I recently (oh, good lord, it was this morning-- am I still sitting here at the computer) wrote a piece in response to historian John Thompson's guest post on Living in Dialogue. That piece is here. John attempted to post a very thoughtful response in the comments section, but apparently it was so thoughtful that it broke the internet. He asked for my help in posting it, and I asked if I could instead post it as a guest post here on the main stage. So here it is-- John Thompson's response to my morning post.
Curmudgucation’s response
to my post, like Wag the Dog’s and Paul Thomas’s response to the Gates
call for a moratorium and the comments on both
posts, are indicative of a fundamental difference between the two sides
in this education civil war. Corporate reformers refuse to submit their
hypotheses to peer review by professionals or the give and take of
democracy. We, the coalition of educators and families
who do not even have a name, respect the clash of ideas.
Obviously, I knew my post would annoy
friends. Honestly, the first drafts were more supportive of the
moratorium, and less confrontational to Gates. I knew I had to listen
and temper my call for offering an olive branch after
thinking through the arguments it would provoke.
For instance, it makes an excellent
point about Pearson and the profits that motivate them. Originally, I
ducked that reason entirely, and I did so for a reason which many will
reject. Especially in my first drafts, I tried
to be as diplomatic as possible, hoping that Gates and other reformers
would listen. Even in my final draft, I soft pedaled that issue, which
of course is one of the dangers of trying to stress communication over
confrontation.
Yes, I believe that Gates probably is taking the attitude of “Let's
get our PR and politics lined up and relaunch more effectively in a
year or two." Naively or not, my first drafts focused on explaining to
reformers
why that’s a bad idea. They won a lot of political victories for the
first decade of two of reform, but they’ve wracked up one implementation
failure after another. I don’t expect them to give up the political
fight, but neither do I expect that they will find
a bigger and better political gun to pull out. (We in schools and in the
rest of society may lose to the worst of Big Data; we can’t deny the
possibility of defeat or dwell on it.)
The last third of my posts stressed the political benefits that I
see in working for a moratorium, as long as we are in stark contrast
with reformers and don’t obscure our intentions. We’re in the fight
against testing and other reward and punish schemes
for the long run.
Yeah, the commenter, Eric Baldwin, is right, and I think it is
great that Hanna Skandera, Kevin Huffman, and other Chiefs for Change
have blown their gaskets and I bet the billionaires don’t like being
called ridiculous by reformers an more than they do
by teachers.
I agree with the great post below, Data is the Fools Gold of Common Core
Paul Thomas didn’t mention me, but I often ask myself what his response will be to some of my posts. He responded to Gate’s call with a brilliant passage
from Hemingway. Yes, the “Road to hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs.”
His post prompted an equally good
metaphor by Anthony Cody. Common Core is like a road through the Amazon
forest. Stop the road and you can save the forest. (That explains why I
said that I can’t see myself supporting a new
set of NATIONAL standards, after Common Core is defeated.)
I’d say that that metaphor is
supportive of both sides on the point that separates Curmudguation and
me. In the overall fight against the road, don’t we accept as many
temporary delays as we can get while trying to kill it?
Students who would be damaged next year by Common Core testing are like a
village that is first in the road’s path. Saving that village is a
first step. Saving the village of teachers who would have been punished
in the next two years is a second step.
Whether we’re environmentalists
fighting a road or educators fighting corporate reform, we must discuss
and debate the best ways to win short term and long term political
victories. By the time I finished the post, I knew I
had toughened it up to the point where Gates people would dismiss it,
but where it would still rile up allies. I went ahead with it because we
need to converse about these issues.
I see Anthony has also responded.
I need to now think through his post. On first reading, I would stress that we agree that the first priority is the “impact
our students. Does it relieve them of a test-centered education? Does
it alter
the path we are on towards an education system monitored by tests,
increasingly delivered by technological devices, all aligned to a master
set of standards? Or does it simply slow the pace slightly, in order to
placate and silence critics?”
Yes, as Anthony says, Common Core “will yield
terrible results for our students, especially those facing the greatest
challenges in life and in school.”
We and the increasing number of families who are
rejecting tests must continue to fight those who “will continue to label
these students, and the schools they attend, as failures.”
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