Testing dissidents: School leaders go public with their concerns over the harm of highstakes tests - education

School Administrator, Dec, 2001 by Paul Riede

When it came down to it, Catherine Kitto decided she couldn't accept the "bribe money."

So the principal of Gulf Gate Elementary School in Sarasota, Fla., drove six hours to Tallahassee, the state capital, where she and four of her teachers personally handed their $500 school performance bonuses back to Gov. Jeb Bush at an open Cabinet meeting.

The protest two years ago gave the women a temporary sense of empowerment, but it did nothing to slow down Florida's high-stakes testing system. Last year, Kitto and the rest of her staff simply accepted the $86,000 the state gave their school for its "A" ranking on the state exams, divvying up the money among the staff.

Kitto says she is using the most recent bonus to join two anti-testing lobbying groups and to work with parents and staff to minimize the negative impact of the exams. But meanwhile, she is scrupulously following state directives to administer the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests in her school, even though she believes they are sapping the life out of classrooms and unnecessarily stressing teachers and children.

"I am doing things that are totally against my principles," says Kitto, an educator for 38 years, including 13 as a principal. "I feel really badly about it, and that's why I'm willing to speak out about it. It's not good for kids. It's not good for education. I think in the long run we will find out that we're not doing a good job giving to kids what they need in the workplace and in life."

Fighting Back

As a new generation of high-stakes tests begins to yield consequences for schools and students, Kitto is hardly the only conflicted school leader in the United States. Administrators across the country who disagree with their state's testing policies are looking for ways to fight back without putting their students in academic limbo or running afoul of the law themselves.

Parents, students and a few educators have led high-profile protests and boycotts against the tests in California, Massachusetts, New York and elsewhere. Others are working with state administrator associations or legislators to try to modify the testing systems or are even filing lawsuits to overturn them.

In upstate New York, Fairport Superintendent William Cala is trying to establish an independent board that would grant an entirely new diploma--unrecognized by the state Education Department--under which students would not have to take the state's required Regents exams. A coalition of alternative public schools concentrated in the New York City area is suing the state, arguing that the mandate to administer the exams is arbitrary and has no educational value.

Then there are smaller, more symbolic demonstrations, such as Kitto's payback to Gov. Bush or the message Georgia educator Stephen Schyck sends every time he goes to work. Schyck, principal of Creekside High School just south of Atlanta, wears a button every day reading, "Choose the best answer." The choices given are "test" and "teach," and the box next to "teach" is checked.

Most administrators who oppose the exams walk a fine line between dissent and open defiance--trying to minimize what they see as the negative impacts of high-stakes testing without putting their districts or their students at risk. (Several superintendents interviewed for this story were leery of being labeled "civil disobedients.") In a growing number of cases, they are being pushed by grassroots groups of parents.

"We're opposed to the state grading our schools, traumatizing our kids, narrowing the curriculum and doing all sorts of other nasty things," says Gloria Pipkin, coordinator of the Florida Coalition for Assessment Reform, which is running a "Spay the FCAT" campaign against the state tests. "My position is that superintendents should be courageous and speak out when they see anything harmful being done to their system by the state, but very few of them do that."

Part of the reason is that public opinion polls still show strong support for the testing systems, says Robert Schwartz, president of Achieve, a nonprofit organization based in Cambridge, Mass., formed by governors and business leaders to help lead the national standards movement. The purpose of the tests, he says, is to ensure that all schools maintain high expectations for all of their students.

"The standards movement is essentially an equity movement," he says.

Harmful Measures

But many school leaders draw a sharp distinction between high standards and the kinds of tests they are being forced to give to their students. A few, like Michael McGill, superintendent in affluent Scarsdale, N.Y., are carefully testing the limits of state authority on the issue.

McGill, a vocal opponent of highstakes testing, took no action against students who skipped mandatory state exams last spring, even though more than half the district's 8th-graders joined the boycott. The district took a legalistic approach, treating the boycott the way it usually deals with illegal absences. Under district policy, the only punishment in such cases is to bar students from making up work they missed.