Weigh in on Proposed Change to SOL Testing Program

This article was lifted from the VEA website. If you're a member, stop by the VEA website and vote in our special run-off election. You'll need your membership number to vote.

Weigh in on Proposed Change to SOL Testing Program

At the last Virginia Board of Education meeting, a proposal was made to eliminate the third grade social studies SOL test. Social studies testing is not required under NCLB, and most states do not have a required social studies test. If the third grade social studies test is eliminated, students will continue to take other required third grade tests. Additionally, annual testing in history will still occur in the other currently tested grade levels. Last year, there was a 93 percent pass rate statewide on the third grade social studies test. The state superintendent has proposed that the third grade reading test be modified to include passages based on the social studies SOL content standards as a means of ensuring that the content be taught.

Proponents of eliminating the test argue that removing the third grade social studies test will allow teachers and schools to focus both time and resources on literacy. Teachers will be given greater flexibility to embed social studies content into their reading curricula. Proponents also suggest that the $380,000 savings will allow the state to update and improve tests required under NCLB. The proposed elimination of this test is in response to a request from school superintendents to reduce the testing load.

Opponents of eliminating the third grade social studies test include the Virginia Consortium of Social Studies Specialists and College Educators. This advocacy group acknowledges that the current method of multiple choice testing is flawed, but is concerned that if the test is dropped, social studies will be under-emphasized in elementary school curricula. They worry that social studies instructional time will be reduced, and that ultimately, student performance in future grades will suffer. Additional concerns have been raised that the elimination of this test will simply make the fourth grade test even more broad and difficult to prepare for by adding four more years of content to this test.

The Board will make a final decision at its June 25 meeting. The VEA is currently formulating a position, and needs input from teachers. Please click here to participate in a short survey to help us in this effort.

Bail Out

Robert Reich, most famous for his time spent as a cabinet secretary in the Clinton administration, opined recently that, regarding public school education in our country, we're all out of whack. We bail out corporations, while we are starving and throttling our educational system.

Our preoccupation with the immediate crisis of financial capital is causing us to overlook the bigger crisis in America's human capital. While we commit hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to Wall Street, we're slashing our outlays for public education.

Education is largely funded by state and local governments whose revenues are plummeting. As consumers cut back, state sales and income taxes are shrinking; three quarters of the states are already facing budget crises. State revenues account for about half of public school budgets and most funding of public colleges and universities. In addition, as home values drop, local property taxes take a hit. Local property taxes account for 40 percent of local school budgets, on average.

The result, across the nation: Teachers are being laid off and new hiring frozen, after-school programs cut, so called "noncritical" subjects like history eliminated, schools closed, and tuitions hiked at state colleges and universities.

It's absurd. We're bailing out every major bank to get financial capital flowing again. But we're squeezing the main sources of our nation's human capital. Yet America's future competitiveness and the standard of living of our people depend largely our peoples' skills, and our capacities to communicate and solve problems and innovate ­ not on our ability to borrow money.

Reich continued,

It's our human capital that's in short supply. And without adequate public funding, the supply will shrink further. Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying funding is everything when it comes to education. Obviously, accountability is critical. But without adequate funding we can't attract talented people into teaching, or keep class sizes small enough to give kids a real chance to learn, or provide them with a well-rounded curriculum, and ensure that every qualified young person can go to college.

So why are we bailing out Wall Street and not our nation's public schools and colleges? Partly because the crisis in financial capital is immediate while our human capital crisis is unfolding gradually. Headlines scream what's happening to our money but not to our kids.

As our state stares a $3.5 billion budget deficit in the face and as our school division considers what and whom will be axed, Reich's words ring with a sense of authenticity. When will people wake up and start investing in the foundation of education in our country?

Some will say that the educational system has all the money it needs and that there is tons of waste embedded within the system. As a teacher, I've learned that there is some merit to those arguments. Waste does exist in the educational structures, but that waste generally is does not filter down and enrich anyone at the teacher/student/classroom level.

The greatest waste both financially and instructionally is the propagation of the ridiculous national and state accountability systems. These mandates, which are easily recognized by their acronyms- SOL, NCLB, and AYP, strike fear into the hearts of communities, administrators, teachers, and students. The tacit threats attached to them have encouraged the development of a seemingly slimy accountability business resplendent with guides, formative assessments, data-driven analyzation tools, and testing materials all peddled to frightened school divisions by data sharks.

The ultimate result of this destructive movement, is that the real art and process of teaching has become hopelessly caged and filtered. The intentions may have originally been good, but the results have been destructive.

So I'm with Reich. We do need to bail out the public education system in America. We need to bail out of the myopic accountability mandates. Accountibility is important. Teachers must be accountable for what they teach, but parents and students must be held accountable for their end of the bargain as well. We need to bail out of inferior funding formulas for our schools. State and local governments must be held accountable for providing funding that is more than basic. The nonsensical SOQ game our state plays with public school funding as it seeks to further and further reduce and shirk its responsibility for fully funding its share of the budgets for our public schools needs to stop. We need to improve the physical infrastructure of our schools, reduce class size, fully fund preschool initiatives, and attract highly qualified professionals with highly attractive wages and benefits. Education needs to be the priority.

If you don't bail out a canoe as it charges head-long down a turbulent stream, it will eventually sink.

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/12/03/of_financial_capital_and_human/

ESEA 2007

ESEA 2007

I didn’t envision the first real entry in this blog to be of such a sad and serious nature, but that is the card I’ve been dealt this evening. Some of you may be old enough to remember the series of “Keep America Beautiful “ commercials featuring an American Indian surveying the land of litter, polluting smokestacks, and unbridled development with a tear rolling down his cheek. I feel like that Native American tonight in regards to the state of public education in our country.

As we all know, public school education has been under attack from all sides for many years. I remember the famous words of Education Secretary Terrel Bell from back in 1983, “We report to the American people that while we can take justifiable pride in what our schools and colleges have historically accomplished and contributed to the United States and the well-being of its people, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”

Secretary Bell’s words struck me then with an intense sadness. Deep down, I suspected his words were a bellwether of changes to come.

Fast forward almost 25 years. The whole institution of education has changed. The art of teaching has been largely replaced by standards based instructional practices. “Accountability” has become the marquee word of the day; a linear, one way, one size-fits-all term.

Through it all, teachers like you and me have struggled to maintain the sanctity of the classroom. We’ve fought to keep education meaningful for our children. We’ve endured ill-conceived curricular changes at the national and state level coupled with unrealistic performance standards. Through it all we’ve been pounded by the media, by parents, and by our government. Do you remember when the Secretary of Education Rod Paige called the NEA a terrorist organization? Oh we grumbled at the changes, especially in how these changes affected the childhoods of our students. Yet we’ve been engaged in a futile fight against that rising tide of over-reaction, over-regulation, institutional blindness, micromanagement, and vilification. It’s enough to make a teacher just want to throw up her hands in despair.

Today I received two pieces of information that rocked me. Monday, I received information direct from a trusted source that suggests discussions on the reauthorization of The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (NCLB) with members of Congress are not going well. In fact, my trusted source believes that House Education Chairman George Miller is close to releasing the revamped ESEA legislation this week. In it, the trusted source is hearing that there will be no relaxation of NCLB AYP (Average Yearly Progress) requirements. Worse than that, word on the street is that the bill will tie teacher compensation to test performance. That’s right. If the reauthorization passes, our pay will hinge on how well the children we can’t choose from parents we can’t choose from homes we can’t choose perform on tests we can’t modify or adjust.

The second piece of news I received today shook me equally and at a more personal level. A teacher from another school system came to me and told me that a child she received a couple of weeks ago from another country who speaks no English will not be granted an exemption from the Virginia SOL tests this year. So this third grade teacher is faced with the virtually impossible task of somehow imprinting four years worth of curriculum material onto a child who at this moment has no capacity to process it. The teacher was just flabbergasted and at a complete loss. How is she going to be able to get this child prepared to meet the expectations? Is it fair to have this child, who counts in several AYP groups, impact that school’s scores negatively? Imagine if ESEA passes…is it fair to have this teacher’s livelihood negatively impacted because she just happened to have a child placed in her classroom who couldn’t speak English?

It’s all so preposterous. For me, this is a sad Native American-looking-at-litter-tossed-at-his-feet moment. If the new ESEA evolves from draft as anticipated, I don’t see teachers across America taking it quietly.