[CSPS] (no subject)

[Jonathan Coopersmith]

Another skeptic about standardized test taking.  We're certainly seeming 
the 3rd grade focus on TAKS testing, hopefully not to the exclusion of 
learning.



Another visit from the good ship 'Accountability'
John Young, Opinion page editor
Waco Tribune
Sunday, October 23, 2005

It's funny. Just the other night I saw the new principal of G.L Wiley 
Middle School, Dean Frederick, at the pancake house. I made a point to tell 
him how impressed I was with his campus.

I've been in that school maybe 20 times in the last 10 years. Every time, 
I've been impressed with the quiet, the cleanliness, and with the general 
community involvement. You also can't help but be impressed with Frederick. 
He commands respect.

I'm thinking back through the principals I've known at that school, each 
top-notch. But according to the Texas Education Agency and test scores, 
Wiley is a failing school. And if there's anything we all seem to believe 
in today, it's tests scores. Indeed, they are the new religion. And the 
state is coming with evangelists.

Wiley is conspicuous in a school system that was pronounced unitary – 
desegregated – by the U.S. Justice Department about 20 years ago. Wiley is 
virtually all black and virtually all economically disadvantaged.

It should surprise no one, no one at all, that Wiley struggles to make the 
kinds of grades the state gives to schools populated by children who have 
two SUVs in the driveway, high-speed Internet, the best of everything at 
home and on campus.

According to the state, Wiley and Doris Miller Elementary must make some 
systemic changes or face a staff shakeup or the school equivalent of the 
death penalty: closure. In either case, that would be like taking a hacksaw 
to East Waco and removing one of its ribs.

The state says it has the schools' and the students' best interests at 
heart in making these threats. I can't argue. Sufficient reading and math 
skills are essential.

But I fear for what else these top-down mandates will do for the children 
involved, and for the educators. I fear, for one, that an 
already-standardized, one-size-fits-all approach to learning will become 
more so. I fear an education bled of fascination, bled of gusto, bled of 
enrichment –an education that's not really education but training. You will 
pass this test. That is all.

I liked the comment from Frederick when he got the news of what the state 
might do.

“We're not going to close the doors or accept the fact of unacceptable 
ratings and give in,” he said. “We can't do that. We're talking about 
lives. We're not talking about doggone test scores.”

A few years ago, I stepped out of my role as newspaperman at one event and 
into the role of parent when my son's middle school, G.W. Carver Academy, 
was flagged for low test scores among one demographic group.

A review team came to see what Carver was doing wrong. To my eyes and those 
of the parents who came that night, the answer was “not much.”

At a hearing, every other word that came from the review team had to do 
with state test scores. But state test scores were barely relevant to why 
we had our children at Carver, a magnet middle school with a focus on 
science and technology.

Do we get a choice?

One of the out-of-towners suggested that the school faced state sanctions 
if those test scores didn't rise. When the time came for public comment, I 
said that I'd take state sanctions in a heartbeat over a school that spent 
all of its time teaching a state standardized test.

People who haven't darkened the door of a public school in decades have no 
idea how “accountability” has robbed those institutions of vitality, of 
zest, and of the intangible elements that make children want to succeed. 
There's only so much brow-beating, only so much drilling, only so many 
test-prep worksheets a small mind can endure without zoning out. Later, 
when the option is availed, that uninspired child will drop out.

So, as we focus on these basic skills – as if that hasn't been the fixation 
day after day after day in the “age of accountability” – the challenge will 
be to find ways to inspire, to evoke some wonder, to permit exploration, 
and still improve those doggone test scores.

http://www.wacotrib.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2005/10/23/20051023wacyoung23.html

Jonathan Coopersmith
Associate Professor
Dept. of History
MS 4236
Texas A&M University
College Station, Texas  77843
979.845.8584
979.862.4314 fax

Secretary
History & Philosophy of Science Section (L)
American Association for the Advancement of Science
aaas.org