Babes in the Woods: The Wanderings of the National Reading Panel

By Joanne Yatvin

When they heard that I had been appointed to the National Reading Panel (NRP), my friends predicted, “They’ll eat you alive.” But it was never like that. When we panelists began our journey to discover what “research says about the best methods for teaching children to read,” we were all searchers after truth, each knowledgeable and respected in his or her professional domain and each dedicated to working together toward our joint goal. Along the trail, pressured by isolation, time limits, lack of support, and the political aims of others, we lost our way — and our integrity.1

To begin with, Congress, which had commissioned our journey, was naive to believe that a panel of 15 people, all employed full time elsewhere and working without a support staff, could in six months’ time sift through a mountain of research studies and draw from them conclusions about the best ways of teaching reading. And the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), designated as our guide and provisioner on the journey, was irresponsible both in advising Congress that the task could be done in that way and in selecting the wrong combination of people to do it.

In late 1997 Congress passed legislation authorizing the “Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), in consultation with the Secretary of Education,” to select the members of the panel from more than 300 nominations by individuals and organizations involved in reading education. The bill specified that the panel was to be made up of “15 individuals, who are not officers or employees of the Federal Government and include leading scientists in reading research, representatives of colleges of education, reading teachers, education administrators, and parents.”

NICHD stretched that definition to its limits by appointing 12 university professors. Eight of them were reading researchers, two were administrators without backgrounds in reading or teacher education, one was a teacher educator, and one was a medical doctor. Other categories were represented by one parent, one elementary school principal, and one middle school language arts teacher.2

There was no reading teacher in the sense I believe Congress intended. When, shortly after the initial panel meeting, one of the university researchers resigned, I suggested that it made sense to replace him with a primary-level teacher of reading. A month later, at our second meeting, the panel chair announced that,

“after considerable discussion, we concluded that at this stage in the game we might just as well not replace him.3”

The panel was not told who the “we” were. And since the work of the panel had scarcely begun, the explanation offered was scarcely credible. Why wouldn’t NICHD officials want someone on the panel who actually taught young children how to read?

The appointment of the medical doctor was also troubling. Although, technically, she was a reading researcher who worked in the controversial area of brain activity in reading, she had no knowledge or experience in reading instruction. What really made her an inappropriate choice, however, was her close professional association with NICHD. In a videotape later produced under the direction of NICHD, this doctor appears five times, hailing the breakthrough accomplishments of the panel, while other members who were far more involved in the panel’s research appear once or not at all.

At the first meeting of the panel in April 1998, another troubling fact about NICHD’s appointments became apparent.

All the scientist members held the same general view of the reading process. With no powerful voices from other philosophical camps on the panel, it was easy for this majority to believe that theirs was the only legitimate view.

Without debate, the panel accepted as the basis for its investigations a model composed of a three-part hierarchy: decoding, fluency, and comprehension. Theoretically, the components of the model are both discrete and sequential. This skills model posits that learners begin to read by separating out the individual sounds of language and matching them to written letters and combinations of letters.

Learners then move on to decoding words and stringing them together into sentences. Since most words in grade appropriate texts are already in learners’ spoken vocabularies, understanding emerges from correct pronunciation. For sentences to be understood, rapid, conversational verbalization is required; this is called fluency.

The understanding of texts was seen to depend on building a larger vocabulary and using strategies to uncover ideas and the structures that bind them together in written discourse. Despite minor differences of opinion that surfaced in discussion from time to time, this hierarchy-of-skills model was always the official view of the panel.

For scientists to take such a quick and unequivocal stance was disturbing, since there are two other models of reading that currently claim legitimacy, each with numerous adherents. In one of them, a holistic or constructivist view, readers must do many things at once, right from the beginning. They identify words by visual memory, match sounds to letters, pull word meanings from context, understand sentences as complex structures, figure out how the whole system of written language works, obtain information about content, and predict both the words and the content to come. Of course, the texts young learners attempt to read are short and simple in the beginning and grow more challenging as their facility grows.

The other dominant model among conservative thinkers and in the public mind is a simple decoding model. It posits that learners begin in the same way as in the skills model— by separating oral language into sounds and matching those sounds to written letters. With increasing mastery of this one skill, learners can read anything.

Understanding the meaning of what one reads and acquiring new words and ideas are seen as separate from learning to read. These processes are facilitated by the teaching of school subject matter, by life experiences, and by reading more advanced material.

The decision to use only one model for all its investigations was critical in sending the NRP down a particular path in its journey. It excluded any lines of research that were not part of this model, among them how children’s knowledge of oral language, literature and its conventions, and the world apart from print affects their ability to learn to read. It also excluded any investigation of the interdependence between reading and writing and of the effects of the types, quality, or amounts of material children read.4

Contrary to interpretations made by many politicians, members of the press, and ordinary citizens, the NRP report does not — and cannot — repudiate instructional practices that make use of any of these components because the research studies on them were never examined.

Despite the choice of a single research path, a large number and a wide range of topics were proposed and discussed by panel members at our second meeting in July 1998. Several of those topics were in fact outside the boundaries of the accepted skills model — such as writing and literature — but the panel members were then in an optimistic frame of mind, thinking that those topics could be worked into the narrow structure we had decided upon. At that time, we were roaming free.

By October of that year, as the reality of the limits of our time and energy and the vastness of the body of research on reading were beginning to sink in, the panel created a list of 32 relevant topics and voted to investigate 13 of them, including oral language, home influences, print awareness, instructional materials, and assessment instruments.

This occasion, incidentally, was the only time that the panel took a formal vote on anything. Our usual manner of making decisions was to talk an issue to death until the chair decided that one position was more solid than others. From my perspective, it appeared that he was more favorably disposed toward the contributions of the scientists than those of other panel members. I began to realize who was leading this expedition.

A second critical decision, urged by NICHD at the first panel meeting and later accepted by the panel and codified in a lengthy and detailed methodology, was that only experimental and quasi-experimental studies would be included in the review of research. NICHD’s premise was that a great deal of published research is of poor quality.

It exhorted the panel to set higher standards, comparable to those used in medical research. No one discussed the fact that the type of medical research referred to is applied to the treatment of disease or deficiency, not to the processes of normal, healthy development, which is what learning to read is for most children.

Moreover, medical research differs in two important ways from educational research: experimental subjects are randomly selected from homogeneous populations, and most treatments are given under a “double-blind” protocol, in which neither the subjects nor the experimenters know who is getting the treatment and who is getting a placebo. Such conditions are impossible to re-create in educational settings.

Two nondecisions by the NRP are also worth mentioning: not to use a compass and not to consult knowledgeable guides. Despite several discussions about formulating our own definition of reading, we never did so. And reviewed by outside practitioners as well as by researchers before the panel accepted them, the panel never said yes or no. In the end, the reports were submitted only to other researchers. With regard to definitions, although reading has been defined often and well in the past, it was important for the NRP to make clear its own use of the term.

In the various subcommittee reports, “reading” is used to represent many different kinds of operations, from accurate pronunciation of nonsense words to a thorough understanding of a written text.

When a subcommittee report asserts that a particular instructional technique “improves children’s reading,” the public deserves to know whether the authors mean word calling, speed, smoothness, literal comprehension, or the ability to assimilate a subtle and complex set of ideas.

With regard to review by practitioners, it was also important to get reactions from teachers, who are at the heart of the instructional process.

One component of the charge from Congress to the NRP was that it determine “the readiness for application in the classroom of the results of this research.” How could a group that included only one classroom teacher make such a determination without consulting a number of teachers?

Once the panel began digging into research studies in the summer of 1998, the members realized that, even with a limited number of topics and strict selection criteria in place, the tasks of analysis and synthesis were overwhelming.

Clearly, more time was needed. Late in the fall, as the original deadline approached, NICHD asked for and received a year’s extension from Congress. But even that was far from enough time. Three years might have allowed the panel to investigate thoroughly all the topics it had originally identified.

The huge volume of work to be done brought to light another adverse pressure on the panel. Outside of a research librarian who would do electronic searches on request from panel members, NICHD supplied no support staff. Although the organization was willing to pay assistants employed by panel members to screen, analyze, and code the relevant studies, enough hands were simply not available. The only members who had assistants qualified to do such work were the university researchers. And most of their assistants were graduate students, already deeply immersed in their own research projects and reluctant to take on a new line of inquiry that would not benefit them directly.

As time wound down, the effects of insufficient time and support were all too apparent. In October 1999, with a January 31 deadline looming, investigations of many of the priority topics identified by the panel a year earlier had not even begun. One of those topics was phonics, clearly the one of most interest to educational decision makers and to the public. Although the panel felt that such a study should be done, the alphabetics subcommittee, which had not quite finished its review of phonemic awareness, could not take it on at this late date. And so, contrary to the guidelines specified by NICHD at the outset, an outside researcher who had not shared in the panel’s journey was commissioned to do the review.

In the end, only 428 studies were included in the NRP subcommittee reports. Thousands of studies were rejected without analysis because their titles, publishing circumstances, or abstracts revealed that they did not meet the panel’s criteria. Since the release of the report, outside reading experts have charged that the panel missed many qualified studies. I cannot say if that charge is true, but it certainly seems possible that the shortage of time and support staff could have led to errors of omission.

At the October 1999 meeting, subcommittee chairs summarized their findings before the whole panel for the first time. Although there was general satisfaction with the content of the reports presented, the panel members were worried. There was no time to give the reports careful and critical scrutiny. In fact, even then, not all the reports were in finished, written form. Moreover, individual members were more interested in finishing their own reports than in scrutinizing the work of others. In that respect, we had reached a point where it was “every man for himself.”

Panel members were also dismayed to realize that only eight topics had been covered. Somehow, each subcommittee thought — perhaps hoped — that the others were covering more ground. It also became apparent that different subcommittees had used different approaches to their topics. Although the agreed-upon plan had been for all subcommittees to use common procedures for search, selection, analysis, and reporting, this turned out to be impossible for most of the topics. Often there were too few studies, or the studies were too diverse to do the metaanalyses originally intended.

Most discussion at that October meeting focused on how to present these facts honestly and clearly to prospective audiences. Ultimately, the panel decided to explain its difficulties in the full report in the belief that the various audiences for the report would understand and respect the panel’s decisions. It was at this meeting that I formed the intention of submitting a “minority report.” Shortly thereafter, I informed the panel chair in writing and sent a copy to the director of NICHD. I felt that we had done an incomplete, flawed, and narrowly focused job and that our explanations would not make up for it, even if the public read them, which was unlikely, given the fact that they would be buried in a more than 500-page report. Receiving no response to my letter, I drafted a minority report expressing my dissatisfaction with our work and submitted it to the panel.

For the most part, the panel members received my report without comment, although the chair and the executive director tried to persuade me that my points could be incorporated into the body of the full report.5 Right up to the deadline for publication, I was ready to withdraw my report if I could be shown that my concerns were met in some other way.

The NRP’s last bad decision was to call its report finished and submit it for publication. Members convinced themselves that, because they had worked hard under adverse conditions, the report was satisfactory. Most of the scientists also seemed to believe that the standards they had set and the methodology they had developed were accomplishments important enough to compensate for the shortcomings in their work.

To justify themselves, they added a special section titled “Next Steps” that explained the small number of topics investigated and suggested areas for future investigation. Another special section called “Reflections” was also added to summarize and emphasize the panel’s accomplishments. These last-ditch efforts were to no avail. The panel’s claim to scientific objectivity and comprehensiveness was lost.

Still, the panel’s trials were not over. The situation worsened when the phonics report was not finished by the January 31 deadline. NICHD officials, who wanted it badly, gave that subcommittee more time without informing the other subcommittees of this special dispensation. The phonics report in its completed form was not seen, even by the whole subcommittee, of which I was a member, until February 25, four days before the full report was to go to press.

By that time, not even all the small technical errors could be corrected, much less the logical contradictions and imprecise language. Although a few changes were made before time ran out, most of the report was submitted “as is.”

Thus the phonics report became part of the full report of the NRP uncorrected, undeliberated, and unapproved. For me, that was the last straw, and I informed my fellow panel members that I wanted my minority report to be included. As I feared, since April 2000, when the report of the National Reading Panel was released, it has been carelessly read and misinterpreted on a grand scale.

Many journalists, politicians, and spokespersons for special interests have declared, for example, that 100,000 studies were analyzed by the panel and that we now know all we need to know about teaching reading. Government agencies at all levels are calling for changes in school instruction and teacher education derived from the “science” of the NRP report.

NICHD has done its part to misinform the public by disseminating a summary booklet and the aforementioned video, which, in addition to being inaccurate about the actual findings, tout the panel’s work in a manner more akin to commercial advertising than to scientific reporting.

Neither includes any mention of a minority report. I said above that the NRP’s last bad decision was to publish its findings as if they were complete and definitive. Unfortunately, that has proved to be untrue. Individually, members of the panel have made the decision not to speak out against the misrepresentations and misinterpretations of their work. A few have even jumped on the NICHD bandwagon for reasons I can only imagine. Most have simply remained silent.

Although NICHD will not provide all-expenses-paid trips for panel members who might say anything critical— or even altogether accurate — about the NRP report, those who wish to speak out are not without access to professional and public audiences.6 Why not write letters to editors, speak at professional conferences, seek meetings with legislators? Perhaps the silent ones have convinced themselves that the NRP report really is all that NICHD claims it to be or that, whatever its flaws, it is doing more good than ill.

Unquestionably, it would be difficult for them to admit that the panel lost its bearings and let guides who had other goals lead it in the wrong direction. Or perhaps they have more selfish reasons. As one researcher on the panel told me in private conversation, “I agree with you on many points, but I depend on NICHD for funding my research.”
-----------------------------
1. I apologize to readers if my chronology of events contains minor errors. During the time I was writing the article, officials at NICHD prevented me from gaining access to the panel’s archives, which previously had been open to all panel members and which were reopened briefly after the article was submitted to the Kappan.

2. Although I know I was nominated by the executive board of the International Reading Association, I have no idea how my name rose to the top of the list. At the time of my nomination I was a school district superintendent, but before the panel convened, my district merged with a larger one, and I became principal of two schools. I can only speculate that NICHD wanted someone with the title of superintendent and was not aware that my position had changed.

3. NRP Proceedings, 24 July 1998.

4. The only exception was an investigation of one aspect of the amount of student reading: nonstructured, nonsupervised, silent reading.

5. The executive director, an independent contractor, was hired by NICHD to guide the technical work of the NRP. His main function at this time was to synthesize the various subcommittee reports into a coherent whole.

6. NICHD has refused to pay any of my expenses for speaking at professional conferences. At one conference where another panel member and I took part in the same presentation, NICHD paid his expenses, but not mine.
-----------------------
Joanne Yatvin is an adjunct professor at Portland State Univeristy

If Ten Percent Refuse the Test it's Over!

This was written by Pennsylvania parent Michele Gray. Be sure to check out her blog .

If we can just help parents overcome their fear of saying No to testing, their fear of what will happen if their school doesn't make AYP, we can end this all now. Only 10% of parents and/or kids have to decline testing and it's over. The 10% isn't some mystical 100-monkeys number.

According to psychometricians, if the tests fail to test the same percentage each year, all the stats are invalid. That's why there is extreme pressure on schools to test 100% and why there is the threat of failing if the percentage for the whole school OR for any measurable subgroup falls below 95%. In fact, for small rural schools, their scores are statistically meaningless anyway, but they still have to take the test, or else we could all sue under the equal protection clause.

[U.S. Education Secretary] Arne Duncan said earlier this week that the Dept of Ed predicts 82% of schools will fail this year no matter what we do. So why not force the schools to fail because parents and kids say NO to testing rather than putting the burden and the blame on kids with special needs, living in poverty, struggling with English, and so on. That's just wrong. In fact, it's evil.

I also highly recommend the book "Making the Grades" by Todd Farley. It's been recommend by Alfie Kohn and Jonathan Kozol. It's very readable, very funny and after reading it no parent in their right mind will ever let their child be subjected to these tests ever again.

It's insane that we are allowing our children to be subjected to a full two weeks or more of these pointless tests that only enrich the private for-profit testing industry. I remember taking the SATs or GREs took a couple of hours on a Saturday morning, back when it was just ETS [Educational Testing Services]. Now it's multi-national companies like Pearson (in which Qaddafi is major investor; Qadaffi and NCLB Testing ) or McGraw-Hill or DRC that are draining millions of education dollars into the pockets of CEOs while our kids tests are scored by temps. [Read: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Test Scorer ] Farley recently sent this to me:

"Last summer, before she lost her job, [D.C. Chancellor of schools, Michelle] Rhee was arguing for even MORE standardized tests in the DC schools. As a parent, she said, she "wanted to know how her kids are doing...." To me, that is the fundamental problem with standardized testing: In my opinion, we don't know anything about the kids at all. We score their open-ended responses in sweatshop like conditions, bored out of our skulls, item by item. We never, in other words, get a feel for a whole human being, just random words on a page.

The multiple choice questions are either too simplistic or pretend they are too complex, as if you could get some understanding of a child's understanding about literary characterization (or whatever) in multiple choice format. As far as I'm concerned this whole thing is a great deal for big business, but that's it.

If Michelle Rhee really wanted to know "how her kids are doing," all she needs do is ask the friggin' human being standing at the front of their classroom, the person who hears her kids' answers (and thought processes) every day, who knows how hard those kids work or how they play together, etc etc."

Michele also has a blog called: Leaving Behind the PSSA Here's an excerpt from a recent letter to Michael Hardy,  superintendent of State College Area School District.

"We are told that private for-profit companies can do a better job than you and others who are committed to public education because of the free market. The free market resulted in scandals ranging from Halliburton and Blackwater in Iraq, to the Enron debacle, to the recent outrage in our own backyard with private for-profit prisons for kids.

When our tax dollars are involved, greed and corruption run rampant in the “free market.” Please think about your role in this and if there is anything you can do to take a stand against the Big Lie that is NCLB and high-stakes standardized testing which threatens the future of the kids you serve."

Visit her Facebook page: NCLB Testing: Stop the Madness Know the Truth

Rhee's wrong about what's best for kids.

Is Richard Whitmire, who wrote a book about the former Chancellor of District of Columbia public schools, worried he may not sell enough books? In "What Is Behind the Discrediting of Michelle Rhee?" in Education Week he writes:

"While researching my book, The Bee Eater, I often shook my head in amazement after reading some of the online comments posted after a Washington Post story about Rhee. Wow, I would say to myself, some people really, really dislike her.

It’s not that Rhee didn’t, and still does, have many supporters. You don’t launch a new organization like StudentsFirst and declare a one-year goal of enlisting one million members and raising $1 billion without having more than a few backers.

Rhee’s track record in Washington is ripe with data, both local and national. Why not judge her on that and her actual reforms, or her lengthy record building the New Teacher Project?"

My comment:

As my daughter says, even if you put a child in a box he or she will learn something. The issue is that test scores do not say much about any student's true ability or potential. If you teach kids with a narrowed, basic skills curriculum they will learn basic skills, but not much beyond.
If you teach kids reading by means of a rigid script or in a lock-step curriculum, the kids will not be able to stretch their minds beyond the script or the facts taught.

If you do not allow children in kindergarten to play and socialize, those kids will not function well enough in 21st Century jobs because they'll lack imagination (needed to come up with innovations), and the skills to work in teams.

As long as powerful corporations and billionaires have influence over education as is now the case, we can never have quality education. Business is about "the bottom line", about turning schools around for profit, about selling ever "new" curriculum to districts.

Corporations base decisions on reducing costs which often leads to throw-away, shoddy products. In education it will lead to schools that teach basic "skills" and "knowledge", content that can be measured on the high-stakes tests,instead of a rich, quality curriculum that stretches student potential and develops interest in life-long learning.

As Edward Luttwak remarks in his book, "Turbo-Capitalism; Winners and Losers in the Global Economy"

"Corporations are not moral entities. They exist to make a profit"

Textbook and test manufacturing profits for McGraw-Hill soared from 50 million dollars in 2002 when NCLB was just enacted, to 300 million dollars by 2009. I'm sure it is more now.

Read this article by Joanne Barkan to understand the far reaching consequences of business involvement, Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools.

Well-paying jobs will be few!

If only people, especially those in business, including students majoring in business, would read books like “Turbo-Capitalism: Winners and Losers in the Global Economy” by Edward Luttwak, they would realize that only a small number of all the envisioned “proficient” students” will ultimately find a slot away from the base of the pyramid that is capitalism!

Well-paying high-tech jobs requiring advanced math and science will be few. Yet, Bill Gates and others believe it necessary that kids are pushed in that direction whether it is their area of strength, or love, or not!
Why do we even believe this hype, when according to BBC World News corporate America is already investing money in research and development labs in China, therewith supporting the graduates over there instead of here? See China's Drive to Promote Invention.

"..multinational firms are now betting that the long-term future of innovation may lie in China. Hundreds of companies have opened research centres in Beijing and Shanghai.

Intel has its own compound in a skyscraper in Beijing, where dozens of young researchers doodle on notepads or write incomprehensible programmes onto their computer screens.

Intel's strategy is simple - sign up the best young brains in China and then get them to have a go at some mind-bending problems, such as face processing imaging, machinery application on video retrieval and ultra-mobile devices."

It’s not because there are no smart graduates here as we are supposed to believe. It’s because investing in Chinese graduates and labs is cheaper! Having more science and math majors here is not going to change that. 

Luttwak writes “Corporations are not moral entities. They exist to earn profits.” Indeed! They are opportunists, lacking allegiance to their own country, fellow citizens and even their own employees which they easily lay off under the guise of “restructuring.” At a later time they rehire, but at lower wages and offering fewer benefits!

Clearly corporations will employ any strategy that promises profit, including outsourcing which has nothing to do with the talent pool stateside, but with savings.

Writes Luttwak: “ ... even at the height of the boom in 1997, there was still an oversupply of software engineers in general, so much so that employers could pick and choose among job applicants, specifically picking the young who cost less, while rejecting mid-career applicants - not something they could afford to do if there were a shortage.”

As an example, since 1997 Microsoft has only hired 2% of all software writing applicants! The other dozen or so smaller software companies hire even fewer which leaves more than 70% of qualified people without a job of their choice! That’s what “business” hopes No Child Left Behind will “produce” — an oversupply of qualified human resources for any field in which large profits can be made to drive down wages and generate more profit. And profit for whom? For the CEOs and the stockholders!

Grading Parents?

Florida state Rep. Kelli Stargel, a mother of five and a Republican who sits on several education committees, came up with the idea of grading parents on their involvement in their children's education. These are the three criteria:

»A child should be at school on time, should be prepared to learn after a good night's sleep and should have eaten a meal.

»A child should have the homework done and be prepared for tests.

»There should be regular communication between the parent and teacher.

I have no issue with the third one, except it should be the teacher who initiates most of the contact. Unfortunately teachers are short on time, especially these days with the focus on numerous assessments they do on students.

I totally disagree with the second one. Studies show that homework in elementary grades have no noticeable positive effect on learning, so why make a child's life miserable with forcing him/her to do homework?

Alfie Kohn says:

"More homework is being piled on children despite the absence of its value. Over the last quarter-century the burden has increased most for the youngest children, for whom the evidence of positive effects isn’t just dubious; it’s nonexistent." - See Rethinking Homework

Worse is to prepare him/her in or out of school for the tests! At a CSAP presentation at a local school a teacher advised parents to time their children when they do their homework or chores, so as to prepare them for the timed standardized tests. Why is there a time limit at all on tests for such young children? Do they know less if they take a bit more time to show what they know?

And what about the first one? How can that be demanded of parents who are under the stress of living in poverty, who perhaps are dealing with domestic violence, and substance addiction?

Most parents who have the capability (read: financial security, and savviness about optimum child development and how to nurture that) to care about their children's education, are already involved in their children's education.

And, being an involved parent is still no guarantee that the child will be successful in school as the legislator believes. School has to be willing to make adaptations for a child's learning needs and that is not happening under the demands of No Child Left Behind, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act which will soon get another catchy, sound good name when it is reauthorized sometime this spring or summer.

Let's put a stop to its focus on standardized testing and common, national standards. Let's help stretch students' minds and talents instead.

Take a stand. Stay informed. Join Uniting 4 Kids, the national organization founded in Denver and which will officially launch on February 19.


And remember:

"Activism doesn't give up, activism doesn't fall silent. Activism doesn't rely on the opiate of hope" ~ John Pilger

Students are just Corporate Workers in Development.

On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 Rog Lucido wrote:

In 2004,after 38 years of teaching physics and mathematics, I retired from active teaching to do research and write a book about the deleterious effects of high-stakes testing on students, teachers and schools, Educational Genocide-A Plague on our Children.

I distributed free copies of my book to union leaders, state and national legislators, governors, business leaders and other educational influentials. I along with other teachers, parents, and college professors here in Fresno began a group we called Educators and Parents Against Testing Abuse-EPATA.

We gave talks, presentations, workshops and cosponsored the Chavez Education conference for seven years. I took on the responsibility to coordinate the Assessment Reform Network in the San Joaquin Valley. I was part of the ARN-I and EPATA list serves.

I did all of this to help educators, parents and decision makers see more clearly the effects the current high-stakes testing policies and practices were having on education.

I thought that if all stakeholders had the evidence of what was happening to students, their teachers and schools that they might have an ‘aha’ experience and leave the dark side of using fear, threats and punishments to promote their educational agenda of mean accountability. Their plan was to disregard the professionalism of teachers and create a system of incessant monitoring, pacing charts, and scripted lessons with a prescribed inflexible curriculum. It attempted to sanitize learning to a set of discrete inputs followed by tested outputs in the same mold of manufacturing a toaster.

Little by little I began to see that this was just the tip of the iceberg. These manifestations revealed the core drive. It was that those with power and money want to usurp the freedom of education in the public domain and confine it to the corporate mindset of profit and control.

"Like the many advertisements for private goods and services, those who want to commandeer American education seek to convince an unsuspecting public that business practices employed in education are in the best interest of all students-who after all are just corporate workers in development. This is their central belief."

Contrast this to those of us who hold that students have unique hopes, desires and dreams that do not want to be bound by the artificial structures and limitations of becoming a worker bee. Education should be at the service of students not at the service of the corporate power brokers and those who support that mentality. Students’ teachers along with their parents are among those who give meaning to their world. They mediate all possibilities to enrich students’ lives. Teacher professionalism flows from our care and concern for individual students. We thrive on their successes. Life long learning for them is our greatest hope. This is our central belief.

I no longer believe that discourse with logical arguments, research studies and ‘proof’ about maximizing student learning and best practices for teachers have any significant effect on those who support the corporate mindset for education. There comes a point where reasoning and evidence have little sway in changing the course of events that are progressively worsening. While ongoing dialogue should not be abandoned, I no longer have confidence that it will effect the change with the immediacy that is necessary for the educational health and well being of our students.

It is much like standing in line at the check out counter only to see a child being physically abused by an attending adult. When supplications to stop the beating do not abate the behavior, then a coordinated force is required if not demanded by the situation to protect the child.

The civil rights struggles of the 60’s and our own war of independence are examples of the need to confront the injustices of those with beliefs that restrict freedoms and can enslave generations. We are in a battle of beliefs.

The planned July 28-31- Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action is a first step. I suggest that this should be followed by a well-coordinated national parent and teacher work stoppage.

Parents keeping their children home and teachers not working until our concerns are heard and a plan for action is established.

*Equitable funding for all public school communities
*An end to high stakes testing for student, teacher, and school evaluation
*Teacher and community leadership in forming public education policies
*Curricula developed by and for local school communities

It will not be easy. Those in power and control will not give it up without a fight. There is blood in the water and those corporate sharks who already have plans on our schools are seeing dollar signs. We have many on this list and beyond who can form nuclei of action. Count me in.

Rog


Rog ( Horace ) Lucido, Physics Instructor, Ret.
Program Evaluator
Heald College Mathematics Adjunct
Educational Consultant
Educators and Parents Against Testing Abuse ( EPATA )
Assessment Reform Network Central Valley Coordinator
email: lucid4@cvip.net

Arne Duncan's Call With Business Leaders

It is truly appalling to read the transcript and see the close knit entanglement of business in education. Many education activists knew this a long time ago, but have a hard time convincing the public. Susan Ohanian has a book on the subject: Why Is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools?

Here some insightful parts of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's telephone conference call on January 24th, with representatives from major players (IBM, Ford Foundation, GlaxoSmithKline, Panasonic etc.)

"Listen" in!

Suzanne Immerman (Director of Philanthropic Engagement at the US Department of Education):

"..We recognize that the philanthropic sector is a core constituency in education reform in our country and as a result want to make sure that all of you have a chance to hear directly from the Secretary about issues that are most relevant to all of us in our work."

Arne Duncan:

"..my goal is to make every single governor in this country the best education governor their states have ever seen..we’re going to do hopefully a really innovative thing in the middle of February in Denver. We invited about 150 districts to come, do a conference around labor management issues.

..We would only bring in districts where the superintendent, the school board chair and the union leader would all come together. We were worried we’d have very few takers. We have slots for about 150 districts and we had almost 250 districts want to come in.

..What we think is - there’s a relatively small handful - 10 to 12 districts around the country that have come up with much more thoughtful contracts that really support student achievement. We don’t see why that can’t go to scale just like common standards went to scale.

..We obviously want to reauthorize NCLB this year, do it in a bipartisan way. I think we have a real opportunity to do it. I spent Friday in ..Minnesota with [House Education and Labor Committee] Chairman Klein.

..I think he can be a real partner in this. .. we’re not necessarily going to grant every single issue but I think there’s a lot of common [ground] there.

...  I think there’s actually a very good chance it can happen. And having you guys continue to push off and be a partner in this work I think we can do it.

Last week.., we had this great forum.. with the folks who came as part of the I3 competition who didn’t quite get funding from us.

We had about 700 leaders attend the forum from around the country.

[Participants included executives from Goldman Sachs, AT&T, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt]

We want to continue to partner great ideas whether it’s through I3 or Promised Neighborhoods, with potential funders and lots of information obviously on our Web site for you to look at there.

..the forum..was a real chance to continue to build a community of learners together to have folks collaborate and to provide exposure to potential funders for the good work that’s going on out there.

.. to continue to drive change at the state level is hugely important...getting folks to continue to change policies, getting folks to redesign what the state departments do to support the good work in classrooms, getting states to think through legislation that’s either helpful or not helping, having you guys play at that state level, I can’t emphasize how critically important that is going forward.

..with 40 states..having raised standards, 44 states working the common assessments together, lots of movement there. And my goal is to make every single governor in this country the best education governor their states have ever seen.

..And I’ve met with virtually every single one of the new governors. I’ll be going to speak with the NGA [National Association for Governors] in February and want to continue to keep all of them moving. So your support at those local levels is critical.

I think, you know, part of the challenge always is with us, and are we doing a good enough job to reach out to the business community and to reach out to CEOs and ask their thoughts about ways we can do that better and to be a better partner. We more than welcome those ideas as well."

Bill Shore of  GlaxoSmithKline shared:

"..we have our own business advisory council. And the superintendent set it up. And there are about 50 companies here - we meet every three months, it’s a religion almost, we meet every three months with the superintendent and the senior staff, and go over all the goals and objectives that the school system has and what it’s going to take to make him and the students successful.

And helps identify the role that each of us in the business community can play. IBM’s at the table, GlaxoSmithKline, Cisco. He’s got access to every business here. And it has been so refreshing for us because it’s always been us going to the school system trying to help.

..no superintendent ever invited us to the table. So now there’s this incredible dialogue that has not existed before. And we’re literally working in the trenches with him to help make him successful."

Arne Ducan:

"Yes, and I love that and those kinds of models. Unfortunately they are more the exception than norm. And if we had those set up for every single school district that would be fantastic."

Read it all. Click here.