by: Sharon Schmidt

In late March the Chief Education Officer Barbara Eason-Watkins replied to my concerns in a letter. This is what she wrote about opting out:

“Parents are not required to sign releases for their children to participate in any assessment series. If parents choose to exclude their children, the school has no obligation to provide an alternate activity. Your child will be asked to engage in a silent, self-guided activity.”

So, my third grader sat out the May 10 and 11 Learning First Benchmark tests and the May 17 Scantron. He read many chapters of the new Rick Riordan novel, The Red Pyramid, and probably memorized his new Calvin and Hobbes collection.

We certainly appreciated his principal’s willingness to accomodate our decision.

If your child attends Chicago Public Schools, they are subject to a complicated and overwhelming system of standardized tests. While students are repeatedly filling in bubbles on answer sheets and preparing to fill in bubbles on answer sheets, they are missing out on the fun, creative, exploration of the world that education could and should be about. Instead, the current testing regime replaces the joy of learning with the bureaucracy of learning. Parents, we are not alone in our feeling that these tests terrorize our students, our fellow parents, our student’s teachers and our entire schools.

We have listed these as “days” of testing because a 1 ½ hour test disrupts the entire schedule of a school day: classes are eliminated or shortened, bilingual or special education services are eliminated or shortened, even lunch may be switched to a cold lunch or have its regular time moved.

First Lady Michelle Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20500

Templates and more information is here:

http://timeoutfromtesting.org/mobama.php

—

Dear Michelle Obama,

I was at Grant Park on election night. Your husband reminded us of the changes that occurred in the last 100 years, and asked us to dream of what life would be like in 100 more. It is important to think how we might measure the success of these changes, as the essential element for determining our future is not the measure itself, but the unit of measure - for that reveals something deeper about ourselves and our values.

Ultimately, the measure of life must be made by each of us, both personally and socially, by the lives we lead, the meanings we hold, and the moments we share. Each of us, and all of us, must determine what it means to have a life worth living. This is not an abstraction, but rather, a moment by moment deliberation that we make now, and that we will also make one hundred years from now.

That is the greater purpose of education - to enable each us to determine who we want to become, and then to help us in that becoming.

Which is quite a different vision of education from what many of us experience now – the one that focuses on technological processes and subject-matter knowledge and standardized tests.

The souls of ourselves and our children are at stake. What will prepare us for the unforeseen challenges of the next one hundred years is not the ability to fill in the right bubble, but the ability to ask questions that understand both the urgency of now and the direction of our future. These are not multiple-choice questions that can be answered in number 2 pencil with desks separated. Indeed, these are questions yet to be asked. However, we know they will have to be answered by the actions of people coming together to remake the worlds around them. Rather than education that values a student’s life only by its measure, let’s create an education that values each student as a life beyond measure.

Sincerely,

Wade Tillett

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/06/01/33tap.h29.html?tkn=OPUFqM7io65bEbtpQ7Pp49tT3Bvei1BazDMp&cmp=clp-edweek

Merit Pay in Chicago Public Schools?

Does the idea of having your salary based on your students’ test scores make you mad?

It should.

• Chicago Public Schools has already implemented a pilot merit pay program called the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) in 29 schools.

• The current Chicago Teachers Union administration (Marilyn Stewart and the UPC) supports the program. The current CTU leadership has even sent around a union representative to voice support at the presentations to pitch the program to different schools. Marilyn listed TAP as one her great accomplishments with Arne Duncan at his last Chicago Board of Education meeting.

• The TAP program links teacher pay to students’ test scores. At first, teacher pay is mainly linked to school scores. As the years go by, more and more of your pay is determined by only your students’ scores.

• In the merit pay pilot program, you are in competition with your colleagues for a limited pool of money. The worse your students do, the more money another teacher can make.

Let’s not give more power to Chicago Public Schools Administration and the standardized tests.

It’s not too late. CORE is fighting to stop the spread of merit pay and other insidious misuses of standardized tests. If elected, CORE will defend Chicago Teachers Union members from pay linked to test scores in the next contract negotiation.

Frequently Asked Questions

• But I heard the money is only a “bonus” on top of base salary?

  • Chicago Public Schools is using this as a strategy to legitimate merit pay. For example, at the next round of contract negotiations, CPS will likely offer “bonuses” for higher test scores with less base salary increase. How would the union defend our members if each teacher was paid differently based on a secret test? 10,000 grievances? Our basic bargaining power would be gone.

• What about “value-added” scores?

  • The pilot merit pay program pays based on student score increases. This is quite problematic. In 2008, remember that ISBE had to rescore all the ISATs due to a scoring error. In 2010, Susan Zupan, a CORE member, found in her analysis that some grades increase their scores more than others every year.* This means it is not fair to compare across grade levels. Also, the tests were not designed to be used at a per-class level.

• Wouldn’t this encourage competition among colleagues and maybe even cheating?

  • Yes. It also discourages cooperation and collegial sharing of methods and materials.

CORE’s Testing Task Force looks into how the misuse of standardized tests interferes with making schools that serve the best interests of our students. The CORE Testing Task Force is open to all who are interested in advocating and acting to create schools that work for kids.

For more information, or to get involved, please visit the CORE website: http://www.coreteachers.com/

*For Susan Zupan’s data go to substancenews.net

http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1094&section=Article

We will meet on Wednesday, Jan. 20th at 4pm at Manny’s Coffeeshop, 1141 South Jefferson St.

Our first task will be to encourage teachers that they are not alone in their feeling that tests are terrorizing students, parents, teachers and entire schools. The current testing regime replaces the joy of learning with the bureaucracy of learning.

We know that good schools:

• encourage joyful learning,
• value exploration, wonder and awe,
• have students that are interested and actively engaged,
• address students’ concerns,
• have teachers that work together to address students’ needs and character,
• support students beyond the school walls,
• have the ability to abandon the lesson plan and follow teachable moments,
• build on student and community strengths,
• have practicing student citizens.

The current testing mania interferes with each of the points above. We will examine how.

In addition to giving voice to what schools could and should be, we will look into alternatives to tests that can better provide “accountability” and equity. We will look into misuse of test scores for promotion, school closings, and “bonus” merit pay in the TAP program.

There will be a testing workshop at the Jan. 9 Malcolm X meeting. In addition, please save March 4, the National Day of Action in Defense of Education for potential action.

Hope to see you there!

Karen Lewis, Norine Gutekanst, Wade Tillett

In addition to teaching for Chicago Public Schools, I teach Curriculum and Instruction in the Middle School through UIC to mainly Chicago Public School teachers. We came up with the above list of things that have inherent value at school: what they love. It shows that what’s important at school is a lot broader than the “content”.

• those you have to apply to
• and those you don’t.

Most students go to those you don’t have to apply for - their neighborhood school. But they go there feeling like they weren’t “good enough” to “get into” one of the “good schools.” I’ve been trying to encourage my eighth graders to see their neighborhood school as a good option, as an option that still leaves their future college and career paths open. Still, students read the action louder than the words and the reality of Chicago Public Schools is this, according to our counselor:

• To even take the high school application exam, you must get a stanine of 5 or more in math and reading on the state standardized test in 7th grade. This eliminates 4 of 10 students.
• If all 6 of those students apply to the selective enrollment schools, only 1 is accepted.
• Thus, 9 of 10 students feel they have been told they are “not good enough”.

Before a student even walks into a neighborhood high school, she feels like she is going to a place for leftovers.

http://pureparents.org/data/files/prompolproprev10-15-09.pdf