See: CIVIL RIGHTS GROUPS DISAGREE ON NEED+EFFECTIVENESS OF
ANNUAL TESTING: No progress in academic excellence or equity |
http://bit.ly/1dhA5P8
TESTING RIFT INTENSIFIES
From Politico Morning Ed | http://politi.co/1Mt76UF
| 5June2015 :: : Education Trust President Kati Haycock
weighed in Thursday on the debate over whether annual tests serve the interests
of the civil rights community, saying National Center on Education and the
Economy President and CEO Marc Tucker's recent thoughts [http://bit.ly/1HAn4rL
] on the subject were "breathtaking in their arrogance." Tucker
argued, among other things, that the current accountability system dumbs down
the curriculum and leads to excessive test prep especially for poor and
minority students. And he thinks civil rights groups like the NAACP and the
Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights should reconsider their strong
pro-accountability position.
Haycock disagrees with Tucker's stance - and his tone.
"We work with - and have learned from - [civil rights]
leaders and organizations on many issues over many years. And while they may or
may not decide to call him out on his accusations, I will. Because even a white
girl can recognize that this is yet another example of the patronizing
attitudes displayed by so many white education 'leaders' when anybody from the
black, brown or Native communities that have been shortchanged in education for
so long DARES to disagree," Haycock wrote in a blog post: http://bit.ly/1H5z6xl (follows)
- Tucker told Morning Education that Haycock is "just
plain wrong." The civil rights community is not as united on testing as
many think it is, he said, citing a recent op-ed [http://bit.ly/1BKzpI3].
"I actually laughed when I saw it, to tell you the truth," Tucker
said. "What's important to me here is not overriding the civil rights
community, but persuading people in it that they have misread the
situation."
____________________
CALLING THE NATION’S
CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS IGNORANT ON TESTING: REALLY?
Published in the EdTrust Blog by Kati Haycock | http://bit.ly/1IhZymb
Jun 4, 2015 :: Last week, Marc Tucker, president of the
National Center on Education and the Economy, took to the pages of Education
Week to call leaders of the Urban League, the NAACP, the National Council of La
Raza, the League of Latin American Citizens, the Leadership Conference on Civil
and Human Rights, and other national civil rights and disabilities
organizations unwitting participants in a plot to injure the nation’s most
vulnerable children. Their crime? A unanimous conviction that our country
should not abandon the annual testing that gives parents and teachers a regular
objective measure of how well their children are progressing on their journey
through school.
Tucker’s assertions are breathtaking in their arrogance:
That these leaders — many of whom run large, complex organizations and have
advanced degrees from some of the nation’s most prestigious universities — are
somehow less capable than he is of understanding what the data say about the
progress of black, brown, and Native children. That they are so untraveled or
unread as to be somehow unaware that most high-performing nations don’t use
such an approach. And, most breathtaking of all, that these leaders — all of
whom have devoted their lives to bettering the conditions of low-income
children, racial minorities, English learners, and children with disabilities —
are willingly countenancing a policy that is doing actual damage to these very
children.
While neither I nor my organization was a part of the letter
on testing opt-outs that raised Tucker’s ire, we work with — and have learned
from — these leaders and organizations on many issues over many years. And
while they may or may not decide to call him out on his accusations, I will.
Because even a white girl can recognize that this is yet another example of the
patronizing attitudes displayed by so many white education “leaders” when anybody
from the black, brown or Native communities that have been shortchanged in
education for so long DARES to disagree.
If it mattered, I would refute Tucker’s assertions one by
one. That would be easy, for the “evidence” he puts forth is weak. His
suggestion, in particular, that these organizations are blind to the problems
inherent in standardized testing should give pause to any knowledgeable reader,
for these very organizations have fought against the misuse of tests for
decades.
What is so especially galling, though, is that Tucker’s
attack is simply subterfuge for the real point he is trying to make, which is
not about the accountability that the civil rights leaders have been working so
hard to sustain. He doesn’t approve of the use of tests in teacher evaluation.
Now what, you ask, does the civil rights leaders’ support of
annual assessment and the responsibility of every school to act when the
results show that any group of students is not progressing have to do with
whether it is right to use tests in the evaluation of teachers?
Not a damn thing.
But by baiting readers with his portrayal of civil rights
leaders “duped” into supporting practices that are bad for vulnerable children,
he avoided ever having to wrestle with efforts by the unions to dupe parents
into sabotaging the best tests we have ever had just because those tests also
are used in the evaluation of some teachers. That sleight of hand might have
confused some, but it would have taken a lot more skill to dupe any of the
civil rights leaders I know. Thankfully, they’ve prevailed against far more
determined and wily opponents.
At a time when almost every state has adopted new and much
higher standards for what its children should be taught, we owe parents,
teachers and students themselves at least an annual look at where students are
on their journey toward those standards. While tests cannot, and should not, be
the whole of that checkup, they are a critically important part because they
are common across all of the schools in a state. That is why, even as they
worry about the extra and often lower quality tests that have been piled on by
districts and schools, American parents support continuation of this annual
statewide checkup, with support among parents of color highest of all.
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