Accountability Meets the Corporate Achievement Gap

The Associated Press ran a story on August 12, 2008, citing a report from the Government Accountability Office that revealed that two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005. About 25 percent of the U.S. corporations not paying corporate taxes were considered large corporations, meaning they had at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in receipts. And, according to the report, about 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes altogether over the same period.

How ironic in the age of No Child Left Behind that the GAO - the Government Accountability Office - would be the one that would point out corporate America's lack of accountability when it came time to paying the bills in this country.

It's clear to me that we have a Corporate Achievement Gap here. What is the Corporate Achievement Gap? The Corporate Achievement Gap is the difference between what taxpayers paid into the general coffers -- for roads and bridges, for schools and fire trucks -- and what 25 percent of U.S. corporations did not put in. This gap is an achievement gap because it underscores the potential for achievement if only these corporations would help fill this gap.

But they are simply not doing their part, not shouldering their load, not paying their dues.

Right now, the US federal government pays for between 7 and 10 percent of the total budget for public preK-12 education. The other 90 to 93 percent is paid for by state and local taxpayers.

Imagine, if you would, what kind of impact there would be if the US federal government doubled its current investment in public education from about 10 percent to 20 percent. Imagine the difference this could make.

In his amazing book Class and Schools, Richard Rothstein wrote:

All told, adding the price of health, early childhood, after-school, and summer programs, (the) down payment on closing the achievement gap would probably increase the annual cost of education, for children who attend schools where at least 40% of the enrolled children have low incomes, by about $12,500 per pupil, over and above the $8,000 already being spent. In total, this means about a $156 billion added annual national cost to provide these programs to low-income children.

These are 2003 - 2004 data, and they're probably not completely accurate. But these numbers at least give you an idea of what it might take to actually close the educational achievement gap. They give you the sense that closing the educational achievement gap might actually be something that could be done.

But before we can close the educational achievement gap, we must first close the Corporate Achievement Gap.

Teachers and schools are being held accountable. It's time to start holding corporations accountable, too. We must demand that they contribute to the health and well-being of the country by paying their fair share.

How "Choice" Is No Choice at All

In a national school system that has worsened -- not improved -- under NCLB, there are a few schools where good teaching and learning practices are in place. The Portland public schools system -- like many others across the country -- holds these schools out to parents through a "choice" process that involves a lottery.

Most parents who know about these schools and can afford to transport their kids there want what these schools offer. They still have an extended recess. They still have art and music and see them as intrinsic to healthy childhood development, not as frivolous extras that can come or go depending on the budget or the latest test data.

This past spring, parents in Portland flocked to these kinds of schools. At Emerson Charter School, there were over 200 applications for 12 spots in the K-1 classroom. Similar numbers were seen at Trillium, Opal, and Portland Village School.

But the approaches these schools take are usually not offered to us at our neighborhood schools. They certainly aren't offered at my neighborhood school -- a school that voluntarily subjects children to the DIBELS test and limits 5 and 6-year-old Kindergarten children to 20 minutes of recess and a sprinkling of PE, art, and music here and there.

So here's what the "choice" for parents looks like: (1) we can roll the dice and hope that we get lucky and get in to one of these schools, or (2) we can enroll our children in schools that follow test-centric, developmentally inappropriate curricula. The former is a desired outcome. The latter comes with a great deal of anxiety, trepidation, and bitterness.

Of course, we can choose to withdraw our children from the school system and homeschool them. But this is not really a choice, given the options. It's really a matter of necessity. With some degree of sadness and a great deal of disappointment, my wife and I decided to homeschool our daughter this year. We believe we had no other choice. Homeschooling will be fun and rewarding, and we're looking forward to it. But it often feels like we're making lemonade from lemons.

So does making the "choice" schools available to all parents make the other schools better? Absolutely not. Do all parents and children benefit from the "choice" schools? Absolutely not. Rather, other parents and their kids become your competition as you scramble and beg for the few crumbs thrown out. It's a sickening and heart-breaking process. It is morally and ethically stinky. You know that if you are lucky and get in, your kid is going to make it. You know that other kids will not get in. You are aware of this. And still you participate in the "choice" process.

I never liked "choice" because it's no choice at all. What "choice" does is effectively defang the opposition, as the few most vocal opponents of the status quo branch off and start their own charters and then attract others. The kids that make it into these schools are lucky, indeed. But the rest are not so lucky and must play the hand they've been dealt. My wife and I are in a postion where homeschooling is possible -- this year. But who knows about next year? And most parents are not in a position to be able to homeschool. They are stuck with the test-centric schools and must choose between them and nothing at all.

Some choice . . .

What is good assessment?

Good assessment begins with the end in mind, i.e., you start off with what you want students to know and be able to do. So let's imagine for a moment what that might look like. Here's a starter:

1) we want all students to be able to read and love doing so
2) we want all students to have a fundamental grasp of numeracy and mathematical thinking
3) we want all students to be able to write persuasively on a variety of subjects

You might also wish to nurture and develop certain qualities in students, e.g., curiosity, compassion, creativity, confidence.

So now the question becomes: how do we determine that students know these things, can do these things, or have acquired these qualities? The trick is to use assessment to help students know them, do them, and acquire them. In other words, good assessment is indistinguishable from good instruction. Good assessment drives instruction because it provides rich, meaningful information that both students and teachers can use -- teachers to improve their instruction and students to improve their learning.

So here's the litmus test for the current battery of assessments that have hijacked our curricula: do they provide rich, meaningful information that both students and teachers can use?

I would say the answer is "no" because most of the assessments in use today via "data-driven assessment" practices produce information that is shallow and disjointed. But even worse, some of the assessments used produce information that is simply wrong.

To make this case, let's consider the DIBELS test. The Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) is a set of one-minute measures: recognizing initial sounds, naming the letters of the alphabet, segmenting the phonemes in a word, reading nonsense words, oral reading of a passage, retelling, and word use. The measures are used to assess phonological awareness, the alphabetic principle, accuracy and fluency in reading connected text, vocabulary and comprehension.

The DIBELS is used to assess more than 1,800,000 students from Kindergarten to grade 6. Students who do not meet the expected benchmark are given the DIBELS over and over, i.e., the test becomes the exclusive means by which progress in reading is measured.

Jay Samuels, a professor of education psychology and of curriculum and instruction at the University of Minnesota, served as a member of the National Reading Panel and coauthored the fluency section of the panel's report. The NRP's report has become the gospel on how reading is to be taught in this country, so Samuels' opinion carries some weight. Here is what he recently wrote about the DIBELS:

--begin excerpt from Reading Research Quarterly (2007-10-01)--

The DIBELS's battery of tests . . . aim to identify students who may be at risk of reading failure, to monitor their progress, and to guide instruction. With the widespread use of DIBELS tests, a number of scholars in the field of reading have evaluated them, and not all of their evaluations have been flattering. For example, Pearson (2006, p. v) stated,

“I have built a reputation for taking positions characterized as situated in 'the radical middle'. Not so on DIBELS. I have decided to join that group convinced that DIBELS is the worst thing to happen to the teaching of reading since the development of flash cards.”

Goodman (2006), who was one of the key developers of whole language, is concerned that despite warnings to the contrary, the tests have become a de facto curriculum in which the emphasis on speed convinces students that the goal in reading is to be able to read fast and that understanding is of secondary importance. Pressley, Hilden, and Shankland (2005, p. 2) studied the Oral Reading Fluency and Retelling Fluency measures that are part of DIBELS. They concluded that “DIBELS mispredicts reading performance much of the time, and at best is a measure of who reads quickly without regard to whether the reader comprehends what is read.”

If Riedel's conclusion that administration of subtests other than Oral Reading Fluency is not necessary for prediction of end-of-first- and second-grade comprehension, in combination with the critical evaluations of DIBELS by some of our leading scholars in reading is not enough to raise the red flag of caution about the widespread use of DIBELS instruments, I have an additional concern about the misuse of the term fluency that is attached to each of the tests. Because each of the tests is labeled as a fluency test, it is only fair game to see if that term is justified. I contend that with the exception of the Retell Fluency test, none of the DIBELS instruments are tests of fluency, only speed, and that the Retell Fluency test is so hampered by the unreliability of accurately counting the stream of words the student utters as to make that test worthless. Let us not forget that, in the absence of reliability, no test is valid.