Head Of Nation’s Teachers Union Criticizes Little Rock Schools Takeover

The recent state takeover of the Little Rock School District is a bad idea because the answers to the district’s problems must come from within the community, the national president of the National Education Association said at the Clinton School of Public Service Monday.

The bulk of Lily Eskelen Garcia’s address was focused on problems with standardized testing caused by the federal No Child Left Behind law, which she said created a “factory production model.” That kind of mindset had led to the takeover in Little Rock, she said.

“You are experiencing what can happen when you don’t hit your quota of kids that hit their cut score on that standardized test,” she said. “We do not want to pretend that we don’t have problems in many of our schools. We are struggling to find answers so that our students can succeed, but school takeovers by those experts, those outsiders who don’t know your children, will not solve the problems,” she said.

In the audience were two members of the State Board of Education: Diane Zook, who voted for the takeover, and Dr. Jay Barth, who voted against it.

After her speech, Garcia, a former lunch lady who became Utah’s Teacher of the Year, said she had asked her researchers at the NEA what she could say about the takeover.

“They said the evidence is quite clear,” she said. “There is no track record of success on this, whether it’s a mayor taking over a school or the governor taking it over. They said whenever they bring in an outside expert, it’s usually very expensive, they stay three or four years and leave, and nothing changes. … The only thing that turns around schools that are really struggling is when you come in and you bring the whole community together to plan and solve that problem.”

The State Board’s decision removed the district from being under the control of the elected school board and placed it under the ultimate authority of the state’s education commissioner, Tony Wood. Wood is a former Little Rock School District deputy superintendent.

Garcia referred to the No Child Left Behind law, created in 2002, as “No Child Left Untested.” The law set penalties for schools that failed to ensure that 100% of their students score satisfactorily on standardized tests. Those penalties were supposed to take effect in 2014, but the Obama administration has issued a series of waivers for states that institute certain changes. Congress is considering reauthorizing the law this year.

She said the law has led to a “factory production model” obsessed with testing and emphasizing solutions that work only on paper. She compared it to the famous “I Love Lucy” chocolate conveyor belt episode.

She said that kind of model – where students are tested and teachers and school districts held strictly accountable for the results – had not been proven to work elsewhere. Other countries that don’t use that model, such as Singapore and Finalnd, have moved ahead of the United States on the international PISA exam.

Finland, she said, has a unionized teacher workforce, no standardized testing, no private schools, and no merit pay for teachers based on their students’ test scores. School professionals have authority over decisions, and schools are funded equally. Nearby Sweden and Norway, which use the factory model, have not seen similar success, she said.

Garcia called for an end to what she said is the education system’s obsession with standardized tests. She said better indicators need to be developed that better explain the “opportunity gap” that exists between succeeding and failing schools.

“Until we empower people at the school building level, it’s not going to work,” she said.