It's Complicated: Standardized Testing And Equity

Lately, there have been a lot - A LOT -- of thoughts about standardized testing in my Facebook and Twitter feeds. I get a couple of education briefing emails daily, and they are also chock-full of talk about testing.

Most of the talk is dichotomized: Tests = good. Tests = bad. I reject the notion that I have to be unequivocally for or against standardized testing. As an education advocate and teacher coach, I believe that intellectual complexity, while not part of the American political discourse, should be something that we strive for.

This means that if we are to find the best path for our kids, we have to be able to hold complicated ideas in our minds (as someone who is most familiar with people in education reform, I find that most of them actually do hold these sort of nuanced positions, but are mischaracterized by the opposing side, and I'm sure it goes the opposite way as well.)

We can believe that testing, as currently practiced, is biased WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY believing that right now, it is an important tool for equity.

If you look into the history of intelligence testing, you will find that it is deeply linked to the eugenics movement, to attempts at sorting people into those who deserve power and those who don't. We know that many standardized tests are biased - I recently read an SAT question in which the test taker was asked to edit a passage about skiing, which was really challenging if you couldn't picture what was happening in the passage. I mean, how many of us have the means or opportunity to go skiing regularly? Standardized test questions are often raced and classed to focus on background knowledge that is more commonly held by White, middle class kids (or even upper middle class - per the skiing example).

However, such tests are currently an important tool for uncovering the faults in our education system. In the state of Texas, where I work, the tests are minimum standards tests, which means that they test a fairly basic set of reading and math skills. If most kids are not passing them, it means that we are not doing our basic job as educators, and if there are gaps by race, class, language status, that means that we are failing children based upon those factors. Do the tests need to be improved? Yes. But do they give us important information about the continued racism and classism in our school systems? Yes.

We can believe that poverty needs to be addressed in our society WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY believing in the abilities of all children to succeed in school.

One of the most specious arguments leveled against ed reformers is that they don't take poverty into account when asserting that children from low-income neighborhoods can be successful. Anti-reformers charge that until poverty is solved and children are food secure, have medical care, etc. we can't expect kids to do well.

This is just false. I know it is because I've been in the classrooms where kids from low-income families are excelling (I estimate that I've been in several hundred classrooms by this point in my career). These classrooms are taught by a range of teachers - new in the profession, years in the profession. Traditionally trained and alternatively certified. They have been in schools that have huge numbers of resources, and schools that have very few. The common denominator is that they believe their kids can do it - more than that, that they believe students from low-income communities are uniquely positioned to be the leaders of tomorrow.

All of these teachers who are leading kids to excel would love it if a range of social supports were put in place for their students. In particular, in my community, mental health care is the hardest to find. However, this doesn't stop these teachers from finding ways to reach their students, to communicate care, and to teach rigorous curriculum. 

We can see the negatives of a "testing culture" WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY recognizing that people create the culture, not tests.

People, it's real that teachers and kids are feeling way too much pressure around testing. As a teacher coach, I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to help teachers navigate relationships with administrators who want to see test prep, test prep, and more test prep. These administrators are feeling pressure from their bosses. Through all of this, I coach teachers to find a way to do what is best for kids, which is to teach a rich, rigorous curriculum that goes way beyond test strategies.

Often, teachers who are committed to this idea find themselves practicing what Martin Luther King, Jr. defined as creative maladjustment. This means that they find ways to do what they know is right for kids, while doing it in ways that, honestly, keep them out of trouble in this testing culture. They do this because they believe in kids and families, and they know that keeping their jobs is the best way to be there for those kids and families.

It's these classrooms where kids excel, not the ones where kids are just learning testing strategies. Anyone who argues that "the test made me do it" in regard to teaching a low-rigor curriculum is just wrong. It's how we approach the tests in our schools that results in the crazy culture, not the tests (but since tests can't talk back, they make good scapegoats.)

We can believe in the power and wisdom of parents.

I'm not going to qualify that one. We need to listen to parents, and not all parents have the same interests. Unfortunately, the parents who are heard most often are not people of color or people from low-income communities.

While many White, upper middle class parents talk about opting their kiddos out of standardized assessments (which I totally understand), we have to realize that being able to make that choice comes from a place of privilege. If you can opt your child out of an exam, you aren't counting on a scholarship or a magnet school acceptance that results from a test score. You aren't worried that one act of opting out could hurt your child's entire future.

Most of the parents I work with want their kids to do well in exams because they know that these are door openers for their kiddos. Is it fair that so much rides on these tests? No. But it does. Parents want us in the education field to do better for their children, and that includes helping them to excel on these types of standardized tests.

As a teacher, I hated testing. I won't lie about that. My students did well AND I taught them a curriculum that involved social studies simulations of the Oregon Trail, class-written plays, writing digital books, reading Narnia books. You might say: hey, you must have had a ton of resources. Nope. When I started teaching I had a case of phonics readers from the 70's and a box full of dittos and silverfish that my predecessor left behind. I created almost everything we had, or slowly acquired it over time (this was before Donors Choose allowed teachers to easily get donations). My students were almost all English language learners and many came in several years behind -- most of the classrooms I currently coach have similar demographics.

I would have loved it if I didn't have to worry about a standardized test, that my students didn't have to sit for days, bubbling in answer books with their No. 2 pencils. However, I knew that it was critical both to their futures and to my ability to gauge whether I was doing right by them. When their parents showed up at the classroom door, asking: "Did she pass?" I had to be able to say yes. And if the answer wasn't yes, I had to tell them what I was going to do to change my practice and help their kiddo succeed in order to go to the next grade prepared.

Until we find a better way of determining whether we are doing right by kids in our schools, such tests are going to be necessary. I'm worried that current anti-testing movements are going to turn back the clock to a time when we pretended that everything was OK in our schools. Yet, I still want to find that better way. It's complicated.

I'm sorry... was I standing in the way of your privilege?

The other day I was at Spec's, which is this giant liquor store we have in Texas. It's more than just a liquor store - it's your one-stop-shop for entertaining. Do you need (for some reason) Kahlua, a single-malt scotch of the finest quality, a prickly pear, a frozen pizza, and a roasted duck? And you want to pay discount prices? Then Spec's is the place. (Seriously. It's a miracle.)

As you can imagine, such a fantastical magic land is usually packed, particularly on the weekends. On this Friday afternoon in question, several folks, including myself, were patiently waiting at the check out. It's one of those places where they have one line that feeds into all of the check out stands. As we were waiting, a man walked up to one of the customer service employees (they have lots of knowledgeable folks to assist you in picking out whatever you need; they are real experts. Did I mention that this place is amazing?).

The man had a bottle of champagne in his hand.

"Is there a way I can just pay for this one bottle?" he asked.

Meaning, without standing in line like all of these people.

This stuck out to me because not too long ago read an article about such a situation at the post office, discussing how in these situations White men are acting on their White male privilege without even thinking about it. In that article, though, the man who tried to cut to the front of the line at the post office was denied and sent to his rightful place in line.

At the liquor store, however, the employee tried to put off the man for a moment, but the man continued to press, and so he was ushered to another check out that had just opened, passing by the women and people of color who had been waiting in line (there were no other White men in line). None of us said anything.

In a nutshell, this is White male privilege at work.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, you might be thinking. You are reading way too much into this situation. After all, the guy was probably busy. Maybe he was late for something.

Sure, of course. Maybe we were all busy and late for something, but we waited in line.

Let's play out the situation if it was a little different. What if I, a White woman, had been the one asking. After all, I only had five things in my basket, and several people in front of me were buying cases of liquor.

First off, women are socialized not to ask for favors that inconvenience others - so it's pretty unlikely that I would do so. In fact, if there was some urgent, urgent reason I couldn't wait (I don't know, like an alien invasion?) I think it's more likely that I would actually leave the store without buying something than actually believe I should go to the front of the line. 

But I do know what happened one time recently when I was the airport, in the security line, and I heard the announcement that my flight was boarding. I was nearly at the front of the line, and I asked the woman in front of me if I could bypass her, as my flight was boarding. I received a hate-filled look from another woman. She did let me go ahead in line (after all, women are also socialized to say yes, even when it inconveniences us), but when it turned out we were on the same flight, she gave me the bitch, you are out of line look - the one that women use to regulate other women who aren't following norms. To this day, I still feel sort of guilty that I even asked for this favor.

That's your problem, you might be thinking.

Of course, I can't know what it feels like to be a person of color, and so I don't want to speak to as if I could. But I will say, I think most of us know that if the man at the liquor store had been Black, it's a lot less likely that he would have gotten his own lane opened for him. That doesn't mean that Black men don't have male privilege, but intersectionality makes it complicated.

It seems like when it comes to privilege, a lot of the "advice" out there is for those who don't have privilege to be more like the dominant culture. For women, it's about how they can be more like dudes. Men are successful because they're confident, says The Atlantic.  Women can learn to take more risks and be more confident. "Lean in" and ask for more, says Sheryl Sandberg. And when it comes to White privilege, many seem to believe that the answer is in teaching children of color in "successful schools" to be facsimiles of some weird version of WASP life, wearing polo shirts with khakis and sitting up perfectly straight with their hands folded and unmoving.

Well, what if the answer isn't leaning in? What if we need to look in the mirror, and when our privilege is hurting others, try to lean out a little bit? Not just teaching girls to take risks but also teaching boys to be more nurturing and considerate of others? Teaching White children about their privilege and at the same time affirming the value of cultures other than European, making schools places where success doesn't mean "White and male."

 To do that, we need to change the big systems of society of course. My whole career is dedicated to that. But I also believe that when it comes to ending oppression we have to sweat the small stuff, the moments in line at the store, the tiny words we use that put people down, the eye rolls that tell others they aren't doing life right. We're definitely going to get it wrong a lot of the time, miss opportunities, make mistakes. I do it all the time when it comes to my own privilege. But when we're not even willing to consider that our small actions actually do have weight to those with whom we have to stand in those lines, then all the governmental change or policy papers in the world won't make a difference.

I'll have that with pepperoni, mushrooms, and bigotry

Last week I had a small group of new teachers over to my house for a "community dinner." I work with (mostly) young adults who are going to be teaching in schools in neighborhoods that are predominantly low-income, with populations that are majority African-American and Hispanic. Few of the teachers I work with actually live in the communities where we teach, and so the theme of the dinner was to get to know the community a bit. We also have parent and family dinners where they meet the kids we work with - this is just the very beginning of their training experience.

The teachers were coming over in about 30 minutes, so I called the local pizza place for delivery. 

"You're not in our delivery area," said the (none too polite) woman on the other end of the phone.

"I'm looking at your online map right now. I am in the delivery area."

"No. You're not in our delivery area."

"But I'm three minutes away."

"You're not in the delivery area."

This went on for a few minutes and then I hung up because now the teachers were on their way and we needed food. There were no other pizza places that delivered nearby, so I had to call a national chain that I am not particularly fond of.

The whole time, a knot was beginning to develop in the pit of my stomach.  The longer I thought about it, the more I realized that it wasn't some kind of technical glitch that had led to my house being "outside the delivery area" that I was clearly in. It was redlining, pure and simple.

As a White, middle class person, part of my privilege is that I don't even need to know that there is a word like "redlining." It means, businesses draw a "red line" through neighborhoods where they will refuse to do business, because these neighborhoods are deemed to be unsafe or unprofitable. The decision of which neighborhoods won't be served is based upon the income and race of the people who live in that neighborhood. In the case of my neighborhood, the population is primarily low income, majority Hispanic.

When I emailed the pizza place, they told me that they don't deliver to my neighborhood because of "two incidents" that happened when they first opened. The safety of the drivers comes first, they said. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Discrimination isn't an inconvenience, I said.

This case was particularly egregious, in my mind, because of the characteristics of the neighborhood. Create a mental picture, if you will: I live on a long, two block stretch of road between a major thoroughfare and a sub-division. The sub-division isn't technically gated, but there's a big entrance sign and a very clear dividing line between the "nice" side of the tracks (figuratively speaking... there are no actual tracks, but there is a street) and the "wrong side of the tracks."  The school where our teachers work is right on the dividing line. Kids on the "wrong" (i.e. my) side of the street mostly attend that school. Kids in the sub-division mostly attend private and magnet schools outside the neighborhood.

I did a little research - called driving to the end of my street -- and got the addresses of the two houses that stand across the street from each other - one inside the sub-division and one outside. I put them into the pizza place's online ordering system. The result? You guessed it. The one inside the sub-division has delivery available. The one outside - not so much.

If safety was really the concern, then both houses should be on the undeliverable list. They are literally across the street from each other. There is nothing that makes one "safer" than the other -- except one house probably costs 150,000 more than the other.

This incident has made me think a lot about my privilege as a White person and what my role is as a resident of this neighborhood. You see, the fact that I'm shocked an incensed by this is part of my privilege. I haven't had to deal with this day in and day out my entire life. And I can't hide from the fact that this discrimination is racial, and not just about class (although it is about class too). I have lived in working class, predominantly-White neighborhoods throughout most of my adult life. Many people have wondered if the places I've chosen to live are safe. But I never dealt with this until I moved to a neighborhood where the majority of the residents are people of color. 

At my work, we talk a lot about what it means to be passively racist vs. actively anti-racist. As a White person, I can't escape the fact that I benefit from a system of privilege that oppresses my fellow humans based on the color of their skin. So I figured in this situation I had three choices:

1) Most passively racist: Shrug.

2) Also passively racist: Email the owner of the pizza place and express dissatisfaction but couch it solely in terms of class, never mentioning the word "race" because it is too loaded.

3) Anti-racist: Email the owner of the pizza place and frankly question his business choices as racist and classist.

I chose the third one, and am still waiting to hear back after our latest back-and-forth. I don't kid myself that this is enough.  I think that there may be more to be done here if our person-to-person interaction doesn't result in anything, like complaining through the Better Business Bureau. Obviously, I need to do more research to figure this out. 

Because of my work, I think of racism often in systemic terms. This is necessary because of the kind of change we are working to create - we deal at a systems level.  However, the most upsetting thing about this for me has been the idea that someone could drive down my street and look at the families and kids, the pets and the garden gnomes and the bicycles, and think - "these people are criminals. I'm not safe here." And then cross the street, and say "Whew, glad I made it into the safe zone." As many times as I experience this kind of thinking, it never loses its sting. 

Who Would Mama Earth Vote For?

I love voting. When I taught second grade, I eschewed Halloween, but dressed up in costume for election day (flag-blue wig, Lady Liberty sash). This year, the economy is number one in most people's minds. The question of who'll improve the economy has been dumbed down in election ads -  tax and spend, spend and tax. There's a lot more to the question of improving the economy, however; and how the president thinks about science and technology will impact BOTH the economy and the environment.

If you're interested in where the presidential candidates stand on scientific questions, check out "Science Debate 2012", in which you can compare side-by-side responses of the candidates to questions about science, the environment, and innovation.

The big take-away?

These guys aren't so different, at least on paper

But hey, you're probably thinking:isn't Obama our guy if we're environmentalists?

Well, I do agree that if you're voting green, Obama is the one to vote for.

But lets be real. Neither side is that green. 

Take the Keystone XL Pipeline, for example. In the televised debates, Romney has repeatedly brought up the pipeline - a pipeline that would bring oil from Canadian tar sands - .as necessary to foster energy independence (how a pipeline bringing oil from Canada results in US energy independence, I'm not sure.) Environmentalists believe that the pipeline will have devastating environmental impacts along its route. In particular, extracting oil from tar sands is a seriously dirty way to get oil. But Obama's record isn't all sunshine and puppies when it comes to Keystone.The Obama administration has both slowed the construction of Keystone and supported parts of it. No matter who becomes president, there's a good chance Keystone will go ahead, even as it becomes less important to the oil industry. 

We have to ask ourselves, in a two-party system driven by big money, will the long-term view of planetary health ever be a major issue? There's no benefit in the quarterly profits to looking a hundred years ahead, and a four-year election cycle is too short to truly witness our impact on the planet.

And of course, journalists today are afraid to ask the hard questions about our planetary future:
Which candidate will bring about Z-Day*?

For that, you have to turn to the fearless truths spoken by Joss Whedon, who also happens to be creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and also happens to be on my short list of personal heroes, along with Stephen King and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

If you're waiting for the Zombie Apocalypse, well, then Romney is definitely your guy.



*Z-Day? You know... the beginning of the zombie apocalypse.

Kid Activists = The Next Generation Goes Green

I love this video!

As I've written about before, my love of the Vampire Diaries led me to discover the Ian Somerhalder Foundation, which enlists kids in environmental activism. I love that Ian uses his heartthrob status for good, and I love these kids who are speaking out against the Keystone XL Pipeline. (Click here to read in-depth about this project, which is meant to bring oil from Canadian tar sands to the Gulf)

A lot of people (read: politicians) in Houston - where I live - are pro-pipeline, since it is proposed that it run all the way to our fair city, which will theoretically result in jobs at some point in the future. However, tar sands oil weighs heavily on the environment. Some folks argue that the pipeline will reduce our dependence on foreign oil... because what? Canada's a state or something? Really, I think we're just saying that it reduces dependence on oil from Muslim countries. Would you like a little racism with your environmental destruction?

If thinking about the pipeline makes you feel gross inside, then watch these kids:

(and yes, a teen wrote the song in the background)

Check out the National Resource Defense Council for more information on how you can add your voice to those speaking up against the pipeline.