A Blunt Student Tells BOE: Too Much Testing, Too Little Learning
I witnessed some exceptional testimony at the May 6, 2014 Board of Education student achievement committee meeting.
I attend a lot of BOE meetings, and this story is rare, heartwarming and important to every resident of Hawaii. This is a good story to share.
Corey Rosenlee and his daughter Vivian came to testify at the BOE student achievement committee meeting. Corey is a teacher at Campbell High School, and Vivian is a 5th-grade student at Holomua Elementary. Both of them took time off from school to attend the 8:30 am meeting.
This meant catching up with schoolwork later, and Corey had to use up a paid personal day.
The Rosenlees are to be applauded for making the personal sacrifices that parents, families, teachers, and students must make these days to address the Board of Education because the full board meets only during work days. IMHO that no one should have to sacrifice to address the BOE, but that’s another matter.
Vivian described what it’s like to be a student in her Hawaii public school. They have math half the day and reading the other half. There are a lot of tests. Only about once a month do they get physical education instruction. Art, social studies and science manage to make an appearance maybe twice a month.
After her testimony, a board member asked Vivian how her teachers would be able to know what students know other than by testing them. There was a pregnant pause as Vivian thought about it. A stream of responses rushed through my head, but the most prevalent was, “No one is against tests, but the DOE has an obsession with aligning students鈥 time with passing tests rather than providing a valuable, well-rounded, useful education.”
Vivian shrugged her shoulders and said, “I guess they could be more creative.”
How poignant.
Let’s stop pigeon-holing students and their performance based on bubble sheets. Use our highly qualified, competent teachers’ creativity do that so they may assess and evaluate their students in the context of their own classrooms.
Sure metrics and data are important, but the obsessive amount of time the DOE spends gathering data is stifling. Overreliance on bubble tests oppresses creativity.
The Common Core standards were not developed by teachers. Maybe the public and the BOE don鈥檛 know this.
The federal push for the Common Core standards was politically motivated, with strong influence from corporate CEOs interested in cashing in on the education “reform” movement that drains our education system.
Education 鈥渞eform鈥 in 2014 is subterfuge for a means to divert public education tax monies toward private corporate coffers.
The tiny, impoverished rural Hawaii school where I used to teach has spent over a million dollars of taxpayer money in the past several years on corporate consultants. I kid you not.
I could be wrong, but financial transparency has never been a DOE strong suit, so getting exact figures is near impossible.
Focus groups that the DOE put in place to sanction their newly-adopted testing and curriculum standards involved only a few hand-picked employees and, I suspect, long-time cronies.
Most, if not all of the BOE Members who set DOE policy have no experience teaching in a post-NCLB classroom.
Why aren鈥檛 teachers at the forefront in any effort we, as a society, implement to improve public education? One needs to question what鈥檚 really going on.
Another board member asked Vivian if she had ever shared her concerns with her teacher. Another beautiful answer from Vivian. Yes, she had discussed this with her teacher. He told her he has no control over the situation.
Out of the mouths of babes comes the truth.
About the author: Vanessa Ott is a former DOE teacher, computer software trainer and founding senior editor of Electronic Musician magazine. Currently she resides in both Hawaii and Honolulu counties.
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