The National Council of Teachers of English has stepped off the reform train with its “Resolution on Challenging Current Education Policy and Affirming Literacy Educators’ Expertise .”  In 2011 it published a series of books under the general title Supporting Students in a Time of Core Standards. In 2012 it has second-guessed collaboration with the federal reform agenda as  defined by “high-stakes testing and the evaluation of teachers and schools based on students’ test scores.”

At issue is the targeting of schools and teachers as the source of students’ poor performances on standardized tests.  The Department of Education has made teacher evaluation based on students’ test performance an essential prerequisite for the next lap of  “Race to the Top.” In spite of Secretary Arne Duncan’s pro-teacher rhetoric, the reform train has made carrying off ineffective teachers its primary objective.

Employing student test data to evaluate teachers breaks a cardinal rule of psychometrics: that  a test should never be used to assess what it was not designed to assess.  The roar of the reform train has all but drowned out the protests of experts, declaring the misappropriation of test data for assessing teachers.  Ultimately the train has been hijacked by politicians, leaving the psychometricians, literacy specialists, curriculum developers, and practitioners in the station. Politicians, state school administrators and business tycoons have commandeered the locomotive, leaving behind the conductors, the passengers and the freight handlers.

In addition to the critique on high-stakes testing, NCTE has resolved to

• support ongoing classroom-based assessments consistent with the NCTE/IRA 2009Standards for the Assessment of Reading and Writing;
• evaluate teachers based on comprehensive measures of effectiveness, such as observations of instruction, teacher portfolios, parent response, and increases in achievement as evidenced by curriculum-based authentic assessments;
• promote school/home/community partnerships by valuing the voices of all stakeholders who take part in the education of children;
• support curriculum that develops every student’s intellectual, creative, and physical potential; and

• provide equitable funding for all schools.

This is the “It-takes-a-Village” approach to school reform, which engages all the stakeholders and attends to the local context to fashion the appropriate strategy for each school.  And it trusts the stakeholders to know and implement what is best for their schools.  No school reform has ever succeeded apart from these principles.

For nearly two decades NCTE has attempted to coordinate its professional resources with the standards movement and with federal programs. Its proposed language arts standards could not pass muster in 1993 and its periodic resolutions on assessment, professional development and literacy have been ignored by each new administration, both Republican and Democrat.  The organization has engaged the standards movement at every station.

As the reform train recedes into the distance, a new vehicle of reform pulls up– the familiar yellow school bus.  The school bus, at least, picks up every student and stops at every school. It is slow, methodical, and a slave to routine, but it serves every constituent on its route.   The reform train drops off its registered packages and clatters on.