What
This Is…
Issue #82- October 7, 2012
In this issue: Standardized
Testing, MMSD Educators Under Fire
Testing,
"Mapping" a Road to Nowhere…
Assessment is a vital part
of the educational process. Educators
need to know what their students know and we use assessment to guide our
instruction as well as inform us about student progress. Parents and other adults in students lives
want to know where their child stands in their educational development. Educators share information gathered from
assessments, student work and other observations with families in an ongoing
effort to support student learning of important skills and information.
Unfortunately, assessment
has become a "tool" used for an entirely different purpose. So called, "reformers", want to
assess children in order to rank and evaluate educators and schools, not to
make education better, but to somehow document our success or failure in
educating young people. In doing so,
they've turned education into a form of competition where we can identify
schools that are successful by their numerical rank or by some other formula
based on data collected by standardized testing.
We have an epidemic of
testing that has broken out in our nation's schools and it is deadly to
learning and student achievement. I
could spend some more time looking at this issue from a "big picture"
perspective, but there is another reality that is much more important than the
political or sociological one. That
reality is the one that I work in on a daily basis. It is populated by a cadre of dedicated
educators and caring families. The
primary inhabitants, in fact the ones for which this environment is created
for, are the students who come each day to work and learn in my classroom (and
in classrooms around our city, state and nation).
We can debate issues and
policy forever and never come to a satisfactory conclusion that will please
everyone. However, on an individual
basis in classrooms everywhere the success or failure of our public schools is
easier to define. Every year I sit down
with families and students and we identify needs and goals for the year. Over the course of the year there is constant
assessment, evaluation and a flow of communication between home and school
about the students I serve. All of us work
together to try and find the best ways to make sure that students are learning
necessary skills and information that they will need in the future.
In many cases this isn't a
smooth or easy process. Growth is rarely
linear and constant, but the important thing is the collective effort and
cooperation between home, school and the community. We may agree or disagree about the methods we
use to educate any given student, but in the end it is the student whose needs
take the highest priority. We try different
ideas and utilize different resources, all while maintaining the focus on the
child.
This is true for a
majority of the school year, but there are too many times where this
cooperative effort is disrupted and undermined by the intrusion of mandates
from outside sources. Sometimes these
interruptions are simple, isolated problems that are resolved quickly, but
there are also some that are symptomatic of a larger pattern that is emerging
in our public education system.
An example of these types of
disruptions are the changes implemented for elementary school educators Monday
afternoon planning time by MMSD administration.
By taking time that had been available for educators to use
independently and using a significant amount of that time for formal
professional development or other meetings we lost time to communicate with
families and other educators. In the
last round of contract negotiations our district's administration offered the
idea of changing staff hours and making us have planning time in the morning,
before school. That is another time when
many educators are able to communicate with the families of their students.
Educators in Madison have fought to
try and preserve as much of our previous schedules as possible, and to some degree
have been successful. However, there is
another, more disruptive, intrusion into our time with students and our
communication with families…standardized testing. This testing takes up a significant amount of
instructional time, undermines student's efforts and results in misleading
information that confuses and frustrates families.
How much time is
significant? I knew we spent a lot of
time testing, but recently was asked exactly how much and added up the
hours. Between the three MAP sessions, the
WKCE, the COGAT and additional testing required by MMSD to meet guidelines
imposed by legislation and education policy the number is too high. You can't forget the amount of time spent
preparing for testing in this number as well.
The result? Specific numbers vary
by grade level, but the amount of time used for standardized assessment is
extensive.
More time must also be
considered lost as schedules are altered to accommodate testing as well. Students at this grade level don't just test
and then switch to another topic without needing time to recover. We also want to make sure that they are
performing their best so we change our curriculum during these testing periods
and reduce their workload. This results
in more lost instructional time for students at all elementary grade
levels. Because different grade levels
have different testing requirements and many Madison classrooms have combined grades this
adds to the disruptive effects of testing.
The time lost becomes more
significant at lower grades where students are not capable of taking
individualized standardized tests and therefore must be tested individually by
trained professionals, usually teachers.
The result is that these students who are most in need of instruction
lose the learning time with their teacher in exchange for assessment time.
In many school buildings a
tremendous amount of effort is put into attempting to minimize the impact that
testing has. The results are a cobbled
together, "best of a bad situation" solution. What is missing from the current discussion
in most schools is not, "How do we make this work" but instead should
be, "Why are we contorting our schedules and disrupting our student's
educations for these assessments?"
As soon as we move the focus of our discussion away from asking whether
our assessments are useful and good for students we lose the true meaning of
education and assessment. We become
proxy advocates for testing by adapting our curriculum and schedules to fit the
tests not the students.
The assessments affect
individual students in different ways, but the results are rarely
positive. Educators are under pressure
to administer these tests and often the testing environment is quite different
from the daily classroom environment. In
most Madison
classrooms students are encouraged to ask questions, challenge ideas and work
cooperatively to learn about any given topic.
Standardized testing is an entirely different situation and many of our
students struggle to adapt, even with significant test preparation instruction.
In fact standardized
testing creates a negative atmosphere and reduces each student to a number, or
box to be filled in. Exactly the type of
situation that we are trying to avoid as we work to engage and motivate our highest
risk students. Because we can't leave
any child "behind" we must force students who already have fragile
and tenuous connections to school to sit isolated and prove that they are
struggling academically. I won't mention
specifics (to protect student anonymity) but I have seen testing negatively
impact many students in my years of teaching, and the effects are increasing as
the testing becomes more intense and more value is placed on the scores. Watching students take a standardized test
and seeing their heads drop, the tears flow and their frustration build hurts
me as an educator.
Standardized testing
forgets that these are children who have a very different idea of what they are
doing during the testing than the adults who create the tests do. I have many examples of this that I have seen
during my 15+ years as an educator. In
fact my own experience with standardized testing offers an insight into why we
need to take all testing results with a "grain of salt". I have always tested well, usually scoring
quite high, but I remember my mindset wasn't optimal during testing. As a big baseball fan (and unfortunately for
me a Cubs supporter) the A/B/C/D/E choices became the Astros, Braves, Cubs,
Dodgers and Expos. Naturally my default
answer was "C", Cubs.
I've heard my own students
talk about their thoughts during testing and the discussions don't increase my
faith in the test results. A recent
student said their favorite part of the MAP testing (done on the computer) was
"clicking" (believe it or not, this student needed repeated
interventions to stay focused during testing).
I've heard many teachers talk about their difficulties in getting
students to perform their best on tests that mean little to them
personally. The lack of direct connection
to topics we are working on, the seemingly random nature of the questions and
the disruptions to school routines all contribute to student's disconnect with
the tests.
We often seem to forget
that we are taking students who are young and just developing their skills and
shaping their ideas about education. For
the majority of the school year we work closely with them and encourage their
progress. Then during these testing
sessions we change our interactions, enforce a whole new strict set of rules
and emphasize their performance in different ways. This makes students feel uneasy and magnifies
the importance of the tests in their minds.
It certainly doesn't help that those students who stay up on current
events see the importance that adults outside of their school experience place
on the test results either.
The reporting of results
provides another set of variables that decreases the usefulness of standardized
tests. It is difficult to convey to
families and students what their scores mean.
After students finish their MAP test, their score appears on the final
screen. As we leave the computer lab I
find myself besieged by students clamoring to know what a 214, 201, 197, etc.
means. Of course their WKCE scores have
an entirely different scale, and other assessments also use different values to
measure scores. As educators we are
placed in the position of translating numbers to families when we really should
be talking about other aspects their child's education.
The way the test results
are used is also troubling. I have had
students who were struggling in significant ways denied access to additional
support or Special Education evaluations because their test scores were not low
enough. At the same time I have seen
students offered or excluded from TAG recommendations based on these
scores. These things happen even when
multiple educators and student's families speak up and advocate for students
needs. The test score becomes the most
valued data about a student, while those who know the child best and who have
professional experience are left trying to justify their opinions that have
been formed by observing the student on a daily basis.
As an educator I have no
problem with accountability. I expect
the most from myself and my students. I
want feedback and constructive opinions from families and welcome evaluations
from my administrators. Accountability
isn't the issue here, the real issue is that I want to be held accountable for
the right things. I want my students to
be able to lead happy, productive lives and to have an educational background
that will support their efforts. That is
what I work towards, not higher test scores that measure vague, ambiguous
skills whose value is determined by some source far removed from the lives of
my students and their families.
In the end, the test
scores become another way to divide people who attend, support and work in
public schools. Programs and educators
are evaluated on the merits of their ability to improve a student's test taking
ability while ignoring the fact that these tests are only on measure of student
progress. We have huge issues with
equality of opportunity in our society and our educational system reflects the
disparity between the "haves" and the "have-nots".
Testing our students won't
eliminate the Achievement Gaps, but it certainly provides ammunition for those
who would radically change our educational system. Standardized tests can provide some useful
data, but shouldn't be employed at the expense of other forms of assessment
that will help improve the instruction that students receive. Until educators, students and families unite
to challenge the dogma that standardized testing is a valid and valued way to
evaluate our schools and students we will find ourselves continuing down a path
that leads to educational ruin.
Madison
Educators, Between a Rock and a Hard Place…
It's
difficult to know how to react to the recent negotiations and ratification of
contracts for all MTI bargaining units and the AFSCME units who work in
MMSD. On one hand there is relief that
we were able to get a contract that protects us through 2014. On the other hand is the bitter taste left
after seeing what the future of public educators in Madison will look like unless we are able to
change the existing climate that surrounds our schools.
There
is no doubt in my mind that we didn't receive the respect or the contract that
we deserve. I know that conservatives
would agree with this statement, but for different (less friendly)
reasons. The contracts that were
negotiated leave Madison educators still well
off when compared to other school districts or public employee unions in other
parts of Wisconsin. Our negotiating teams were able to preserve
many parts of our collective bargaining agreement and even were able to remove
the threat of wage reductions for our hard hit hourly employees.
The
protection of a contract for another year gives us more time to work on
building support for our efforts to protect public education and more time to
work to educate the general public about what is happening in education
"reform" movements. We have an
obligation to define our positions regarding education reform and to take the
lead in creating an atmosphere that allows for change, while still protecting
educators and public education. It
allows educators in Madison
a reprieve from the immediate threats of a handbook and the challenges that new
policies would bring to our daily labors with students.
That
this was accomplished while we were backed against a wall and had a short
negotiating window with little leverage to bargain with is truly
remarkable. It is also a testimony to
the support that Madison
educators enjoy from the public and from some of the School Board and parts of
our administration. We shouldn't forget
that the district didn't have to bargain, but could have waited for the legal
challenges to be decided. Their refusal
to consider some of MTI's proposals or to budge on some of their demands showed
the disparity in power that exists in current labor/management relations.
While
it would be wonderful if district administration and the educators they employ
could work together, it is clear that there are different agendas which make
cooperation difficult. This is extremely
unfortunate. Now is the time when all
those involved in public education from the top administrator down should be
finding common ground and not fragmenting in the face of the attacks by
"reformers".
There
are several troubling things about this current round of negotiations.
Bargaining
with employees should be a reasonable expectation and not considered an act of
generosity. The concept that we were
lucky to even get a chance to negotiate a new contract shows just how distorted
things have become in Wisconsin.
Many
of the MMSD proposals read like a blueprint that would be supported by
educational "reformers" who look to privatize public education. As it ended, there is still the potential to
change the way our schools operate under this new contract. The antipathy that developed during the
Madison Prep debate appeared during the negotiations as MTI was portrayed as an
obstacle to student achievement by some MMSD negotiators.
Under
current labor conditions it is very difficult to adapt existing contracts to
new or different ideas. In the past
contracts could be altered by both parties agreeing to do so and creating
formal "amendments" to the contracts.
Now, under Act 10, unions and school districts have lost that
flexibility. Who knows what MTI and MMSD
would be able to do if real bargaining could be done.
The
educators who make up MTI are committed to improving student achievement and it
is insulting to assume that we aren't.
We are also committed to making sure that educators are treated fairly
and that working conditions are reasonable for all educators. This can sometimes cause difficulties as new
programs are implemented, but often results in good dialog that makes for
stronger proposals in the long run.
It
is clear that there are those in MMSD who would like to see MTI disappear and
be given complete freedom to control the employees in the district. Some of the sticking points in negotiations
showed this to be very true. For
example, all MTI represented employees could pay up to 10% of their health
insurance premiums under the new contract.
Teachers, the largest number of MTI members, offered to pick up the
entire cost of any insurance premium increases for the other units. These units have been the most impacted by
recent reductions in take-home pay.
However, MMSD refused this, even though it didn't affect student
achievement and would not have impacted the district's budget.
The
initial proposals offered by the district were a terrifying look into what an
employee handbook might look like in the future. The proposals take us in a direction that
leads towards privatization and the struggles that other urban school districts
have already encountered. It is clear
that public education in Madison
is facing dire threats to its survival.
Public
education needs to be just that, public, and part of this public nature of
things is the participation of groups representing all concerned parties. In the case of public education this means
that input from many sources, including educators, needs to be heard. We can't run our public schools like a
business and ignore the concerns of the professionals who staff our
schools. The process that existed prior
to Act 10 may not have been perfect, but it allowed multiple perspectives to be
heard when issues were bargained. I hope
that future discussions will keep this in mind and that we don't allow any
single group to dominate the conversations as we work to improve our schools
for all students.
As
educators we need to keep this in mind as we work to build connections with the
communities we serve. In some cases MTI
is seen as an impediment to progress and we must make it clear that our
concerns are presented in ways that reinforce our commitment to making schools
good places for everyone to work and learn.
It
is said that in every cloud is a silver lining and that is how educators here
must approach the negotiation and ratification of our contracts. Our negotiating teams and MTI staff won us
another year to continue the fight to protect public education and to preserve
our labor rights. Madison has often been a leader in both of
these fights and we have the opportunity to be in the forefront again.
We
must use this extra time to build support within the community and to share our
message with the general public. It is
distressing that so few in the community know about or understand the
importance of public education. We need
to build connections with all parts of the Madison community and develop working
relationships with the people who live, work and raise children in this
city. We have to listen to them, recognize
their needs and work to build a school district that serves all parts of the
population effectively.
We
need to clarify our positions and demonstrate the willingness to work with
different groups while still protecting the things that we value. The issues around Madison Prep provide an
example of how different organizations that want the same thing can come into
conflict. By clearly articulating our
points of view and connecting with other groups, compromises and discussion can
occur. If all parties operate in good
faith, with the interests of the students as the primary focus, then positive
results will occur.
Of
course all actions have consequences and we can't sacrifice future generations
of students by gutting our public education systems in the present. We have seen how privatization has negatively
impacted schools in communities across the nation. The "tool" used by supporters of
privatization has been the need to address a "crisis" in public
education. We should be wary of these
quick fixes and look towards building sustainable reforms that are focused on
the good of the most students possible.
MTI's
membership must also work to develop solidarity and strength. Too many of us have been content to let a
small number represent our interests. We
are all ambassadors for our union and for public education. We also can't forget that the things we are
losing took years and significant struggle to gain and concessions now mean a
repeat of these battles. We have time,
it may be "borrowed", but we do have the opportunity to build an even
stronger organization to represent public education and public educators in Madison. Our efforts will provide support and
motivation for other educators around the state, just like the Chicago teachers inspired
us.
We
may be tired, we may be angry, we may be disheartened, we may be all that and
more. However, at the same time we are
educators and we are proud of our profession, our schools and our union. The solidarity exhibited during negotiations
spread through all MTI and AFSCME units.
Now we need to work on strengthening the bonds that unite us while
spreading our solidarity to our community.
Each of us owes our best effort to each other and to our students.
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