Opinion

OP-ED: Charters and Heavy Testing Hurt Our Schools

Published

10 years ago

November 6, 2015

Across the country, parents have been in revolt against high-stakes standardized testing, with kids tested over and over again while creativity is cut out of classroom curricula.

Parents — particularly in targeted urban schools from Chicago to Boston — are also marching against the forced closing of neighborhood schools, displacing kids and shutting down needed neighborhood centers.

Now there is more and more evidence that the parents have it right — and the deep-pocket “reformers” are simply wrong.

First, the Obama Administration — which has pushed high-stakes testing as central to its education agenda — announced that kids were being tested too often, with too much school time devoted to preparing for and taking required tests.

In what a writer for the New Yorker described as a major “mea culpa,” the administration now recommends that standardized testing be limited to 2 percent of class time. Maybe music, art and creativity will have a chance once more.

Second, a report by the Center for Media and Democracy on charter schools — the centerpiece of the so-called reformers’ agenda — reports that some $3.7 billion in federal money has been larded onto charter schools in the past two decades with virtually no accountability.

The result is often a simple rip-off: schools that never open or open for a few months and shut down. Some highly touted cyber charters — schools featuring online courses — are, as Education Week reported, essentially useless, like not going to school at all.

Others, like the highly touted New York Success Academy Schools, apparently boost their test scores by identifying low-performing students who have “got to go” and finding ways to get rid of them.

And now the National Assessment of Education Progress, the gold standard for measuring progress, reports that American kids have lost ground in math, and either were stagnant (4th graders) or worse (8th graders) in reading.

Charters are spreading like kudzu; wall-to-wall standardized testing is nearly universal — and the parents are right: It isn’t working.

The reality, as National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen Garcia has pointed out, is that the nations that have outperformed the U.S. in recent years don’t do the things that the deep-pockets reformers have been touting.

They don’t terrorize teachers; they train, respect and pay them.

They don’t set up private charters and drain money from public education; they devote more resources to the poorest students, not less.

They don’t do repeated high-stakes standardized testing; they evaluate teachers and students carefully, mentor them and improve them.

The school “reformers” are hurting, not helping.

Closing neighborhood schools too often divorces parents from their students’ schools.

Demeaning teachers is leading to higher turnover, when experience is central to becoming a good teacher. Repeated standardized testing takes the joy out of learning, making kids less likely to find their strength.

As Jeff Bryant of the Education Opportunity Network writes, parents are driving an “education spring,” revolting against an elite reform agenda that is driving away good teachers, undermining public schools, and draining funds and fun from our public schools.

Parents are right to keep the pressure on.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Advice

COMMENTARY: If You Don’t Want Your ‘Black Card’ Revoked, Watch What You Bring to Holiday Dinners

From Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Year’s Day, whether it’s the dining room table or the bid whist (Spades? Uno, anyone?) table, your card may be in danger.

Published

5 days ago

December 14, 2025

Oakland Post

The ‘aunties’ playing cards. iStock photo by Andreswd.

By Wanda Ravernell
Post Staff

From the fourth week of November to the first week in January, if you are of African descent, but particularly African American, certain violations of cultural etiquette will get your ‘Black card’ revoked.

From Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Year’s Day, whether it’s the dining room table or the bid whist (Spades? Uno, anyone?) table, your card may be in danger.

It could take until Super Bowl Sunday for reinstatement.

I don’t know much about the card table, but for years I was on probation by the ‘Aunties,’ the givers and takers of Black cards.

How I Got into Trouble

It was 1970-something and I was influenced by the health food movement that emerged from the hippie era. A vegetarian (which was then considered sacrilegious by most Black people I knew) prepared me a simple meal: grated cheese over steamed broccoli, lentils, and brown rice.

I introduced the broccoli dish at the Friday night supper with my aunt and grandfather. She pronounced the bright green broccoli undone, but she ate it. (I did not, of course, try brown rice on them.)

I knew that I would be allowed back in the kitchen when she attempted the dish, but the broccoli had been cooked to death. (Y’all remember when ALL vegetables, not just greens, were cooked to mush?)

My Black card, which had been revoked was then reattained because they ate what I prepared and imitated it.

Over the decades, various transgressions have become normalized. I remember when having a smoked turkey neck instead of a ham hock in collard greens was greeted with mumblings and murmurings at both the dining room and card tables. Then came vegan versions with just olive oil (What? No Crisco? No bacon, at least?) and garlic. And now my husband stir fries his collards in a wok.

But No Matter How Things Have Changed…

At holiday meals, there are assigned tasks. Uncle Jack chopped raw onions when needed. Uncle Buddy made the fruit salad for Easter. My mother brought the greens in winter, macaroni salad in summer. Aunt Deanie did the macaroni and cheese, and the great aunts, my deceased grandmother’s sisters, oversaw the preparation of the roast beef, turkey, and ham. My father, if he were present, did the carving.

These designations/assignments were binding agreements that could stand up in a court of law. Do not violate the law of assignments by bringing some other version of a tried-and-true dish, even if you call it a new ‘cheese and noodle item’ to ‘try out.’ The auntie lawgivers know what you are trying to do. It’s called a menu coup d’état, and they are not having it.

The time for experiments is in your own home: your spouse and kids are the Guinea pigs.

My mother’s variation of a classic that I detested from that Sunday to the present was adding crushed pineapple to mashed sweet potatoes. A relative stops by, tries it, and then it can be introduced as an add-on to the standard holiday menu.

My Aunt Vivian’s concoctions from Good Housekeeping or Ladies’ Home Journal magazine also made it to the Black people’s tables all over the country in the form of a green bean casserole.

What Not to Do and How Did It Cross Your Mind?

People are, of all things holy, preparing mac ‘n’ cheese with so much sugar it tastes like custard with noodles in it.

Also showing up in the wrong places: raisins. Raisins have been reported in the stuffing (makes no sense unless it’s in a ‘sweet meats’ dish), in a pan of corn bread, and – heresy in the Black kitchen – the MAC ‘n’ CHEESE.

These are not mere allegations: There is photographic evidence of these Black card violations, but I don’t want to defame witnesses who remained present at the scene of the crimes.

The cook – bless his/her heart – was probably well-meaning, if ignorant. Maybe they got the idea from a social media influencer, much like Aunt Viv got recipes from magazines.

Thankfully, a long-winded blessing of the food at the table can give the wary attendee time to locate the oddity’s place on the table and plan accordingly.

But who knows? Innovation always prevails, for, as the old folks say, ‘waste makes want.’ What if the leftovers were cut up, dipped in breadcrumbs and deep fried? The next day, that dish might make it to the TV tray by the card table.

An older cousin – on her way to being an Auntie – in her bonnet, leggings, T-shirt, and bunny slippers and too tired to object, might try it and like it….

And if she ‘rubs your head’ after eating it, the new dish might be a winner and (Whew!) everybody, thanks God, keeps their Black cards.

Until the next time.