Summer is traditionally a time for teachers and kids to recharge. Sadly, we live in tough times. Many city kids are forced to attend dreadful summer school, where they get to do mostly more test prep, even if it turns out they were unnecessarily flagged for those programs, as happened to almost five thousand New York City students this summer (this news was buried in the second to last paragraph of Mayor Bloomberg's press release on test score results). Many city teachers have spent the summer wondering if they will have a job in the fall. Those who have jobs are probably worried about the chaos that surely awaits them, as new job performance measures that use student test scores to evaluate teachers go into effect despite the outcry from national experts that this is just plain wrong. Daniel Koretz, author of Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us (2008), says he is noticing a "growing unease" with standardized testing since the publication of his book. I wish that were so.

Yesterday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced a plan to offer states a waiver from the NCLB requirements of 100% student proficiency by 2014 if they can show that they are doing the things the states that won Race to the Top money are doing, including tying teacher performance to student test scores. Also in the works are attempts to move the preparation of educators out of universities, as New York State has done . University schools of education are also being reviewed by NCTQ and U.S. News and World Report in an effort to make them accountable in similar ways for student learning outcomes.

Not surprisingly, there is a growing outcry in the teaching ranks of "STOP THE INSANITY!" Last month, I attended the Save Our Schools March and rally in Washington DC, and the two day conference that preceded it at American University. Despite the scorching heat, several thousand people listened to and cheered on a top-notch line up of speakers including Linda Darling-Hammond, Deborah Meier, Diane Ravitch, Pedro Noguera, and, heavily covered by celebrity-loving media, Matt Damon. Damon got a lot more attention for a backstage interview with Libertarian Reason TV than for his excellent podium speech. He was introduced by his mother, Nancy Carlsson-Paige who is a well-known author and teacher educator. 

This event was energizing and brought together people from many states to argue for four principles of real educational reform:

-       Equitable funding for all public school populations  

-       Ending high-stakes testing for student, teacher and school evaluation 

-       Curriculum developed for and by local school communities

-       Public education policies formed by teachers, families and local leadership

It's likely that a fifth principle of high quality early childhood education will be added to the group's agenda as their work moves forward. Coinciding with the conference and rally were several film screenings. I managed to see two documentaries. The first, August to June, is a beautiful portrait of classroom life that is hard not to love. The second is a homegrown response to Waiting for Superman entitled The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman. It really makes you want to get up out of your chair and go on a march or get to a protest rally. Those behind the latter film are teachers and parents arguing for ten "real reforms" that echo the sentiments of the Save Our Schools agenda.

The problem moving ahead as I see it is going to be finding good ideas that can be implemented at low cost. Protest movements are good at letting politicians know what constituents want and don't want, and at getting some publicity for their cause. What's needed now are people on the ground who have a way of moving forward towards making the needed changes happen in their communities. Until the testing beast is tackled, I just don't know that this will happen on the necessary scale. We can't just say no to the tests, tell parents to opt their children out of them, get states to refuse the NLCB waivers, and undo all the harm that has been inflicted as a result of the high stakes testing fiasco without a plan to put something else in place. For that to happen, we need good ideas. We already have some very smart people working on this, but what they are trying to do will take lots of money and time, and we don't have either of those things right now. Here are a few ideas I propose, please add your own in the comments. Let's build a list! 

1)    Ask the question, "Is this really in the best interests of our children?" It's hard to answer this question with a, "No, but…"

2)    Engage people in discussions about what we value about public education. Liven up dinner parties, get parents talking about their hopes and dreams for their children and what it means to be educated. Make the outcomes of those conversations visible to the community and to those in schools.

3)    Debunk the myth of the test as a measure of anything. All a multiple-choice test tells you is that a student knew how to bubble in an answer. Period.

4)    Invest time in being informed. The best way to knock down phony talking points is with solid research, expertise, and compelling evidence.

5)    Use social media to spread the message (that's right, Twitter and Facebook are useful for more than just procrastination!)

6)    There's strength in numbers. Don't fight the good fight alone. Find others, meet up, share, talk, strategize, get new perspectives on what's going on.

7)    Go visit schools. Volunteer, grab every opportunity to be around students and see for yourself what's going on so that you can use that to inform your actions.

8)    When you find something that's powerful, persuasive, informative, pass it on, post it, share it, review it, write about it.

9)    Learn to be a good storyteller. Stories are often how we make sense of the world. Stories can change people's minds. Powerful stories are hard to forget.

10) Collect examples of just how idiotic the tests are. People often forget this and just assume that the tests are reasonable. They are not.