Nations like Finland are getting better results by de-emphasizing exams. Why are we doing the opposite?
When I heard the news last week that the Department of Education is aiming to subject 4-year-olds to high-stakes testing, all I could do was shake my head in disbelief and despondently mutter a slightly altered riff off "The Big Lebowski's" Walter Sobchak.
Four-year-olds, dude.
You don't have to be as dyspeptic as Walter to know this is madness. According to Stanford University's Linda Darling-Hammond, who headed President Obama's education transition team, though we already "test students in the United States more than any other nation," our students "perform well below those of other industrialized countries in math and science." Yet the Obama administration, backed by corporate foundations, is nonetheless intensifying testing at all levels, as if doing the same thing and expecting different results is innovative "reform" rather than what it's always been: insanity.
In light of this craziness, it's no wonder we're being out-educated by countries going in the opposite policy direction.
Though bobo evangelists like David Brooks insist -- without data, of course -- that reduced testing "leads to lethargy and perpetual mediocrity," Hammond notes that "nations like Finland and Korea -- top scorers on the Programme for International Student Assessment" have largely "eliminated the crowded testing schedules used decades ago when these nations were much lower-achieving."
Finland's story, recounted in the new documentary "The Finland Phenomenon," is particularly striking. According to Harvard's Tony Wagner, the country's modernization campaign in the 1970s included a "transforming of the preparation and selection of future teachers."
"What has happened since is that teaching has become the most highly esteemed profession [in Finland]," says Wagner, who narrates the film. "There is no domestic testing ... because they have created such a high level of professionalism, they can trust their teachers."
The inherent parallels between Finland and the United States make the former's lessons indisputably relevant to us. As Wagner says, Finland is a fellow industrialized country "rated among the highest in the world in innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity." And though Finland is more racially homogenous than America, Wagner points out that "15 percent of the population speaks a second language" -- meaning the country's schools face some of the same cross-cultural challenges as our schools.
That said, for all the similarities, Finland finds its comparative success in how it chooses to differ from us.
Where Finland rejects testing, nurtures teachers, and encourages its best and brightest to become educators, we fetishize testing, portray teachers as evil parasites, and financially encourage top students to become Wall Streeters.
Just as important, Finland's tax and social welfare system have made it an economically equal society, and its education quality doesn't vary across class lines. By contrast, America's low taxes and meager social safety net have made it the industrialized world's most stratified nation -- and our separate and unequal education system is better funded and better performing in rich neighborhoods, and grossly underfunded and therefore underperforming in poor areas.
This is the ugly secret that America's education "reformers" seek to hide.
As Joanne Barkan reports in Dissent magazine, data overwhelmingly show that "out-of-school factors" like poverty "count for twice as much as all in-school factors" in student achievement. But because economic inequality enriches wealthy titans like Wal-Mart's Walton family, and because those same titans fund education policy foundations and buy politicians, the national education debate avoids focusing on economics. Instead, it manufactures a narrative demonizing teachers and promoting testing as a panacea.
It's certainly a compelling fairy tale. Unfortunately for "reformers," Finland, Korea and other successes prove the story's dishonesty -- and too bad for America's kids that those successes are being willfully ignored.
Wednesday, Jul 6, 2011 11:30 ET Atlanta gripped by massive cheating scandal
Investigation reveals that malfeasance occurred at more than four-dozen area schools
By DORIE TURNER and SHANNON McCAFFREY, Associated Press
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal speaks at a news conference, as former Attorney General Mike Bowers and Dekalb County DA Bob Wilson, right, listen, on Tuesday.
Former Atlanta schools Superintendent Beverly Hall knew about cheating allegations on standardized tests but either ignored them or tried to hide them, according to a state investigation.
An 800-page report released Tuesday to The Associated Press by Gov. Nathan Deal's office through an open records request shows several educators reported cheating in their schools. But the report says Hall, who won the national Superintendent of the Year award in 2009, and other administrators ignored those reports and sometimes retaliated against the whistleblowers.
The yearlong investigation shows educators at nearly four dozen Atlanta elementary and middle schools cheated on standardized tests by helping students or changing the answers once exams were handed in.
The investigators also found a "culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation" in the school district over the cheating allegations, which led to educators lying about the cheating or destroying documents to cover it up, according to the report. School officials had "warnings" as early as 2005 that there was cheating on standardized tests, but those signals were ignored, according to the report.
At one elementary school, four educators gathered at a colleague's home in Douglas County one weekend to have a "changing party" using answer sheets provided by a school official, the report states.
Teachers who admitted to investigators they cheated said they were under immense pressure to raise test scores, the investigators wrote. One elementary school principal forced a teacher to crawl under a table during a faculty meeting because that teacher's test scores were low, according to the report.
"Dr. Hall and her administration emphasized test results and public praise to the exclusion of integrity and ethics," the report states. "Dr. Hall either knew or should have known cheating and other misconduct was occurring in the APS system."
Hall's attorney, Richard Deane, denied the report's allegations.
"Dr. Hall steadfastly denies that she, her staff, or the vast majority of APS teaching and administrative professionals knew or should have known of any allegedly widespread cheating," Deane wrote in a statement. "She further denies any other allegations of knowing and deliberate wrongdoing on her part or on the part of her senior staff, whether during the course of the investigation or before the investigation began."
The results of the investigation are being forwarded to prosecutors, and many of the cases could lead to criminal charges, Gov. Deal said.
"Nothing is more important to the future of our state than ensuring that today's students receive a first class education and integrity in testing is a necessary piece of that equation," Deal said. "When educators have failed to uphold the public trust and students are harmed in the process, there will be consequences."
Deal declined to answer questions about Hall or her role in the cheating scandal. He said the investigation is being forwarded to Fulton, DeKalb and Douglas county prosecutors for possible criminal charges.
All educators in the report also will be referred to the state Professional Standards Commission, which licenses teachers in Georgia, to determine whether they should have their licenses suspended or revoked, Deal said. The district has 6,000 employees, half of them teachers.
Interim Atlanta schools superintendent Erroll Davis said in a news conference later Tuesday that those responsible for the cheating will "not be put in front of children again." Davis took over the 50,000-student district Friday after Hall retired June 30.
He said he had not yet seen a full copy of the investigators' report.
"It's clear this is to involve the removal in a very short period of time of those who have created or helped created or participated in or should have halted this scandal," Davis said.
Atlanta school board chairwoman Brenda Muhammad said she was "devastated" by the results of the probe.
"I am very upset, very angry," she said. "Many of our children have been cheated, and that, I think, is the most sinful thing that we can do to our children because they look to us as adults. This board is committed to making sure that this never, ever, ever happens again."
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed called the report "a dark day" for the city's schools, where more than three-fourths of the children are poor.
"There is no question that a complete failure of leadership in the Atlanta Public School system hurt thousands of children who were promoted to the next grade without meeting basic academic standards," Reed said in a statement.
The investigation was done by former state attorney general Michael Bowers, former DeKalb County district attorney Robert Wilson and former Atlanta police detective Richard Hyde. They conducted 2,100 interviews and reviewed more than 800,000 documents.
A number of other urban school districts and states have been caught up in cheating scandals in the last several years, including Baltimore and Houston, and Texas, Michigan and Florida.
Problems have mounted, some experts say, as teachers and school administrators -- particularly those in low-income districts -- bow to the pressure of the federal No Child Left Behind requirements and see cheating as the only way to avoid sanctions. Under the law, failing schools must offer extra tutoring, allow parents to transfer their children to higher performing schools and fire teachers and administrators who don't pass muster.
For parents like Shawnna Hayes-Tavares, who has three children in Atlanta schools, the results of the state investigation are disheartening. She said her son attended one of the suspect schools, and his test scores dropped dramatically when he transferred to another school, suggesting his earlier scores had been inflated.
"We are appalled," Hayes-Tavares said about the state report. "It's criminal."
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