Testing for what we cannot cure

[Any other bloggers out there feel like a kid who hasn't done her homework when you haven't been blogging? Here's my excuse: we got a new kitten, my husband sprained his back, and I got mastitis all in the past 2 weeks. Which I think tops "blogspot ate my posting".]

This morning I've been reading an article about New Jersey's decision to add grammar to its state-wide standardized testing. Among other things it quoted a school administrator saying that bad grammar was "rampant" and complaining that "impact" is not a verb, damn it! (While no doubt many of us are annoyed by the verbing of nouns, I have a hard time ceding oversight of the evolution of language to the New Jersey Department of Education. Take the word 'nice': it has meant, at various times: ignorant, foolish, timid, dainty, fussy, strange, requiring precision, minute, subtle, and most recently agreeable. And no doubt the aforementioned administrator would have fought every change tooth and nail.)

Anyway, putting aside the difficulty of coming up with a fair test of optimal sentence structure and word usage, what really caught my eye was this:

[N]ationwide polls show public opinion leaning in favor of the Bush administration's efforts to hold schools accountable through testing.

One parent who supports more tests is Inga Price of Amityville. Her daughter Raven, 11, starts sixth grade Tuesday in the district's Edmund W. Miles Middle School. "The earlier we can get a heads-up on what the kids' skill levels are, the earlier we'll be able to help them," said Price, an insurance underwriter.

It occurs to me that we have switched over to a medical model here. We no longer concentrate our energies on helping children to learn, but rather on diagnosing their learning deficiencies. Kind of like American "health care," which really ought to be called "disease care" since so little of it focuses on keeping us healthy.

Take"well" visits, which have that name for public relations purposes. These consist of a lengthy battery of screening tests for problems, and an absence of helpful advice on staying healthy. No one ever told me to take folic acid in pregnancy, nor iron, nor calcium. No one told me to take probiotics and give them to the baby following antibiotics in labor (and because they did not, Tristan went 5.5 months without properly absorbing calcium, zinc, magnesium, and other important minerals; my diet was very restricted; and he suffered from intestinal pains and eczema). No one explained to me that the baby needs omega fatty acids for brain development, and that babies whose mothers take fish oil and other supplements have cognitive advantages (on the average, of course) over babies whose mothers took placebos. No one explained that nursing moms should never eat trans-fats (partially hydrogenated vegetable oil) because it interferes with the fats which reach breastmilk, preventing the baby from obtaining the healthy fatty acids they need most. They knew I was breastfeeding-- how hard would it have been to mention this? I frankly don't get any health information at all from well visits, I have to find it all myself using Google. [/rant]

Standardized testing uses time and money in the diagnosis of learning deficiencies, while not, in itself, doing anything to improve education. The same arguments used to promote well visits, the same stories of unknown illness which thank god were caught in time, will be used here. "No one knew little Tommy couldn't read," will be the tale which is told to justify putting all children through hours of testing for problems.

Many people would be quite convinced by the screening argument, but in this case it falls flat because there is no guarantee of help for those identified as needing remedial help:

However worthy its aims, "No Child Left Behind" is creating what many school officials fear will become a logistical nightmare. Because of technical complications, results from next winter's tests won't be available until eight months later. That's too late, local officials say, for scores to be used in deciding which students should be offered remedial tutoring in summer school.

Nor will districts have an easy time finding the money for extra tutoring.

Starting in 2002, when "No Child Left Behind" was signed into law, there was a substantial jump in federal Title I money earmarked for remedial instruction. This year, however, the flow of federal aid has dropped off in response to other budget demands, including the fighting in Iraq.

Michael Mostow, superintendent of Patchogue-Medford schools, says his system is getting about 10 percent less Title I money this year than last -- a loss of $100,000. "We've diverted over a million dollars to testing in this year's budget," he said. "I think it's the tail wagging the dog."

Note that the remedial instruction budget dropped from $1 million to $900,000, while the budget for the testing itself is over $1 million. More money is spent on testing than is spent on remediation. This is like your insurance company covering the lab test for a diagnosis, but then not covering the prescription drug required to treat the problem. Meanwhile, somebody, somewhere, is making off like a bandit with profits from the growing testing industry. School districts are using books from the same company who makes their tests, for instance (in the above article, McGraw-Hill). The school curricula, materials, and tests are all being corporatized, and there is the hidden purpose of convincing students there is something wrong with them.

To go back to my medical analogy for a moment, tens of millions of Americans suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and autism. And for each of these diseases, the medical community says: we do not know what causes this, and we have no cure. We can only treat your symptoms.

Similarly, within the schools, millions of children are diagnosed with ADD or ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, speech disorders, developmental delays, and so on. And for each of these the schools say: we don't know what causes this, we can't cure it, but we can work with your child. Remember the TeenScreen program, designed to screen kids for psychological problems? It's got to be nigh impossible to get one's child through the school system these days without having them diagnosed with a problem.

I have to ask, on both the educational and medical fronts, whose interests are being served in convincing us all that something is wrong with us? There is the obvious capitalist side to this. I read that in 2002 the top 10 pharmaceutical companies made more profits than the other 490 companies in the Fortune 500 combined. Educational deficiencies will become a cash cow as well, for a different kind of corporation.

I know I've blogged that ADHD is imaginary. I tend to think now that there may be a biological basis for some of it, due to trans-fats (the government should not allow these in our food, period), lack of nutritional advice given by doctors, and mercury poisoning. But mainstream medicine maintains it's all genetic, so there's no point even discussing anything with them. You just have to go and do your own research.

To sum up this long and winding post, for me there is a certain parallel in taking charge of my family's health on my own, and educating my children on my own. I hate to see the schools adopting the medical model, prioritizing the diagnosing of problems over teaching, while too often being incapable of doing anything to ameliorate those deficiencies.