Having Students Follow An Idea

Saurabh Anand published a piece at JSTOR last month that has been an open tab on my desktop ever since, even as I have added it to my file of Things I Would Totally Steal If I Were Still Teaching.

The piece is "Teaching Students to Follow an Idea," and Anand is talking about an assignment that he uses with first-year academic writing students at the University of Georgia. 

I developed this activity because students often perceive research writing as a series of requirements: finding scholarly sources, writing an annotated bibliography, citing sources, and producing a literature review. These requirements are useful, but they can also make scholarship seem like a collection of finished objects. Articles appear in databases, then students download them, extract information, and cite them. I wanted students to see something different: scholarship as a conversation that changes over time.

Yes! The "collection of finished objects" really strikes a chord with me, and the rationale parallels my thinking when I designed an assignment around having students research local history mostly from primary sources. 

But Anand lands in a different place, and it is also cool. He asks students to take a scholarly article, pick an idea from it, and trace that idea's history. Where did it come from? What were the responses to it? Who built on it? Who disagreed with it? 

What is the biography of that idea?

Anand is working in scholarly materials, but the possibilities here-- especially when applied to chunks of history--are considerable.

It also reminds me of teaching high school juniors about the various intellectual and social waves in US history. Because-- and some folks seem to have lost track of this-- we can talk about ideas in a classroom without actually "indoctrinating" anyone. Every year I had to talk about American attitudes, throughout history, about race and gender and religion and society itself. And I opened each new wave with a version of this speech:

I am not asking you to decide that these folks were right or that they were wrong. I am not here to convince you to agree with them, but I am going to present, as clearly as I can, how they viewed the world and the human beings in it. You can agree or disagree-- that's entirely your decision-- but I want you to understand where they were coming from.

Implicit in that approach was holding the ideas themselves at arm's length, studying them as things in themselves. The idea was to look at how they grew and spread and how the affected the people who embraced them, not to try to decide whether or not they were True. In doing so, my hope was that students would learn to recognize pieces of those ideas still floating around in our cultural soup today. (Also, if I'm honest, to help students develop the habits of mind that made it possible to examine their own beliefs and scan them for integrated consistency). 

So I can see a version of Anand's assignment working on a large scale (Where did the critical realists start? What were they reacting to? How did different writers try to articulate or dramatize their ideas, and which pieces of the ideas did particular authors favor? Did they fall from favor, and if so, why? What ideas pushed them aside? Damn, but I am just itching to go back in time and use some of this approach.). The assignment can also work on smaller scale (Where did the story about litter boxes in schools start? How did it spread? Who helped spread it? Has it peaked yet?)

Ideas and beliefs have their own lives, growing, changing, both responding to and shaping the world around them. They are not set in concrete, unchanged and unaltered by time, and they can be studied by questions so much more interesting and useful than, "Is this correct?" This, for me, is one of the fundamental problems of the those who are fighting "culture wars"-- their insistence that for most questions, there is one True Answer and it has never changed and will never change-- which is itself an idea that has shifted and ebbed and flowed and changed over the centuries. 

Humans and human society shift and change and rise and fall and regularly re-assess the world around them and their place in it. That process, that life of ideas, is fascinating and useful. I am glad that subtext was part of my teaching, but right now I would love a little bit of a do-over.

The End of Disparate Impact Language

The Trump administration has been crossing out rules about "disparate impact" all across federal agencies. The language was axed in the Department of Education back in July, and while the change was covered in some media and greeted with appropriate complaints from a host of civil rights groups, lots of folks sort of napped through the whole business, even as the DOJ threw out fifty desegregation cases involving schools.

So let's take a second to talk about disparate impact and why anyone should care that the feds no longer pay any attention to it.

The principle of disparate impact starts with the understanding that 1) not all discrimination is intentional and 2) not all intentional discrimination is announced as such.

Disparate impact allows us to bypass an argument about whether or not someone in charge had prejudice in his heart which he deliberately enacted through policy. 

For the last several decades, everyone has understood that you cannot write down in official policy, "We will not hire Black people." But if you have hired 100 people in the last six months and 50% of the applicants were women and 0% of the actual hires were women, there is reason to suspect that perhaps your organization has a civil rights problem.

In education, a common disparate impact argument has centered on discipline, the argument being that if Black students composed 20% of your student body and 90% of your discipline referrals, maybe something is going on. 

The effect of the principle of disparate impact is that many employers and schools have been super-careful because they're afraid they might be doing a racism without even trying. The principle of disparate impact has launched thousands of implicit bias PD sessions and made folks examine more carefully how they might be discriminating without even meaning to. 

But that same effect makes reactionary snowflakes sad. You can't just let every discriminatory thought fall out of your mouth without someone making a fuss! Even Supreme Court Justices aren't immune; “You can’t say that marriage is a union between one man and one woman,” Sam Alito said at a Federalist Society event in 2020. “Until recently, that’s what the vast majority of Americans thought. Now, it’s considered bigotry.”

So for MAGA, already accepting the premise that white men are the most oppressed and downtrodden group in the country, disparate impact is one more way that they are held down. 

Ther is no doubt that parsing out disparate impact is an inexact art, and there is absolutely no doubt that public schools do not suffer from a shortage of people looking over their shoulder, waiting to catch them doing Something Wrong.

But the loss of the principle of disparate impact means that discrimination can only be called out when some school administrator or staff member is stupid enough to announce, "I am taking this action in order to discriminate against this group of people, a group that I personally hate." It may take a while for some districts or states to feel free enough to start doing terrible things, but they've got at least two years to get comfortable with the idea. In the meantime, families of female or minority or LGBTQ students will have to start looking for another means to protect themselves. 

What's Wrong With Educational Research (Part 23,881)

Noah Smith is an "econ blogger" who mostly does econ stuff, but a week ago he decided to take a swipe at education. Yes, it's always super-awesome when economists try to talk about education, but this particular post caught my attention because Smith would like to explain why smaller classes are a snare and a delusion, and his argument highlights one of the major problems with education research over the past several decades.

Smith starts out commenting on the Nikole Hannah-Jones piece (I believe at this point there are three grown adults on the planet who have not expressed an opinion about the piece, and two of them are stuck under rocks) and then wades into a round of "do schools need more money" as a way of introducing his gripe, which is that when schools get more money, they spend it on teachers to try to reduce class size.

"I’ve been hearing all my life that smaller classes will improve the quality of education," he opines, then goes on to cite some contemporary praise for smaller class size. He cites a 2014 study and a 2013 program in Tennessee (Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio or STAR) and digs into a study of the entire country of Israel, where due to a rabbinical rule, class sizes were capped at 40 (like 40 students somehow qualifies as a small class in any year since about 1957).

The initial study showed "gains" but then a follow-up study showed no class size effect. Then he pulls up a couple of meta-analyses (a study of studies, for those of you who skipped this day in college). He quotes a study from Filges et. al.:

Overall, the evidence suggests at best a small effect on reading achievement. There is a negative, but statistically insignificant, effect on mathematics. For the non-STAR studies the primary study effect sizes for reading were close to zero but the weighted average was positive and statistically significant. 

And more of the same, all looking at the effects of smaller class size on "student achievement." 

Student achievement.

Here we go again. Hundreds of studies that accept Big Standardized Test scores as accurate, reliable, and valid proxies for the desired outcome of an education. 

Do researchers use the proxy because they truly believe BS Tests are a valid proxy, because BS Tests are the easiest thing to find that comes in nice numbers, or because they know on some level that publishing a study that examines the effects of X on the scores from a single multiple-choice reading and math test given once a year would cause too many people to respond, "Well, who cares?" Or are they simply implicitly arguing that BS Test scores are, in fact, the whole point and object of education and nothing else matters?

Look, measuring education and student achievement and growth is really hard, because what we want for our children includes a whole lot of hard-to-measure stuff, not to mention things that don't really kick in or pay off until years later. Plus all the things that require a slow approach; can you measure how well a student can read and reflect and dive into a full novel by giving them a series of multiple choice questions about a 500-word excerpt? No, you cannot. But somehow many folks have come to accept that a tiny, not-very-valid measure of a tiny sliver of a tiny part of a whole human's education can be treated as a proxy for the whole big picture. And that leads to all sorts of bad conclusions.

This particular instance stands out because I don't think there's a single human being who remembers being in a K-12 classroom who does not understand that smaller class size is a plus. It guarantees students more attention, makes the teacher's job easier (both in teaching and management), and provides the student with a more human experience. There isn't a parent on the planet who, given the choice, would say "Don't put my child in the class with fifteen students-- I want her in the class with 45." There isn't a teacher on the planet who would say, "Yeah, could you just jam ten more students into each of my classes, because that will make my job easier." Need more? There's a whole organization (Class Size Matters) that can provide more. 

You can line up studies that "prove" that class size doesn't matter from here to the moon and the eyerolls and muttered comments of "bullshit" will far outnumber the responses of, "Oh, well, I see. I guess I don't care how big the class is after all." Because no sensible human being would believe that class size doesn't matter. And when research is based on bad and incomplete data that causes it to arrive at literally unbelievable conclusions, it does not deserve to be taken seriously.

Smith goes on to make some valid points. Like good teachers are better than bad teachers, and there is not an infinite supply of good teachers. So if we hire a bunch more teachers in order to reduce class size, we will end up hiring less-than-great teachers. Fair enough. Though I will point out that putting a mediocre teacher in front of a small class gives you a better chance of success than putting them in front of a large class. 

Maybe we could use the money to raise salaries and attract more good teachers rather than reduce class sizes, Smith suggests, and boy have we been here before. In 2015, Marguerite Roza and the Georgetown Edunomics Lab were trying to make a case for the Super Sardinemaster-- one great teacher in front of a couple hundred students. Way back in 2010, Bill Gates (who, I will remind you, has never been right about education) thought it sounded like a great idea. Reformsters like the idea because it's cheap. For a while, the Super Sardinemaster was imagined as a great teacher working over the internet with many students, but we ran a large scale experiment about that kind of teaching back in 2020, and mostly everyone hated it.

What many economists understand about education could be spread out on the head of a pin and still leave room for a flock of angels to hold a good-sized square dance. But they ought to understand that using bad data leads to bad results, and this is a particularly dramatic demonstration of that principle. Too much education research rests on a foundation of junk, no more reliably stable than a pile of sardines

ICYMI: New Adventure Edition (10/4)

This is the weekend of Applefest in Franklin, an annual festival hung on the thin hook of Johnny Appleseed's residence in the are for fifteen minutes a couple hundred years ago. John Chapman is a fascinating story, and so is the story of how he became a story, and I recommend Johnny Appleseed: The Man, The Myth, The American Story by Howard Means for reading about all that. As for Applefest, we have a few hundred booths, a car show, a lot of food, a show at the theater (this year-- Mean Girls), and a race from one end of town to the other; the board of directors and the CMO will be running again this year.

But the most exciting thing this week was that the board of directors had their first instrumental music lessons. One board member is pursuing percussion, and the other aspires to trumpeting. They have their instruments, their method books, and the privilege of attending a school with a full time music teacher who will see them once a week as we begin this adventure. Tooting and bonking abound at the institute, loaded with potential and promise. We shall see.

In the meantime, here's some reading from the week.

A warning to blue-state governors from the Florida voucher wreckage

Democratic legislator Carlos Guillermo Smith lays out the many damages done to education by Florida's voucher program.

What Impact Will Trump’s Federal School Voucher Scheme Have on States?

Andy Spears gets a quick quote from Jeremy Mohler of In The Public Interest. Short answer: impact will be negative.

Statement of Jessica Levin, Esq., Director of Public Funds Public Schools, on Treasury Department’s Proposed Regulations for the Federal Voucher Scheme

There are a plethora of statements out there now that the rules are out, but Jessica Levin is a smart lawyer and I find her comments particularly valuable, because much of what's being said just isn't accurate.

All Our Kids Will Go To Alpha School

Many folks have thoughts about Ben Riley's reporting about Alpha School, but this piece by Matt Seybold is one of the better ones for capturing the wider implications of this upscale snake oil emporium.

Public Schools Can Help Save Us From AI and Alpha Schools!

Nancy Bailey looks at the Alpha baloney and AI and what public schools could do about them.

Seventeen Years of Roza-Tinted Glasses

Bruce Baker, the noted education funding expert, has made a long-time habit of cleaning up after Marguerite Roza (whose name you may not work but whose economic apologetics for reformsters you have almost certainly encountered). Here's an overview of her greatest hits (and why they're baloney).

My Different 12 Low Cost Suggestions

Larry Ferlazzo offers a reaction to the NYT piece that asked thirty education "experts" how to improve schools-- but he gets beyond the eyerolls hat most of us offered to get to some more practical matters.

We’re Reporters, Not Teachers.We Were Able to Start Private Schools Anyway.

ProPublica reporters demonstrated that in some states, any dope can start a private school. This is a pretty astonishing piece.

What’s Left for Public Education?

Jennifer Berkshire continues to ponder why Democrats cannot get an act together when it comes to public education. No, not even those Democrats.

Why Am I Going To The TFA 35th Anniversary Alumni Summit?

Gary Rubinstein recalls his long, complicated, and important history with Teach for America.

I Told You So: Five Predictions for the New Federal Voucher Program

Sue Kingery Woltanski has made many correct calls about vouchers in Florida. Now she has some predictions for the federal voucher program. They all look correct to me.

Ohio Charter School graduates spend far longer in poverty than Public School graduates

Stephen Dyer continues to puncture the old myth that charter schools in Ohio will help lift students out of poverty.

Fired for not moving LGBTQ books, a former Tennessee librarian sues

Yet another battle in the ongoing fight against censorship.

I was really busy at Forbes.com this week. There you will find stories about:

* The Oklahoma decision furthering the cause of religious charter schools

* A report on where special student needs are growing

* Natashe Singer's book about tech giants commandeering classrooms

* Federal voucher rules and how they show no chance for flexibility for states

I love good cross-genre cover. It can open up a song in ways you just never thought of. Here's Lake Street Drive doing a completely other cover of "I Want You Back"

Teachers Should Know Stuff

Carl Hendrix is on Elon's cyber-sewer this week arguing that teachers who were trained over the last fifty years have been taught that "knowing stuff is the least important part of thinking," offering a diagram of Bloom's Taxonomy as evidence. 

I'm not going to get into an argument about the taxonomy's virtues or lack thereof, and in the thread, Hendrix acknowledges the idea of knowledge at the bottom of the taxonomy because it's foundational, not least important.

But I will agree that the tide has run away from Knowing Stuff in education. for which we can blame a confluence of ideas. 

One is the foolish "we don't need know stuff cuz we has google" argument, which was always without foundation. It's hard to look things up when you don't know enough to ask questions. And storing information outside your brain just means that it's not available to power your thinking or insights. The ugly cousin of this argument is that AI can just know stuff for us, which is even worse because AI cannot be trusted to get things right, and if you know nothing yourself, you cannot judge when AI is feeding you baloney. The cherry on top is that AI and enshittification have worsened Google and the internet so badly that it is even less useful as a repository of knowledge than it used to be. It is not a safe or accurate place for outsourcing your responsibility to know stuff.

The other is the modern reform movement, especially Common Core. The emphasis has been skills, skills, skills. Never mind knowing what Hemmingway had to say in The Sun Also Rises-- it's time to work on using context clues and inferences. This has always been a crock-- you cannot practice skills like critical thinking without some content to think about. It's not useful to practice chewing with your mouth empty. You can't generate waves without some medium through which the waves move. Knowing Stuff has to come before "skills."

Twenty-some years of teacher training has indeed shifted practicum to the idea of teaching to the standards and developing skills in order to do well on the Big Standardized Test. Most of the student teachers I hosted in my classroom were working from content knowledge they'd acquired in high school. It is, in fact, the teacher training mirror of the problem-- teacher prep in way too many cases focuses on the skills and techniques of teaching while ignoring the actual content knowledge that the teacher is supposed to be teaching.

This is fixable. I know, because my own teacher training fixed it, and could be a model for other teacher programs.

My undergraduate degree was not in education, but in English, because my college (Allegheny College in Meadville PA) used to run a program based on the idea that the teacher should be a content area expert. That came first. I took 1.5 education courses before I student taught (plus one English course designed specifically for teachers). That's the first part.

The second part was exceptional support during student teaching. My supervisor watched me in the classroom usually once a week, often for more than an hour. During student teaching, I took more methods courses. The college had a field office for all of us--and there were only 9--in the downtown Cleveland hotel where we all lived, and we took courses there a couple nights a week. Methods courses taught by working teachers, not college professors. One was a methods course taught by the same person who observed our teaching, so the methods course could include practical discussions of something that happened two days ago in our actual class. 

The third part was an extension of that support into our first year of teaching. To the district, we were first year teachers; to the college we were interns. During that year, more classes at the field office, and more, less frequent, observations by the same person who saw us in student teaching. And then an assortment of Masters-level education courses in summers back at the college, leading to a Masters in Education. 

It was a low-volume, high-cost program, so of course the college eventually killed it. But the model is still a good one. Create content-area experts-- people who Know Stuff-- and then support the heck out of them as they sharpen their teaching edge on the hard stone of actual classrooms. 

Teachers should Know Stuff and be trained in the What of teaching and not just the How. Because all the technique in the world will not help you if you don't know what the hell you're talking about. And yes-- knowledgeable competence is one piece of the classroom management puzzle. Yes, a teacher needs to know some of the How as well-- lots of Hows, really. But so often the How is driven and shaped by the What; I worked with more than a few student teachers who couldn't figure out how to teach a lesson because they literally could not figure out what exactly they were trying to teach (pro tip: downloading some worksheets from an online teacher site, or having ChatGPT whip one up, will not help you solve any of these problems).

Teachers should Know Stuff so that they can Teach Stuff. Everything comes after that foundation is laid.

Thank You, Ed

We lost a giant in the local music community this weekend. I don't really have the words, but I have to try. 

I met Ed when I was ten years old, in his first year in the district. He was my first trombone teacher, and he would become probably the most influential person in my life not actually related to me. I will tell you some stories about Ed and me, but I want you to understand this up front-- I tell these stories not to focus on myself, but because there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of people who can tell similar stories, because that's who Ed was-- the guy who influenced the course of many students' lives.

From the beginning of my trombone days, Ed gave me permission to play. When I came to a lesson to demonstrate that I'd worked out a "jazzy" rendition of something from the book (nothing like a fifth grader's hot "Go Tell Aunt Rosie") or to show that I could peck out some approximation of a tune I knew, he didn't tell me to straighten up. He told me there was a name for what I was doing and that it was something lots of musicians did (and could I now please play the lesson I was supposed to have worked on). That kind of support might seem like a small thing, but it was very much Ed. "Sure, you can do that."

Some band directors can be micromanaging control freaks; Ed was the opposite. What Ed gave us in band was ownership, and with it, responsibility. "I'm not the one who's going to be out there in front of an audience," he would tell us, and we knew that wasn't strictly true, but we also got the point-- the band was our band and we should do our best not for him, but for ourselves. 

We learned leadership in Ed's band. When you became a section leader, you understood that you were there to help the people in your section stay on point and do their best. An awful lot of what I learned about leadership (and which I ultimately carried into my own classroom) I learned from Ed in band. Work with your people. You can have high expectations without being a jerk. 

Ed was a working musician (what a friend of mine and another of his students calls a blue collar musician) who gigged around with combos playing jazz and standards and whatever the gig needed. "Take the gig," he taught us, "Because playing always leads to more playing." And who doesn't want to keep playing?

Ed was never ego-driven. When it came to stage band (what many schools have because "swing" was too controversial), Ed started us, sometimes stopped us, but in between we were expected to play as an ensemble, holding ourselves together. He didn't need to be out there acting like the leader. 

I can't begin to list all the lessons I learned from Ed. When you make a mistake, just keep going because if you stop and make a fuss, then you've made two mistakes. Suck it up and stay on point. Listen to what the rest of the group is doing. Advice for pit orchestra playing: when in doubt, leave it out.

Band was a place where I felt responsible, accomplished, capable, respected. That was thanks to Ed.

When I ended up teaching in the same high school, Ed was not done nudging me forward. After I was dragged into the musical theater program to help teach the music, Ed was the one who said, "You already know how all these songs go. You might as well direct the pit." He enlisted me as a substitute trombonist for a dance band he played in; later, after the regular guy moved away, I became a regular player. Sometimes I drove us to gigs together (he would give me grief about the turkeys riding in the back of my creaky old Open hatchback) and I enjoyed our conversations in the car together, plus moments like the New Year's Eve when he started to argue on my behalf with the cop who stopped me for turning the wrong way on a one-way street. 

Ed was one of those people who never stopped growing. He took a sabbatical to walk the entire Appalachian Trail. He got himself a pilot's license. He worked as a golf course groundskeeper. He was director of the town band for thirty years and was constantly finding ways to stretch us as players. He was a linchpin of local theater pit orchestras. He sang in church choirs. He was founding member of our regional orchestra. He even overcame his less-than-fondness for traditional "dixieland" jazz to play in a band with his family and mine. 

Ed could be curmudgeonly, but he was never unkind and he was always supportive. It is impossible to overstate how wide and deep his influence has been. Many of his students went on to become professional musicians or music teachers, but many of us are like me-- not a professional musician or music teacher, but busy amateurs for whom music is an important part of life (another lesson I took into the classroom-- you're not just teaching the future majors in your field). 

Everyone has Ed stories. There isn't a musician in this area who hasn't been touched, directly or indirectly, by his work, which of course means there isn't anybody at all in this area who hasn't been touched by his life and work. 

It is hard to imagine the world without Ed in it, even harder to imagine who I would be if I had not known Ed (and, as I said, I'm not the only one). He lived a full, rich life and achieved the most that a teacher can hope for-- to make the world a better place and help his students become their best selves. He leaves a teacher's legacy-- hundreds of people carrying a light out into the world with a flame he helped ignite and feed. He was giant, but he never carried himself like one. Thank you, Ed. 

That's Ed on clarinet, his son on tuba, and his grandson on drums. 

ICYMI: Autumn Arrives Edition (9/27)

Fall arrived last week, along with plenty of other stuff. I'm here playing in the orchestra pit for Mean Girls and handling a bunch of other personal business, and not in Houston where I'm sure the Network for Public Education is putting on a bang-up gathering. But as I learned years ago, you can't be everywhere at once. Plenty on my mind at the moment, but let's just move on to the reading list for the week. Remember, sharing is important.

The Education Dept. hasn't been dismantled. It's become more inefficient, staff say

Spreading the work of one federal department over several other departments with no expertise in that area doesn't improve efficiency!! What a shocker. Jonaki Mehta and Cory Turner report for All Things Considered.

Justice Department Scraps Dozens of School Desegregation Cases

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports on the departments important work in not bothering any schools that may or may not be desegregating. 

FOURTH REPORT: Former Alpha School students speak out

Ben Riley continues his reporting on Alpha School, this time with some illuminating comments from actual students and parents.

What We Mean When We Say “Good School” (pt. 1)

Jose Luis Vilson considers what we mean by "good school" by considering the virtues and values that schools can--or should-- display.

The Parent Trap

Parenting is hard. Paul Thomas points out the whole "I know my child best" refrain of the parental rights crowd might not be entirely based in complicated reality. Did your parents know you-- all of you-- when you were 16?

In Praise of The Sage on The Stage

Peter Shull enters the age old debate with a fairly nuanced "both and" argument.

Somebody Is Always in the Teacher’s Ear

TC Weber reports that those folks who "coach" teachers via live earpiece are still in business, and going to work on Memphis teachers.

#1 in Education Freedom Is Not #1 in Education

The Heritage Foundation declared Florida the tops in educational freedom. Sue Kingery Woltanski is here to break down what exactly that means.

The Public Purpose of Public Schooling—A Summary of Expert Thinking

Jan Resseger collects some smart people thoughts about the purpose of public education.

To Dismantle Democracy, You Subvert Public Schools

Audrey Watters tracks the attempts to dismantle public education back through many decades with her trademark blend of scholarship and anger.

Melania Trump Slammed After Gifting Elementary School Kids 'AI Literacy Training' And Tells Them To 'Use' AI Tools During North Carolina Visit: 'This Is Ridiculous'

Mrs. Dear Leader brings some corporate-sponsored AI-flavored tools to some really young children in North Carolina, ignoring a bunch of research explaining why this is a bad idea.

Trump Proposes $810 Million in Education and Health Cuts, Defying Congress

As before, this is not so much a cut as an illegal attempt to simply refuse to fork over the money that Congress appropriated for stuff. 

ChatGPT Helped Tumbler Ridge Shooter Focus on Guns, Tactics, and Terror

Mark Follman at Mother Jones reports on one more ChatGPT horror story. 

This week at Forbes.com, I wrote about evidence that school voucher accountability is past due and publicly supported. 

Saying goodbye to summer.