D.C. Schools Propose Expansion of K-12 Standardized Testing — Do We Really Know Erin McGoldrick?

An article written by Bill Turque appearing in today’s Washington Post reveals what can only be considered a controversial move by Washington D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s goal to expand the use of standardized testing to include regular testing of all students from kindergarten through twelfth grade. According to Turque, the purpose of the testing would be “to measure academic progress and the effectiveness of teachers.”

While Rhee continues to support the use of standardized tests as tools to inform data-driven decision making, Turque, nevertheless, also presents parent and community concerns about the effect that testing has on students and teachers.

And, yes, while an assessment is a tool that should serve to gauge the quality of instruction and learning, we have seen the opposite in many cases since widespread testing mandates began with NCLB.  Study after study shows that students with effective teachers make the most progress, no matter what methods those teachers use.

Think about the best teachers you had in school.  Now think about the qualities that made them that way.  I’ll bet each of the teachers you chose had qualities in common.  I’ll also bet they did quite a few things differently as well.  Teachers are not created with cookie cutters.  We cannot expect all of our seventh grade language arts teachers to walk into a classroom, open a textbook, and read the same scripted lesson to students in the same manner at the same time every day.

Guess what?  That’s what’s happening in many of our schools. How many of the teachers you thought about earlier — those really good teachers who made an impact on you — would have been able to do that if their administrator evaluated them based on whether they followed a scripted lesson plan created by a textbook company?  How many of them would have chosen the profession of teaching?

Last month, Peter Smagorinsky had a piece in the Atlanta Journal Constitution about the nature of teaching and how problematic it is when we begin to consider linking teacher pay to student test scores, as well as other important issues being discussed in education.  Indeed, we have a sad state of affairs when teachers who are passionate and successful in the profession advise their own children against entering it because the culture of accountability has created an environment where the very elements that drive their passion and success are sapped by standardization.

Interestingly, Turque also cites Erin McGoldrick, Rhee’s “chief of data and accountability,” who argues that “assessments … can only improve teaching.”  If there is no room within the box, the passion and success of our brightest and most creative teachers will never see the light of day.

McGoldrick’s position is no surprise given her background in both the charter school movement as well as in research design and analysis.  Before moving to Washington D.C. in tandem with Rhee, they served together on the school board for the St. Hope Public Schools, a charter school system in Sacramento, California.

According to the St. Hope web site, McGoldrick served as the Director of Data Management and Analysis for the California Charter Schools Association.  While she held a variety of positions in K-12 research, McGoldrick has never been a teacher in a classroom, so her comment in the Turque article about assessments improving teaching is interesting, particularly given her background in research.  I wonder if she’s spoken with Diane Ravitch lately.  Maybe she should.

Further, before becoming involved with Washington D.C.’s schools and California’s Charter schools, McGoldrick did research analysis for the Los Angeles Unified School District.  She has a master’s degree in public policy from UCLA and a bachelor’s degree in classics from Notre Dame.  Hmm.

School Teacher, 1940

Education Reform: Diane Ravitch’s Miraculous Transformation

In an op-ed piece appearing in today’s Washington Post, Diane Ravitch addresses how problematic accountability and choice school initiatives have become in the eight years since No Child Left Behind became the law of the land.  Given that the state of Florida is continuing with measures in recently proposed legislation that ties teacher pay to student performance, it is time not only to recognize, as Ravitch has, the problems inherent in such connections, but to engage in dialogue to propose reforms that do not diminish the broad, comprehensive education that all children deserve.  To focus on math and English to the exclusion of  history, foreign language, the arts, and physical education – subjects that are not tested according to NCLB – is shortsighted, at best.

Literacy Demands and the Workplace

If I were of the canine species, my reaction to reading Beaufort’s “Preparing Adolescents for the Literacy Demands of the 21^st-Century Workplace” (Christenbury et al., 2009, pp. 239-255) would have immediately resulted in my hackles being raised.  Instead, I read her arguments with great interest, yet also concern, as I disagree with some of her assumptions.  Even in the introduction to this section of the text, “Literacy Out of School,” the editors contextualize the importance of literacy outside of school by excerpting A Test of Leadership, a document that assumes a utilitarian view of education, citing that “business and government leaders have repeatedly and urgently called for workers in all stages of life to continually upgrade their academic and practical skills” (p. 237).  Noting counterpoints, of which Beaufort’s chapter is one, the editors, like the author, fail to question the validity of market-driven discourses.  Instead, they assume “that many workplace values and practices are specific to the culture of a particular profession and the corporate values of individual businesses” (p. 238), a position, that while not untrue, sets the nature of education – specifically literacy education – as one that is purely service-oriented.  In essence, an ironic contrast given what Beaufort proposes.

Beaufort begins the chapter by immediately drawing connections to economy and utility.  While she is not incorrect in asserting that adolescents who do not have advanced literacy skills are often shut out of jobs – or job advancement – because of their lack of ability to think critically and write effectively, traits that are valued in the workplace (p. 239), her focus on education merely as preparation for work – a utilitarian function – addresses an incomplete philosophy of the purposes of education.  In this way, she is not unlike conservative writer Charles Murray, who argued in an op-ed piece in the New York Times that education is a utilitarian concept linked to economic functionality.  Simply, we educate the populous to perform tasks that ultimately serve to keep our market-driven economy operating successfully, ignoring the perspective that education, albeit idealistically, also serves as a tool for personal enlightenment as well as one of social utility.  By understanding how to think critically and write effectively, as Beaufort suggests, people are equipped with the skills to engage in pertinent matters that are political, social, or otherwise.  To reduce the argument to cultivating “literate behaviors” as they contribute to developing the “skills required in the various jobs [students] will do” (p. 240), especially targeting blue-collar workers and the changes reflected in blue-collar occupations as a result of the transition from a manufacturing-based to a technologically-based economy (p. 241), is telling and reminiscent of age-old arguments about the purpose of education.  Further, her suggestion that high school curricula be rewritten to facilitate both student independence and greater exposure to non-fiction texts (p. 251), while not bad, too easily dismisses the critical thinking and independence that can as easily be fostered with other texts (digital, film, fiction, etc.) given a knowledgeable and effective instructor.

Arguments addressing the purpose of education are myriad, though a brief article, “Liberal Education Versus Vocational Training,” appearing in Harper’s Magazine in 1944 and written by Medford Evans and George R. Clark, addresses these disparate views:

“In every society where there is a ruling class there is one kind of education for rulers and another for the ruled. Vocational training, which confines itself to teaching skills, tends to limit the individual’s interest in general social problems and to discourage intelligent participation in political life. As such, it is the ideal education for the servants of the ruling class. It is sharply distinguished from a vital program of liberal education such as that which provides a broad general training for rulers … The real issue is a political rather than an academic one: how widely available should liberal education be? There is no more radical and democratic idea afloat in educational circles today than that of providing liberal education for everyone” (p. 60).

Only because the needs of industry have changed – not because of an altruistic desire to improve the worker’s plight– is the focus on preparing workers with the skills necessary to succeed in the workplace salient.  Interestingly, though Beaufort supports preparing students by, among other things, “introducing them to the concept of discourse communities and the social nature of written communication” (p. 248), these goals have been hampered by the implementation of widespread standardized testing, which, in many cases, has resulted in teaching a disproportionate amount of working-class students skills using methods that are at odds with a dynamic curriculum that encourages independent and critical thinking as well as one that values the varied and complex nature of writing.   So, while Beaufort’s suggestions regarding curriculum design and assessment are not far removed from what schools encourage – and teachers implement – in traditionally successful programs, it is questionable how much free thought and skill industry wishes its workers to have before they are considered counterproductive to a greed-based, market-driven economy.