Our Government Needs the Truth to Enact Real Reform;
Current Reform is Detrimental

Bullying and wrongdoing go hand-in-hand. Financial misappropriation is so common in bullying cases it can almost be assumed."
Tim Fields, Bully in Sight

No Child Left Reform depends on standardized testing to determine whether our schools are doing their job, i.e. whether they receive federal aid and whether they are monitored or possibly closed. On the surface, it makes sense. But as a component of our abusive system, it is a disaster, since teachers are held accountable for higher test scores without being given true input into what needs to be done to achieve them. Top-down management imposes greater expectations on teachers, and with fear cracking the whip on a regular basis, teachers become reactive rather than proactive. As a result, they focus more on the test, than on their knowledge of child development and how learning takes place.

With exception of intrinsically motivated students, most children and even adolescents do not care about tests or learning. They simply want to complete tests as quickly as possible. A teacher could rattle off the answers for an upcoming test, and only those whose goals were to do well in school would bother to pay attention. So when teachers try to deposit knowledge that they know is covered on a test, it bounces off the students' closed brains. However, when a teacher presents an interesting lesson and creatively inserts learning into it, children learn by accident. Interesting lessons do not happen when teachers are focused on forcing facts into their students' brains. A few students who are motivated to do well in school, seize the opportunity to excel, but they are in the minority. The majority of students need to be massaged into learning.

Opponents of the new fads in teaching believe that teachers resist teaching to tests because they resist teaching the basics. These two ideas are not synonymous. Even teachers who believe basics must be taught, know that there needs to be some creativity and individualized teaching within the process of teaching anything. Any teacher who bases her lessons on appropriate child development, knows that attempting to force facts at inappropriate stages or times backfires. The result is that not only do the children do poorly on the tests, but the time was wasted and learning does not take place.

At a recent town hall meeting discussing education, a science facilitator, whose job it is to help teachers enrich their teaching of science, expressed her frustration with her job. She stated that teachers are so frightened about achieving high tests scores or else, that they do not want to listen to her instruction. Frightened workers of any kind are not effective; teachers so focused on scores that they refuse to learn better ways of reaching children are not going to produce positive results. Teachers could explain all this to their superiors if teacher abuse weren't the outcome for having an opinion. Therefore, what works is not communicated. Teachers take orders regardless whether they are effective to avoid being mistreated. This means that increased testing opens more avenues to abuse teachers and creates less effective instruction.

In addition to teaching to the test during the month or months prior to the test, many schools are now shoving academics down children's throats in defiance of scientific research. It has been determined that first grade is when reading readiness occurs for most children. Some children self teach reading as early as three, but most are ready at six according to research. By the time children reach second grade, the early learners and the first grade learners seem to even out and reach the same point, indicating there was no real advantage in early learning. Since the child did this on his own, no harm was done. However, now schools are insisting on advanced reading instruction with homework in kindergarten to assure that these students test well by third grade. Some kindergartens have academics for nearly three hours straight, forgoing snack and recess to optimize "learning" time. Not only does this effort become worthless in the long run, many of these children will be set into a path of neurotic behavior attempting to meet these developmentally inappropriate demands. Given that kindergarteners have a twenty minute attention span, learning stops, yet opportunities for proper social and emotional development are stifled in this environment. It becomes a lose/lose situation for many children.

Harm can be done pushing a child who is not ready. But the schools do not care about the children when test scores mean finances to them. The end result is burning our children out at early ages, while not accomplishing better results for the most part. Teachers may realize how detrimental this is, but they will not say a word if they know what is good for them. And so it goes on.

NAPTA believes governments could learn a lot more about schools by evaluating the amount of money they spend warding off litigation than by test scores. As courageous teachers speak out against this institutionalized child abuse, lawsuits occur. Therefore, high legal expenditures could signify high levels of abuse. Better yet, if teacher abuse were exposed and outlawed, the truth about what children needed to thrive academically would be driving our schools and children would achieve on tests naturally. As long as teachers are not free to speak about what children need, children's needs will not be met and test scores will reflect this dismal condition of teachers being prodded into focusing on the tests. If you read through POLITICS on this site, you noted the outrageous behavior surrounding state testing, one example being 288 assessments due in 180 days of teaching. As long as administrators dump requirements on teachers without allowing any authentic feedback, we can be sure that absurd expectations will reign in our classrooms, only to harm children more. NAPTA says NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND reform should be called NO CHILD KICKED IN THE BEHIND reform. But until the truth is out, children will be kicked in the behind.

If you read Carrie Clark's story in TEACHER STORIES, you will gain more insight on the connection between testing and finances. "My seven-year legal battle against my employer finally reached a conclusion. I was awarded a settlement of $150,000 (US) with no 'hush clause.' My attorney was finally convinced that my Freedom of Speech was not for sale. I was punished on the job for telling the truth. The last thing I was willing to give up was my right to continue to speak about what I witnessed…discrimination of language minority students and misuse of federal funds in a public school."

The more money the government pours into this system of organized crime, the more teachers and students are abused. NAPTA is not suggesting that the schools receive less money; we suggest that schools are scrutinized, held accountable, and that realistic oversight is put into place, while teacher abuse is outlawed so our children will be protected.

The government can no more expect the truth from the average teacher in this current system, than they can expect to hear the truth from a citizen of Iraq. Without democracy, and the opportunity for tyranny to flourish, free speech is stifled, and feedback is parroting of administrative desires rather than authentic information. Our government understands this phenomenon in Iraq, and they need to recognize it is happening right here in our nation. It may be difficult to admit this failure, but without doing so, our administrators will have weapons of mass destruction right in our midst - OUR SCHOOLS.

In the book Mad in America, c. 2002, Robert Whitaker reported treatments in our mental institutions that were abusive to our mentally ill patients before and during World War II. He alleges that the American Medical Association (AMA) released an edited report about the effectiveness of the then current methods, after firing a psychiatrist for refusing to change the initial report that he wrote telling the truth. (p.70-71). For ten years, the false report stood until conscientious objectors to the war, who had chosen to serve in these institutions as a substitute for serving in the armed forces, revealed the truth. They were so appalled by what they saw, that they united and exposed the abuses to the media and to district attorneys. The Ohio panel issued an indictment:

The grand jury is shocked beyond words that a so-called civilized society would allow fellow human beings to be mistreated as they are at the Cleveland State Hospital....We indict the uncivilized social system which in the first instance has enabled such an intolerable and barbaric practice to fasten itself upon the people and which in the second instant permits it to continue....The Grand Jury condemns the whole socio-political system that today allows this unholy thing to exist in our State of Ohio.

In order to remove this corrupt cover, someone had to be in a position to see the truth, and have the courage to speak out. Our teachers are in that position. However, they lack courage, paralyzed by the excessive fear teacher abuse places within their souls. Our administrators, as in the case of the doctors, have a financial interest in maintaining status quo. As a nation we have to have the wisdom to know that any institution is vulnerable to greed and cannot be left unscrutinized. Scrutiny must go well beyond outsiders inspecting test scores. This means making sure that everyone who exists within the system has a voice to keep the system honest. Checks and balances must be in place rather than an airtight system where teacher voices are smothered by a tacit political agreement from the school district through the state government.

Whitaker's book is an expose on abuses in the mental health arena. The patterns are the same as in business, as in the Catholic Church, as in our schools, as in tyrannical countries. Power corrupts. Total power corrupts even more. It should be obvious that our schools are dysfunctional due to corruption, yet our remaining remnants of motherhood, apple pie and America are vested in our image of our schools and most people just cannot fathom how filled with malice they are. It is time to see so we can remove it. It is dark, very dark.

Look at the mean spiritedness all over our country and ponder about how illogical it is to think greed has passed over our educators. Rather than dismiss malice as a possibility, support us so we can level the playing field, which includes the courts. Thinking litigious teachers are the problem, our courts tend to view teacher disputes with prejudiced eyes; teachers are taking money from kids when they sue. Teachers enter the courts with a strike against them, and have to fight districts using tax and insurance money to build impossible cases against them. The victim becomes the perpetrator as they "take money from the kids." Teachers lose trying to win. The courts belong to our administrators with exception of a few rare incidences where wisdom still prevails.

If comparing education to other institutions does not persuade you that our educators are or could be living a lie, look at their actions that speak much louder than their words. Wouldn't our administrators support any method that accomplished meeting our children's needs if they were sincere? They don't. Money/power is the decision maker, not children's needs:

LAWSUIT TARGETS ST. LOUIS TECHNOLOGY CHARTER SCHOOL

by Mikal J. Harris
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 30, 2002

For the second time in the short history of charter schools in St. Louis, the School Board is suing to block one of the schools. The district's chief claim in its latest suit is that the University of Missouri at Rolla cannot legally sponsor a charter school in St. Louis. The school district asks that the Missouri Board of Education refund to the district any state money diverted from city schools to the St. Louis School of Engineering and Technology charter school. Charter schools are publicly funded, but operate free from many of the educational requirements placed on public schools. Charter schools in Missouri can operate only in St. Louis and Kansas City. Of the 25 such schools in the state, 18 are in Kansas City. The first in St. Louis opened in 2000. Missouri law requires that charter schools have sponsoring institutions. The law says sponsors can be a local school board or a public college or university with its primary campus in the school district, or in a county adjacent to the county in which the district is located. The suit states that because the University of Missouri at Rolla is neither in the city of St. Louis nor in St. Louis County, it has no authority to sponsor a charter school in St. Louis.

Here's another:

QUOTES FROM: "Successful charter school set to close"
By Stephanie Banchero, Chicago Tribune staff reporter
Published June 1, 2002
"For three years, Governors State University Charter School has been the envy of south suburban school districts. Its pupils post some of the highest test scores in the area. Two dozen applicants sit on a waiting list. And officials recently broke ground on a $6 million, state-funded school building." "But in a stunning rebuke, the Crete-Monee District 201-U School Board, which holds the charter, voted last month to shut down the school at the end of the year. The reason: Crete-Monee officials felt Governors State University, which created the school and provides the curriculum and principal, has too much control."

These are only two examples. Many organizations have formed to support charter schools, vouchers, and alternative methods of educating children, only to be thwarted by administrators with public funds.
Until our federal government lifts the curtain on this hidden white collar crime, leaving children behind is the least of our problems. Our problem is where we are leaving them and to whom we are entrusting their futures. This is scary.

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