Ach, it's just a lousy test, who cares? We all took tests. I remember Mrs; Smith set us up with the Iowa Basics in 1st grade. After what seemed an interminably long time, many starts and stops, she collected booklets and washed it from memory by doing a splendid one-person rendition of
Brer Rabbit and Tar Baby. After that we got milked and cookied, then napped. No one died, our education didn't tank and frankly, no one really cared.
So what's the fuss today? Surely kids need to be able to read, write and do arithmetic and testing tries to establish who is making the grade and who isn't. Right?
Well, wrong. Come with me after the flip and I will turn your "brain" around on why the current pre-occupation with standardized tests is undermining education, widening the achievement gap and guaranteeing a lifetime supply of "underclass".
The Background
(Skip if you are up to speed on this issue.) In an earlier
diary in this series, we took a hard look at standardized tests: what they are, who profits from them and why they are a dubious measure of anything meaningful in education. Subsequent to that, TeacherKen posted
a diary on the dangers of Teaching to The Test, and Dewey Counts about the motivations of the
Anti-School Movement in trying to discredit and ultimately destroy public education.
Further, you should be aware that 2007 is renewal year for NCLB in the form of ESEA and that political candidates running now are formulating positions on NCLB, standardized testing, and the gamut surrounding K-12 education, which, in domestic policy, ranks second to Health Care among voters' concerns.
The Situation Now
'Tough Daddy" conservatives, and perhaps even a majority of Democrats have embraced a rather simple meme about education based on the perception of what's happening with kids. In their minds, youngsters just don't measure up--they're lazy, slothful, disrespectful and likely to bring this nation down economically unless we do something--right now!--to turn things around. Here is a sample:
Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in the place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parent, chatter before company, gobble up their food and tyrannize teachers.
Familiar? It was said by Spocrates 2,500 years ago.
You see, this pathological fear about the demise of civilization at the hands of children goes back a long way,... like forever. It's just that today, we have been given a super mega-dose of paranoia about our kids by people who have an interest in seeing fundamental change in education policy. It's how they set the table for sweeping reform. Think back over the decades... "There is a Missile Gap with the Soviet Union" (1960s), "A Window of Vulnerability" (1980s), "Iraq has Weapons of Mass Destruction" (2002), "Social Security is about to go broke" (2005), "Our test scores are slipping" (Constantly).
The political modus operandi is to create fear and panic, then come riding in with a completely calculated solution, not better policy.
In this case, the cure is test after test after test. Leaving aside corporate profiteering, conservative fantasies about state-funded religious education, the numbers gaming, among other things, I previously argued that NCLB is failing because there are no additional inputs into the system. That, in fact, politicians play the part of a greedy factory owner awaiting a magic increase in production despite having done nothing more than urge workers to produce more or lose their jobs. (This would be laughable, of course, but it is precisely what happens under NCLB.)
That is not quite accurate. There have been changes in the assembly line driven by NCLB. Since it's all about juicing test scores--the bottom line, much like a corporation-- the only thing taught in some situations is math and reading. Seventy-one percent of schools report that they have narrowed the curriculum in order to try to meet test targets under NCLB, cutting music, art, gym and other electives.
`Big deal' the conservatives say, `kids need to learn how to read and do math before they can do anything else.'
Well, it is a big deal according to contemporary brain-research. You see, young people have their brain's hardware in place by about age 9 or 10. That is, the brain has reached its mature size. But, youngsters spend the next 10 years building the brain's capacity and decision-making ability, making connections and using real-life experiences to wire an infrastructure capable of creating a meaningful and fulfilling life. Brain growth-spurts between age 10 and 20 are essential for a person's character formation, decision-making ability, creative interests and overall orientation toward curiosity and learning. That is what makes the "adolescent experience" feel so incredibly intense. If certain activities, functions and human experiences are not tapped, utilized and developed, whole parts of the brain simply don't engage, but rather, wither, shrivel and die.
As David Walsh National Institute on the Study of Family and Media puts it:
What we focus on grows, what we pay attention to grows, especially during the adolescent years when growth spurts are firing through the brain.
Here are Walsh's top recommendations for getting kids through to a healthy, productive and well-functioning brain:
A. A healthy and varied diet
B. Talking it through with a trusted person during times of crisis, depression or trauma
C. Learning skills never before attempted or experienced
D. A place to consistently practice previously acquired skills, both in groups and individually.
E. Intense physical activity
F. A rhythmic activity, like dance or music.
G. Sleep hygiene
H. And the top factor for increasing brain-function in youngsters: reducing the level of stress.
Are we synchronizing our educational approach with the real cognitive needs of adolescents? It depends, as always on where you live.
As pointed out here, most negative impacts of increased testing are occurring at the lowest performing schools. We already know that poverty is the number one factor in reducing educational attainment in this country. The supposedly great thing about NCLB was that it was going to address this disparity, close the "achievement gap".
Well, guess what? Because affluent districts have little to no difficulty passing State NCLB exams, (many state tests are geared quite low to ensure high pass rates) they have had to make next to no changes in their curriculum and practices. Such students continue to achieve highly in a well-rounded environment, then waltz off to college, graduate and embark on careers. (Note: this diary makes no claim about being able to find and hold a job after college given corporate off-shoring.)
The same cannot be said for schools and districts where there are high concentrations of poverty, family dysfunction or immigrants/children of color. Here, scores are low because children enter school far, far behind their peers. It has been estimated that an average 6-year-old from a disadvantaged home enters school having heard 2 million fewer words (bulk not distinct) than middle-class children.
As these underperforming students move along in school, their curriculum narrowed to meet test targets, they come to see learning as a passionless and painful exercise in doing what other people demand of them. The exact moment when the brain most needs stimulation, new experiences, passion, joy, wonder--an environment typically available in affluent communities--low-performing schools are retreating to drill and kill, rote learning and narrow behaviorism.
It's great training for entry-level workers, but to say that small changes in test scores represents a narrowing of the achievement gap is such a false and gutless distortion that it makes me rage likeJonathon Kozol!!!!---Shame of the Nation.
We know what works with kids: a high-degree of caring and principled guidance, multiple sources of stimulation, mega-doses of fun, joy and passion, and, the one thing that is always indispensable:
Again, Dr. David Walsh:
Whatever the risk factor, the largest protective factor for kids in the amount and quality of their connection through relationships.
Unfortunately, under NCLB, the positive elements--what works for developing a child's brain, and thus equipping a person to live a whole life--are not on the agenda, at least for those unable to come in at "average" on State tests. (Remember we have already established the inanity, inaccuracy and unreliability of those tests.)
In the final analysis, addressing inequities and inequality in America is not the practical effect of NCLB, whatever its proponents claim. It does nothing to improve practices within high-performing schools and districts--except with small "sub-groups" of students who need to be pulled from elective classes and mindlessly drilled on the basics.
The impact is to ensure that America's underclass is schooled in a manner which equips them with, at most, rudimentary skills to perform entry-level jobs, but no real exposure to, or inspiration for, education as self-discovery, a means of fulfillment or its importance in teaching a person how to think. This is more than a loss of electives--remember: if not wired into the brain during adolescence, the likelihood of these functions ever coming on-line dissipate quickly.
And, in fact, we arrive full-circle here at the end because despite my earlier abuse of Socrates' good name, he also said this:
The unexamined life is not worth living.
Maybe if America's disenfranchised youth ever really understood how unfair and unconscionable was their lot in the richest, and--to many-- "greatest" nation on earth, they might act to achieve their full rights and potential. That would put them directly at odds with "the haves, and the have-mores"--as George Bush once said. And that would represent a real crisis amongst youth indeed.