By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
These last few weeks, teachers across the country are again being commanded to set aside their lessons and begin teaching to the state assessments. This interference with teacher professionalism has been going on for over two decades, accelerated by No Child Left Behind and surviving under E.S.S.A. accountability. Look at last year’s tests and drill into each student’s head the answers in order to score higher on this year’s assessment. As a result, state assessment scores go up while national aptitude tests and other measures of student creativity continue to drop. International assessments show the United States descending into the level of undeveloped nations.
All of the blather about “individualized learning” is set aside. There is but one standardized test in each of the major disciplines in most states. It is a reform that forces teachers to abandon unique teaching of unique students. It attempts to produce standardized students and fails miserably. When implemented by bipartisan politicians (Bush and Kennedy), it set a goal of having every student 100 percent proficient by 2014. It was as stupid as proclaiming a uniform treatment be used by doctors and eventually requiring 100 percent survival for all patients. Such a goal reflected the total cluelessness of politicians about the profession of teaching and the nature of students.
A legislator is not a professional trained in depth to possess licenses in medicine, law and teaching. The have no business making decisions about professional practices. Law, medicine and teaching are professions that establish what constitute professional practice and malpractice. When French physicians in the 1800s discovered that applying leeches for bloodletting did not improve survival for certain diseases, it was the medical profession and not the patients or politicians that determined that leeching was not good medical practice. Unfortunately, these professions are coming under attack by politicians who think they because they are elected, they are god.
In some states, legislators are considering preventing medical boards from disciplining doctors who continue to promote ivermectin and chloroquine for COVID. The governor of Texas wants to penalize doctors who treat trans kids. Statements from these elected know-it-alls reveal they don’t have a clue about the mode of action of drugs nor the complex biology and multiple determinants of gender and sexual orientation (two different factors).
Headlines nationwide report growing teacher shortages. Surveys indicate that up to half of teachers, paraprofessionals and classroom aides are considering leaving the profession. Much of this flight from the classroom is being portrayed as a consequence of the stress resulting from the COVID pandemic. But my teacher contacts express far more frustration with the escalation in de-professionalization that is rampant among state legislatures and politicians.
The interference with the teaching profession has reached a new historical peak, with states enacting gag rules and teaching restrictions centered around concepts they think are Critical Race Theory but are not. They likewise are targeting any history that does not present an angelic America and often include any concepts that would make any student (or more likely the parent) feel “uncomfortable.” That again places the full range of any sex education outside of the classroom.
I was on the Kansas Science Standards Committee that had to fight to keep evolution in the science curriculum during the infamous 1999-to-2005 Kansas State Board of Education hearings with creationists. But the extent of this barrage of political control over professions exceeds even the early 1950s Joe McCarthy inquisitions.
Fortunately, parents at this time of year have one option they can take: withdraw your student from the state assessments. For the last decade, parents in some states have forced the proportion of students “required” to take the test in their state to drop below the minimum. The more parents who opt their students out of these assessments, the sooner this unprofessional process will be discarded. This can help save some veteran teachers from leaving teaching and perhaps keep some college students from abandoning a teaching career. They will still have to fight to teach that the earth is not flat and that American history was not all sunshine and roses.
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John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities during 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.