HOUSE EDUCATION COMMITTEE HEARINGS ON ACT 16
Thank you, Representative Rohrer, and members of this distinguished committee for inviting me to participate in this historic event. This is historic because it represents the very foundations that are being questioned and examined in cities and towns across America today. It is not just about Act 16 or the PSSA test. It is our striving to discover the answers to the very fundamental questions and problems at the heart of American education, Pennsylvania in particular. Before I begin, I would like to make it clear at the outset that I believe that standards, assessment and accountability are necessary functions of the educational process. There are no easy answers and no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solutions to the issues that face us.
In preparing for this hearing, I asked myself the following questions in order to ascertain a clear picture of what these hearing are all about:
What constitutes a good Pennsylvania education?
What are the functions and roles of testing in the educational process?
What is the structure of PA education and how does it relate to testing?
What are the problems that exist across the state?
Can testing rectify these problems?
Why is there a scarcity of teachers, superintendents and principals?
What is the role of legislators?
Whose responsibility is the classroom?
Is there any state, school or community that is making a difference for students?
What does the latest learning and brain-based research tell us about testing?
Are these all related in some way?
I have lived in this state for the past five years moving from one locality to another urban, suburban and rural, to determine the needs of constituents- the children, families, communities, business, educators and legislators. As I’ve traveled, I have inquired, “What constitutes a good education?” No two people give the same answer. In business, we set goals for ourselves, just like in education. If everyone at the helm has a different agenda or a different target, who could steer the ship and keep it on course? In Pennsylvania, I have watched the highest levels of government steer the ship from one course direction to another. Now I ask you, who could run a business, drive a car, command an ocean liner, or guide a child in a classroom when the target keeps moving? What business would survive if this year it sold ladies’ garments and next year, the Board of Directors decided to sell computers?
What is the purpose of testing? Testing is a tool, a measure, a yardstick to locate areas in need of assistance, re-teaching or levels of competency. According to the latest research from the cognitive sciences, standardized testing is a diagnostic and prescriptive tool for measuring particular computation and symbolic manipulation skills. The information in testing does not enable the learner to distinguish real understating from ‘literal’ because tests separate mind and body. Tests cannot measure the content of the human mind or meaning, just as implementing instruction does not guarantee learning (Crowell 1992, 1999, Allen 1998, Archbald 1988,).
Yet, as I have listened to these hearings, it appears to me that tests can often be used as a weapon; an instrument of degradation, humiliation and punishment. The Empowerment Act has designated the PSSA as the sole measurement tool for assessing the success or failure of a school. There is a growing movement to rank schools nationwide by state test scores as the 1999 edition of Education Week suggests. However, according to a recent surveys conducted by Phi Delta Kappa (2000) and others (Campbell 1999, Cizek 1999, Daves, 1984, Haney 1993), the singularity of test scores does not measure a child’s ability to succeed. Rather, a combination of factors weighs far greater in evaluating performance. Adding to this, PSSA test 1) results return too late to be useful 2) do not measure student performance 3) are scored by individuals who do not have knowledge of the community or the children being tested 4) and, as a High Stakes tool, add a component of risk. The national media has uncovered several school districts across the nation that reflect the pressure of principals and districts to ‘meet the scores’ by altering results. (Newsweek July 2000)
Edward White of California State University has stated that we have two choices about testing; ‘we can ignore them in the vain hope that they will go away or we can participate in them in an informed way to make them as good as possible’. Individuals have come before you throughout these hearings and recommended the same tests that I would have you consider like the Iowa or Terra Nova. Each district, as you have seen, has a different measurement tool determined by their local community for a reason.
The media would have us believe that schools are ‘damsels in distress’, with remote experts cast as her saviors. However, if we look realistically at the problem, the ‘crisis’ has been created by profit margins of the testing industry that, of course, maintains the crisis, and the cultural distrust of teachers, for as long as the establishment endorses it. The ‘testing industry’ last year, claimed $50 billion dollars in profits. The industry does its best with clever marketing strategies and business acumen as well as playing on, and perpetuating the cultural mistrust of teachers. This distrust is carefully nurtured: remote ‘experts’ develop educational tests and prepackaged curricula and send them off to school administrators, who ensure that teachers faithfully execute the plan. Students are thus shaped to the specifications of experts whom they will never meet and who may have never set foot in a classroom. And of course, holding students accountable will require an enormous amount of standardized tests.
In the area of accountability, there is irony here in the public discourse. While teachers and schools are being held hyper-accountable, the ‘experts’ in the assessment industry are given carte blanche: a nearly unfettered marketplace, very few governmental restrictions and the ‘right’ to protect what they consider to be proprietary information. In 1979, Senator Kenneth LaVelle introduced a bill to regulate the industry: “The testing industry has shrouded itself in a mantle of secrecy that leaves it unaccountable to the public who should be able to independently assess the accuracy and validity of its product.” This is truly remarkable in an age in which accountability is the crucial force. It is difficult to imagine the public response to a school that tried to cut off ‘freedom of information’ in this way.
The argument used is to protect the ‘integrity’, ‘objectivity’ or ‘fairness’ of the tests. But in reality, this practice shields the industry from public exposure. I suspect that if we begin to hold testing companies accountable for THEIR work, the industry would not hold up to the scrutiny. Such as is it with the secrecy around the PSSA .
I agree with Peter Johnston in that ‘constructive assessment’ is possible only through collective, local effort with those who have direct contact with children daily. Common sense tells us that standard tests are objective means for holding schools accountable. In reality, a fair minded and just concept of accountability begins with a clear sense of who is accountable, to whom and for what. Schools must be accountable not to corporate entities, remote educational experts or some restless national audience created by mass media, but rather to their local communities.
This also means that communities must be held accountable to schools. Accountability is not a one-way street. And schools must not be pitted against their communities. In fact, a clearer understanding of schools as part of their communities is needed. Too often, schools are somehow seen as outside, islands unto themselves. But schools are full of community members.
The change in education must begin, not from the top down but from inside out. This state is large and extremely diversified, ranging from the rural agrarian populations of Clarion County to the overcrowded streets of Philadelphia. Testing does not define the problem in every school district. Rather the school is a reflection of the community in which it resides. The Cleveland School District reached out to the community, business and local government to alter its educational structure. The state of Nebraska designs its testing instruments locally through a joint venture of teachers, community leaders, parents and administrators. If the PSSA were the sole standard of measuring, schools like Reading School District with a 58% migrant population would certainly appear on the list. How can one test measure the understanding and knowledge of a child in the poverty communities of Philadelphia, the transient Hispanic population of Reading and the middle-upper middle class suburbs of Dallas? We have grossly underestimated the real assessment ‘experts’, the local communities and their teachers. The local school districts can determine the needs of their local communities and the measures of testing to be used.
However, the dwindling population of professional educators shadows the issue. The Williamsport School District spent over a year in their nation wide search to find applicants to respond for their Superintendents position. This is a common problem among all schools for all positions across the state (PESSA Principalship 2000). The education profession is not valued and the shortages are mirroring public sentiment. The inevitable solutions are to execute emergency certificates for warm bodies to hold lessons for expanding or high-risk school systems. What effect does this have on student learning and testing? What is happening in these classrooms? This is not meant to point a finger at districts that must bow to the shortages with no other recourse. However, are student test scores to be made accountable for unprepared teachers and fluctuating populations? No public school districts that I am aware of in Pennsylvania live in the Utopia of the Hershey School that spends $68,000 per child in a sheltered environment.
Whose responsibility is it for the process of learning to take place? The truth is, you cannot teach anyone anything unless they are ready, willing and able to learn. The only thing that can be done, according to the experts, is to create environments for learning. So, how is this accomplished?
The state of Pennsylvania, like Virginia, is a Commonwealth state, where local control predominates. And localized government, according to research, holds the greatest promise for successful schools (Barth 1990, Blank 1999, Bocan 1999, Coulombe 1995, Dryer 1999 Graf, 1998 Hartman 1997 Kennedy 1999). Most successful schools in the world contain students who enjoy school, are passionate about learning and do well, are schools that are locally governed (Smith 1998, Nathan 1999). This means that the responsibility of learning rests on the student. The responsibility of the learning environment is strictly the role of teacher. The principal acts as collaborator and support to the teachers. What does this mean in real terms?
It means that in a vital community, teachers would have a voice and would be engaged in dialogue with other community members, including parents, other taxpayers, local businesses, politicians. And teachers would be encouraged to speak from their expertise. In any vital community, members are responsible for practicing their expertise and valuing the expertise of other members. Most communities tend to value the expertise of the middle class professions; medicine and law, for example. Would lawyers entertain the notion that public opinion defines the daily operations of their office? However, teachers are rarely referred to as professionals in quite the same way because they are considered public property.
If teachers are recognized as professionals, they will have reason to become more involved in their communities as sanctioned experts. With a seat at the table of educational reform, there would be collaborations. This arrangement would also assert their expertise reframing educational assessment towards a locally humane and locally appropriate assessment programs. Those who are in contact with children daily and who understand how local circumstances enable and constrain the possibilities for teaching and learning are in the best position to offer us reliable, useful and learning-centered assessments of students work. It also encourages teachers to share their expertise with others, to create a culture throughout the state in which assessment expertise is viewed as part of the work of being a teacher. This is the type of model that works from the ‘inside out’, rather than from the ‘top down’.
Let the teachers demonstrate their expertise and competencies, the very reason they continue to educate themselves under Chapter 48 of the PA state Code. A statewide system of local assessments is a sound policy for the students of this state using the states traditional commitment to local control to its full advantage. Assessment then becomes a local responsibility and a local priority. Then test scores will skyrocket, students will stop dropping out of school. Children will feel like human beings and not displaced numbers on a tally sheet. Instead of looking for quick fixes and micro managing schools, allow the people who are trained for their jobs to do their jobs. Teachers, Principals, and Communities know their students. Let the instruction and assessment up to them and allow them to do their jobs. (Argyris 1990, Balaban 1997, Barth 1990, Blamk 1999, Bocan 1999, Chubb 1990 Clarke 1999, Cohen 1999, Comer 1997, Darling-Hammond 1997, Hack 1998, Hawkins, 1991, Johnson 1997).
In closing, I have included in your packet from some of the schools across the nation that have successfully demonstrated the strategies I have described throughout this presentation. Thank you again for the opportunity to participate in this hearing.
BROCHURES
Alternative Community School in Ithaca, New
(a press release from Rep. Fred McIlhattan who visited this school is also enclosed)
The Renaissance School, Lakeland, Florida
SAIL in Tallahassee, Florida
Liberty School in Maine.