The Progressive Roots and Disastrous Consequences of Test Driven Pedagogy

The Progressive Roots andDisastrous Consequences of Test Driven Pedagogy byMark Naison | special to NewBlackMan
Whenthe nation turned to the right in the 1980's and 1990's andneo-liberalism in its many manifestations began to dominate the policiesof both political parties, parents in inner city neighborhoods desperate to dosomething in their increasingly violent, impoverished neighborhoods turnedto schools to try to reverse the growing class and race inequality in thenation which  they feared—quite accurately—was putting their childrengravely at risk. In looking for help, they turned their attention to the oneinstitution that had not abandoned their neighborhoods, the public schoolsand tried to figure out some way to have schools serve their needs.
Intrying to make schools work better, they ended up, making what turned out to bea Faustian bargain with leaders in corporations and foundations looking torevolutionize American education through technology. In city aftercity across the country, inner city parents and their advocates decided toendorse the application of universal testing in the schools to show howfar their children were falling behind, and with it, the impositionof a test driven pedagogy, pioneered by charter schools, designed to bringtheir children up to the levels of middle class and upper middleclass children in the acquisition of basic skills, and with it give theirchildren an opportunity, in an increasingly hierarchical society, to gain entryinto the middle class
Unfortunately,the whole strategy was destined to fail. It is difficult, if notimpossible, to use the public schools to create greater class andrace equality , when tax policy, income policy, and numerous informaldimensions of class privilege maximize those polarities., especially when thepedagogy involved discouraged creativity and critical thinking. The resultproved to be the exact opposite of what is intended, despite the enthusiasticsupport of all levels of government and corporations and private philanthropy.Since No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top have been institutionalized,Black, Latino and poor people, have fallen further behind the white middleclass and upper class  in every important social indicator, fromunemployment rates, to the wealth gap, to home ownership and life expectancy.
Andthis leaves supporters of democratic education in a difficult position. We haveto challenge a strategy that originally had widespread support in inner citycommunities. But challenge it we must. Just because minority parents, in theirdesperation to do something about rampant inequality, decided to push for moretesting and more accountability for schools based on those tests, doesn't meanthe strategy was sound. In my judgment, it made schools in poor communitiesless able to prepare their students for college and a demanding job market thanschools in middle class communities—including the ones policy makers send theirchildren—which rely far less on standardized tests.
Moreover,such pedagogy discourages introducing young people, in strugglingneighborhoods, to the critical thinking skills necessary to foster socialjustice activism—the only force that can realistically reduce racial and classin equality in this society. Teaching students individual mobility skills is apoor substitute for direct involvement in  neighborhood redevelopment and in  political movements—like Occupy Wall Street—that putdemands on all levels of government for a redistribution of wealth.
Atest driven pedagogy aimed at  reducing "The Achievement Gap" isnot only counterproductive in its own terms, it undermines the acquisition ofthe very skills necessary to reinvigorate democracy and fight  effectivelyfor racial and economic equality. Or to put the matter more bluntly, anyone whosupports the imposition of more standardized tests in the nation's publicschools is PLAYING THE MAN'S GAME!!!
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Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies andHistory at Fordham University and Director of Fordham's Urban Studies Program.He is the author of two books, Communistsin Harlem During the Depression and WhiteBoy: A Memoir. Naison is also co-director of the BronxAfrican American History Project (BAAHP). Research from the BAAHP will bepublished in a forthcoming collection of oral histories Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life From the1930's to the 1960's.