A year ago today I sent the following message to NYSED. On this matter (i.e., narrow focus on standardized test scores as the measure of value in education) I have been writing, calling, mailing, and emailing newspapers, and various publications for more than a decade. I’ve met with legislators, educators, and union folk for over a decade, attended appearances by edu-folks out on “listening tours”, and gone to protests. This letter is one of the more recent efforts to suggest common sense to people at the policy and regulation level. There’s a touch of snark in here but they really, really have it coming and have for longer than I have been doing this. My preference would be to feel like I didn’t have to do any of that stuff, but see something/say something at some point needs to become do something.

Recently, NYSED and the teachers union in NY announced an agreement to drop yearly state assessments as the primary measure for evaluating schools and educators. So it feels like a needle may have moved in a positive direction in terms of bringing reality and humanity back to the endeavor to educate. I don’t think I had anything to do with that, but what if I had done nothing? What if I had just complained behind closed doors, and plodded along waiting years and years for someone else to make things better? What if I was an “Oh well, there’s nothing we can do about it” sort? So my choice is to believe either that I was the one persistent and annoying voice that pushed for better, or believe that there are others out there who knew and know we could and should be doing something different and better for learners.

Some of this has been Grammarlized up a touch but I tried to retain the original flavor.

June 7, 2023

To whom it may concern at NYSED,

I am writing regarding the “Rebuild Phase” of the accountability system for public schools. The current air quality issue brought on by the Canadian wildfires prompted me to get this done and sent in quickly. Don’t worry, I don’t think death from smoke inhalation is imminent or anything. It could take a bunch of years for the things teachers are just expected to risk and endure as essential workers and first responders to kill me. Like a sheriff doing our start-of-the-year in-service a few years back told staff gathered to hear it: You can get shot several times with a handgun before you’re actually killed! It’s not like the movies where it’s just one shot then you keel over dead (probably), so you should keep fighting. 

So, I’ll keep on fighting I suppose.

I understand the claim that that path forward has incorporated “input from educational experts and stakeholders, including public comment from a recent public survey…” (a quote from NYSED’s School and District Accountability page).

What is required to be considered an “educational expert” and/or a “stakeholder”? I am a parent of three students who attend(ed) the school I teach in. I have been a teacher for over twenty years. I have a pretty deep and broad understanding of education policy and what has shaped it over the past decades. I have had personal communications (email, phone, and in-person) with NYSED Regents and associates-both as a parent advocating for my child and as a professional educator applying some critical thought to an accountability approach that became and is becoming more and more disconnected from the lived realities in schools. It would appear that I am expected to throw my professional and personal self into a pandemic, in front of bullets should it be necessary, into schools on days when air quality is being described as hazardous, and I have seen the destructive impact of the accountability approaches imposed from above on the learners and educators below. It feels pretty expert and stakehold-ery to me!

With that rather brief and limited scope on what I bring to what comes next, here is my input:

1. The weight of standardized test scores needs to be reduced in the evaluation and accountability approach. A framework for tracking those measures need to remain because achievement in those areas is important, but the year-long obsession over ELA and Math assessment data has caused some vital areas to go neglected for far too long.

2. The introduction and inclusion of more whole-child to well-rounded young citizen measures needs to happen and such measures need to be given more weight in the accountability process. This speaks to those far-too-long neglected areas back in the first “input” item. I can get into details if I need to, and this has been the topic of some of my prior communications, but I think anyone who has walked the earth for a bit and gotten themselves involved in public education gets that there is far, far more than good test scores needed to survive in the world we’re living in. Yes, those discrete skills are necessary and measured in a more cost-effective way (e.g. insisting that a state full of children be forced to take computer-based state assessments) but there are some more essential soft skills that are lacking in the approach to what schools are most aggressively held accountable for. 

3. A cumulative portfolio of experiences should be that framework of accountability. Much like what may have been used back when the state was looking to farm all sorts of personal data to benefit curriculum and assessment vendors…what was it, “In-bloom” or something? Except this would be to benefit the student, the family, the educators, the school, the community being served. Those experts and stakeholders you want to hear from would all have skin in the game. This “portfolio” could travel with the student from intake to graduation and beyond. At the point where they become more independent learners preparing for lifelong learning, say junior high and high school, the students could review their own portfolios for gaps, strengths, opportunities…

I could honestly go on forever, and who knows. I may still. My ideas require some leaning in by the people actually doing the job, and more backing off by people who don’t. That’s where we’ll really see who honestly wants the best outcomes for learners.

Dan McConnell