Just as I was feeling I may have been a little harsh on the State of Texas, I was listening to a podcast from KCRW in Santa Monica, Warren Olney’s news show To The Point.  The show, entitled Are High-Stakes Tests Corrupting Public Education? was broadcast on April 5, 2013.  The theme of the show is stated next to the podcast:

After charges of systematic cheating on standardized testing by administrators and teachers a backlash is growing against standardized testing.

Since there is a growing trend to tie teacher pay to the scores of their students on standardized tests, it is not surprising that some teachers and administrators have been caught cheating.  All it takes, after all, is the eraser on your number two pencil and a pile of student exams.

My sister teaches first grade in Florida, one of the poster states for No Child Left Behind, now called Race to the Top, both of which are based on the Texas assessment model where President George W. Bush’s people got the idea.   Florida is also a “right to work” state, which means, actually “the right to work without a contract or union interference”.  You can get a contract in a “right to work” state, but don’t expect too much about keeping your job to be guaranteed in it.  

My sister, who teaches students from poor and largely illiterate families, many of whom don’t speak English, is graded on the same scale as those who teach the children of the affluent.  There is no curve.  You can imagine her torment, thinking of her pay being tied not to how much she actually teaches her students, which is considerable, but to how well they do on standardized tests, when compared across the nation to every other kid.  Her class, by the way, always has the top scores, by far, in her school.  But she and her students are judged against the scores of students in wealthy neighborhoods in far away states that fare much better in educational outcomes.

Anyway, it will surprise few, I suppose, to hear it stated on Olney’s show, at around 8:10, that Texas leads the nation in money spent on standardized testing and also on the sheer number of tests given.  

It has a wonderful side effect, what one of Olney’s guests called “drill and kill”, this relentless teaching to the test, preparing kids to guess the right answers and learn strategies for gaming these often shabbily designed tests (I speak from experience, having prepared classes for and proctored a number of these), it serves to demoralize the staff and children of schools in poor neighborhoods.  These schools can then be shown to have failed, and closed, and public money can be given to the private sector to operate competitive schools that can succeed.  In the end, to a certain type, privatizing everything is the way to go, since the “free market” (think “right to work”) is the best arbiter of good and bad.

After all, look how well the free market has taken care of controlling health care costs in the USA (leading the world in expense, pretty far down the list in health outcomes), making sure banks and investment houses (which are largely the same thing now) play fairly, guaranteeing a baseline quality of life in the richest country in the world so that no old person ever has to eat dog food (cat food is also a possibility).  

Ach, there I go again, hating our freedom… I really am a one trick pony.  Good night.