Well, this is depressing, but worth the read.
Over at Inside Higher Education, John Warner shares a reflection on a recurring research project he performs with his own college students. If they could receive an A in the course in return for doing absolutely nothing except keeping the secret that they had done absolutely nothing (no assignments, no showing up for class, no nothing at all), would they take the deal.
Roughly 85% of Warner's students say yes, they would take the deal.
When they ask what the trick is, Warner points out that they would learn nothing. They're okay with that.
An “A” is an “A,” and “A’s” are good because they help their overall
GPA. It would mean more time to dedicate to their other classes. They
could sleep in later. They do not like English classes and would
therefore dodge the unpleasantness of such a thing. They could check off
a requirement without having to do any work. They could take 18 instead
of 15 hours and be closer to graduation. They could pick up an extra
shift at their job.
Warner's conclusion? Students are not coddled; they are defeated.
We have divorced school from learning, and this is the result.
For most of my students, the purpose of school is to do well in
school so you can climb the ladder to the next part of school. I am
giving them a free pass at school, so it would be silly not to grab at
the opportunity.
And many of you who teach are nodding your heads, thinking, "Yes, that sounds about right."
I'm not going to blame this on reform. Students like these have always been around-- I went to college with a whole bunch of them.
But ed reform leans into this. Reformster philosophy is what education would look like if "reformed" by the same students who would take Warner's deal. Students attend K-12 to get "college and career ready," which just means they need to get A's in K-12 school so that they can get A's in college so that they can land a good job. That's literally our administration's plan for ending poverty. It is surrender. It is redesigning schools so that we can focus on getting a good grade so that we can get more good grades so that we can get a paycheck because that's what will help really rich people get more money which will raise their score in the success game.
Actually learning something? That's only useful if it will get you a good score on the Big Standardized Test, and while we are supposed to pretend that the BS Test score is "proof" that you are a Good Grade Machine and maybe learned something, the learning is not as important as the BS Test grade, and if anybody could get a high score on the BS Test without learning something, they would probably take that deal. Not only would they take that deal, but the reformsters would cheer the "success" of reform.
Meanwhile, reformsters are trying to align the ACT and SAT and college itself so that Warner's ladder to nowhere stays in place and the rungs are all Standards-aligned.
I don't know how we put learning in the center of education, just as I don't fully understand how we arrived at a place where trying "to put learning in the center of education" is even a thing that needs to be discussed. But boy do we need to figure it out.
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
One-to-One Tech Barriers
We leapt into the one-to-one world in the fall of 2010, when my district put a netbook in the hands of every single high school student.
I was excited. The process of trying to get a class into the single computer lab or, worse, use the traveling laptop labcart, was generally frustrating and lacked-- well, a certain spontaneity. I want a world where students always have computers handy, ready to be called into action at a moment's notice.
Some of us went and got us some training. Some of us already had some computer skills. Policies were created, the netbooks were rolled out and, ever since, we have been a technology-linked school where students romp happily through a field of modern educational tech-supported possibilities. Ha! Just kidding. We've wrestled with a bunch of obstacles to one-to-one tech.
I don't present the following as anything but our own specific story; I'm not sure whether we're an outlier or an exemplar. I'm inclined to think a bit of both. But here are the obstacles that stood (and in some cases still stand) in the way.
Student's Deeply Limited Grasp of Tech
When automobiles first became available, the average owner owned a set of tools and knew how to repair and maintain most parts of the vehicle. The steady development ever since has been in the direction of a car that anyone can own and use without even a rudimentary understanding of internal combustion. That's the usual trajectory of technology, and computers have followed it.
My digital natives for the most part understand how to use their favorite apps, and that's about it. A little over a decade ago, my students knew html and we built websites from scratch. Nowadays, when a question-- any question-- comes up in class, I frequently fall back on the same old refrain. "Gee, if only there were a tool that gave each of us quick and easy access to most of the accumulated information of mankind, where we could quickly locate an answer to that question."
I took computer courses in the seventies in which I learned how to program in BASIC on punch cards. My first home computer was a Commodore64. I am endlessly curious about a zillion things, and the fact that I live in an age where my curiosity can be instantly gratified by the small net-linked computer in my pocket is the third most miraculous thing for which I am thankful (the others would be my wife deciding to marry me and my grandson's existence).
My digital natives think they are carrying small Snapchat machines on which they can play games and watch videos. They literally forget that their computers have other useful capabilities. And when things stop working properly, they mostly don't know what to do about it.
And boy-- if I could just get them to absorb the two main rules of internet use: 1) Everything is forever and 2) Everything is public. That would be great.
Student Alarm That School and Computers Have Teamed Up
This has gotten better over time, but I'll never forget the initial alarm. I thought students would jump for joy that they could have computers at school, but instead the reacted as if they had come home to find school holding class in their kitchen. The intrusion of school on the cyberspace that they think of as their own did not go well.
In fact, to this day, we have students and families who simply refuse to pick up, use, or take possession of their school-issued chromebook (that's what we're using since netbooks died).
Infrastructure Limitations
I teach in a rural district. Many of my students go home to places that have no internet, either because their families don't care to have it and/or pay for it, or because they live in a place where the internet does not reach. Yes, there are such places in America, and many of my students live in them. That means that our chromebooks are mostly shiny paperweights when the students get home. It also means that one of the great advantages of tech-- to be able to extend school beyond the physical and temporal boundaries of the school day-- can't happen.
Equipment Limitations
In six years, there has never been a class period in which I could say, "Get out your computers and we'll do X" and have every student actually do that successfully. A netbook won't boot up. Another one won't connect to the network. Every year at least one student discovers a new sort of computer malfunction that I have never seen before.
Some of this is students generated. Many of my students treat their computers with the same love and care that they use for their textbooks. And these are teenagers, so even when they mean well, stuff just kind of happens.
Some of it is not the students' fault. Our IT people are pretty good, and they do a good job of keeping our network working. But we are also a public school district in a rural small town area and we surely aren't running out to buy top-of-the-line equipment any time soon.
Either way, my students become hugely frustrated and dismissive of the tech. When I tell them we'll be using the computers for the next unit of work, they are not happy about it. That's partly because of the transparency of technology-- when it works 100 times, you don't really notice, but when it fails on the 101st use, that sticks in your memory.
Nevertheless, I Would Not Go Back
I have tried to embrace many of the limitations. After all, paper is a fragile medium that requires special storage and maintenance and is very susceptible to all manner of malfunction, but we've just learned to adapt. And filters, firewalls, and constant monitoring are going to be part of my students' lives when they enter the workplace. Learning how to thwart those barriers coexist with limitations is a realistic, if depressing, life lesson.
And with all that, I can still send them on treasure hunts for obscure pieces of information or interesting images. We can pull a piece of writing up on the big screen and group edit it while the author makes changes in real time. We can create completely new types of research projects.
Yes, my students are still slightly tech-reluctant. They will compose an essay on the computer, but they still want to print it out on paper (and I prefer to grade it that way-- I have not yet found a piece of software that allows mark-up as simply and quickly as my pen). And book publishers need not worry; my students remain steadfastly uninterested in reading text in any sort of e-form.
There are things we did right. We didn't have a tight-bound batch of software in place, and we do not have a tightly-defined technology plan in place that tells each teacher exactly what to do with a classroom full of computerized students. That may seem like a mistake, and some teachers weren't happy about it, but it has turned out to be the right choice. Anything that we had adopted six years ago would be outdated and useless today, meaning we'd either be stuck with useless junk, or the school board would be repeatedly dumping funding into a money cyber-pit. Instead, classroom teachers (with the assistance of a district-hired tech coach) have been finding, developing, and honing the stuff that they need for their own teaching. Far better to figure out what tech support will aid you in your teaching than to be told how you must change your teaching to fit whatever tech tool the district bought.
That flexibility has been invaluable. If a teacher asked me about having their school go one-to-one, I'd say absolutely go for it, and do it with lots of resources and no plan. Expect it to be hard. But also expect to find new and interesting mountains to climb.
I was excited. The process of trying to get a class into the single computer lab or, worse, use the traveling laptop labcart, was generally frustrating and lacked-- well, a certain spontaneity. I want a world where students always have computers handy, ready to be called into action at a moment's notice.
Some of us went and got us some training. Some of us already had some computer skills. Policies were created, the netbooks were rolled out and, ever since, we have been a technology-linked school where students romp happily through a field of modern educational tech-supported possibilities. Ha! Just kidding. We've wrestled with a bunch of obstacles to one-to-one tech.
I don't present the following as anything but our own specific story; I'm not sure whether we're an outlier or an exemplar. I'm inclined to think a bit of both. But here are the obstacles that stood (and in some cases still stand) in the way.
Student's Deeply Limited Grasp of Tech
When automobiles first became available, the average owner owned a set of tools and knew how to repair and maintain most parts of the vehicle. The steady development ever since has been in the direction of a car that anyone can own and use without even a rudimentary understanding of internal combustion. That's the usual trajectory of technology, and computers have followed it.
My digital natives for the most part understand how to use their favorite apps, and that's about it. A little over a decade ago, my students knew html and we built websites from scratch. Nowadays, when a question-- any question-- comes up in class, I frequently fall back on the same old refrain. "Gee, if only there were a tool that gave each of us quick and easy access to most of the accumulated information of mankind, where we could quickly locate an answer to that question."
I took computer courses in the seventies in which I learned how to program in BASIC on punch cards. My first home computer was a Commodore64. I am endlessly curious about a zillion things, and the fact that I live in an age where my curiosity can be instantly gratified by the small net-linked computer in my pocket is the third most miraculous thing for which I am thankful (the others would be my wife deciding to marry me and my grandson's existence).
My digital natives think they are carrying small Snapchat machines on which they can play games and watch videos. They literally forget that their computers have other useful capabilities. And when things stop working properly, they mostly don't know what to do about it.
And boy-- if I could just get them to absorb the two main rules of internet use: 1) Everything is forever and 2) Everything is public. That would be great.
Student Alarm That School and Computers Have Teamed Up
This has gotten better over time, but I'll never forget the initial alarm. I thought students would jump for joy that they could have computers at school, but instead the reacted as if they had come home to find school holding class in their kitchen. The intrusion of school on the cyberspace that they think of as their own did not go well.
In fact, to this day, we have students and families who simply refuse to pick up, use, or take possession of their school-issued chromebook (that's what we're using since netbooks died).
Infrastructure Limitations
I teach in a rural district. Many of my students go home to places that have no internet, either because their families don't care to have it and/or pay for it, or because they live in a place where the internet does not reach. Yes, there are such places in America, and many of my students live in them. That means that our chromebooks are mostly shiny paperweights when the students get home. It also means that one of the great advantages of tech-- to be able to extend school beyond the physical and temporal boundaries of the school day-- can't happen.
Equipment Limitations
In six years, there has never been a class period in which I could say, "Get out your computers and we'll do X" and have every student actually do that successfully. A netbook won't boot up. Another one won't connect to the network. Every year at least one student discovers a new sort of computer malfunction that I have never seen before.
Some of this is students generated. Many of my students treat their computers with the same love and care that they use for their textbooks. And these are teenagers, so even when they mean well, stuff just kind of happens.
Some of it is not the students' fault. Our IT people are pretty good, and they do a good job of keeping our network working. But we are also a public school district in a rural small town area and we surely aren't running out to buy top-of-the-line equipment any time soon.
Either way, my students become hugely frustrated and dismissive of the tech. When I tell them we'll be using the computers for the next unit of work, they are not happy about it. That's partly because of the transparency of technology-- when it works 100 times, you don't really notice, but when it fails on the 101st use, that sticks in your memory.
Nevertheless, I Would Not Go Back
I have tried to embrace many of the limitations. After all, paper is a fragile medium that requires special storage and maintenance and is very susceptible to all manner of malfunction, but we've just learned to adapt. And filters, firewalls, and constant monitoring are going to be part of my students' lives when they enter the workplace. Learning how to
And with all that, I can still send them on treasure hunts for obscure pieces of information or interesting images. We can pull a piece of writing up on the big screen and group edit it while the author makes changes in real time. We can create completely new types of research projects.
Yes, my students are still slightly tech-reluctant. They will compose an essay on the computer, but they still want to print it out on paper (and I prefer to grade it that way-- I have not yet found a piece of software that allows mark-up as simply and quickly as my pen). And book publishers need not worry; my students remain steadfastly uninterested in reading text in any sort of e-form.
There are things we did right. We didn't have a tight-bound batch of software in place, and we do not have a tightly-defined technology plan in place that tells each teacher exactly what to do with a classroom full of computerized students. That may seem like a mistake, and some teachers weren't happy about it, but it has turned out to be the right choice. Anything that we had adopted six years ago would be outdated and useless today, meaning we'd either be stuck with useless junk, or the school board would be repeatedly dumping funding into a money cyber-pit. Instead, classroom teachers (with the assistance of a district-hired tech coach) have been finding, developing, and honing the stuff that they need for their own teaching. Far better to figure out what tech support will aid you in your teaching than to be told how you must change your teaching to fit whatever tech tool the district bought.
That flexibility has been invaluable. If a teacher asked me about having their school go one-to-one, I'd say absolutely go for it, and do it with lots of resources and no plan. Expect it to be hard. But also expect to find new and interesting mountains to climb.
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Leadership and Taking Risks
Nancy Flanagan had a great piece last week at EdWeek. "Defining Teacher Leadership" kicks off with her reaction to this handy meme:
She finds the first part is right on point. But the second part?
Most of the school leaders I encountered in 30 years in the classroom were good people, but the overwhelming majority were cautious rule-followers and cheerleaders for incremental change. The principals followed the superintendent's directives and the folks at Central Office looked to the state for guidance. Most recently, everyone has experienced the heavy hand of the feds--for standards, assessments and "aligned" materials. "Successful" leaders hit benchmarks set far from actual classrooms.
That sounds about right. As does this:
If I had waited for my school leaders to be risk-takers before feeling comfortable with change in my classroom, decades could have gone by.
I'm not sure we need school leaders who are risk takers; it's not the modeling that is most important. The biggest power that principals and superintendents have is not the power to demonstrate risk, but the power to define it.
School leaders get to decide two key aspects of risk-- what constitutes going outside the lines, and what possible consequences go with it. Principal A may run a school where getting caught with students up out of their seats in your classroom may win you a chance to stand in the principal's office while you're screamed at. Principal B may run a school where you can take students outside for an unscheduled sit on the lawn session and all that happens is you hear a, "Hey, shoot me an email before you do that the next time." Principal C, unfortunately, may run a school in which I'd better be on the scheduled scripted lesson at 10:36 on Tuesday, or there will be a letter in my file.
School leaders also get to decide how much they will protect their people. If you're teaching a controversial novel or running a project that may bring blowback form the community or from administrators at a higher level, will your principal help protect you from the heat, or throw you under the bus?
In other words, school leaders don't have to take risks -- they just have to create an environment where it is safe for teachers to take risks.
And teachers do share some responsibility in this risk-taking relationship. I have always had a pretty simple rule (like many rules, I figured it out by breaking it early in my career)-- if I'm about to do anything that could conceivably lead to my principal getting a phone call, I let him know what's going on, and why, and how, ahead of time. He can't support me if he doesn't know what I'm up to.
And of course, risk definition has been partially removed form local hands. Teachers now have personal ratings and school ratings and a host of other reformy accountability consequences riding on teacher choices. It makes leaders more risk averse, and that means clamping down on teacher risk taking as well. The last decade has not exactly fostered a risk-taking atmosphere.
The reformy movement has muddied the water on the other element of risk-- what, exactly, we are risking. Reformsters have tried to move us from , "Oh, no! That lesson didn't actually help my students master the concept I was teaching, meaning we lost a period of school and will have to try this again tomorrow" to "Oh no! We have low scores on a standardized test and must now lose money or be closed or fire somebody." Accountability and new standards and the Big Standardized Test have convinced too many administrators that teachers that take risks are now taking huge risks for enormous stakes and maybe we had all better just take it really, really easy and play it super, super safe and get back to those nice new test prep materials we just bought.
So I don't need my school leaders to model risk-taking for me. I just need them to provide me with a workplace where it's okay safe for me to try a few things and see if I can find interesting new paths for success. Which, ironically, is exactly what I am supposed to be providing for my students. If doing my teaching job is like changing a flat tire in the rain, I don't need an administrator who is changing another one of the tires on the car. I need someone who will make sure my tools are handy while they hold an umbrella over my head to keep the rain off me.
She finds the first part is right on point. But the second part?
Most of the school leaders I encountered in 30 years in the classroom were good people, but the overwhelming majority were cautious rule-followers and cheerleaders for incremental change. The principals followed the superintendent's directives and the folks at Central Office looked to the state for guidance. Most recently, everyone has experienced the heavy hand of the feds--for standards, assessments and "aligned" materials. "Successful" leaders hit benchmarks set far from actual classrooms.
That sounds about right. As does this:
If I had waited for my school leaders to be risk-takers before feeling comfortable with change in my classroom, decades could have gone by.
I'm not sure we need school leaders who are risk takers; it's not the modeling that is most important. The biggest power that principals and superintendents have is not the power to demonstrate risk, but the power to define it.
School leaders get to decide two key aspects of risk-- what constitutes going outside the lines, and what possible consequences go with it. Principal A may run a school where getting caught with students up out of their seats in your classroom may win you a chance to stand in the principal's office while you're screamed at. Principal B may run a school where you can take students outside for an unscheduled sit on the lawn session and all that happens is you hear a, "Hey, shoot me an email before you do that the next time." Principal C, unfortunately, may run a school in which I'd better be on the scheduled scripted lesson at 10:36 on Tuesday, or there will be a letter in my file.
School leaders also get to decide how much they will protect their people. If you're teaching a controversial novel or running a project that may bring blowback form the community or from administrators at a higher level, will your principal help protect you from the heat, or throw you under the bus?
In other words, school leaders don't have to take risks -- they just have to create an environment where it is safe for teachers to take risks.
And teachers do share some responsibility in this risk-taking relationship. I have always had a pretty simple rule (like many rules, I figured it out by breaking it early in my career)-- if I'm about to do anything that could conceivably lead to my principal getting a phone call, I let him know what's going on, and why, and how, ahead of time. He can't support me if he doesn't know what I'm up to.
And of course, risk definition has been partially removed form local hands. Teachers now have personal ratings and school ratings and a host of other reformy accountability consequences riding on teacher choices. It makes leaders more risk averse, and that means clamping down on teacher risk taking as well. The last decade has not exactly fostered a risk-taking atmosphere.
The reformy movement has muddied the water on the other element of risk-- what, exactly, we are risking. Reformsters have tried to move us from , "Oh, no! That lesson didn't actually help my students master the concept I was teaching, meaning we lost a period of school and will have to try this again tomorrow" to "Oh no! We have low scores on a standardized test and must now lose money or be closed or fire somebody." Accountability and new standards and the Big Standardized Test have convinced too many administrators that teachers that take risks are now taking huge risks for enormous stakes and maybe we had all better just take it really, really easy and play it super, super safe and get back to those nice new test prep materials we just bought.
So I don't need my school leaders to model risk-taking for me. I just need them to provide me with a workplace where it's okay safe for me to try a few things and see if I can find interesting new paths for success. Which, ironically, is exactly what I am supposed to be providing for my students. If doing my teaching job is like changing a flat tire in the rain, I don't need an administrator who is changing another one of the tires on the car. I need someone who will make sure my tools are handy while they hold an umbrella over my head to keep the rain off me.
Monotune
If you haven't seen this yet, see it now:
One size does not fit all. Making everything or everyone to the same standard does not produce beautiful music. Variety, difference, deviation from the same single standard is a good thing, not a problem.
One size does not fit all. Making everything or everyone to the same standard does not produce beautiful music. Variety, difference, deviation from the same single standard is a good thing, not a problem.
I Don't Hate Hillary, But...
I don't hate Hillary Clinton.
I don't think that she should be convicted of treason. I don't think her email handling represents an unprecedented breach of, well, anything. I don't think that she has a trail of misbehavior and ethical violations behind her any wider or deeper than the average political animal, and I believe that were she male, she would induce far less rage and indignation. And I think there are plenty of folks on the right who have developed a derangement when it comes to HRC that is unhealthy for both the country and for them.
Nevertheless, I am unlikely to vote for her.
I remain convinced that Clinton would be terrible for public education. Terrible. As in, it wouldn't be any worse if we elected Jeb! Bush. The signs are constant and clear.
Here it is again in yesterday's Independent. Covering Chelsea's appearance in Cleveland, the site noted her objection to Sanders' desire to roll back our world-topping incarceration rate, and that included the Clintonian alternative theory of how to fix things:
Senator Sanders proposes abolishing prisons for profit, which have an incentive to lock up more people, to legalize marijuana, and to eliminate “mandatory minimums” for drug-related crimes which result in sentencing disparities between black and white people.
But Ms Clinton's daughter argued that reform needs to come in the shape of education and the promise of jobs, citing her mother’s “cradle to education and cradle to jobs pipeline” policy for historically disenfranchised communities like inner cities and rural areas.
Clinton is still fond of the cradle-to-career pipeline concept, a love affair some folks like to date back to the infamous "Dear Hillary" letter from Marc Tucker. That letter lays out how education could be used to gather data, both sorting children out and directing them to a proper spot in society. After almost twenty-five years, this is still a reformster dream-- collect data as we move students through a standardized "education" program that prepares students for their proper place in society.
Right-tilted wingnuts see the spectre of socialism lurking in this sort of plan, a giant centralized government big brothering its big fat nose into every aspect of society. These folks are a century behind. When Big Brother arrives, he will not be the public face of an evil totalitarian government; he will be a fully owned subsidiary of corporate interests.
The cradle-to-career pipeline will be a complicated piece of machinery, and every single knob and valve will be owned by somebody intent on profiting from it. I don't even know what we call this concept of socialism driven by free market profit motives. But I do know that it will have neither high quality education nor the interests of students on its mind.
Dismantle public education and sell off the parts. Turn teachers into content delivery specialists. Let a million charter school bloom. Impose one-size-fits-all standards that will open the market on a larger scale. Reduce educational outputs to simply measured deliverables. Collect a ton of data and use that to select peoples' fates. Contract every single step of the process out to corporate interests, including writing the rules for how all this will be set up and evaluated.
The GOP candidates are all okay with this, think it sounds just fine. Hillary is perfectly okay with this as well, and as a bonus, it's also her answer for addressing poverty-- once we get corporate school reform in place, we'll be able to make every poor person employable, aka useful to a corporation, and that will fix it all-- poverty, prisons, the works.
How the major teachers' unions ever decided to support someone whose dream for teachers is that they be reduced to easily-replaced, low-paid McTeachers is beyond me.
Clinton has benefited from the emergence of the batshit crazy wing of the GOP (though I have still not ruled out my theory that Trump is just trolling the GOP in an elaborate scam to hand Clinton, once one of his fave pols, the election). But compared to the "serious" GOP candidates, she is just as corporate, just as tied to big money, just as willing to trash public education.
She has yet to say anything that contradicts any of this. She has yet to name one thing wrong with the education policies of Obama-Duncan, or George W. Bush. She ha yet to distance herself in any meaningful way from the policies that have been beating the crap out of public education for over a decade. And at the same time, she is tied to the privatizers, the profiteers, and the reformy policy makers who love reform, groups like the Center for American Progress, which has advocated tirelessly for reformster ideas and which was founded and run by John Podesta, the man now running Clinton's campaign.
Yes, it's a depressing time to be a teacher and voter. Bernie Sanders hasn't had all that much to say about education, and supporters mostly have to fill in the blanks-- it doesn't seem as if his strong stance against the big money running politics would be consistent with reformster policy driven by the same big money.
I don't hate Hillary. I don't think she's an evil witch. As her campaign resorts to more and more of the standard stupid, underhanded political tricks like push polls and crappy attacks, I don't so much smell brimstone as I detect the air of flop sweat.
But in terms of policy and political ties, I believe she is no friend of public education. In this she is much in step with the Democratic Party, which has decided that teachers and public education can be thrown under the bus. Trump and Cruz have had their own bad effect on the Democratic Party, which can now lean more easily into its slogan-- "Democrats! At least we're not quite as bad as those other guys!"
I wasn't feeling Clinton back when this campaign cycle started (what-- six, seven years ago?) and I haven't heard anything in the time since to make me warm up to her. Particularly not when Sanders is out there. Clinton does not have my vote-- not for the primary, and, should she pull off the upset of winning the nomination, probably not in the general election, either. I am not a single issue voter, but I am also bone tired of giving my support to politicians who turn around and attack me. I don't hate anybody, but I do hate repeatedly volunteering to be punched in the face.
I don't think that she should be convicted of treason. I don't think her email handling represents an unprecedented breach of, well, anything. I don't think that she has a trail of misbehavior and ethical violations behind her any wider or deeper than the average political animal, and I believe that were she male, she would induce far less rage and indignation. And I think there are plenty of folks on the right who have developed a derangement when it comes to HRC that is unhealthy for both the country and for them.
Nevertheless, I am unlikely to vote for her.
I remain convinced that Clinton would be terrible for public education. Terrible. As in, it wouldn't be any worse if we elected Jeb! Bush. The signs are constant and clear.
Here it is again in yesterday's Independent. Covering Chelsea's appearance in Cleveland, the site noted her objection to Sanders' desire to roll back our world-topping incarceration rate, and that included the Clintonian alternative theory of how to fix things:
Senator Sanders proposes abolishing prisons for profit, which have an incentive to lock up more people, to legalize marijuana, and to eliminate “mandatory minimums” for drug-related crimes which result in sentencing disparities between black and white people.
But Ms Clinton's daughter argued that reform needs to come in the shape of education and the promise of jobs, citing her mother’s “cradle to education and cradle to jobs pipeline” policy for historically disenfranchised communities like inner cities and rural areas.
Clinton is still fond of the cradle-to-career pipeline concept, a love affair some folks like to date back to the infamous "Dear Hillary" letter from Marc Tucker. That letter lays out how education could be used to gather data, both sorting children out and directing them to a proper spot in society. After almost twenty-five years, this is still a reformster dream-- collect data as we move students through a standardized "education" program that prepares students for their proper place in society.
Right-tilted wingnuts see the spectre of socialism lurking in this sort of plan, a giant centralized government big brothering its big fat nose into every aspect of society. These folks are a century behind. When Big Brother arrives, he will not be the public face of an evil totalitarian government; he will be a fully owned subsidiary of corporate interests.
The cradle-to-career pipeline will be a complicated piece of machinery, and every single knob and valve will be owned by somebody intent on profiting from it. I don't even know what we call this concept of socialism driven by free market profit motives. But I do know that it will have neither high quality education nor the interests of students on its mind.
Dismantle public education and sell off the parts. Turn teachers into content delivery specialists. Let a million charter school bloom. Impose one-size-fits-all standards that will open the market on a larger scale. Reduce educational outputs to simply measured deliverables. Collect a ton of data and use that to select peoples' fates. Contract every single step of the process out to corporate interests, including writing the rules for how all this will be set up and evaluated.
The GOP candidates are all okay with this, think it sounds just fine. Hillary is perfectly okay with this as well, and as a bonus, it's also her answer for addressing poverty-- once we get corporate school reform in place, we'll be able to make every poor person employable, aka useful to a corporation, and that will fix it all-- poverty, prisons, the works.
How the major teachers' unions ever decided to support someone whose dream for teachers is that they be reduced to easily-replaced, low-paid McTeachers is beyond me.
Clinton has benefited from the emergence of the batshit crazy wing of the GOP (though I have still not ruled out my theory that Trump is just trolling the GOP in an elaborate scam to hand Clinton, once one of his fave pols, the election). But compared to the "serious" GOP candidates, she is just as corporate, just as tied to big money, just as willing to trash public education.
She has yet to say anything that contradicts any of this. She has yet to name one thing wrong with the education policies of Obama-Duncan, or George W. Bush. She ha yet to distance herself in any meaningful way from the policies that have been beating the crap out of public education for over a decade. And at the same time, she is tied to the privatizers, the profiteers, and the reformy policy makers who love reform, groups like the Center for American Progress, which has advocated tirelessly for reformster ideas and which was founded and run by John Podesta, the man now running Clinton's campaign.
Yes, it's a depressing time to be a teacher and voter. Bernie Sanders hasn't had all that much to say about education, and supporters mostly have to fill in the blanks-- it doesn't seem as if his strong stance against the big money running politics would be consistent with reformster policy driven by the same big money.
I don't hate Hillary. I don't think she's an evil witch. As her campaign resorts to more and more of the standard stupid, underhanded political tricks like push polls and crappy attacks, I don't so much smell brimstone as I detect the air of flop sweat.
But in terms of policy and political ties, I believe she is no friend of public education. In this she is much in step with the Democratic Party, which has decided that teachers and public education can be thrown under the bus. Trump and Cruz have had their own bad effect on the Democratic Party, which can now lean more easily into its slogan-- "Democrats! At least we're not quite as bad as those other guys!"
I wasn't feeling Clinton back when this campaign cycle started (what-- six, seven years ago?) and I haven't heard anything in the time since to make me warm up to her. Particularly not when Sanders is out there. Clinton does not have my vote-- not for the primary, and, should she pull off the upset of winning the nomination, probably not in the general election, either. I am not a single issue voter, but I am also bone tired of giving my support to politicians who turn around and attack me. I don't hate anybody, but I do hate repeatedly volunteering to be punched in the face.
Monday, February 15, 2016
NJ: Red Bank and the New White Flight
The Red Bank, NJ, school system is actually a tiny little thing. Three boroughs (Red Bank, Little Silver and Shrewsbury) run their own K-8 schools which then feed into a regional high school.
There's one other school in Red Bank-- Red Bank Charter School. Red Bank Charter School is back in the news because its operators have asked to double the schools size, from 195 seats to 400, in a move that represents a direct assault on the public schools of the city. RBCS has served not just as a drain on the public system, but a powerful engine for resegregation. Red Bank Charter School is not just an example of how charters gut public school resources, but how charters can be the new white flight.
Red Bank Charter is no Success Academy-- when they announced the expansion, they left their own parents and supporters flatfooted. In January, charter leaders held a meeting for parents who wanted some sort of response for when their neighbors cornered them in the grocery store. One characterized the proposal as a PR disaster. At that meeting, they learned that part of the reason for the initiative was Chris Christie's full-on support for charters in his State of the State speech.
Flanked by Trenton lobbyists and a pair of ex-superintendents-turned-consultants, charter Principal Meredith Pennotti said one key reason the school is seeking to expand is “the political climate” — specifically, Governor Chris Christie’s unabashed support of school choice.
Best to expand the operation while the business climate supports it and before Christie leaves office. But there are more arguments-- none of them good.
RBCS likes to make the argument that they actually spend less per pupil than the public school system, even as research shows that they have been better-funded than the district to the tune of about $1,700 per student. They don't like to point out that the lower per-pupil spending is because they serve fewer students with special needs. NJ, like many states, has different state support rates for students with special needs, because they cost more to educate. In Red Bank Borough, the SSN population is 19.2%. At RBCS, the SSN population is 7.3%. RBCS spends less per pupil because they specialize in teaching the low-cost students. If you want a more complete, scholarly look at how this funding system works and how it affects local public schools, this paper by Julia Sass Rubin is worth a look.
When it comes to income, Red Bank Borough's free or reduced lunch population runs around 88%. RBCS runs around 40%.
Segregation is also reflected in racial makeup of the schools (here's where we could mention that New Jersey has a hugely segregated school system). Red Bank Borough is about 7% white. Red Bank Charter is about 52% white. The borough school is 80% Hispanic; the charter, 34%.
But RBCS admission is by lottery, which suggests that these demographics are not just the demographics of the students who attend RBCS, but the demographics of the students who apply. The charter is talking about going to a weighted lottery to favor poor students, but if this is their applicant pool, what difference would it really make?
Red Bank Charter School does not look very much like Red Bank, the borough, or the Red Bank Borough K-8 school.* What Red Bank Charter School does look like is the two neighboring boroughs. Those schools (Little Silver and Shrewsbury) have school populations that are 90% white and virtually without any free or reduced students at all. And they're very close by, so that if parents, say, wanted to get their children away from Those People, a move up the road would do it. What is a community to do to stop that kind of white flight?
Well, in a meeting between local journalists and three charter officials trying hard to sell the expansion, the answer emerged:
Although the charter school is supposed to offer an alternative so that they will as they said in this decision… so as to mitigate the effect of white flight. Now how do you do that? You start a small public school which will offer an opportunity for those who otherwise would leave town or choose the parochial or other private school. It’s as simple as that. What else would you do? Offer an alternative.
Yup. Charter schools as the new white flight. Don't buy a whole new house to keep your kids from going to school with Those People-- just sign up for your local charter.
RBCS uses many of the usual charter shell games-- they like to compare their PARCC scores to the Red Bank scores, despite the fact that their school population is hugely different from Red Bank's. If you care about PARCC scores (and I don't, but it is a reformy metric of choice) and if you can handle charts and regressions, this piece by Jersey Jazzman shows that RBCS's scores are nothing special, and that in some areas they are being outdone by the public system. In fact, a parent did some number crunching and found that the Red Bank public school actually outperformed the charter without adjustment-- for just one example, the average 8th grade scores for ELA and Math were higher at the public school, for one example. We can play with these numbers all day, but at a minimum, we have to conclude that RBCS does not significantly outperform the public school.[Update: You can look here for Jersey Jazzman's latest look at the latest data. Nothing has changed.]
Many in the Red Bank community have spoken out against the expansion. It's a small district in a small community, and the doubling the charter size will gut the financial support for the public school. Duplicating services is not financially efficient or cost-effective, but it's worse than that.
Charters have introduced a new entitlement-- the right to attend a private school at taxpayer expense. Maybe you could make a case for this if the private school were demonstrably better-- but Red Bank Charter is not. Maybe you could make a case if it weren't going to cost the taxpayers more-- but you can't run two systems for the cost of one. Maybe you could justify it if the new system was going to help all students-- but this will damage the public system for the students left in it. And maybe you could justify it if the charter system was offering something special-- but apparently Red Bank Charter is here just to provide a new version of white flight. Absent other evidence, I assume that the teachers and students of Red Bank Charter School are decent folks who work hard. But is that enough reason to let the charter double its size and take a huge bite out of the public school budget?
Imagine if parents had to go door to door and say, "Hey, I need to take some tax dollars from you so that my kid doesn't have to go to school with your kid." Or maybe a community gathering where someone announces, "Let's take up a collection so we can pay some better-off white folks to stay in town."
The irony at the end of this K-8 kerflufflage is that all of these schools feed into the Red Bank Regional High School, a school so successful and well-regarded that it regularly draws students over and above those coming out of the feeder schools. In other words, when all is said and done, everybody's kids ends up in high school with Those Peoples' Kids anyway.
State Education Commissioner Hespe is expected to rule on RBCS's expansion plan soon. If you're in New Jersey, you might want to contact him with your thoughts. I'm over in Pennsylvania, but I can't even see a reason to keep Red Bank Charter School open, let alone expand it. But I have a feeling that the taxpayers of Red Bank could use a few more voices on their side.
*Courtesy of Red Bank SD, here's a demographic breakdown of the charter and public schools in nifty chart form
There's one other school in Red Bank-- Red Bank Charter School. Red Bank Charter School is back in the news because its operators have asked to double the schools size, from 195 seats to 400, in a move that represents a direct assault on the public schools of the city. RBCS has served not just as a drain on the public system, but a powerful engine for resegregation. Red Bank Charter School is not just an example of how charters gut public school resources, but how charters can be the new white flight.
Red Bank Charter is no Success Academy-- when they announced the expansion, they left their own parents and supporters flatfooted. In January, charter leaders held a meeting for parents who wanted some sort of response for when their neighbors cornered them in the grocery store. One characterized the proposal as a PR disaster. At that meeting, they learned that part of the reason for the initiative was Chris Christie's full-on support for charters in his State of the State speech.
Flanked by Trenton lobbyists and a pair of ex-superintendents-turned-consultants, charter Principal Meredith Pennotti said one key reason the school is seeking to expand is “the political climate” — specifically, Governor Chris Christie’s unabashed support of school choice.
Best to expand the operation while the business climate supports it and before Christie leaves office. But there are more arguments-- none of them good.
RBCS likes to make the argument that they actually spend less per pupil than the public school system, even as research shows that they have been better-funded than the district to the tune of about $1,700 per student. They don't like to point out that the lower per-pupil spending is because they serve fewer students with special needs. NJ, like many states, has different state support rates for students with special needs, because they cost more to educate. In Red Bank Borough, the SSN population is 19.2%. At RBCS, the SSN population is 7.3%. RBCS spends less per pupil because they specialize in teaching the low-cost students. If you want a more complete, scholarly look at how this funding system works and how it affects local public schools, this paper by Julia Sass Rubin is worth a look.
When it comes to income, Red Bank Borough's free or reduced lunch population runs around 88%. RBCS runs around 40%.
Segregation is also reflected in racial makeup of the schools (here's where we could mention that New Jersey has a hugely segregated school system). Red Bank Borough is about 7% white. Red Bank Charter is about 52% white. The borough school is 80% Hispanic; the charter, 34%.
But RBCS admission is by lottery, which suggests that these demographics are not just the demographics of the students who attend RBCS, but the demographics of the students who apply. The charter is talking about going to a weighted lottery to favor poor students, but if this is their applicant pool, what difference would it really make?
Red Bank Charter School does not look very much like Red Bank, the borough, or the Red Bank Borough K-8 school.* What Red Bank Charter School does look like is the two neighboring boroughs. Those schools (Little Silver and Shrewsbury) have school populations that are 90% white and virtually without any free or reduced students at all. And they're very close by, so that if parents, say, wanted to get their children away from Those People, a move up the road would do it. What is a community to do to stop that kind of white flight?
Well, in a meeting between local journalists and three charter officials trying hard to sell the expansion, the answer emerged:
Although the charter school is supposed to offer an alternative so that they will as they said in this decision… so as to mitigate the effect of white flight. Now how do you do that? You start a small public school which will offer an opportunity for those who otherwise would leave town or choose the parochial or other private school. It’s as simple as that. What else would you do? Offer an alternative.
Yup. Charter schools as the new white flight. Don't buy a whole new house to keep your kids from going to school with Those People-- just sign up for your local charter.
RBCS uses many of the usual charter shell games-- they like to compare their PARCC scores to the Red Bank scores, despite the fact that their school population is hugely different from Red Bank's. If you care about PARCC scores (and I don't, but it is a reformy metric of choice) and if you can handle charts and regressions, this piece by Jersey Jazzman shows that RBCS's scores are nothing special, and that in some areas they are being outdone by the public system. In fact, a parent did some number crunching and found that the Red Bank public school actually outperformed the charter without adjustment-- for just one example, the average 8th grade scores for ELA and Math were higher at the public school, for one example. We can play with these numbers all day, but at a minimum, we have to conclude that RBCS does not significantly outperform the public school.[Update: You can look here for Jersey Jazzman's latest look at the latest data. Nothing has changed.]
Many in the Red Bank community have spoken out against the expansion. It's a small district in a small community, and the doubling the charter size will gut the financial support for the public school. Duplicating services is not financially efficient or cost-effective, but it's worse than that.
Charters have introduced a new entitlement-- the right to attend a private school at taxpayer expense. Maybe you could make a case for this if the private school were demonstrably better-- but Red Bank Charter is not. Maybe you could make a case if it weren't going to cost the taxpayers more-- but you can't run two systems for the cost of one. Maybe you could justify it if the new system was going to help all students-- but this will damage the public system for the students left in it. And maybe you could justify it if the charter system was offering something special-- but apparently Red Bank Charter is here just to provide a new version of white flight. Absent other evidence, I assume that the teachers and students of Red Bank Charter School are decent folks who work hard. But is that enough reason to let the charter double its size and take a huge bite out of the public school budget?
Imagine if parents had to go door to door and say, "Hey, I need to take some tax dollars from you so that my kid doesn't have to go to school with your kid." Or maybe a community gathering where someone announces, "Let's take up a collection so we can pay some better-off white folks to stay in town."
The irony at the end of this K-8 kerflufflage is that all of these schools feed into the Red Bank Regional High School, a school so successful and well-regarded that it regularly draws students over and above those coming out of the feeder schools. In other words, when all is said and done, everybody's kids ends up in high school with Those Peoples' Kids anyway.
State Education Commissioner Hespe is expected to rule on RBCS's expansion plan soon. If you're in New Jersey, you might want to contact him with your thoughts. I'm over in Pennsylvania, but I can't even see a reason to keep Red Bank Charter School open, let alone expand it. But I have a feeling that the taxpayers of Red Bank could use a few more voices on their side.
*Courtesy of Red Bank SD, here's a demographic breakdown of the charter and public schools in nifty chart form
Apologies to those who got here early. Attempting to edit by phone led premature publication as well as a host of other issues appearing and disappearing (including, i guess, this oddly centered text). This should now be it. I swear I'll never attempt editing by phone again.
Sunday, February 14, 2016
The Flawed Premises of Reform
In Friday's Washington Post, Mike Petrilli and Chester Finn, the current and former chiefs of the right-tilted thinky tank Thomas B. Fordham Institute, set out to create a quick, simple history of modern education reform. It's aimed mostly at saying, "Look, we have most of the bugs worked out now!" But it also lays bare just what failed assumptions have been behind fifteen years of failed reformster ideas.
They start by throwing our gaze back a decade to when "US education policies were a mess." Then:
At the core of the good idea was the common-sense insight that if we want better and more equitable results from our education system, we should set clear expectations for student learning, measure whether our kids are meeting them and hold schools accountable for their outcomes, mainly gauged in terms of academic achievement.
And there are most of the problems with the reformsters approach, laid out in one sentence.
if we want better and more equitable results from our education system, we should set clear expectations for student learning
Yeah, that sounds sort of sensible, but the problem that first lurked in the background and then erupted with the advent of Common Core is that the way to make expectations clear is to make them specific, and before you know it, you have one-size-fits-all standards, and one-size-fits-all standards suck in the same way that making all US school students wear a one-size-fits-all uniform and eat one-size-fits-all food.
It is like saying that we can fix the divorce problem in this country by setting clear expectations for getting married and holding everyone to those expectations. Fordham sages tried to get around this with their "tight-loose" formulation, but they failed. Meanwhile, the standards themselves are amateur-hour constructions that take a definite side in arguments that experts don't find at all as neatly settled as the standards assume (e.g. is reading a complex relationship between reader and text, or a set of skills and behaviors-- the Core insists on the latter, but actual educators favor the former).
if we want better and more equitable results from our education system, we should... measure whether our kids are meeting them
Also sounds sort of sensible, and yet we do not know how to do it. It really is as simple as that-- we do not have a large-scale, standardized instrument that can measure all learning for all students in a standardized, one-size-measures-all manner. Instead of asking, "What's the best way to measure critical thinking" test manufacturers have asked "What's something we could do on a standardized mass-administered test that would pass for a critical thinking measure?"
The Fordham has just released a report that tries to argue that the latest next-generation tests are achieving great feats of measurement. They aren't. And trying to measure student learning as if it occurs in just two dimensions on a single track is just such a meager, inadequate, stunted approach as to be useless. Well, worse than useless, because doing it leads some people to think they're actually accomplishing something.
if we want better and more equitable results from our education system, we should... hold schools accountable for their outcomes, mainly gauged in terms of academic achievement.
"Outcomes" just means "test scores," and that, again, is such a truncated, inadequate vision of the mission of US public schools. Ask a taxpayer, "What are you paying schools and teachers to do?" I doubt that you will hear the answer, "Why, just to have students get good test scores. That's it. That's what I'm paying them to do."
This is not to claim or pretend that there are not schools that are failing to fulfill the promise of public education. But that failure belongs not to the schools alone-- student success exists at the confluence of teachers, schools, communities, and local, state, and national leadership. Reformsters have been enthusiastic in their calls to hold teachers and schools accountable, but when it's time to hold state and federal governments accountable for bad regulations, unfunded mandates, and grotesquely inequitable funding of schools, reformsters fall silent. The fans of ed reform could, for instance, devote themselves to ferreting out districts where local and state authorities have underfunded schools to the point that students attend in unsafe crumbling buildings, but that's just not happening.
We know beyond the remotest shadow of a doubt that poverty is a huge factor in education. Not insurmountable, not inescapable, not hopelessly overpowering-- but still a major factor. We know that teachers are a large factor inside schools. But somehow we want to a big accountability hammer to land on teachers, but when it comes to holding anyone "accountable" for poverty, reformsters have nothing to say (well, except for those who suggest that the only people accountable for poverty are poor people).
And about that common-sense insight...
The notion that all of these things-- the clear and specific standards being measured by a test leading to "accountability" measures taken against the schools that come up short-- are common sense? Well, we have to call them "common sense" because we can't call them "evidence based" or "scientifically proven" or even "sure seemed to work well over in Location X" because none of those things are true. They haven't worked anywhere else, and now that we've been trying it for over a decade, we can see pretty clearly that they don't work here, either.
The best we get from reformsters is a circular argument-- "this tool is a valid measure and means of improvement, because when I measure the progress of this tool by using this tool, I see success."
There are other unfounded assumptions underlying the reformster approach that depend on these other bad assumptions. For instance, the whole idea that the power of the free market can be unloosed to improve education rests on the idea that we can measure definitively which are the best schools producing the best students who are taught by the best teachers. But we can no more do that than we can list the hundred best marriages in America, or the hundred best friends.
They remain convinced that we must have one-size-fits-all standards so that we can measure all students against them so that we can compare all students and schools so that we can.... what? We still don't have a real answer. It's common sense. It's something you just have to do, because not doing it clashes with reformsters beliefs about how the world is supposed to work. They literally do not understand how education works, and when they approach the world of education, they feel like OCD sufferers in a museum where all the paintings are hung crooked. They want to "fix" it, and they want to ask the people who work there, "How can you possibly function like this?" They can't see that the paintings aren't crooked at all.
The whole reformster approach is based on measuring a cloud with a meter stick, measuring the weather with a decibel meter, measuring love with a spoon.
Reformsters want to drive the school bus by setting a brick on the gas pedal and strapping the steering when into place, and every time the bus hits a tree, they say, "Oh, well, we just need a next-generation brick, and to fine-tune where we strap the steering wheel into place." They will tweak and improve and re-tweak, and they will keep failing because their approach is fundamentally wrong.
They start by throwing our gaze back a decade to when "US education policies were a mess." Then:
At the core of the good idea was the common-sense insight that if we want better and more equitable results from our education system, we should set clear expectations for student learning, measure whether our kids are meeting them and hold schools accountable for their outcomes, mainly gauged in terms of academic achievement.
And there are most of the problems with the reformsters approach, laid out in one sentence.
if we want better and more equitable results from our education system, we should set clear expectations for student learning
Yeah, that sounds sort of sensible, but the problem that first lurked in the background and then erupted with the advent of Common Core is that the way to make expectations clear is to make them specific, and before you know it, you have one-size-fits-all standards, and one-size-fits-all standards suck in the same way that making all US school students wear a one-size-fits-all uniform and eat one-size-fits-all food.
It is like saying that we can fix the divorce problem in this country by setting clear expectations for getting married and holding everyone to those expectations. Fordham sages tried to get around this with their "tight-loose" formulation, but they failed. Meanwhile, the standards themselves are amateur-hour constructions that take a definite side in arguments that experts don't find at all as neatly settled as the standards assume (e.g. is reading a complex relationship between reader and text, or a set of skills and behaviors-- the Core insists on the latter, but actual educators favor the former).
if we want better and more equitable results from our education system, we should... measure whether our kids are meeting them
Also sounds sort of sensible, and yet we do not know how to do it. It really is as simple as that-- we do not have a large-scale, standardized instrument that can measure all learning for all students in a standardized, one-size-measures-all manner. Instead of asking, "What's the best way to measure critical thinking" test manufacturers have asked "What's something we could do on a standardized mass-administered test that would pass for a critical thinking measure?"
The Fordham has just released a report that tries to argue that the latest next-generation tests are achieving great feats of measurement. They aren't. And trying to measure student learning as if it occurs in just two dimensions on a single track is just such a meager, inadequate, stunted approach as to be useless. Well, worse than useless, because doing it leads some people to think they're actually accomplishing something.
if we want better and more equitable results from our education system, we should... hold schools accountable for their outcomes, mainly gauged in terms of academic achievement.
"Outcomes" just means "test scores," and that, again, is such a truncated, inadequate vision of the mission of US public schools. Ask a taxpayer, "What are you paying schools and teachers to do?" I doubt that you will hear the answer, "Why, just to have students get good test scores. That's it. That's what I'm paying them to do."
This is not to claim or pretend that there are not schools that are failing to fulfill the promise of public education. But that failure belongs not to the schools alone-- student success exists at the confluence of teachers, schools, communities, and local, state, and national leadership. Reformsters have been enthusiastic in their calls to hold teachers and schools accountable, but when it's time to hold state and federal governments accountable for bad regulations, unfunded mandates, and grotesquely inequitable funding of schools, reformsters fall silent. The fans of ed reform could, for instance, devote themselves to ferreting out districts where local and state authorities have underfunded schools to the point that students attend in unsafe crumbling buildings, but that's just not happening.
We know beyond the remotest shadow of a doubt that poverty is a huge factor in education. Not insurmountable, not inescapable, not hopelessly overpowering-- but still a major factor. We know that teachers are a large factor inside schools. But somehow we want to a big accountability hammer to land on teachers, but when it comes to holding anyone "accountable" for poverty, reformsters have nothing to say (well, except for those who suggest that the only people accountable for poverty are poor people).
And about that common-sense insight...
The notion that all of these things-- the clear and specific standards being measured by a test leading to "accountability" measures taken against the schools that come up short-- are common sense? Well, we have to call them "common sense" because we can't call them "evidence based" or "scientifically proven" or even "sure seemed to work well over in Location X" because none of those things are true. They haven't worked anywhere else, and now that we've been trying it for over a decade, we can see pretty clearly that they don't work here, either.
The best we get from reformsters is a circular argument-- "this tool is a valid measure and means of improvement, because when I measure the progress of this tool by using this tool, I see success."
There are other unfounded assumptions underlying the reformster approach that depend on these other bad assumptions. For instance, the whole idea that the power of the free market can be unloosed to improve education rests on the idea that we can measure definitively which are the best schools producing the best students who are taught by the best teachers. But we can no more do that than we can list the hundred best marriages in America, or the hundred best friends.
They remain convinced that we must have one-size-fits-all standards so that we can measure all students against them so that we can compare all students and schools so that we can.... what? We still don't have a real answer. It's common sense. It's something you just have to do, because not doing it clashes with reformsters beliefs about how the world is supposed to work. They literally do not understand how education works, and when they approach the world of education, they feel like OCD sufferers in a museum where all the paintings are hung crooked. They want to "fix" it, and they want to ask the people who work there, "How can you possibly function like this?" They can't see that the paintings aren't crooked at all.
The whole reformster approach is based on measuring a cloud with a meter stick, measuring the weather with a decibel meter, measuring love with a spoon.
Reformsters want to drive the school bus by setting a brick on the gas pedal and strapping the steering when into place, and every time the bus hits a tree, they say, "Oh, well, we just need a next-generation brick, and to fine-tune where we strap the steering wheel into place." They will tweak and improve and re-tweak, and they will keep failing because their approach is fundamentally wrong.
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