The Bush Education Agenda: Tested for Failure

 

by Harold Berlak

 

Center for Education Research, Analysis, and Innovation
School of Education
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
PO Box 413
Milwaukee WI 53201
414-229-2716

 

May 10, 2001

 

CERAI is now EPRU

 

CERAI-01-18

 

TheBush Education Agenda: Tested for Failure

ByHarold Berlak 

Three presidents havesought to claim the title of education president and campaigned to institutenational testing. George Bush (the elder) tried in 1992 and failed.  In1994 Bill Clinton implemented Goals 2000, which gave states federal incentivesto install statewide testing.  But Congress blocked Clinton’s proposal tocreate national tests for 4th and 8th graders in readingand math. Organized opposition to these national testing schemes joined theleft and right margins of American electoral politics, uniting civil rights,children’s, and fair test advocates with conservative Christians andlibertarian Republicans.  Opposition to Clinton’s testing proposal was ledin the House by the Black Caucus and in the Senate by then-Senator JohnAshcroft.

George W. Bush has madeeducation one of his first orders of business, proposing a sweeping plan thatrequires annual tests for children in elementary and middle schools andpunishes low-scoring schools. While the President rhetorically de-emphasizedhis plan’s use of private school vouchers – and acquiesced when a Congressionalpanel dropped vouchers entirely in order to win bipartisan support – he and hispolitical advisors believe his proposal for national testing will be a winner.

The Bush plan, while itdoes not require states to use the same test, nevertheless installs a form ofnational high-stakes testing. In order to collect federal dollars (whichaccount for approximately 7% of state education budgets), Bush would requirestates to test children in grades 3 through 8 annually, set specific testperformance goals, and mandate what the proposal calls “corrective action.”1Although vouchers allowing students in such so-called under-performing schoolsto attend private schools are apparently out of the picture for now, theamended bill still would allow parents to use federal funds to pay for privateafter-school tutoring.2

National testing also hasthe support of center-right Democrats. Senator Joseph Lieberman, the 2000 vicepresidential candidate, and Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, who chairs theDemocratic Leadership Council (the group that has worked to remold the party toattract affluent suburbanites and helped orchestrate Clinton’s first election),have proposed an alternative to the Bush plan that resembles the President’s,although with less-frequent testing.  Lieberman and Bayh also wouldrequire states to set content standards and to meet test performance goals inorder to continue receiving federal education dollars. All students would betested in reading and math, once during elementary school and once during themiddle school years. In the place of vouchers, they propose grants to charterand magnet schools.3

Both the Bush and theLieberman-Bayh plans, if enacted, would as never before concentrate power inthe hands of federal and state government officials, greatly diminishing localcontrol by district boards, schools, teachers, and parents.  In the wordsof one official, the plans represent  “a sea change”-- a 180 degreereversal of the traditional Republican populist position espoused by RonaldReagan, who called for minimizing the federal role in education and foreliminating the US Department of Education.4

Distancing himself from themaligned Clinton testing proposal, Bush denies altogether that his is aproposal for compulsory national testing.  Every state, he asserts, isfree to opt out, and also is free to write its own standards and administer itsown test. The freedom to opt out is illusory, however; states cannot afford tolose the federal government’s 7% contribution to their education budgets. Andwhile states may write their own content standards and may use any test theychoose, for the purpose of receiving federal dollars the plan calls for federalofficials to adjust each state’s test results to a test known as the NationalAssessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Currently the NAEP is awholly voluntary, nationally normed standardized achievement test given annuallyto a scientifically selected sample of students in each state. It is nowadministered in a way that does not permit use of scores to make judgments anddecisions about the fates of particular individuals or schools.  WhileNAEP is considered on technical grounds to be a good test relative to otheroff-the-shelf standardized achievement tests and custom-tailored state tests,it is still a multiple-choice standardized tests with all the shortcomings andlimitations of such tests.

Under the Bush plan, however,NAEP would be employed in a way it was never intended to be used, violatingprofessional testing standards which bar the use of any single standardizedtest for making high-stakes decisions.5 The mostserious consequence of using the NAEP, or any single test, as the only validindicator of educational achievement and learning is that it inevitably comesto serve as a de facto national curriculum.  Whatever the rhetoricmay be about local control and individual responsibility, the Bush plan wouldplace politicians, appointed and career government bureaucrats, and theirchosen experts distant from classrooms and local communities, in firm controlof what teachers teach and how they teach it.

Using government-mandated teststo reform schools is certain to fail.  It will lower educationalstandards, increase inequalities, and deepen the nation’s racial divide. We can be sure of this because many states already have in place the sorts oftesting and accountability plans that both the Bush and the Lieberman-Bayhproposals contemplate.

Bush himself cites hisTexas experience as the model of success for the nation.  A look at theresults in Texas is sobering, however.  While Bush and his Secretary ofEducation, former Houston school superintendent Rod Page, point to higher testscores, the actual numerical gains in test scores were small, and a subsequentRand Corp. study cast considerable doubt on the claimed gains.6Separately, Boston College researcher Walt Haney showed that a sharp increasein the number of 9th grade students retained likely inflated Houston’s highschool passing rates, and that the numbers of dropouts in Houston, alreadyamong the highest in the nation, soared, most markedly for African Americansand Mexican Americans.7 Another study by Rice UniversityProfessor Linda McNeil documents the multiple ways Texas policy pushed studentsout of school, increased educational disparities, and degraded the curriculumas a consequence of enormous institutional pressures to prep students for thestate-mandated standardized test.8

California began its marchtoward “aligning” tests to standards sixteen years ago. A newly elected,liberal-leaning Superintendent of Instruction, Bill Honig, initiated the policyas a low-cost solution to raising standards at a time when the state’sexpenditures for education and other social services were shrinking. What wassold to the public as an apolitical, non-partisan plan became deeply mired inCalifornia’s cultural wars and the state’s toxic electoral politics. The firstof the new tests aligned to the State’s language standards, called CLAS, was developedby Educational Testing Service and arrived in 1994 on the eve of that year’selections. Republican Pete Wilson, in his successful bid for a second term asgovernor, made CLAS into a hot-button issue. Wilson vilified the test and thestandards as an effort by the left to impose a multicultural orthodoxy onschools. With his reelection, as part of a Republican wave that turned over theUS Congress to GOP control for the first time in 40 years, the policycompletely unraveled. CLAS and the new language standards were jettisoned andsubsequently curriculum standards for all major school subjects were rewrittenlargely to mollify the right.

Under a federal mandate toinstall a test, California in 1998 adopted an off-the-shelf standardizedachievement test, the Stanford 9, published by Harcourt Measurement, Inc. At best last year’s gains were small and mixed; California reported an overall4- to 5-percentile-point gain on the Stanford 9, which is equivalent to ahandful of test items.

This year for the firsttime the state is providing cash bonuses to the schools and their staffs whohave met testing targets set by the state, and $1,000 prizes to the state’shighest-scoring students. In the original legislation, parents were given theunrestricted right to exempt their children from taking the tests.  Whenit became clear that large numbers of parents would likely opt out, the StateBoard of Education adopted the rule that schools with exemptions exceeding 15%of the student body would be ineligible for all financial rewards. Organized protests have occurred in several areas across the state.  Someteachers in high scoring schools have pledged to donate their reward money toschools that are in greatest need.  Further complicating California’splan, on President Clinton’s last day in office, the U.S. Department ofEducation informed the state that the federal government’s contribution toadministering the state’s testing program may be in jeopardy because theStanford 9 did not comply with the regulation that the test must be “aligned”to the curriculum.9

In Massachusetts theappointed state board of education controlled by advocates of testing andallied with business interests is in the process of imposing the MassachusettsComprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) test as a condition for gradeadvancement and graduation. The effort is being resisted by students andparents who are boycotting tests and by a coalition of parents, students, civilrights leaders, children’s and fair test advocates who have organized a fierceand sustained campaign of opposition. The high school population inMassachusetts is 17% Latino and African American, yet together they account formore than 40% of those who are pushed out or drop out. A study concluded that,based on a trial run of 10th graders, the failure rate in schoolsand districts that predominantly serve the poor and people of color couldlikely exceed  70%.10  Under considerable pressure, theState Board of Education slightly softened the rules on exemptions and delayedby two years a requirement that students pass MCAS as a condition for highschool graduation. The controversy will not go away, however, and it willalmost certainly intensify as the new deadline approaches. 

The failures and deepeningcontroversy about such testing policies are not limited to California, Texas,and Massachusetts.  Currently 24 states have installed or are in theprocess of installing a form of mandated testing linked to a system of rewardsand punishments. Problems are widespread, and organized opposition crossingideological, party, cultural and racial lines is growing, in New York,Illinois, Florida, and D.C., Georgia, Louisiana, Nevada and other states.  

The political stakes forPresident Bush are high: A domestic policy victory would bolster his claim thathe can reach out to Democrats and be a unifier; a loss on education, which bothparties say is “non-partisan” issue, would undermine his other policy initiativeswhere there are obvious and deep ideological differences.

Whether Congress passes andfunds Bush’s testing proposals depends on two things: whether conservativeChristians in the GOP –  heretofore hostile to national testing, but whosespokesman John Ashcroft is now Bush’s attorney general –  will remainsilent on the policy they once opposed; and whether the loosely knit movementsof civil rights groups, fair test  advocates, parents, teachers, students,and local community activists can unify and bring  enough pressure to bearon state legislators and on Congress to derail the president’s plan.

National and statewidetesting as the chief instrument of educational reform is simplistic,counterproductive, and a major assault on local, democratic control of thenation’s public schools. The tragedy is that mandated testing increasesinequality, perpetuates institutional racism and installs mediocrity.  Itinflicts lasting harm on all children, but those most likely to be hurt are thechildren of the poor, of color, immigrants, and those with specialdevelopmental needs.

Testing has been sold tothe public as an inexpensive fix for our schools. This is false. In addition tothe social costs, the direct and indirect administrative costs are enormous. Ata minimum, the Bush plan has been estimated by the National Association ofState Boards of Education to add $2.7 billion to $7 billion in expensesannually.11 Based on previous research, the truecost could be many times that once lost teaching days and the loss of classroomtime that is diverted to coaching students for tests are included.12 These are resources that could and should be directed to fixing deterioratedschool buildings, buying books, raising teacher salaries, and encouraging thedevelopment of systems of accountability that expand and deepen studentlearning and extend educational opportunities to all children.

1NOTES

. Wilgoren, J., “EducationPlan by Bush Shows New Consensus.” New York Times, Jan 23, 2001

    Sanger, D., “Bush Pushes Ambitious Education Plan.” New York Times, Jan.24, 2001

    Schemo, D.J., “Schoolbook balancing act.” New York Times, Jan. 24,2001    

2. Ornstein, Charles, “Bush losingvouchers, gaining an education deal.” Dallas Morning News. May 7, 2001

3

.  Wilgoren,  Jan23, 2001

    Sanger, Jan. 24, 2001

    Schemo, Jan. 24, 2001    

4

. Schemo, Jan. 24, 2001

5.  1999 Standards, forEducational and Psychological Tests produced jointly by the AmericanEducational Research Association (AERA), American Psychological Association(APA) and National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME)

See also:

Linn, Robert, “Assessmentsand Accountability,” Educational Researcher 29:2 2000

6.  Texas reports as much as 11percentile points gain on its own test ( TAAS). A recent Rand report, ImprovingStudent Achievement; What State NAEP Scores Tell Us   (available athttp://www.rand.org) shows gains of three percentile points or less.  Onthe other hand, the Nation’s Report Card compiled by National Center forEducational Statistics indicates a small but steady decline in NAEP readingscores of Texas high school students.  Available at: http://www.nces.ed/gov

7. Haney, Walter, “The Myth of theTexas Miracle in Education,” Educational Policy Analysis Archives, Vol.8, No 41, http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n41/

8.  McNeil, Linda, Contradictionsof School Reform: Educational Costs of Standardized Testing. New York:Routledge, 2000.

9.  Schrag, Peter, “Testing,accountability and wedge politics.” Sacramento Bee, Jan. 31, 2001.Available at: http://www.sacbee.com/voices/news/old/voices04_20010131.html

10.  FairTest / CARE (Coalitionfor Authentic Reform in Education), MCAS: Making the Massachusetts DropoutCrisis Worse.  MCAS Alert, September 2000. Available at: http://www.fairtest.org/care/MCAS%20Alert%20Sept.html

11. News release, “Cost Of President'sTesting Mandate Estimated As High As $7 Billion.” Washington D.C.: NationalAssociation of State Boards of Education, April 25, 2001. Available at:http://www.nasbe.org/Archives/cost.html

 

12 . In 1993, Boston CollegeResearchers Walter Haney, George Madaus, and Robert Lyons estimated indirectcosts of testing at $20 billion annually (The Fractured Marketplace forStandardized Testing Boston: Kluwer, 1993)