They say the definition of chutzpah is killing your parents and then begging for mercy because your an orphan. In a recent op-ed in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, the anti-union Pioneer Institute aspires to chutzpah using Labor Day as an excuse for lobbying for an unfunded mandate. How else to interpret their op-ed bemoaning the fact that the Commonwealth has yet to implement the history portion of the MCAS:
With Labor Day upon us, it’s unfortunate that current state policy makers are ignoring the words of the education reform law and Madison’s wisdom that has endured for well over two centuries. Today, history is a shrinking part of the curriculum in Massachusetts schools because the commonwealth has indefinitely postponed making passage of an MCAS U.S. history test a high school graduation requirement.
The move is particularly unfortunate given our rich labor heritage. Massachusetts became the first state to pass a law limiting the use of child labor in 1843 because union members petitioned the state Legislature.
The reason for no MCAS test in History: money. It costs money to implement a test. Questions have to be written, field-tested, and stock-piled for retests. Psychometricians have to analyze the results for reliability and bias. People have to be paid to correct the essay portion of the tests. In the last 10 years, education funding–that other part of improving education—has plummeted. Chapter 70 funds are $440, 000, 000 lower than they are supposed to be. Other educational monies have been cut as well. And the future of education funding isn’t going up.
The Pioneer Institute would like us to that history is a “shrinking part of the curriculum.” What does that mean? Students are taking less history? Not in my school. And history isn’t alone in not having an MCAS test. There is no MCAS test for foreign languages or any academic class taken after sophomore year. Is Algebra II a shrinking part of the curriculum?
The Pioneer Institute is certainly too wise to not know that the economy and state budget are both in trouble. As fiscal realists, they must know that implementing the History MCAS test will cost money. What other conclusion can be drawn but that they want to increase the state budget to accomodate this unfunded mandate? Maybe their next op-ed will call for a tax increase.
And most other elementary and middle schools. For a simple reason — in the age of MCAS, untested subjects are untaught. Thus the inadequate funding goes to MCAS subjects first, everything else second.
Educating the entire left hemisphere of the brain has pretty much been eliminated. Art and music are also-rans. Foreign language is dying outside districts with comfortable scores and/or budgets. History is being chopped below high school.
Of course there’s less history. I’d say the solution isn’t to test history, but to expand education beyond multiple choice questions. But Pioneer wouldn’t have that.
…there is plenty of history in grades 3,5,7,&8. I of course say fund it AND test it. Ditto for civics and language. My town also takes quite a bit of pride in its arts and music programs.
Pioneer has long supported increasing funding for public education (district and charter schools, vocational-technical schools, school choice mechanisms such as METCO, etc.). We have also sought funding to be restored for MCAS remediation (used to be $30 million). We have also supported additional money to be expended on the U.S. History test (which has been, by the way, the law of the Commonwealth since 1993).
And, yes, we have written publicly about the need for the state to meet its financial (chapter 70) commitments in education, whether in the Globe or in the Providence Journal (July 9,2010). From the ProJo:
But while we are for funding, we are, as noted in the ProJo, not for pissing away money on a bureaucracy:
The point’s not that you get management of the MA DESE in order and, poof, we’ve met our funding needs, but rather that if you manage the executive offices closely and also prioritize education over other less “core” issues, then, yeah, tax increases wouldn’t be necessary. An example of an area where we likely agree: Forgo tax breaks to the film industry and supposed “sweet-spot” industries and you will find lots money that gets you pretty far along.
As for my shop’s being “anti-union,” it might be helpful to point out that we also held an event last year (September 7), together with Democrats for Education Reform and the Albert Shanker Institute, entitled “Tough Liberals: The Legacy of Albert Shanker and How Teachers’ Unions Can Lead In-District Reform.” It featured Shanker’s excellent biography Richard Kahlenberg (Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation), Deborah Gist (RI’s Ed Commissioner), Paul Toner (MTA), Ruth Wattenberg (AFT National), and Joe Williams (DFER). And we make a point of frequently including representatives from teachers union and public school managers at our events because we believe they are important voices to hear from (though, admittedly, I am more interested in what I see in the data and what I hear from parents and students).
If you had to summarize in three soundbites our view on unions, it’s probably something like this:
1) Unionism’s historic role in advancing important social changes in the 19th and early 20th century is without question.
2) In recent years, public unions have often been opponents of reform. So have managers in public educational systems, who are at least as big of obstacles to reform as the teachers unions are.
3) Moving Massachusetts ahead so that our students are not only #1 in the country but so they are the best in the world will require hearing the concerns of teachers unions but, more importantly, getting their participation and buy-in for additional reforms.