Do Nothing and All Fail

I remember when I started my career in education in CA in the 90s as a teaching assistant in a 5^th grade classroom.  This was the first year that CA decided to implement a test called the CLAS (I believe that is the correct acronym, but it was a long time ago) to assess their reading, writing, problem solving and critical thinking abilities.  It had the students solving problems in science using the scientific method and writing their answers in paragraphs; it had them reading and analyzing poetry; and it had them solving math problems and explaining their reasoning, just to name a few.   It was truly a performance-based test that assessed the students’ skills and capabilities.  In the aftermath, upper and upper middle class families with political connections complained about the test: that it wasn’t what they had expected; that their kids weren’t prepared; and that their kids didn’t do well because they had changed the test so radically.  So, what happened?  Instead of having the will and strength to stand up to the high-powered and connected few in the hope of helping children, the superintendent of schools got rid of the test and went back to the old traditional, multiple choice one. 

Now we have another battle called NCLB.  It is a test of the same multiple choice variety as it has always been.  The only difference is that this assessment has even higher-stakes attached to it: schools can be shut down and teachers can lose their jobs.  In no way does this test help the problem-solving, critical thinking, reasoning, reading, or writing skills of children.  How can it?  How can a bubble-in test assess those things?  As a result, teachers teach those exact same skills—bubbling in multiple choice—to the detriment of everything else.  My daughter is in first grade and I’ve never seen so many worksheets that fill in the blank and bubble every day.  I’m totally convinced that the real-life skills that will aid her abilities to read, write, think, create and innovate (all the things that the President put forth as goals in his State of the Union speech) are now on my shoulders to teach, as she is not getting them at school.  The good news is that she does score well on the multiple choice tests so she won’t be Left Behind. 

What I have learned from past experience is that NCLB will remain; that Obama and his Education team won’t change the policy or its requirements because the students who do well on the test are those that come from highly educated families, with income levels that are middle class and above, and have the sociopolitical capital to excel with our without the assessment.  Since the tests don’t affect their children’s grades, scores, or their futures, they do nothing.  By doing nothing, they endorse a policy that does children no good.