How Federal Education Policy That Says 'If They Breathe Test'em' Has Deformed Kindergarten

If you really want to look for evidence of how federal initiatives like "Race to the Top" and "No Child Left Behind" have impacted schools, you only need to read the findings of this study: "Study Snapshot: Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?" In that study, it is very clear that our schools have increasingly short-changed and abused young students with their testing fetish. In this study, researchers compared kindergarten classrooms from 1998 to 2010. Here are some of findings that should make both educators and policymakers feel ashamed.

• While academic instruction increased, time spent teaching the arts substantially decreased.
• Students were increasing taught using textbooks and workbooks.
• Amount of time students were given for play has decreased.
• During the time period 1998 to 2010, kindergarten has increasingly become like first grade in 1998.
• Kindergarten teachers are more likely to subject students to standardized testing in 2010.
• These kinds of practices are more pronounced at schools serving predominantly low-income students.

As our federal government has increasingly become involved in public education, we've seen our schools deform the education system in all kinds of ways in order to "produce test scores." This is more evidence of that. Policymakers and educators are complicit in this transformation. 

(For a another summary of this study, check our NPR's "More Testing, Less Play: Study Finds Higher Expectations for Kindergartners." Though I would take issue with the idea of the practices as subjecting students to "HIGHER" expectations.)

Arne Duncan's Proposal to Use Test Scores to Measure Teacher-Prep Program Effectiveness

Public schools have suffered under Secretary Arne Duncan's Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind law waivers. Testing, not learning has become the focus. Schools have cut arts programs and non-tested subjects. Enormous amounts of time are spent during the school year getting students ready for the tests. And, since the Obama administration took office, there are many states like North Carolina that administer a record number of state tests, and the use those results as a part of teacher evaluations. It has been this President's education policy that has done more to elevate test scores to even higher levels than under No Child Left Behind. 

Now, Arne Duncan is once again trying to elevate test scores even higher: he wants to use test scores to evaluate the effectiveness of teacher programs too.

Under Arne Duncan's latest effort to hold somebody else accountable for education except himself and politicians, Duncan now wants to create a new, massive bureaucratic procedure to judge the "effectiveness" of teacher preparations programs around the country. This behemoth proposal would bizarrely twist test scores once more in the name of accountability. As I read through this proposed procedure, I simply grow more and more angry at a President and Secretary of Education who simply have no clue as to what their "test-them-if-they-breathe" education agenda has done to schools, students, teachers, classrooms, and the future of the education profession. If you read the fine print of this massive document, you can quickly read between the lines regarding what Arne Duncan is actually proposing.

• Using test scores, most likely value-added measures, to determine the effectiveness of teacher preparation programs that receive federal funding.
• The development of a massive pile of red tape and bureaucratic procedures to make sure teacher preparation programs comply to the dictates of the US Department of Education.
• An enormous overreach of federal power and powergrab by the US Department of Education.

There was a time when I would have defended the existence of the US Department of Education. Now, I am slowly beginning to feel that perhaps the best thing for public schools is for this new Congress to simply dismantle it. Has there been a single good policy or idea that has come down through this department during the Obama Administration?

I think it's perhaps time to write some letters, send emails, and make some phone calls on Duncan's bizarre plan to use test scores in yet another high stakes manner. All US educators and pre-service educators need to take some time and let the President, Secretary Duncan, Congress, and the US Department of Education know their thoughts on this one.  Otherwise, like the Race to the Top, Duncan will claim he has heard only praise for this latest effort to bend the education world to tests.

If you would like to submit your own comment or opinion, you can do so at the address below. The deadline for submitting comments is February 2, 2015. Perhaps enough educators will submit comments that it will take the US Department of Education five years to read them. 

Read and Comment on the Newly Proposed Arne Duncan Teacher Preparation Rule. (BE SURE TO DO SO BY FEBRUARY 2, 2015).

Obsession with International Test Scores and Arne Duncan 'Crying Wolf''

Yesterday, the media continued the tradition of sounding the alarm: "Our schools are doomed according to the latest PISA, or Program for International Assessment, scores." NPR chimes in with this one, "PISA Test Results for US Students Are Sobering," and Huffington Post has this headline, "US Test Scores Remain Stagnant While Other Countries See Rapid Rise." NBC news echoed Huffington Post with this one, "US Teens Lag in Global Education Rankings as Asian Countries Rise to the Top,"  One has to question when this incessant obsession with international test scores is going to stop. Why all this fuss about being first in test scores? Do they really think that somehow, magically, our nation will be transformed and educated when we suddenly move up the rankings?

Then there's Education Secretary Arne Duncan who is "Crying-Wolf" once more, when he says, "We're seeing a Picture of Educational Stagnation" as he pointed out at Townhall.com. About the only thing stagnant is his incessant droning about these test scores every time they come out.  Duncan hasn't learned the old wisdom that says "If you cry wolf too many times, people stop listening to you." Perhaps its time we do just that. He, no doubt, will use these scores as an opportunity to push his educational agenda of National Standards, National Testing, and tying teacher evaluations to test scores. His playbook of propaganda has become all too transparent over the past several years.

The truth is out there though. As Diane Ravitch pointed out in her new book Reign of Error, and as she points out in this Washington Post op-ed, "The myth persists that once our nation led the world on international tests, but we have fallen from that exalted position in recent years. Wrong, wrong, wrong." Ravitch points out that "THE UNITED STATES HAS NEVER BEEN FIRST IN THE WORLD, NOR EVEN NEAR THE TOP, ON INTERNATIONAL TESTS."

So why this continued obsession with being first? We have never been first since international assessments were first given in the 1960s or 1970s. Does that mean we haven't ever been economically competitive since? I think the history of business and industry shows that the economy did well during various times even when our international test scores were in the tank. The fact is, OUR ECONOMIC VIABILITY IS NOT TIED TO TEST SCORES and I would add, being first on international assessments isn't going to change our economic fortunes.

Perhaps it's time we, as educators, stopped accepting this mythology perpetuated by Arne Duncan and his Department of Education. It's time for us to demand that the media quit participating in this absurd obsession with test scores and comparing our students' performance with other countries, when we know that other countries game the system and test only more selective students.

Arne Duncan has not yet learned that apples do not compare to oranges, except perhaps in the narrow world he lives in. Educators at all levels need to start countering and questioning this Duncanesque perversion of the truth, and quit buying-in to the false mythologies his department of education is perpetuating. Sure, our schools sometimes struggle. We who are in the schools fight to reach students every single day. We teach our hearts out, and we have Duncan's Doom and Gloom constantly bellowing from Washington.

As far as I am concerned, he has "Cried Wolf" for the last time. He has nothing else left to say worthwhile. So I am no longer listening to him. I can't remove him from the Department of Education, but I can choose to stop listening to his blather. The sooner the Obama administration moves on and Duncan moves out, we can hopefully stop chasing myths and get down to the real business of improving education.

The truth is we are not going to test our way to economic prosperity, so it's time to realize that.

3 Ways to Create a Climate of Possibility and Creativity in Our Schools

“The real role of leadership in education is not and should not be command and control. The real role of leadership is climate control; creating a climate of possibility, and if you do that, people will rise to it and achieve things you did not anticipate and couldn't have expected.” Sir Ken Robinson, TED Talk "How to Escape Education's Death Valley"

What is ultimately wrong with No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the Common Core State Standards? Each of these initiatives are a product of what Sir Ken Robinson calls mechanistic thinking. In mechanistic thinking, education is seen as an “industrial process” done to kids. You subject kids to this process, and at the end, you test them, then declare (or not declare) them college and career ready, educated, or whatever term you choose. As Robinson points out in his TED Talk "How to Escape Education's Death Valley," subjecting kids to these kinds initiatives and the standardization movement means millions of children have been left behind.

Why are so many children left behind in the current American system of education? The whole problem, according to Robinson, is simple: American education "contradicts 3 principles under which human life flourishes." These principles are: 1) Human beings are naturally different and diverse, 2) Human beings are naturally curious creatures, and 3) Human life is inherently creative. By contradicting these principles, we are losing students because the American system of education ignores the very things that allow humans to thrive and survive.

There's no denying that these fundamental principles of humanity are ignored in an education culture where standardization and conformity are elevated above principles of diversity, curiosity, and creativity. But what can we do, as school leaders, to create a "climate of possibility and creativity?" Perhaps we can begin to establish that climate by doing three things:

1. We can treat students as different and diverse, not as standardized unfinished products to which we "add value" through subjecting them to the same curriculum and the same tests. Education under No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the Common Core is all about conformity and standardization, not diversity. Each of the initiatives is about narrowing the curriculum so that we can test kids the same way, compare their scores, and boast or censure what we have done educationally. Instead of moving more and more toward standardization, we need to be moving to personalization. Under a personalized education system we capitalize on students' natural talents and abilities, not stifle them with standard curriculum and standardized testing. As 21st century school leaders we need to focus not on data entirely, but more on individual students. Drop out rates, proficiency rates, growth rates are not the center of what we should be doing as educators. Kids are.

2. We can recognize that human beings are naturally curious creatures, and create systems of education that value curiosity above all else. As Robinson points out, “Curiosity is the engine of achievement.” Yet in our efforts to treat our education system mechanistically, we stamp our curiosity with standardized curriculum and standardized testing. We treat “teaching” as a delivery system, when it should be treated as the "art of mentally stimulating, provoking, and engaging children in learning."  Robinson points out that the dominate culture in American education does not focus on teaching and learning, it focuses on testing. We have turned our schools into places where the culture is about compliance, not curiosity. As 21st century school leaders we need to make human curiosity central to our school cultures, not compliance.

3. We can recognize in our schools that human beings are inherently creative and turn them into places where creativity is valued. We spend our whole lives creating; it is a part of who we are as humans. Our role as educators should be to awaken this creativity and power it up, instead, we are too busy standardizing everything and stifling creativity. Our students should be engaged creatively, not engaged in test prep and testing at the expense of all else. As 21st century school leaders we need to create a school culture that values creativity above standardization and conformity.



Sir Ken Robinson's TED Talk: How to Escape Education's Death Valley


As long as policymakers at the national level, state level, and the district level continue to see education as this mechanistic, industrial process that is “done to kids” we're going to continue to have an education system that fails a large number of students. Changing our tests and our standards every few years is not going to create a climate of possibility and creativity in our schools. It only perpetuates the mechanistic system of education that has failed many of our kids for over a hundred years.

Our Test-Centric Approach to Education Reform Ignores the Real Problems

The one lesson politicians should have learned from No Child Left Behind, is that when all of your energies and resources are turned to just improving test scores, failure is the result.  As education historian Diane Ravitch states eloquently in her book, The Death and the Life of the Great American School System, ”Our schools will not improve if we rely exclusively on tests as the means of deciding the fate of students, teachers, principals, and schools.” Sadly, I’m not sure our current political leaders have learned the lesson yet that schools will not improve by solely focusing on using test scores and standards to improve them.

Our national education policy is still dominated by a “test-centric” approach to reform that ignores so many other factors that impact education such as poverty, inadequate health care, and lack of gainful employment. According to education scholar Linda Darling-Hammond, “The United States has the highest poverty rate for children among industrialized nations,” (The Flat World and Education, Linda Darling-Hammond, 2010). We want to “Race to the Top” but we’re looking for short cuts to get there. We want standards and “better tests” but we don’t want to engage in the hard, difficult work of addressing poverty, lack of health care, lack of good, affordable housing, and lack of opportunity for jobs with living wages. As long as national education policy is driven by a blind belief in test results and national standards, 10 years from now, we will be either staring at the same dismal  conditions both educationally and economically if we’re lucky, or we will be much worse with a society with an even wider gap between those that have and those that have not.

What then is the answer? Just how bad are things in different parts of the country? This morning I stumbled upon a 5-year initiative by the American Federation of Teachers and partners like Cisco, Blue Cross Blue Shield, College Board, among many others, that focuses on the educational improvement of an entire community ravaged by unemployment, lost opportunity and lost promise. McDowell County West Virginia has not fared well at all since 1980 and that community is the focus of this initiative.


While it is easy to become entangled in the debate about the role of teachers unions in education when debating education policy, I think it is admirable that the AFT and its partners are putting into practice what they’ve been trying to make politicians understand all along; education reform must do more than focus on test scores and standards. It has to also address the dreadful conditions some of our fellow US citizens find themselves living in.

With this post, I am not taking sides in the debate about unions per se. I do believe, after 20+ years experience, and seeing countless students struggling to live in forgotten communities without the basics most of us take for granted, that the answer to our problems as a country lies, not in investing in more and different tests, or in national standards, but in focusing on the crushing problems facing our poorest students.

After watching the video below about “Reconnecting McDowell” I was reminded of an incident that happened in one of the schools where I once worked. I walked by a table during lunch one day, and a young 11 year old girl sat there with her head down. She had enormous tears in her eyes. I walked up, leaned down and asked her to step out the lunchroom for a minute. Once out of the hearing of others, I asked, “What’s wrong?” Through her tears, she blurted, “I don’t have any lunch money. My parents didn’t have any to give me.” She proceeded to tell me that when she went through the lunch line, the cafeteria took her plate away and refused to serve her lunch because she owed so much money. I took her back through the lunch line and told her to get anything she wanted, and that it would be taken care of. You can debate all you want about why a child does not have money to eat. You can accuse her parents of not taking care of her, but the reality for her is she was not going to be able to eat that day, and a focus on raising her test scores was not going to change that reality.

As I understand it, Reconnecting McDowell is an effort to try to improve the education of a community, and not do it by just focusing on test scores. It is an effort to focus on poverty, healthcare, housing, and  a broken community. I have been to McDowell County West Virginia and have seen firsthand all that the video describes. That is why this effort caught my attention. Poverty is real, and those of us who have worked in schools where it exists know its faces.


Link to Reconnecting McDowell Web Site.

Takeaways from Diane Ravitch's HDNet Interview: NCLB Is a Disaster

Diane Ravitch recently was interviewed by Dan Rather on HDNet. During that interview, she emphasized several things the public needs to know about the current state of public schools.

• "No Child Left Behind has set our public schools on the road to destruction." I have often wondered if the true motivation behind that legislation was to simply make sure schools fail so that arguments for privatization would be stronger. Perhaps that's not the true intent of the law, but it has been the result.
• No Child Left Behind, with its tremendous emphasis on testing, has not succeeded in teaching anybody anything. It has turned schools into test-prep centers, where the only thing that matters is the scores. The scores even matter more than the students.
• Tests should not be used to make high stakes decisions. Our politicians around the country are doing just that. Florida is basing whether a student is promoted on "the test." Many more states have adopted merit pay schemes and tenure schemes that are tied to testing. It would seem that politicians have more faith in these tests than the ones who give them every year.

Check out Diane Ravitch's interview below.




No Child Left Behind has been a disaster. Those of us who have worked in schools that received the infamous label of "AYP-Not Met" know first hand how all focus turns to "the test." Students are asked to give up electives such as art or music so they can attend "one more tutoring session." It really is sad that we do that  to our kids.