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| It's called jiu-jitsu |
Take this piece, recently being recirculated on the interwebs, entitled "The Testing Emperor Finally Has No Clothes." Writer Bruce Dixon wastes no time getting straight to the point-- he's talking about the "tyranny of testing." He's speaking to an Australian audience, but his criticisms are recognizable to U.S. and British educators critical of the practice of using Big Standardized Tests to measure students and schools and teachers.
Standardized testing policy is "intrusive, devisive, deceitful" and is "fast turning teachers into lab rats." It's an "insidious virus" based on "chicanery." It fosters the false impression that learning is a competitive sport. It "kills curiosity and penalizes diversity." He quotes writers like John Holt, Anya Kamenetz, Deborah Meier and Alfie Kohn, all critics of test-centered schooling. He invokes Finland as an education exemplar.
And he points out that the testing industry is big money, pushing the testing regimen as a giant cash cow. The choice, Dixon suggests, is between lobbyists and learners.
Up until this point in the article, Dixon's argument could have been written by any of the army of advocates for public education. But Dixon is not a soldier in that army, and he signals it as he starts to consider alternatives to a testing regimen. "Our modern world demands," he says, "a shift in thinking about credentials at every level, how and why they are awarded but more importantly why."
Dixon cites the Mastery Transcript Consortium, a group that proposes a new way of reporting student achievement based on what it calls "Mastery Credits." This is a version of what are sometimes called micro-credentials or badges. The idea behind them is to break down every bit of learning into one particular item, and once you pass some sort of competency test, a little badge goes in your permanent digital record (not unlike earning an achievement on your Xbox game). In the super-deal version, all of this is both delivered by and recorded via computer and the cloud, so that you can earn them anywhere, any time, and your digital "transcript," perhaps stored blockchain style can be accessed by any future employers, the government, and anyone who pays for the privilege, forever. If you want to know more about this, look at speculative video about The Ledger.
As you might have figured out, this approach to learning renders a traditional public school virtually obsolete and unnecessary.
So who is Bruce Dixon? He's the cofounder and president of the Anywhere Anytime Learning Foundation and a consultant who talks to education departments and tech companies and advocates for 1-to-1 learning, an approach that puts one computer in the hands of every student.
Another name for the mastery based approach is Competency Based Education, and another name for that is Personalized Learning, which many education experts see as Education Reform 2.0. Ironically, one of the great marketing tools for Education Reform 2.0 has been Education Reform 1.0. Bruce Dixon is just one example of someone whose using dissatisfaction with Education Reform 1.0 to pitch his 2.0 products.
If you are someone who is unhappy with test-centric schooling and the data gathering that goes with it, you should take a careful look at anyone who hopes to rescue you. The CBE you're considering may well get rid of the once-a-year Big Standardized Test--and replace it with small standardized tests every day. It may be heavily computer-based, and therefor hoovering huge amounts of data about your child. And rather than giving control back to your local school and your child's teacher, it may strip the local school of even more control and reduce the classroom teacher to an aide who monitors the software and keeps students on task.
And as always, the best question to ask someone who promises you to rescue from one Awful Thing is, "What are you selling?"
Originally posted at Forbes
But as parents, how are we able to stop this? School districts and Superintendents make these decisions and our children are stuck with those decisions. Both of my children were in a 1:1 IPad pilot at the MS level. I hated it! I thought it was intrusive, collected too much data, there were always issues with connectivity (in school and at home), didn't do much to help the poor children who lived in the hotel rooms along the highway. I finally refused for child#2 to bring the computer home and that was a compromise because when I refused all usage, I got a call from admin that since everything was done on the computer, my child would have to just sit and rot....no paper/pencil assignments would be offered. Child #2 is now in private school and although they use their own 1:1 device, it is used for note taking and word processed writing assignments....everything else is handwritten or paper based. Teacher based learning and teacher autonomy is this schools best asset....much like the public HS's before reform started (I graduated in 82). As parents, we have no say...especially in large urban/suburban districts.
ReplyDeleteThe Chromebook Kids are a real world version of the Stepford wives. Quiet and compliant, clicking the day away. I walk by these classrooms and thank god that I'm an old, school teacher and an old-school, teacher, happy to be a walking, talking anachronism. The Chromebook Invasion is not only damaging to kids but also producing a new generation of teachers who really can't. Using Chromebooks is like the old "packet" approach, multiplied by infinity. The move to subvert teaching as a profession is working.
DeleteSo glad to hear that you had the wisdom to reject this pandemic use of these silicon babysitters.
Just another clueless adult conflating how self-motivated, well educated, adult professionals and their own kids learn, WITH the best ways for all children/adolescents to learn. Virtually every reform "solution" I have read about requires the enriching experiences, the structure and discipline, and the necessary support and motivation that only our already successful students possess. Where are the "solutions" for the distracted, the distraught, the disenfranchised, the disinterested, the disillusioned, and the defeated kids who need much more from us than test-prep and Chromebooks?
ReplyDelete