If you haven’t yet written your N.C. House representative to express your concerns with high-stakes testing and request that he or she support HB 775 – Moratorium on High-Stakes Testing, please do so as soon as possible.

Here’s the letter MecklenburgACTS co-chair Pamela Grundy sent to the members of the House Education Committee today. Yours doesn’t need to be nearly this long. But stories about personal experiences with high-stakes testing will make an impact. For information about locating and contacting your representative, go to the CONTACT Representatives button at the top of this page.

Dear Representative,

On behalf of many, many North Carolina parents, I write to ask you to support HB 775, which would impose a one-year moratorium on state-mandated consequences tied to standardized test scores here in North Carolina. This would be a first step in dealing with the high-stakes testing madness that has done so much damage to education in our state.

As the mother of a sixth grader who has spent his whole career in North Carolina schools, I have seen that damage first hand.

Four summers ago, just before school began, my son came to talk to me.

“I’m nervous about third grade,” he confided.

I was a bit surprised, but recovered quickly and donned my everything-will-be-all-right mom hat. Third grade would be great, I reassured him. He loved his school. He’d been assigned a marvelous teacher, funny and warm and super-sharp. His friends would all be back. He didn’t have anything to worry about.

He quickly set me straight.

“I’m nervous about the EOGs.”

My son was no fool.

For three years he had cheered on anxious test-takers at the school’s annual EOG pep rallies.

For three years he had walked softly past classrooms where silent students bent over bubble sheets.

For three years he had seen the signs. “Closed for Testing.” “Testing in Progress.” “Quiet: Testing.”

He knew how much the tests mattered.

He knew this year he would be the one clutching the yellow pencil, with not only his own fate, but that of his teachers and his school weighing on his nine-year-old shoulders.

And my beautiful, bright son, who already bore the official stamp of “academically gifted,” was worried before he even started school.

Third grade was not an easy year. My son’s teacher, who had been working with children for more than thirty years, didn’t think third graders were old enough for this kind of testing. But it was her job to prepare them, and she gave it all she had.

She taught them all the tricks – how to cross off the obviously wrong choices, when to guess. At home, we completed worksheet after practice worksheet – on top of the reading and projects that were the regular class assignments. She was a fantastically skilled teacher, regaling the class with a style and flair and humor that made the whole thing as bearable as possible. But still, anxieties rose.

I remember that the pollen was bad that spring, and the room filled with sniffs and sneezes. They ran out of tissues, and resorted to passing a roll of toilet paper from desk to desk, students tearing off sheets as needed. It felt like nature was conspiring to make the test-prep time as miserable as possible, in some fiendish trial of character. We did our best to just keep slogging forward.

Then test week came and went.

When the tests were done, so was my son. He had done his job. He had passed both tests, made his contribution to the school’s all-important final numbers. His teacher, to her credit, kept on teaching, moving to new subjects, assigning new projects. But he refused to do another lick of work. Threats, encouragement, even bribes all failed. He ended the year with the worst grades he’d ever gotten.

This was not a valuable learning experience. It did not toughen up my son and make him eager for the next challenge. The math test was all right. The literacy test – the area where he excels – was awful: piece after poorly-written piece of manufactured writing, followed by cramped, dull questions (for an example of this kind of test, you might review last year’s Pineapplegate scandal).

By the end he knew – without my telling him – that the tests on which so much energy had been expended gave him no opportunity to demonstrate the most important things his teacher taught him – the thorny questions the class pondered, the multi-media projects they crafted, the way they learned to express themselves with vivid, graceful language. The “3″ he got in math was simply a relief, and the “4″ in literacy was not really worth celebrating.

In short: his anxiety turned into cynicism. And I could not tell him he was wrong. I don’t have a problem with tests in general, and we’re hard on him about keeping up his grades. But these high-stakes tests are different. I just keep explaining that there are some things you’re simply required to do, and that even when they don’t make sense you should still do the best you can. That’s just the way life is sometimes. I suppose that is some kind of lesson, but it’s not one I enjoy repeating.

I want to emphasize that my son is lucky here. He has never failed one of these tests, never had to worry that it would hold him back a grade, or mark him as a “failure.” He has been in classes where his teachers have been confident enough to put some limits on both test prep and anxiety. But it has harmed his education all the same.

Now here’s where you come in. I want my son to learn a different lesson from this high-stakes testing mess. I want him to learn that when citizens see that something has gone terribly wrong in our society, they can band together and stop it, using the power of democracy and of representative government.

By listening to us, and by supporting this and other measures that reduce high-stakes testing, you can help teach this lesson to students across the state. Please join us.

Sincerely,

Pamela Grundy
Charlotte, N.C.

Had a great time at our Board of Education testing zombie event. Keep those signatures coming, and look for action news soon!

Here’s what we had to say.

For more than a decade, North Carolina schools, students, teachers and families have suffered from the onslaught of high-stakes standardized tests sparked by the No Child Left Behind legislation.

These zombie tests have invaded our schools, sucking time and money from teaching and learning. They’ve deadened creativity and original thought, squashed imagination, stripped both teachers and students of dignity.

Like zombies, these tests just won’t die. Despite conclusive evidence from many sources that the explosion of testing No Child Left Behind testing did more harm than good, the numbers and the cost of tests continue to multiply.

Dozens of new high-stakes state tests will be introduced this year, with more to come in subsequent years. We anticipate that the budget that will be unveiled tonight will include significant expenditures on equipment and other costs of these largely unfunded state and federal mandates.

And as Dr. Morrison and other educational leaders have pointed out, these tests that are sucking so much time, energy and money cannot assess the twenty-first century skills that our children need to be learning, skills such as creativity, entrepreneurship, cooperation, determination and complex problem solving.

It’s time to stop the madness. Parents, students, teachers, leaders and community members need to stand up and say “we won’t take it any more.” If we all stand together, our elected leaders in Raleigh and in Washington will have to listen.

We want to emphasize that this is not a partisan issue. Both Democrats and Republicans bear responsibility for testing madness. Across Mecklenburg County, and across our state, both Republicans and Democrats are fed up with the damage it has done to our schools.

We also want to emphasize that we are not here to criticize CMS. We are here to ask for your support as we call on our state leaders to take action.

While some tests are mandated by the federal government, state leaders can cut their numbers and remove high-stakes measures – such as A-F grades for schools and using test scores to determine teacher pay – that have narrowed the curriculum to the limited material covered by the tests, and have prompted rampant, soul-deadening teaching to the test.

Our MecklenburgACTS.org petition, which can be found at NoTestingZombies.com, calls on state leaders to reduce tests where they can, and to place a moratorium on state-mandated high-stakes consequences until this madness can be sorted out. We call on the public, on the board, and on our superintendent to give us your support.

Help us keep the zombies from our children’s brains. Thank you.

It’s time to fight high-stakes standardized tests!

Join the undead for a rally at the Government Center Plaza, 600 E 4th St, Charlotte, NC 28202 before the Board of Education meeting.

Come anytime between 4-6:30 pm. Wear your best zombie attire. We will have zombie makeup available.

RSVP at our Facebook event. Help spread the work by using the zombie image for your Facebook profile picture.

Questions? Email Carol.

It’s time to turn that pressure up again. In the next few years, students across North Carolina will face a tsunami of tests that will dwarf the previous plan. These include 177 new state tests and online Common Core tests that will suck time, money and energy away from the twenty-first century skills our children need to be learning. We all need to speak out now.

To that end, MecklenburgACTS has launched a new End Testing Madness Petition.

This statewide petition focuses on state officials, who are responsible for the bulk of these exams, as well as the damaging stakes that will be attached to them. Local school officials have very little say in any of this. They’re mostly scrambling to figure out how they’re going to pay for it.

Please read the petition, sign it, and tell all your North Carolina friends via Facebook, Twitter and any other means at your disposal.

We’ll be sharing more information about other opportunities for action in coming weeks. Make sure you keep up with the latest developments by liking our Facebook page.

End Testing Madness in North Carolina!

Please take a minute to let Dr. Morrison and other educational leaders know that you support his statements and urge them to take meaningful action to end testing madness.

We at MecklenburgACTS also support the call for a national three-year test moratorium made by Montgomery County superintendent Joshua Starr, and would be happy to back Dr. Morrison were he to join that call.

You can show your support for Dr. Morrison’s stand by sending an e-mail of support to Dr. Morrison, State Superintendent Dr. June Atkinson, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and your state and federal representatives. Let them know that Dr. Morrison speaks the truth about the destructive effects of high-stakes testing, and urge them to take immediate action to reduce the number of such tests and their problematic role in evaluating students, teachers and schools.

You may read their full comments here.

We’ve also archived the September 11, 2012 comments to the Board of Education from Pamela Grundy and Carol Sawyer.

The DNC has departed, but there’s still much to do. Teacher morale and the new state tests will both be addressed at the school board meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 6:30 p.m. at the Government Center. Please try to come join us. It would be great to have a large, supportive audience.

Teacher Morale

Barry Sherman and Bevelyn Sherrill, who wrote the “CMS has crisis of heart” piece in the Observer, will be presenting to the board during the Requests from the Public period. We will follow with further presentations on teacher morale and on the recently released teacher retention report produced by TNTP (an organization founded by Michelle Rhee).

New State Tests

There will also be a presentation on the new state tests. According to the PowerPoint posted with the  board meeting agenda:

1. This year CMS will administer 22 new state-mandated high school tests, as well as new social studies tests in grades 4-8 and new science tests in grades 4, 6 and 7. The scores will be used in teacher evaluations.

2. In high school, these new state tests “will take the place of teacher-created final exams” and “will count as 25% of each high school student’s final grade.”

3. The state is apparently not providing funds for printing or scoring the exams, information that was not conveyed to CMS until after the CMS budget was approved. CMS will have to find funding for these expenses in its own budget.

Keep Your Eyes on the Legislature

We can expect more legislative action in the next session. Ruth Samuelson has already re-floated the idea of performance pay. We have heard that “parent trigger” legislation is likely to be introduced. At the DFER meeting, corporate reform guru Jonathan Alter asserted that “panelists promoting DFER’s reform vision in North Carolina and Indiana are ‘still in the wilderness,’” suggesting that DFER may move to help them. The group 50CAN, which promotes corporate reform in state legislatures, has already moved into our state, and there are indications that Michelle Rhee and Students First will not be far behind.

Students First, Parent Revolution and Democrats for Education Reform are pushing for education policies that have no track record of success:

• An expansion of high-stakes testing that turns schools into testing factories and drives families and top teachers away from public education.

• Relentless charter school expansion even though charter schools regularly perform less well than comparable public schools.

• School closings which disrupt families and communities and send most students to schools that perform no better than the ones they left.

• Parent trigger laws which divide parents and have yet to improve a single school.

We’ve seen here in Charlotte how these policies destabilize communities, anger parents and demoralize our best teachers. We call on President Obama and other Democrats to reject these policies and join parents and education experts in support of a more positive set of changes that includes small classes, a well-rounded curriculum, more meaningful parent involvement and greater investment in teachers and families.

Parents Across America has also produced an online toolkit with further suggestions for improving schools, as well as background on the parent trigger and the “Won’t Back Down” movie.

For a story of a high-poverty school that remade itself using the changes that we recommend, visit Pamela Grundy’s blog, Seen from the ‘Rock. Contact Pamela at shamrockparent@earthlink.net.

Unfortunately, too much precious time, energy and money has been sidetracked by policies that harm our schools rather than help them. These flawed policies have led to:

            • Excessive high-stakes testing

            • Demoralization of dedicated, hardworking teachers

            • School closings and charter school policies that destabilize families and communities, especially in low-income areas

Proponents of these flawed policies have scheduled two events during DNC week here in Charlotte – a film and panel discussion on Monday and a “town hall” on Tuesday.

We need to tell convention-goers and elected officials that parents on the ground do not support these efforts. Many of us have seen first-hand the damage these policies have done to students, schools and communities. We also know they have no track record of success.

Please join us before both events to rally in support of a more dynamic vision of an excellent public education for every student – one centered on parent and community involvement, greater support for dedicated educators and a vigorous, creative approach to learning and evaluation at all public schools. We also urge you to sign up to attend the events and voice your thoughts.

Monday, September 3: “Won’t Back Down” film and panel discussion sponsored by Michelle Rhee’s Students First, by Parent Revolution and by Democrats for Education Reform. Funders of these well-heeled groups include the Broad, Walton and Gates foundations, Rupert Murdoch and Wall Street hedge funds. To sign up: http://www.studentsfirst.org/page/s/dnc-signup.

EpiCentre Theater: 210 E. Trade St.             Rally: 12:30-1 p.m.               Event: 1-3 p.m.

Tuesday, September 4: Democrats for Education Reform Town Hall. The panel will feature elected officials who have supported legislation on policies such as high-stakes testing, charter school expansion and private school vouchers. Some of these bills are now being pushed by the ultra-conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). To sign up: http://www.dfer.org/events/2012townhall.

Knight Theater: 430 S. Tryon St.                        Rally: 12:30-1:30 p.m.   Program: 1:30-4 p.m.

If you or your group plan to participate, let us know at mecklenburgacts@gmail.com.