The Politics of Accountability

Throughout the conservative/liberal debate on education culture-driven differences that drive the ideologies of American politics as “an accepted framework” that defines “the primary purpose of schooling” exists. The ability for the American student to succeed is based in economically driven values perpetuated by both national and global competition (Spring, 2011). The model for high-stakes testing and its position in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was based in mythical results of then-Texas Governor George H. W. Bush’s “Texas (Houston) Miracle” campaign as the presidential “Education Candidate” of 2000. When he became president, Bush “brought with him former Houston Superintendent of Education Rod Paige to be Secretary of Education. He also brought the "Texas miracle" — [who] supposedly increased test scores attributed to Texas' strict accountability system,” but  “before the end of Bush's first term, Paige would leave in disgrace, thanks to revelations of cooked scores, forced-out students, and other barely legal means of inflating test results” (Brown, Gutstein & Lipman, Spring 2009). Eight years after its implementation, CBS reporter Dan Rather uncovered a story of lies as the failure of the model was revealed by a Houston assistant principal (Leung, 2011). At the 2011 annual American Association of School Administrators (AASA) conference, educational historian and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education under George H. W. Bush, Diane Ravitch, spoke of the punitive repercussions caused by a law and its mandates based on this myth. She stated that “we have a federal law punishing teachers, closing schools, based on a myth, to put it politely” (Ravitch, 2011).

I find it extremely troublesome that history repeated itself as Arne Duncan, the former Chicagoan “chief executive officer” was brought onboard as Secretary of Education under Barack Obama. As a private sector businessman, Duncan was the CEO of the Chicago school system and brought to his new position a legacy of his many accomplishments in bridging achievement gaps and providing high quality education to every child. However, as Brown, Gutstein, and Lipman (2009) posit:

the biggest threat to finally achieving equitable and quality education in Chicago's low-income African American and Latino/a schools is not the individual who carries out the policy but a system of mayoral control and corporate power that locks out democracy. The impact of those policies includes thousands of children displaced by school closings, spiked violence as they transferred to other schools, and the deterioration of public education in many neighborhoods into a crisis situation.

Connections that connect

Sophocles, Orwell, Shakespeare, Beowulf (not an author), Bradbury, Lowry, Chaucer, Angelou, Dickenson, Harper Lee, Emerson, Anaya, anything in the Bible which is only taught when allusions are present, the connects to Homer and mythology as well as scientific discoveries, great painters, the pyramids, Illuminati, mathematic equations, my life.

Critical thinking includes me?

References

Brown, J., Gutstein, E., & Lipman, P. (2009). Arne Duncan and the Chicago success story: Myth or reality. Rethinking Schools, 23(3). Retrieved from http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/23_03/arne233.shtml

Ravitch, D. (February 23, 2011). Diane Ravitch at NCE 2011 part 1 [Online video]. AASAVideoCenter. Retrieved, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvstR3Bkh4c

Spring, J. (2011). The politics of American education. New York, NY: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Critical Thought and Accountability: A 2011 Retrospect

At the annual conference for the National Council for Social Studies, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stated that “the need for a useful, fair and rigorous system of accountability remains as urgent today as it ever was” (December 2, 2011). In a July 18^th, 2011 speech, President Barack Obama proclaimed that “A world-class education is the single most important factor in determining not just whether our kids can compete for the best jobs but whether America can out-compete countries around the world” (whitehouse.gov).

Accountability can be used as battering ram when it becomes a means of reward and punishment for all involved in the educational structure of governance. The result is a stagnation of assessment ideology as standardized mandates become the foundation for design. Referencing Free School educator Chris Mercogliano, Miller (2000) states that modern schooling, “is driven by fear – fear that the nation’s economy is not keeping up with competition, fear that children are not learning what we think they should know, fear on the part of the parents that their children will not succeed in school or careers” (p. 133). This sentiment was furthered by a National Research Council panel who perceived a danger to both teaching and learning. “The panel said attaching incentives or punishments (“high stakes”) to test scores pushes teachers to focus on the material that is tested, and leads them to leave out material or entire subjects that are not tested” (Jehlen, July 18, 2011).

Organizations such as the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) posit that when accountability becomes a vehicle for high-stakes assessments, the individual can become lost as a statistic for data. One of AFT’s criteria to insure that accountability is not confined to a single-test mentality states that “high-stakes decisions for students should be reinforced and corroborated by multiple indicators (e.g., teacher judgment, teacher-generated assessments and observations, grades, performance-based tasks, exhibitions/portfolios of student work)” (aft.org). 

The reality is that this reinforcement is influenced by companies such as Pearson Longman that not only publishes what is read, but provides testing materials and centers to over 165 countries throughout the world (pearsonvue.com) controlling what and how assessments manifest. Their allegiance with Educational Testing Service (ETS) includes materials that teach and assess English language skills, align the teaching of knowledge to Common Core Standards, and provide the means to “achieve valid and efficient measurement of abilities using constructed-response items” (ets.org). ETS also collaborates with the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) that provides analysis for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often referred to as “the Nation’s Report Card” (ets.org/k12/naep).

Pearsonification

Taking a unique student and quantifying with a common outcome

That has travelled through the Bill and Melinda Gates

Of technological tools

That prepare the American student

To critically think

Within the box of acceptable response

That is scanned

So that a score can cut those

Who do not belong

After 13 years

Dewey or Dewey not remember the Freire way of what education is all about?

References

Characteristics of fair and sound accountability (2011). In aft: A union of professionals.  http://www.aft.org/issues/standards/account/character-acct.cfm

Duncan, A. (2011, December 2). A well-rounded curriculum in the age of accountability:       Remarks at National Council for Social Studies annual conference. 

In Ed.gov: U.S. Department of Education. http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/well-rounded-curriculum-age-accountability

E. Mechaber.  (2011, July 18). Staying Competitive Through Education: The Presidentand American Business Leaders Announce New Commitments (Web logcomment).  http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/07/18/staying-competitive-through-education-president-and-american-business-leaders-announ

Jehlen, A. (2011, July 18). National Research Council gives high-stakes testing an F. In  neatoday: Today's news from the National Education Association.  http://neatoday.org/2011/07/18/national-research-council-gives-high-stakes-testing-an-f/

K-12 education (2011). In ETS: Listening, learning, leading.  http://www.ets.org/k12/naep

Miller, R. (2000). Caring for new life: Essays on holistic education (Vol. 1). Brandon, VT: Foundation for Educational Renewal.

Test Taker Services (2011). In Pearson: Pearson Vue. 

http://www.pearsonvue.com/programs/

 

Whose Education is it, Anyway?

After twenty years of teaching, I am questioning my meaning. Welcome. The integration of art, creativity, individuality, and diverse perceptions intertwine to design my philosophy of education, which at any moment in time, influenced by student/teacher interactions, can change. But now I, my students, and fellow educators are facing an antagonist that steals an individual's voice and replaces it with a standardized definition of critical thought. Hidden behind a veil of accountability, this disguised pedagogical manipulator of education penetrates lesson plans, once rich in creativity, that defines me, as a teacher.

Whose education is it anyway?

What does “social justice” really mean

When students and teachers are ordered

And oppressed by a ruler that is straight edged

So that the compass of thoughts, ideas, insights

Possesses the ability to embrace individual potential

Of both students and teachers

Slam

 CCSS, PARCC, SBA, EOC

Slam back

The power of the teacher

Who can face all obstacles

With knowledge and understanding and reason and

The power of TEACHERABILITY

Super Slam

Because a teacher knows and shows and believes

And doesn’t use obstacles as a reason for failure

To give students convenient “F’s” or “A’s”

Or some grade that is decided by what and whom in between or “your own bias”

Or, whatever forbid, GOOD TEST SCORES

Pointing fingers

What was I saying about social justice and oppression?

Who owns the slam?