Living in Dialogue, Teacher Voices, and The NEA 360 Report

At his blog Living in Dialogue, Anthony Cody has published an important series of articles about the creation of NEA's 360 report. Taken together, the articles create a picture of the contentious and fraught (depending on your perspective) process involved in creating the report. They are also a primer in how an attempt to include teacher voices can turn into something else entirely (Cody's leading metaphor of auto-tuning is exceptionally apt).

The report was managed by VIVA, and was intended to be a response to this question:

A wide body of research suggests that instructional quality has an important impact on student learning and development, but is not the only major factor. Are we including appropriate measures and indicators in today’s student accountability systems? How should responsibility for students’ education be assigned and measured at all levels of the education system? How should teachers be supported to provide the best possible education in every classroom? Who should be responsible for providing the resources to create a safe and equitable learning environment for all students?

VIVA collected responses from 953 members, and the selected (through a "proprietary algorithm") seventeen leaderly teachers who were given the job of turning those responses into a report. What Cody presents on the blog is a series of reflections by several of those seventeen teachers.

Start with this article by Cody:

The Auto-Tuning of Teacher Voices: VIVA and the NEA 360 Report on Educational Accountability

And then move on through the full package:

It’s Time to Speak Out: Comparing Reports, by Petra Schmid-Riggins
Using Our Teacher Voices: the Fight to Be Heard, by Amanda Koonlaba
Teachers Speak Out, Then Get Schooled, by Rachel Rich.
Let All Teachers’ Voices Be Heard, by Nancy Kunsman.
We Must Create Avenues for Authentic Teacher Voices to be Heard, by Enid Hutchinson.
The Process and the Report: What Went Wrong, by Joy Peters.

There are several different viewpoints represented here, but a picture of the events that led to a softening, editing, edge-smoothing, teacher-shushing rewrite of the report do slowly emerge. It is riveting reading, though for anyone who has ever tried to produce a report with a committee and for management that has something in particular in mind, much will ring true and familiar.

The package of essays is a bit frustrating in its lack, with one exception, of hard specifics. What exactly was edited out and what exactly was it turned into? That part is not as clear as it might be. But the essays are united in their very personal voices; these six individuals will tell you exactly what it felt like to them to be involved, and I found that helpful. Any attempt to create some sort of objective history would have left me searching for and wondering about personal perspectives.

Ultimately how it all happened is more important than what exactly resulted, because the 360 Report that ultimately resulted and which-- well, tell the truth. You hadn't heard of it. You didn't know there was such a thing. If you go search the NEA website, you can dig up some references to NEA 360 Accountability in the 2014-2016 strategic plan. It appears under "Strategic Goal #1:Strong Affiliates for Great Public Schools—Building affiliate capacity to elevate the voices of education professionals is critical to the advancement of public education in America." In the pages used to explain this bureaucratic mush, NEA360 appears as a thing to be integrated into "existing and future affiliate programs." I was going to dig further, but the NEA strategic plan is one of those documents that actually radiates little particles of sleep-inducing numbness, beamed out by string after string of words put together in bland parades of meaningless generality. So, for now, I'll go no further. I quit while I could still feel my face.

But the NEA360 report itself can be read here. It is built around six recommendations:

1) Implement multi-pronged solutions to the multiple factors that impact student learning, enabling legislators, educators, parents, and students to each clearly understand their particular role and responsibility in every student’s learning process.
2) Widen curriculum to promote all areas of human growth such as curiosity, creativity, collaboration
and other life-long skills.
3) Create equity of educational opportunity for all students through appropriate funding, geographical representation in developing standards (and their accompanying assessments), and raising the pedagogical qualifications of teachers.
4) Empower educators to be decision makers in matters related to curriculum, professional development, and school/district policy.
5) Create a new restructured evaluation system of collaboration where teachers have equal voice of their annual professional growth.
6) Honor the commitment for all students to receive Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE), recognizing that the diversity of student needs requires diverse programs to accomplish this goal.

nmahavkjhwljkayqwu-----

Sorry. My face went numb all the way down to my hands.

Look, if any of the 953 respondents said anything close to any of those items, I will eat my hat, deep-fried and stapled to an armadillo. The subheadings (38 in all) are much better, and actually include some useful such as banning the use of standardized tests from teacher evaluation. But there is an awful lot of horse-by-committee hump and spit here. The articles at Living in Dialogue help me understand why.

The articles give a picture of how the impulse to include teacher voices, even when well-meant and sincere (which, okay, maybe VIVA deserves that much credit, or maybe not) can go astray and take us to a place where those voices are just as hard to hear as ever. It's not cheery reading, but while you've got a few extra minutes, it's worthwhile reading. 

Is It Time for a Truce

As guest blogger over at Anthony Cody's Living in Dialogue, John Thompson asks the question, "Is it time for a truce."

He's responding specifically to the Gates Foundation call for a two-year testing moratorium. Now that they've put down that particular club, do we point down our pointy sticks and try to have a chat?

It is odd to watch the moratorium idea play out. Since it's a recommendation from Gates, the Arsenal of Reformy Stuff, I don't anticipate any reformsters standing up to say, "Don't listen to them!" if for no other reason than it's hard to transition from that to "Could we have our big fat check now, sir?"

But that doesn't mean reformsters can't fumble the idea. The Cuomo "compromise" in New York says essentially that we'll hold off on beating teachers over the heads with the testing, but we will go full speed ahead on beating up students with them. There's no way to make philosophically consistent sense out of that decision. Either the tests are a good idea, a good idea that's not ready for prime time yet, or a bad idea; in none of those cases does the Cuomo testing pause make sense. And it makes least sense if you're foundational motivation is "Let's do what's best for the kids."

The moratorium smells like a practical decision, the latest version of the Bad Tests Are Ruining Public Support for Our Beautiful Beautiful Common Core Standards argument that we've been hearing for a while, and the tension around it underlines one of the fault lines that have been present among the reformsters since day one-- there are reformsters who want to do national standards and testing "right," but they have allied themselves with corporate powers who got into this to have a shot at that sweet sweet pile of education tax money, and they have more inclination to wait than my dog has to sit and stare longingly at his bowl of food.

It's one of the interesting questions the moratorium raises. If Gates says, "Let's wait on testing," will Pearson say, "Sure, we can put off that revenue stream for a few years."

But Thompson correctly identifies the danger of the moratorium.

Gates blames others for not getting test-based accountability right. Presumably, a two-year moratorium would give top-down reformers the opportunity to hold management accountable for improperly holding students and teachers accountable. Apparently, the Foundation would use the moratorium to tinker with precisely the amount of coercion - not too harsh but not too easy - that should be imposed on the systems that make teachers and principals toe the line. 

In other words, the moratorium is not about "Hey, this whole high stakes testy thing might be a mistake that messes up our noble goal of high standards." It's more likely about, "Hey, we messed up the implementation of these high stakes tests. Let's get our PR and politics lined up and relaunch more effectively in a year or two."

The reformsters have put down their club, but that's probably because they've gone to pick up a gun.

Thompson is also correct in suggesting that we can use the interregnum to make our case against high stakes testing to the general public, the politicians, the people who have only been paying half attention. We have a chance to lay out our ideas, make our point. A moratorium gives the reformsters a chance to repurpose the energy and resources they are now using to defend the testing; likewise, it gives the resistance the chance to repurpose the energy and resources we are using to oppose the testing. As Thompson said on twitter, better for "jaw-jaw than war-war."

So, no, I don't think the moratorium presents a chance for a truce. I think it is at best a lull, and more likely represents a shift of the battle to other fronts.

[EDIT- John Thompson sent along a very thoughtful response to this piece which I have put up as a guest post here.]