As I mentioned in the previous posting, I believe that part of the problem for the educational resistance movement is a problem of language.
The folks that brought us No Child Left Behind thought that they had made a great branding decision by bundling all the various aspects of their reform program under one title. NCLB was an octopus with many limbs, from high stakes testing to financial boondogglery for remediation to school district evaluations to whatever else they wanted to graft on. The Powers That Were slapped a big label with the NCLB logo on that monster, but when the whole business turned ugly, that giant logo turned out to be a giant target.
If you hated the testing, you were opposed to NCLB. If you hated the government overreach, you were against NCLB. If you hated the overly-prescriptive curriculum materials, you were against NCLB. If you just knew that something was wrong with the whole direction, even if you couldn't put your finger on it, you were against NCLB.
The new wave of reform has corrected that tactical error. CCSS, federal overrreach, high stakes testing, TFA, charter schools, money and power grabs, destructive evaluations of buildings and teachers-- we know all of these things are part of the same toxic trend, the same drive to dismantle American public education and sell the parts for scrap.
But when we want to explain, clearly and passionately, what we are trying to oppose, we have nothing to call it. So we end up either waving our hands vaguely and throwing around phrases on the order of "you know, all that stuff." Or we rattle off the whole laundry list and end up sounding like scattershot crazy conspiracy theorists.
Worse yet, the fact that the Whole Big Mess doesn't have one single name lulls some folks into thinking that we only need to fight one arm of the octopus. Those other arms are friendly and benign; only this one arm wants to strangle us. And because all the arms have different names, the general public-- those folks who don't spend every day poring over blogs about education but whose support we need-- that general public has no idea that these are all parts of the same hungry animal.
Language matters. Language helps frame the discussion. There's a reason that the two sides of the abortion debate call themselves Pro-Choice and Pro-Life. There's a reason that some people call them Public Schools and other people call them Government Schools (three guesses which group supports them). There's a reason that, historically and in so much folk narrative, being able to name something is the key to power over it.
The Giant Education Reform Complex needs a name. I don't have a proposal, but I think about it a lot. It doesn't have to be pretty-- "military-industrial complex" is not very evocative, but everybody knows what it means. But we need something to call this giant mess of reform, and it probably shouldn't have the word "reform" in it because when you are out there announcing that you're against reform, you're already in trouble. Education Complex Takeover. Giant Edu-grab.
I don't have an answer. But I think the question is huge. We know what the beats is. But it needs a name.
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Monday, November 18, 2013
Can the CCSS Be Cleansed?
UPDATE: This column appeared in a slightly altered and improved form on Anthony Cody's blog. As much as I appreciate your attention here, you might want to go read that. And while you're there, read through the rest of his most excellent work.
A recent recurring refrain around and about the comments sections is the notion that the Common Core standards are, in and of themselves, quite fine, and if we could just uncouple them from the testing and implementation regimens, all will be well. We need not throw the baby out with the bathwater, nor stand in the way of fine new standards just because their ugly testing step-cousin is trying to sneak through the door with them.
The CCSS are really pure and decent; we just need to find a good exorcist to cast the testing demon out of them.
I can remember thinking like that. I can remember looking at the standards and thinking, "Many of these are actually fine." (I should note that I teach at the high school level, not elementary.) In fact, one of my earliest complaints about the CCSS was that they were one more example of folks telling us to do things that we already did. And I don't think there's a teacher alive who wouldn't relish the promise of freedom to pursue the standards in any way they deemed best.
"You know," I thought at one point. "If it were possible to just use these standards as a rough guide to follow as a thought best, and we got the government to stop testing, I could live with this."
And that was the moment when I knew that, no, the CCSS were not pure of heart and I would never learn to love them.
Because what would decoupling look like, after all? What incantation would exorcise the testing demons? Would teachers go to government and say, "Thank you for these guidelines. Trust us-- we will use our best professional judgment and produce the best-educated generation of students ever. Just step back and watch us work." No, that would never work, and it would never work because the CCSS are not for us. They never were.
People who like the standards are looking at them as a guide, as that helpful assurance that teachers sometimes like that we are on the right page. We like standards. We like standards like drivers like white lines. And we think of standards as a map, a tool to help us find our way. To us standards say, "Here's a map. We trust you to find your way."
Not the CCSS. The primary purpose of the CCSS is to call teachers out. It says, "Here's what you are supposed to be doing, or else. And we'll be checking up on you every step of the way." It is not a tool to be used by teachers; it's a tool to be used on them.
The CCSS say, "Here's what you must prove you're accomplishing." If you tell your students that you expect them to study and learn the chapter about Torquemada and 15th Century Spain, they know there's a test coming. Everyone expects the Spanish Inquisition. The CCSS are not about helping us teach; they are about holding us accountable, so they are meaningless without testing (and some parts are meaningless with it).
They are also, of course, about making money. NCLB also wanted to bust into the big piggy bank that is public school funding, but NCLB was a big blunt hammer; CCSS is a more sophisticated pry bar.
But the biggest-- the hugest, in my opinion-- reason that CCSS cannot be cleansed is reflected in the difficulty all of us who write about education these days, and it is probably the biggest lesson that the powers that be learned from NCLB.
The biggest mistake in NCLB is that they gave the whole thing a name. The testing, the state standards, the punishing evaluations, the funding pressures-- everything was gathered under the No Child Left Behind banner. Oh, how we loathed it. We called it funny mocking names. But even when we couldn't see the full picture, we knew its name. We knew its name.
This thing that's happening now? The contempt for teachers, the drive to privatize, the evaluation-based punishment, the dismantling of our profession, the destruction of public education, the redirection of billions of tax dollars, the secrecy, the ill-conceived standards-- we can see all its pieces, but it does not have a name.
That's a powerful choice, because it fosters the idea that these are all separate and discrete pieces, not part of a giant machine chewing apart the entire American institution of schooling. And it leads to the belief that some of these separate pieces can be cleansed and saved, that we can accept and somehow leave the rest behind.
People who believe in the cleansing of CCSS are like the characters in the story of the blind men and the elephant, only they are saying, "This tail piece is slim and pleasant; I'm going to take it home with me. But the parts you two are describing sound nasty. leave them here." You can't just take home a piece of the elephant.
The Common Core standards are part of that whole nameless beast, and the creators of that beast will never let you take only a piece of it home. The testing regimen is not its own separate thing that can be just thrown out any more than it was its own thing when it was the spine of NCLB. If you want only one arm of the octopus, you can't exorcise the rest of the animal. You can only have one limb when you have killed the whole beast.
A recent recurring refrain around and about the comments sections is the notion that the Common Core standards are, in and of themselves, quite fine, and if we could just uncouple them from the testing and implementation regimens, all will be well. We need not throw the baby out with the bathwater, nor stand in the way of fine new standards just because their ugly testing step-cousin is trying to sneak through the door with them.
The CCSS are really pure and decent; we just need to find a good exorcist to cast the testing demon out of them.
I can remember thinking like that. I can remember looking at the standards and thinking, "Many of these are actually fine." (I should note that I teach at the high school level, not elementary.) In fact, one of my earliest complaints about the CCSS was that they were one more example of folks telling us to do things that we already did. And I don't think there's a teacher alive who wouldn't relish the promise of freedom to pursue the standards in any way they deemed best.
"You know," I thought at one point. "If it were possible to just use these standards as a rough guide to follow as a thought best, and we got the government to stop testing, I could live with this."
And that was the moment when I knew that, no, the CCSS were not pure of heart and I would never learn to love them.
Because what would decoupling look like, after all? What incantation would exorcise the testing demons? Would teachers go to government and say, "Thank you for these guidelines. Trust us-- we will use our best professional judgment and produce the best-educated generation of students ever. Just step back and watch us work." No, that would never work, and it would never work because the CCSS are not for us. They never were.
People who like the standards are looking at them as a guide, as that helpful assurance that teachers sometimes like that we are on the right page. We like standards. We like standards like drivers like white lines. And we think of standards as a map, a tool to help us find our way. To us standards say, "Here's a map. We trust you to find your way."
Not the CCSS. The primary purpose of the CCSS is to call teachers out. It says, "Here's what you are supposed to be doing, or else. And we'll be checking up on you every step of the way." It is not a tool to be used by teachers; it's a tool to be used on them.
The CCSS say, "Here's what you must prove you're accomplishing." If you tell your students that you expect them to study and learn the chapter about Torquemada and 15th Century Spain, they know there's a test coming. Everyone expects the Spanish Inquisition. The CCSS are not about helping us teach; they are about holding us accountable, so they are meaningless without testing (and some parts are meaningless with it).
They are also, of course, about making money. NCLB also wanted to bust into the big piggy bank that is public school funding, but NCLB was a big blunt hammer; CCSS is a more sophisticated pry bar.
But the biggest-- the hugest, in my opinion-- reason that CCSS cannot be cleansed is reflected in the difficulty all of us who write about education these days, and it is probably the biggest lesson that the powers that be learned from NCLB.
The biggest mistake in NCLB is that they gave the whole thing a name. The testing, the state standards, the punishing evaluations, the funding pressures-- everything was gathered under the No Child Left Behind banner. Oh, how we loathed it. We called it funny mocking names. But even when we couldn't see the full picture, we knew its name. We knew its name.
This thing that's happening now? The contempt for teachers, the drive to privatize, the evaluation-based punishment, the dismantling of our profession, the destruction of public education, the redirection of billions of tax dollars, the secrecy, the ill-conceived standards-- we can see all its pieces, but it does not have a name.
That's a powerful choice, because it fosters the idea that these are all separate and discrete pieces, not part of a giant machine chewing apart the entire American institution of schooling. And it leads to the belief that some of these separate pieces can be cleansed and saved, that we can accept and somehow leave the rest behind.
People who believe in the cleansing of CCSS are like the characters in the story of the blind men and the elephant, only they are saying, "This tail piece is slim and pleasant; I'm going to take it home with me. But the parts you two are describing sound nasty. leave them here." You can't just take home a piece of the elephant.
The Common Core standards are part of that whole nameless beast, and the creators of that beast will never let you take only a piece of it home. The testing regimen is not its own separate thing that can be just thrown out any more than it was its own thing when it was the spine of NCLB. If you want only one arm of the octopus, you can't exorcise the rest of the animal. You can only have one limb when you have killed the whole beast.
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Arne Duncan vs. White Moms
As is spreading rapidly, Arne Duncan put his foot in it again this week with his cogent analysis of why people are not putting on a smile, lying down, and letting the Common Core roll right over them. You can find a full treatment here, but I want to just take a moment to unpack how many kinds of arrogant foolishness are rolled into that one little comment.
“It’s fascinating to me that some of the pushback is coming from, sort of, white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were, and that’s pretty scary,”
1) Why are we having this conversation?
Once again, Arne seems to have forgotten one of the central, important fictions of the Common Core-- that they are totally the result of a state initiative, and that they in no way represent a federal attempt to commandeer the state-based control of schools. If this isn't his program, why is he devoting so much time and fervor to defending it? Why aren't a bunch of governors running around defending the program that they developed all on their own that was in no way set up and nursed to life by the feds?
2) Moms? Really??
I thought these days it was supposed to be the GOP that dismissed contrary points of view simply by attaching them to women. "Ha ha. This is the crazy kind of objection you'd expect from one of those women. You know women, with their dumb vaginas and not-very-strong thinky parts. That's who comes up with this kind of stupid objection."
3) Plus "white" and "suburban"?? Did you skip politics 101?
Granted, this is a kind of genius play here. These are people who have it cushy, but they're not truly elite. We're trying to invoke the language of privilege, but not too much because that would land us in Arne's neighborhood. So "white suburban" translates roughly as "privileged but not as great as me." Arne is saying, "People who live on the mean streets-- they get it. People who have risen to the heights of power and wealth on their great merit (like, you know, me) get it. But these out-of-touch suburbanites (did I mention they were women) don't get it."
If you think I'm reading too much into points #2 and #3, imagine how this plays if Arne instead attributes these concerns to "blue collar fathers" or "working class black parents."
4) And then when you think for a second more...
Wait-- so only suburban Moms care about how well their kids are doing at school??
5) It's not me. It's you.
The administration has managed to cave and admit that maybe the ACA rollout didn't come off quite as planned and that maybe-- just maybe-- things weren't quite as originally advertised. (Predicted soon-to-be-meme from the comment section of the WaPo article-- "Obamacore-- you can keep your school and teachers if you like them. Oops!")
But in the world of CCSS, there's still only one explanation for why people are upset about the results. Their perception of their school, the school's teachers, the education that they perceived in THEIR OWN CHILDREN-- all of those were at fault all this time, and now only the magic of thefederal oops-- state standards can finally open their eyes.
Yup-- exposure to their offspring, with whom they presumably live, occasionally share a meal, even exchange the occasional grunts and greetings-- none of that could possibly give a parent an impression of how smart their child is. Only CCSS can reveal-- and surprise them with-- the truth.
In Arne's world, there is no possible way that the bad results are even a teensy bit the result of an untested program poorly rolled out program. And that's why--
6) Randi Weingarten is actually right about something
The WaPo column contains a money quote from the AFT head, saying that the CCSS rollout is even worse than the ACA launch. And she's right. And she's right because the ACA rollout has allowed for course correction, changes based on conditions on the ground, and even an admission that some things need to be tweaked.
But in Arne-world, all problems, all objections, all difficulties with the CCSS have one explanation-- all you dumb civilians who don't know revolutionary genius when you see it. Especially those of you with vaginas.
“It’s fascinating to me that some of the pushback is coming from, sort of, white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were, and that’s pretty scary,”
1) Why are we having this conversation?
Once again, Arne seems to have forgotten one of the central, important fictions of the Common Core-- that they are totally the result of a state initiative, and that they in no way represent a federal attempt to commandeer the state-based control of schools. If this isn't his program, why is he devoting so much time and fervor to defending it? Why aren't a bunch of governors running around defending the program that they developed all on their own that was in no way set up and nursed to life by the feds?
2) Moms? Really??
I thought these days it was supposed to be the GOP that dismissed contrary points of view simply by attaching them to women. "Ha ha. This is the crazy kind of objection you'd expect from one of those women. You know women, with their dumb vaginas and not-very-strong thinky parts. That's who comes up with this kind of stupid objection."
3) Plus "white" and "suburban"?? Did you skip politics 101?
Granted, this is a kind of genius play here. These are people who have it cushy, but they're not truly elite. We're trying to invoke the language of privilege, but not too much because that would land us in Arne's neighborhood. So "white suburban" translates roughly as "privileged but not as great as me." Arne is saying, "People who live on the mean streets-- they get it. People who have risen to the heights of power and wealth on their great merit (like, you know, me) get it. But these out-of-touch suburbanites (did I mention they were women) don't get it."
If you think I'm reading too much into points #2 and #3, imagine how this plays if Arne instead attributes these concerns to "blue collar fathers" or "working class black parents."
4) And then when you think for a second more...
Wait-- so only suburban Moms care about how well their kids are doing at school??
5) It's not me. It's you.
The administration has managed to cave and admit that maybe the ACA rollout didn't come off quite as planned and that maybe-- just maybe-- things weren't quite as originally advertised. (Predicted soon-to-be-meme from the comment section of the WaPo article-- "Obamacore-- you can keep your school and teachers if you like them. Oops!")
But in the world of CCSS, there's still only one explanation for why people are upset about the results. Their perception of their school, the school's teachers, the education that they perceived in THEIR OWN CHILDREN-- all of those were at fault all this time, and now only the magic of the
Yup-- exposure to their offspring, with whom they presumably live, occasionally share a meal, even exchange the occasional grunts and greetings-- none of that could possibly give a parent an impression of how smart their child is. Only CCSS can reveal-- and surprise them with-- the truth.
In Arne's world, there is no possible way that the bad results are even a teensy bit the result of an untested program poorly rolled out program. And that's why--
6) Randi Weingarten is actually right about something
The WaPo column contains a money quote from the AFT head, saying that the CCSS rollout is even worse than the ACA launch. And she's right. And she's right because the ACA rollout has allowed for course correction, changes based on conditions on the ground, and even an admission that some things need to be tweaked.
But in Arne-world, all problems, all objections, all difficulties with the CCSS have one explanation-- all you dumb civilians who don't know revolutionary genius when you see it. Especially those of you with vaginas.
Where Failed Management Fads Go To Die
When I was working my college summers in private industry, I was introduced to Management By Objectives. It was all the rage-- well, it was all the rage with upper management types who liked to book training sessions for the rest of the company. And it was all the rage with the consultants who made money traveling around the country consulting and seminarring and just generally doing their drive-by rearranging of other peoples' deck chairs.
I don't remember anybody liking MBO very much, and when I played catch-up with my old cronies at the company, I heard that MBO was on its way out. Not only were people tired of it, but it didn't work very well.
Not too long after that, as a college grad with his own teaching certificate, I was introduced to the hot new thing in education-- Teaching By Objectives. I was dumbfounded. It was as if someone had simply taken all the old MBO materials and gone through pasting "teaching" in to cover up every "management."
How could it be? People in industry were already abandoning MBO-- even if you thought schools should or could be run with corporate techniques, why would you pick one that was being dumped as ineffective?
Well, I was young, and new, and just learning one of those Things They Never Tell You in Teacher School.
Public education is the elephant's graveyard of bad management techniques.
Maybe it's that some education leaders have an inferiority complex that leads them to believe that business people know something we don't. Maybe it's just that consultants have to eat, too, and once the private sector won't hire you anymore, where are you going to turn. All I know is that I noticed education was always climbing on the bus just as the private sector was climbing off.
Nothing has changed under the current reform wave. Ten years ago, Jack Welch was all the rage with his bell curve management technique-- rate all your employees and fire the bottom ten percent. But by the end of the two thousand oughts, folks were noticing that besides being hardhearted, arbitrary and just plain mean, the Welch strategy didn't actually work.
And yet in the time since the private sector fell out of love with Jack Welch, the commonwealth of Pennsylvania decided to score schools and label the bottom 15% as "failing" and thereby targeted for various remediation, vouchering, and take-over. Essentially PA decided to Welch its schools.
Now Microsoft has forsaken stack ranking. They've finally noticed that it creates a toxic atmosphere, kills collaboration, and is just generally bad for the company's health.
Meanwhile, in the elephant's graveyard, what is being pushed? The Danielson model for teacher evaluation, in which the implicit assumption is that a teaching staff should plot out on a bell curve. "Nobody," we are told over and over and over in PA, "will live at the top level." Most of us will live in the unexceptional middle. You know. Like a bell curve.
And every merit pay variation to come down the pike is built on stacking-- if you want that bonus (or, under some systems, not to be fired) you are going to have to beat out your colleagues across the hall. Fellow teacher needs a little help? Just remember, they can't do better without taking away from your success. Best to keep those lesson plan ideas and teacher-made materials under lock and key.
Public education is where failed management techniques go to die. Whenever someone wants to tout an idea as super-dee-duper because it's all the rage in the private sector, remember that the question to answer is, "And how is that working for them?" And by "working," we mean "creating a better product" and not "hornswaggling a bunch of investors into boosting the stock prices."
I don't remember anybody liking MBO very much, and when I played catch-up with my old cronies at the company, I heard that MBO was on its way out. Not only were people tired of it, but it didn't work very well.
Not too long after that, as a college grad with his own teaching certificate, I was introduced to the hot new thing in education-- Teaching By Objectives. I was dumbfounded. It was as if someone had simply taken all the old MBO materials and gone through pasting "teaching" in to cover up every "management."
How could it be? People in industry were already abandoning MBO-- even if you thought schools should or could be run with corporate techniques, why would you pick one that was being dumped as ineffective?
Well, I was young, and new, and just learning one of those Things They Never Tell You in Teacher School.
Public education is the elephant's graveyard of bad management techniques.
Maybe it's that some education leaders have an inferiority complex that leads them to believe that business people know something we don't. Maybe it's just that consultants have to eat, too, and once the private sector won't hire you anymore, where are you going to turn. All I know is that I noticed education was always climbing on the bus just as the private sector was climbing off.
Nothing has changed under the current reform wave. Ten years ago, Jack Welch was all the rage with his bell curve management technique-- rate all your employees and fire the bottom ten percent. But by the end of the two thousand oughts, folks were noticing that besides being hardhearted, arbitrary and just plain mean, the Welch strategy didn't actually work.
And yet in the time since the private sector fell out of love with Jack Welch, the commonwealth of Pennsylvania decided to score schools and label the bottom 15% as "failing" and thereby targeted for various remediation, vouchering, and take-over. Essentially PA decided to Welch its schools.
Now Microsoft has forsaken stack ranking. They've finally noticed that it creates a toxic atmosphere, kills collaboration, and is just generally bad for the company's health.
Meanwhile, in the elephant's graveyard, what is being pushed? The Danielson model for teacher evaluation, in which the implicit assumption is that a teaching staff should plot out on a bell curve. "Nobody," we are told over and over and over in PA, "will live at the top level." Most of us will live in the unexceptional middle. You know. Like a bell curve.
And every merit pay variation to come down the pike is built on stacking-- if you want that bonus (or, under some systems, not to be fired) you are going to have to beat out your colleagues across the hall. Fellow teacher needs a little help? Just remember, they can't do better without taking away from your success. Best to keep those lesson plan ideas and teacher-made materials under lock and key.
Public education is where failed management techniques go to die. Whenever someone wants to tout an idea as super-dee-duper because it's all the rage in the private sector, remember that the question to answer is, "And how is that working for them?" And by "working," we mean "creating a better product" and not "hornswaggling a bunch of investors into boosting the stock prices."
Thursday, November 14, 2013
TFA in Pittsburgh: Adding insult to injury
When contemplating the deployment of TFA forces in Pittsburgh, there's one other aspect of the PA education picture to keep in mind.
Pennsylvania's 14 state-owned universities have been experiencing tough times. The economic forces brought bear on them include budget moves by a governor who is not a friend of education, and simple demographics. The college-age population of PA has been shrinking, and most schools are suffering a corresponding decline in enrollment.
That has led to rumors of cuts, proposals for cuts, and actual cuts. For one example of how this has played out, we can look at the state university in my neighborhood, Clarion.
In August of 2013, Clarion sent out emails to incoming freshmen headed for the education department that their department was probably going to be axed. Their completion of the program was assured, but they would be the last. Later in the month, Clarion unveiled its "right-sizing" plan which did indeed include dissolving its education department. Since that time, University management has backed away from the original scope of the plan, but it is still unclear how much of the backing away represents real change and how much it represents trying to reframe with new, less-alarming language.
Clarion is a particularly disturbing case, because they started out as a "Normal" school; their core mission has always been training teachers. Now that mission is in doubt. (You can read some current news coverage here, and you can watch the whole mess unfold in real time here ) Similar dramas are unfolding across the system, each dealing with the financial pressures in their own way (the one common thread-- music programs are dropping like flies).
Let's hold this up against the backdrop of the TFA assault on Pittsburgh schools.
You're 18 years old and you are thinking about becoming a teacher. You look around at your state system, and you see an uncertain future. Maybe the program you want to (or can afford to) enroll in will still be there; maybe it won't. Maybe it will vanish out from under you midway through your college career.
But meanwhile, we are supposed to believe that Pittsburgh schools have a shortage of teachers, and that PA needs a TFA field office to help draw more non-teachers into teaching.
So as a future PA teacher, you have to wonder if you should even go into a teaching program, and if you do, will you need to compete for scarce jobs with well-connected ivy leaguers?
If there really is a teacher shortage in Pennsylvania, would it not make sense to work on the pipeline, to support and strengthen teacher training programs and give them the tools to recruit and thrive? If Pennsylvania needs teachers, why is Pennsylvania not trying to create more?
Where is the STEM initiative for educators? After all, nobody is saying, "Hey, we don't have enough scientists and engineers, so lets give graduates with humanities degrees a five week course and send them out to make sciency stuff." No, what we said was, "We need more people in this field, so lets beef up the support, funding, training, and recruiting."
TFA in Pittsburgh doesn't just hurt in the short run. In the long run, it exacerbates the very "shortage" it pretends to address. Combined with the downsizing of universities in PA, it send s a clear message to young Pennsylvanians-- "If you were thinking about becoming a teacher, you should probably think about something else instead."
Pennsylvania's 14 state-owned universities have been experiencing tough times. The economic forces brought bear on them include budget moves by a governor who is not a friend of education, and simple demographics. The college-age population of PA has been shrinking, and most schools are suffering a corresponding decline in enrollment.
That has led to rumors of cuts, proposals for cuts, and actual cuts. For one example of how this has played out, we can look at the state university in my neighborhood, Clarion.
In August of 2013, Clarion sent out emails to incoming freshmen headed for the education department that their department was probably going to be axed. Their completion of the program was assured, but they would be the last. Later in the month, Clarion unveiled its "right-sizing" plan which did indeed include dissolving its education department. Since that time, University management has backed away from the original scope of the plan, but it is still unclear how much of the backing away represents real change and how much it represents trying to reframe with new, less-alarming language.
Clarion is a particularly disturbing case, because they started out as a "Normal" school; their core mission has always been training teachers. Now that mission is in doubt. (You can read some current news coverage here, and you can watch the whole mess unfold in real time here ) Similar dramas are unfolding across the system, each dealing with the financial pressures in their own way (the one common thread-- music programs are dropping like flies).
Let's hold this up against the backdrop of the TFA assault on Pittsburgh schools.
You're 18 years old and you are thinking about becoming a teacher. You look around at your state system, and you see an uncertain future. Maybe the program you want to (or can afford to) enroll in will still be there; maybe it won't. Maybe it will vanish out from under you midway through your college career.
But meanwhile, we are supposed to believe that Pittsburgh schools have a shortage of teachers, and that PA needs a TFA field office to help draw more non-teachers into teaching.
So as a future PA teacher, you have to wonder if you should even go into a teaching program, and if you do, will you need to compete for scarce jobs with well-connected ivy leaguers?
If there really is a teacher shortage in Pennsylvania, would it not make sense to work on the pipeline, to support and strengthen teacher training programs and give them the tools to recruit and thrive? If Pennsylvania needs teachers, why is Pennsylvania not trying to create more?
Where is the STEM initiative for educators? After all, nobody is saying, "Hey, we don't have enough scientists and engineers, so lets give graduates with humanities degrees a five week course and send them out to make sciency stuff." No, what we said was, "We need more people in this field, so lets beef up the support, funding, training, and recruiting."
TFA in Pittsburgh doesn't just hurt in the short run. In the long run, it exacerbates the very "shortage" it pretends to address. Combined with the downsizing of universities in PA, it send s a clear message to young Pennsylvanians-- "If you were thinking about becoming a teacher, you should probably think about something else instead."
CCSS: Lowering the Bar
College and career ready.
We can discuss the many and varied flaws of the CCSS all day, but those four words are all it takes to shove me off the CCSS bus.
That's it? That's your idea of what an education is for? All we send students to school to do is to get vocational training for a job? Or to go to college, which is just four more years of vocational training for a more impressive job.
I could wax rhapsodic about the value of the whole human experience, about how our minds, bodies and spirits are meant for more than the simple grind of the workplace. I could talk about how nobody ever lay on a deathbed whispering, "Oh, if only I had spent more time getting college and career ready." I could serve up some tasty rhetoric, like "What good is making a living if you don't have a life?"
But instead, let's look at the practical implications of this, and since the pushers of CCSS are practical people, let's ask them these questions repeatedly.
If a young woman's intention is to become a stay at home housewife and mother, should she be allowed to drop out of school?
Does this mean we can drop all arts programs now, because none of our students are going to be making a living as artists and musicians? Well, no, some of them might. But this gets tricky-- a future professional musician needs the experience of playing in an ensemble-- should we force all the future engineers to play an instrument or sing in choir so that our handful of future professional musicians have the appropriate preparatory experience? And by the way-- notice that for that sentence to be clear, I have to write "professional musician" but not "professional engineer." That's because lots of folks can be musicians without being professional musicians-- does being a musician without making a living at it count?
What about shop class and sports programs? And if I'm sure I'm going to pursue a non-science career, can I just drop out of math and science classes?
Of course the answer to that last one is "no" because in CCSS, one size fits all. But how does that work if I'm going to be college and career ready? Are we preparing every single student for exactly the same career? If we are, which career is it? If we aren't, why are we applying the exact same standards to everyone? Ditto the colleges-- are we preparing everyone for exactly the same college with the exact same major? And are we preparing them to be biology majors at Harvard, or English majors at Wassamatta U, or welding at Anywhere Technical Institute? How can the answer be both/either if they are being prepared with exactly the same standards??
And we haven't even started on the "clarification" that the "career ready" portion really means "ready for a career that will provide them with a living above the poverty line." Which means "none of the part-time minimum wage jobs that now drive much of the economy." (Which leads to the question, who will be working at Wal-Mart when all high school graduates are working at the above-poverty jobs that are going to magically appear to receive them?)
"College and career ready" sounds so harmless, so benign, so perfectly reasonable. But it's really a signpost that signals how myopic, ill-thought-out, and contrary to the values of both America and good education the CCSS are. When I look at the CCSS, I know something smells, and I don't have to dig deeply at all to find the source of the stink.
We can discuss the many and varied flaws of the CCSS all day, but those four words are all it takes to shove me off the CCSS bus.
That's it? That's your idea of what an education is for? All we send students to school to do is to get vocational training for a job? Or to go to college, which is just four more years of vocational training for a more impressive job.
I could wax rhapsodic about the value of the whole human experience, about how our minds, bodies and spirits are meant for more than the simple grind of the workplace. I could talk about how nobody ever lay on a deathbed whispering, "Oh, if only I had spent more time getting college and career ready." I could serve up some tasty rhetoric, like "What good is making a living if you don't have a life?"
But instead, let's look at the practical implications of this, and since the pushers of CCSS are practical people, let's ask them these questions repeatedly.
If a young woman's intention is to become a stay at home housewife and mother, should she be allowed to drop out of school?
Does this mean we can drop all arts programs now, because none of our students are going to be making a living as artists and musicians? Well, no, some of them might. But this gets tricky-- a future professional musician needs the experience of playing in an ensemble-- should we force all the future engineers to play an instrument or sing in choir so that our handful of future professional musicians have the appropriate preparatory experience? And by the way-- notice that for that sentence to be clear, I have to write "professional musician" but not "professional engineer." That's because lots of folks can be musicians without being professional musicians-- does being a musician without making a living at it count?
What about shop class and sports programs? And if I'm sure I'm going to pursue a non-science career, can I just drop out of math and science classes?
Of course the answer to that last one is "no" because in CCSS, one size fits all. But how does that work if I'm going to be college and career ready? Are we preparing every single student for exactly the same career? If we are, which career is it? If we aren't, why are we applying the exact same standards to everyone? Ditto the colleges-- are we preparing everyone for exactly the same college with the exact same major? And are we preparing them to be biology majors at Harvard, or English majors at Wassamatta U, or welding at Anywhere Technical Institute? How can the answer be both/either if they are being prepared with exactly the same standards??
And we haven't even started on the "clarification" that the "career ready" portion really means "ready for a career that will provide them with a living above the poverty line." Which means "none of the part-time minimum wage jobs that now drive much of the economy." (Which leads to the question, who will be working at Wal-Mart when all high school graduates are working at the above-poverty jobs that are going to magically appear to receive them?)
"College and career ready" sounds so harmless, so benign, so perfectly reasonable. But it's really a signpost that signals how myopic, ill-thought-out, and contrary to the values of both America and good education the CCSS are. When I look at the CCSS, I know something smells, and I don't have to dig deeply at all to find the source of the stink.
Monday, November 11, 2013
The Data Tree
The official from the Department of Trees stopped by the old farmer's home. "I'm here," he said, "to cut down some trees."
The farmer reluctantly pulled walked out the front door into the yard. He had seen this happen before, and he wasn't optimistic.
"Okay," he said. "which ones have to go?"
The official checked his tablet. "We've been collecting extensive data, so we know which of your trees have been most successful. We'll be chopping down all the others that did not earn a highly effective rating. Starting with this one." And he pointed to one of the oldest trees in the yard.
The farmer scratched his head. "How do you figure that tree needs to be chopped down?"
"Oh, our data is extensive," said the official. "We've tracked the number of fruit produced for the past decade, and this tree lags far behind."
"Well, yes," said the farmer. "That tree is old and doesn't produce many apples these days. But see that tree house up in the branches? Both my kids used to play in that, and now when my grandchildren come to visit, they play there, too. You should hear them laugh when they're up there together. Sound lights up the whole house."
"That may be," said the official. "But we only collect data on the number of fruit. We can't measure anything about happiness or joy, so those data are unimportant." He walked through the yard. "This one, too. It goes."
The farmer stopped in his tracks. "But that's the tree with the swing. My wife and I used to sit out there every evening, drinking cider and going back over the day while the wind blew soft through those branches. That tree's full of experience and memories."
"Be that as it may," said the official, not looking up from his tablet. "The data says the tree is ineffective. It must go."
The official strolled a bit further, then gestured with a bit more energy at a gnarled old monstrosity of a tree. "Cheer up, old timer. It's not all bad news. Our data says that this tree here is highly effective. According to the data, it's highly productive."
"That?" The farmer smiled in spite of himself. "That's a crabapple tree. Hundreds of apples come off that and you can't eat a one of them."
"Well, sir, we aren't able to quantify any of that data. We can only measure quantity, so that's what matters. This tree is your best one on the lot."
"Son," said the farmer. "You are a damned fool. The world is filled with a million kinds of trees for a million kinds of uses. Why you would want to ignore all that just because it doesn't make neat numbers for your computer program is beyond me, but just because you intend to lead such a sad, blinkered life doesn't mean you get to cut down my whole orchard. Get yourself on out of here."
The official might have protested harder as he left, but the truth was, it was his last day on the job and he wouldn't have to deal with any of this ever again. He could hardly wait to start his new work for the Department of Education.
The farmer reluctantly pulled walked out the front door into the yard. He had seen this happen before, and he wasn't optimistic.
"Okay," he said. "which ones have to go?"
The official checked his tablet. "We've been collecting extensive data, so we know which of your trees have been most successful. We'll be chopping down all the others that did not earn a highly effective rating. Starting with this one." And he pointed to one of the oldest trees in the yard.
The farmer scratched his head. "How do you figure that tree needs to be chopped down?"
"Oh, our data is extensive," said the official. "We've tracked the number of fruit produced for the past decade, and this tree lags far behind."
"Well, yes," said the farmer. "That tree is old and doesn't produce many apples these days. But see that tree house up in the branches? Both my kids used to play in that, and now when my grandchildren come to visit, they play there, too. You should hear them laugh when they're up there together. Sound lights up the whole house."
"That may be," said the official. "But we only collect data on the number of fruit. We can't measure anything about happiness or joy, so those data are unimportant." He walked through the yard. "This one, too. It goes."
The farmer stopped in his tracks. "But that's the tree with the swing. My wife and I used to sit out there every evening, drinking cider and going back over the day while the wind blew soft through those branches. That tree's full of experience and memories."
"Be that as it may," said the official, not looking up from his tablet. "The data says the tree is ineffective. It must go."
The official strolled a bit further, then gestured with a bit more energy at a gnarled old monstrosity of a tree. "Cheer up, old timer. It's not all bad news. Our data says that this tree here is highly effective. According to the data, it's highly productive."
"That?" The farmer smiled in spite of himself. "That's a crabapple tree. Hundreds of apples come off that and you can't eat a one of them."
"Well, sir, we aren't able to quantify any of that data. We can only measure quantity, so that's what matters. This tree is your best one on the lot."
"Son," said the farmer. "You are a damned fool. The world is filled with a million kinds of trees for a million kinds of uses. Why you would want to ignore all that just because it doesn't make neat numbers for your computer program is beyond me, but just because you intend to lead such a sad, blinkered life doesn't mean you get to cut down my whole orchard. Get yourself on out of here."
The official might have protested harder as he left, but the truth was, it was his last day on the job and he wouldn't have to deal with any of this ever again. He could hardly wait to start his new work for the Department of Education.
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