Another American Hero

In 2008 I wrote about two teachers who jeopardized their jobs because they wouldn't subject their students to high stakes tests.

Doug Ward was a special education teacher in North Carolina and refused to administer the tests to his students with disabilities.

Carl Chew, a 6th grade science teacher in Seattle refused to subject his students to the Washington State test, the WASL.

Today, a new teacher has stood up to the national testing insanity, this time a Kindergarten teacher in Florida. She refuses to waste a week of instructional time giving 45 minute one-on-one computer-based tests to her students.

Putting Job At Risk, Kindergarten Teacher Refuses to Administer Standardized Test

It's not about me, says 59-year-old Susan Bowles, this is "about teachers all across the country who are fed up with testing and who can’t teach their students.”

by Lauren McCauley, Common Dreams staff writer

Fifty-nine-year old Susan Bowles is joining the call of other educators who refuse to sacrifice critical learning for hours of high-stakes testing. (Photo: Sarah-ji)
Risking her job and life passion, a kindergarten teacher in Florida is taking a stand against the high-stakes takeover of the public school system by refusing to administer the state-mandated standardized test to her young students.

In a letter posted to her personal Facebook page this weekend and later re-posted on the blog Opt Out Orlando, 59-year-old Susan Bowles of Gainesville, Florida explained how the FAIR assessment—which this year was revamped to be a computer-based test—is difficult to administer, unfairly tests the young students' computer abilities, and ultimately consumes hours and hours of critical classroom time.

Bowles wrote:

This assessment is given one-on-one. It is recommended that both teacher and child wear headphones during this test. Someone has forgotten there are other five year olds in our care. There is no provision from the state for money for additional staff to help with the other children in the classroom while this testing is going on. A certified teacher has to give the test. If you estimate that it takes approximately 45 minutes per child to give this test and we have 18 students, the time it takes to give this test is 13 ½ instructional hours. If you look at the schedule, a rough estimate would be that it requires about one full week of instructional time to test all of the children.

Our Kindergarten teachers have been brainstorming ways to test and still instruct. The best option we have come up with is for teachers to pair up, with one teacher instructing two classes while the other teacher tests one-on-one. So now we are looking at approximately TWO WEEKS of true INSTRUCTIONAL TIME LOST. We will not be putting them in front of a movie or having extended playtime, but the reality is that with 35 students, instruction is not the same. FAIR TESTING IS DONE THREE TIMES A YEAR!

Encouraging others who are equally frustrated with the increasing number of standardized tests to contact Republican Governor Rick Scott and voice their complaint, Bowles adds, "This is not an education problem. This is a state government problem."

Though some Alachua School Board members have expressed support for Bowles' action, district spokeswoman Jackie Johnson told the Gainesville Sun that, "Until Florida law changes, we’re under legal obligation to administer (these tests).”

Bowles says she is likely in breach of her contract by not administering the test and is "heartsick over the possibility of losing my job." However, Bowles she "cannot in good conscience" submit to losing up to six weeks of instruction. She concludes by citing as motivation a similar protest made by a friend and fellow educator "who quit teaching because she could no longer participate in cheating children out of fun, creativity and enriching learning — in the name of education."

Bowles later told the Sun that her protest is "not about one kindergarten teacher in Florida. It’s about teachers all across the country who are fed up with testing and who can’t teach their students.”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

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Sign An Education Declaration to Rebuild America

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Vermont State Board of Education: Statement and Resolution on Assessment and Accountability, Adopted August 19, 201

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Battle for the Net

REPA III - Deprofessionalizing Education

ON BEING A PROFESSIONAL

This weekend Anthony Cody posted the following video on his new blog site...

The three minute talk by Visiting Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at Howard University, Denisha Jones, speaks right to the heart of the matter of allowing (or encouraging) people to walk into public school classrooms unprepared.

Dr. Jones (Ph.D in Curriculum and Instruction from Indiana University) focuses her comments on the 5-week TFA (Teach For Awhile?) training program which places minimally trained college graduates in public school classrooms. In its early years, TFA aimed to fill unfilled positions in low income neighborhood schools. Now it's also being used to replace laid off teachers with cheap temps in school districts around the nation.

On the other hand, REPA III, which was adopted last week by the Indiana State Board or Education, doesn't even require 5 weeks of pedagogical training before you can be hired to teach in one of Indiana's high schools. You have to be well trained or experienced in your subject area, but developing the skills needed to transfer knowledge and develop understanding to the students in your classroom is apparently not necessary. If an unlucky high school does hire you to teach, only then do you have to start your training in pedagogy. You can "learn how to teach" from...

...school-based professional development, college or university-based course work or professional development, an entity that is not an institution of higher education, or a professional education organization

This pedagogical training must start within the first month you enter the classroom. The seven members of the State Board of Education who voted for REPA III apparently believe that you can 1) make it through the first month in a high school classroom without any knowledge of how teaching actually works or 2) learn how to teach instantly once you are exposed to "pedagogy training." [Note how the language in REPA III allows you to get your "training" from virtually anyone...like Pearson, perhaps]

THOSE FABULOUS FINNS

Allowing untrained "experts" to teach on the REPA III plan is simply the logical next step in the privatization of public education and the deprofessionalization of teachers in Indiana and across the nation.

In contrast, Finland has improved its schools and national education, not by testing every child yearly and using tests to punish students, teachers and schools, or by reducing funding for education resulting in lower or frozen teacher salaries. It hasn't removed collective bargaining rights for teachers, or taken away teachers' due process rights. What Finland has done, among other things, is to elevate the profession of teaching to such a high level that the "best and the brightest" want to pursue careers in education. The Finns have improved teacher training by increasing, rather than decreasing the requirements needed before one can step in front of a classroom. They require educators to understand their subject area, of course, but they also require them to be well trained in pedagogy. They give their teachers plenty of time to collaborate and plan lessons so their students need less in-school time than their American counterparts. They pay their teachers well, and even pay them during their training.

What does all this investment in teacher training and professional development yield?

Academically, Finland is one of the highest performing nations in the world.

WE'RE NOT #1

We hear so much about how American schools are failing because our students don't score high enough on international tests and how we should learn from those successful countries so that our students will be able to "compete in the global marketplace."

Then we turn around and underfund our schools, overwork our teachers, blame public education for the failure of policy makers to deal with issues surrounding poverty and sell off the education of our children to private and charter schools with little or no public oversight.

The final step in making our public schools as much unlike successful nations' schools as possible, is to demoralize teachers and deprofessionalize the field of education. Instead of increasing requirements for becoming a teacher, we decrease them. Instead of doing what we need to do to attract the "best and the brightest" to our public school classrooms we make a career in the field of education so difficult and so filled with mind-numbing test-obsessed insanity that fewer and fewer students are going into teaching and older, experienced career teachers are leaving the field in greater and greater numbers.

REPA III requires training in some "related field." Would any of the seven REPA III supporters on the Indiana State Board of Education want to be treated for an illness by say, an anatomy professor who never attended medical or nursing school, but who promised to learn how to practice medicine within a month? Would any of them go to a former police officer for legal help, for example, if the officer decided that s/he wanted to practice law and would start on her/his law degree during the first month of handling their case?

Do any of them send their own children to schools with untrained teachers?

Dr. Jones said,

...this is what makes one a professional. They have completed a course of education deemed appropriate by the leaders in their field, and they have demonstrated a readiness to enter the profession. [emphasis added]

The seven pro-REPA III members of the Indiana State Board of Education are not leaders in the field of education despite some of their credentials. They have demonstrated that they are unqualified to have anything to do with public education.

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Sign An Education Declaration to Rebuild America

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Vermont State Board of Education: Statement and Resolution on Assessment and Accountability, Adopted August 19, 201

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REPA III - The Wrong Direction

Yesterday, by a vote of 7 Ayes to 3 Nays, the Indiana State Board of Education passed REPA III, rules which define the qualifications for public school educators. This version contains the Career Specialist Permit which gives non-educational professionals the right to teach in Indiana high schools.

LOCAL CONTROL

Why did David Frietas, a lifelong educator who has spent much of his professional career working with educators, vote for this. Referring to REPA III he said,

"We give a lot of lip-service to local control of public schools and I see this issue as an opportunity to reinforce and affirm our great school principals, great school board and great superintendents to make that decision for allowing people to have a pathway into the profession," Freitas said. "But the gatekeepers should not be at the state level. ... That is best done by the local school board."

Does he really believe that or is he being disingenuous? Consider...

Does he believe that testing requirements should be under local control? Does he believe that local school systems should choose what tests to use, how often to administer them and what to do with the results?

Does he believe that curriculum decisions should be under local control? Does he believe that local school systems should choose their own textbooks and standards?

How is REPA III different than any other aspect of public education which is decided at the state level? Why isn't he pushing to remove state involvement from other areas of public education? Why did he agree to sit on the state board of education where he is part of a group which makes policy decisions "at the state level." If he is in favor of local control, why did he accept appointment as one of the state level "gatekeepers?"

THE NAYS

Thanks to professional educators Glenda Ritz, Brad Oliver, and Troy Albert, who voted against REPA III. It dilutes the quality of teaching in Indiana's high schools, insults the thousands of education professionals in the state who earned their credentials, and experiments with the quality of education for our students. Those three educators understand that you don't just walk into a public school classroom, begin disseminating information and call that teaching.

They understand that lowering standards for public school teachers won't help students learn or raise student achievement.

DARLING-HAMMOND

Linda Darling Hammond is a Professor of Education at Stanford University and a researcher in education policy and reform. In the film, Rise Above the Mark, she said,

What do we know about what works?

We know that high achieving systems are equitably funded whereas we fund our schools very inequitably. They take care of children with health care and preschool education, they have very low rates of childhood poverty whereas we have the highest rate in the industrialized world.

They invest in very well trained teachers and administrators who are extremely professional and well supported and knowledgable, and then they let them make decisions about what to do. They have a lean curriculum guidance some curriculum suggestions about what should happen each year but then people in the schools develop that into real curriculum and programs.

They use assessments that are authentic, performance based, open ended, essays, oral examinations, projects, scientific experiments all of those. Many fewer tests much more thoughtful, and at the end of the day they're really aiming to enable all of their kids to be successful in the public system. [emphasis added]

Having very well trained teachers and administrators in Indiana is something that the majority of members of the State Board of Education apparently don't believe in.

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Sign An Education Declaration to Rebuild America

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.

~~~

Stop the Testing Insanity!

Vermont State Board of Education: Statement and Resolution on Assessment and Accountability, Adopted August 19, 2014

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