Nobody squawked much when it was announced that Pearson had won the bid to develop the framework for the 2018 PISA test. The PISA, you will recall, is administered by the Organization for Economic Co-operative and Development every three years, leading directly to a festival of handwringing and pearl-clutching as various politicians and bureaucrats scramble to squeeze statistical blood from the big fat turnip of test results.
And yes, Pearson just won the right to design the 2018 edition. Given that back in 2011 Pearson won the contract to develop the 2015 PISA, the new contract is not a shocker. Given that Pearson is marching toward becoming the Corporation In Control Of Universal Testing, this barely qualifies as a blip. They have the GED. They have the PARCC. They have dreams of managing via computer every test, testlet, and testicle that exists.
There are many problems with that, but one of the fundamental issues is the one raised by this post's title.
When one person with one ruler does all the measuring, how are we to know if he's correct?
If we want to confirm the accuracy of our Pearson measuring tool so we check it against our Pearson standards device and make sure those results line up with the Pearson Master Assessment-- well, at the end of all that, what do we really know?
If Pearson tells us that our six-inch long baby pig weighs 500 pounds, how are we to discover that it's a lie? If Pearson weighs our bag of gold and tells us it's worth $1.98, and they own all the scales, how do we know if we're being cheated?
It doesn't matter whether the people who make the rulers are devious or incompetent-- if there is no one left to check their work, how do we know the true dimensions of anything? If Pearson makes all the tests and keeps assuring us, "Yessiree, this test lines up with our other test and fits in with the main test, so we can assure you that this absolutely measures true learning or complete education or intelligence or character or what matters in a human brain or the strength of a nation's education program," how do we check to prove whether that is true or not?
Who watches the watchmen? Who measures the rulers? To whom does Pearson answer, other than stockholders? I'm hoping we don't wake up some morning to discover the answer is "nobody."
Showing posts with label PISA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PISA. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Monday, October 6, 2014
Should We Treat Teachers Like Software Engineers?
At TechCrunch, David Liu suggests the answer is "Yes."
That's kind of wacky, because Liu is the COO at Knewton, a data crunching wing of Pearson and previously notorious for imagining that data overlords could tell you what to have for breakfast on testing days. But Liu is a global data cruncher, and he wants to bring some of that globalism to the discussion.
Liu starts out with a perfunctory nod to one year's worth of PISA scores to suggest that it seems the US is falling behind (pro tip-- when charting "trends," more than one data point is useful). He recently spent some time in Korea and Japan, and that got him to thinking. He notes that those nations have super-duper PISA scores, and so he concludes, "Maybe we should only give PISA tests to our best students."
Ha ha. No, just kidding. He's going a whole other direction here.
It’s obvious that Korea and Japan both value education enormously. But so does the United States. We regard education as a basic human right.
Do we? Do we really? Is that why we have billionaire industrialists saying they can't stand to watch underfunded schools another second, so they're going to pay more taxes to help properly fund them? Or is that why we have hedge fund managers and their friends getting into the school biz in order t9o make a bundle of loot, and facilitating their marketing by booting out students who are too difficult or costly to teach? But hey-- let's move on.
So why is there a great test result discrepancy?
Some say it’s cultural. In America, we prize exceptionalism; in Korea and Japan, the focus is on raising the mean. Others point to socioeconomic inequality; schools can’t fix poverty. American K-12 education is controlled at the local level, making it difficult to implement programs widely. We’re paralyzed by politicized debates over standards, testing, and budgets.
We've heard that last one from technocrats before-- democracy is messy and slow and that's by and large because we let everybody have a voice when clearly some people just don't deserve to have a voice. In which case Korea would look pretty good to them (particularly the Northern one, although South Korea is a rather crappy place for teachers as well). Liu skips over the possibility that the testing instrument is a lousy, or that not everybody tests the same population. Instead, he lands on this:
But I think there’s something more important at play here: the way we treat teachers. In Korea and Japan, teachers are revered and paid accordingly. Top students aspire to the profession.
And then this...
In Korea and Japan, teachers are paid in accordance with their stature in society.A 2012 study found a correlation between higher teacher pay and improved student outcomes. Korea and Japan were at the top of the spectrum for both.
The study in question deserves its own dissection, but we can sail right past that to the larger question-- how can a guy who is the flipping COO of a major data corporation NOT know the difference between correlation and causation. I invite him to check out this awesome website, where we learn, among other things, that there is a correlation between people who die falling into swimming pools and the number of movies Nicolas Cage appeared in.
I mean, I am just a teacher, but it seems fairly clear to me that if a culture really values education, they spend a lot of money on it, including teacher salary money.
But do not give up on Liu yet, because he actually has some more useful observations in his article.
He gets points for the oft-noted but worth-repeating observation that teachers in the US, Japan and Korea work about the same number of hours, but that Japanese and Korean teachers spend far fewer of those hours in a classroom, whereas in the US, our default assumption is a teacher who's not in front of a classroom is slacking off, and we should get teachers in front of students as close to 100% of the time as we can get.
Liu argues for career paths for teachers, particularly creating roles for master teachers to mentor and lead. This was always a good idea, back before reformsters grabbed onto it as a way to cut staffing costs. Liu may or may not be imagining the reformster version of master teaching, but he definitely missed the memo on Burn and Churn. Several of his arguments come down to "good for retention."
The first step is providing teachers with the support they need: competitive compensation, growth opportunities, well-equipped schools, and enough time. Today, almost half of American teachersleave the classroom within their first five years of teaching. No industry can endure that kind of turnover and not suffer from it.
He doesn't really need to argue for software engineer style rock star status. All he's really saying is, "Treat teachers like valuable high-skills, hard-to-replace employees." Who ever expected that there would come a time when that simple piece of business common sense would be a radical idea?
That's kind of wacky, because Liu is the COO at Knewton, a data crunching wing of Pearson and previously notorious for imagining that data overlords could tell you what to have for breakfast on testing days. But Liu is a global data cruncher, and he wants to bring some of that globalism to the discussion.
Liu starts out with a perfunctory nod to one year's worth of PISA scores to suggest that it seems the US is falling behind (pro tip-- when charting "trends," more than one data point is useful). He recently spent some time in Korea and Japan, and that got him to thinking. He notes that those nations have super-duper PISA scores, and so he concludes, "Maybe we should only give PISA tests to our best students."
Ha ha. No, just kidding. He's going a whole other direction here.
It’s obvious that Korea and Japan both value education enormously. But so does the United States. We regard education as a basic human right.
Do we? Do we really? Is that why we have billionaire industrialists saying they can't stand to watch underfunded schools another second, so they're going to pay more taxes to help properly fund them? Or is that why we have hedge fund managers and their friends getting into the school biz in order t9o make a bundle of loot, and facilitating their marketing by booting out students who are too difficult or costly to teach? But hey-- let's move on.
So why is there a great test result discrepancy?
Some say it’s cultural. In America, we prize exceptionalism; in Korea and Japan, the focus is on raising the mean. Others point to socioeconomic inequality; schools can’t fix poverty. American K-12 education is controlled at the local level, making it difficult to implement programs widely. We’re paralyzed by politicized debates over standards, testing, and budgets.
We've heard that last one from technocrats before-- democracy is messy and slow and that's by and large because we let everybody have a voice when clearly some people just don't deserve to have a voice. In which case Korea would look pretty good to them (particularly the Northern one, although South Korea is a rather crappy place for teachers as well). Liu skips over the possibility that the testing instrument is a lousy, or that not everybody tests the same population. Instead, he lands on this:
But I think there’s something more important at play here: the way we treat teachers. In Korea and Japan, teachers are revered and paid accordingly. Top students aspire to the profession.
And then this...
In Korea and Japan, teachers are paid in accordance with their stature in society.A 2012 study found a correlation between higher teacher pay and improved student outcomes. Korea and Japan were at the top of the spectrum for both.
The study in question deserves its own dissection, but we can sail right past that to the larger question-- how can a guy who is the flipping COO of a major data corporation NOT know the difference between correlation and causation. I invite him to check out this awesome website, where we learn, among other things, that there is a correlation between people who die falling into swimming pools and the number of movies Nicolas Cage appeared in.
I mean, I am just a teacher, but it seems fairly clear to me that if a culture really values education, they spend a lot of money on it, including teacher salary money.
But do not give up on Liu yet, because he actually has some more useful observations in his article.
He gets points for the oft-noted but worth-repeating observation that teachers in the US, Japan and Korea work about the same number of hours, but that Japanese and Korean teachers spend far fewer of those hours in a classroom, whereas in the US, our default assumption is a teacher who's not in front of a classroom is slacking off, and we should get teachers in front of students as close to 100% of the time as we can get.
Liu argues for career paths for teachers, particularly creating roles for master teachers to mentor and lead. This was always a good idea, back before reformsters grabbed onto it as a way to cut staffing costs. Liu may or may not be imagining the reformster version of master teaching, but he definitely missed the memo on Burn and Churn. Several of his arguments come down to "good for retention."
The first step is providing teachers with the support they need: competitive compensation, growth opportunities, well-equipped schools, and enough time. Today, almost half of American teachersleave the classroom within their first five years of teaching. No industry can endure that kind of turnover and not suffer from it.
He doesn't really need to argue for software engineer style rock star status. All he's really saying is, "Treat teachers like valuable high-skills, hard-to-replace employees." Who ever expected that there would come a time when that simple piece of business common sense would be a radical idea?
Saturday, August 2, 2014
CCSS Myths That Won't Die, Already
You may think that certain Common Core bunk has been debunked so many times that it would finally crawl back to the PR cave that it crawled out of and, if not die, at least spend the weeks eating twinkies and watching AMNTM marathons. But no.
Here comes Cynthia Dagnal-Myron over at HuffPost with an article that looks as if it were written in the summer of 2013. But no-- August 1, 2014. It's a sobering reminder that these undead talking points are remarkably resistant to the light of day. Let's tick off the bogus bunkery still bouncing around.
You haven't read them, have you
We leap right in with the title-- "Do You Really Know What the Common Core Is?" -- and that old standard insinuation that if you're critical of the Common Core, it must be because you don't really understand them, you poor dear. Even Mike Petrilli at the Fordham Institute (motto: We Use Common Core Butter on Our Common Core Bread) no longer claims that CCSS is not criticized by some folks who have looked at it pretty damn carefully.
American schools are failing
You would think by now that we have sufficiently explained how US student scores actually stack up internationally. Breakdowns of PISA scores tell us far more about poverty in the US than schools internationally. Nor do we ever remember to ask the important question "Did the US ever lead the world in these scores?" (spoiler alert: no). And if schools are currently failing, you'd think that would tell us something about the over-a-decade that reformsters have had their own way with public education. They've had a generation of students to fiddle with-- weren't they supposed to be announcing "Mission Accomplished" by now?
But no. Dagnal-Myron starts with this simple premise.
Our school system is broken. Badly.
Faux history
And so in 2009, the leaders of 48 states, two territories and the District of Columbia enlisted the aid of hundreds of teachers and educational experts who eventually created the Common Core to help us fix it.
Well, it is true that some things did happen in 2009. After that, this sentence goes south. I recommend Dagnal-Myron catch up on a more fact-based history of the Common Core. Try this short account by educational historian Diane Ravitch. Or Lyndsey Layton's interview with Bill Gates about his role in spreading Common Core. If you want more background in painstaking fully-researched detail about the pre-2009 history of the Core, try this piece by Mercedes Schneider.And this piece by Anthony Cody is as good a place as any to work on that "hundreds of teachers" baloney; it includes lots of helpful links to NGA's own list of the sixty-ish people who wrote the Core.
Weird self-contradiction
I have read literally (literally!) hundreds of these paeans to Common Core, and they inevitably include some moment of self-devouring illogic. In this case, Dagnal-Myron wanders down a byway about testing. Some districts test too much, because there's money involved, and that leads to lousy test scores. But not, I guess the test scores that Dagnal-Myron used as proof that schools are terribly broken and failing.
Numbered lists of CCSS swellness
You'd think we didn't need to bother, but no-- here comes a list.
Reading non-fiction is swell
It's up to districts to pick reading lists, and students already read non-fiction, and districts don't have to use that list in the appendix marked "Here's how to do it right." Districts are totally free to risk their funding by ignoring the CCSS "suggestions."
Also, Tea Party be crazy
Noting that required reading only includes a few swell things like the Declaration, Dagnal-Myron notes that these swell documents are the very ones many of the people who seem angriest about the CC love to pull out of a suit pocket and wave, very proudly, at the camera. Come on-- even some of the big CCSS boosters have finally figured out that the Tea Party is only a tiny little slice of the folks lined up against the Core.
More critical thinking and reading and writing
She considers this the "money" standard. I consider this a chance to ask the same old question-- what do you think teachers were doing previously? Were English teachers sitting in classes saying, "No, don't actually read that book. Just put it under your pillow. And for God's sake-- when you write an essay about it, use irrational arguments and don't support them with anything of substance."
Is that what you think we were doing?
And if your answer is no, then why do we need a multi-gazzillion-dollar school-system-disrupting massive federal-ish program to give us permission (or orders) to do what we were already doing?
Magical Common Core powers
Dagnal-Myron supports the previous point by observing that teenagers make poor decisions, and parents may not always enjoy it when their children approach them with solid, well-built arguments.
But you'll thank those teachers later, when she kills that first interview and lands a job with a salary that gets her out of your house and into that first apartment. Or helps her start paying off some of those loans so she can move out a little sooner.
Yes, Common Core will completely override the developmental stage of being a teenager. Science may think that wacky teenage behavior is the result of their stage of neurological development, but no, it's just that they haven't been taught critical thinking and proper textual support by CCSS-empowered teachers. You'd think that the actual physical make-up of the human brain might have an affect on what that brain can do, but no-- Common Core will re-write the human brain! Because, magic!
Things that aren't in Common Core presented as reasons to love Common Core
To be fair, I'm pretty sure that all administrators, consultants and education professors take a workshop entitled "How to make the newest education reform program say what you wish it would say." This is not a new thing.
For Dagnal-Myron, it's technology. Somehow, CCSS means that "technology is blended into the curriculum" (this also scores the usual "forgetting to stick to the standards-are-not-a-curriculum story"). She really doesn't offer any explanation of how Common Core is linked to technology, nor how it will make underfunded districts able to afford computer gee-gaws, but she's pretty sure that once computers enter the classroom, students will be really excited. Which is a charming point of view, if you are still in 1995.
Tsk-tsk-tsk
Again, as someone who specializes in sophomoric mockery, I enjoy a good tsk now and then myself. But no CCSS apologia is complete without it.
So what's not to like? I have no idea. They address the needs of today's students in ways today's students might actually find more engaging. But boy, there are some angry people out there hell bent on making sure the Common Core goes away tout de suite.
I'm really sorry to hear that. I was hoping American kids were finally going to get the big boost they needed to catch up to the kids in other countries.
But I guess some our kids will be eating their dust a little while longer...
So there you have it. You may think that we've covered all of this ground so thoroughly that there could not still be people out in the world who haven't gotten any of these memos. But no-- there are still writers, thinkers, and leaders flapping about today as if it's August 2013. Let it be a reminder to the rest of us to stay vigilant and repetitively redundant in getting the message out. And for those of you who don't, tsk tsk tsk.
Here comes Cynthia Dagnal-Myron over at HuffPost with an article that looks as if it were written in the summer of 2013. But no-- August 1, 2014. It's a sobering reminder that these undead talking points are remarkably resistant to the light of day. Let's tick off the bogus bunkery still bouncing around.
You haven't read them, have you
We leap right in with the title-- "Do You Really Know What the Common Core Is?" -- and that old standard insinuation that if you're critical of the Common Core, it must be because you don't really understand them, you poor dear. Even Mike Petrilli at the Fordham Institute (motto: We Use Common Core Butter on Our Common Core Bread) no longer claims that CCSS is not criticized by some folks who have looked at it pretty damn carefully.
American schools are failing
You would think by now that we have sufficiently explained how US student scores actually stack up internationally. Breakdowns of PISA scores tell us far more about poverty in the US than schools internationally. Nor do we ever remember to ask the important question "Did the US ever lead the world in these scores?" (spoiler alert: no). And if schools are currently failing, you'd think that would tell us something about the over-a-decade that reformsters have had their own way with public education. They've had a generation of students to fiddle with-- weren't they supposed to be announcing "Mission Accomplished" by now?
But no. Dagnal-Myron starts with this simple premise.
Our school system is broken. Badly.
Faux history
And so in 2009, the leaders of 48 states, two territories and the District of Columbia enlisted the aid of hundreds of teachers and educational experts who eventually created the Common Core to help us fix it.
Well, it is true that some things did happen in 2009. After that, this sentence goes south. I recommend Dagnal-Myron catch up on a more fact-based history of the Common Core. Try this short account by educational historian Diane Ravitch. Or Lyndsey Layton's interview with Bill Gates about his role in spreading Common Core. If you want more background in painstaking fully-researched detail about the pre-2009 history of the Core, try this piece by Mercedes Schneider.And this piece by Anthony Cody is as good a place as any to work on that "hundreds of teachers" baloney; it includes lots of helpful links to NGA's own list of the sixty-ish people who wrote the Core.
Weird self-contradiction
I have read literally (literally!) hundreds of these paeans to Common Core, and they inevitably include some moment of self-devouring illogic. In this case, Dagnal-Myron wanders down a byway about testing. Some districts test too much, because there's money involved, and that leads to lousy test scores. But not, I guess the test scores that Dagnal-Myron used as proof that schools are terribly broken and failing.
Numbered lists of CCSS swellness
You'd think we didn't need to bother, but no-- here comes a list.
Reading non-fiction is swell
It's up to districts to pick reading lists, and students already read non-fiction, and districts don't have to use that list in the appendix marked "Here's how to do it right." Districts are totally free to risk their funding by ignoring the CCSS "suggestions."
Also, Tea Party be crazy
Noting that required reading only includes a few swell things like the Declaration, Dagnal-Myron notes that these swell documents are the very ones many of the people who seem angriest about the CC love to pull out of a suit pocket and wave, very proudly, at the camera. Come on-- even some of the big CCSS boosters have finally figured out that the Tea Party is only a tiny little slice of the folks lined up against the Core.
More critical thinking and reading and writing
She considers this the "money" standard. I consider this a chance to ask the same old question-- what do you think teachers were doing previously? Were English teachers sitting in classes saying, "No, don't actually read that book. Just put it under your pillow. And for God's sake-- when you write an essay about it, use irrational arguments and don't support them with anything of substance."
Is that what you think we were doing?
And if your answer is no, then why do we need a multi-gazzillion-dollar school-system-disrupting massive federal-ish program to give us permission (or orders) to do what we were already doing?
Magical Common Core powers
Dagnal-Myron supports the previous point by observing that teenagers make poor decisions, and parents may not always enjoy it when their children approach them with solid, well-built arguments.
But you'll thank those teachers later, when she kills that first interview and lands a job with a salary that gets her out of your house and into that first apartment. Or helps her start paying off some of those loans so she can move out a little sooner.
Yes, Common Core will completely override the developmental stage of being a teenager. Science may think that wacky teenage behavior is the result of their stage of neurological development, but no, it's just that they haven't been taught critical thinking and proper textual support by CCSS-empowered teachers. You'd think that the actual physical make-up of the human brain might have an affect on what that brain can do, but no-- Common Core will re-write the human brain! Because, magic!
Things that aren't in Common Core presented as reasons to love Common Core
To be fair, I'm pretty sure that all administrators, consultants and education professors take a workshop entitled "How to make the newest education reform program say what you wish it would say." This is not a new thing.
For Dagnal-Myron, it's technology. Somehow, CCSS means that "technology is blended into the curriculum" (this also scores the usual "forgetting to stick to the standards-are-not-a-curriculum story"). She really doesn't offer any explanation of how Common Core is linked to technology, nor how it will make underfunded districts able to afford computer gee-gaws, but she's pretty sure that once computers enter the classroom, students will be really excited. Which is a charming point of view, if you are still in 1995.
Tsk-tsk-tsk
Again, as someone who specializes in sophomoric mockery, I enjoy a good tsk now and then myself. But no CCSS apologia is complete without it.
So what's not to like? I have no idea. They address the needs of today's students in ways today's students might actually find more engaging. But boy, there are some angry people out there hell bent on making sure the Common Core goes away tout de suite.
I'm really sorry to hear that. I was hoping American kids were finally going to get the big boost they needed to catch up to the kids in other countries.
But I guess some our kids will be eating their dust a little while longer...
So there you have it. You may think that we've covered all of this ground so thoroughly that there could not still be people out in the world who haven't gotten any of these memos. But no-- there are still writers, thinkers, and leaders flapping about today as if it's August 2013. Let it be a reminder to the rest of us to stay vigilant and repetitively redundant in getting the message out. And for those of you who don't, tsk tsk tsk.
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