That to me was not the point, nothing good comes from paranoid thinking!
I did not like the testing in the view of small towns that have less funding and
lower pay than a bigger city. "Historically, standardized tests have been reliable
indicators of access to resources and nothing more." Keeping the common core testing
would put the blame on the Schools and Teachers for being in a low income town
with less spending money for education.
You get what you pay for thats why parents want their kid to go to Harvard
and not a JR college. Lower education is lower pay down the road.
It's bad for the labor pool as the wages are set low by the masses,
as along with the cost of the low pay in low sales with tax revenue losses.
The Teachers get the blame for bad test and not just from low resources
but a result from that in all around poverty, it's all connected.
It's also like in view of Rotter, Social Learning Theory, Low Expectancies.
The kids will see it as other kids being punished with a test and they will
form an expectancy that the test is punishment so they won't
take the test, or just blow it off! I myself made happy faces with the dots on
the test before when I was in school, I said hell with it and blew off the test.
http://psych.fullerton.edu/jmearns/rotter.htm
~~~~~How Standardized Testing Reveals Stark Inequalities Between Rich and Poor
Last month, USA Today reported on the hundreds of thousands of children across New York State who opted out of the state standardized English Language Arts (ELA) tests. Data from the tests is high stakes all around; it's linked to individual students' academic advancement, teacher evaluations, and overall school performance ratings. Proponents of testing usually argue that collecting such data is necessary to measure student achievement and hold educators accountable, but the state director of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), Nicole Brisbane, offered USA Today a surprising explanation for why students really ought to take these tests: "Schools are one of the biggest differentiators of value in the suburbs," Brisbane told USA Today. "How valuable will a house be in Scarsdale when it isn't clear that Scarsdale schools are doing any better than the rest of Westchester or even the state? Opting out of tests only robs parents of that crucial data."
The opt-out movement was bigger than ever this year, with an estimated 200,000 New York children refusing the state exams that test ELA and math. After a budget season in which Governor Cuomo pushed hard
to have student test scores count for 50% of a teacher's evaluation,
critics of high stakes testing had even more evidence to argue that the
so called "education reform" agenda has more to do with firing teachers
and closing public schools than it has to do with ending inequality.
Following Brisbane's statement about potential Scarsdale
homebuyers to its logical conclusion would suggest that testing is
actually about maintaining inequality, not fighting it. "It is apparent
that this competition, market-based ideology accepts that there will be
inadequate resources for some and an abundance for others," says Jia
Lee, a New York City public school parent and teacher. "I would argue
that all public schools should and could be excellent places for all of
our children and communities." Lee rejects the premise of pro-testing
reformers that standardized tests are reliable indicators of quality
education.
"Historically, standardized tests have been reliable
indicators of access to resources
and nothing more." When it comes to resources, there's no question that wealthy school districts in New York State have an abundance compared to those that serve poorer children. According to data from the Education Trust, the highest poverty districts in the state receive 10% less funding per student in state and local revenues than those with the lowest poverty rates. Adjusted for the needs of students in poverty - who, according to the federal Title 1 formula, cost at least 40% more to educate - the poorest districts actually receive 16% less than those with the least poverty. On top of that, districts serving the most students of color receive 11% less per student than those serving the fewest students of color.
and nothing more." When it comes to resources, there's no question that wealthy school districts in New York State have an abundance compared to those that serve poorer children. According to data from the Education Trust, the highest poverty districts in the state receive 10% less funding per student in state and local revenues than those with the lowest poverty rates. Adjusted for the needs of students in poverty - who, according to the federal Title 1 formula, cost at least 40% more to educate - the poorest districts actually receive 16% less than those with the least poverty. On top of that, districts serving the most students of color receive 11% less per student than those serving the fewest students of color.
Given these funding disparities at the state and local
level, on top of the individual advantages that wealth provides
students, like access to school supplies, tutoring, and enrichment, it
becomes clear that students in a place like Scarsdale aren't on remotely
the same playing field as students in the Bronx, where there is a 45% child poverty rate.
Using the data provided by standardized tests to argue that wealthier
neighborhoods have "better" schools further entrenches that inequality.
Wealthier neighborhoods simply have wealthier schools. "It makes me so angry that there are people who have so
much money and so much power who are using that power to keep my
students in poverty, by putting policies in place that they know will
keep some property values high and some property values low," says New
York City public school teacher Megan Moskop. For Moskop, Brisbane's
quote is significant because it unveils what's beneath the successful
narrative of so many education reformers who advocate for closing public
schools in the name of equality. "The narrative of DFER has been so
carefully constructed and thoughtfully worded to call it a civil rights
narrative. I think there are a lot of well intentioned people that buy
into that narrative," including passionate teachers who believe in the
charter school movement, says Moskop. "They're not seeing the other side
of that, which is that this is a competitive system where kids are
losing more and more."
Victoria Frye, a New York City public school parent whose
son has chosen to opt out of the tests since fifth grade, was surprised
to hear DFER's focus on wealthy communities, given that the
organization's agenda is all about focusing on accountability for
schools in under-resourced communities. (A national reform organization,
DFER advocates for "policies which stimulate the creation of new, accountable public schools" (particularly charter schools)
"and…simultaneously close down failing schools.") "They're supposed to
be concerned with the so-called 'failing' schools that are failing poor
students, not with suburban property owners," Frye says. Her son is now a
seventh grader and is opting out this year even though the tests are a
determining factor in high school admissions; his current school goes
through 12th grade, and he's happy to stay. "[Opting out] really
diminishes your opportunities for applying to different schools, which
is, of course, part of the whole market-based consumer model of
education ushered in by Bloomberg," says Frye.
Frye and her husband are both scientists and firm believers
in quantitative measurement. But as her son lost increasing amounts of
instruction time to test prep, and as the tests became further connected
to teacher evaluations, "it just became more and more obvious that they
were used for political reasons and not for pedagogy."
Indeed, according to DFER's website, the organization's
mission is to support leaders who "champion America's public
schoolchildren." But Brisbane's USA Today quote is not an outlier. She
expressed a similar sentiment in a DFER blog post, writing: "How will
suburban communities maintain their draw if there isn't a measure of how
the schools are actually doing in comparison to those across the
state?" She went on to argue that test data has "sparked so many
positive changes for low income students."
In a statement to AlterNet, Brisbane claims it is the
opt-out movement, not testing, that really harms low-income
students: "The people who are opting out of tests are largely those who
already feel like their child has access to a high-quality education,
and are doing so in a way that directly harms low-income and minority
students throughout New York. We should be supporting students and
teachers throughout New York, whether they are in Scarsdale or the
Bronx, and making sure all students have a fair shot at a quality
education. Rather than maintain the status quo where wealth determines a
quality education, data can and should highlight where the gaps are so
we can invest in schools that need it the most."
Brisbane's suggestion that the resistance to testing is
populated by people who have no stake in the matter is evidently an
attempt to make the protest seem less legitimate than it actually is; it
is, however, an accusation that is demonstrably untrue, as reports of
just who is opting out make clear. New York principal Carol Burris, for
example, has written
about her district, Brentwood, which had a 49% opt-out rate for ELA
tests, and a 57% rate for the math tests administered the following
week. Burris notes that,
"Ninety-one percent of Brentwood students are black or Latino, and 81 percent are economically disadvantaged. Brentwood is not unique - Amityville (90 percent black or Latino, 77 percent economically disadvantaged) had an opt-out rate of 36.4 percent; Greenport (49 percent black or Latino, 56 percent economically disadvantaged) had an opt-out rate that exceeded 61 percent; and South Country opt outs (50 percent black or Latino and 51 percent economically disadvantaged) exceeded 64 percent."
Those numbers clearly run counter to the narrative that the movement is exclusively white and middle-class. And while new data analysis
from the New York Times reveals that districts with the highest opt-out
rates had 50% or fewer students receiving free and reduced lunch, the
opt-out numbers were higher this year in nearly every district where
data is known. Critics of testing also point out that there are a number
of factors making it harder for low-income families to refuse, from
language barriers to a lack of educational options. "Families who are struggling financially are in even more
difficult situations because they've been pressured to raise the scores
to keep their schools open," parent and teacher Jia Lee says. "High
stakes standardized tests are a distraction when we already know what
the problems are. That is why families, especially in the shrinking
middle class, are realizing more and more that the only way to push back
against policies that deepen inequities, is to refuse the tests."
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