maybe we've missed it at Substance, but we haven't read in the eulogies in the corporate media that one of the last acts by Maya Angelou as a public intellectual in the United States was to join in a denunciation of the test craziness forced across the nation by President Barack Obama and his "Race To The Top." The authors' Letter to President Obama criticized federal education policy in no uncertain terms. And of the more than 100 authors and illutarators of children's books who signed the appeal, Maya Angelou stood proudly.
Maya Angelou defended President Barack Obama against the racism of many of his fiercest critics, but he didn't even respond to her criticism of the federal government's Race To The Top test-based corporate school "reform" program.There was no mention of her opposition to federal testing mandates in White House, City of Chicago, and other official proclamations about her life.
OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA THAT MAYA ANGELOU SIGNED:
President Barack Obama?The White House, Washington, DC 20500
Dear President Obama,
We the undersigned children�s book authors and illustrators write to express our concern for our readers, their parents and teachers. We are alarmed at the negative impact of excessive school testing mandates, including your Administration�s own initiatives, on children�s love of reading and literature. Recent policy changes by your Administration have not lowered the stakes. On the contrary, requirements to evaluate teachers based on student test scores impose more standardized exams and crowd out exploration.
We call on you to support authentic performance assessments, not simply computerized versions of multiple-choice exams. We also urge you to reverse the narrowing of curriculum that has resulted from a fixation on high-stakes testing.
Our public school students spend far too much time preparing for reading tests and too little time curling up with books that fire their imaginations. As Michael Morpurgo, author of the Tony Award Winner War Horse, put it, �It�s not about testing and reading schemes, but about loving stories and passing on that passion to our children.�
Teachers, parents and students agree with British author Philip Pullman who said, �We are creating a generation that hates reading and feels nothing but hostility for literature.� Students spend time on test practice instead of perusing books. Too many schools devote their library budgets to test-prep materials, depriving students of access to real literature. Without this access, children also lack exposure to our country�s rich cultural range.
This year has seen a growing national wave of protest against testing overuse and abuse. As the authors and illustrators of books for children, we feel a special responsibility to advocate for change. We offer our full support for a national campaign to change the way we assess learning so that schools nurture creativity, exploration, and a love of literature from the first day of school through high school graduation.
Alma Flor Ada
Alma Alexander
Jane Ancona
Maya Angelou
Jonathan Auxier
Kim Baker?Molly Bang
Tracy Barrett
Chris Barton
Ari Berk
Judy Blume
Alfred B. (Fred) Bortz
Lynea Bowdish
Sandra Boynton
Shellie Braeuner
Ethriam Brammer
Louann Mattes Brown
Anne Broyles
Michael Buckley
Janet Buell
Dori Hillestad Butler
Charito Calvachi-Mateyko
Valerie Scho Carey
Rene Colato Lainez
Henry Cole?Ann Cook
Karen Coombs
Robert Cortez
Cynthia Cotten
Bruce Coville
Ann Crews
Donald Crews
Nina Crews
Rebecca Kai Dotlich
Laura Dower
Kathryn Erskine
Jules Feiffer
Jody Feldman
Mary Ann Fraser
Sharlee Glenn
Barbara Renaud Gonzalez
Laurie Gray
Trine M. Grillo
Claudia Harrington
Sue Heavenrich
Linda Oatman High
Anna Grossnickle Hines
Lee Bennett Hopkins
Phillip Hoose
Diane M. Hower
Michelle Houts
Mike Jung
Kathy Walden Kaplan
Amal Karzai
Jane Kelley
Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff
Amy Goldman Koss
JoAnn Vergona Krapp
Nina Laden
Sarah Darer Littman
Jos� Antonio L�pez
Mariellen L�pez
Jenny MacKay
Marianne Malone
Ann S. Manheimer
Sally Mavor
Diane Mayr
Marissa Moss
Yesenia Navarrete Hunter
Sally Nemeth
Kim Norman
Geraldo Olivo
Alexis O�Neill
Anne Marie Pace
Amado Pe�a
Irene Pe�a
Lynn Plourde
Ellen Prager, PhD
David Rice
Armando Rendon
Joan Rocklin
Judith Robbins Rose
Sergio Ruzzier
Barb Rosenstock
Liz Garton Scanlon
Lisa Schroeder
Sara Shacter
Wendi Silvano
Janni Lee Simner
Sheri Sinykin
Jordan Sonnenblick
Ruth Spiro
Heidi E.Y. Stemple
Whitney Stewart
Shawn K. Stout
Steve Swinburne
Carmen Tafolla
Kim Tomsic
Duncan Tonatiuh
Patricia Thomas
Kristin O�Donnell Tubb
Deborah Underwood
Corina Vacco
Audrey Vernick
Debbie Vilardi
Judy Viorst
K. M. Walton
Wendy Wax
April Halprin Wayland
Carol Weis
Rosemary Wells
Lois Wickstrom
Suzanne Morgan Williams
Kay Winters
Ashley Wolff
Lisa Yee
Karen Romano Young
Jane Yolen
Roxyanne Young
Paul O. Zelinsky
Jennifer Ziegler
By: Susan Ohanian
Maya Angelou
I'm unwilling to confer sainthood on Maya Angelou because passages from her work were so widely used on high stakes standardized tests. Here's one example:
Sample:
But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage (stanza 2)
Which of the following best describes the effect of the metaphor in the stanza above?
It explains that the bird that is trapped may
A. break the bars that confine it.
B. not hope to see the outside world.
C. soon grow to accept the situation.
D. be consumed by its own anger.
Ohio Graduation Test, "Caged Bird" by Maya Angelou
No, she didn't write the test questions, but she held the copyright to the work that was used.