Julie DelegalHere’s a prediction that no one wants to hear.
Ten years down the road, after the Common Core State Standards have been implemented, after some company makes millions of dollars on tests and tools, and after more Florida public schools close and more private ones begin feeding at the public trough, poverty will still be the overwhelming factor that determines whether children will succeed or fail at school.
We’ll simply have more cutting-edge ways of assessing that truth.
Acknowledging the effect of poverty on learning is often considered the “soft [class] bigotry of low expectations.” While it’s public education’s mission to break the correlation between poverty and poor academic performance, pretending that the link doesn’t exist doesn’t help to get the job done.
The politically correct verbiage associated with Florida’s Jeb-Bush-brand reforms, you see, forbids any mention of poverty. It’s been factored out.
What we’re left with — when we look at which poor kids do better on standardized tests, and which poor kids do worse – is the flawed debate over “good teachers” versus “bad teachers.”
The movement isn’t out to improve “teaching” as a set of skills. No, the dominant education reform movement in Florida has set out to blame educational outcomes on “bad teachers,” many of whom belong to teachers’ unions.
There’s not a single study that links the union status of teachers — positively or negatively — to student outcomes.
Never mind that standardized tests aren’t reliable indicators, over time, of teacher effectiveness. Never mind that the gloom-and-doom statistics about students in the United States falling behind in the global learning race all but disappear when poverty is accounted for.
Never mind, either, that private schools aren’t better than public schools, once poverty is factored in, or that charter schools haven’t helped our poorest students in Florida.
We’ve got a movement to implement, by golly, and we can’t be bothered by facts. They just detract from the bigger, politically correct message: Parents and teachers who question the effects of high-stakes-testing culture on our kids are “defenders of the status quo.” Parents and teachers who proclaim that poverty affects learning are “defenders of the status quo.”
Who, amid this mess, are the defenders of our children? Who speaks for valid research that consistently questions the wisdom of the high-stakes-testing-plus-privatization approach?
I’ve always given props to the idea of standards-based education.
I’m a fan of the idea of fewer, deeper, clearer frameworks for launching curricula. I absolutely agree with Bush-brand reform on these points. High bars, set equally for everyone, can enable educators to pinpoint the potholes in students’ skills and fill them — when those tools are paired with adequate resources.
And when you talk to teachers who are able to meet their students’ needs, it’s all about the children — what’s going on in each of their families, whether kids are getting enough to eat and enough support and guidance from their parents.
If the true purpose of standards-based education is to challenge teachers and students to achieve at higher levels, then I’m all for it. If the true purpose of assessing students with standards-aligned instruments is to determine their relative strengths and weaknesses, then I’m for that, too.
But if the purpose of the Common Core State Standards and the yet-to-be-determined test is just one more way to label “failing” public schools and siphon away more tax money for private schools, count me out.
Research shows that private is not better. What good is “choice,” if students don’t learn more after the “choice” is exercised?
Further, if standards-aligned assessments are going to be used as weapons instead of tools, count me out. We need not make our students feel like failures for not knowing what they haven’t learned — we need simply to teach them.
Finally, if education reform is designed to co-opt poor families politically, rather than improve their children’s educational outcomes, then please count me out, because that’s just plain diabolical.
Keep the “wheat”: standards and diagnostics. Add a little “yeast”: the resources to give our most vulnerable students equal educational footing. Get rid of the “chaff”: privatization, union busting, and badmouthing the public schools.
When students from poor families perform as well as those from affluent families, we’ll have done something commendable. Until then, we’re just playing politics with the lives of Florida’s children.
