Oregon is Behind the NCLB Ed Curve, and Should Have Stayed There

by David Safier

A quick post from Portland, Oregon, where I taught for 30-some years and am now visiting.

Late in the standardized-testing day, Oregon has decided that students need to pass standardized tests in math, reading and writing to graduate high school. Unlike Arizona, the tests were only being used for graduation requirements in a few Oregon school districts where the administrators decided they wanted to be the best little boys and girls in the state.

The District where I taught was one of those “good little boys and girls” districts. I was a member of the loyal opposition who complained about high stakes testing at every opportunity, but I too taught my English students how to pass them. Otherwise, if some of my students didn’t pass because I hadn’t taught them the tricks that earn them a few extra points (I’m talking about testmanship, not cheating), I would have let them down.

The irony is, it looks like the standardized testing wave has crested and is poised to slope downward into a more benign position. No Child Left Behind is reviled by the left, the right and by teaching groups. Some states are turning their backs on all the high stakes testing nonsense, realizing, I hope, that the right wing that crafted the bill (and sucked Ted Kennedy and some other liberals into foolishly supporting it) was looking for ways to harm, not help, public education.

So Oregon, at the forefront of many innovative ideas, is now hitching onto the back end of a train that looks like it’s about to chug its way off to a side spur in the train yard and be decommissioned.

There’s another touch of ironic humor here — or self-parody, if you will. It took Arizona years to figure out it needed alternative ways for students to pass AIMS so we wouldn’t be faced with large numbers of students who didn’t graduate. Oregon has those buy-outs built in from the beginning. The “everyone has to pass the tests to graduate” edict has been amended before it even goes into effect. Isn’t it great when people start out knowing how ridiculous it is to do what they’re doing, but they go ahead and do it anyway?