On Test Scores and Poverty by Mark Naison

On Test Scores and Poverty by Mark Naison | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
To understand how unique our current historical moment is, and in particular, how much powerful corporate interests have seized control of both political parties, ask yourself the following questions:.
When FDR spoke of a third of a nation “ill-housed, ill clothed, and ill-fed” did he identify raising student test scores as a major component of his program to heal a wounded nation?
When LBJ launched the anti-poverty program, did low test scores of young people living in poverty represent a major target of the programs he initiated?.
When Dr King unveiled his idea for the “Poor People’s Campaign,” was poor performance on tests among the nation’s poor a central subject of his rhetoric?
The very posing of these questions moves us into the realm of absurdity—yet  in state after state, and in the US Department of Education, “closing the achievement gap”—i.e. raising the test scores of students in poor communities—is lauded as the civil rights cause of our time, and the one sure fire method to reduce inequality in a society where every other policy seems to maximize it.
Do current policy makers know something that FDR, LBJ and Dr. King didn’t, or is the egalitarian rhetoric underlying their obsession with raising student test scores disingenuous and self-deluded?
While I cannot pretend to know what policy makers, in their heart of hearts, really think, I do know this—that since No Child Left Behind was passed in 2001, child poverty has skyrocketed, the concentration of wealth at the top of the society has grown, the prison industrial complex has expanded, and the gap in college admission and retention between poor and wealthy students has expanded.
And as for schools, we see the wealthy sending their children to private schools with few tests and a huge emphasis on the arts- and the poor and the rapidly shrinking middle class sending their children to schools which are stripped down test factories with beaten down and demoralized teachers.
This is the ugly reality that the flowery rhetoric of inclusion hides If narrowing the achievement gap is an anti-poverty strategy, it is the single most ineffective such strategy in modern America History.
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Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham’s Urban Studies Program. He is the author of two books, Communists in Harlem During the Depression and White Boy: A Memoir. Naison is also co-director of the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP). Research from the BAAHP will be published in a forthcoming collection of oral histories Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life From the 1930’s to the 1960’s.