Why Does Testing = Civil Rights?

Stephanie Simon at Politico reported Republicans in the House and the Senate, along with some some Dems, may force a roll-back of the NCLB testing mandates.

But guess who's criticizing talk of the roll-back?

Some "progressive Dems" and some in the "civil rights community," who see testing as a "civil rights issue":

Part of the difficulty in rewriting the law is that the most hated parts of the bill are deeply intertwined with its heralded civil rights provisions: The testing requirements, for example, allowed the government for the first time to spotlight the achievement gaps between white students from higher-income families and their peers when those test results were broken down by race and socioeconomic status. NCLB put a public spotlight on schools and districts that were falling flat when it comes to helping disadvantaged students — and pressed them to improve when no one else would.

Civil rights groups say they were caught a little off guard by the sudden resurgence of debate over this aspect of NCLB. They fear Congress will strip core provisions of the law but hope that the national conversation about race sparked by recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City will help keep a spotlight on civil rights.

Rep. George Miller, the outgoing ranking member of the House education committee and an original author of NCLB, said he anticipates the business and civil rights communities will rein in lawmakers when it comes to keeping the law’s testing and accountability requirements.

“There’s no future for the NEA in being anti-civil rights for poor and minority children. Historically, that’s never been their position,” Miller said.

Have you got that, folks?

George Miller, who has taken gobs of money from for-profit education companies, wraps himself in the veneer of "civil rights champion" as talk of rolling back the federal mandates on testing circles Washington D.C.

 Miller's got a financial stake in keeping the status quo going (especially now as he exits Congress and gets ready to rake in even bigger bucks lobbying - reportedly for Pearson), but he's not the only one rapping the anti-testing movement as essentially racist:

For the civil rights community, collecting annual data allows parents to know how their children are doing, and to an extent, just having the data public can shame schools into doing better.

“We see this as a civil rights bill,” said Nancy Zirkin, executive vice president for the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

“I am hard-pressed to understand how you give states federal money with no strings attached,” Zirkin said.

Right - because the only way to ensure a quality education for all is to test children every year in every subject and punish districts, schools and educators whose students don't "measure up."

You know, I went back to that iconic speech Martin Luther King Jr. gave at the March on Washington in 1963 I noticed that there's this little repeated passage:

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed - that every child shall be tested in every subject in every grade and their schools and teachers held accountable for those scores.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood and compare Common Core test benchmarks.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom, justice and charters schools that do more to bring about segregation in public education than anything else.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where their teachers will not be judged by the colors of their skin but by their students' scores on their yearly Common Core exams and fired if those scores do not show improvement two years running.

I have a dream today!

See?

Testing and judging schools and teachers by the test scores is a civil rights issue, one that MLK Jr. and some the other great Civil Rights leaders of yore gave their lives to champion.

No wonder Miller, Zirkin and the other "Civil Rights" champions of today continue to promote testing and Common Core as a "civil rights issue."

I'm sure it has nothing to do with the Gates Foundation money that ends up funding Zirkin's Leadership Conference (see here) or the for-profit education company money that funded Miller for so long and the Pearson money that may fund him in the future.

Corporate Education Reform Proponent George Miller To Retire From Congress

The corporate education reform movement and for-profit post secondary school industry lost a reliable shill:

California Rep. George Miller, Nancy Pelosi’s strong right arm and one of the top Democratic legislators of his generation, is stepping down at the end of this year after four decades in Congress. 

Miller informed Pelosi, the Democratic leader, of his decision last Wednesday and began telling personal staff Monday morning in advance of a public announcement in his Bay Area home district.

Miller was a huge supporter of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, a big proponent for high stakes testing and teacher evaluations tied to high stakes tests and a vacuum cleaner when it came to sucking up huge amounts of campaign funds from the for-profit schooling industry.

I'm sure Miller will slink off to become a lobbyist in the education reform world somewhere, either for the charter sector or the for profit college sector.

One way or another, Miller will cash in.

The good news is, at least he's out of Congress.

George Miller Is Right

Representative George Miller, ranking Dem on the House education committee, never met a standardized test he didn't like, a teacher he didn't think should be evaluated by that standardized test and testing companies and edu-entrepereneurs he wasn't happy to take money from in order to make sure the Endless Testing regime he helped put in place with No Child Left Behind continues ad infinitum.

AOL Post is running some jive video of Miller giving an "impassioned" speech against the Republican NCLB re-authorization bill in which he says "Children are running out of time in this country!"

Miller is upset because the GOP bill rolls back some of the NCLB data tracking nonsense, doesn't require teachers be evaluated using test scores, and doesn't promote the Endless Testing regime that Miller loves.

Representative Miller is right that children are running out of time - he's simply wrong about why they're running out of time.

Miller and his pro-testing, pro-privatization Dems have been either making ed policy or helping to make ed policy since 2002.

In that time, we have seen testing increase to every subject in every grade all the year through so that teachers and schools can be evaluated using test scores.  We have seen all kinds of data tracking of schools from the feds in order to hold "failing" schools accountable. We have seen districts get rid of gym and music and art and recess in order to increase time given for test prep.  We have seen schools ignore teaching to the whole child, get rid of social and emotional learning, replace literature with informational text reading and personal writing with argumentative essay writing.

Miller is right that children are running out of time - they are running out of time to get a real education that goes beyond test prep, argumentative writing and informational text reading.  They are running out of time to go to a school where they have recess or they take field trips or sit around in healing circles or talk to a counselor about their feelings rather than their standardized test scores.  They are running out of time to go to a school in a system that privileges human individuality and autonomy over systemic standardization and compulsion. They are running out of time to be treated like human beings rather than data points.

In short, they are running out of time because Miller and his pro-testing, pro-privatization Dems and the Repubs who stand with them have done their best to destroy public education in less than a generation, blame it on the teachers and schools, then sell off the pieces to the very donors who give to these crooks or hire them once they leave office.

Miller can decry the Republicans and they're cutting of the budget for schools all he wants.

He is as to blame for the destruction of public schools with his pro-privatization, pro-testing policies as they are.

Dems Plan To Address Teacher Evaluations In NCLB Jr.

Corporate whore and ranking Dem on the House Education Committee George Miller wants to enshrine teacher evaluations based upon student test scores in the NCLB Jr. bill they're starting to write in the House.

You know what to do - give Miller - a corporate-owned shill if ever there was one - and his staff an earful.

And this time, get angry.

Mention Egypt.

Talk about the coming revolution to rid the country of corporate-owned whores like himself and his president - metaphorically, of course.

These people aren't listening when we speak nicely.

So like Joe Strummer said, Anger can be power if you know how to use it.

Here's the contact info:

Washington, DC Office

George Miller 2205 Rayburn HOB
Washington, D.C. 20515
Phone: (202) 225-2095
Fax: (202) 225-5609