Week 6: Critical Literacy Across the Curriculum and Performance-Based Learning, Standards, and Assessment

My Response:

Overall, I do believe assessment is a political act. While a teacher might initially rebuff at this, especially if their whole attention is engrossed with what they are teaching in the classroom at the moment, how you decide to assess your students can reflect on how a school is seen by a community. If one assesses primarily using norm-referenced standardized test, then your school will be represented by how closely they align with the demographic average of the United States and how closely a teacher decides to teach to the test that is being administered. The issue is when one works for a school that does not fully align with the norm. For instance, while a timed standardized test might reflect a students' ability to comprehend a text, it might also disadvantage L2 students who are learning the language - thus disproportionately harming a school because of the number of its ELL students rather than the quality of education it provides to them (Alvermann and Phelps, p. 334). However, if one assesses students with authentic assessments comprised of assignments that students have worked on over the year, while it might provide a privacy risk, it will provide the community with a better indication on the language growth of the students in question (pp. 334, 338).  At the end of the day, it is political - it shapes the way in which your school and your students are seen by the world around them, and governs how your school, district, and local leaders will respond.

 

In order to describe how assessments open doors for some while closing them for others, I am reminded of something I read in Belonging Through a Culture of Dignity  by Floyd Cobb and John Krownapple (2019). In it, they describe how, as an initial result of the first few assessments administered under No Child Left Behind, schools which had excellent standardized test averages saw an increase of real estate values as families with the means to move their kids to "Excellent" schools did so (p. 40). Thus, while wealthier parents helped excellent schools succeed with the added tax revenue that would come into them, the so-called "failing" schools - ones often labeled "diverse" derisively - would fall through the cracks, with school quality floundering in proportion to the funding needed to ensure these schools offered their students a quality education. For those who oppose the idea of testing as a barometer for school quality, its obvious to see why. While these norms-based assessments were designed with the intention of improving all of America's schools, it instead indirectly segregated them based on familial wealth. And, as many ELL families are likely in the lower end of the economic bracket, its plain to see why they might feel doors have closed on them. With limited resources compared to their wealthier peers, the opportunity to succeed is simply not the same. That's not to say they can't succeed, but rather that the road to success will be longer and more arduous than their affluent peers.

 

References

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Alvermann, D., & Phelps, S. (2002). Assessment of students. In Content reading and literacy: Succeeding in today's diverse classrooms. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

 

Cobb, F., & Krownapple, J. (2019). Belonging Through a Culture of Dignity: The Keys to Successful Equity. Mimi & Todd Press.

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Response to Melinda Oakes:

I like how you tie this into matters of public policy. Here in Alaska, state norms-based testing is definitely political, As many of our state's school districts do poorly on testing (just ignore the fact that most of these districts reside in remote parts of the state where there are already high rates of poverty and illiteracy - not to mention how inaccessible these communities are because they are only accessible by air travel), our frankly bone-headed governor has decided to not raise the state's base student allotments since he came into office in 2017, While this has had the inevitable effect of harming our state's schools and placing districts near bankruptcy - one district that I used to work for has it so bad that students in a small remote community have to attend a school in a building that is condemned! - he doesn't seem to be that affected by it. Instead, he's focusing his attention on Charter Schools as students in these schools do well in testing - a solution that only benefits the major communities like Anchorage, Fairbanks, and so on. Now I'm not saying that standardized testing is the reason why public schools here are underfunded, but when you have an opportunistic governor who'd rather use test scores to justify not investing in our school system rather than improve upon it, they sure can be a problem.

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Response to Michelle Johansen:

Boy, do I get it! It's funny; in my 7th Grade English class, we've been reading a memoir written by one of the Little Rock Nine called Warriors Don't Cry. The students really seem to enjoy it, but it is sure funny how politicians who are usually unaware of how their education system works seem to make a big impact. While members of the Little Rock Nine like the author had to put up with frankly all kinds of torture by segregationist students and parents just to survive the school year, rather than doing anything effective to help the students who were being harmed, the governor at the time appeased to the segregationists by closing the Little Rock Central High School for several years - allowing the white kids to attend private schools while harming members of the African American community in the process. And Arkansas was not the only Southern state who used tactics like this to thwart integration after the Brown decision. 

Flash forward to today, what makes it sad in the case of Alaska right now is not only is our governor using testing data to underfund and harm Alaska's schools, but unlike other governors, he is very familiar with the types of school districts in remote Alaska that are hurting the most, as he began his career as a teacher! Maybe its a beef against his former employer, or maybe he's selling out to big interests and more conservative pundits who prioritize charter schools and voucher programs instead of adequately funding schools that need it the most. In both instances, the nasty side of the politicization of education is that students are harmed at the expense of the whims of politicians. Whether that is to promote abhorrent ideologies like segregation as in the case of Little Rock in the 1950s or a governor's wish to cut funding and benefit their outside interests, the ones who are harmed at the end of the day are the students.