More Than a Score

by Jesse Hagopian

  Legislative efforts took center stage in Texas in the 2013 session, where parents led a successful charge to reduce high school end-of-course graduation tests from fifteen to five. The lead parent group, Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment (TAMSA, often called “Mothers Against Drunk Testing”) was backed by community organizations such as Save Texas Schools, Texas Parents Opt Out of State Tests, unions, administrators, school boards, and civil rights organizations. In Minnesota, teachers unions and civil rights groups, with support from the state superintendent, backed legislation that successfully repealed the state’s graduation exams. Many bills to roll back testing mandates were introduced in other states as a first step in efforts to alter policy.

  Public forums served to educate and involve parents, students, teachers, and community members. Groups such as the Denver students have described these conversations as essential for building a movement. Chicago parents took petitions to their schools to inform others and develop contacts, and organized public meetings in a variety of neighborhoods. Resolutions helped build the movement. More than 80 percent of Texas school boards approved a resolution in 2012 stating that high-stakes testing “is strangling our public schools” and undermining the chance for “broad learning experiences.” FairTest joined with other groups to launch a National Resolution on High Stakes Testing, signed by six hundred organizations and more than eighteen thousand individuals as of early 2014. A series of Florida school boards passed similar versions, leading the state association of boards to approve a resolution, as did the Pennsylvania association. This effort continues. In December 2013, the New York City Council approved a statement against high-stakes testing.

  In some cases, testing reform actions built on or complemented other efforts to defend and improve public schools. Chicago youth linked testing to discipline issues and school closings. Youth in Portland, Oregon, also had been working on issues such as school closings. Growing efforts to connect students nationally in turn fed into the testing resistance. Students in several cities started talking together regularly, and Denver and Portland students walked out in concert.

  In the fall of 2013, the American Federation of Teachers, in alliance with the National Education Association, the Opportunity to Learn Campaign, and Communities for Public Education Reform, launched “Reclaiming the Promise of Public Schools.” They used “town hall” meetings across the country to develop unifying principles. (FairTest helped develop the principle that addresses assessment.) Five hundred teachers, students, and community organizers launched the campaign at a Los Angeles conference in October. Spurred by this, groups organized actions across the nation on December 9, 2013, many of which addressed testing.

  What Next?

  Strong, creative actions—such as boycotts, walkouts, zombie marches, and play-ins—energize participants. They have framed issues well and effectively attracted the media.

  However, many supporters cannot boycott, or cannot attend a demonstration on a workday, but want to participate. Groups need to involve significant numbers of people in forceful and visible activities that bridge opting out on one end of the protest spectrum and signing petitions on the other. They need to use a wide range of activities and means of communication to inform, educate, and shape the debate, relying on both mainstream and social media. Community meetings are essential to build support for a range of actions as well as an opportunity for people to share experiences and educate one another, policy makers, and the media.

  Threats of reprisal are a real danger to boycott organizing. For example, some New York City administrators tried to keep students who opted out of testing from advancing to the next grade due to the absence of mandated test scores. Denver officials threatened to suspend test boycotters and bar them from walking in graduation ceremonies. However, pushing back against punishments is frequently successful, as was the case in New York and Denver. Anticipating such attacks and planning how to resist them, or even turn them to our advantage, are important. Seattle teachers’ refusal to administer tests, combined with wide community support, including students opting out, led officials to drop threats and eliminate some testing.

  It is crucial to stress that assessment can be a valuable learning tool and that schools should be responsible to their communities. Students in Providence, Portland, and Denver demanded better assessments as well as an end to high-stakes testing, as have teachers in Seattle and parents in New York and Chicago. In Texas, a proposal by a network of districts to create a better assessment and accountability system passed the legislature only to be vetoed by governor Rick Perry. Successful reform strategies often demand that a state or district shift from harmful practices to educationally beneficial ones.

  If the movement only rolls back the tests without winning better alternatives, proponents of testing will use the vacuum to reassert the primacy of standardized exams. NCLB destroyed many promising assessment initiatives, but there are US and international examples, such as the New York Performance Standards Consortium. Activists can use them to counter the false claim that standardized tests are the only way to let the public know about or improve school quality. As the movement gains in strength, opportunities to overhaul assessment will open up. The movement must be ready with well-developed options.

  The race and class composition of the movement is another vital concern. Urban, activist student groups are often multiracial. However, in some locales, boycott and opt-out movements are seen as mainly “white” or privileged. In other communities, activists say, privileged groups are less likely to collaborate with those from other neighborhoods. Suburban parents or teachers may not know or have ties to urban groups. Some wealthier city parents may capitalize on their children’s higher scores to gain admission to elite public schools, using tests to perpetuate inequality even as they protest them. Urban parents of color are far more likely to have serious concerns about educational quality that have led many to support testing as a way of judging schools. The absence of an agenda for strengthening schools that rural, suburban, and urban communities can all support could fatally undermine the movement. Thus, activists must take steps to address race and class inequalities in schooling and in the movement.

  The fundamental question is how to develop the power to win major reforms. Groups across the nation are grappling creatively with the issue as they develop strategic plans for the coming years. Facing the wealth and power of government, big corporations, foundations, and media, only large numbers of organized people will be able to turn the testing tide. Sharing experiences, analyses, strategies, and tactics, as well as providing mutual support, will strengthen our emerging movement.

  Moving from resistance to legislative and policy victories is not necessarily simple or quick. Nonetheless, local campaigns have won meaningful gains in Texas and Minnesota and made significant progress in winning public opinion. Assessment reform activists have started to change the positions of journalists and elected officials in some jurisdictions. The rapidly expanding movement now has momentum and the next few years will be critical in the struggle to save public education from the standardized testing wrecking ball.

  “Dear President Obama, We Need Literature Over Test Prep”

  Discovering a Deeper Meaning in Life

  On Tuesday, October 22, 2013, I read Valerie Strauss’s invaluable education blog The Answer Sheet, at the Washington Post, and was thrilled to learn that the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, known as FairTest, had spearheaded the drafting of an open letter to President Obama. Signed by some 120 authors and illustrators of books for children, the letter expressed opposition to Obama’s support for standardized testing policies that were destroying children’s love of reading literature, stating, “Our public school students spend far too much time preparing for reading tests and too little time curling up with books that fire their imaginations.”

  I was even more exhilarated when I saw some of my favorite authors had contributed to the letter. The legendary poet, act
or, and activist the late yet immortal Maya Angelou lent her name to the effort. As Valerie Strauss put it, “Angelou is noteworthy on this list not only because of her position in the literary world but because she has been a big public supporter of Obama.” It made me think of Angelou’s line from her celebrated poem “Still I Rise”: “Does my sassiness upset you?” The cherished children’s author Judy Blume also signed the letter. Blume’s Superfudge is one of the earliest stories I can remember my mom reading aloud to me, so her signature was particularly gratifying. The name of the award-winning social justice children’s author Alma Flor Ada jumped off the page at me as my two sons and I have enjoyed and been deeply moved by her stories and poems. I decided to contact Flor to find out more specifically what motivated her to sign this letter against the abuses of standardized testing. I also wanted to know what she thought of the Common Core State Standards’ emphasis on the use of informational text over literature.

  —Jesse Hagopian

  Alma Flor Ada wrote this response:

  Why Literature?

  There are important reasons why literature should be an essential aspect of education, and whenever we say literature we are referring to good literature, outstanding books written for children and young adults, in poetry, in historical and contemporary fiction, in biographies, in nonfiction books of literary and artistic quality, in drama.

  Children and youth deserve the best, and when it comes to language nothing is superior to good poetry, to good literature. Yes, it is important that students are able to read and understand informational text, but informational text does exactly what it is intended to do: it provides information. Literature does far much more; what it provides cannot be underestimated nor dismissed or restricted without terrible detriment.

  Literature is the product of the pondering and analysis of human experiences and emotions. It invites reflection, allowing readers to gain insight on human behavior, to better understand themselves and others.

  Literature requires mastery in the crafting of words, in order to be engaging and compelling. It not only gives an example of the power of language but becomes a model of living consciously, of paying attention to what happens around us, of discovering a deeper meaning in life.

  All cultures have created poetry and various forms of literature, even in the oldest periods of history, or the most remote corners, even when they did not have a written language. This tells us something about the human thirst for the aesthetic experience literature provides. And the literary creations have been preserved, transmitted orally from generation to generation, as proof of how valued and cherished they have been.

  Of course we want students to have information, and to learn how to retrieve existing information, but this must not be done at the expense of giving them the possibility to know and reflect about the dilemmas that life presents, the need to make choices that is part of daily living, as literature does.

  A mind used to reflecting and analyzing will be much better prepared to face information with a discerning mind. A child or a young person who enjoys reading because he or she was given the opportunity to read enjoyable, exciting, intriguing, thrilling, delightful books will face with joy, interest, and ease informational texts.

  There is a claim, to support the supplanting of good literature by informational reading, that as adults students will have to read manuals of great complexity. The argument must be made that perhaps manuals could be written with greater clarity if those who write them would have a better background in expository writing. Let’s fix the manuals, not deprive the students.

  A final point of great importance. Literature can also be highly informative about a multiplicity of themes. It seems, though, that frequently the only recognition to the contribution of literature to the enrichment of knowledge is given to historical fiction. Teachers could benefit from being pointed in the direction of books that combine high literary quality and sound information about a multiplicity of topics, not only historical ones. This would be more beneficial than restricting the time and support given to the presence in the curriculum to one of the most valuable tools to educate: great books.

  Here now is the FairTest letter that I and others signed urging Obama to rethink his commitment to high-stakes testing:

  President Barack Obama

  The White House

  Washington, DC 20500

  Dear President Obama,

  We the undersigned children’s book authors and illustrators write to express our concern for our readers, their parents and teachers. We are alarmed at the negative impact of excessive school testing mandates, including your Administration’s own initiatives, on children’s love of reading and literature. Recent policy changes by your Administration have not lowered the stakes. On the contrary, requirements to evaluate teachers based on student test scores impose more standardized exams and crowd out exploration.

  We call on you to support authentic performance assessments, not simply computerized versions of multiple-choice exams. We also urge you to reverse the narrowing of curriculum that has resulted from a fixation on high-stakes testing.

  Our public school students spend far too much time preparing for reading tests and too little time curling up with books that fire their imaginations. As Michael Morpurgo, author of the Tony Award Winner War Horse, put it, “It’s not about testing and reading schemes, but about loving stories and passing on that passion to our children.”

  Teachers, parents and students agree with British author Philip Pullman, who said, “We are creating a generation that hates reading and feels nothing but hostility for literature.” Students spend time on test practice instead of perusing books. Too many schools devote their library budgets to test-prep materials, depriving students of access to real literature. Without this access, children also lack exposure to our country’s rich cultural range.

  This year has seen a growing national wave of protest against testing overuse and abuse. As the authors and illustrators of books for children, we feel a special responsibility to advocate for change. We offer our full support for a national campaign to change the way we assess learning so that schools nurture creativity, exploration, and a love of literature from the first day of school through high school graduation.

  Alma Flor Ada, Alma Alexander, Jane Ancona, Maya Angelou, Jonathan Auxier, Kim Baker, Molly Bang, Tracy Barrett, Chris Barton, Ari Berk, Judy Blume, Alfred B. (Fred) Bortz, Lynea Bowdish, Sandra Boynton, Shellie Braeuner, Ethriam Brammer, Louann Mattes Brown, Anne Broyles, Michael Buckley, Janet Buell, Dori Hillestad Butler, Charito Calvachi-Mateyko, Valerie Scho Carey, Rene Colato Lainez, Henry Cole, Ann Cook, Karen Coombs, Robert Cortez, Cynthia Cotten, Bruce Coville, Ann Crews, Donald Crews, Nina Crews, Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Laura Dower, Kathryn Erskine, Jules Feiffer, Jody Feldman, Mary Ann Fraser, Sharlee Glenn, Barbara Renaud Gonzalez, Laurie Gray, Trine M. Grillo, Claudia Harrington, Sue Heavenrich, Linda Oatman High, Anna Grossnickle Hines, Lee Bennett Hopkins, Phillip Hoose, Diane M. Hower, Michelle Houts, Mike Jung, Kathy Walden Kaplan, Amal Karzai, Jane Kelley, Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff, Amy Goldman Koss, JoAnn Vergona Krapp, Nina Laden, Sarah Darer Littman, José Antonio López, Mariellen López, Jenny MacKay, Marianne Malone, Ann S. Manheimer, Sally Mavor, Diane Mayr, Marissa Moss, Yesenia Navarrete Hunter, Sally Nemeth, Kim Norman, Geraldo Olivo, Alexis O’Neill, Anne Marie Pace, Amado Peña, Irene Peña, Lynn Plourde, Ellen Prager, PhD, David Rice, Armando Rendon, Joan Rocklin, Judith Robbins Rose, Sergio Ruzzier, Barb Rosenstock, Liz Garton Scanlon, Lisa Schroeder, Sara Shacter, Wendi Silvano, Janni Lee Simner, Sheri Sinykin, Jordan Sonnenblick, Ruth Spiro, Heidi E. Y. Stemple, Whitney Stewart, Shawn K. Stout, Steve Swinburne, Carmen Tafolla, Kim Tomsic, Duncan Tonatiuh, Patricia Thomas, Kristin O’Donnell Tubb, Deborah Underwood, Corina Vacco, Audrey Vernick, Debbie Vilardi, Judy Viorst, K. M. Walton, Wendy Wax, April Halprin Wayland, Carol Weis, Rosemary Wells, Lois Wickstrom, Suzanne Morgan Williams, Kay Winters, Ashley Wolff, Lisa Yee, Karen Romano Young, Jane Yolen, Roxyanne Young, Paul O. Ze
linsky, Jennifer Ziegler

  “It Was the Right Thing to Do”

  This interview was conducted on January 15, 2014, and has been edited and condensed.

  Jesse Hagopian: Let’s start with your own personal history with standard testing. Talk a little bit about what’s been your experience with these tests, as a student, a middle school teacher, or now as a principal at South Side high school, that helped shape your views on standardized testing?

  Carol Burris: One of my big passions as a principal has been the elimination of tracking and giving all kids the best curriculum that schools have to offer, and so part of the interest that I’ve always had in testing is the role that it plays in the sorting and selecting of kids and how inaccurate that process is. I became very concerned when I started to see the move toward sorting teachers by scores into categories, and sorting kids into one of four categories, and then having this label of “college-readiness” attached to it I felt that was part of a larger picture of the way American schools tend to look at kids, you know, almost in boxes, and make decisions on their lives based on test scores.