Michelle Rhee turned up on LinkedIn as an expert"influencer" (no, not influenza) to analyze "the state and future" of her industry.
In general, I try not to give any space in my head to Ms. Rhee, but she remains such a perfect example of everything that's wrong with the Masters of Reforming Our nation's Schools, and this post is such a perfect example of how badly she gets everything wrong, that it seems worthwhile to spend some time and attention explaining why Rhee doesn't deserve any of our time and attention. It's a short article, with only a few points to make, and yet Rhee doesn't get a single thing right. Not a thing.
To open, she notes that putting "education" and "industry" together might strike some as odd. She explains that away:
However, putting those words next to each other is a reminder that the
American public education system does have an end-goal: to deliver the
“product” of well-educated young people and thereby a well-educated
country.
Yes, the woman whose favorite current talking point is that all this kerfluffle about schools is caused by adults failing to put students first, just called students a "product," like a toaster or a cheese roll or anything else that might come of a factory assembly line for someone to buy and use. I wonder if it's too late to change her organization's name to "ProductsFirst."
She follows up with familiar statistics-- context-free international test rankings, lots of African-American kids who read below level, a projection about the workforce of 2018. And then she announces five takeaways from the current state of education factories across the US.
We aren't focused enough on students
What she means is, we don't have enough ball busting teacher evaluations in place. "Studies show that robust evaluations improve teacher quality and benefit kids," she says, but if you're hoping to see an indication of what studies those are or how exactly they reached that conclusion or even what "benefit" we're talking about that the products would receive-- well, you hope in vain.
But when we try to have that public conversation, the focus somehow
turns to educators’ challenges – things like managing classroom time and
administering standardized tests – rather than what’s best for student
achievement.
Wrong again. The sentence imagines that having a well-managed classroom or having less teaching time sucked away by pointless testing would not be best for student achievement. No, teachers want more time and resources because we are all dreaming of handing out worksheets, propping up our feet and drinking pina coladas.
Just kidding. As many have pointed out, teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions. We are lifeguards trying to reach our floundering students while Rhee and her cronies want to strap us to cement blocks. Then, when we complain about how hard this makes to reach our students, they sneer, "Oh, yes, it's all about you, isn't it."
We get caught up in crazy debates that distract
She's pretty close to not-wrong here, but she fails to grasp that the debates are crazy because one side of the table is occupied by crazy people. Her specific point here is that we keep having this crazy debate about poverty being a problem, and it's just out of control.
But it’s a distraction to use poverty as a scapegoat and, until it’s
solved, refuse to discuss how to improve failing schools and refuse to
address the low achievement levels among poor and minority students.
Just because a solution won’t fix every single problem our kids face
doesn’t mean we should give up trying.
This is a Rhee specialty-- hard-hitting debate against a straw man. Once again, Rhee has successfully struck down an argument that nobody has made. Find me a teacher anywhere in a high poverty area who says, "Because my students are poor, I will just never try to teach them." Until that day comes, Rhe is in fact having a debate that is crazy because she is debating voices in her own head.
Adult-Focused Political Lobbying Organizations Have a Stranglehold on Education
Man, I wish. But in Rhee-land, these groups-- okay, actually, we're only talking about teachers' unions-- have hijacked cool reformy stuff, including battling back that swell Common Core. No mention of all the political lobbying by, say, StudentsFirst et al. Although, for whatever reason, she does not raise the usual specter of Tea Party crazies. Nope-- just teachers who are devoting all their time and energy to screwing up schools because, hey, that's why I got into teaching as my lifetime (longer-than-two-years) work-- because I was motivated by a powerful desire to interfere with the education of young people. I mean, young products. I just could not wait to throw my big wooden sabos into the big school assembly line.
Reform is Working
And now I am beginning to suspect that Rhee is actually high as she writes this, because if she's seeing any signs of reformy success, she is operating on some separate plane of existence. We should all send her a copy of Reign of Error. She cites DC and Tennessee as states that are making awesometastic gains, while the rest of the nation stays flat. That would be the same flat that, in her intro, was a death-spiral in desperate need of reforming.
This is one of the most threadbare tunes that the MoRONS sing, because they have had their way for at least a decade. Anything that's desperately wrong these days is their own damn fault, but they need to do this bizarre dance where 1) we are failing and need rescuing and 2) the rescue is totally succeeding.
Change is Happening Far Too Slowly
Too slowly for whom? Because the emerging national consensus is that everything in the CCSS regime has been rolled out so fast that they may have left the wheels behind. Did Rhee miss the "It's the implementation" memo that CCSS fans have been reading from? You know-- the one where all this reformy stuff is truly great and all these hiccups are just the result of being too quick and doing wacky things like testing on standards that aren't being taught yet.
No more handwringing or fretting over election-year cycles (damn democracy, anyway). Let's just get this done. It's the oldest sales shtick in the book-- we must act RIGHT NOW or the opportunity will be lost forever. Rhee mentions results-driven improvements, and I wished she had mentioned a specific one, because, again, reformy stuff has been failing hard all across the country. Also, she would like mean Mayor deBlasio to give Eva back the rest of her schools.
Those of us who care about American public schools have a responsibility
to focus on delivering a great education for all students. But right
now, we’re distracted.
You know what? I have to upgrade her to a 10%. Still below basic, but at the end, she finally gets something right, mostly by accident. Because I'm pretty sure that sentence doesn't mean the same thing it does to her that it does to me.
We are distracted. We're distracted by people who don't know what they're talking about trying to dismantle US public education so that corporate vultures can pick at the bones. We're distracted by policies that bleed public schools of resources so that corporate interests can gain a bigger ROI. We're distracted by policies that mandate educational malpractice and attempt to turn our students into products and data generation devices and cogs in a giant soulless machine.
Michelle Rhee might actually be a nice person. I don't know. But what I know is that she didn't succeed as a teacher, didn't succeed as a school leader, hasn't succeeded in anything in education except earning big bucks talking about all the things she doesn't know. She is the Kim Kardashian of education, a celebrity spokesmodel who is just one more shiny distraction from the serious work of education that needs our attention. I swear this is the last time I'm going to spend some of my attention on her.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Can Hillary Be Trusted?
The twitterverse erupted briefly yesterday when Hillary Clinton, appearing at the Globalization of Higher Education conference in Irving, Texas, dropped a few bricks of praise upon the head of co-host Jeb Bush. Specifically, she lauded him for his dedication to and passion for education and the reform thereof. Upon hearing those words, many Democratic fans of public education dropped their jaws upon the most conveniently located floor.
As HRC jockeys for position re: 2016, the question is arising-- is she good for public education?
I'm nominally a Democrat. I voted for Obama in 2008 (oops) and again in 2012 (would you rather have a pointy stick in the eye or a knee in the groin). I am neither a member of the Cult of Hillary's Awesomeness nor of the Stop That Evil Bitch Club. But I can't say that her supportive words for Jebby don't surprise me.
Look, all politicians love to play with education. If religion is the third rail of politics, education is its plush fluffy stuffed unicorn-- you can always pick it up without any danger of getting hurt.
But Hillary's record is not promising.
The big smoking gun in her education past is the infamous "Dear Hillary" letter from Marc Tucker, sent in 1992 as what appears to be part of a larger policy discussion. In the letter, Tucker proposes a reinvention of American public ed into a european-style job training program that prepares workers to meet the needs of society, even as it tracks their every move into a giant database to be used by government "job counselors" and prospective employers. Any of this sound familiar?
Righty critics point to several moves of the Clinton administration to set this new educational order into motion, including directing fed $$ to governors (not, say, elected school boards) and the building up of national testing initiatives. And Hillary has generally shown herself to be a big fan of big government solutions.
HRC has been pretty quiet about CCSS and has confined most of her edu-activity to relatively harmless fluff like her new "Too Small To Fail" program to encourage parents to engage in their children's education. But her friends, her connections, and her praise for a governor whose record on public education is one of the most destructive in the country-- these are not good signs.
Advocates for the US public education must stop stop stop stop STOP assuming that Democrats have our backs or that Republicans are our enemies. We need to start demanding that our leaders take a stand, and we need to hold them accountable no matter what their affiliation.
The status quo of high stakes test-driven education is a bipartisan monstrosity. It's a trick where liberals are co-opted with "Government will make sure this need is met" and traditional conservatives are co-opted with "The need will be met by private corporations." The driving principle is money. Pay attention to the money.
Do I think Hillary is a friend of pubic ed? I do not. I believe she is part of the sad decades-long history of our descent into the current state of corporate vulturedom and deliberate dismantling of public education. Unless and until she makes a clear and deliberate break with the status quo, I am going to assume she is just one more politician angling to destroy the institution to which so many of us have dedicated our lives.
As HRC jockeys for position re: 2016, the question is arising-- is she good for public education?
I'm nominally a Democrat. I voted for Obama in 2008 (oops) and again in 2012 (would you rather have a pointy stick in the eye or a knee in the groin). I am neither a member of the Cult of Hillary's Awesomeness nor of the Stop That Evil Bitch Club. But I can't say that her supportive words for Jebby don't surprise me.
Look, all politicians love to play with education. If religion is the third rail of politics, education is its plush fluffy stuffed unicorn-- you can always pick it up without any danger of getting hurt.
But Hillary's record is not promising.
The big smoking gun in her education past is the infamous "Dear Hillary" letter from Marc Tucker, sent in 1992 as what appears to be part of a larger policy discussion. In the letter, Tucker proposes a reinvention of American public ed into a european-style job training program that prepares workers to meet the needs of society, even as it tracks their every move into a giant database to be used by government "job counselors" and prospective employers. Any of this sound familiar?
Righty critics point to several moves of the Clinton administration to set this new educational order into motion, including directing fed $$ to governors (not, say, elected school boards) and the building up of national testing initiatives. And Hillary has generally shown herself to be a big fan of big government solutions.
HRC has been pretty quiet about CCSS and has confined most of her edu-activity to relatively harmless fluff like her new "Too Small To Fail" program to encourage parents to engage in their children's education. But her friends, her connections, and her praise for a governor whose record on public education is one of the most destructive in the country-- these are not good signs.
Advocates for the US public education must stop stop stop stop STOP assuming that Democrats have our backs or that Republicans are our enemies. We need to start demanding that our leaders take a stand, and we need to hold them accountable no matter what their affiliation.
The status quo of high stakes test-driven education is a bipartisan monstrosity. It's a trick where liberals are co-opted with "Government will make sure this need is met" and traditional conservatives are co-opted with "The need will be met by private corporations." The driving principle is money. Pay attention to the money.
Do I think Hillary is a friend of pubic ed? I do not. I believe she is part of the sad decades-long history of our descent into the current state of corporate vulturedom and deliberate dismantling of public education. Unless and until she makes a clear and deliberate break with the status quo, I am going to assume she is just one more politician angling to destroy the institution to which so many of us have dedicated our lives.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Why CCSS Can't Be Decoupled
Don't think of them as standards. Think of them as tags.
Think of them as the pedagogical equivalent of people's names on facebook, the tags you attach to each and every photo that you upload.
We know from our friends at Knewton what the Grand Design is-- a system in which student progress is mapped down to the atomic level. Atomic level (a term that Knewton lervs deeply) means test by test, assignment by assignment, sentence by sentence, item by item. We want to enter every single thing a student does into the Big Data Bank.
But that will only work if we're all using the same set of tags.
We've been saying that CCSS are limited because the standards were written around what can be tested. That's not exactly correct. The standards have been written around what can be tracked.
The standards aren't just about defining what should be taught. They're about cataloging what students have done.
Remember when Facebook introduced emoticons. This was not a public service. Facebook wanted to up its data gathering capabilities by tracking the emotional states of users. But if users just defined their own emotions, the data would be too noisy, too hard to crunch. But if the user had to pick from the facebook standard set of user emotions-- then facebook would have manageable data.
Ditto for CCSS. If we all just taught to our own local standards, the data noise would be too great. The Data Overlords need us all to be standardized, to be using the same set of tags. That is also why no deviation can be allowed. Okay, we'll let you have 15% over and above the standards. The system can probably tolerate that much noise. But under no circumstances can you change the standards-- because that would be changing the national student data tagging system, and THAT we can't tolerate.
This is why the "aligning" process inevitably involves all that marking of standards onto everything we do. It's not instructional. It's not even about accountability.
It's about having us sit and tag every instructional thing we do so that student results can be entered and tracked in the Big Data Bank.
And that is why CCSS can never, ever be decoupled from anything. Why would facebook keep a face tagging system and then forbid users to upload photos?
The Test does not exist to prove that we're following the standards. The standards exist to let us tag the results from the Test. And ultimately, not just the Test, but everything that's done in a classroom. Standards-ready material is material that has already been bagged and tagged for Data Overlord use.
Oddly enough, this understanding of the CCSS system also reveals more reasons why the system sucks.
Facebook's photo tagging system is active and robust. Anybody can add tags, and so the system grows because it is useful. On the other hand, their emoticon system, which requires users to feel only the standardized facebook emotions, is rigid and dying on the vine because it's not useful and it can't adapt.
The CCSS are lousy standards precisely because they are too specific in some areas, too vague in others, and completely missing other aspects of teaching entirely. We all know how the aligning works-- you take what you already do and find a standard that it more or less fits with and tag it.
Because the pedagogical fantasy delineated by the CCSS does not match the teacher reality in a classroom, the tags are applied in inexact and not-really-true ways. In effect, we've been given color tags that only cover one side of the color wheel, but we've been told to tag everything, so we end up tagging purple green. When a tagging system doesn't represent the full range of reality, and it isn't flexible enough to adapt, you end up with crappy tagging. And that's the CCSS.
It's true that in a massive tagging system like this, a Big Test could be rendered unnecessary-- just use all the data that's pouring in from everywhere else. Two reasons that won't happen:
1) While our Data Overlord's eyes were on the data prize, their need for tagged and connected data opened the door for profiteering, and once that stream is flowing, no Pearsonesque group will stand for interfering with it.
2) High stakes tests are necessary to force cooperation. To get people to fork over this much data, they must be motivated. We've seen that evolution in PA, as the folks in charge have realized that nothing less than the highest stakes will get students to stop writing the pledge to the flag on their tests and teachers to stop laughing when they do.
Decoupling? Not going to happen. You can't have a data system without tagging, and you can't have a tagging system with nothing to tag. Education and teaching are just collateral damage in all this, and not really the main thing at all.
PS: Note Diane Ravitch's morning post which displays how badly the standards fail at being standards by all standard standards standards. Why did they do such a bad job of writing standards? Because they weren't trying to write standards-- they were writing data tags!
Think of them as the pedagogical equivalent of people's names on facebook, the tags you attach to each and every photo that you upload.
We know from our friends at Knewton what the Grand Design is-- a system in which student progress is mapped down to the atomic level. Atomic level (a term that Knewton lervs deeply) means test by test, assignment by assignment, sentence by sentence, item by item. We want to enter every single thing a student does into the Big Data Bank.
But that will only work if we're all using the same set of tags.
We've been saying that CCSS are limited because the standards were written around what can be tested. That's not exactly correct. The standards have been written around what can be tracked.
The standards aren't just about defining what should be taught. They're about cataloging what students have done.
Remember when Facebook introduced emoticons. This was not a public service. Facebook wanted to up its data gathering capabilities by tracking the emotional states of users. But if users just defined their own emotions, the data would be too noisy, too hard to crunch. But if the user had to pick from the facebook standard set of user emotions-- then facebook would have manageable data.
Ditto for CCSS. If we all just taught to our own local standards, the data noise would be too great. The Data Overlords need us all to be standardized, to be using the same set of tags. That is also why no deviation can be allowed. Okay, we'll let you have 15% over and above the standards. The system can probably tolerate that much noise. But under no circumstances can you change the standards-- because that would be changing the national student data tagging system, and THAT we can't tolerate.
This is why the "aligning" process inevitably involves all that marking of standards onto everything we do. It's not instructional. It's not even about accountability.
It's about having us sit and tag every instructional thing we do so that student results can be entered and tracked in the Big Data Bank.
And that is why CCSS can never, ever be decoupled from anything. Why would facebook keep a face tagging system and then forbid users to upload photos?
The Test does not exist to prove that we're following the standards. The standards exist to let us tag the results from the Test. And ultimately, not just the Test, but everything that's done in a classroom. Standards-ready material is material that has already been bagged and tagged for Data Overlord use.
Oddly enough, this understanding of the CCSS system also reveals more reasons why the system sucks.
Facebook's photo tagging system is active and robust. Anybody can add tags, and so the system grows because it is useful. On the other hand, their emoticon system, which requires users to feel only the standardized facebook emotions, is rigid and dying on the vine because it's not useful and it can't adapt.
The CCSS are lousy standards precisely because they are too specific in some areas, too vague in others, and completely missing other aspects of teaching entirely. We all know how the aligning works-- you take what you already do and find a standard that it more or less fits with and tag it.
Because the pedagogical fantasy delineated by the CCSS does not match the teacher reality in a classroom, the tags are applied in inexact and not-really-true ways. In effect, we've been given color tags that only cover one side of the color wheel, but we've been told to tag everything, so we end up tagging purple green. When a tagging system doesn't represent the full range of reality, and it isn't flexible enough to adapt, you end up with crappy tagging. And that's the CCSS.
It's true that in a massive tagging system like this, a Big Test could be rendered unnecessary-- just use all the data that's pouring in from everywhere else. Two reasons that won't happen:
1) While our Data Overlord's eyes were on the data prize, their need for tagged and connected data opened the door for profiteering, and once that stream is flowing, no Pearsonesque group will stand for interfering with it.
2) High stakes tests are necessary to force cooperation. To get people to fork over this much data, they must be motivated. We've seen that evolution in PA, as the folks in charge have realized that nothing less than the highest stakes will get students to stop writing the pledge to the flag on their tests and teachers to stop laughing when they do.
Decoupling? Not going to happen. You can't have a data system without tagging, and you can't have a tagging system with nothing to tag. Education and teaching are just collateral damage in all this, and not really the main thing at all.
PS: Note Diane Ravitch's morning post which displays how badly the standards fail at being standards by all standard standards standards. Why did they do such a bad job of writing standards? Because they weren't trying to write standards-- they were writing data tags!
Sunday, March 23, 2014
The Coming Teacher Shortage
Friday I sat down for coffee with the president of a local university (in my other incarnation as a local newspaper columnist, I get the occasional request to chat). Among other things, she confirmed what I have been hearing for a while-- enrollment in state school teacher programs is plummeting, down in my region almost 50% from better times.
Part of the problem is that, at least in my part of Pennsylvania, the college-age demographic sector is shrinking, and so all college enrollment is shrinking. But as we look at the shrinking interest in joining our profession, I think we have a couple of factors to consider.
The obvious
Teachers have been getting slammed for a couple of decades now. Today's eighteen-year-olds have heard a lifetime of noise about how teachers are screwing up education, standing in the way of progress, failing in all meaningful ways. They have heard the backhanded attack fallacy that a teacher is the most important factor in a school, and schools are failing, so what do you suppose that means about teachers? They have heard that teachers suck, school suck, that US education is just a giant suckfest.
They have even heard (and I feel sad to have to admit it, because I think it's wrong) veteran teachers tell them, "Don't do it. Don't pursue teaching."
They have also heard that you don't really need to study teaching to be a teacher. Pittsburgh beat back an attempted incursion by Teach for America, but while that looked like a done deal, what message did it send to students entering their final year of a teacher prep program? "Don't bother. We're going to hire some business majors with five weeks of training. Those credentials you just spent four years acquiring don't mean jack to us."
I should also acknowledge that in some areas, massive staff cuts and school closings have created a situation of local teacher surplus. In places like Chicago this only underlines my last point, because certified teachers have in effect been replaced with untrained TFA and TNTP bodies. This all adds further to the "why bother" view of applying to college teaching programs.
These factors would be enough to drive down interest in the profession, but I don't think they're the whole story.
The less obvious
Most of us developed our idea of what school is about during our own years in school. "School" almost always means, especially at the start of a career, "the kind of school I grew up in."
As many of us have said before, high stakes test-driven accountability is not "reform"-- it's the status quo. After over a decade of test prep and test taking and practice testing and test result obsession, we have now created a generation of students who don't know anything else. For today's high school senior, all this test obsession is not some new thing that is threatening education-- it's what education is. For this generation, school is the place you go to get ready for big important tests.
For many of this generation (depending on the lucky or unlucky draw of a local district), a teacher is someone who helps students get ready for big tests. A teacher is someone who delivers a prepared program-in-a-box; they don't develop units or create material or do anything except open the box and unpack what's inside.
This makes the teaching profession hugely less appealing. "If I can help just one kid figure out the right bubble to fill in on his test, I will feel like I've made the world a better place," said no young person ever. The inspiring, exciting image of teaching-- the independence, the intellectual searching, the firing of imaginations, the sparking of young minds, the nurturing of fragile young souls, the passing on of vibrant living knowledge, the participation in the miracle of growth, the guiding on a path to being fully human-- all those things that fired us up about teaching-- we got that bug from our own teachers and our own school experience. But far more of today's young people associate school with the drudgery of clerical work, the autonomy of assembly line workers.
The Masters of Reforming Our Nation's Schools have done their best to refashion teaching into work as uninspiring as minimum wage work in a fast food chain. (Ironically, the one place we still find teaching described in such inspirational terms is in TFA propaganda.) We dislike what the MoRONS are trying to do to teaching so much that we fight; what in that sad new world of teaching would attract somebody.
Which is perhaps the more sobering implication. Because some people do still enter teacher prep programs. Some of them have had the fortune to encounter inspirational old-school teaching, to become fired up like the rest of us did. But some have encountered the new fast-food clerical status quo, and they're okay with it. "Teaching's not hard. Do what I'm told, prep them for a test. Easy peasy!" And those future clerks will do just well in college programs that spend less time on "How To Inspire Your Students" and more on "How To Use Aligned Standards To Raise Test Scores."
See, the coming teacher shortage is not just about having fewer people who call themselves teachers. It's also about new young people who will claim the name of teacher and won't really have any idea what they're talking about.
Part of the problem is that, at least in my part of Pennsylvania, the college-age demographic sector is shrinking, and so all college enrollment is shrinking. But as we look at the shrinking interest in joining our profession, I think we have a couple of factors to consider.
The obvious
Teachers have been getting slammed for a couple of decades now. Today's eighteen-year-olds have heard a lifetime of noise about how teachers are screwing up education, standing in the way of progress, failing in all meaningful ways. They have heard the backhanded attack fallacy that a teacher is the most important factor in a school, and schools are failing, so what do you suppose that means about teachers? They have heard that teachers suck, school suck, that US education is just a giant suckfest.
They have even heard (and I feel sad to have to admit it, because I think it's wrong) veteran teachers tell them, "Don't do it. Don't pursue teaching."
They have also heard that you don't really need to study teaching to be a teacher. Pittsburgh beat back an attempted incursion by Teach for America, but while that looked like a done deal, what message did it send to students entering their final year of a teacher prep program? "Don't bother. We're going to hire some business majors with five weeks of training. Those credentials you just spent four years acquiring don't mean jack to us."
I should also acknowledge that in some areas, massive staff cuts and school closings have created a situation of local teacher surplus. In places like Chicago this only underlines my last point, because certified teachers have in effect been replaced with untrained TFA and TNTP bodies. This all adds further to the "why bother" view of applying to college teaching programs.
These factors would be enough to drive down interest in the profession, but I don't think they're the whole story.
The less obvious
Most of us developed our idea of what school is about during our own years in school. "School" almost always means, especially at the start of a career, "the kind of school I grew up in."
As many of us have said before, high stakes test-driven accountability is not "reform"-- it's the status quo. After over a decade of test prep and test taking and practice testing and test result obsession, we have now created a generation of students who don't know anything else. For today's high school senior, all this test obsession is not some new thing that is threatening education-- it's what education is. For this generation, school is the place you go to get ready for big important tests.
For many of this generation (depending on the lucky or unlucky draw of a local district), a teacher is someone who helps students get ready for big tests. A teacher is someone who delivers a prepared program-in-a-box; they don't develop units or create material or do anything except open the box and unpack what's inside.
This makes the teaching profession hugely less appealing. "If I can help just one kid figure out the right bubble to fill in on his test, I will feel like I've made the world a better place," said no young person ever. The inspiring, exciting image of teaching-- the independence, the intellectual searching, the firing of imaginations, the sparking of young minds, the nurturing of fragile young souls, the passing on of vibrant living knowledge, the participation in the miracle of growth, the guiding on a path to being fully human-- all those things that fired us up about teaching-- we got that bug from our own teachers and our own school experience. But far more of today's young people associate school with the drudgery of clerical work, the autonomy of assembly line workers.
The Masters of Reforming Our Nation's Schools have done their best to refashion teaching into work as uninspiring as minimum wage work in a fast food chain. (Ironically, the one place we still find teaching described in such inspirational terms is in TFA propaganda.) We dislike what the MoRONS are trying to do to teaching so much that we fight; what in that sad new world of teaching would attract somebody.
Which is perhaps the more sobering implication. Because some people do still enter teacher prep programs. Some of them have had the fortune to encounter inspirational old-school teaching, to become fired up like the rest of us did. But some have encountered the new fast-food clerical status quo, and they're okay with it. "Teaching's not hard. Do what I'm told, prep them for a test. Easy peasy!" And those future clerks will do just well in college programs that spend less time on "How To Inspire Your Students" and more on "How To Use Aligned Standards To Raise Test Scores."
See, the coming teacher shortage is not just about having fewer people who call themselves teachers. It's also about new young people who will claim the name of teacher and won't really have any idea what they're talking about.
News from Institute of Grittology
Here at the Institute of Grittology, we're committed to helping monetize the work of our research partners, The Research Institute for the Study of Obvious Conclusions ("Working hard to recycle conventional wisdom as proprietary programing").
Our speakers bureau has determined that statements such as "treating children with support and kindness helps them do better in life" do not enhance the revenue stream. However, folks will fork over good money to hear "it is our collective responsibility to strive at all levels of our educational communities to provide environments for students that are calm, supportive, encouraging, thoughtful, and planned, which provide opportunities for students to ignite their latent capabilities to be resilient."
In addition to repackaging such insights as "people who don't quit tend to finish more stuff," we have found that Grittology also provides good cover for traditional management insights such as, "If people think you're abusive, they just need to suck it up and grow a pair." If people find a situation difficult, challenging, upsetting or oppressive, they should understand that it is because they lack sufficient grit. Moving forward, locating and identifying grittacious individuals will become increasingly important for employers who don't want to feel pressure to make their work environment more human-friendly.
Of course, in today's educational marketplace, to really sell grit we're going to need to collect some data in order to quantify the objectively measurable aspects of grit. We hope to be part of the great cradle-to-grave data trail because this will allow prospective employers to better assess the continued employable of individual human resource units vis-a-vis more efficacious application of task performance potential productivity growth ROI workplace retention growth. Also, we expect to make a shitload of money.
We have developed some testing tools for assessing an individual's Grit Or Resiliency Proficiency. The GORP score can be generated for school students. Here are some ample items.
For small children
Have the child sit in a small room and with a cute puppy. Once the child has had the opportunity to bond, enter the room, take the puppy, and tell the child, "This is your fault. You don't deserve nice things." and storm out. Observe child's reaction.
Below basic: Cries like some sort of baby.
Basic: Sniffles and sulks
Proficient: Calls parents to buy a new puppy
Advanced: Builds a puppy with materials in examination room
For older children
Tell the subject that his/her parents have been killed in a terrible car crash and the student will now have to go live in an orphanage
Below basic: Cries like some sort of baby
Basic: Curls up quietly in fetal position
Proficient: Runs away
Advanced: Plans to use estate to attend nice private school
For teens
Put teen in room with person they would find attractive who flirts with student for short period before abruptly announcing that the student "is too gross for anybody to ever love."
Below basic: Cries like some sort of baby
Basic: Whines and asks "Why don't you like me?"
Proficient: Says "Well, I know you are, but what am I"
Advanced: Offers to have parents buy attractive person a car
Human resources departments in school districts have also expressed an interest in using GORP scores as part of the hiring process. Intense research has demonstrated that people who tend to stick with their commitments tend to stick with their commitments, and as school working conditions become worse and worse, identifying employees who can put up with those conditions for a full teaching year is becoming cost-effective. We suggest GORP scoring be part of the hiring process. Here are some sample items for pre-employment GORP testing.
Sample GORP test item 1:
Lock applicant in room without food for forty-eight hours
Below basic: Dies
Basic: Becomes gravely ill
Proficient: Remains healthy but thin
Advanced: Calls his lawyer and arranges release
Sample GORP test item 2:
Punch applicant in the face
Below basic: Falls down
Basic: Falls down but gets up slowly
Proficient: Punches examiner back
Advanced: Calls lawyer and has district sued
Important note for school districts
Studies of grit suggest that grit is often associated with independent thought and inability to follow orders blindly. Too much grit in your teaching staff and before you know it you have test boycotts and union activity and teachers asking annoying questions in staff meetings. District human resource departments should ideally hire candidates whose GORP scores are only basic or proficient, as teachers with advanced GORP scores might not be willing to just quietly sit and take it.
Remember-- having grit is valuable and important, but not as important as being compliant and within all standard acceptable ranges of behavior. We need people in the workplace who can take abuse, but not people who will actually fight back.
Our speakers bureau has determined that statements such as "treating children with support and kindness helps them do better in life" do not enhance the revenue stream. However, folks will fork over good money to hear "it is our collective responsibility to strive at all levels of our educational communities to provide environments for students that are calm, supportive, encouraging, thoughtful, and planned, which provide opportunities for students to ignite their latent capabilities to be resilient."
In addition to repackaging such insights as "people who don't quit tend to finish more stuff," we have found that Grittology also provides good cover for traditional management insights such as, "If people think you're abusive, they just need to suck it up and grow a pair." If people find a situation difficult, challenging, upsetting or oppressive, they should understand that it is because they lack sufficient grit. Moving forward, locating and identifying grittacious individuals will become increasingly important for employers who don't want to feel pressure to make their work environment more human-friendly.
Of course, in today's educational marketplace, to really sell grit we're going to need to collect some data in order to quantify the objectively measurable aspects of grit. We hope to be part of the great cradle-to-grave data trail because this will allow prospective employers to better assess the continued employable of individual human resource units vis-a-vis more efficacious application of task performance potential productivity growth ROI workplace retention growth. Also, we expect to make a shitload of money.
We have developed some testing tools for assessing an individual's Grit Or Resiliency Proficiency. The GORP score can be generated for school students. Here are some ample items.
For small children
Have the child sit in a small room and with a cute puppy. Once the child has had the opportunity to bond, enter the room, take the puppy, and tell the child, "This is your fault. You don't deserve nice things." and storm out. Observe child's reaction.
Below basic: Cries like some sort of baby.
Basic: Sniffles and sulks
Proficient: Calls parents to buy a new puppy
Advanced: Builds a puppy with materials in examination room
For older children
Tell the subject that his/her parents have been killed in a terrible car crash and the student will now have to go live in an orphanage
Below basic: Cries like some sort of baby
Basic: Curls up quietly in fetal position
Proficient: Runs away
Advanced: Plans to use estate to attend nice private school
For teens
Put teen in room with person they would find attractive who flirts with student for short period before abruptly announcing that the student "is too gross for anybody to ever love."
Below basic: Cries like some sort of baby
Basic: Whines and asks "Why don't you like me?"
Proficient: Says "Well, I know you are, but what am I"
Advanced: Offers to have parents buy attractive person a car
Human resources departments in school districts have also expressed an interest in using GORP scores as part of the hiring process. Intense research has demonstrated that people who tend to stick with their commitments tend to stick with their commitments, and as school working conditions become worse and worse, identifying employees who can put up with those conditions for a full teaching year is becoming cost-effective. We suggest GORP scoring be part of the hiring process. Here are some sample items for pre-employment GORP testing.
Sample GORP test item 1:
Lock applicant in room without food for forty-eight hours
Below basic: Dies
Basic: Becomes gravely ill
Proficient: Remains healthy but thin
Advanced: Calls his lawyer and arranges release
Sample GORP test item 2:
Punch applicant in the face
Below basic: Falls down
Basic: Falls down but gets up slowly
Proficient: Punches examiner back
Advanced: Calls lawyer and has district sued
Important note for school districts
Studies of grit suggest that grit is often associated with independent thought and inability to follow orders blindly. Too much grit in your teaching staff and before you know it you have test boycotts and union activity and teachers asking annoying questions in staff meetings. District human resource departments should ideally hire candidates whose GORP scores are only basic or proficient, as teachers with advanced GORP scores might not be willing to just quietly sit and take it.
Remember-- having grit is valuable and important, but not as important as being compliant and within all standard acceptable ranges of behavior. We need people in the workplace who can take abuse, but not people who will actually fight back.
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Cloudy with a Chance of Data
There are so many reasons to be opposed to the business of mining and crunching data. We like to rail about how the data miners are oppressive and Big Brothery and overreaching. But there's another point worth making about our Data Overlords:
Data miners are not very good at their job.
My first wife and I divorced about twenty years ago. We have both since remarried and moved multiple times. And yet, I still get occasional pieces of mail for her here at my current home. The last time I looked at my credit report, it included me living at an address that she used after we split. I could try to get it changed but A) she is a responsible woman who I'm sure has excellent credit and B) have you ever tried to get info on your credit report changed?
As I work on this, several other browser windows are showing ads for K12. I cruised to some sites maybe two weeks ago doing research for some pieces about cyber charters, but now my browser and adsense are sure I'm in the market for cyberschool. It is tempting to click the ads repeatedly in order to drain k12's ad budget of another wasted 25 cents, but I would have to live with the consequences.
My brother and I have an old game we sometimes play. When pollsters call us, we answer opposite of our actual beliefs in order to feed the pollster false info. Because who says we can't or shouldn't?
Before anything of use can happen in the data cloud, two things must be true:
1) The data must be good.
The tools for collection must be accurate. Designing good data collection tools is hard. The Data Overlords are trying to convert all the tools of instruction and assessment into tools for data gathering, but that's not what they're generally designed to do. Most fundamentally, I collect data about a student to create a picture of that student, not to turn that student into one data point among millions.
But beyond the accuracy of the tool, there is the willingness of the data generators. I suspect this is a blind spot for Data Overlords-- they are so convinced of the importance of data collection that they don't necessarily understand that most of us feel no compelling reason to cooperate.
There is no moral imperative to help the Data Overlords gather accurate data.
2) The program for crunching it must be good.
In the late seventies I was studying BASIC programming language and our professor was reminding us repeatedly that computers are stupid machines that happen to possess speed and long attention spans. If we tell them to do stupid things, they will-- but really, really fast! A computer is not one whit "smarter" than the person who programmed it.
If the person writing the software believes that knowing "2 + 2 = 5" means you're ready for calculus, the program will find many six-year-olds are prepared for math courses.
Put another way, a computer doesn't know how to predict anything that no human being knows how to predict, and it particularly doesn't know how to predict anything involving a series of complicated data points that the software writer failed to anticipate. So a human being could easily figure out that my ex-wife doesn't live here, but the software lacks the complexity to pull together the right data. And a human being could figure out that I used some of my brother's airline points to get a magazine subscription, but the software thinks he might live here, too.
The software can't figure out how to put every single person together with his/her perfect romantic match. It can't figure out exactly what movie you want to watch right this minute. And it doesn't know that I hope K12 dies a permanent death.
It's as simple as GIGO-- bad data processed poorly yields no useful results. Waving your laser pointer and intoning, "Look! Compuuuuters! Data! Data made out of numbers!! It's magical!!" will not convince me to cheerfully welcome my New Data Overlords.
Data miners are not very good at their job.
My first wife and I divorced about twenty years ago. We have both since remarried and moved multiple times. And yet, I still get occasional pieces of mail for her here at my current home. The last time I looked at my credit report, it included me living at an address that she used after we split. I could try to get it changed but A) she is a responsible woman who I'm sure has excellent credit and B) have you ever tried to get info on your credit report changed?
As I work on this, several other browser windows are showing ads for K12. I cruised to some sites maybe two weeks ago doing research for some pieces about cyber charters, but now my browser and adsense are sure I'm in the market for cyberschool. It is tempting to click the ads repeatedly in order to drain k12's ad budget of another wasted 25 cents, but I would have to live with the consequences.
My brother and I have an old game we sometimes play. When pollsters call us, we answer opposite of our actual beliefs in order to feed the pollster false info. Because who says we can't or shouldn't?
Before anything of use can happen in the data cloud, two things must be true:
1) The data must be good.
The tools for collection must be accurate. Designing good data collection tools is hard. The Data Overlords are trying to convert all the tools of instruction and assessment into tools for data gathering, but that's not what they're generally designed to do. Most fundamentally, I collect data about a student to create a picture of that student, not to turn that student into one data point among millions.
But beyond the accuracy of the tool, there is the willingness of the data generators. I suspect this is a blind spot for Data Overlords-- they are so convinced of the importance of data collection that they don't necessarily understand that most of us feel no compelling reason to cooperate.
There is no moral imperative to help the Data Overlords gather accurate data.
2) The program for crunching it must be good.
In the late seventies I was studying BASIC programming language and our professor was reminding us repeatedly that computers are stupid machines that happen to possess speed and long attention spans. If we tell them to do stupid things, they will-- but really, really fast! A computer is not one whit "smarter" than the person who programmed it.
If the person writing the software believes that knowing "2 + 2 = 5" means you're ready for calculus, the program will find many six-year-olds are prepared for math courses.
Put another way, a computer doesn't know how to predict anything that no human being knows how to predict, and it particularly doesn't know how to predict anything involving a series of complicated data points that the software writer failed to anticipate. So a human being could easily figure out that my ex-wife doesn't live here, but the software lacks the complexity to pull together the right data. And a human being could figure out that I used some of my brother's airline points to get a magazine subscription, but the software thinks he might live here, too.
The software can't figure out how to put every single person together with his/her perfect romantic match. It can't figure out exactly what movie you want to watch right this minute. And it doesn't know that I hope K12 dies a permanent death.
It's as simple as GIGO-- bad data processed poorly yields no useful results. Waving your laser pointer and intoning, "Look! Compuuuuters! Data! Data made out of numbers!! It's magical!!" will not convince me to cheerfully welcome my New Data Overlords.
Who Puts the Scary in Pearson? Meet Knewton.
Behind the data generating-and-collecting behemoth that is Pearson is a company called Knewton. And here's a video from the November 2012 Education Datapallooza (a name that I did NOT make up, but was officially given the event by the Dept of Education, because they are so hip. I believe they also listen to the rap music). In just under ten minutes, Jose Ferreira, Knewton CEO, delivers the clearest picture I've ever seen of the intentions of the Acolytes of Data. (H/T to Anne Patrick.)
He opens with the notion that in the next few decades, we will become a totally data mined world. There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about that, but that's another post. He may well be right. He believes that has big implications for education, because while everybody is just collecting data in dribs and drabs, education is the Great River O'Data.
Knewton is now (and remember-- "now" is 2012) collecting millions of data points per day per student. And they can do that because these are students who are plugged into Pearson, and Pearson has tagged every damn thing. And it was this point at which I had my first light bulb moment.
All that aligning we've been doing, all that work to mark our units and assignments and, in some places, every single work sheet and assignment so that we can show at a glance that these five sentences are tied to specific standards-- all those PD afternoons we spent marking Worksheet #3 as Standard LA.12.B.3.17-- that's not, as some of us have assumed, just the government's hamfisted way of making sure we've toed the line.
It's to generate data.
Worksheet #3 is tagged LA.12.B.3.17, so that when Pat does the sheet his score goes into the Big Data Cloud as part of the data picture of Pat's work. (If you'd already figured this out, forgive me-- I was never the fastest kid in class).
Knewton will generate this giant data picture. Ferreira presents this the same way you'd say, "Once we get milk and bread at the store," when I suspect it's really more on the order of "Once we cure cancer by using our anti-gravity skateboards," but never mind. Once the data maps are up and running, Knewton will start operating like a giant educational match.com, connecting Pat with a perfect educational match so that Pat's teacher in Iowa can use the technique that some other teacher used with some other kid in Minnesota. Because students are just data-generating widgets.
Ferreira is also impressed that the data was able to tell him that some students in a class are slow and struggling, while another student could take the final on Day 14 and get an A, and for the five billionth time I want to ask this Purveyor of Educational Revolution, "Just how stupid do you think teachers are?? Do you think we are actually incapable of figuring those sorts of things out on our own?"
But don't be insulted-- it's not just teachers who are stupid, but the students themselves. Knewton imagines a day when they can tell students how they best learn and under what conditions. Will you do best watching videos or reading? "We should be able to tell you what you should have for breakfast [to do well on a test]"
Because human beings are simple linear systems and if you measure all the inputs, you can predict all the outputs? That seems to be our assumption, and even I, a high school English teacher for crying out loud, know enough about chaos theory and the systems of complex systems to know that that is a fool's game. (If you want to read more about it, and you should, I highly recommend Chaos by James Gleick)
Beyond the privacy implications and the human-beings-as-widgets implications and the necessity to tag every damn sentence of every damn assignment so our data overlords may drink their fill-- beyond all that, there are implications for what an education means.
One aspect of becoming an educated person is getting to know yourself, to understand your strengths and weaknesses, your abilities and deficits, defining your own character, and making choices about how to be in the world as a your particular version of a human being.
How, I wonder, do we adjust to software that attempts to do most of that for you? How do you get to know who you are when you've got a software program looking over your shoulder and telling you all about who you are with implacable inhuman data-driven assurance? It's a huge question and one that I feel unsure of how to answer. I wish the guys at Knewton shared a little bit of my fear and unsureness.
UPDATE: Twitter user Barmak Nassirian directed my attention to this article, which provides an even more complete view of exactly how Knewton thinks they can accomplish their goals. It confirms the impression that these are guys who know a lot more about data systems than about carbon based life forms. It's long-- but it's interesting reading.
"The New Intelligence" by Steve Kolowich. Inside Higher Ed.
He opens with the notion that in the next few decades, we will become a totally data mined world. There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about that, but that's another post. He may well be right. He believes that has big implications for education, because while everybody is just collecting data in dribs and drabs, education is the Great River O'Data.
Knewton is now (and remember-- "now" is 2012) collecting millions of data points per day per student. And they can do that because these are students who are plugged into Pearson, and Pearson has tagged every damn thing. And it was this point at which I had my first light bulb moment.
All that aligning we've been doing, all that work to mark our units and assignments and, in some places, every single work sheet and assignment so that we can show at a glance that these five sentences are tied to specific standards-- all those PD afternoons we spent marking Worksheet #3 as Standard LA.12.B.3.17-- that's not, as some of us have assumed, just the government's hamfisted way of making sure we've toed the line.
It's to generate data.
Worksheet #3 is tagged LA.12.B.3.17, so that when Pat does the sheet his score goes into the Big Data Cloud as part of the data picture of Pat's work. (If you'd already figured this out, forgive me-- I was never the fastest kid in class).
Knewton will generate this giant data picture. Ferreira presents this the same way you'd say, "Once we get milk and bread at the store," when I suspect it's really more on the order of "Once we cure cancer by using our anti-gravity skateboards," but never mind. Once the data maps are up and running, Knewton will start operating like a giant educational match.com, connecting Pat with a perfect educational match so that Pat's teacher in Iowa can use the technique that some other teacher used with some other kid in Minnesota. Because students are just data-generating widgets.
Ferreira is also impressed that the data was able to tell him that some students in a class are slow and struggling, while another student could take the final on Day 14 and get an A, and for the five billionth time I want to ask this Purveyor of Educational Revolution, "Just how stupid do you think teachers are?? Do you think we are actually incapable of figuring those sorts of things out on our own?"
But don't be insulted-- it's not just teachers who are stupid, but the students themselves. Knewton imagines a day when they can tell students how they best learn and under what conditions. Will you do best watching videos or reading? "We should be able to tell you what you should have for breakfast [to do well on a test]"
Because human beings are simple linear systems and if you measure all the inputs, you can predict all the outputs? That seems to be our assumption, and even I, a high school English teacher for crying out loud, know enough about chaos theory and the systems of complex systems to know that that is a fool's game. (If you want to read more about it, and you should, I highly recommend Chaos by James Gleick)
Beyond the privacy implications and the human-beings-as-widgets implications and the necessity to tag every damn sentence of every damn assignment so our data overlords may drink their fill-- beyond all that, there are implications for what an education means.
One aspect of becoming an educated person is getting to know yourself, to understand your strengths and weaknesses, your abilities and deficits, defining your own character, and making choices about how to be in the world as a your particular version of a human being.
How, I wonder, do we adjust to software that attempts to do most of that for you? How do you get to know who you are when you've got a software program looking over your shoulder and telling you all about who you are with implacable inhuman data-driven assurance? It's a huge question and one that I feel unsure of how to answer. I wish the guys at Knewton shared a little bit of my fear and unsureness.
UPDATE: Twitter user Barmak Nassirian directed my attention to this article, which provides an even more complete view of exactly how Knewton thinks they can accomplish their goals. It confirms the impression that these are guys who know a lot more about data systems than about carbon based life forms. It's long-- but it's interesting reading.
"The New Intelligence" by Steve Kolowich. Inside Higher Ed.
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