First of all, is this not exactly what the CTU strike was “about” (working conditions for adults are assumed to be somehow related to learning environments for students , no?)?  Second of all, the “what” of learning is likewise inextricably linked to the “how,” as you point out in the sentence immediately prior to the above.  As an example, why am I (dual cert. Math and Sp.ed. teaching in a Title 1 high school) being forced to teach intermediate Algebra content, in the format of a mandated college-prep curriculum which is built on the assumption of requisite skill sets, as well as average to above-average intelleligence, to students with IQ scores below 70, many of whom require a calculator for single-digit operations?  Is there not something else to be done with the school day that might be slightly less alienating (and much more in line with individual needs and abilities) for these students?  Mind you, I am far from being anything close to a “cognitive fundamentalist,” but there is something amiss here, and when our school (as well as every other school with a disproportionately high number of sp.ed. and ESL/ELL students) is labeled “Persistently Low-Achieving” time and again, after, surprise, suprise, the aforementioned students fail to score a 19 in the ACT math subtest, the local bourgeuois press, and the School Board, and the State Department will scream yet again, “See – mediocre scores, mediocre schools, close them, defund them, ‘transform them!’”

I would be careful about the importance you give to test scores here, and would ask you, exactly, how it is that we might fight “transformation” on their terms if not in the way that the CTU has.  

As an aside, the NAEP came up recently in our district, and one of the tricks in the state in which I teach has been to exclude students with disabilities from taking this test.  This is, of course, patent discrimination.  The state’s justification?  Students with disabilities are not provided accommodations on the NAEP – likewise, patent discrimination.  NAEP’s justification?  The accuracy of their exam would be compromised.

The point being, our most vulnerable populations (e.g. students with disabilities and new immigrants with limited proficiency in English) are being hammered by demands that they perform as well as their peers on standards-based, and sometimes norm-referenced (e.g. the ACT) measures of academic achievement, performance and skills-acquisition.  Such measures are not designed with these students in mind, the companies which produce them assume that the extent to which these tests are valid is PRECISELY the extent to which these students score very poorly (e.g. Quality Core, ACT), and they work very hard to guarantee that the testing accommodations to which these students are legally entitled are denied them when/wherever possible.  As far as the ACT goes, this means the necessity of a standard distribution, or else colleges and universities (by nature highly exclusionist in academic terms) will consider such exams worthless.  The crux of the matter becomes clear when a state, like ours, suddenly decides that the ACT is their new accountability gold-standard, and that the standard distribution “does not matter.”  In addition, by placing a new emphasis on dropout rates and attrition, many students who would never have laid eyes on a college entrance exam two years ago will now be included in this number.

All combined, this becomes the latest recipe for making our poorest public schools look like disaster zones.  In short, the tests are another weapon to be wielded by capitalists against the ‘expense’ of basic social provision.  The context and approach may vary over time, but the basic assumption will always be, “We can’t afford to subsidize the education of those who won’t be likely to contribute very much to the surplus anyway, so how best to cut this expense?”  It might be dressed up as the latest imperative to “Close the Achievement Gap,” or some such nonsense, but that’s just used to sell it all too the many well- intentioned liberals who still have jobs (as of today) in Central Office.

I apologize for the tone, but I can tell you from very real and immediate experience that the issues related to assessment and due process for sp.ed. students in CPS are exactly the same issues we struggle with in our district, and I am personally inspired by the CTU strike action.  I don’t care much for any analysis that ridicules such resistance, or anyone who would applaud such resistance, as being part of the “ordinary left,” and in the same breath browbeats teachers and students for their “mediocrity” as indicated by capitalist tools of measurement.  

About unions or new organizations—I wouldn’t want to pre-judge the situation in any particular place. It might be possible for a union to transform itself into a constituent party to a new class-wide group that included students and community members. However, in light of the ways that laws, customs and the ambitions of union officials constrict unions’ practices, I’d be inclined to think that new organizations will be necessary.

About our “own” criteria for student success: I have two quite different responses. First, in the short run, we need to be really sensitive to the profoundly idiosyncratic ways in which individuals develop and learn (as distinctive as fingerprints) and that our criteria always need to be sensitive to the goal of engaging children and sustaining development. Therefore, the criteria we need to apply are primarily criteria about what the adults do and what the learning environments are like, rather than what the children learn. Second, in the long run, I think education needs to lay the groundwork for the progressive abolition of the distinction between mental and manual labor—a goal that would imply far greater levels of knowledge and skill acquisition for almost everyone than we’re familiar with.

About the defeat of the black community in 1968: I’m not especially interested in defending the particular demands of the community control movement (although I do think they need to be placed in the context of many years of stubborn white resistance to school desegregation). Nonetheless, combined with the earlier defeat of a proposal for a civilian review board for the police department, the decentralization that was adopted as an alternative to community control transformed a popular mobilization into a quagmire of nepotistic corruption which all but completely led to the dominance of the UFT in the city’s education system for thirty years. In retrospect, it would probably have been better if the community control advocates were more sophisticated about the educational issues but, perhaps to our dismay, a comparable effort in Chicago years later (with a much more sophisticated analysis) didn’t lead to much more.

About good teaching can’t being measured: I confess that this is an impressionistic judgment based on reading lots of teacher comments in various media, including blogs. I may be wrong. In any case, I really think that teaching needs to be informed by a coherent understanding of learning and not by a whole bunch of common sense assumptions.

About lousy schools: I k now that the tests are really lousy (perhaps we can meet some time so we can share stories about them) and are not necessarily good measures BUT kids in schools that have really high scores do really well on all sorts of other important measures. I have no interest in test prep but I have a lot of interest in kids learning a lot. High scores, not mediocre scores, reveal that kids have learned a lot. About dropouts: I realize that there are really good reasons why kids drop out of school. In the absence of any other good opportunities for kids to learn very much, however, I see their dropping out as a defeat.

About time: I agree—it’s all about time. Every teacher should be fighting every day about time!

John

John

Many more things I could comment on in this article. My overall feeling is that we teachers need to push our colleagues to do better, to be more aware of the big picture and have this inform our teaching. But my other strong feeling is: when the hell are we going to have time to do this? The very organization of school inhibits our *own* solidarity, and we too often let the union dominate the conversation about what “improved conditions” really means. In some ways we need to push back on the bread and butter issues just to free up some space for us to do our jobs better in a radical social sense. This idea needs to go beyond union boilerplate and be rooted in the kinds of working class organizations hinted at here.