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DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION BY ROSCOE CARON AND LARRY LEWIN
Up Against the Machine
BILLS IN SALEM FIGHT THE EDUCATION COMBINE
“You had a choice: You could either strain and look at things that appeared in front of
you in the fog, painful as it might be, or you could relax and lose yourself.”
— Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
I
n Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,
the character Chief Bromden could hear the hum
of “The Combine” in the walls. It was the sound
of the system that strips us of our humanity and
individuality. It crushes spirits until they conform.
Pop quiz: What would Ken Kesey think of to-
day’s corporate “reform” model of education that
reduces much of the adventure and joy of learning to meet-
ing pre-ordained metrics and benchmarks based on end-
lessly repeated standardized testing?
Community Alliance for Public Education (CAPE)
members have been busy in Salem working on legisla-
tion designed to challenge parts of the testing-industrial
complex. Made up of testing companies, the vast data-
gathering state and local educational bureacracies, the
corporate-backed “stakeholder” lobbying groups that
promote “accountability,” and legislators who are unable
to oppose those forces — this is “The Combine” that has
run educational policy in Oregon for two decades. This is
the machine that presently runs your child’s classroom.
The “Too Young to Test” bill (HB 2318) that would pro-
hibit mandatory testing from prekindergarten through
grade two is stalled. House Education Committee mem-
bers know this testing is excessive and inappropriate. Fac-
ing intense lobbying and not able to envision an alternative
to the failed testing-based model they have historically
supported, they are stuck.
The “Eliminate Oregon’s Graduation Barrier” bill (SB
456) is doing better. There’s less money involved and join-
ing the 40 states that have no graduation testing require-
ment is less threatening but is certainly not a slam dunk.
Also up against the machine, our hero in Salem, Sen.
Lew Frederick (D—Portland), has an “Opt-Out Strength-
ening Bill” (SB 433). Frederick, an author of the original
2015 opt-out bill, is furious at the way local districts are
doing everything possible to prevent parents from opting
out of state-mandated high-stakes testing. This includes
minimizing notification of parents’ rights, ordering teach-
ers to not talk to parents about their rights and directly
discouraging parents from opting out. This is a system
based on fear and misinformation.
Frederick’s other bill, “Comprehensive Audit of Testing
Costs” (SB 428) would document the real costs of manda-
tory standardized testing. It’s fascinating that the data-
obsessed complex displays no desire to know the actual
costs of its own system: “the impacts on instructional time,
curricula, educators’ exercise of professional judgment,
budgets and administrative time and focus”. If the public
knew the real price of the corporate “reform” model, they
would reject it. The testing machine operates in the shad-
ows, behind walls.
Locally, last school year CAPE conducted a pilot study
of time consumed by mandatory standardized testing
with 10 local teachers keeping a log of time they spent ad-
ministering, practicing or meeting to discuss tests with
colleagues, administrators or parents. These teachers
averaged 46 hours in the year — some spent considerably
more time. We believe most teachers do. This computes
to six school days — even more than the recently lost snow
days. We moan about making up snow days in June but
somehow accept days lost to testing. And so much more
than time is being lost to testing.
Time to jam the machine.
Roscoe Caron and Larry Lewin, retired Eugene School District middle
school teachers, are members of the Community Alliance for Public
Education, which works “to defend public education from the damag-
ing practices of ‘reformers’ and corporate interests.” CAPE is a member
of the Oregon Public Education Network (OPEN). Find us on Facebook
and the web for more on these bills.
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