 DETENTION: Candidate Steve Novick’s record still shows support for state testing.
IMAGE: Dennis Culver |
In a debate reminiscent of the spat between Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over Louis Farrakhan’s uninvited Obama endorsement, Oregon’s leading candidates in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate have been battling over who hates No Child Left Behind more.
First, Senate candidate Steve Novick rejected No Child Left Behind, President Bush’s signature education policy. Then candidate Jeff Merkley denounced it. Then they both more or less rejected and denounced it.
Novick, a lawyer; and Merkley, speaker of the Oregon House, have been fighting over who is the strongest opponent of No Child Left Behind because teachers despise the Bush policy. Its purpose is to raise public-school students’ test scores, but it is also an underfunded mandate.
And on the eve of the Oregon Education Association’s union endorsement meeting this weekend, neither candidate wants to tick off the powerful teachers union’s 48,000 members.
But before there was the bane of teachers known as No Child Left Behind, there was an equally incendiary—and just as test-heavy—educational policy elevating emotions in Oregon. Some say it was even the state prequel to the federal No Child Left Behind.
The policy, passed by the Oregon Legislature in 1991, was known as CIM/CAM. And one of its defenders in the Democratic establishment was Novick, who from January to October 2003 was the legislative coordinator for the Oregon Department of Education tasked with warding off threats to CIM/CAM, which stands for Certificate of Initial Mastery and Certificate of Advanced Mastery.
The OEA was also a supporter of CIM/CAM, but eventually turned against the certificates as many of its members were screaming about the extra paperwork they created.
“It is amazing how many people bought this pig in a poke,” says Caleb Burns, a Democrat and a leading opponent of the educational measure.
The certificates of mastery promised to revolutionize schooling in Oregon—by setting a high standard for what Oregon wanted its students to learn and by assessing students in a way that required real problem solving rather than filling in bubbles with No. 2 pencils.
Some of the problems with CIM/CAM were evident from the start. Teachers had little to no input on the program. Then things got worse. Despite its aspirations, CIM essentially became a series of standards-based tests put into practice across the state. CAM was a less widely implemented vocational training program. Together the programs cost tens of millions of dollars a year, but they were never fully embraced by many schools.
Because of that and because of the cost, a strange alliance of the left and the right emerged over the years to take down CIM/CAM.
And the efforts came to a boil in 2003, when Novick was working as legislative coordinator for State Superintendent of Public Instruction Susan Castillo. She started her term in January of that year as a CIM/CAM believer, at the same time that CIM/CAM opponents were working to kill the certificates.
First came House Bill 2415. The bill, which was backed by leading charter-school advocate and onetime Castillo opponent Rob Kremer, would have ended CIM/CAM. Novick testified in Salem against abolishing the program, saying, according to minutes from the May 1, 2003, meeting, that CIM/CAM was working fine and that it was a valid program that had been subjected to outside reviews.
Novick says now that “kill” bill was also an attempt to outsource Oregon’s own assessment programs to “off-the-shelf” testing companies, a move he and Castillo opposed. The bill never made it to the floor.
To make sure Kremer and his cronies lost their battle to kill CIM/CAM, Rep. Vic Backlund (R-Keizer) introduced a compromise bill, House Bill 2744. That measure purported to limit CIM/CAM, but its purpose was to shift the discussion around CIM/CAM from the testing system’s deathbed to its recovery room, Kremer says.
“It wasn’t just a matter of ‘Are CIM and CAM good?,’ it was also ‘Should CIM and CAM be replaced by off-the-shelf commercial tests,” Novick says of HB 2744.
The compromise bill passed with Merkley’s support, though his public record now shows the same evolution on CIM/CAM as the teachers union.
Eventually, the 16-year battle to undo CIM/CAM succeeded with the support of Merkley, then the House Speaker. On April 18, 2007, under Castillo’s supervision—and long after Novick left the state education department—the Oregon House voted to kill CIM/CAM with House Bill 2263. Novick says he also probably would have voted with Merkley to kill CIM/CAM, but his public record remains in favor of preserving the certificates.
The certificates’ ghosts still linger in Oregon—and the rest of the country, for that matter. Today the only thing more common than tests in schools is teachers’ grumbling about tests in schools.
“It clearly led to No Child Left Behind,” says Bill Bigelow, a widely respected Portland teacher on leave who is also the editor of the left-leaning Rethinking Schools magazine. “I really think people should have spent their time opposing the whole thing.”
FACTS: Merkley changed language on his campaign website earlier this winter to reflect his sharpened critique of the No Child Left Behind testing boondoggle. Sometime after mid-January, “Improve No Child Left Behind” became “Completely Overhaul No Child Left Behind” at jeffmerkley.com.
To read the fallout from last week’s OEA story dealing with Merkley’s efforts to get his children into charter schools, go to wweek.com/wwire/?p=10940.
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It was worthless with no correlation to any education measurement norm or standard in the country.
By the time Castillo, Merckley and the OREA Dems arrived to pull the plug the machine had already broken down.
CYA with a quiet demise delivered the final blow.
I witnessed Novick's support for CIMCAM. He was relentless in his praise and defense of this long ago red flagged failure. But Novick never appeared to have ever done any homework on the issue. He simply launched into condemnation of those opposing it with contrived charges of anti-public school agenda's attempting to "take over" testing of our children. Even though people like Calab Burns who wisely fought the reform for years is a dedicated Liberal Democrat.
The red flags wove in every school dictrict as Novick and company paraded out the establishment protectionism they align with. The OEA-teacher's unions, COSA adminitrators and OSBA school board associations joined in the rhetoirc to further the CIMCAM.
Though the OEA was for the most part, silence, their support for the other partners remained fully intact.
Novick and company was joined by the usual allies of the education establishment. The Oregon Business Council and Oregon Business Association joined the drum beat pushing the CIMCAM failure 5, 6 7 years further along than the evidence and common sense should have allowed.
The problems were many, specific, documented, provided, highlighted and screamed by concerned citizens only to fall on the deaf politics driven by
OEA, Novick and Merkley.
There wasn't much difference between the NCLB and CIMCAM. Both were unfunded mandates with CIMCAM costing far more that NCLB.
One big difference was Oregon's CIMCAM allowed plenty of all-talk/no action about standards and accountability but only NCLB actually included consequences.
Consequences which the OEA ordered Novick, Merckley and their other paid- for politicans to combat.
So here we are pondering the OEA, Novick and Merckley.
Merckley helps attack charter schools while applying for his own kids to attend one. He fed the CIMCAM machine attacking our schools.
Novick pitched in and is forever posturing himself as champion of public schools while he contributed mightily to the biggest assault on public classrooms in Oregon history.
The OEA facilitates all of this.
So who should the OEA endorse?
Obvioulsy it should be which ever candidate has and will be the biggest enemy of public education.
That's a tough call.
Steve stands behind his efforts in the 2003 session to head off the Rob Kremer/Randy Miller proposal to switch to commercially-prepared testing, as well as his time at the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) under Susan Castillo.
But the campaign did want to point out what we thought was a rather glaring omission in the treatment of the 2003 debate.
As the article reads, "[B]efore there was the bane of teachers known as No Child Left Behind, there was ... CIM/CAM," leaving out that the 2003 legislative debate was precisely about whether to adapt CIM/CAM to comply with NCLB or begin with a new testing program altogether. As a February 16, 2003 Oregonian editorial entitled "It Would Be Folly to Dump CIM/CAM" noted:
"A fourth reason is that we don't have a choice, unless we are willing to forfeit Oregon's share of federal aid to education. The federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires the state to test yearly in grades 1-8 and high school by 2005-06 instead of only in grades 3, 5, 8 and 10, as Oregon now does.
"Our state is going to have to spend time, effort and money -- at least $2.5 million annually -- in test preparation and verification and teacher training to meet the federal deadline."
Steve, on behalf of the Oregon Department of Education, worked with a bipartisan group of legislators and OEA to adapt CIM/CAM to meet these federal requirements.
To suggest, that in his capacity as a staffer, he could have worked to abolish testing is a straw person - and also not an accurate representation of his beliefs on tracking student performance. For a more complete view of his views on NCLB, you can read his January speech on the subject here:
http://novickforsenate.com/steve_calls_repeal_no_child_left_behindfull_statement
(And sorry WW folks for using the Oregonian here - know that is just waiving a red flag in front of you guys ;)
Merkley's wife toured a charter school with a friend, and in order to take the tour filled out a form. The End.
Talking about "Merkley’s efforts to get his children into charter schools" is way off base in light of what actually occured, and this little morsel by the same author slamming both candidates does nothing to correct the false impressions sold in the first two "articles".
But I guess you guys have a candidate's character to assasinate, so I'll get out of the way and let you get on with it.
Novick worked with Democrat legislators, ODE and OEA to prevent a CIMCAM demise. CIM/CAM needed little adpation to meet federal NCLB requirements.
Unfortunately the tests Oregon designed and still used today, which the Novick-Merckley-OEA-ODE cabal support, are worthless assessments without any correlation to any national norm.
They tell our schools and parents very little.
Novick's shameless effort to head off the end of this faulty testing cost our schools and students great losses that continue today.
Novick did much worse than refer to the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills and Stanford Tests etc (that Jesuit and Catlin Gable use) as "commercially-prepared testing".
He testified, on several occasions that that "Kremer wants to turn over the testing of our school children to big fat evil corporations".
Never mind that the ODE contracts for all sort of tasks including online testing application to corporations, Novick's twisted view of long established, respected designers of nationally valid assessments is harmful to public education.
Novick has been defending Oregon's inferior and invalid assessments while disparaging nationally respected test.
That's not good for our public schools.
No one suggested Mr. Novick could or should have worked to abolish testing.
Rather if he was genuinely concerned about tracking student performance he should not have been defending the heavily flawed and invalid assessment system USED for CIMCAM and remaining today.
The idea that Novick represents legitimate tracking of student performance is completely inconsistent with his pattern of supporting and defending CIMCAM and Oregon's fatally flawed testing system.
A system which still remains in place today with Steve's full support along with Merckley, the ODE, OEA, COSA and OBSA support as well.