OUR DOOMED STANDARDIZED TEST DRIVEN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Our Delaware State Constitution, on page thirty-nine, gives the full responsibility and
accountability for program and cost efficient public schools to our sixty-two State Legislators. Our
Governor also has some direct responsibility as this office appoints our State Superintendent of
Public Education and members of our State School Board.

For decades these tragically uninformed and misinformed political public education decision-
makers have developed policies and requirements they've stressfully superimposed on school
building staff, parents and students driven by detached, irrelevant standardized tests. These
coercive, threatening, ineffective rerquirements have caused most citizens to believe this is the
correct approach to improving our public schools as it is accompanied by buzz words like
"tougher standards" and "accountability."Research proves that even successful private
businesses train their workers in best knowledge practices and then empowers them for decision-
making for improved products and/or services. In our public schools, anyone with a room
temperature IQ knows that our school building level staff and parents are the adults who have
one hundred per cent of educational interactions with students. They will always be the key
human resource in improving our state's dismal record on education indicators, not corporate
business CEO's and elected politicians who have to get directions to visit school buildings.

Over the past two decades, our national and Delaware corporate business communities and
our two state branches of government have superimposed three restrictive, coercive, ineffective
"tinker and proclaim" projects presented as school reform that would all give our state "world
class schools." Three of these projects were the Sizer Project, Goals 2000 and No Child Left
Behind. The latest project is Vision 2015, also tied in with Race to the Top. All of these have or
will fail with costly tax-payer and lost human potential results as they contain no research-proven
comprehensive reform plan which requires reform components training of school building level
staff and parents and then empowering them to make all program decisions within and between
school buildings. This readily available program and cost effective reform knowledge is one
hundred eighty degrees from our ongoing costly, wasteful bureaucratic organizational
arrangement and process. I recommend googling and reading the information about the new
movie "Race to Nowhere" that is being viewed by groups throughout our nation and informs
citizens as I am trying to do in this article. I also recommend googling Standardized Tests and
reading what some Educational Scholars inform about the costly, ineffectiveness of standardized
test driven school systems and their schools. Our state level political representatives and their
always aligned appointed officials have convinced the majority of citizens that perpetuating failing
public schools via "winners/losers" and "one size fits all" standardized tests is the way to operate
our public schools. Ask any teacher if standardized tests help with planning lessons of what
should be taught and learned in the classroom. An all-purpose excuse for our public school
malaise is to point a finger at the victim students and proclaim, "It's there for them to learn and if
they don't learn it, it's their fault." No, totally uninformed, you should credibly examine the three
fingers pointing back at you.

In states like Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio and Wisconsin, charter schools and
vouchers supporting private schools were not destroying public schools quick enough. Their
recently elected Republican Governors and State Legislators have quickly passed laws
eliminating collective bargaining rights for teachers, elimination of teacher job tenure, drastically
reducing public education budgets and other assaults designed to deliver a final death blow to
public education. Michigan, for example, is now applying a new law which gives their Governor
the right to appoint a Financial Director Dictator to take over any local government or public
school district deemed in serious financial difficulty. This single Dictator can contract quickly with
profit-making corporate businesses to take over operations of these previously publicly controlled
local governmental organizations. The other two huge cash cow public programs these corporate-
controlled politicians want to privatize are Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. Their campaign
rhetoric didn't disclose these privatization plans. And this political party proclaims loudly
nationwide it wants to keep government out of our lives. As a political independent, among the
now largest number of registered voters, it's not hard to understand why hordes of these
independent voters are not supporting these Wall Street goals.

There are two thoroughly research-proven comprehensive program and cost effective public
school system reform models being utilized in our nation. Both atre explained on the School
Reform page of our nonprofit, nonpartisan deinformedvoters.org web site. One is the
Kindergarten through Grade Three Primary Phase Developmentally Appropriate Practices
program developed by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).
The other is the Quality District Model, a total district reform system that's the only comprehensive
district-wide K-12 reform system validated by the prestigious Program Effectiveness Panel
created by the US Department of Education and eight years later re-validated in adopter districts
by the same Panel. For over twenty years, I worked as a Consultant/Trainer for the US
Department of Education and the nonprofit national/international Partners for Quality Learning
organization helping State Departments of Education and School Districts from Hawaii to Maine
train staff and parents to implement these reform systems. All elementary schools in the
Canadian Province of British Columbia use the NAEYC reform Primary Phase program. The
exemplary Kentucky Education Act mandated this K-3 program in their elementary schools. Their
act also mandated initial and continuous best knowledge training be provided building level staff
and parents and that all program decisions be made by a school building level committee
comprised of the
Principal, three Teachers elected by peers and two Parent Leaders elected by peers. I was the
first brought in to provide foundational training to some twelve hundred State Department staff
and all of Kentucky's District Superintendents, Elementary School Principals and Lead Teachers
on these two mandated State Act requirements.

Both of these research-documented reform systems train staff and parents to relate instruction,
curriculum and AUTHENTIC, ongoing, performance embedded assessment to each student's
rate and style of learning. All students make solid academic and other personal/social
developmental progress without being flunked, labeled, sorted or segregated. These unnecessary
destructive practices cause at least ten percent of teachers and other building level staff's time to
be wasted handling inappropriate or disruptive behavior outbursts. School Districts that trained
staff and parents and competently implemented the Quality District Model show at least a district-
wide academic score gain of at least two grade levels. Students are not taught to pass rote
memorization standardized test questions but given interdisciplinary learning experiences that
develop their creative, innovative abilities and higher order thinking and problem solving skills.
Students' critical and independent thinking are developed in these schools. These reformed
districts graduate well over ninety percent of their students compared with our Delaware rate of
slightly over sixty percent. That indicator alone would equal a $300 million annual increase in
efficiency. Even recent News Journal articles inform us we're seventh from the top state in per
student annual funding but forty-third in drop-out rate and forty-seventh in creating students
afflicted with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) with fourteen percent of students in
this "Hardening of the Categories" illness. I have sent packages of best knowledge explanations
and research evidence to our state level elected and appointed education decision-makers and
asked to meet with them to explain these two reform systems and arrange a visit to at least one
of these continuous education progress for all students districts. Not a single individual or group
has accepted my invitation. I suggest a desk paperweight with the following inscription, "The only
difference between a rut and grave is depth."

Dr. Floyd E. McDowell is Facilitator of the nonprofit, nonpartisan deinformedvoters.org web site.
He resides at 11 Dover Court, Bear, DE 19701 and can be reached at (302) 832-2799) or via
email at flydmcdwll@comcast.net.