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Say standardized testing is devisive 

OAKLAND — Public school teachers and union representatives from around the Bay Area spoke out Thursday against standardized testing and cash incentives they termed “divisive” and a growing obstacle to their educational mission. 

“We need more than just a gimmick when it comes to teacher accountability,” said Barry Fike, president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers. 

At a news conference at the Elihu Harris State Office Building, teachers lined up to toss fake money into a trash bag, symbolizing their decision to refuse or donate the cash rewards they have received because their schools exceeded the state’s Academic Performance Index. 

The members of the Oakland Educational Association together have refused $3,500, and Reva Kidd, a teacher at Berkeley’s Cragmont Elementary, said she had been offered $10,000. 

“I couldn’t believe it because we struggle so much to get adequate compensation,” she said. 

Margot Pepper, a third-grade Spanish-language immersion teacher at Rosa Parks Elementary School in Berkeley, said she had been offered $500. 

“I turned down the money because I feel the test is not a measure of achievement,” she said, but rather, “a measure of socioeconomic level.” 

As an example, Pepper said she had an “extremely bright” Latino student who was fluent in English but “bombed” the Stanford Achievement Test-9, the current centerpiece of the state’s testing program. 

Meanwhile, she said, a Caucasian child at risk of failing out of class “was the highest scorer.” 

About a dozen other speakers lambasted the SAT-9 at the press conference and at a subsequent panel discussion hosted by the California Coalition for Authentic Reform in Education, or CalCARE. Fadeeluh Muhyee, a senior at Oakland High School, said by awarding bonuses based on SAT-9 test scores, the state was funneling cash to the schools that need it the least. 

“That’s the way this is set up: So rich schools can get richer and poor schools can get poorer.” 

“Teachers don’t want this kind of blood money,” said state Assemblywoman Dion Aroner, D-Berkeley. Aroner was also a panel member. “They want salary increases.” 

The state board of education voted to make SAT-9 the primary public-school evaluation test in November 1997. Two years later, the state government passed the Public Schools Accountability Act, which provided cash rewards for school districts that exceeded a state-defined Academic Performance Index. 

Les Axelrod, a research and evaluation consultant with the state education department’s standards and assessment division, said that SAT-9 “certainly isn’t aligned to the state standards we’ve adopted” under API. 

Developed by Harcourt Educational Measurement, Inc., the SAT-9 is based on a broad national standard so that it can be used anywhere in the country. 

In the language of the testing world, it is “norm referenced:” Students are measured against a statistical nationwide average, rather than scored on their own achievement level. 

Rick Rubino, principal of Madison Elementary in San Leandro and a panelist, was among those at Thursday’s forum who said part of the problem with the SAT-9 is that half those who take it inevitably score below average. 

“I think my head will explode if I hear one more teacher say: ‘We have to close the achievement gap,’” Rubino said. “You’re never going to close the achievement gap using SAT-9, because half will always fail.” 

The Public Schools Accountability Act called for broader performance measures for schools than simply the SAT-9, including attendance, Axelrod said. As part of this broadening, yet another standardized test is being rolled out: The California Achievement Standards test, whose language component is already being administered simultaneously with the SAT-9.  

In 2003, the state board is due to for a complete revamp of the Standardized Testing and Reporting program, Axelrod said. 

“This coming year is going to be last year of the STAR program as we know it.” 

In the meantime, however, teachers around the state have begun to speak out against the trend toward cash rewards for raising student test scores — a policy that both presidential candidates last year advocated as a means toward teacher accountability. 

“No matter where I go, this issue is on the front page, all over California,” Aroner said at the press conference. 

Pepper, the Washington Elementary teacher, said the SAT-9’s inequality along lines of income and race was bound to lead to lawsuits against school districts. Inequality was not the only problem the cited Thursday evening, however. 

Kidd, the Cragmont teacher, said the award money was “divisive among teachers,” and several complained that requirements to remove all educational materials from their walls before testing week disrupted their jobs. 

“My position as a teacher is very compromised by the process,” said Kidd. 

Rubino and several others said they were not against student assessment tests in general — just the SAT-9. 

“People like it because it’s easy,” he said. “They don’t have to get down in the trenches and do an authentic assessment.” 

The use of the SAT-9 and the national push for cash incentives results from “the perception that teachers have a ‘cush’ situation,” said Fike, of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers. 

“So what do we get? Methodology designed by people by and large far from the classroom.” 

“If the public thinks the system is broken,” Rubino said, “then we have to fix the system and the perception.”