Governor Malloy issued a letter to the Performance Evaluation Advisory Council on Tuesday urging more “flexibility” and a delay regarding the planned changes to teacher evaluations. There was no mention of delaying or canceling the standardized testing in March; those tests are central to this issue.

This relieves stress for many of those directly affected by the policy that was pushed through in 2012, but some in the media are playing this off as politicians merely being responsive to constituents. Although the current standardized testing does not encourage this, let’s apply some critical thinking and see what evidence leads us to believe.

Suburban teacher Elizabeth Natale’s op-ed (17 Jan 2014) “went viral,” showing the mainstream news media what those paying attention have known for some time: high stakes testing sucks the life and purpose out of public education. What has not been readily acknowledged by the governor, state legislators, or that segment of the media is that Natale’s poignant essay presents no fresh perspective. Her piece might have empowered others to speak up and send letters, but there have been scholars and educators doing just that for several years now. Why, then, is this same sentiment getting attention only now?

Part of the controversy here is that teachers’ evaluations would be heavily impacted by something having little connection to teaching — standardized test scores. Malloy is now asking for scores from the CMT, CAPT, or SBAC (standardized test brands) to be potentially excluded from evaluations for this year, with the caveat: federal approval necessary.

Robert Cotto, Jr., current member of Hartford’s Board of Education, had submitted testimony last March while working with Connecticut Voices for Children; in this, he said that because the State Department of Education does not know the fiscal and educational impact of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), to which the SBAC is linked, an independent study should be done. Connecticut Voices for Children’s analysis suggested that modifications be made to Connecticut’s standardized testing system and the way those test results are used.

Cotto testified two other times last year. He said that one of Malloy’s staff showed interest after his testimony at the appropriations committee meeting, but never followed up with CT Voices for Children.

In 2012, Cotto also testified on several occasions, this time regarding Senate Bill 24: “An Act Concerning Educational Competitiveness.” Speaking on behalf of CT Voices for Children, he said such emphasis on standardized testing would “accelerate the trend of teaching to the state’s standardized tests and excluding students from schools and districts that would not score well on those tests such as emerging bilingual students (ELL), students with disabilities, low-income, and/or some minority students.”

In another piece of testimony regarding SB24, Cotto said:

Test information, skillfully interpreted, can often help teachers, administrators, parents, and students to identify the strengths and weaknesses of students in basic English literacy skills. Nevertheless, the CMT and CAPT were not designed to judge teacher skill or knowledge. Since students are not distributed randomly or equitably within classrooms, between schools, and across districts, using standardized test scores as an indicator for teacher evaluation could penalize those teachers who work with the least prepared students in the most challenging classroom conditions. This is particularly true for tests that only measure absolute, or standards-based levels, rather than indicators of relative improvement over time.

In 2012, as in 2013,  Cotto was also not the only person testifying against overuse and misuse of standardized testing. There were dozens.

Dawn Pilkington, a kindergarten teacher in Easton, wrote that this “plan does not take into account the ways some school districts, such as my district, choose to group students with special needs. In my school, students with special needs are placed in one or two classrooms per grade level to effectively provide services in the least restrictive environment possible. If you were to look simply at the test scores from each classroom, not understanding the grouping of children within each class, it would appear that these one or two teachers at each grade level are less effective due to their lower overall test scores. In reality, those specific teachers have worked even harder throughout the year to differentiate instruction and provide a supportive learning community for many different types of learners.”

Later, she wrote, “At a time when our country needs to teach future generations to be intelligent and innovative members of society, we are instead teaching students how to bubble in multiple choice answers and respond to artificial prompts. ”

She was not the only person to show concern that students were being deprived of 21st century skills.

Also in testimony during Governor Malloy’s second year in office, Jose M. Vas, a Danbury teacher, expressed similar frustration with the high stakes testing culture:

Our students, schools and teachers need help, not ever more draconian evaluation methods. Do we want our students to grow up to be thinking, contributing citizens or do we want them to know how to pass tests? These two things are not even mutually exclusive but we have made them so.

A teacher from New Milford opposed connecting educators’ evaluations to standardized tests, explaining how many factors can impact scores. Kimberly Patella’s testimony states:

It is a week before CMT’s begin and I already learned from some parents that they will be taking their children off medication because the child didn’t like being on the meds. I have a group of parents who have taken their children on vacation during school and have asked for missing work (as if we teach out of a book or use worksheets), one student just learned that his dad walked out on the family, my remedial readers have informed me that they usually create patterns on the bubble sheets during the test because they don’t like taking the DRP.

She pointed out that she would be held accountable, even though none of those things are within her control.

Jessica Karjanis, a teacher from Stamford, complained that she would also be made responsible for matters other than her teaching. In her testimony, she gave a scenario that is actually not uncommon here in Hartford: students move to the United States with limited English, just weeks before the standardized tests. Although no rational person could be expected to gain language proficiency in that timeframe, teachers are held responsible nonetheless when those children are unable to pass a test.

It was not accountability teachers feared. There were suggestions for alternatives, such as using a combination of classroom observations, students’ grades, and portfolios. But basing a large percentage of one’s work review on standardized testing presents problems.

An educator from Ridgefield, Mark Reinders, wrote:

No two classes are alike. If my salary rested on student peformance it would fluctuate radically despite the fact that NOTHING about my level of commitment, effort, effectiveness, dedication and ability changes from year to year. In fact, each year I get better. This does not always guarantee a similar output by students. I may have 27 kids like last year who were often not super motivated no matter how hard I worked. This year I have 22 who ARE very motivated. A class in inner city New Haven will not be remotely comparable to a class of 20 in Darien, CT. Creating a pay structure predicated on student testing would result in a) wildly fluctuating pay levels year by year ( making it literally impossible to plan for the future), b) foster competitive and often antagonistic atmospheres within a building where collegiality now reigns because everyone will work to have the better students, fewer special needs students, better parents, etc. (this would happen because you would have made their professional survival utterly dependent on the best test takers) c) eliminate any hint of true education and sense of curiosity, inquiry and most of all enthusiasm for learning because taking a bunch of badly flawed tests and the relentlessly endless preparation for those tests the cornerstone of so-called education. Just because you take someone’s temperature every day does not mean you are addressing their illness. I feel that if the current proposals are permitted to become law they will virtually ensure that the best and the brightest will look at the teaching profession and turn away ASAP. Ultimately the students will pay the greatest price because of the zealous pursuit of Stepford students, taught by Stepford teachers who are being encouraged to hoard all their best units and teaching methods with no guarantee of a salary increase or job security.

A teacher at Sedgwick Middle School in West Hartford, Ted Goerner, showed concern that tying test scores to teacher evaluations would erode the institution:

I fear that if salaries are tied to performance on standardized tests, many teachers will be reluctant to diverge from the specific test content. And if they do diverge and spend time teaching concepts that are not on the test, are they not risking the possibility that their students will not perform quite as well as those that strictly teach to the test and only to the test?

Like Reinders, Goerner worried that the outcome would be the homogenization of education:

No test is perfect but the constant alignment and re-alignment of our curriculum with tests is leading us towards a future in which every child in the state will be taught exactly the same material in exactly the same way. This is a bureaucratization of education. It has and will continue to drain the spontaneity and intellectual passion from our classrooms. Teachers need to have the freedom to teach in away that will best prepare students for an ever-changing world. Teachers need the freedom to teach the things that they and their classes of heterogeneously grouped students are most passionate about and to tailor their instruction on a daily basis.

Yvette Budrow, an educator in Hamden Public Schools, suggested that the emphasis on standardized testing is a way to dodge the hard work of improving education. She wrote:

If a test is the only measure of a teacher’s effectiveness, then a child is simply a number. Soft skills, integrity, citizenship, community awareness, and contributions will have no value. Schools are not the panacea for all ills. We do need to change to reach the highest number of students graduating equipped with skills to work and continue their education. This proposal is simply an example of finding an easy target to place blame and avoid the hard work: How do we reform our schools to engage students and help all of them succeed?

Kevin Egan, a Waterbury teacher, said:

After a decade of suffering from the unfunded promises of No Child Left Behind and realizing that the law has been a total disaster, now Connecticut wants to continue to place a high priority on high stakes standardized test scores by tying them to evaluation, and subsequently employing draconian measures to tie evaluation to certification. Teachers know that testing should be used for diagnostic purposes, to help students and teachers, but instead, it has turned into a deadly weapon that is used punish teachers and schools.

Later, he quoted from Diane Ravitch before warning that passing this bill would make for future embarrassment:

The PEAC council has called for evaluation to be reliable, valid, fair and useful, but yet nothing in SB 24 seems to accommodate any one of these four requirements. We also know that the evaluation framework is not complete, and several issues in it have yet to be defined. We need legislation that promotes strong collaboration between all stake holders. Let’s not rush into a system of school reform that we know is not going to work, just for the sake of saying we are now instituting school reform. I would urge this committee and your fellow legislators to vote this bill down and avoid the unmistakable embarrassment of signing a bill that will do absolutely nothing for the achievement gap and do everything for the corporate reformers and billionaires who have raided our state on the backs of our teachers in the hopes of unimaginable profits.

Several others testified that these tests were not designed for teacher evaluation. Still, others wanted to know more about the financial costs. A Wesleyan Sociology of Education professor called these standardized tests “inaccurate and ineffective.”

Yet in May 2012, the State Senate passed the controversial bill 28-7, with the State House of Representatives passing it unanimously the following day. Politicians voted favorably, despite admitting that they had not read the entire book-length bill.

Teacher anger and frustration over standardized testing is not something that arose two weeks ago or even at the start of this school year, but in the lead up to Malloy’s flawed attempt at education reform, most of the local news media both fixated on its own misinterpretation of teacher tenure and gave voice only to politicians and those benefitting financially from the “education reform” movement.

Now, Governor Malloy hits the brakes even though the light has been red for over two years. How is this year different from all of Malloy’s other years in office as governor?