AFT releases new policy report: Smart Testing, Let's Get It Right

This week, the American Federation of Teachers hosted a forum that featured the presentation and discussion of a paper authored by education writer and consultant Paul Barton. The paper, “Smart Testing: Let’s Get it Right: How assessment-savvy states have become since NCLB?” asserts that only 52 percent of states’ tests are aligned to strong standards, allowing some to conclude that states are doing a better job in developing content standards than in using them to drive assessment. As a result, testing that is not aligned with strong standards drives many accountability systems. This “drift into test-based accountability” is troubling to many educators.

Two years ago, the NCTE Executive Committee adopted Framing Statements on Assessment that describe the Council's guiding principles on assessment. Further, NCTE has endorsed a Joint Organizational Statement on the No Child Left Behind Act that emphasizes the need for the law to "to shift from applying sanctions for failing to raise test scores to holding states and localities accountable for making the systemic changes that improve student achievement."

What assessment practices do you value? Does the current policy emphasis on accountability make it easier, or more difficult, for you to engage in the kinds of assessment practices you believe work best?

Reading First Controversy

Have you had a chance to read the Inspector General's report on Reading First Grant Reviews? It's a revealing, even explosive, report. What do you think it means for the future of NCLB? What reforms are needed to keep this kind of corruption from poisoning the grant review process in the future?

Richard Allington to Discuss NCLB at NCTE Annual Convention

Richard Allington will discuss how the influence of NCLB does not encourage engaging children in independent reading activities or in rich and varied composing activities. Instead NCLB's influence is to place children in one-size-fits-all controlled and contrived packaged programs. He will also share research-based but unprofitable scientific strategies for improving reading improvement. A discussion session will follow the presentation.

Has NCLB Affected Your Teaching?

Today more than ever we need to speak up to
policymakers and members of our communities and tell them our personal stories
of good teaching and learning! Please take a few minutes to write a letter
to the editor of your local newspaper and share your story of how NCLB has
affected your work as a literacy educator.

• Write your own story and feel free to use information from
  these NCTE resources:
  
• results from an April 2006 survey
  on how NCLB has affected NCTE members' teaching
• the NCTE Legislative Platform
• talking points on Teacher Quality, Assessment, Narrowing of Curriculum, and
  Professional Development
  
• See our Tips for Writing Letters to the Editor
  
• Print or open in a new window these instructions for using Congress.org to submit your
  letter, then click on the logo below to go to
  Congress.org
  
  
  
• Take a moment to complete our September 2006 survey about how NCLB has affected
  your teaching and your students' learning.
  
• Did you send a letter to the editor of your local
  newspaper? Please forward a copy of your letter to slate@ncte.orgslate@ncte.organd
  complete this short report form.
  
• If your letter does run in the newspaper, please send us a
  clipping: SLATE Responses, NCTE, 1111 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, IL 61801-1096;
  fax: 217-278-3760

Hearing and Hearings

Congress holds lots of hearings on important matters. And sure, we can watch these on C-SPAN. But sitting in on one, the listener (at least, “this listener”) expects more substance…. This is especially true if the Hearing has a lofty title, such as “How Innovative Educators are Integrating Subject Matter to Improve Student Achievement.” Before attending, one conjures up great expectations about how NCLB has fostered this “new way of teaching” (or perhaps, how it has not).

NCTE recently did a survey of more than 2000 members to get their views on how NCLB had impacted them. (Results of the survey will be released soon.) So I thought the Hearing would provide some testimony that perhaps our survey had missed. While it was clear that all who testified had tapped into the energy and learning potential of their students, to my dismay, I heard nothing that was illustrative of innovative ways of teaching. And none of even the best ideas (and that is stretching it) seemed directly related to NCLB. Where was the connection? Where were the transitions? Where were the cause and effect examples? What could I report? Ahh, but maybe I am thinking too much like an English teacher, or maybe just a careful listener – waiting for/hoping for the point?

How has NCLB fostered new innovative teaching? Tell me in clear identifiable ways.