standardized testing

I got into an argument with one of my favorite people last week about funding allocation and Milwaukee Public schools.  I think the person I argued with speaks for many citizens of this city and this country who think that since their tax dollars are going to public schools, that the schools should be accountable to the tax payers in demonstrating that funding is being used wisely.  On some level, I understand this impulse.  There are certainly ways in which I feel that some funding of MPS has been misspent.  The problem lies in deciding how we will measure MPS's accountability.  Unfortunately, I feel that many Americans feel that education has become a commodity, and should be measured as such.   In our current market economy, this translates in "How can we get the most bang for our educational buck?"  And the way we decide to measure this has been given in the form of standardized testing.  (Which, as some previous posts have pointed out, is a big business, in itself. )  

This is a flawed answer to a flawed question.  

For one, as we have learned in every ed class that we have taken so far, teaching critical thinking skills is a central part of receiving a good education.  Standardized tests are, essentially, designed to eliminate any possibility for the existence of critical thinking.  It is difficult to consider multiple perspectives and the construction of knowledge when there is only one right answer which can be indicated by coloring in one of five bubbles.    In fact, creating standardized tests and promoting standards that demand an unequivocal answer and strongly suggest what should and should not be covered as part of course content, can quite possibly reinforce social inequalities in our society, as a whole.  We reward students and schools that recapitulate the status quo and punish ones that challenge it.  That is not a good teaching or learning strategy.

If there is any question whether standardized tests are truly capable of measuring learning in an effective way or if  teaching to "standards" make teaching better, ask a teacher.  They are, after all, experts on this subject, something that the standardized testing and standards debate seem to frequently ignore.  How many teachers have you encountered that say "Standardized testing is great! It truly measures the capability of my students in an unbiased way.  It is a critical part of a constructive learning process."  Instead of letting politicians or for-profit testing companies determine what is best for our students and what is important to learn, why don't we let educators decide?    

Critical Pedagogy

First off, I loved this article.  I know this is going to sound cheesy and ridiculous, but I don't care.  When I read this article, I felt like I had found a home.  The topic of this article is largely why I decided to leave academia to go back to school to get certified to teach high school.  Clearly, the article is written from a sociological perspective (which is why I love it).  This perspective is something that I have been teaching my students on the college level.  At some point last year, while I was teaching a book that discusses the hidden curriculum at a public school in California, I realized that rather than teaching *about* this idea, I wanted to become a high school teacher so that I could try to enact change based on this idea.  

This is why I am here.  I understand that knowledge is socially constructed.  I agree that what we recognize as knowledge and learn in classrooms has been constructed through a lens of power and frequently perpetuates inequalities and reinforces hegemonic power relationships. If we want to effect change, if we want to eradicate inequality, we have to change how knowledge is constructed and communicated.  This is overwhelming.  So the question that presents itself is this:  This is an interesting theory, but what can we DO about it?  It's such a huge, all encompassing issue.  First, we must make sure that our curriculum represents multiple perspective so that we don't privilege one construction of knowledge over another. For teaching history, this means including a lot of primary sources and making sure these primary sources reflect multiple perspectives.  It's about teaching critical thinking skills, more than just data.  Perhaps, the most important thing we can do as teachers is to teach our students to challenge knowledge, to think critically about it, and even to think critically about what we teach them.  

Chapter 22

I thought there were some very interesting points in the article.  I think that a lot of people assume that a lot of queer kids don't know they are gay until they come out.  The assumption is that middle school kids don't know that they are gay.  The article discounted this.  When I was in high school, there were about five of us that were extremely close.  One of whom is gay.  He knew he was gay since he was in middle school, but he never came out to anyone (besides his therapist) until college.  Why not?  Not even to his extremely close friends.?  Because we live in a heterosexist and homophobic world.  My friend was terrified of how he would be treated, the potential violence he could encounter.  And that fear is real.  

 Some of the other posts have critiqued this article for not providing any specific recommendations for what we can actually do to help LGBT youth in our classes.  Here's one simple thing that we can do.  I believe we talked in class about the controversy in West Bend about some parents trying to remove some books from the library, or reclassify them for older readers.  Apparently, the reason the books raise some objections is that they contain characters who are openly queer and may even have queer relationships.  For this, one of the parents said (I will paraphrase here): "I think that the book should be removed.  If it is left in the library, I think there should be an equal number of books in the library that teach children who might consider being gay how to turn away from such a path."  There are a lot of things wrong with this statement.  For one, usually kids don't consider (i.e. choose) being gay.  They are gay. period.  Second, the straight equivalent of the book in  question would not be one that teaches kids how not to be gay, but rather a book with straight character engaging in straight relationships.  That would be 99.5 % of the books already in the library.   Although we do have some out role models in the media that weren't around 20 years ago, that doesn't mean that heterosexism or homophobia have disappeared.  The fact that we can name all of the openly gay role models that come to mind show how rare they actually are.  Can you name all of the straight role models for kids these days?

So maybe something we can actually *do* is to make sure the libraries at the schools we work in have books that are queer-positive.  

(Amy - I know this post is late, and I don't expect credit for it, but I really wanted to write it anyway.)

Rules are not inherently neutral

I am currently struggling trying to find my own understanding of Ferguson's commentary about the use of rules in the classroom.  I don't think that the existence of classroom rules, by themselves, are inherently oppressive.  And I don't *think* she is saying that either.  I do agree that it is important to understand that rules are not neutral.  The rules that we write can cater to particular students more than others, and we may not even realize that they are doing that.  For example, some of the students in the article were punished for not speaking "proper English."  The rejection of the students home language patterns in this way, sends a message to the students that they, and their families, are not respected by the school or their teachers.  It's not surprising that they would develop methods to try to save face as a result.  By developing and enforcing rules that reinforce the valuing of the "normal" white culture,  school rules do end up operating as instruments of normalization that help keep those who are in power in power.  

I also think that what is the most important lesson in this article is that rules are not enforced in an equal way.  I think we all know that when we were in school some kids got away with stuff that other kids couldn't.  The ways in which these rules are enforced tends to correlate with societal expectations of race, class, and gender.  (There is a great article called "The Saints and the Roughnecks" that talks about how socioeconomic status affects this.)   Biased enforcement of school rules can also carry over into how students are tracked.  "Troublemakers" are more likely to be tracked into more remedial classes.  If race affects who is considered to be a troublemaker, then it is no surprise that tracks are racially segregated even within ethnically diverse schools.  This was certainly the case at my high school.  Segregated tracking contributes to a social reproduction that reinforces power relationships in our society.  

Social Reproduction

The readings for this week, especially the article about Mountain View and Ground View schools reminded me of a quote from that article "Still Separate Still Unequal," by Jonathan Kozol.  Kozol interviewed some students at a school like Ground View about their school and the classes available to them, like sewing and hairdressing 1 and 2.  One particularly astute kid explained it this way: "The owners of sewing factories need laborers. It’s not going to be their own kids. You’re ghetto so we send you to the factory. You’re ghetto, so you sew."  Schools like Mountain View trains students to be working class or poor adults.  It sends these students the message that they aren't valued.  The metal detectors, ID badges, and prominently displayed class schedules send them the message that they are expected to misbehave.  That they are expected to be criminals.  And, perhaps, by now, we are all beginning to realize this.  I think we all know that something needs to be done about this.  

The flip side is trickier, though.  Should we be changing Mountain View?  These kids are learning the opposite of the kids from Ground View.  They are learning to be executives.  They are learning to lead.  Is there anything wrong with that?  Isn't that the ideal? I'm not so sure.  They are also learning to be entitled.  They are learning that they are the norm.  That everything that is different from them is "less than", not simply "different from."  

And to a certain extent, we learn the same thing.  As Saltman explains, when we think of kids from working class and poor backgrounds as having "risk factors," "we assume that the privileged position is the norm, the benchmark, or the ideal against which other identities will be judged."  But an identity that includes an overdeveloped sense of entitlement is not ideal.  The flip side of inequality is privilege.  To have true equality, we need to equally consider both.

what are our values, as teachers?

I am in the social action group.  I conducted research based on the idea of incorporating social justice into the curriculum.  One idea that came up over the course of my research was one's approach to "teaching values."  On the surface, this is a general idea, which can be defined in all kinds of ways.  I have frequently heard the idea that teachers should be apolitical.  We should be objective and value-neutral.  I think this is impossible.  And I am not alone.  At some point in most of the articles that I have read, each author mentioned that teaching is not an objective, value neutral activity. 

We are told to avoid "difficult" and "uncomfortable" topics like racism or oppression so as not to make our students uncomfortable or offend their parents.  But this is not value-neutral.  Whenever we make a discussion about what content to cover in class and what to leave out, we are making decisions that convey values.  As Kraft (one of the authors of my articles) explains, "choosing to avoid serious discussions about social issues is a value judgment that perpetuates injustice, racism, sexism, classism, and inequality."  We cannot remain silent on these issues unless we want to perpetuate these problems.

Furthermore, encouraging your students to take action and teaching them about examples of social activists who have effected change is no more biased than pretending that the world is fair and equal.  Doing nothing is not value-free or objective; it is irresponsible. Regardless of what we say or do, or don't say or don't do, we are role models.  I, for one, would like to be a role model that suggests that the world should and can be changed for the better.  I would like to be a role model that shows that fighting racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia are moral imperatives in our society.

Indeed the fox is now guarding the henhouse

I enjoyed Lounsbury and Vars's use of the metaphor of the fox now guarding the henhouse to discuss the ways in which the consolidation of the corporate and political elite means that the corporate elite are setting public policy that will, in the end, help sustain their own interests, not the interests of the average middle school student, and certainly not the interests of poor middle school students.  Related to this is the current emphasis on standardized tests and mandated assessments that claim to provide a better education for all, but instead, really create a pedagogy that contradicts the teaching of critical thinking skills and manufactures a crisis that is used to push for a specific political agenda: for the use of vouchers and for profit management of education.  Consider the following quote "is it too extreme or an exaggeration to suggest that high-stakes testing may be lobotomizing an entire generation of young people?"  Yes, it is a little extreme, but there is also a kernel of truth there.  

I also enjoyed the discussion present in a couple of the articles about the necessity of teaching the middle school student how to become a good citizen.  However, I also thought it was interesting how much what it means to be a good citizen can vary depending on who is doing the defining.  For the Carnegie foundation, a good citizen is one who accepts responsibility, is a "doer not just an observer," who will understand the genesis of the United States and its basic values, and will participate in "appropriate ways" in the government.  Although, on the surface, these all sound like good things, I think what is significant to this is what it does not mention.  What are the values of the United States?  What does it mean to participate in "appropriate ways?"  What is a "positive sense of global citizenship?"