Marilyn doesn't teach here anymore
Testing didn't just crowd out teaching, it also crowded out teachers

State-mandated tests, district-mandated tests, program-mandated tests—everything seemed to be fueled by anxiety over making adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act and, in turn, limited the hours Beiler had available to teach her Title I and ESL students. It was as if a tourniquet had been applied to public education, cutting off the flow of time for instruction and learning.

Beiler estimates she had no more than four uninterrupted weeks to work with her students during the last five months of the 2005-06 school year. The other weeks? They were littered with test prep, proctoring and post-test administration. Her students were put on ice while Beiler handled tasks like making sure the “bubbles” were filled in correctly on the student data portion of answer sheets.  “I really felt like I let those students down so badly,” she says.

Rather than continue in a job that was robbing her of the opportunity to teach, Beiler chose to resign. And perhaps the cruelest twist in the whole episode was the source of the pressure to test: the No Child Left Behind Act. It’s a law that has no bigger supporter than Beiler, a master teacher with 13 years’ experience in Albuquerque schools. When NCLB was rolled out in 2001, she welcomed what looked like a new national commitment to high expectations in public education and schools built on the premise that there were no “expendable students.” That message was right on target for Beiler, who has built a career on working with struggling readers in Title I and ESL programs. But the law was rolled out the wrong way: It’s become heavy on sanctions and blame and light on resources and support for teachers. Now, she adds, state and district officials around the country are deathly afraid of NCLB sanctions. They’ve responded in the schools by piling test upon test, hoping that yet another exam will shed some light.

But the testing frenzy has a price—teaching and learning, the type of work that kept Beiler in the system so long. Even today, her voice wavers a little as she remembers some of the victories she and her students fought for—and won. There was that group of Title I students who decided to troop out of a holiday party and into Beiler’s reading class because what was happening there was too important to sacrifice to Valentines and games. There was that little girl from ESL reading who, in less than two years, traded the shyness that comes from being desperately behind classmates for top honors and student leadership.

“I love teaching and I love doing Title I,” Beiler says. “I am a really, really good Title I teacher. And I would still be teaching if I were allowed to do my job.”

She also believes the overtesting problem is part of a bigger dilemma schools face when it comes to NCLB. There is a massive disconnect between the people who set policy and the people who actually teach children.

The AFT is pressing Congress for a new version of NCLB that, among other things, would prohibit unnecessary and duplicative testing.  Beiler says she enthusiastically supports these efforts and has one more suggestion: Hook up some major policymakers with a few days work as substitute teachers in public schools. It’s the only way they’ll see why “every teacher I know who has retired has done so not because they are tired of teaching but because they can no longer jump through all the crazy hoops.”

Some say the jury is still out when it comes to judging how effective these SES providers have been. But that’s overstating things. A report delivered to Congress in August makes clear that the jury was never seated—many of these providers continue to operate as unaccountable, loose cannons in school districts across the country.

The Government Accountability Office concludes that no adequate evaluation exists for SES providers, most of which are private, for-profit groups. A few states have completed evaluations, but “none provides a conclusive assessment of SES providers’ effect on student academic achievement,” GAO finds.

Why this colossal lapse in government oversight—particularly in this era of accountability? Part of the problem, GAO suggests, is that the U.S. Education Department has failed to provide the technical help states need to ensure that the public is getting its money’s worth from SES providers.

And problems extend beyond evaluation. Many of these providers are operating on an island, disconnected from the curriculum and teachers, which balkanizes school improvement. GAO found that four out of 10 school districts deal with SES providers that operate beyond the pale—districts where “at least some [SES] providers did not have any contact with teachers.” 

The report “serves as an important springboard for strengthening the accountability of tutoring services to students in underperforming schools,” says AFT executive vice president Antonia Cortese. “Sustained, intensive, one-on-one or small-group tutoring that is linked to a school’s curriculum and provided by well-qualified educators can help struggling students boost their achievement,” she explains. “Yet, as the GAO report unfortunately highlights, tutoring services under NCLB often fail to meet this standard.”

The report also notes that local districts had trouble providing “timely and effective” notification of parents and attracting providers to rural districts or to serve students with disabilities. “It is a waste of time and tax dollars when tutoring bears no relationship to a school’s curriculum [and] fails to reach the students who need it most,” Cortese adds.