|
Schools
assess student achievement of state standards at grades
3,5 and 8. This year, for the first time, all Oregon 10th-graders
are supposed to earn a Certificate
of Initial Mastery, proving that they have met standards.
A number
of national organizations have graded Oregon's standards.
Fair Test gave Oregon a D. Education Week gave the
standards a B+ but gave the educational climate a D- because
of funding woes.
Laurelhurst Elementary teacher Ron Norman (above) says teachers
and students are overwhelmed by tests. "It's not making
teaching any fun," he says, "and the kids don't like it
either."
According
to Tanya Gross, a spokeswoman for the Oregon Department
of Education,
students do not have to take the state tests.
In a
letter to the education department, Weyrauch complained
that with the emphasis on state standards, "the opportunity
to teach students to think creatively and critically about
their place in [the world] is lost."
When
Democrat Vera Katz left the Legislature, she entrusted her
education reform to skeptical Republican leaders like Senate
President Brady Adams (below).
Adams, who has been reluctant to fund the reforms, doesn't
like the way they're going. "We're teaching teachers to
teach to the test," he says.Adams should know. His wife
teachers first grade in Grants Pass, and he barely sees
her, even on weekends. "On Sunday, she gets up and goes
to work," he says.
Teachers
have
figured out that grades 3, 5, 8 and 10 are best avoided.
"It's creating a nasty environment," Portland Association
of Teachers president Richard Garrett says. "Nobody wants
to teach those grades."
Education advocate Kathie Humes (above) says the intent
of reform was to "raise the floor and open the door." Instead,
"by trying to do it on the cheap, we've got factoid, Jeopardy-style
testing," she says. "We have proficiency tests in everything
except spitting."
District
guidelines suggest that fifth-grade teachers will spend
nearly 100 hours preparing for, scoring, recording and analyzing
student work samples this year.
Bill
Bigelow (above) thinks the pursuit of knowledge has been
replaced by a mania for assessment. "The state has turned
standards into tests," says the Franklin High teacher.
Teachers'
test-
related workload will balloon to 150 hours next year when
science samples start. These numbers don't include the class
time students spend producing the
samples.
Brandy
Steffen, a junior at David Douglas High, says students don't
put much stock in their Certificates of Initial Mastery.
"Our favorite saying is that if you go out into the job
market, no one is going to care," says the honor-roll student.
"It doesn't have any importance in the real world."
Bill
Bigelow and Linda Christensen, who is in charge
of the Portland schools' writing programs, edit a national
publication called Rethinking Our Schools (www.rethinking
schools.org).
School
board chairman Ron Saxton says he's received numerous complaints
from parents about the pressure their kids are under. "Parents
are beside themselves," he says.
The
social studies tests that students took last month are experimental
and will not count on their permanent records. Social
studies tests will be required in 2000-01 unless delayed
by the state school board.
When
it comes to school reform, new state Superintendent Stan
Bunn is seen as a big improvement over Norma Paulus. "Bunn
has made it clear he want to hear from us," says Franklin
High teacher Bill Bigelow. "That's a big difference from
his predecessor."
The
'95 Legislature amended reform, requiring extra services
for students who exceed or fail to meet standards. "To this
day," says Patrick Burk, "there hasn't been a dime allocated
for those services by the Legislature."
|
|
In 1991, the Oregon Legislature, led by then-Speaker of the
House Vera Katz, engineered the most radical school reform
in Oregon's history.
At the time, Katz called House Bill 3565 "a revolutionary
process for change." Her ambition was boundless. Oregon,
she said, would create nothing less than the best schools
in the world.
Eight years later, it is becoming clear that school reform
has jumped the tracks. People who agree on nothing else
say Katz's vision for Oregon's schools is on the verge of
becoming a train wreck.
Even Katz admits reform isn't working. Asked how the public
should assess her legislative legacy, the Portland mayor
is frank.
"From an outsider's perspective," she says, "I would give
it a failing grade."
Evidence that Oregon school reform is failing is everywhere.
You can see it in the mood of education advocates like
Kathie Humes, a director of the Coalition for School Funding
Now!, member of countless education committees and mother
of a Lincoln High School freshman. Humes initially supported
school reform. Now she's a critic, arguing that the process
has alienated parents, teachers and, most of all, students.
"This year," she says, "there's been more discontent than
I've ever seen before."
You can see that school reform is failing from the reaction
of teachers like Ron Norman.
A 25-year veteran of the Portland schools, Norman teaches
fifth grade at Laurelhurst Elementary. Parents and peers
consider him a superb teacher and an independent thinker;
he quit the teachers' union five years ago, finding it more
interested in benefits than instruction.
Norman loves his job but says school reform has tested
his commitment. "Every year I've taught has been better
than the year before," Norman says, "until now."
You can see that school reform is failing from the dropout
rate.
Reform was supposed to help underachievers the most. When
Katz's bill became law in 1991, then-state Superintendent
of Public Instruction Norma Paulus was quoted as saying,
"Everybody realizes that a dropout rate as high as ours,
at 25 percent, is totally unacceptable." Today, Portland's
dropout rate is 40 percent. Evidence suggests that school
reform is a primary culprit.
You can even see that school reform is failing from the
rise in enrollment in special education.
Parents once feared the stigma of special ed. Now, many
seek for their children the federally guaranteed services
the designation carries and the immunity from school reform
it provides. Today, more than 12 percent of Portland Public
Schools students receive special ed, an increase of 17 percent
since 1994. As reform continues, the demand for special
ed will rise, according to Patrick Burk, a senior Portland
schools administrator. "It's as predictable as rain," Burk
says.
If evidence abounds that school reform is failing, the
inevitable question is: Why? How could a movement that was
supposed to make schools better in fact threaten to make
them worse?
Some critics say the original concept stank. Christian
conservatives, led by state Rep. Ron Sunseri, smelled a
liberal conspiracy in Katz's bill; they said reform was
an attack on family values and an attempt to install a national
curriculum. Fiscal conservatives such as state Sen. Brady
Adams said reform smelled like pork; it was a waste of money.
The truth is far more complicated.
School reform, as Katz proposed it, was a package that
included lengthening the school year from 180 to 220 days,
creating learning centers for struggling students and encouraging
teachers to coach rather than lecture. Most importantly,
the package required that students meet clearly defined
standards of knowledge in grades 3, 5 and 8 on their way
to earning a Certificate of Initial Mastery in grade 10.
Progress toward the standards would be assessed through
projects, essays and portfolios rather than only by traditional
standardized tests.
Katz's bill lacked only one element: money. Reform without
funding was like a Rolls Royce without an engine. Today,
the school year is the same length it was in 1991. The state
did develop a 50-page list of standards, but there's no
money for remedial services, teacher training, textbooks
or any other local support--Portland's current school budget
is barely larger than it was in 1991.
Meanwhile, the state Department of Education's budget has
exploded. In 1991-93, the department's budget was $477 million;
in 1999-2001 the projected allocation is $907 million, an
increase of 90 percent. The number of full-time employees
involved in testing and assessment has increased from three
to 30.
After eight years of reform, all that's left of Katz's
revolutionary plan can be summed up in three words: tests,
tests and tests.
It would be hard to overestimate the tangle of tests Oregon
school kids face today, thanks to school reform. In 1995,
the Oregon Legislature, newly responsible for the majority
of school funding, made it clear that it wanted local districts
and individual schools to become more accountable for students'
performance. Every student in the state, lawmakers said,
should meet standards and pass multiple-choice tests in
every content area.
Portland students have always taken standardized tests,
but in the past they only spent a couple of days on them
each year. Now, says Laurelhurst teacher Norman, "the kids
are getting bombarded with tests."
State testing begins in third grade, but students don't
get the full battery until fifth. This year, Norman's fifth-graders
waded through three days of writing tests, one day of math
problem solving, one day of multiple-choice math, two days
of multiple-choice reading, two days of multiple-choice
science and two days of multiple-choice social science--11
testing days in all.
Taking the tests is only part of the operation. Before
students take each test, they spend days learning the scoring
guide and cramming information into their heads. The consequence
is that time once spent learning math, English and history
is now spent learning how to take tests.
Then there are the work samples: in-class assignments prescribed
by the state. Each fifth-grader must complete three writing
samples, two math samples and two speeches. A fifth-grader
might calculate the area of several geometric shapes contained
within a rectangle, write about the decline of the Siberian
tiger, or make a speech persuading others not to smoke,
to cite a few examples.
Teachers like the idea of work samples, because in theory
they give kids a chance to display skills that standardized
tests might not measure. But in reality, says Jeff Creswell,
a fifth-grade teacher at Irvington Elementary, samples are
another method of testing--and not so beneficial for students.
On the writing sample, for instance, students can't use
any of the resources--peer editing, teacher editing, parental
assistance or unlimited time--that they would normally use
on an assignment.
Work samples chew up huge amounts of time. Norman's 28
students will generate 196 work samples this year. He grades
each of them according to five or six discrete criteria
described by state scoring guides. Scoring guides go into
mind-numbing detail--the one for speeches runs to four pages.
Altogether, Norman must record more than a thousand separate
grades on the samples alone.
Fifth-grade teachers at Irvington Elementary calculated
that if they did all the preparation, testing and assessment
suggested by the education department, they'd spend a third
of the school year just on testing and work samples--60
class days in all. "It's a huge loss of instructional time,"
Creswell says.
The ironic consequence of reform is that it has actually
shortened, not lengthened, the school year for many kids.
At many schools, teachers need so much time to prepare for
tests and grade samples that they've requested the school
week be reduced. This year, 25 Portland elementary and middle
schools (up from 17 last year) are regularly sending kids
home early or letting them arrive late so teachers can catch
up, says district spokesman Lew Frederick.
At Atkinson Elementary, for instance, school lets out an
hour and a half early every Friday so teachers can catch
up on standards-related work. Over the course of the year,
that means Atkinson students lose more than 60 hours of
instructional time to early dismissal. "We're sending kids
home early so teachers can complete work samples," says
Vinh Nguyen, an administrator who oversees 22 of the city's
elementary schools. "What purpose does that serve?"
Pressure to proceed with reform will only increase. In
his belated plea for more education money last month, Gov.
John Kitzhaber pledged that, in return for greater funding,
90 percent of all students will meet standards. Next year,
Portland schools will pay principals based on how well their
schools do on state tests.
The consequence of all the emphasis on testing is that
there's little time left for anything else. Norman loves
teaching math, for instance, but he says the specter of
state requirements is cutting into the depth of his instruction.
"When I get into an interesting area," he says, "I wonder
if it's worth doing because I know it's not going to be
on the test." Secondary subjects suffer, as well. Jan Greene,
a colleague of Norman's, estimates she spends twice the
allotted time on math and reading, leaving little time for
health, science and current events.
At Lincoln High, a different problem arises. Earlier this
year, says Humes, the school had to deny 114 students places
in advanced science courses. The reason? The combination
of implementing reform and still having to satisfy existing
state requirements, such as health and P.E., has exhausted
the school's resources. Humes says this trade-off illustrates
two of the complications of standards: First, schools must
operate under both the old credit-based system and the new
reforms. Second, as pressure to raise performance increases,
schools will concentrate their resources on kids who are
just short of meeting standards because they're the easiest
to improve. High and low achievers, Humes fears, will be
neglected.
As for the students themselves, they say classrooms have
become pressure cookers. "All the planning and getting ready
for tests is stressful," says Alison Moran, one of Norman's
fifth-graders. Moran will probably meet standards, but like
many students she is confused by the whole process. "I don't
know why we're taking these tests," she says.
Moran's mother, Roberta Dusenberry, thinks endless testing
takes the fun out of learning. "Kids are going to lose their
spark and their interest," she says. "Their memories of
elementary school will be of taking tests. I remember making
a papier-mâché dinosaur when I was in school.
Where does that fit in today?"
It's one thing for tests to gobble up time; it's another
for them to waste it. Last December, Franklin High social
studies teacher Bill Bigelow attacked the state tests for
trying to shoehorn complex concepts into multiple-choice
questions. He and many other teachers think such tests trivialize
curriculum and don't measure what students really know.
The problem in Oregon and other states, says Monty Neill
of the education-advocacy group FairTest in Cambridge, Mass.,
is that standards demand an impossibly broad range of knowledge.
"Most standards aren't teachable," Neill says. "You're not
supposed to take the standards seriously; what you take
seriously is the tests."
Consider Oregon's social-studies standards for fifth-graders.
The state standard asks students to "understand how individuals
significantly influenced the course of world history." The
included list of 13 individuals, from Kublai Khan (1215-1294)
to Jacques Cousteau (1910-1997), covers more than 700 years
and every continent. Teachers say no meaningful curriculum
could encompass such a range.
The same standard requires fifth-graders to know 19 individuals
who shaped America, from Hernan Cortes (1485-1587) to Cesar
Chavez (1927-1993). Nobody disputes that a knowledge of
history is crucial, but a typical Portland fifth-grade curriculum
covers American history from 1600 to 1820. Kids understandably
whiffed on such questions as "What did Cesar Chavez try
to accomplish as the leader of the National Farmworkers
Association?" and "What was the most important reason Nelson
Mandela fought against South Africa's policy of segregation?"
Chavez was born 60 years after the Civil War ended; Mandela
is a heroic figure but doesn't figure anywhere in early
American history.
Confusing standards leave teachers guessing which facts
will be included on the test or, in the case of math, which
subject areas. Two weeks ago, the education department declared
that the math tests taken in January and February by 80,000
fifth- and eighth-graders would have to be rescored. Nearly
every student had bombed on the tests, apparently because
they covered topics the kids hadn't been taught.
Portland School Board chairman Ron Saxton suffered the
frustration of the tests firsthand. Unlike the governor,
Mayor Katz and other local luminaries, Saxton accepted an
invitation by The Oregonian to take the 10th-grade
tests in English and math. The math test seemed reasonable,
but Saxton, a lawyer and a bibliophile, thought the English
portion was absurd. "They took things more complicated than
a multiple-choice format lends itself to and crammed them
in," he says.
Not everyone hates school reform. Bob Chudek, head of curriculum
for the David Douglas School District in Southeast Portland,
says parents are enthusiastic and teachers and students
have adjusted. He admits colleges and employers haven't
yet come to understand the value of higher standards, but
he thinks they will.
Brandy Steffen, a junior at David Douglas High, takes a
less rosy view. Steffen, who carries a 4.0 grade-point average
and has already exceeded standards, says her peers think
reform is a waste of time. "I don't think I've heard any
positive remarks about it," she says. "The attitude is that
it's busywork; it won't really benefit us in the long run."
Steffen's skepticism strikes at the most basic premise
of Oregon school reform: that rigidly structured, standards-based
education is the key to economic success. In 1983, with
the U.S. economy wobbling, the federal Department of Education
produced a booklet entitled "A Nation at Risk" panning America's
supposedly inferior schools. Then, in 1990, the National
Center on Education and the Economy published "America's
Choice: High Skills or Low Wages!"
Both publications essentially argued that Japan and Germany
were kicking America's butt economically because those countries'
work forces were better trained. In 1991, Katz, an NCEE
board member, used "America's Choice" as a blueprint for
her legislation, right down to the term "Certificate of
Initial Mastery."
Of course, since the early '90s the Japanese and German
economies have tanked. German workers may be well trained,
but they're also among the most expensive, least productive
and least employed in the developed world. As for the Japanese,
their once-invincible corporations now look all too mortal.
More than 25 teachers and administrators interviewed by
WW agree that the rigid instructional model underlying
Oregon school reform fails to acknowledge that all kids
are different--they learn in different ways and at different
speeds. In industries where this country rules the world--software
development, personal computers and entertainment--creativity
is a key element. To put it mildly, critics say, the one-size-fits-all
approach implicit in standards-based education does not
encourage creative thinking.
Yet education reform based on German and Japanese models
steams ahead. For her part, Katz insists the underlying
premise is correct, saying that a high-tech economy and
the growing disparity between rich and poor demands standards-based
education more than ever. She blames a lack of funding and
poor marketing and implementation on the part of the state
Department of Education for the bastardization of her vision.
Norman, among many others, isn't convinced that the role
of schools is to crank out model employees. No matter how
much politicians and employers want a better product, he
says, treating schools like assembly lines isn't the way
to get there. "Businesses have a bottom-line mentality and
that's fine," he says, "but children are not just a product
that you put on a shelf."
For all the gloom surrounding reform, not all is hopeless.
Even those most frustrated with standards are committed
to improving schools. By several measures they are succeeding.
Oregon's Scholastic Aptitude Test scores have led the nation
eight years in a row; Oregon's eighth-graders ranked near
the top on the 1998 National Assessment of Educational Progress
reading test and scored second in the world on an international
science test in 1997. In Portland, says Burk, the district's
own standardized tests show that students are a grade level
ahead of their peers a decade ago.
Teachers and administrators also have high hopes for Stan
Bunn, the new state superintendent of public instruction.
Bunn has addressed critics' concerns, asking the State Board
of Education to delay the controversial social-studies and
science standards and freeze the number of work samples.
After five months on the job, Bunn is upbeat about reform.
He thinks that a big part of his work will be communication.
The problem, he says, "is not in the quality of the program
but in how successfully it has been explained to the public."
It will take more than better communication to fix what
Kathie Humes thinks is wrong with Oregon's education reform.
Humes speaks for many parents when she says all the testing
in the world isn't going to make kids smarter--that will
require smaller class sizes and teachers who have time to
teach. She quotes a proverb to describe the futility of
excessive testing: "An old farmer says, 'You can weigh that
cow all you want but it ain't going to make her any fatter.'"
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Willamette Week | originally
published May 5, 1999
|
