It. Doesn't. Work.*

*Unless by "work" you mean "advance The Big Project to Kill Public Education"

The road to public school privatization is paved with test scores. It's an industry hijacked-- some convincingly argue manufactured and developed--for the purpose of discrediting public schools so they lose students, become nonviable, and can be stripped down and sold for parts. 

<brief aside>

(At last report, Pio Pico Middle School here in Los Angeles was being "dissolved" to make way for a nearby charter school--one already co-located on the campus of Los Angeles High School but which apparently needs additional room to grow. Information has been hard to come by--looking at you, UTLA!--so if anybody out there knows what's going on over there on Arlington, please share in the chat. In the meantime, there's a petition at change.org if you're so inclined.)

Testing, particularly the state-sponsored standardized that is being carpet bombed onto schools all over Los Angeles, is the hired assassin of Privatization (alias "school choice"). The thing is, it's bullshit. The data produced by state-sponsored standardized testing--which is to say the test scores on which "school choice" depends--it's all bullshit. As @Liat_RO says in her retweet referring to a working paper from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, the testing fails even on its own terms.  

“NO measurable impact”

Any teacher could have told you this, but still https://t.co/T3W91pRdU8

— Liat in BK (@Liat_RO) January 24, 2022

More on the researchers' findings later. First, some scenes from previous episodes. 

When it comes to The Big Project To Kill Public Education, whether it's the organizations that benefit directly--like the testing corporations, consulting firms, and charter school management companies--or it's the broader freemarket  community that has invested heavily in the demolition of a public institution so that corporations might live! (more on ALEC and their interest in the Project in a future post. For a taste, go here), underneath nearly all of the destruction is testing. 

The notion that every student has to be tested every year using state-sponsored standardized tests is relatively new--I used to peg it at the arrival of No Child Left Behind in 2002, but friends remind me that, as bad as George W. Bush was at everything, about this one thing he comes in second at least. Winner of the presidential "Terrible on Public Education" championship is none other than President Barack Obama, whose diabolically named "Race to the Top" extortion racket brought truckloads of cash to desperate states with desperate school districts all over the country. 

The nearly four-and-a-half billion dollar pot of gold seems quaint now, but it was a lot of money in those days. And all the districts had to do--all we had to do--was sell our souls, nod our heads, give a few tests, raise a few scores, and base personnel evaluations--and the paychecks that go along with them--on  those scores. Hatchet man Arne "never met a charter he didn't love" Duncan, was tasked with delivering the bad good news, and is reported to have been the happiest former Secretary of E____ (I can't even write it) when one Betsy DeVos replaced him on the "Worst Ever" list. 

In any event, this "Are we getting our money's worth?" commercial--dare I say capitalist--model of education probably really goes back at least to Ronald Reagan's "A Nation at Risk," because most of today's awful shit does, and it has grown and evolved and metastasized until it resembles the blob who ate the world. 

Well, all that growing and evolving doesn't happen on an empty stomach, so test scores. Production for use, as the old socialists use to say (ironic much?), and once you get test scores you have to use test scores. Where do you think "failing schools" come from, anyhoo?

The incessant state-sponsored standardized testing that compels schools to compete for resources and students, narrows the curriculum, powers the "failing schools" narrative, falsely encourages parents to seek alternative "choices," and demoralizes students and staff is a crucial weapon of public school mass destruction.

And for what?  Lots of different justifications are given for the testing mania.  "Identifying holes in instruction" is one. And then there's "promoting racial equality and ensuring support for all traditionally marginalized groups of students." I like that one and wish it were true. But truly bad ideas like today's testing boondoggle require swanky suites of jargon for protection.  

Meet the overarching rationales for the state tests: "objectivity," "comparability," and "accountability." It's nice that they rhyme, but let's take a closer look. 

We'll start with objectivity and its explicit distrust of educational professionals. Not satisfied that training and experience might prepare a teacher to evaluate a student's learning in good faith, proponents of these exams declare that they prevent biased grade distortion which could redound to the teacher's benefit. It's code for "teachers can't be trusted" and is an important tool in school destabilization. The punch line? Testing, of course, is itself not objective, as it privileges certain kinds of knowledge and narrow, prescribed modes of demonstrating "proficiency." (You might be surprised how the "proficiency" cut-off point was determined. Story for another time.)

Comparability. Another of the main rationales for the testing regime is to use the "objective" metric of test scores to compare schools across a district, a state, or the country. Set aside for a moment the fact that the test scores are not valid measures of learning but simply a snapshot of how well a student can recall a favored subset of "knowledge" under a particular set of circumstances. The real question is: Why compare them at all? How does it help a school or its students to know their scores are lower or higher than the scores of another school across town, or across the state or country? The answer is: It doesn't. We compare schools so parents will have a way to choose when it comes to school choice. You need a mechanism for elevating certain schools and discrediting others. This is it.

Of course, although the hucksters talk objectivity and comparability, these testing "ideas" are only meaningful as tools to achieve the principal goal of testing. Coming in at Number One on the sounds-like-it-ought-to-be good-but-it's-evil hit parade is everyone's favorite: Accountability, which is to say, evaluating and punishing schools and everyone in them. 

This kind of testing is terrible. It degrades and destabilizes public schools, putting them under constant stress with its voracious appetite for resources, its capacity to place administrators and teachers in public jeopardy and to demoralize students and staff, and its power to distort the curriculum. The Big Project to Kill Public Education depends on it.

That's true in general, but it's stupendously true when teachers are evaluated based on test scores. And I'm not even talking about the art teachers evaluated based on math and English scores, or teachers evaluated based on students they never had. Oh yeah, it happens. Teacher evaluation systems. Value-Added. Merit pay, hirings, and firings have all been based on the test scores of individual teachers. Which are not their test scores. They are their students' scores.

Today's focus is teacher evaluation and the premise that all this testing is necessary because you need a metric to compare schools and teachers. That way you can separate the good ones from the bad and incentivize the bad ones to get better or get out. 

And to some people who have no idea what teachers do or what schools are like, that can make a kind of soggy-brained sense. I mean, if teachers are the selfish, cynical half-humans they are advertised to be, then just base their evaluations and paychecks on their test scores (by which we mean their students' scores) and watch them jump! All you have to do is threaten them a little (or a lot) and they'll change their attitudes, get off their asses, and raise those test scores! By which we mean their students' scores. It just stands to reason! 

It. Doesn't. Work. High-stakes reforms tying teacher evaluations to their students' test scores do not raise test scores. Usually bullshit is detectable by the smell, but thanks to a group of researchers we have more objective evidence.  Introducing the star of today's episode:

From the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, this report from December of last year details the findings of Joshua Bleiberg, Eric Brunner, Erica Harbatkin, Matthew A. Kraft, and Matthew Springer as they examined, just like the title says: "The Effect of Teacher Evaluation on Achievement and Attainment: Evidence from Statewide Reforms."

Now, cutting to the chase for those of you so busy you can't believe you've read this far, from the Abstract:

We find that, on average, state teacher evaluation reforms had no discernable effect on student achievement in math or ELA.

And just in case you missed it, from the paper's Conclusion: 

We find that, on average, teacher evaluation reforms had no detectable effect on student achievement or attainment.

To quote Liat in BK, "Any teacher could have told you this...." To which I say, "Yes, teachers have been saying this for freakin ever, but who listens to us?" The paper is a pretty good one and I'll discuss it further below for those of you so inclined. But regardless, it gives us something tangible to point to and say, "See?" 

Whether that matters to anyone whose paycheck depends on evaluating teachers using their students' test scores is an open question. 

Continuing on. Some background from the paper:

Between 2009 and 2017, 44 states and Washington, D.C. implemented major reforms to their teacher evaluation systems. Prior to the reforms, teacher evaluation was largely a perfunctory exercise that resulted in nearly all teachers receiving satisfactory ratings (Weisberg et al. 2009). Strong incentives by the federal government helped spur the widespread reforms. The $4.35 billion federal Race to the Top (RTTT) grant competition incentivized states to reform evaluation systems by regularly evaluating teachers based on multiple measures (including student academic growth) and using performance ratings to inform personnel decisions.

This evaluation reform wasn't just a suggestion. 

The rapid uptake of teacher evaluation reforms came, in part, as a response to President Obama’s RTTT program and its offer of large competitive grants to states that were struggling during the Great Recession (Bleiberg and Harbatkin 2020; Howell and Magazinnik 2017). In particular, the application rubric for RTTT rewarded states for using student outcomes to evaluate teachers and inform personnel decisions with evaluation ratings. (emphasis mine)

So the new study shows "null effects on achievement." Case closed, right? Not so fast, my friends. See, as we've discussed, the objective isn't to identify and nurture an army of fabulous instructors but rather to enfeeble the system to the point of defenselessness. And the Privatizers and Profiteers who promote this stuff and profit from it will not take "no" for an answer. 

So they look for the answers they want. They think they've found one in the infamous Michelle Rhee D.C. Public Schools brainchild IMPACT, and in fact, there have been some desired outcomes, by which I mean test scores. Test scores did move but, and there's always a but, the changes were generally attributed to the release or resignation of teachers deemed to be "ineffective" and replacement with new, presumably more "effective" teachers. Or at least teachers who are more test-focused. 

Easy, right? Disturbingly, from the same paper:

Similarly, evidence from a national study of teacher evaluation reforms found that these reforms increased the number of new teaching candidates who had attended more competitive undergraduate institutions but also decreased the overall supply of teaching candidates (Kraft et al. 2020). (emphasis mine)

This is not good. If there's one thing we know about schooling in a pandemic, it's that staffing is going to be a problem. Thanks to decades of depredation and character assassination, people are leaving in numbers, and replacing experienced teachers with bus drivers and the National Guard is unlikely to have positive effects on student outcomes. We'll have to wait for that study. 

In the meantime, IMPACT aside, the paper warns that the results of studies looking at teacher evaluation system reforms similar to those that have been "adopted at scale nationally" are "decidedly mixed."

Furthermore, even in districts that claim to have had success with "evaluation reform" (and when you hear the word "reform," you should always take a look over your shoulder), have done so with programs that offer much more than threats based on insufficient "value added."

Again, from Bleiberg, Brunner, Harbatkin, Kraft, and Springer:

Several quasi-experimental and experimental studies in large urban school districts point to the potential for evaluation systems to serve as engines for professional growth. Taylor and Tyler (2012) studied Cincinnati Public School’s peer evaluation and feedback system. They found that being observed and evaluated by experienced, expert teachers and school principals improved teachers’ ability to raise student achievement in math but did not affect ELA achievement. A similar study of France's national teacher evaluation system found that high-stakes observation and feedback by certified pedagogical inspectors improved teachers’ contributions to student achievement (Briole and Maurin 2020). (emphasis mine)

For evaluation reform to be authentically effective and not just bogus advertising, it takes tons and tons of resources. Lots of observations, lots of meetings about observations, lots of feedback about observations, all done by trained, certified experts in teaching. No teacher who has been evaluated in the last thirty years would waste ten minutes of their lives waiting for that to happen. 

More from the same paper:

The evaluation process itself may support ongoing improvements in teachers’ practice if evaluators provide feedback and coaching, prompt teachers to reflect on their practices, or provide data that allow districts to match teachers with targeted professional development (Donaldson 2020; Donaldson and Firestone 2021; Galey-Horn and Woulfin 2021; Mintrop and Trujillo 2007; Springer 2010; Woulfin and Rigby 2017).

No shit. Observation and feedback. As Liat in BK might say, any teacher could have told you that. 

And one more thing. "Evaluation Reform" also requires lots and lots of money for bribes incentives. Because that has worked out so well in Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Virginia. At least. It's not that hard to raise test scores, if all you want is to raise test scores.

There are some problems with the paper. Start with the fact that, aside from a brief nod to graduation rates, "student outcomes" means what it always means: test scores. Until we force a broader, more humane set of metrics, the battle against the commercial model of schooling cannot be won. This paper, though, is a significant addition to our arsenal.  

The report's most serious failing, however, is that there are thousands of words about teachers and test scores, but very few about actual students. Maybe the authors figured that those considerations don't belong here. But then where do they belong?

I've been thinking a lot about that, so I decided to include here a short excerpt from my unpublished book, Answer Key. Based, as they say, on too many true stories:

Just imagine being one of those students--one of the ones you know quite well because, you know, you teach them every day. And imagine that you have been taking tests for what seems like your entire school life and that these tests are calibrated to yield a certain number of “not proficient”s every year, and that for as long as you can remember you have been one of them.

And even though you are “not proficient,” you have been going through school and learning stuff and passing your classes and doing pretty well, but every time you think you know something the test gets harder and you are once again one of the “not proficient”s. And imagine you don’t even find that out until the next year when there’s nothing you can do about it.

It must really suck, right? And so after having been battered and beaten with a number two pencil for long enough, a lot of those kids get discouraged and give up. Not all of them, but certainly enough for us to ask, “What significant and actionable information are we collecting by putting kids and parents and teachers and schools and districts through all this every year and sometimes every month? Why are we even doing this?”

As I've written before and will definitely be writing again, the scores on state-sponsored standardized tests are not meaningful for students or for teachers. The testing causes tremendous disruption--not in a good way--and it doesn't even deliver on its own terms. And the arguments for the testing regime are specious, because the people and organizations making those arguments know the data is not meaningful. 

Finally, a note regarding new LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho. In support of his school choice agenda, Mr. Carvalho is extremely fond of repeating: "One size fits none." It will be interesting to see if he applies that same principle to the district's standardized testing obsession. 

Testing is Politics and Profiteering, not Pedagogy.

Testing is Politics and Profiteering, not Pedagogy.

Updated: For a glimpse of the future, look no further than the new super's profile today's (2.15) Los Angeles Times. If you can get past the word spray, you'll find that the core of Carvalho's "school choice" proposals is what it always is for Privatizers: a religious devotion to "data" by which they mean test scores. To diminish one element of a system in order to elevate a different element, you need metrics--a metric, really--and for school choicers that metric is invariably the scores on state-sponsored standardized assessments. The road to public school privatization is paved with test scores.

As reported by Howard Blume in the Los Angeles Times online Feb. 10, "Incoming Los Angeles schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho said Thursday that he would expand high-quality school choices so that every family would have access to the program they want without having to put their child on a bus to get there."

Sounds good, right? Everyone favors "high-quality" schools. And if a school has access to UCLA's professors or has an advanced theater program or a great marching band, and that's important to a particular student and their parents, then why shouldn't that kid have a chance to participate in that "program"? Right? Carvalho goes on to talk programs and promises to bring in partnerships with colleges and universities so students can begin earning credits while in high school, so there's that. 

But NEWSFLASH!--community schools are doing that right now. My former school had partnerships first with Santa Monica Community College and then Los Angeles Community College. These programs allowed students to begin taking free college classes after school on our campus, and potentially to graduate from high school with an AA degree and credits for transfer to a four-year university.

Ah, but the outfit Carvalho likes is the National Education Equity Lab, which receives funding from the Gates Foundation and boasts Arne "never met a charter he didn't like" Duncan on its Advisory Board.  These people are not supporters of public education. If you are a teacher working and believing in public schools, they are not your friends. No, these organizations and their fans are dedicated to slicing off a piece of the public pie for themselves. 

So let's talk about programs. Putting aside for a moment that implicit in Carvalho's framing is the fantasy that "programs" exist separate from the people--the teachers--who conceive and nurture them, who develop and promote and fight for them, the fact of the matter is it can't work. Even Carvalho, with his faith in technological answers to human questions, must know that it's impossible for every school in every community to satisfy every student's and parent's preference for every possible specialized passion. 

But Carvalho is a gifted politician and when he talks, he uses the word "program" quite intentionally. He doesn't mean marching bands and he doesn't just mean the project of some not-for-profit looking to be in the school business. In his Thursday remarks, the new boss was careful to say that he's committed to "Creating high-quality new schools and programs 'particularly in ZIP Codes where right now they do not exist.'” (emphasis mine) 

In fact, Carvalho doesn't necessarily mean what you think he means at all. The new LAUSD superintendent clearly wants to make sure that every neighborhood, every community has "access," but to... what exactly? 

As I wrote late last year, soon after Carvalho was hired: 

In a 2018 article, the corporate school-reform website The74 reported that then-Miami schools chief had a "sweeping vision for dramatically expanding educational choice," and went on to say this about Carvalho:

"Understand this fact: In Carvalho’s district, the fourth-largest in the country, more than 70 percent of the roughly 400,000 students do not attend their zoned public school. That’s not a typo. These students attend charter schools, take classes over the internet and at local colleges, and even attend private, faith-based schools — all with taxpayer funds or under tax credit scholarship programs." (emphasis mine)

That from an organization that thinks this is a good thing. 

No, the Privatizers and Profiteers are playing the long game and it depends on destabilizing existing public schools. They have a comprehensive, methodical plan for the destruction of a public institution and the transfer of its assets to private, commercial entities. 

According to The Times, Carvalho is planning a "multiyear project" predicated on the creation of competing schools and an escalation of school choice. "I don’t think it’s fair or equitable for students to have to get on a bus for hours on end to get to that one school or be shut out of that opportunity," says the new boss.

So, what kinds of "new schools and programs" will be planted in these allegedly  neglected zip codes? What will these new "high-quality" schools look like, and what impact will they have on existing schools and programs? 

And finally, how will parents and students decide among the "choices"? If not every school will have every program, what will signify that every student can get some "high-quality" schoolin' without having to get on a bus?

For Carvalho and the legion of Privatizers and Profiteers, it comes down to the same thing it always comes down to: test scores. 

The road to public school privatization is paved with test scores. Which are bullshit.

The answer to all your questions.

Via Tony Kornheiser, writing for the Washington Post in 1994: 

"TV wizard Don Ohlmeyer ... once told me, 'The answer to all your questions is: Money.'"

The superb Robyn Pennacchia @RobynElyse over at Wonkette has an excellent article that connects the dots between the hostility being directed at educators and the larger project of undermining public schools in order to privatize and cash in on education. 

It should surprise exactly no one that many of the loudest voices protesting and threatening teachers, administrators, school board members and even students themselves are Republican operatives, political hacks whose brief extends far beyond the banning of "uncomfortable" books and history or the rejection of school safety measures.

These ideological shock troops masquerade as concerned parents while acting as political goons, aided and abetted by Fox and the massive conservative ecosystem which promotes them while deliberately shielding their true identities, and enabled by a timid mainstream media that refuses to honestly describe and expose them.

Pennacchia describes the process:

Within the last couple years, there has been what seems like a massive uptick in outraged parents. Parents who are mad about masks, parents who are mad about books, parents who are mad about "critical race theory." They show up at school board meetings across the country to yell their faces off, frequently going viral due to the sheer number of stupid things they manage to fit into the three minute allotment they have to talk.

We're supposed to believe that these are grassroots efforts led by concerned parents who just want a say in their children's education. That these groups they form are organic. That those participating in them are, in fact, actual parents in the school district they're protesting in.

Of course, those of us who are hep know a large number of these people are not so much parents as they are Republican strategists, activists and think tank employees. That doesn't mean that there aren't parents who are "concerned" about these things — but it does mean that their outrage about them is being purposely stoked by professionals with an agenda.

And the agenda? What is the ultimate goal of inciting all this animosity and pointing it "march to the capital" style at educators? Pennacchia continues:

The obvious, immediate agenda is to get Republicans elected. Glenn Youngkin's victory in Virginia, for example, was largely spurred by parental outrage over masks and critical race theory.

But that may not be all they are after. As Truthout reports, many of the organizations ginning up the hysteria over these issues are simultaneously involved in efforts to encourage the privatization of schools by undermining support for public schools.

For years, the goal of school privatization advocates has been to oppose funding for education and then criticize the public school system for failing, hoping that this will lead to parents taking their kids out of schools and becoming increasingly supportive of voucher programs and so-called "school choice," with the ultimate goal being a for-profit education system usurping the public education system.

Penacchio goes on to quote this very good Truthout piece peeling back the veneer covering the scam. From Truthout:

School privatizers seem to know that sowing enough distrust in public education — and capitalizing on the genuine frustration of parents struggling to cope with pandemic-related work, schooling and child care issues — could fulfill their “great disenrollment” prophecy. One strategy of these “parent” groups seems to be using easily replicable resources to attack public schools, deploying them in school districts nationwide and attracting right-wing media coverage. 

Liat Olenick @Liat_RO raised the issue in a great article in The Nation, connecting the attacks over COVID and "Critical Race Theory" and describing them as "a primary Republican organizing strategy." The project to enfeeble public schools is well-funded and comprehensive:

What unites all these attacks are the right-wing, anti-union billionaires who benefit from them: The anti-CRT furor is a coordinated attack on the institution of public education and multiracial democracy, designed to justify defunding public schools and replacing them with segregated charter schools and voucher programs. The current attacks on teachers over Covid safety demands serve the very same purpose. The hedge fund managers and billionaires who have funded the charter school and school voucher movements for the past two decades are the same elites who stand to benefit from this latest raft of anti-teacher, anti-union vitriol.

Of course, educators in public schools are also familiar with contempt from the nominal "left."  We are witnesses to the charter school craze and white flight, and we sure as hell remember "Race to the Top" and Arne Duncan (looking at you Barack Obama). The pandemic, with its nondenominational rancor over masking and in-person schooling, has cranked the volume up to 11. 

Olenick rightly observes that even--I'd say especially--during these miserable times, "the vitriol isn’t just coming from Republicans, but also from leading “liberals” who conveniently refuse to hold politicians accountable for failing to implement basic mitigation strategies to keep schools open but are extra-eager to attack teachers’ unions demanding things like soap in the bathrooms and minimal Covid testing." And she has a warning for us:

The failure to confront authoritarianism and the failure to defend public schools and educators from Covid is the same failure. When an institution is a cornerstone of democracy, you fight for it, you fund it, and you respect it.

Democrats ignore attacks on teachers and schools to their peril. There is no democracy without public education. There is no public education without qualified, caring, and dedicated teachers.

In Olenick's words: "Healthy democracies don’t hate their teachers."

The other side--Republicans, religious conservatives, true believers and opportunists--are well-organized and committed. Theirs is a comprehensive, methodical plan for the destruction of a public institution and the transfer of its assets to private, commercial entities. You can see the plan playing out in real time in Virginia (h/t @jbouie). Like ALEC writing model legislation to be cribbed by legislatures all over the country, Youngkin and his Virginia mobsters have created the template for reducing public schools to rubble. 

When combined with pre-existing conditions such as diabolical funding formulas and the national testing addiction, this present demonstration of outrage over everything from masks to the accurate teaching of history spurs parents and students to take advantage of "school choice" portals, leave their former (public) schools impoverished, and delivers an entire system ready to be stripped down and sold for parts.

It's a pretty dreary picture and can feel like the ship has already sailed. As a teacher, I was always inside the event horizon. I could feel the gravity of freemarket schooling as it was warping spacetime and sucking the life out of my little corner of the universe, but what was I supposed to do about it? It was overwhelming and seemed unstoppable. I had 180 students. I was fucking busy.

What I didn't know and didn't have time to learn was that I wasn't alone. Other people felt like I did--and I'm not just talking about the half dozen in my "this sucks" lunch group. Now I know that lots of people--big important people--have been fighting this battle for decades, some of them successfully. The Profiteers and Privatizers are playing the long game but they haven't yet won the war. There's still time to join the fight. 

I'm just getting started and the sheer weight of what I don't know could tip the earth off its axis. However, I am exploring lots of different resources and include some of them here. I have not had time to fully vet them all, and if you have additional suggestions, please share. 

Diane Ravitch, author, historian and former Assistant Secretary of Education, has been a leader in this battle. Her blog is must reading and I'm working my way through her books, especially The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education; Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America's Public Schools; and now Cutting School: The Segrenomics of American Education co-authored with Noliwe Rooks. It takes time, but I'm retired and now I have time. I want to go to war fully armed. 

Ravitch also is president of the Network for Public Education, and though some of its material could be updated (toolkit), the website provides a very good rundown of organizations around the country that are fighting to save the public in public education. Email is here for more information.

There are other resources I've discovered as I've been teaching myself what lots of others seem to already know. On her blog, Diane Ravitch writes that an organization called
UnKoch My Campus "does a great job of tracking and exposing the influence of billionaire Charles Koch in schools and higher education." According to their website they are a "fiscally sponsored project" of Essential Information, the Ralph Nader-founded (1982) non-profit. Their K-12 report for 2020-2021 identifies many of the major players and details the strategies of the Koch Network's "capture" of education Privatization Plan and illustrates it this way:

It's a good graphic, though test scores and the national testing addiction really deserve their own space around steps 3 and 4.

Jennifer Berkshire @BisforBerkshire is a writer I'm now becoming familiar with. Her "Have You Heard" podcast is excellent and I'm looking forward to reading A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, co-authored with Jack Schneider. I first heard her speak about her work on the Know Your Enemy podcast.

"C'mon Waid," some of you might be thinking. "I did not come here for extra homework. I have 180 students right now, and you want to give me a reading list?" That's not it. I'm just telling you what I'm reading. So I understand the terrain and I'm not just bullshitting about what things used to be like. So I can get a clearer, more complete picture of our enemies, and our friends. And, ideally, to help you understand that you are not alone.

It would be helpful to have some models of successful resistance. Within the network of teachers, allies, and all advocates for public education and its offspring, multiracial democracy, we should be able to identify effective strategies and replicate them in diverse locations under varying circumstances. We're smart enough to reproduce successful plans just like the bad guys, only we use our power for good. 

I did manage to find a few ideas. Here, for example, Diane Ravitch joins a panel of international educators in a discussion titled "Fighting the Privatisation of Education," presented by the University of New South Wales Centre for Ideas, among others. I find Ravitch generally too optimistic regarding the impact of the pandemic on the public's attitudes towards schools and the people who work there. However, these remarks all predate the current "CRT"/book banning/masking brouhaha, so perhaps that explains it.  

It's a good conversation and much of it may sound familiar. Nevertheless, as we continue to learn the battlefield and our enemies and allies, we are still in the middle of an active warzone. What can a teacher do? What are some specific actions we can take to impede the drive to privatize public schools? When I know more, I'll say more, but for the time being I'll rely on Ravitch. I know you're busy I'll save you some time. 

Shorter Diane Ravitch: 

• Join your union. (Waid editorial: Just shut up and do it. They're not perfect, but if you think a union is expensive, try not having one.)
• Collaborate and organize with like-minded individuals around the country (Network for Public Education) and the world in order to amplify your voice. 
• The road to privatization is paved with testing data, so align yourself with the opt-out movement in your state.  
• Read Slaying Goliath.

Later this month I'll be starting Goliath, which is advertised as a collection of successful stories and strategies from around the country. I'll share them in a future post. In the meantime, please, if you have ideas that have worked for you or a colleague, please do share them in the comments section. You may comment anonymously if you prefer.

During my career I pushed back against bad administrators and bad policies at my schools and helped lead a strike against my district--all on behalf of my students and their families. I worked to support public schooling and fought threats like excessive testing and school choice, but my efforts were limited and local. Looking back, I spent my career in a silo grinding my teeth and shockingly unaware that there was an entire community of resistance just outside my classroom walls. Now I'm outside those walls and I have the time and bandwidth to educate myself and become part of that community. 

Fundamentally, this fight is about much more than a particular ideology, or politicians seeking to evade responsibility, or parents' rights (which, let's face it, is really just hostage-taking by the most extreme parents available), or fear, or class, or religion. It goes beyond someone's idea of morality, or even racism. All these are crucial elements of the battle, but they are engineered primarily to achieve the objective. The same plan was, is, or will be used to turn other public institutions into private profit centers. From the U.S. Postal service to national parks to public schools, it's up to us to protect them. 

The struggle is grueling because the stakes are high. Money is power and power concedes nothing. So if you ever wondered why school board meetings are now screaming matches or how "CRT" is even a thing, or when you see book banning and ask "What the actual fuck is going on?" remember: 

The answer to all your questions is money. 

What is it really like?

Please tell us.

Charles Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) retweeted an interesting article from Esquire. It's written by Jack Holmes and contains interviews with selected teachers around the country talking about what's really going on in their schools. (Note: Journalists should really talk to high school teachers once in a while. Here we at least get one middle school teacher, but the form is dominated by interviews with "specialists" and elementary school teachers. I don't get it. Never have.) Anyway, it's a good read and accurately represents my own experience and that of my colleagues who are still in the business. 

The thing is, why is this a thing? If there is anybody out there who isn't aware of what it's like teaching and learning in schools right now, they are either not interested or posturing and they should just shut up. 

But of course they won't. That's why Holmes describes a "great American schools debate," which is an interesting way to frame what we're going through. I used to teach debate, and to have one you need some sort of resolution. What would that be? What is the actual proposition being debated? What is one side "for" and the other "against"?

"Schools should be open" comes to mind, but that is what we like to call a shitty proposition. Who would argue otherwise? Maybe one of my ninth graders during the before times, fantasizing about endless summer and no homework. Not today. 

"Schools should be open under all circumstances" is obviously preposterous, as most people can imagine a case where closing schools would make sense. All they have to do is look up.

"Schools should be open under these circumstances." Now we're getting somewhere. Except this is where awareness of the circumstances comes in. Honest awareness. After two years? C'mon Man.

As I say, in Holmes's article teachers accurately describe conditions inside schools. But you shouldn't take my or anyone's word for it. If you are not familiar with the actual circumstances in an actual school, if you have not talked with students (including some kids who are not your own), and a variety of teachers, you have not done your homework. In spite of what you heard on Fox or found on Facebook, or read about in the New York Times for that matter (looking at you Michelle Goldberg, and your pal Randi Weingarten), if you have not talked with counselors and administrators, if you have not made time some morning or afternoon to mask up and visit your kids' classrooms, you really don't know anything. And honestly, that is some bullshit parenting.

Now, maybe you don't give a crap about schools. It may be that you don't have kids in school and you really don't see how any of this concerns you and you have nothing to say about it. Carry on. 

However, if you have kids in school but haven't done your homework, and you still insist on demonstrating and shaking your fists and terrorizing teachers and school boards declaring "schools must be open!" and "no mask for my kid or I'll bring every single gun," then you are just political dupes serving your ideological masters, and you are using your kids to demonstrate your fealty. You dream that your performative outrage will earn you a place at the adults' table but you will settle for scraps dropped on the floor as long as you get a pat on the head once in a while. You are dangerous. And fuck you.

And if you don't have kids in school and haven't done any homework. but you make a lot of "kids need to be in school-no masks-no vaccines!" noise with all your threats and your shouting, then you're even bigger assholes and fuck you twice. 

None of you, not the quiet-no-kids, nor the kids-no-homework, nor the no-kids-no-homework people has any legitimate place on the debate stage. If you are going to contend that "Schools should be open under these circumstances," you need to understand the circumstances, not based on social media claims or commentary by those intent on ginning up outrage for their own purposes, but from your own observations. If you want to determine what should go on inside schools going forward, you must at least know what's going on now. Do some real research. Or just shut the fuck up.

Teachers would be the LAST to suggest that there are simple answers to our present "debate." Teachers keenly understand the complexity of the unique challenges presented by COVID, as well as the numerous problems which are magnified by the pandemic but that many of us have spent careers trying to solve. 

Teachers don't have all the answers, but we know the questions. We understand the "debate" at a level more profound than any of the other stakeholders except students because school is where we spend our lives. In the "great American schools debate," someone really should start listening to teachers. At least we're qualified to argue the proposition. 

It is odd to be reading this article in January, 2022. I'm not complaining, exactly. It's just that this information has been readily available for a long time. Whether it's life in schools during the pandemic or any other time, teachers and their students have been talking and writing about it for years. It just feels like, if anyone was interested in knowing what we think, they would have listened by now.

Data is bullshit. Part Two

What's the plan? Testing is easy; fixing things is hard.

It's testing season in California, as this graph shows:

It's going to be a busy spring! And you can get a picture of the next three years here:

The list at the bottom tells you what these kids, their teachers, and their schools have to go through every year. Shit, the testing window for four of them never closes. And in my school our administration hired test prep consultants to make us develop five extra tests to get kids ready for, you know, the other tests. 

So, once again, in a pandemic (please do whatever it takes to keep yourselves and your families safe) with schools closing and students walking out, the testing abides. Someday we'll find ourselves in whatever comes after a pandemic and we can get back to fighting the Originals for the soul of public education. A preview: Data is bullshit. 

Data is bullshit for several reasons. These tests produce useless snapshots of a student's state of mind on a particular day. They are developed by people who don't know students and certainly have never met yours. The "data" they generate is neither reliable nor valid and arrives too late for immediate action even if they were. Finally, we begin today with how data is used. 

If there is no plan for meaningful analysis of what "data" is produced, and no plan for action based on that analysis even if it took place, which it doesn't, then data is bullshit. 

I've got a lot more to say on why you should not take these tests seriously--and why you should never use them to evaluate your students or your teaching (that job will eagerly be done by the testing fanatics), but I'll just close this installment with the following short excerpt from my book, Answer Key: A Teacher’s Completely Unofficial, Fiercely Unauthorized Handbook and Survival Guide. 

Data is Bullshit.

My friend Rebecca reminded me recently that data doesn’t have to be bullshit. It’s really about how we use it. And I’ll even admit that not all data is bullshit. For example, as I’m writing this, the Chicago Cubs have averaged four hits and two runs per game over the last seven games, of which they have lost six. That is significant and actionable. I’ve stopped watching them for a while and I feel a lot better.

Data can be useful in schools, too, but it depends on what kind we’re talking about. If we’re talking attendance, we can and do make calls home to find out where a student has been when they have not been on Zoom or in school. Schools are pretty serious about that because their paychecks depend on it. Another example is reading level data which can be useful for teachers as they work to assemble appropriate materials and devise plans to address each student’s specific needs.

On the other hand, if the data comes from a standardized test you are required to give and you don’t get the scores back until after your students have left your class or the class has left that area of study, or if the tests don’t measure what they say they measure, or if they measure something of no value to your students--often because the something is unrelated to your instruction because you know your students and they tragically do not, then data is bullshit. 

 <snip>

As my friend Nick would often say, “Right now, there is a third grader who can’t read.” That’s the data part, if we’re keeping score. “What’s our plan for that student?” Of course there wasn’t one. There isn’t one. Bullshit. Testing is easy. Fixing things is hard.  

If there’s no schoolwide plan to address issues revealed in the data and no time carved out to analyze the data and formulate a set of strategies (maybe during one of the thousand “not this again” PDs), then the school is profoundly unserious about data and is not advancing the interests of students but simply using the testing for some other purpose.

The true purposes of data collection might include “accountability” (rewards and punishments) or advertising (competition for students) or political advancement (see how they turned that district around!) or the support of the testing-industrial complex and its bazillion jobs inside and outside actual schools and school districts.

But in the end, the answer to all the questions is money.

Now those profiteers and hucksters and fanatical true-believers will never stop pretending that theirs is "important work." They will offer to help with analysis and remediation and "standards based instruction," and all it will cost is bags of cash, tons of time, and everything you know about teaching kids.

They will never stop bullying. They will never stop lying because their career advancement, their political futures, their paychecks depend on it. 

That does not mean you have to believe them. 

Next time we'll get into some of the details regarding the tests themselves and share ideas for resistance. I'm sure many of you have developed strategies for minimizing the damage. If you have any good ones, please share. 

Great post from Diane Ravitch's blog on standardized testing. 

impedimenta vocationis, or...

 "Why So Sad?"

It's back to school as Los Angeles Unified joins districts around the country in the post-holiday, in-person student and staff scavenger hunt, aka "Where is Everybody?" Oh Boy. 

As you know, across the country teachers and staff are sick and sick of the madness, and intelligent parents are reluctant to send their kids into the maw of the beast while equally intelligent students are refusing to offer themselves up as sacrifices to the ideological and economic deities reigning over The Greatest Country In The World. (Caution Nitwit Crossing: I am not referring to the deranged California anti-vaxxers pulling their kids out of school so they can march with them holding up dopey signs while they hack up talking points --"show me the science!" and "my child's body something something"--about shit they are too stupid to even want to understand).

Chicago Teachers are fighting the Good Fight. At some schools, thirty percent of the staff is out sick. Kids are walking out in New York. But across The GCITW, bazillions of people who spend a lot of time yakking about public schools without bothering to spend any time in them have thoughts. "Children need to be in school!" they declare, not knowing what that will look like but at least it'll be quiet around the house. And don't get me started on childcare! The howling intensifies--"schools must be open! in person! for the children!"--in spite of...well...anything. 

Chin Up, teachers! This is actually good news! Oh yeah. It's what we call a teachable moment. Here's a nugget, fresh from the "Every challenge is an opportunity" cliché dispenser.

Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.

Translated from the original Nietzsche and hammered into a paraphrase celebrating toughness and resilience, it goes something like "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." 

Only it's not true. Not true at all.

What doesn't kill you can leave you smashed and broken, exhausted, discouraged and depressed. If you are a teacher these days (or any other kind of human), you are running hard on a treadmill going faster than you are and you're ready to break. You might be thinking, "I'm working as hard as I know how to work and all I hear is how terrible teachers are. Maybe I'm not cut out for this. Maybe I just can't take it."

Maybe you can't. There are a million reasons someone might want to leave the profession, but people saying mean things about you isn't a very good one. Nor is the fact that you don't get everything you want. Nor the fact that your bosses are idiots and make you do stuff you don't want to do while taking away every good thing. If a middle schooler can survive that nonsense, you can too. You did. You can survive this, too. 

But it is hard. I did it for twenty-five years and I understand. I certainly get that it was a lot easier "back then." Even though I retired barely a year ago, in that one year teachers have been dropped physically into the middle of a virus superstorm armed only with sham promises of new "safety protocols" and masks and hand sanitizer they bought themselves. You've had to endure the anti-vax, anti-mask maniacs and dodge the mountains of CRT bullshit. You've had to withstand the hostility of the ignorant and the ignoble who blame you for wanting to save the lives of your school families and your own.

And you've had to do all that while the usual suspects--venal climbers in the Principal's Suite, brain-dead district lackeys, the anti-public school crusaders in the Privatizer Brigade--have continued to damage students, undermine your work, and destroy the institution you have dedicated some or a lot of your life to sustaining. Well, at least that hasn't changed. 

We will eventually find a way to manage COVID and stay reasonably safe. The maniacs will find something else to rant about, and maybe it won't be schools. And the CRT thing? What CRT thing? It served its immediate purpose in Virginia and went on break. Even when they inevitably resurrect it for political ammunition, teaching the truth about racism will always be something worth fighting for.

COVID sucks in the extreme and there's nothing you or anybody can do except everything they tell us to do to keep ourselves and our friends and families safe. But the people who are making your life miserable are knowable and beatable. Some are just bad bosses in the way that bosses all over the known universe are bad, and you will find a way to impede them, ignore them or fool them in order to do what you know is right. 

However, the Big Project to Destroy Public Schooling that has been grinding forward for decades is kicking into high gear, and these enemies are not going to give up or forget about the multi-billion dollar reservoir of public funds they are itching to get their hands on. In fact, the pandemic offers the perfect opportunity to further ravage a system under stress and slice off another chunk.

Some of these weasels are plutocrats looking to cash in. Some hate public schools for providing opportunity across class lines. Some of the haters are still seething over the elimination of state-sponsored prayer in schools. And some are permanently appalled by integrated classrooms. All of them, though, are salivating over the big juicy pie of public money they've dedicated their entire so-called lives to getting a piece of.  

These demolition and excavation experts have already had considerable success. The Supreme Court will soon decide how much more. That part is familiar to anybody in the education biz anytime in the last two decades. It's also infuriating and exhausting. And heartbreaking. 

But here is the important part: Your heart is much stronger than you realize. That's how you ended up a teacher. You're smart and tough and you absolutely can survive this. Don't give up, is what I'm saying.

Of course I'm saying it from retirement. I don't carry a roster anymore, and I'm here writing about it, not there going through it. That's a fair criticism and I acknowledge it. But teachers have been dropped in the shit up to the eyeballs for as long as there have been clueless dilettantes and rapacious grifters cashing in, and I swam through it for twenty-five years. When I left, I left in my time, on my terms, when I had done what I set out to do. Don't let them force you out before your time. Don't let the bastards grind you down.

How? How do you not just say screw it and hit the snooze button? Get up tomorrow and find an easier job that pays more and where nobody hates you for being good at it. How do you carry on? 

I don't know for sure how you can, but I know that it can be done. I know that stubbornness helps. A bit of flexibility when necessary. I know you should never underestimate the value of outrage and pure, unalloyed anger. I  always felt I got strength and the energy to sustain my career from looking directly into the faces of those who are rooting for us to fail and making it harder for us to succeed. And saying--at least to myself and my friends--Fuck Those Bastards. 

In that spirit, I think Diane Ravitch has it about right when she asks:

Who is responsible for the widespread teaching exodus? Who demoralized America’s teachers, the professionals who work tirelessly for low wages in oftentimes poor working conditions? Who smeared and discouraged an entire profession, one of the noblest of professions? 

and goes on to assemble a rogues' gallery of culprits. She continues and puts a lot more meat on the bone in a follow-up post:

Last week, I posted my thoughts on “Who Demoralized the Nation’s Teachers?” I sought to identify the people and organizations that spread the lie that America’s public schools were “broken” and that public school teachers were the cause. The critics slandered teachers repeatedly, claiming that teachers were dragging down student test scores. They said that today’s teachers were not bright enough; they said teachers had low SAT scores; and they were no longer “the best and the brightest.”

The “corporate reform” movement (the disruption movement) was driven in large part by the “reformers'” belief that public schools were obsolete and their teachers were the bottom of the barrel. So the “reformers” promoted school choice, especially charter schools, and Teach for America, to provide the labor supply for charter schools. TFA promised to bring smart college graduates for at least two years to staff public schools and charter schools, replacing the public school teachers whom TFA believed had low expectations. TFA would have high expectations, and these newcomers with their high SAT scores would turn around the nation’s schools. The “reformers” also promoted the spurious, ineffective and harmful idea that teachers could be evaluated by the test scores of their students, although this method repeatedly, consistently showed that those who taught affluent children were excellent, while those who taught children with special needs or limited-English proficiency or high poverty were unsatisfactory. “Value-added” methodology ranked teachers by the income and background of their students’ families, not by the teachers’ effectiveness.

All of these claims were propaganda that was skillfully utilized by people who wanted to privatize the funding of public education, eliminate unions, and crush the teaching profession.

More villains follow, largely taken from suggestions made by readers of her excellent blog. In additional posts, Ravitch discusses the new private bounty hunters and the old "voucher vultures." And please do read through the comments, made by not-robots, many of whom are or were actual teachers instead of politically motivated bloviators looking for a consulting job. 

If you're wondering why teaching--even in a pandemic--is so much more difficult than it has to be, which is to say, more difficult than the practically impossible job it already is even under the best circumstances, you can start with these lists. Look your enemies in the face and learn their names. You may find that some you've known forever, but some you may have thought were your allies. They are not. Our enemies are mere mortals engaged in an immoral project. Identifying our enemies and calling them by their names gave me strength. And giant reservoirs of anger. Which kept me going for decades. It may help you.

It's hard, but in Chicago and New York and New Haven and Philadelphia and Fort Worth and Des Moines and Los Angeles and Oakland and a million other places around the country--in every other place around the country--students and parents and teachers and staff are fighting for their schools and figuring it out in real time. You are not alone.

No one is alone.

Fuck the New York Times. Double Fuck the Wall Street Journal.

I read the news today, and Oh Boy.

Schools are opening again at the end of Winter Break and Omicron is kicking ass with nine hundred thousand new COVID cases a day, and kids and teachers and staff are sick and scared, but according to The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, the problem is...?

If you said god damn teachers and their god damn unions, YOU WIN!

I tweeted out a response calling out the union-busting privatizers and profiteers along with their media boosters, and I thought I'd share that tweet here. Solidarity, Chicago Teachers Union! Stay safe. Stay strong.

 

Here's Josh Marshall on what's happening in New York schools. There are similar stories from around the country. It's not simply a question of open or closed. Does open mean safe? Meaningful? Are promised safety protocols real or CYA lip service?

Politicians and ideologues insist "Schools must be open!" and "Think of the children!" Parents, frustrated and exhausted from these last two years, shout their assent or just nod along, not really knowing what they are signing their kids up for. Many parents whose students are privileged to attend well-funded schools can be confident that their kids will be taken care of. Other parents face the impossible but inescapable decision to gamble the safety of their children against their ability to provide for them.

What a perfect opportunity for the privatizers and profiteers to bash teachers and their unions and impugn the entire notion of public schooling!

These vultures conveniently ignore the fact that their decades-long project of degrading, starving, and slicing up public schools has led directly to the crowded classrooms, staff shortages, and inadequate resourcing we are grappling with in this moment.

Oh, and you know who else ignores it? The New York Times with its faux concern for students obscuring the sideways wink to its anti-union corporate masters and privileged readership. Well, fuck the New York Times.

And while we're at it, double fuck the Wall Street Journal with its hysterical "political scandal of the year" bullshit and its call to use Chicago teachers' concerns over safe school openings as an excuse to institute a voucher program. Yes, double fuck them.

Links deliberately omitted because, of course, fuck them.

The pandemic has magnified a lot of problems with public schooling: insufficient resources (particularly technology), hapless administrations, low staff morale, flagging public confidence and the lack of enlightened political leadership and support. For teachers, these are familiar challenges in an extraordinary time.

But one of the greatest threats schools face, apart from COVID itself, is the investor class with its media allies that are using this emergency as an opportunity to advance their financial interests in the privatization project.

We know this stuff already. I plan to keep going until everyone does. Stay safe. Stay strong.

And by the way, UTLA? Are you there?

Data is bullshit. Part One

Yes. Yes it is. 

Of course, it doesn't have to be. There is lots of useful data in the universe. The Covid infection rate and the number of available hospital beds in your town are important pieces of information. Cholesterol level. Blood pressure. Miles to the gallon. Yards per carry. Odds of getting a heart on the river. Each of these data points has an outcome associated with it that is meaningful and actionable. 

There are data that are related to schooling that are also meaningful. Graduation rates. Attendance. Student-teacher ratio. Number of students qualifying for subsidized lunches. The trouble is that when school reformers talk about data, they are talking about test scores. 

So, as I wrote last time, all of these terrible ideas that incoming superintendent Alberto Carvalho is likely to bring to LAUSD--school choice, performance pay for teachers, the firings--all of them depend entirely on "data," by which he means "testing," by which he means state-sponsored, corporate-controlled assessments. If you are wondering what the hell I'm talking about: 1) You need to pay closer attention, and 2) You obviously don't teach math or English, or now science, or... 

In any case, this approach is unsound because the data are unsound. 

I threw that "are" in there for those of you who insist that data must be plural. However, I'll be using the word as a singular mass noun to represent the scores on these tests, and using it specifically to attack the notion that these scores--this "data"-- is the supreme (or any) expression of what students know, how effective their teachers are, or whether their schools have "failed." This data is a political tool and not meaningful in any educational sense. Teachers should resist the entire enterprise. Some ideas on how to do that later. 

For those of you thinking "Oh my test scores! I could lose my job!" I'm sorry, but you are right to be concerned. For any of you thinking, "My scores! I must be a shitty teacher!" You might be a shitty teacher, but it has nothing to do with your test scores, which are not your test scores. They are your students' scores. 

If you've been thinking that the testing is crazy and pointless and you've been thinking the same thing since No Child Left Behind, take comfort in the fact that you have been right for twenty years. Read on for corroboration and please comment and add your own thoughts. For those of you newer to the madness and thinking "Am I crazy? Or is this insane?" Take comfort in the fact that you are not crazy. It is insane, and you need to give yourself permission to acknowledge that. It's not you, it's the testing. You want proof?

Let's begin with the emphasis on testing and the elevation of test data generation over other elements of schooling. In case you haven't heard, we're in the middle (if we're lucky) of a fucking pandemic. Schools are under assault while struggling to keep students and staff safe, and people increasingly don't want to work there or go there. Teachers are desperate to reconnect with their students, to support their mental health while helping them engage and focus on their studies. So what do you think would be the most important concern for educators high enough on the food chain to actually decide things? 

If you guessed standardized testing, you win! Libraries are battlefields and there's no staff and schools can't even follow their own safety rules, but the testing abides. The testing obsession among educators who aren't teachers is as stifling as the gun obsession among 2nd Amendment fetishists. The destruction just happens more slowly.

In her excellent The Answer Sheet blog (no relation) at the The Washington Post, education writer Valerie Strauss posted on the subject and includes some very good questions from Bob Schaeffer from Fairtest. It's a good read.

Right now you should be on break, but in a week the lunacy will resume and many of you out there will be trying to open a testing session, trying to get students to finish a session, or wondering why there are sessions at all while we're still in a fucking pandemic. You are asking the right question and very probably using the right words--at least with your friends--to describe the ridiculousness. 

Some of you, however, might actually be listening to the testing fanatics who are leading your so-called Professional Developments (really just test training and ass covering) or pushing you to be sure you catch the "make-up" testers, and you might actually be thinking, "Well, at least it's for a good cause." 

Well just forget it. You (may) have to give the tests in order to keep your job, but unless your idea of a good cause is enriching the testing-industrial complex and their shareholders while destroying the public in public education, there is no reason for any teacher to feel good about giving these tests. Period. 

If you have any doubt about this, consider the following (if you haven't already--like a bazillion times): First, teachers are prevented from seeing the questions from the tests--including the ones their students got right and wrong--and are prevented from seeing the scores in time to shape instruction. And, get this, teachers are definitely prohibited from discussing the assessments with even their own colleagues (sign the affidavit!). So ask yourself: Why would such a discussion--one that might actually do some good if by good you mean helping students and, incidentally, raising test scores--be outlawed? 

Second, imagine a world so gripped by a pandemic that whole school systems had to close down for months. Then they open again and improvise their way through a year of masks/no masks, vax/no vax, and "What happened to all the Covid tests?" Under these circumstances, what could the value of administering these assessments possibly be? Except, of course, to support the narrative of failing schools. In that case, what better time to test? 

(By the way, check the "Nation's Report Card"  if you're up for a little mind tease. It takes some doing, but if I'm reading the long-term trends correctly--and I like to think that I am--it turns out the actual scores on perhaps the least egregious of the Big Tests, the NAEP, have been pretty stable recently and have gone up significantly over time. Hardly a picture of crisis. There is a genuine and serious issue regarding score gaps and equity, but even those gaps have diminished. However, you probably haven't heard how great a job we're doing in schools. That's not the carefully constructed and immensely profitable narrative.)

The truth is the testing exists to enrich the industry and generate data that will elevate certain schools and punish others along with their teachers (aka "hold them accountable"). Which might make some kind of sense if you believe or pretend to believe that teachers are slackers who can and should be shamed and hectored into magically levitating scores, which are in fact controlled by a million variables only one of which is a teacher--or six or seven teachers if you're in high school. And it might make very good sense to you if you're the type of person who cocks their head and looks up at the stars and muses: If only we could get rid of all the bad ones... And oh yes, fuck the teacher unions! 

Or maybe you really believe, or pretend to believe, that scores on a glitchy exam given once a year tell us what we need to know about students and their learning. And if that doesn't work, then we have lots more exams for all the other times of the year! Yes, you might be thinking, "That's totally worth it! Beating up teachers and hijacking instruction is a small price to pay for the higher test scores that will then prove that beating up teachers and hijacking instruction really works! To produce higher test scores!

Except for one thing: Data is bullshit. 

Next up: What's the plan? Testing is easy; fixing things is hard.