[Cross-posted at LeaderTalk.]

I had the opportunity to be on a panel of education experts speaking to college class. On our panel was an PA Department of Education official, and one of the new topics she spoke about the new graduation competency tests that the state is considering. I’ve been pretty outspoken on my blog and in my presentations about my opposition to high-stakes graduation tests. That comes into play later.

The topic was "How can Philadelphia improve its public education system?"

What I spoke about was how we need a new vision of our schools. We can talk about all of the issues facing public education, but we have to fundamentally ask ourselves first what we want our schools to be. We have to be able to articulate a strong vision of what we want our schools to be or other people are going to tell us what our schools have to be.

Right now, there are too many people who want to put too much of the fault on the people in the system. That’s the biggest legacy of NCLB — the erosion of trust in educators. And that’s criminal because we are squandering the good will and hard work of a generation of teachers.

In the 1980 Presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan used the myth of the "Welfare Queen" as a major part of his campaign. Today, under NCLB, we have created the myth of the lazy teacher who, if only there was something to hold them accountable for the way they teach. The myth of that lazy teacher who could get students to achieve if only they worked harder is just that — a myth. Are there bad, lazy teachers? Of course, but they are the vast, vast minority. Most teachers went into the profession because they wanted to make a difference. But our system is broken, and if you put good people in bad systems, the system will win more often than not. And as a result, we have lost the ability to negotiate the terms of our own profession.

And that’s what our current testing mania is at its root. It’s a political tool. It gives politicians a number that they can use to compare schools to each other, and claim that one number can encapsulate all that a student have learned. And these tests now are determining student, teacher and administrator lives, when we know that the tests — at best — tell only a small part of a student’s — and a school’s — learning.

We need to tell a new story — we need to articulate a vision of caring, student-centered schools where students are judged by the work of their own head, heart and hands. We need to talk about how the technological tools at our disposal allow us to fundamentally change the structures of our schools so that we can prepare students for the world they will inherit, but we can’t do that as long as our assessment system is firmly placed in the past.

And that’s what I told the State Education representative in front of one hundred Drexel students. Were my knees shaking when I said it? You bet. But I felt like I could say it after a 20 minute presentation of a different vision of school where the test no longer made sense.

It’s not enough for educators to be against NCLB, we’ve got to be for something else.