$40M spent on testing contract could have served DPS better

Todd Farley, author of "Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry" and former employee of a company owned by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt talks about his experience visiting the Detroit Public School system. Readily apparent are the amount of time and resources spent on the standardized assessment of students by people who do not know what is going on in that community.

"DPS Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb is attempting to solve DPS' $327-million budget shortfall by closing nearly half of Detroit's schools, increasing class sizes in the remaining ones to as high as 60." Yet the school had just completed a 15-month contract worth nearly $40 million, more than 12% of DPS' entire budget shortfall, for HMH's "managed instruction" in reading and math. Where did those millions go? "Some of those millions were used to pay for the tests I helped slap together (mostly recycling passages and questions that had been used many times before) and to sponsor my travels to Detroit." This included meals where "they [the company employees] nonetheless reveled in wine or cocktails and big, delicious steaks. It was a great night to work in standardized testing."

One might think, okay, a couple employees having a nice dinner, that's not so bad. But it wasn't a couple. At the school where teachers were recruited to put their stamp of approval on the tests "there were nearly 20 of us standardized testers on site that day (test developers, senior test developers, supervisors, project managers, customer service reps)...there were nearly twice as many of us than them."

And what would these people, "who had jetted to Detroit from Chicago and New York (and Minneapolis and Missouri and New Mexico)" be able to offer these teachers? Very little. Because "when some of the teachers told us about the conditions they experienced each day (a lack of textbooks in classrooms but a surfeit of students, metal detectors at front doors, cars stolen right out of school parking lots), Mr. Farley's feeling only confirmed the teachers' suspicion that these testers "had no idea what went on in the Detroit Public Schools and, frankly, that we had little to offer. "

Mr. Farley summed it up nicely: "I'm still hard-pressed to see the benefits of sending those millions to Boston to line the gilded coffers of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Wouldn't the city of Detroit have been better served by spending that money to keep its schools open or to hire teachers, coaches, staff or security? Isn't all of that a better way to give the city's kids a chance to succeed than paying tens of millions for the 'expertise' of a bunch of people who will have no more than cursory interactions with the city of Detroit? Wouldn't that money have been better spent on something other than buying me dinner?"


I think any of us with some sense would call a resounding "YES!!!"

Source: Detroit Free Press