A seat at the table: Teachers reclaiming assessment through rethinking accountability

Phi Delta Kappan

Volumn 81, Issue 7, 2000, Pages 502-507

  Gallagher, Chris ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA LINCOLN   (United States)

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EID: 0040559643     PISSN: 00317217     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. The National Assessment of Educational Progress shows Nebraska fourth-graders ranking 10th nationally in math and ninth in reading, while their eighth-grade counterparts rank eighth nationally in math and ninth in science. However, Education Week did not consider student performance in this study; rather, it focused on standards and assessments, efforts to raise teacher quality, school climate, and resources. Nebraska's lowest grades were in standards and accountability (C-) and equity (D), a subsection of resources. But the state would have scored much lower in standards and accountability if it hadn't just adopted statewide standards. Thirty percent of that grade is determined by whether or not the state has a statewide test and which subjects are tested, and another 20% is determined by which accounting systems the state uses (report cards, ratings, rewards, assistance, sanctions). In both of these categories. Nebraska's notation is simply "none." Education Week is careful to note that only Nebraska and Iowa have failed to adopt a statewide test, further reporting that 36 states use school report cards, 19 use school ratings, 19 reward high-performing schools, 19 offer assistance to low-performing schools, and 16 offer sanctions to low-performing schools (closings, takeovers, reconstitutions). See http://www.edweek.org/sreports/qc99, from which all this information has been abstracted (1 March 1999).
2. See Antonio Gramsci, An Antonio Gramsci Reader, ed. David Forgas (New York: Schocken Books, 1988).
3. See Eva L. Baker and Regie Stiles, "Trends in Testing in the USA," in Susan H. Fuhrman and Betty Malen, eds., The Politics of Curriculum and Testing (New York: Falmer Press, 1991), pp. 139-58.
4. Edward M. White, "Writing Assessment Beyond the Classroom: Will Writing Teachers Play a Role?," in Lynne Z. Bloom, Donald A. Daiker, and Edward M. White, eds., Composition in the Twenty-First Century: Crisis and Change (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), pp. 102-3.
5. See Diane Hart, Authentic Assessment (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1994).
6. Walter Haney, George Madaus, and Robert Lyons, The Fractured Marketplace for Standardized Testing (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993), p. 11.
7. Walter Haney, George Madaus, and Robert Lyons, The Fractured Marketplace for Standardized Testing Ibid., p. 36.
8. Walter Haney, George Madaus, and Robert Lyons, The Fractured Marketplace for Standardized Testing Ibid., p. 95.
9. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Cultural Literacy (New York: Random House, 1988);
10. Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987);
11. Dinesh D'Souza, Illiberal Education (New York: Vintage, 1992);
12. and Charles J. Sykes, Profscam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education (New York: Regnery Gateway, 1988).
13. Thomas Sowell, Inside American Education: The Decline, the Deception, the Dogmas (New York: Free Press, 1993);
14. and Charles J. Sykes, Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write, or Add (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995).
15. This privileging of bottom-line efficiency is by no means new; in fact, it has deep historical roots in the late 19th- and early 20th-century "efficiency movement." See Raymond A. Callahan, Education and the Cult of Efficiency (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962);
16. Lawrence A. Cremin, The Transformation of the School (New York: Vintage, 1961);
17. David B. Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974);
18. and David Tyack and Larry Cuban, Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995).
19. On the recent "corporatization of education," see Michael Apple, Official Knowledge (New York: Routledge, 1993);
20. Henry A. Giroux, Border Crossings: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education (New York: Routledge, 1992);
21. and Ira Shor, Culture Wars: School and Society in the Conservative Restoration 1969-1984 (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986).
22. I worked for three summers as a scorer and training leader for a small but profitable and fast-growing educational assessment firm.
23. John F. Jennings, Why National Standards and Tests? (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1998).
24. Quoted in Lil Brannon, "The Problem of National Standards," College Composition and Communication, October 1995, p. 441.
25. White, p. 110.
26. Quoted in Haney et al., p. 10.
27. Johnston, p. 10.
28. Ibid., p. 348.
29. Paul Theobald, Teaching the Commons (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997), p. 31.
30. Paul Theobald, Teaching the Commons Ibid., p. 121.
31. The Nebraska Writing Project is a site of the National Writing Project (NWP), which for 20 years has helped teachers across the U.S. to develop and document their expertise in the language arts. In this assessment project, the Nebraska Writing Project is represented by its director, Robert Brooke; its assistant director, myself; and two teacher leaders from local schools, both expert teachers and researchers. The School at the Center, another network of teachers and university faculty members in our state, shares many of the philosophical principles of the National Writing Project but is focused on rural education. The School at the Center has been nationally recognized for its contribution to rural curriculum and economic development. In this assessment project, it is represented by Jim Walter, co-director of the program; several other faculty members from the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Nebraska, who are also part of the School at the Center project and experts in instruction and assessment; and teacher leaders from participating School at the Center schools.
32. As this article went to press, the consortium described here learned that its grant proposal was accepted. At present, the consortium is hard at work developing locally appropriate assessments.