Mothers against drunk testing

[phantom power]

I have a theory on why the school reform industry can’t quit pushing standardized testing. If your business plan includes the expansion of national chain charters and a lot of employee turn-over and federally-subsidied temp agencies and constant “cage-busting” churn, there’s no other way to evaluate a student, teacher or school than with a number. They don’t want parents to measure a school on anything other than a number because they’re not offering anything other than a number.

Everyone talks about the Atlanta scandal in terms of the cheaters, but I read the prosecutor’s report and I immediately imagined working in that environment or going to school there. No one trusted anyone else. It must have been a nightmare as a workplace, let alone as a school. The school reform industry is focusing on the cheaters, the few bad apples defense, but what was it like working or going to school there if one didn’t cheat? If people are wearing a god dammed wire at your workplace or school, “excellence” probably isn’t happening there, no matter the test scores.

This is a successful public school that has good numbers. They also have a team of people who work well together and have worked well together a long time. This school is as knitted-into the fabric of the town as a public instiution could possibly be. They have long and deep relationships both inside the school and in the larger community. They don’t spend tens of millions on advertising like the charter chains because they’re a truly public school, but if they did advertise they would have much, much more to sell to parents than a kid’s test scores going up or down.

The school reform industry focuses exclusively on test scores because that’s all they have. They aren’t selling local control and input or public schools as the backbone of a democratic society or a great school culture or long-term working relationships between teachers and among students and families and the rest of the people in a community.They can’t. It won’t work with their national chain privatization business model.

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2013/04/10/mothers-against-drunk-testing/

[Drale]

1. Wow Texas is doing something that benifits teachers and children?

Is this a hallucination? Were those Waffles this morning laced with something?