TV Testing

Got on TV again last night. For a private school teacher, I seem to get an inordinate amount of play on local cable: five appearances in the past two years. Chalk it up to being a squeaky wheel. Of course, the first four were just thinly disguised shill for my former employer. Last night was different.

I took my wife to an event called "The Real Trouble with Testing", sponsored by the Texas Observer and hosted by the activism non-profit 5604 Manor. The panel, led by Observer reporter Pat Michels, talked at length about the nefarious effects of high-stakes testing on the public schools and their budgets. It's a Goliath of a problem, since test-makers and educational publishers have such a loud voice in the legislature. Who is there to fight back against this huge corporate interest?

Granted, I've never worked in the public schools. But I went to public schools, and I know that if 45 out of my 180-day school year had been spent on test review, test prep, testing, and re-testing, I probably would have been unhappy.

Why all the testing? To generate data. Why generate data? To justify spending. And why this kind of spending? Because it takes faith in students to make good teachers, faith in teachers to make good principals, faith in principals to make good superintendants, faith in superintendants to make good school boards, faith in school boards to make good state agencies, and faith in state agencies to make a good federal education system. It's the kind of faith that takes a risk, and risks are bad for job security. Better to make decisions based on data, no matter how easily manipulated or misleading that data is.

So my pull-away quote will probably be something about all that. I also mentioned the only piece of data that really changes society: the drop-out rate. Can't wait to see what Pearson has in mind for that one.

The story should be on YNN next week as a part of a back-to-school series. The talented Jennifer Borget was putting it together but unsure what day it would air. 

-- MH