[Update: Damn. This is why I don't ordinarily try to do the work of an actual journalist-- this story has been zigging and zagging all day. I have updated accordingly. I suppose I could rewrite the earlier version and pretend that I haven't had to revise, but that seems cheaty.]
This morning I updated you on the progress of Ethan's Act, the bill in the Florida capitol that was proposing the incredibly radical notion that maybe children suffering through extraordinary difficulties should be easily released from their mandate to take the states Big Test. If you've forgotten the backstory, go read. I'll wait.
The news this morning was that the language Ethan's Act had been attached to an accountability measure, HB 7117. Ethan's name was erased, but perhaps the bill itself would still serve as a legacy.
Comes word this afternoon that HB 7117 is a huge smelly manurefest of a bill that nobody likes, and that its backers were simply trying to absorb Ethan's Law as a piece of political protective covering. State Rep. Karen Castor Dentel has been played, and Andrea Pratt Rediske has to absorb yet another insult in her pursuit of what should be common sense.
[Update: Some folks have taken to e-mail to assure me that this bill is not all that terrible. I'm not a Floridian-- I don't know what passes for non-terrible in Florida education. But at the very least, I need to acknowledge that not all Floridians hate the bill.]
[Update: One other interpretation of events is that this was maneuvering to get the language of the original bill into law without allowing anyone to score political points from it. Can't have a pesky anti-test activist mom getting credit for anything, nor would we want to memorialize a reminder of just how screwed-up the Florida laws have been. Remember-- we only memorialize child victims if they weren't a victim of the actual government.
It has also been noted-- correctly, as I read the language-- that the new language is actually stronger than the original version of Ethan's Law]
The people who have been vocally supporting this crusade now find themselves having to oppose a bill that would have brought Rediske's dream to fruition, while the very people who blocked the advance of Ethan's Law (like Rep. Adkins) try to use the story of this grieving parent to further their own agenda. I know politics are politics, but exactly how low do you have to stoop in order to make opportunistic use of the death of an 11-year-old boy?
The bill involves, among other things, a trade-off of a three year delay for a one-year pause. Florida parents don't believe one year is sufficient to wait on implementing full on "accountability measures" (the usual crap soup of testing etc), and that aspect has been a sticking point. The bill sticks with the grading of schools as well, which people are unhappy about in FL. And it attempts to create a "smooth transition" for Florida education.
In this video, you can find Rep. Adkins making her impassioned plea (at the 1:36:00 mark). She manages to use Ethan Rediske as a political prop without even naming him or the bill that she has co-opted, and she invokes her own motherhood and speaks with oh-so-much-deep feelings. She has allllll the feelings. Schools need to be graded so that schools feel urgency to do a good job (because schools never work well unless they're threatened). But let's not talk about that. Let's remind you all how much you want to do something rational and right for special needs students.
I am as sad and angry as I have ever been at politicians. This is so cynical and nasty and just wrong. Make no mistake-- HB 7117 is a bill that completely deserves to die. But today the Florida House Appropriations subcommittee voted it out of committee, and so it will next make its way toward a vote. It deserves to die. Ethan's Law does not. Can anybody, somebody, somewhere, find at least one Florida legislator with the guts, the brains, the savvy, and the conscience to do the right thing here?
[Update: The good-ish news is that FEA, FSBA and Sup't Association are all now reportedly recommending passage of HB 7117. Likewise, word comes that there is work going on to fix some of the problem areas of the bill-- most notably the one year pause. So it is possible that things may work out well in the end.]
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Ethan's Act Update
UPDATE: This story has taken an ugly political turn, and the note of hope that I struck here was severely pre-mature. Please read this update to the update.
Andrea Pratt Rediske is disappointed and frustrated, but as I'm "talking" to her on facebook this morning before school, she has finally received word about the current fate of the Florida bill that carries her son's name.
You will recognize Andrea Rediske as the mother of Ethan Rediske, who made news as the victim of Florida's bizarrely Kafka-esque testing rules. Ethan was born with cerebral palsy, brain damage, and blindness. Taking the FCAT was both hugely, insanely useless given the level of his cognitive capabilities, but worse than that, the challenge of taking the test was literally physical torture for him. And yet Florida required an annual pile of fresh paperwork to issue Ethan a waiver from the test.
This last year, the state required a note from Ethan's hospice to prove that the child was, in fact, dying.
Andrea Rediske is not a wimp. She is a professor of microbiology, and about the challenges of raising a child with extraordinary needs she once wrote
"My faith teaches me that motherhood is a sacred responsibility, and I am the mother of a severely disabled 10-year-old who has the cognitive ability of a 6-month-old. My son is ‘invisible’ to society—he is too medically fragile to attend school, church, or even go to the grocery store. He has no voice except mine, and I continually battle profit-driven insurance companies to meet his medical needs."
I can only imagine the stress and strain of caring for a comatose, dying child while fending off the state bureaucracy that demands documentation of the weight your family is carrying. But Rediske had the additional strength to bring her son's case before the world as an example of just how badly out of whack the testing culture has become. And her struggles weren't done.
Ethan passed away in February. Rediske continued the fight to protect students with extraordinary needs from the testing juggernaut. FL Commissioner of Education Pam Stewart issued a stunningly tone deaf letter to all teachers that seemed to suggest that taking the FCAT is a wonderful privilege of which special needs students must not be deprived.
Examples of test abuse piled up (how about making a blind student answer picture-based items). State Rep. Karen Castor Dentel, D-Maitland, filed a bill to streamline the process of exempting students with extraordinary needs from testing. She named the bill House Bill 895 "The Ethan Rediske Act."
That was almost a month ago. And then, as the wheels of politics do, the wheels stopped. Rediske could not get word back from the state capitol. She could not find out what was happening with Ethan's bill.
As of this morning, March 26, she knows. The Ethan Rediske Act has been folded into FL HB 7117, a larger bill about school accountability. The bill is 47 pages long, but back on page 38 she found this language:
9) CHILD WITH MEDICAL COMPLEXITY.
(a) As used in this subsection, the term "child with medical complexity" means a child who is medically fragile and needs intensive care due to a condition such as a congenital or acquired multisystem disease or who has a severe neurologic condition with marked functional impairment.
(b) Effective July 1, 2014, a student may not participate in statewide, standardized assessments, including taking the Florida Alternate Assessment, if the student's IEP team, with parental consent, determines that it is inappropriate for the student to participate. The IEP team's determination must be based upon compelling medical documentation froma physician licensed under chapter 458 stating that the student is a child with medical complexity and lacks the capacity to take or perform on an assessment. The district school superintendent must review and approve the IEP team's recommendation.
(c) The district school superintendent shall report annually to the district school board and the Department of Education the number of students who are identified as a child with medical complexity who are not participating in the assessment program
So the news this morning is that Ethan's Act is still alive after a fashion. Protection for children like him is now included in a larger bill, tucked away in the back pages just as students like Ethan used to be tucked away in a back room. But if HB 7117 finally becomes law, the intent of Ethan's Act will become law with it, if not the name.
Meanwhile, it does not appear that Andrea Rediske is learning to love politics. One wonders why it is necessary to work the machinery and feed the agendas and manage the process when it seems so simple to just look at the way standardized tests become devices of torture for special needs students, simple to look at that and say, "Holy smokes! That is messed up! Let's fix that right now."
I know nobody wants to see the political sausages made, but it's nice to imagine that our politicians can see the right thing to do, and then just do it. Thanks goodness we have parents with the kind of strength and devotion displayed by Andrea Rediske. She may not have the comfort of seeing her son's name take its place on an important Florida law, but she can at least see that reaction to his story is on its way to ending a troubling injustice.
Andrea Pratt Rediske is disappointed and frustrated, but as I'm "talking" to her on facebook this morning before school, she has finally received word about the current fate of the Florida bill that carries her son's name.
You will recognize Andrea Rediske as the mother of Ethan Rediske, who made news as the victim of Florida's bizarrely Kafka-esque testing rules. Ethan was born with cerebral palsy, brain damage, and blindness. Taking the FCAT was both hugely, insanely useless given the level of his cognitive capabilities, but worse than that, the challenge of taking the test was literally physical torture for him. And yet Florida required an annual pile of fresh paperwork to issue Ethan a waiver from the test.
This last year, the state required a note from Ethan's hospice to prove that the child was, in fact, dying.
Andrea Rediske is not a wimp. She is a professor of microbiology, and about the challenges of raising a child with extraordinary needs she once wrote
"My faith teaches me that motherhood is a sacred responsibility, and I am the mother of a severely disabled 10-year-old who has the cognitive ability of a 6-month-old. My son is ‘invisible’ to society—he is too medically fragile to attend school, church, or even go to the grocery store. He has no voice except mine, and I continually battle profit-driven insurance companies to meet his medical needs."
I can only imagine the stress and strain of caring for a comatose, dying child while fending off the state bureaucracy that demands documentation of the weight your family is carrying. But Rediske had the additional strength to bring her son's case before the world as an example of just how badly out of whack the testing culture has become. And her struggles weren't done.
Ethan passed away in February. Rediske continued the fight to protect students with extraordinary needs from the testing juggernaut. FL Commissioner of Education Pam Stewart issued a stunningly tone deaf letter to all teachers that seemed to suggest that taking the FCAT is a wonderful privilege of which special needs students must not be deprived.
Examples of test abuse piled up (how about making a blind student answer picture-based items). State Rep. Karen Castor Dentel, D-Maitland, filed a bill to streamline the process of exempting students with extraordinary needs from testing. She named the bill House Bill 895 "The Ethan Rediske Act."
That was almost a month ago. And then, as the wheels of politics do, the wheels stopped. Rediske could not get word back from the state capitol. She could not find out what was happening with Ethan's bill.
As of this morning, March 26, she knows. The Ethan Rediske Act has been folded into FL HB 7117, a larger bill about school accountability. The bill is 47 pages long, but back on page 38 she found this language:
9) CHILD WITH MEDICAL COMPLEXITY.
(a) As used in this subsection, the term "child with medical complexity" means a child who is medically fragile and needs intensive care due to a condition such as a congenital or acquired multisystem disease or who has a severe neurologic condition with marked functional impairment.
(b) Effective July 1, 2014, a student may not participate in statewide, standardized assessments, including taking the Florida Alternate Assessment, if the student's IEP team, with parental consent, determines that it is inappropriate for the student to participate. The IEP team's determination must be based upon compelling medical documentation froma physician licensed under chapter 458 stating that the student is a child with medical complexity and lacks the capacity to take or perform on an assessment. The district school superintendent must review and approve the IEP team's recommendation.
(c) The district school superintendent shall report annually to the district school board and the Department of Education the number of students who are identified as a child with medical complexity who are not participating in the assessment program
So the news this morning is that Ethan's Act is still alive after a fashion. Protection for children like him is now included in a larger bill, tucked away in the back pages just as students like Ethan used to be tucked away in a back room. But if HB 7117 finally becomes law, the intent of Ethan's Act will become law with it, if not the name.
Meanwhile, it does not appear that Andrea Rediske is learning to love politics. One wonders why it is necessary to work the machinery and feed the agendas and manage the process when it seems so simple to just look at the way standardized tests become devices of torture for special needs students, simple to look at that and say, "Holy smokes! That is messed up! Let's fix that right now."
I know nobody wants to see the political sausages made, but it's nice to imagine that our politicians can see the right thing to do, and then just do it. Thanks goodness we have parents with the kind of strength and devotion displayed by Andrea Rediske. She may not have the comfort of seeing her son's name take its place on an important Florida law, but she can at least see that reaction to his story is on its way to ending a troubling injustice.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Rhee Scores Perfect 0%
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.
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.
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.
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