About 20 years ago, all high school students were required to take and pass the HSTEC (Hawaii State Test of Essential Competencies) to earn a high school diploma. If not successfully passed by a student’s senior year, a semester preparatory course was mandatory. Very few students failed this test.

Teachers had only to mention that a certain skill helped students pass the test and student attention spans miraculously increased. The students had a stake in the test results (earning a diploma) and they were highly motivated to learn the skills necessary to pass HSTEC.

Today, students are learning test-taking skills at all grade levels. Schools are judged as meeting AYP (Annual Yearly Progress) based on student test results, and ranked as "failing" if student results do not meet an arbitrary level set by congressional policies. Teachers are constantly being publicly criticized for not being able to raise test results to an ever-increasing level dictated by the No Child Left Behind mandate.

Now teachers are to be evaluated and paid based on student progress (presumably measured by some reference to test results). Nowhere, however, are the students held accountable for the AYP test results. The first question most students ask when testing begins is, "Does this count?" Teachers truthfully answer, "Not for your grades or for graduating, but we’d really like you to do well because we need to report to Washington, D.C., how our school is doing."

This is one reason why there is often no correlation between report card grades and testing results, because grades are important to most students whereas AYP test results are important to adults.

No specific teacher evaluation process was proposed in the latest contract offer, but half of the evaluation is to be based on student progress presumably measured by testing results. The employer also expects teachers to blindly trust and work with them over the next few years to develop this process. This comes from the same people who unilaterally imposed a contract on teachers, the first time this has ever been done in public union bargaining history.

Teachers responded with a "no" vote to these ambiguities, and now there is fallout that the state is in jeopardy of losing Race to the Top federal monies. Everyone is scrambling because the feds are threatening. Where was the sense of urgency when the contract was imposed by these same people who now want to point their accusatory fingers at teachers? No one was scrambling back to the bargaining table months ago.

Teaching is one of the most demanding and stressful occupations. Where there once was public respect for teachers, today there is a blame game directed against teachers. The reaction of the governor and the schools superintendent to the resounding rejection of the recent contract proposal only demonstrates their lack of knowledge on the ever-growing frustration teachers are experiencing. I congratulate my colleagues for taking this courageous stand and encourage the state to stop the blame game against teachers.

One important step toward equitable accountability would be to hold students accountable in these high-stakes AYP testing results that are presently only high stakes for the adults.