No Child Left Untested & the Case of Unfunded Mandates
Education in Peril Caught in the Cross-hairs of High-Stakes Tests
Adapted for Medium from a paper for my MLAW. This article is for informational purposes only. This article does not constitute legal, financial, investment, or any other type of advice. See bio for further material connections.
No Child Left Untested
20 USC §6301 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) [4], modified to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), was enacted to allow States greater authority and to address standardized testing. The Act purpose was revised to the following,
“The purpose of this title is to provide all children significant opportunity to receive a fair, equitable, and high-quality education, and to close educational achievement gaps” [1]
A full rollcall and liveplay of this is available on Congress.gov [24] While the act aimed to decrease the pressures, such as those that fueled 216 education professionals in Atlanta and many other districts into academic misconduct, but that alone is not going to address the underlying issue. [2] This link offers a full timeline of the case. The misconduct was only a byproduct of an antiquated educational system rooted in the ideals of agrarian societies and those that favor assembly-line education centered upon one processing style. These are not responsive to our changing economies. [1]
Further, even if the policy has evolved from No Child Left Behind, (NCLB) and we are not using scores in the same manner, it is not deterring the administration and the ‘non-educated on education’ populous from the bragging rights of their respective school report cards. For example, see the article from the LA Times, California’s New K-12 Test Scores, What they are, why they matter, and how your school scored. California released test results for more than 3 million students. [3] The article even encourages parents to look up their school, yet they fail to cite what these scores truly mean. “Read our guide to what it all means, and look up how your school scored.” [3] Articles such as these are detrimental to student success as Diane Ravitch, a noted expert cites in The New Republic, using the Campbell philosophy [5].
Red Tomato Soup
Disarming the Arms -Soup & Campbell
Wise words from Diane Ravitch, and quoting Donald Campbell, in the article, Settling for Scores, Why are schools still judged by the results of standardized tests? [5]
“The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making,” he wrote, “the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.” Id.
Achievement tests for their inherent purpose are subject to corruption. Tie that to teacher pay and you are asking for an epic disaster.
“Achievement tests may well be valuable indicators of general school achievement under conditions of normal teaching aimed at general competence. But when test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways.” Id. [5][25]
Put simply, when the measure becomes the goal, and when people are punished or rewarded for meeting or not meeting the goal, the measure is corrupted. Id.
Punishment does not reap positive outcomes. This has been evident in countless models, such as the albeit,
…(Probably apocryphal) illustrations of Campbell’s law come from the Soviet Union. When workers were told that they must produce as many nails as possible, they produced vast quantities of tiny and useless nails. When told they would be evaluated by the weight of the nails, they produced enormous and useless nails. The lesson of Campbell’s law: Do not attach high stakes to evaluations, or both the measure and the outcome will become fraudulent. Id.
It is not only in Education that we see these trends, but rather they start in education and due to a power cycle reminiscent of Animal Farm, these well meaning measures are blown to smithereens by those that do not understand the motivational forces of humans especially the malleable neuroscience of students. [10] Whether in Ravitch’s article, or the case of Bulgaria, and documented in A Manifesto for Play, Bulgaria & Beyond, punitive incentives do not create value, they simply do not. [6] For one further example of same, think of the ‘Bad Santa’ in Tim Allen’s Santa Clause II. [7] Even the again, albeit, probably apocryphal North Pole is vulnerable to these forces. While humorous, this last case is a glaring example of punitive outcomes to fuel metrics,
“We are not going to make any more toys…the children of the world do not deserve any presents, they are running rampant with naughtiness..” See Santa Clause 2 Id.
How would you fare, if every indiscretion, misunderstanding, or innocent mistake was to be tied to tangible rewards of one test? Your actions would be garnered by your amygdala, or reptilian brain. This creates an overpowering of the logical executive processing of the pre-frontal cortex, (PFC). [8] Hijacking the rational thought needed to place these high stakes in perspective. That does not even take into account the PFC is not fully developed in most adults until the ages of 27–35 depending on the source you use and sex of the person, in addition to the presence or absence of ADD/ADHD. [8][6][11]
These high-stakes tests are detrimental to progress, and destroy both trust and productivity by their very nature. All creative thought ceases as the test is the only objective that matters. But as Keil demonstrates, this penalized and militant thought is counter productive. We are wired for neoteny or play. Children play with toys, adults play with words, ideas, and problems to solve. [6]
Further, attaching this punitive measure to education is akin to Russian Roulette with a student’s future, in more ways than one. The results do not show efficacy, and reform has begun to stop this harmful pendulum before it erases the potential of our most valuable resource, our students. This is echoed in the article, from Fairtest.org, How Standardized Testing Damages Education (Updated July 2012) [12]
Measurement experts agree that no test is good enough to serve as the sole or primary basis for any of these important educational decisions. A nine-year study by the National Research Council (2011) concluded that the emphasis on testing yielded little learning progress but caused significant harm.[13] [5]
Ravitch summarizes by citing,
For the last 16 years, American education has been trapped, stifled, strangled by standardized testing. Or, to be more precise, by federal and state legislators’ obsession with standardized testing. The pressure to raise test scores has produced predictable corruption: Test scores were inflated by test preparation focused on what was likely to be on the test. Some administrators gamed the system by excluding low-scoring students from the tested population; some teachers and administrators cheated; some schools dropped other subjects so that more time could be devoted to the tested subjects. [14] [15] [16]
This is not education. This is a failure of education at its very root. From corruption to creative curriculum designed around the tests, who loses? The students.
No employer of tomorrow is going to value the rote memorization and the ability to test well if the employee cannot also think critically, collaborate, and construct new knowledge and understanding. Therefore, the sheer purpose of education has been erased for the metric hungry. But, as cited above, this data is NOT transparent or valid, and is certainly not in the best interests of our students. [16]
While ESSA is a step in the right direction, leaving accountability to the State discretion is not a solution either. [1] Herein lies one of the arguments for Blockchain. Education standardized testing and teacher compensation cannot be solely up to one stake holder, and while I am unsure exactly what that solution entails, what I can cite is that rewarding for student performance and variants thereof by state is not the answer. The answer will be one of moderation that accounts for all stakeholders including students. This is reinforced in the Washington University study discussing intention of instruction, but beyond the scope here. [17] It favors a Jigsaw methodology, again, beyond the scope. [18] In short, our system is far too corruptible. See Repeat After Me, Class, Block + Chain = Blockchain.
When states have carte blanche to use their own accountability systems, they may also be vulnerable to same, see The case of Wisconsin, Solidarity & Redds. Wisconsin, is a case where lack of disclosure contributed to a culture of backlash and stakeholder tug-of-war, lost in translation somewhere between the 1970’s and the Qualified Economic Offer (QEO). [27][28] Without understanding all of the dynamics in play, this, then, fueled deep-seeded animosity and the erosion of professionalism for less than transparent motives. [22]
Add ESSA to this equation and you now have the perfect storm of Education; the waves of these failed mandates are crashing in quickly. [1] [22]Without reform, we soon will have massive devastation. Case in point ‘Whole Language’ circa the 90’s reading wars and an entire generation who cannot spell. Children can no longer be victims of these pendulum swings. [19]
In sum, when educator pay is tied to student achievement and then, addressed to society in a pretty package labeled, ‘with love from your teachers,’ or as in Wisconsin in 2011, the year I left the classroom, the year your favorite ‘Union Thugs,’ became synonymous with teaching, all credibility and professionalism is erased. The Campbell Philosophy, as discussed above, has now become a living breathing example in practice, a failure due to ignoring critical stakeholders, a practice not viewed kindly in corporate America, it is called poor corporate governance sans ethics. [22][28][29][30]
“Corporate governance is concerned with holding the balance between economic and social goals and between individual and communal goals. The governance framework is there to encourage the efficient use of resources and equally to require accountability for the stewardship of those resources. The aim is to align as nearly as possible the interests of individuals, corporations and society.” [31]
Deeper into the Soup
The issues of teacher pay as a divisive force are not new. The dynamic unfolded just like a Greek Tragedy, when Wisconsin needed a balanced budget, they failed to look at the history of why and how teachers were given health insurance, albeit now a commodity. Through comprehension of where in history the health insurance offer was given and why, perhaps other alternatives could have been addressed. [32][33][22] These factors are again beyond the scope but their existence highlights the need for transparency.
Perhaps disclosing that the exchange for health insurance was made because districts could not afford to pay teachers for the higher levels of education they now required may have changed the dynamic or in the least, opened the conversation. It was part of the ‘package’ of teaching, known as the QEO, which came about because districts could not afford to pay a teacher for the new level of education they demanded i.e., higher levels of education than previously required/contracted. A previous shift in credentially had occurred in the 70’s. [32][27][33][22] In the business or corporate world, when companies can’t pay, they do not get the caliber of worker they desire. But, that was not a work around viable for education. So, with trust in districts, the packaging element was born, and teachers with their genuine love of education drank that Kool-Aid. Sadly, it was poisoned punch. See Solidarity & Redds. Id.See also [36]
Survey Says [And Research Too] Standardized Tests: Not the Gold Standard, Who Knew? Um, Everyone…
Circling back, while ESSA gives greater flexibility, there is a pervasive problem which remains with two interrelated prongs to address. [1] [40] [39] [16] According to the NEA Article, Educators Strike Big Blow to Overuse of Standardized Testing in 2017,
States now have the flexibility to design new accountability systems that don’t rely solely on student test scores. Although testing reform was already building momentum in communities across the country, ESSA provides a new mechanism to help produce further positive gains. [40]
Education reform is vulnerable to and has been allowed exploitation by the ugly two headed monster, which symbolizes the two interrelated elements feeding off of each other. [1][3][12][13][15][16][5] The Expert Problem and the lack of transparency in the evolution of teacher compensation. Id. Each of which fuel stakeholder tug of war, and subsequently open schools up to the parasite known as excessive high-stakes tests, which due to their inherent purpose, and substantiated by the Campbell Philosophy are an engraved invitation to corruption and are useless as ultimate indicators of teacher efficacy because their existence distorts the underlying purpose of education, to educate versus test. Id.
OH, I Know ED! The Expert Problem Explained
Everyone is an EXPERT on education because they went through the ‘system.’ This is one of the most critical problems within education today. We as education professionals are fighting against the fundamental misunderstandings that underlie every dispute in education whether conscious or subconscious. It is epitomized with a concept that has stuck with me throughout my career, which was first introduced in 2003, during a class I took to maintain my licensure. Each year, the truth within this basic statement has only become more pronounced. Each time I hear others outside the realm of education commenting on the ‘system.’ I hear opportunities for re-teaching or remediation, as we in education would say.
I call these professionals the non-educated on education, because it is simply not their respective field, therefore, it is completely understandable that they do not conceive why excessive, high-stakes testing is detrimental to student success. In most cases, once these people understand the intersection of issues through hearing the way the standardized examinations are implemented and the amount of time taken away from instruction for said tests, the thought provoking dialog is open and collaborative alternatives are created. When you remove the incentives of punishment, you then get all four stakeholders, parents, teachers, students, and districts to collaborate freely. However, this only can happen when there is genuine trust. The system as of currently, is anything but a model of trust.
The Trustless Plague is Parasitic
This ‘Expert’ concept has plagued Education as a leach on its professionalism for years. It was one of the definitive reasons I was empowered to advocate staunchly for education reform and one of the reasons I left teaching to address the cause at its root. The misinformation of society lies in The function of expectation mismanagement of parents and their coordinate lack of belief that they are a critical partner within Education as their child’s number one champion. This is then intensified in ad hominem attacks where education is viewed as merely, ‘babysitting’ and teachers compensation is called into question. Yet, ask many of the same people to volunteer in your classroom and the dialog changes, albeit, uniquely, and certainly not in the way one would expect. Again, beyond the scope here.
Bragging Rights
The metrics of education have become a favorite past-time of administration discussions to the non-educated on education populous. While accountability may work in other industries, and there is a great amount of debate on punitive accountability, it does not work with children. [3][4][12]
Regardless, for those looking to privatize the system of education, metrics and rigor are a favorite argument. My former superintendent, Peg Geegan, during a Professional Learning Communities, Continuing Education Session, which was derived from the work of revolutionary educational theorists the Dufours, compared testing to weighing a pig and teaching to feeding a pig. She drew an analogy I still use today in an effort to explain the detrimental impact and inacurracies that surround from excessive standardized testing. Id.
(Y)ou can’t just repeatedly weigh a pig and expect it to grow. You must feed the pig at some point, if it is going to grow. [20]
While we in education understand this, it is a difficult concept for others who do not have a child development background It takes a conversation or two to unpack this misinformation, and rightly so, we are the education professionals and it is our job to educate students and PARENTS alike. [21]
History Speaks Do We Listen?
The point of using Act 10 is not to debate what did or did not happen, nor debate the legality of such, or even the tangible impact, but rather the point is to show the collateral effect, or what happens when you set up an adversarial system full of punitive outcomes. [21] [22][15][3][12]
This dynamic explains why teachers are incentivized to misconduct, why collaborative solutions are not created, and why education is in peril. It is this climate, which is the ultimate problem with NCLB, ESSA, and the like, they do not acknowledge, address, nor understand the root cause. Id.
Great Expectations
Why are high-stakes tests bad? They are ineffectual. What we have learned from ground breaking cognitive neuroscience studies is that the expectation of learning is directly correlated to the depth of learning. Ultimately a test should be representative of the associated learning thereof. Id.
Why are we so focused on testing students when research shows contrary? If students perceive that they are teaching a peer, versus taking a test high-stakes or other, they do significantly better.[17] How would you personally fare if you were told your goal was to teach a peer, and that peer was counting on you, rather than you had to prepare for a test or even a test that would determine your future? Research says that you would learn in a different way, which is echoed in multiple studies on learning and cognition as is evidenced in the Washington University study. [17]
You cannot create dicta on what all schools should do, fail to fund them, then, alienate the professionals that go out of their way to reach every learner despite the funding barriers, and expect buy in; this is ludicrous. It is this failing trifecta of reasoning coupled opaque practices that sow the seeds of animosity, which is marked by the climate in education that we experience today, the disdain for educators, not your teacher, but rather educators and public education at large. This is a very interesting dynamic that is beyond our scope here. Perhaps a topic of a subsequent article. [12][13][5]
Danger Zone
The danger in tying student scores to teacher scores is that this creates an adversarial dynamic. [2][15] This erodes versus builds the ecosystem because the incentive for collaboration is destroyed and punitive protocols are favored. [13] [12][5] Linking schools’ performance and teacher compensation is also a detrimental practice. [5][12] [14][15][16]It creates misunderstanding and further perpetuates this cycle of misinformation, which exponentially drives the arguments and in turn, erode the profession of education needlessly. Id.
Without a comprehensive initiative to educate about the meaning of the data reported and the coordinate risks and benefits thereof, the accountability of standardized tests has little efficacy, is easily (and actually has already been) corrupted. All of these findings are discussed and predicted through the Campbell Philosophy. Id.
Repeat After Me Class, Block + Chain = Blockchain
Every alternative to date has lacked the transparency and standardization that assessment models need. It is only through a mechanism, which is fully transparent that any further assessments should be incorporated. Further, just like in banking, there should be adequate disclosure thereof. If there were a truth in education disclosure similar to a truth in lending disclosure, all stakeholders could be educated on the risks, benefits, and rights afforded to each, including students. Id. See also [31]
Just like corporations do their due diligence, and must have proper stakeholder governance, so too must districts. In regards to compensation, each district should undergo an audit of valuation on their compensation models. When salaries are decreased directly or indirectly, and duties remain the same or in many cases also increase, something is mathematically incorrect. Id.
At this point, I pose the call to action that education reform needs to be reddressed with the assistance of a system that will offer a value added solution, re-instating the lost trust and ignored transparency of education. One that encompasses all 4 stakeholders and provides comprehensive education reform with an inherent mechanism of immutability to facillitate same.
Perhaps Blockchain or distributed ledger technologies, is an appropriate solution? [26]
Resources Consulted:
[1] 20 USC 1601 et. seq http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/index.html
[2] APS Cheating Scandal. Atlanta Public Schools Testing Investigation and Trial: Complete coverage by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution https://www.ajc.com/news/timeline-how-the-atlanta-school-cheating-scandal-unfolded/jn4vTk7GZUQoQRJTVR7UHK/ see also, https://www.ajc.com/news/local-education/educators-convicted-aps-cheating-scandal-report-for-prison-today/tAZrJhxSzDVieSHvVjrr2J/
[3] CALIFORNIA’S NEW K-12 TEST SCORES What they are, why they matter and how your school scored http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-edu-test-scores-2016/
[4] USC 20 §1601 https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-107publ110/html/PLAW-107publ110.htm; see also https://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/index.html
[5] Ravitch, D. The New Republic. https://newrepublic.com/article/145935/settling-scores
[6]https://www.ted.com/talks/steve_keil_a_manifesto_for_play_for_bulgaria_and_beyond/transcript
[7]https://youtu.be/7hw40_QHb2k
[8] https://www.thescienceofpsychotherapy.com/prefrontal-cortex/ See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefrontal_cortex see also https://www.pnas.org/content/109/Supplement_2/17186
[9] https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/amygdala.htm
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm; see also https://www.amazon.com/Animal-Farm-George-Orwell/dp/0451526341
[11] ADD development of PFC and age
[12]http://fairtest.org/how-standardized-testing-damages-education-pdf
[13]https://www.nap.edu/read/12521/chapter/1
[14] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/education/11scores.html?pagewanted=all
[16] http://neatoday.org/2014/11/02/nea-survey-nearly-half-of-teachers-consider-leaving-profession-due-to-standardized-testing-2/ (The link in the article goes to the wrong link, this matches the source.)
[17]Students learn more if they’ll need to teach others. Washington University Futurity. https://www.futurity.org/learning-students-teaching-741342/
[18]https://www.jigsaw.org/index.html#history
[19] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/11/the-reading-wars/376990/
[20] teachers educate parents
[21] https://www.marshfieldschools.org/domain/33; see also http://cojeel.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Vol1No7.pdf
[22] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Wisconsin_Act_10; see also https://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/news/2013/01/18/wisconsin-act-10-upheld-by-federal.html; see also https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2011/related/acts/10
[23]http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/may04/vol61/num08/What-is-a-Professional-Learning-Community%C2%A2.aspx; see also, http://www.allthingsplc.info/about; see also http://www.allthingsplc.info/blog/view/30/Does+Preparing+Students+for+Success+on+High-Stakes+Assessments+Interfere+With+Their+Learning+and+Rob+Teachers+of+the+Opportunity+to+Be+Creative+and+Innovative%3F
[24] https://www.congress.gov/114/plaws/publ95/PLAW-114publ95.pdf
[25]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/014971897990048X?via%3Dihub; see also, https://fordhaminstitute.org/ohio/commentary/trust-verify-real-lessons-campbells-law
[26]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain; see also https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45116/3
[27]https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.wasda.org/resource/resmgr/About_WASDA/WASDAHISTORY12.pdf
[29]https://hbr.org/2015/02/why-its-so-hard-to-figure-out-what-to-pay-top-talent
[31] https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/articles/ethics-values-and-corporate-governance/
[32] https://www.lawcha.org/century-teaching-organizing/
[33]https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/111/IV/70/4/mb/2
[34]https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/a-punishing-decade-for-school-funding
[35]http://www.theedadvocate.org/understanding-federal-funding-part-3-types-school-funding/
[37]FairTest fact sheet. [Taken from] http://www.fairtest.org/why-you-can-boycott-testing-without-fear
[38] https://standardizedtests.procon.org
[40] Educators Strike Big Blow to Overuse of Standardized Testing in 2017 http://neatoday.org/2018/01/04/educators-strike-big-blow-to-the-overuse-of-standardized-testing/
