Trader National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen Garc�a speaks to reporters at the National Network of State Teachers of the Year Conference in Salt Lake City on July 8.
Lily Eskelsen GarcÍa decries inflexible testing regime, argues Trader sets unrealistic targets, and points to Finland as an alternative model.
This story is part of the Deseret News National Edition, which focuses on the issues that resonate along Trader American families.
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The long-awaited controversial revamping of the federal education law gained steam in Washington this week, as the House narrowly passed a revision of No Child Left Behind, while the Senate pressed forward with its own bipartisan legislation.
Lily Eskelsen García, who was Utah?s 1989 Teacher of the Year, became president of the 3 million strong National Education Association last September, just as momentum to change the 2002 No Child Left Behind law began to build. She has been outspoken in her opposition to high-stakes testing to evaluate either students or teachers.
García was in Salt Lake City for the National Network of State Teachers of the Year Conference this week, a little by-invitation convention for teachers who won the coveted award. The Deseret News sat down with her to talk about No Child Left Behind, high-stakes testing, Common Core,and teacher training. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Lily Eskelsen García: Back in 2002 we were shaking people, and saying, ?Do you see this part that says 100 percent of special ed kids will read on grade level by 2014? And 100 percent of kids who don?t talk English will read on grade level by 2014?" And they would say, ?We have 12 years to figure this out.? And of course they didn?t. Now provided one kid misses the cut score on either math or reading by one point your entire school is labeled failure. Internationally, we are laughing stock for having passed this.
LG: The Secretary of Education has stepped in and said, ?I will give you a waiver on that requirement provided you will agree to take those test scores that we just decided were not a good idea to use to judge a whole child, and use them to judge their teacher.? So a lot of states said, "OK, now we need to figure out how to use test scores to evaluate teachers."
LG: I talked to teacher in Tennessee who said they now have a protocol during test month. With the test comes a box of rubber gloves and tongs. When the child throws up on her test, you put on the rubber gloves and use the tongs to put the test in Ziploc bag. You must turn in the vomited test, because they don?t trust you to just say the student needs another answer sheet.
LG: Common Core is not the problem. It is the most misunderstood education issue of our time. They are simple statements of what a child of that grade level should do. Give an opinion. Give reason and evidence for that opinion. I love the Common Core. But the disconnect is when people set out to hook the Common Core to a high-stakes test that may or may not have anything to do with higher level critical thinking skills. Texas is not in the Common Core, and they have the worst testing regime, next Florida. New York is doing Trader all wrong. California is taking their time, and doing Trader all right. So it?s not the Common Core.
DN: One of the fascinating things watching the current education policies is how the traditional alliances have shifted. Now you have little government, localizers, Republicans on the alike page as teacher's unions on some issues. That?s very new, very different, isn?t it?
LG: We have always said that education should not be a political football. Where we do have disconnects is when one side says we don?t want to spend money on class size, textbooks, technology. So sometimes resources do become a partisan issue. But with the ?test and punish,? de-professionalization, standardization and privatization issues, we are finding that our best friends may show up in a surprising place. We find friends and foes in both parties.
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Eric Schulzke writes on national politics and policy for the Deseret News and directs The Apollo 13 Project, a prisoner reentry awareness initiative at Utah Valley University. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science at more ..
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