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Education expert Alfie Kohn, one of the nation’s most outspoken opponents of high stakes standardized tests, told hundreds of Bay Area teachers Thursday that California is leading the race to the bottom in public education by overemphasizing standardized tests. 

“Congratulations on being number 50,” Kohn boomed, to the applause and laughter of teachers and others packed into the Oakland High School Auditorium. 

Don’t believe the hype that says standards are successfully reforming education around the country, Kohn told the group. “Even if our motives are good we’ve stumbled into something destructive,” he said. 

In more than two hours of remarks, punctuated by bursts of applause from an apparently adoring audience, Kohn said he has yet to meet a good standardized test. Over reliance on tests like the Stanford 9, used to measure California students performance in grades two through 11, and the new California High School Exit Exam makes students less motivated to learn, Kohn argued. 

“When you overemphasize results or achievement you get kids who see learning as a chore,” he said. “It’s the difference between getting kids to focus on how well they’re doing (instead) of focusing on what they’re doing.” 

Education based on long lists of specific standards (Kohn compared such lists to the Los Angeles white pages) makes it impossible for teachers to engage in the kind of spontaneous projects that help engage students and build their enthusiasm for a subject, Kohn said. 

“Standards perfectly suit the worst teachers who thrive under (them)” because it means they don’t have to work as hard, he said. 

Kohn said standardized tests promote a one-size-fits-all approach to education that hampers teachers’ ability to meet the individual needs of their students. Faced with continued moves in this direction, more and more teachers will leave the profession, he warned. 

“If teachers are turned into test prep technicians they will leave,” he said. 

Kohn said the tests are culturally biased because African-Americans and Latinos from underfunded city schools can’t be expected to perform as well as white students in wealthy, suburban school districts. 

Pointing to research showing strong connections between students’ socio-economic status and their performance on standardized tests, Kohn said the tests don’t measure students’ ability so much as “the size of houses near the school.” 

Calling standardized tests a form of “educational ethnic cleansing,” Kohn said they disproportionately punish African-American and Latino students and will cause drop-out rates among these students – already far higher than drop out rates for whites – to rise still further. 

“It’s really not about helping kids learn better,” Kohn said of educational standards. “This movement is about ensuring that we leave more children behind.” 

Finally, Kohn argued that the whole movement towards standards in schools is antidemocratic because the standards are created by experts and imposed by politicians without allowing for input from teachers, parents and students. 

“You don’t make change by demanding, you make change by supporting,” Kohn said, calling for more equitable funding for public schools, higher salaries for teachers, and more professional development based on best practices. 

Teachers from Marin, San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland who turned out to hear Kohn speak Thursday largely shared his views on the evils of standardized tests. 

“This year is terrible,” said Oakland elementary school art teacher Debbie Koppman. “The Oakland school district is under enormous pressure to raise test scores. Teachers feel like they’re damaging kids.” 

“Assessment is doing exactly what he’s saying,” said Alisa Winiecki, a math and science teacher at Oakland’s Brewer Middle School. “Advantaged kids are passing and disadvantaged kids are not.” 

Winiecki said school districts should focus on other ways to hold teachers accountable for student learning, like observing teachers in the classroom, interviewing their students and looking at samples of their classroom work. 

Politicians who emphasize testing as a solution to underachieving students vastly underestimate the dimension of the problem, Winiecki said. 

“The whole educational system needs to be reformed, starting with teaching preparation programs,” Winiecki said. “I haven’t heard of one good (teacher preparation program), at least in the Bay Area. They’re horrible.” 

Alameda County Board of Education member Jerry Wiggins, a resident of South Berkeley, said in an interview Friday that tests such as the California High School Exit Exam are a shortsighted political response to the long-term problem of underperforming schools in the state. 

“It’s a feel-good thing from a political perspective,” Wiggins said. “They’re trying to make a quick splash (before their terms are up).” 

The politicians would do better to focus their efforts on getting more money to the schools, Wiggins said. California still ranks behind much poorer and less populous states in terms of per pupil spending, he said. 

But members of the Berkeley Unified School District Board of Education defended California’s academic standards and the use of standardized tests Friday. 

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” said Berkeley school board Director Shirley Issel. “When you set goals and objectives that allow you to state clearly the skills that you expect students to develop...and you help parents, teachers, students and managers to understand what those skills are...you have a means of knowing how you’re doing.” 

Issel took issue with many of Kohn arguments. Just because teachers follow state academic standards in the classroom does not mean they are taking a more simplistic approach to education, she said.  

“To be an effective teacher you have to be innovative and creative,” she said. “The most effective teachers are the ones who do the best in the standardized curriculum.” 

As for the idea that the tests promote a one-size-fits-all approach to education, Issel said it is often standardized tests that allow educators to identify students individual needs and adjust their teaching accordingly. 

Standardized tests prepare students for the real world because “In this world we all take standardized tests over and over again,” Issel argued. 

Board Director Ted Schultz said standardized tests help educators identify what’s working and what isn’t. 

“It’s nice to be able to compare to different parts of the country or state because if they do better in some areas then that can give you some clues as to how to improve your system.”