Too little and years late for the UFT on Testing

Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2010,

I commented earlier this morning - or late last night post Jets win - J-E-T-S, JETS, JETS, JETS -  on Monday's NY Times "too little, too late article" on the testing crisis in NY, reposting Leonie Haimson's marvelous take down - with samples of interchanges with the Times and examples of how other newspapers did more to expose the issue over the last 3 years, with a little clip from Casablanca on the Louis Renault Award. See

NY Times Shocked, Shocked Over BloomKlein Claims on Reading Scores

One issue I didn't deal with was the role of the UFT on testing.

If I had time I would go back into the Ed Notes archives and show you how from the very beginning of Ed Notes in 1996 I was putting the high stakes testing issue on the table at Delegate Assemblies. I had a high stakes testing principal from 1978 and saw all the evils - in fact, though I loved teaching elementary self-contained classes, her policies ultimately led me to leave the infantry of teaching and become a computer cluster after 18 years. She as happy to get me out because I wasn't doing enough test prep to her satisfaction. But the more TP I had to do the less satisfied as a teacher I was. So I was bringing my experience to the DA. At one point I made a reso and in my speech talked about how high stakes testing had wiped out social studies and science in the elementary schools - and I was surprised to see the place erupt in applause. This must have been around 1999.

The Times piece only had these comments about the role of the UFT:

Teachers pushed back, saying they could gauge their students’ performance better than any mass-produced tests could......Each new policy was met with denunciations from the teachers’ union or from education experts like Diane Ravitch. Ms. Ravitch, a supporter of standardized testing when she was an adviser to the Clinton and Bush administrations, became one of the biggest critics, arguing that schools were devoting too much time to the pursuit of high scores. “If they are not learning social studies but their reading scores are going up, they are not getting an education,” Ms. Ravitch said in 2005, as the mayor coasted to re-election.

 The union only pushed back for internal political reasons - to make the teachers - and the naive NY Times - think they were pushing back. Yes, classroom teachers and Diane pushed back. But the union only did so rhetorically. They supported mayoral control, refused to push back on the social promotion issue when it was clearly done for political reasons, did very little about the onslaught of micro management and the increasing focus on testing and test prep.

Randi took a full page ad in the NY Times to celebrate the great increases – that everyone knew were due to test score inflation – when they were released. Trying to eat from the gravy boat while trying to claim she hates the taste - even though it's dripping down her face.

I put this up on the nyceducation news listserve yesterday:

Also left out of the story is how Randi and the UFT jumped in to grab a share of the credit for the high scores, joining BloomKlein in front of the cameras here and in Washington when they won the Broad prize, grabbing bonus money for the scores and agreeing to have teachers rated on the basis of the tests scores.

The UFT tried to claim teachers deserved a raise due to the results.

I wrote at the time "Does that mean a pay cut if scores go down?" What a slippery slope.

Now some people think with MulGarten in charge there is a new deal at the UFT because he has made noises about the tests. Randi did too. So did Obama. Watch what they do not what they say.

The UFT/AFT was the only truly organized force that could have blown this scam out of the water from Day 1 but instead has chosen to play footsie with the ed deformers. It is now too little too late. History has passed them by.

But history has not passed Real Reformers by - though MulGarten is trying to steal this idea to claim the union are RR's when in fact they are closer to ed deformers in terms of their support for so much of ed deform.

My unvideotaped debate with DOE's Suransky re NCLB, testing, and NYC's dismal results

On Wednesday, September 15, I was invited to New York Law School to debate Shael Suransky, NYC's Deputy Chancellor for Accountability, about NCLB and the negative effects of high stakes accountability systems.

I also took the opportunity to rebut the claims of impressive progress in student achievement in NYC that DOE continues to make, even after the state test score bubble has burst, and to point out the many errors in Chancellor Klein's written statements concerning this issue.

Unfortunately, NY Law School did not allow Lindsey Christ of NY1 or Norm Scott of Education Notes to videotape the event, reportedly because of pressure from DOE.

Lindsey was quite annoyed, and said she had never been barred from taping any such forum, either at NYU, Columbia, the New School, CUNY or SUNY.

For more on what transpired, you can see Norm Scott's accounts here and here, and the email exchange between Lindsey, the very testy VP for PR at NY Law School, and me.

As many people have asked for it, I am posting my powerpoint here, part 1 and part II. If you would like me to present it to your organization, please email me at classsizematters@gmail.com

-- Leonie Haimson, Executive Director, Class Size Matters

Yong Zhao on how our global competitiveness will be damaged by the US government's imposition of high stakes testing

Just as the federal government has announced the awarding of $330 million to two consortiums so that they can develop new national exams, it is more important than ever that people check out this video of one of our best critics of high stakes testing, Yong Zhao.

Zhao is University Distinguished Professor of Education at Michigan State University, where he also serves as the founding director of the Center for Teaching and Technology as well as the US-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence. More on Prof. Zhao here and here.

He points out that China and other Asian countries are trying to move away from standardized testing, because it kills creativity and innovation, just as the US government is trying to impose it on schools throughout the country.

He also talks movingly about the importance of arts education and nurturing individual talents and resiliency, all of which are damaged by the monolithic emphasis on high stakes testing.

Letters to the Times re high-stakes tests

Five letters were published in today's NY Times -- all pointing out flaws in their June 18 editorial about test-tampering, “That Cheats the Kids.” I wrote one of the letters about how the editorial completely missed the point about high-stakes testing -- that it makes the results unreliable. It is the system imposed by the city and increasingly the federal government that cheats our children; not the teachers.

Our children are more than test scores

Check out the new video about how high stakes testing in our schools has forced teachers to teach to the test, schools to close, and children to miss out on the joy and excitement of a real, well-rounded education.