The Origins and
Purposes of High-Stakes Testing
OR
Why Democrats (?)
Support NCLB
Copyright Kathy Emery 2005
1989
Business Roundtable’s Annual Meeting
Agree to transform public K-12 education around
The following “goals”
• OUTCOME-BASED EDUCATION
• HIGH EXPECTATIONS FOR ALL
• STRONG AND COMPLEX ASSESSMENTS
• REWARDS AND PENALTIES
Copyright Kathy Emery 2005
1995
Business Roundtable’s Publication
Nine Essential Components
of a Successful Education System
• State content standards
• State mandated tests
• Rewards and sanctions
• Site-based decision making
• Professional development
• Learning readiness
• Parent Involvement
• Technology
• Safety and Discipline
Copyright Kathy Emery 2005
National BRT engineers “alignment”
1989 to 2001
ECS
AFT
Co-opt governors
STATE BRTs
Lobby state legislatures
Co-opt teacher unions
BCER
Coalition of 13
national business
organizations
National
BRT
PUBLIC AGENDA
Feed newspaper reporters story lines
ED TRUST
• Attack opponents of highstakes testing as racist
• Co-opt school counsellors
CORPORATE FOUNDATIONS
Set up new and co-opt existing research institutes at
universities
Copyright Kathy Emery 2005
American Federation of Teachers
(from 1996 BRT publication, A Business Leader’s Guide to Setting Academic Standards)
“Examples of Ineffectual, Unclear or Poorly Written Standards:
The following selections of standards are cited by the American Federation
of Teachers as examples of what to avoid. The AFT criticizes these
standards for being confusing, not academic enough and overly
focused on skills at the expense of knowledge . . . . Many of the
standards below met objections from members of the public and business
community and were rewritten as a result.”
“Students will demonstrate the ability to examine problems and proposed
solutions from multiple perspectives” (Missouri’s Standards, Draft, 1995).
Education Commission of the States
1999 “ECS Priorities”:
State system of high standards and assessment , incentives,
rewards and sanctions
Data must be disaggregated so no student falls through the
cracks
Flexibility with de-centralized decision-making, charter
schools, and collaborate with federal government’s
Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration Project
Education Trust
A “non -partisan, non-profit” organization branding any
OPPONENT of high-stakes testing AS RACIST!
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“Achievement gap” rhetoric
College-prep curriculum for all
K-16 alignment through high school exit exams
“In June 2003, the Education Trust and MetLife Foundation
established the National Center for Transforming School Counseling
(NCTSC). This new Center continues the work supported by the
Dewitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund and MetLife Foundation to
ensure school counselors across the country are trained and
ready to help ALL groups of students reach high academic
standards.” (from website)
How to Handle the Backlash?
By 2001, only 16 state legislatures had passed
high-stakes testing legislation
BRT PUBLISHES “HOW TO” MANUAL
Addressing and Assessing the “Testing Backlash”:
Practical Advice and Current Public Opinion
Research For Business Coalitions and Standards
Advocates
WHY NCLB???
Eugene Hickock, Under Secretary of Education,
at 2003 Milken Global Conference
Leverage to fundamentally change public education
“ One of the virtues of NCLB is leverage, leverage at the state. . . at the
local level. We don’t’ mind being the bad guys, in terms of the ones
pushing it. But I think our concern is that we are short sighted in how
much leverage we could use. I think it’s leverage that could create a
revolution in American education. And that’s necessary. In itself and by
itself it won’t do it but it’s the difference that might change everything
forever. One of my concerns is that we have been talking about these
issues forever . . . it’s time to make sure we move from discussion to
action. I am very concerned that we will, because we have a new law,
because it is complex because we have tough economic times, that we will
underestimate the potential that we have to redefine everything.”
Why
High-Stakes
Testing?
Business elites change the US
education system to sort and control
1840s Agricultural
Manufacturing economy
State boards of education created to enforce standardized
curriculum and teacher-centered pedagogy
1880s Manufacturing
Industrial economy
Compulsory, comprehensive “factory” schools sort students,
via standardized tests, into voc-ed and college prep tracks
1980s Industrial
Service economy
High-stakes testing legislation creates
new tracking system: college prep v. prison prep
Social Movements: 1830-60 --- 1870-1900 --- 1955-1979
Copyright Kathy Emery 2005
Why High Stakes in 1989?
Toyota, using TQM, sells more vehicles in US than Big 3!
PROBLEM for CEOs:
1. High-tech workers are
expensive
2. Crisis in legitimacy
• Declining wages for working
class
• Disappearing middle class
• Polarization of wealth
• Little evidence of social
mobility
THEIR SOLUTION:
1. Increase # of college grads by
establishing “high standards for all”
2. Legitimize polarization of wealth-“closing the achievement gap” hides
dramatic increase in DROPOUTS
Do it CHEAP!!!: Rely on standardized
tests to “raise the bar” and “turn on the
heat” (students, parents and teachers will
work harder so funding can be cut)
Copyright Kathy Emery 2005
Effect of High-Stakes Testing?
1.
While NO increase of college grads (so expand H1-B visas,
threaten to outsource, outsource, continue threats.)
2.
It does create and legitimize a new tracking system: teachers
mostly blamed for persistent achievement (income) gap.
Re-segregation okay since “goal” is equal test scores.
3. Disarms Opponents: Rhetoric divides parents against teachers
and standards’ advocates get to claim HST as their “civil
rights” crusade.
4.
And legitimizes growing under-funding of schools: Money not
necessary, only higher expectations ( paying teachers less will
help, so undermine unions whenever possible).
Copyright Kathy Emery 2005
Standardized tests are based upon
19th century ASSUMPTIONS
about who is able and not able to perform.
For example: Anglo-Saxons are smarter than everyone else
and upper classes are smarter than lower classes.
Then assumptions built into every generation of test since start
Test “validity” = Does the test produce the same
results as the previous generation of tests?
Test “reliability” = Does the student get the same
result each time she takes the test? This is
achieved by correlating SES with results.
Copyright Kathy Emery 2005
Prison-Prep in “low performing” schools
• Concentration of black and brown
• Teacher-proof, scripted curriculum
• Drill and Kill Reading and Math
• Elimination of Arts and Phys Ed
• Disappearing Science and History
= Dramatic increase in dropouts and pushouts
WHY Prison Prep?
• 1984-1996 = number needing work was 5 times
the number of jobs available from Jean Anyon’s Radical Possibilities
What has been happening to POOR, predominantly
black and brown dropouts?
Growth in Prison Population
Number of Prisoners per 100,000 of Population
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
1980
1984
1988
1992
1996
2000
US BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS
Where has all the money gone?
Effective tax rate of middle class
1948 = % 5
1990 = % 25
Federal share of tax burden by corporations
1940 = % 40
2001 = % 9
From Jean Anyon’s Radical Possibilities
New York Times 11/13/05 Business, section 3, page 1
“Red hot leveraged-buyout industry . .
…so far this year . . . $130 billion with $100 billion in unspent money still
swirling around the country”
Henry Kravis: “unfortunately, there is a flip side to having access to
plentiful capital. It means that too many people without experience in
building businesses have too much money.”
Quick flips (buying then selling company) “spurred in part by superlow
interests rates that allowed them to borrow huge sums of money. . . to reap
returns private equity firms are going to have to sell $500 billion worth
of assets. The question is to whom? Even in the last three years, in as big a
bull market as they come, private equity has never sold more than 153.2
billion in a year.”
HST Rhetoric diverts attention away from funding
crisis and GROTESQUE polarization of wealth
Rhetoric focuses blame on the teachers and anyone else who
opposes high-stakes testing
• “soft bigotry of low expectations”
• “high standards for all”
• “equity and excellence”
Blame on teachers sticks because:
• the public school system has never served the interests of poor
parents of color
• cultural divide (95% of teachers are white middle class females)
• teacher unions in defensive mode, wages and conditions only
• education reform is framed out of its economic and political context
Copyright Kathy Emery 2005
BRT Strategy
“High standards for all” and “Excellence and Equity”
Exacerbates historic division between poor parents of color
and white-middle-class female teachers
Counter Strategy!
Teachers must have deep, honest conversations with parents
so they can form alliances around a vision of reform that truly
serves everyone
Copyright Kathy Emery 2005
Deep and honest conversations among
teachers, parents and students:
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What are the goals of school?
What is good teaching?
How does one know what a student is learning?
HOW should schools and individuals be held
accountable? TO WHOM? BY WHOM?
What kinds of supportive services are needed?
How should the city, state and federal government
prioritize its spending?
What kind of taxation system do we need to have?
How should schools be governed?
and so forth . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Copyright Kathy Emery 2005
Some of those fighting High-Stakes Testing,
but not offering an alternative vision
AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL
• Education Not Incarceration
• FairTest
AT THE STATE LEVEL
• CalCARE
• Californians for Justice
AT THE DISTRICT LEVEL
• Teachers for Social Justice in San Francisco
• Coalition for Educational Justice in Los Angeles
Copyright Kathy Emery 2005
Regional and National Community-Based Organizations
without an understanding of corporate goals and tactics
• PICO (Pacific Institute for Community Organizing)
• ACORN (Association of Community Organizations
for Reform Now)
• IAF (Industrial Areas Foundation, Texas)
Copyright Kathy Emery 2005
Why We Need a Social Movement
“Macroeconomic policies like those regulating
the minimum wage, job availability, tax rates,
federal transportation, and affordable housing
CREATE conditions in cities that no existing
educational policy or urban school reform can
transcend.”
Jean Anyon, Radical Possibilities: Public Policy,
Urban Education, and a New Social Movement
www.educationanddemocracy.org
1964 Mississippi Freedom School Curriculum
My dissertation, (essays, books)
Recommended Resources
The Movement in SF
2005 SF Freedom Summer School
Copyright Kathy Emery 2005