Les Perelman is a hero of mine. The former director of undergraduate writing at MIT has been one of the smartest, sanest voices in the seemingly-endless debate about the use of computers to assess student writing. And now he has a new tool.
Babel (the Basic Automatic B.S. Essay Language Generator) was created by Perelman with a team of students from MIT and Harvard, and it's pretty awesome as laid out in a recent article by Steve Kolowich for The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Given the keyword "privacy," Babel generated a full essay from scratch. More accurately, it generated "a string of bloated sentences" that were grammatically and structurally correct. Here's a sample:
Privateness has not been and undoubtedly never will be lauded,
precarious, and decent. Humankind will always subjugate
privateness.
Run through MY Assess! (one of the many online writing instruction products out there), Babel's privacy essay scored a 5.4 out of 6, including strong marks for "focus and meaning" and "language use and style."
Perelman has demonstrated repeatedly over the past decade that "writing" means something completely different to designers of essay-grading software and, well, human beings. When Mark Shermis and Ben Hammer produced a study in 2012 claiming that there was no real difference over 22,000 essays between human grading and computer grading, Perelman dismembered the study with both academic rigor and human-style brio. The whole take-down is worth reading, but here's one pull quote that underlines how Shermis and Hammer fail to even define what they mean by "writing."
One major problem with the study is the lack of any explicit construct of writing.
Without such a construct, it is, of course, impossible to judge the
validity of any measurement. Writing is foremost a rhetorical act, the
transfer of information, feelings, and opinions from one mind to another
mind. The exact nature of the writing construct is much too complex to
outline here; suffice it to say that it differs fundamentally from the
Shermis and Hammer study in that the construct of writing cannot be
judged like the answer to a math problem or GPS directions. The essence
of writing, like all human communication, is not that it is true or
false, correct or incorrect, but that it is an action, that it does
something in the world.
Computer-graded writing is the ultimate exercise in deciding that the things that matter are the things that can be measured. And while measuring the quality of human communication might not be impossible, it comes pretty damn close.
There are things that computers (nor minimum-wage human temps with
rubrics in hand) cannot measure. Does it make sense? Is the information
contained in it correct? Does it show some personality? Is it any good? So computer programs measure what can be measured. Are these sentences? Are there a lot of them? Do they have different lengths? Do they include big words? Do they mimic the language of the prompt?
And as Perelman and Babel show, if it's so simple a computer can score it, it's also simple enough for a computer to do it. Babel's "writing" is what you get when you reduce writing to a simple mechanical act. Babel's "writing" is what you get when you remove everything that makes "writing" writing. It's not just that the emperor has no clothes; it's that he's not even an emperor at all.
In the comments section of the Chronicles article, you can find people still willing to stick up for the computer grader with what have become familiar refrains.
"So what if the system can be gamed. A student who could do that kind of fakery would be showing mastery of writing skills." Well, no. That student might be showing mastery of some sort of skill, but it wouldn't be writing. And no mastery of anything is really required-- at my high school, we achieved near-100% proficiency on the state writing test by teaching our students to
1) Fill up the page
2) Write neatly
3) Indent clearly
4) Repeat the prompt
5) Use big words, even if you don't know what they mean ("plethora" was a fave of ours)
Software can be useful. I teach my students to do some fairly mechanical analyses of their work (find all the forms of "be," check to see what the first four words of each sentence are structurally, count the simple sentences), but these are only a useful tool, not the most useful tool or even the only tool. I'm not anti-software, but there are limits. Most writing problems are really thinking problems (but that's another column).
Babel demonstrates, once again, that computer grading of essays completely divorces the process from actual writing. HALO may be very exciting, but getting the high score with my squad does not mean I'm ready to be a Marine Lieutenant.
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Is There No Common Ground? Well.....
I sympathize with Peter DeWitt, the former K-5 principal who has morphed into a pundit/trainer. In his blog at EdWeek he can often be found trying to chart a course between the Scylla of the CCSS-based Reformsters and the Charybdis of rabid opposition to any changey things in school while sailing under the Pigpen's Black Cloud of corporate deceitfulness with the Pebble of rhetorical purity tests in his shoe.
I get the desire to believe that surely we're all adults here and we ought to be able to work things out like intelligent human beings. Much of his writing has been about finding middle ground, bridges between the two sides, and he most recently addressed the idea directly in a blog entitled Education: Is There No Common Ground.
I understand the value of that question. A decade ago when we were on strike, one of my oft-repeated sound bites was "This is not a contest for one side to win, but a problem for all of us to solve together." DeWitt says he named his blog "Finding Common Ground" because he "was hoping to meet in the middle on some tough issues." I want to believe that's possible, because in general I believe that where people are pursuing what appear to be different goals, they are often pursuing the same values, but in different ways.
But after wading through the swamp of current education debates, I've reluctantly come to believe that some of our biggest issues are the result of fundamentally different values-- and that creates an unbridgeable gap.
We value the students, the young human beings who are trying to grow into their best selves. Reformsters value students only as cogs in the machine, a part of a system that is built to generate outputs and throughputs. When given a choice between what's good for the system and what's good for the students, reformsters pick the system. They say that they want the system to work well in order to insure students success, but they do not see a value for student success beyond using it to prove that the system is functioning well.
We value testing that helps us make more informed choices about how best to identify and meet the needs of individual students. Reformsters value testing that generates the numbers that prove how well the system is working.
We value standards that give us a guide for the direction student education should take. Reformsters value standards that keep the system trim and in line. We think good standards allow for human variety within teachers and students. Reformsters think good standards correct (i.e. wipe out) individual variations within the system.
We value the toughness and ingenuity to use limited resources to make a difference. Reformasters value the opportunity to make a buck.
We think teachers are the front line soldiers in education who have devoted their lives to the job. Reformsters think teachers are the main obstacle to education in this country.
We think people who are in trouble need help. Reformsters they need to be kicked in the butt and cast aside.
We believe that American public education is a system worth saving. Reformsters believe it is a system worth stripping for parts and destroying.
We believe in a process that allows all voices to be heard, that allows for discussion and revision and redirecting, open to all stakeholders. Reformsters believe that if you don't have money or powerful friends, you don't count and your voice is, at most, an annoyance.
That is perhaps the most frustrating part of these bridging discussions. While men of good faith like Peter DeWitt are really trying to keep the possibility of finding common ground open, reformsters like Duncan and Pearson and the Gates et al have no interest in even opening the door to such a conversation. They don't need to talk to the little people, and they so no reason they should have to.
You know who fought tirelessly to maintain peace between the British government and their American colonies? Benjamin Franklin. Franklin desperately and repeatedly worked to do his very best to find common ground with Great Britain, believing fervently that there was more to unite us than separate us. It was one of the great disappointments of his life when he stood (by some accounts) in Parliament, listened to the British, and realized finally that there was no common ground, there would be no bridge, that the British government did not have peace or bridge-building or anything remotely resembling the best interests of the colonies in mind.
I've had my Ben Franklin moment, and I suspect, at some point, Peter DeWitt is going to have his. I admire him for his optimism. I just can't share it any more. I still want to understand, and I still believe that there may be some people tucked in among the reformsters who are good faith and good intent, but I am no longer in the market to buy a bridge.
I get the desire to believe that surely we're all adults here and we ought to be able to work things out like intelligent human beings. Much of his writing has been about finding middle ground, bridges between the two sides, and he most recently addressed the idea directly in a blog entitled Education: Is There No Common Ground.
I understand the value of that question. A decade ago when we were on strike, one of my oft-repeated sound bites was "This is not a contest for one side to win, but a problem for all of us to solve together." DeWitt says he named his blog "Finding Common Ground" because he "was hoping to meet in the middle on some tough issues." I want to believe that's possible, because in general I believe that where people are pursuing what appear to be different goals, they are often pursuing the same values, but in different ways.
But after wading through the swamp of current education debates, I've reluctantly come to believe that some of our biggest issues are the result of fundamentally different values-- and that creates an unbridgeable gap.
We value the students, the young human beings who are trying to grow into their best selves. Reformsters value students only as cogs in the machine, a part of a system that is built to generate outputs and throughputs. When given a choice between what's good for the system and what's good for the students, reformsters pick the system. They say that they want the system to work well in order to insure students success, but they do not see a value for student success beyond using it to prove that the system is functioning well.
We value testing that helps us make more informed choices about how best to identify and meet the needs of individual students. Reformsters value testing that generates the numbers that prove how well the system is working.
We value standards that give us a guide for the direction student education should take. Reformsters value standards that keep the system trim and in line. We think good standards allow for human variety within teachers and students. Reformsters think good standards correct (i.e. wipe out) individual variations within the system.
We value the toughness and ingenuity to use limited resources to make a difference. Reformasters value the opportunity to make a buck.
We think teachers are the front line soldiers in education who have devoted their lives to the job. Reformsters think teachers are the main obstacle to education in this country.
We think people who are in trouble need help. Reformsters they need to be kicked in the butt and cast aside.
We believe that American public education is a system worth saving. Reformsters believe it is a system worth stripping for parts and destroying.
We believe in a process that allows all voices to be heard, that allows for discussion and revision and redirecting, open to all stakeholders. Reformsters believe that if you don't have money or powerful friends, you don't count and your voice is, at most, an annoyance.
That is perhaps the most frustrating part of these bridging discussions. While men of good faith like Peter DeWitt are really trying to keep the possibility of finding common ground open, reformsters like Duncan and Pearson and the Gates et al have no interest in even opening the door to such a conversation. They don't need to talk to the little people, and they so no reason they should have to.
You know who fought tirelessly to maintain peace between the British government and their American colonies? Benjamin Franklin. Franklin desperately and repeatedly worked to do his very best to find common ground with Great Britain, believing fervently that there was more to unite us than separate us. It was one of the great disappointments of his life when he stood (by some accounts) in Parliament, listened to the British, and realized finally that there was no common ground, there would be no bridge, that the British government did not have peace or bridge-building or anything remotely resembling the best interests of the colonies in mind.
I've had my Ben Franklin moment, and I suspect, at some point, Peter DeWitt is going to have his. I admire him for his optimism. I just can't share it any more. I still want to understand, and I still believe that there may be some people tucked in among the reformsters who are good faith and good intent, but I am no longer in the market to buy a bridge.
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Malloy: I Didn't Bring That Ugly Girl to the Prom
Connecticut Governor Dannel P. Malloy has joined the parade of politicians working to backpedal like a boss away from the Common Core.
On the CTMonitor site, Jacqueline Rabe Thomas recaps Malloy's Monday interview on NPR.
Malloy does his best to create fear and trepidation for anybody considering an opt-out for testing, and his best includes raising the specter of the feds cracking down. "If too many students opt out," he says in what I imagine to be his spooky voice, "the federal government will take our money and find us in violation of No Child Left Behind. I hear that Washington State is going to lose $40 million for losing their waiver, and we don't want to do that!"
This is, at best, a fuzzy version of the truth, but it is actually an interesting invitation to a cost/benefits analysis. Will it cost Connecticut more to continue complying with the Duncan Waiver Edict than it would cost them to stay in compliance? Because "Spend fifty dollars or else I will fine you ten" is not all that compelling an argument.
But Malloy seems to know he's on shaky ground because instead of doubling down on his federal oogie-boogerie, he throws DWE under the bus.
I didn't adopt Common Core. My predecessor did. Like handling the deficit, I was also handed the problem of seeing this implemented.
Well, that certainly speaks to Malloy's great confidence in the value of the CCSS. "The Common Core: As Appealing As Massive Budget Deficits" would make an awesome slogan for the standards, though I'm guessing we won't be seeing it a lot, and Malloy will probably not get his invitation to the next CCSS Boosters Ball.
Thomas wraps the piece up with appropriate journalistic dryness:
While former Gov. M. Jodi Rell entered the state into an agreement with other states to implement Common Core, the Malloy administration signed an agreement in 2012 with the federal government to implement the new standards and tests in order to receive a federal waiver to the No Child Left Behind law.
While we're rejecting slogans, we can probably throw out "Dannel Malloy: Because Courage and Truth-telling Are Overrated" as a campaign slogan.
On the CTMonitor site, Jacqueline Rabe Thomas recaps Malloy's Monday interview on NPR.
Malloy does his best to create fear and trepidation for anybody considering an opt-out for testing, and his best includes raising the specter of the feds cracking down. "If too many students opt out," he says in what I imagine to be his spooky voice, "the federal government will take our money and find us in violation of No Child Left Behind. I hear that Washington State is going to lose $40 million for losing their waiver, and we don't want to do that!"
This is, at best, a fuzzy version of the truth, but it is actually an interesting invitation to a cost/benefits analysis. Will it cost Connecticut more to continue complying with the Duncan Waiver Edict than it would cost them to stay in compliance? Because "Spend fifty dollars or else I will fine you ten" is not all that compelling an argument.
But Malloy seems to know he's on shaky ground because instead of doubling down on his federal oogie-boogerie, he throws DWE under the bus.
I didn't adopt Common Core. My predecessor did. Like handling the deficit, I was also handed the problem of seeing this implemented.
Well, that certainly speaks to Malloy's great confidence in the value of the CCSS. "The Common Core: As Appealing As Massive Budget Deficits" would make an awesome slogan for the standards, though I'm guessing we won't be seeing it a lot, and Malloy will probably not get his invitation to the next CCSS Boosters Ball.
Thomas wraps the piece up with appropriate journalistic dryness:
While former Gov. M. Jodi Rell entered the state into an agreement with other states to implement Common Core, the Malloy administration signed an agreement in 2012 with the federal government to implement the new standards and tests in order to receive a federal waiver to the No Child Left Behind law.
While we're rejecting slogans, we can probably throw out "Dannel Malloy: Because Courage and Truth-telling Are Overrated" as a campaign slogan.
The New Enemies List
The Tea Party threat is over. Well, over-ish.
I've been writing about this in the context of other topics, but I believe it deserves its own attention. Over the past ten days, I've noticed a shift in the narrative about the Enemies of the Core. Back in the day, the Core's enemies were those crazy fringe Tea Partiers. No longer.
On April 21, The Daily Beast attributed attacks on the Core to "an unholy alliance between the Tea Party and the teachers' unions." That article got some play across the internet.
By last weekend, the calmer voice of MSNBC reporter/commentator Steve Kornacki was also discussing Core opposition under the headline of "Unions and Tea Party Find Common Ground."
Yesterday, Michael Petrilli at the Core-loving Thomas B. Fordham Institute was discussing opposition and dividing it into two basic groups-- Libertarians and conservatives on the right, and the NEA on the left. No Tea Party in sight, but the union wanted to use this chance to back away from policy "it has never liked in the first place." Not only do unions oppose CCSS now, but despite but what you may remember seeing and hearing, they never did. Hooray for rewrites of history.
And of course today, Brookings releases a new "study" showing that both unions and teachers are the biggest problem with education reform.
I popped on over to the NEA websites to see any signs of this new opposition, but no-- at NEAToday the most current CCSS article is still President Dennis Van Roekel's weak and almost-immediately-backpedaled-from denunciation of the implementation of the core. That was back in mid-February. At nea.org, a link to a CCSS-shilling article about how change can be swell is still on the front page. So if the NEA is opposing CCSS, it's doing so very very quietly.
Why make the extra effort to hold up the unions as CCSS opponents? Are we trying to bring conservatives to heel on CCSS by trotting out the standard boogie-men of unions? Are we just putting more weight into the Reformster narrative of teachers as the biggest obstacles to education (just as doctors and nurses are the biggest threat to health).
I'm going to read the timing as desperation. It wasn't that long ago that Reformsters were busily trying to convince teachers that all teachers really lerve the Core. Apparently we've stopped trying to sell that story and we're heading back to teachers as education-hating obstacles to truth, beauty and the American way. I can live with it.
I've been writing about this in the context of other topics, but I believe it deserves its own attention. Over the past ten days, I've noticed a shift in the narrative about the Enemies of the Core. Back in the day, the Core's enemies were those crazy fringe Tea Partiers. No longer.
On April 21, The Daily Beast attributed attacks on the Core to "an unholy alliance between the Tea Party and the teachers' unions." That article got some play across the internet.
By last weekend, the calmer voice of MSNBC reporter/commentator Steve Kornacki was also discussing Core opposition under the headline of "Unions and Tea Party Find Common Ground."
Yesterday, Michael Petrilli at the Core-loving Thomas B. Fordham Institute was discussing opposition and dividing it into two basic groups-- Libertarians and conservatives on the right, and the NEA on the left. No Tea Party in sight, but the union wanted to use this chance to back away from policy "it has never liked in the first place." Not only do unions oppose CCSS now, but despite but what you may remember seeing and hearing, they never did. Hooray for rewrites of history.
And of course today, Brookings releases a new "study" showing that both unions and teachers are the biggest problem with education reform.
I popped on over to the NEA websites to see any signs of this new opposition, but no-- at NEAToday the most current CCSS article is still President Dennis Van Roekel's weak and almost-immediately-backpedaled-from denunciation of the implementation of the core. That was back in mid-February. At nea.org, a link to a CCSS-shilling article about how change can be swell is still on the front page. So if the NEA is opposing CCSS, it's doing so very very quietly.
Why make the extra effort to hold up the unions as CCSS opponents? Are we trying to bring conservatives to heel on CCSS by trotting out the standard boogie-men of unions? Are we just putting more weight into the Reformster narrative of teachers as the biggest obstacles to education (just as doctors and nurses are the biggest threat to health).
I'm going to read the timing as desperation. It wasn't that long ago that Reformsters were busily trying to convince teachers that all teachers really lerve the Core. Apparently we've stopped trying to sell that story and we're heading back to teachers as education-hating obstacles to truth, beauty and the American way. I can live with it.
Petrilli Warns of the Day After
Fordham has deployed the Damage Control team of Michael Petrilli to put up an article at the Governing website. Petrilli and his sidekick Michael Brickman (who, sadly, did not even get his picture on this article for which he's billed as co-writer) have a warning for Common Core foes:
Like a dog that finally catches the bus he'd been chasing forever, what happens when opponents of the Common Core State Standards finally succeed in getting a state's policymakers to "repeal" the education initiative? Early signs from Indiana and elsewhere suggest that the opponents' stated goals are likely to get run over.
The Thomas B. Fordham Insitute is a thinky tank that famously was paid both to promote and evaluate the Core, and they've been carrying water for it ever since. In particular, Fordham has been trying to thread the needle of whipping up conservative support for the Core. This article hints about the newest angle of spin they'll be attempting.
Petrilli acknowledges that opposition to CCSS is not "monolithic," and he proceeds to break it down. On the right we have Libertarians who want states to reject everything, and conservatives who want higher standards. Both want to get the feds out of the ed biz; Petrilli and Brickman think those folks are swell. On the left, "the National Education Association sees an opportunity to push back against a policy it never liked in the first place." Lefties object to the Core because of teacher evaluations and the standards being "too hard." Petrilli and Brickman think these guys are full of it.
Indiana and Oklahoma are hitting the rewind button hard, but no state is giving up the whole package because they don't want to give up the money attached, and because they don't trust the schools to do right by students if there aren't measures and sanctions.
But Indiana critics are also unhappy because the new standards look a lot like the Core (only, Petrilli claims, wimpier and suckier). But they should not be surprised, because "if the goal is to align the Hoosier K-12 system with the expectations of colleges and employers, standards drafters will inexorably come to many of the same conclusions."
See? If you want to get your students ready for college and career, you will unavoidably reach the exact same conclusions as the crafters of the Core, because they were just that good and just that correct, and one size really does fit all.
Indiana's new standards (like other "new" standards) don't AT ALL resemble CCSS because state leaders were trying to get rid of the political albatross of the Common Core brand without pissing off Arne Duncan and his Big Buckets of Money. The new standards' resemblance to the Core is not the result of political tap-dancing-- it's the result of the inevitable, inescapable Rightness of the Core. Relax. One way or another, you will all be assimilated.
What about states that want to keep the Core and ditch the Tests? Petrilli warns that new tests will be really, really expensive (not like the PARCC and SBA with their annual massive per-student costs added on top of a complete rebuild of computer infrastructure-- those things were a damn bargain).
What about the criticism that we aren't allowed to change or alter the Core. Of all the people who have pointed this True Thing out, Petrilli picks Phyllis Schafly (!!!) to carry that quote. He says, sure, states can make changes, like how some states added cursive writing, and I guess Petrelli conveniently forgot the 15% rule on additions. Though honestly-- he probably has a point here. If you do mess with the Core exactly who is going to come after you, and with what?
"Is there a better way forward?" Short Petrilli answer-- no. Leaders should grasp the business case for the Core (not the educational one, Mike?) "Half measures designed to mollify the critics will not cut it. The best that policymakers can do is to give voice to their concerns and then get out of the way." And so we return to one of the recurring themes of the Reformsters-- Democracy sucks, and people who aren't as wise as their betters should just be ignored.
It's worth noting that the CCSS support has shifted. From "Don't even go near that door" we've shifted to "Don't even put your hand on the doorknob" to "Okay, well, you may have turned the handle, but you better not pull the door the rest -- no no-- don't open it any more!!" You'll be sorry. Big costs and much inconvenience, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!I look forward to his next column, "Wait Till Your Father Gets Home."
[Edited: Apparently I don't know how to spell Mike Petrilli's name before I've had my morning bagel]
Like a dog that finally catches the bus he'd been chasing forever, what happens when opponents of the Common Core State Standards finally succeed in getting a state's policymakers to "repeal" the education initiative? Early signs from Indiana and elsewhere suggest that the opponents' stated goals are likely to get run over.
The Thomas B. Fordham Insitute is a thinky tank that famously was paid both to promote and evaluate the Core, and they've been carrying water for it ever since. In particular, Fordham has been trying to thread the needle of whipping up conservative support for the Core. This article hints about the newest angle of spin they'll be attempting.
Petrilli acknowledges that opposition to CCSS is not "monolithic," and he proceeds to break it down. On the right we have Libertarians who want states to reject everything, and conservatives who want higher standards. Both want to get the feds out of the ed biz; Petrilli and Brickman think those folks are swell. On the left, "the National Education Association sees an opportunity to push back against a policy it never liked in the first place." Lefties object to the Core because of teacher evaluations and the standards being "too hard." Petrilli and Brickman think these guys are full of it.
Indiana and Oklahoma are hitting the rewind button hard, but no state is giving up the whole package because they don't want to give up the money attached, and because they don't trust the schools to do right by students if there aren't measures and sanctions.
But Indiana critics are also unhappy because the new standards look a lot like the Core (only, Petrilli claims, wimpier and suckier). But they should not be surprised, because "if the goal is to align the Hoosier K-12 system with the expectations of colleges and employers, standards drafters will inexorably come to many of the same conclusions."
See? If you want to get your students ready for college and career, you will unavoidably reach the exact same conclusions as the crafters of the Core, because they were just that good and just that correct, and one size really does fit all.
Indiana's new standards (like other "new" standards) don't AT ALL resemble CCSS because state leaders were trying to get rid of the political albatross of the Common Core brand without pissing off Arne Duncan and his Big Buckets of Money. The new standards' resemblance to the Core is not the result of political tap-dancing-- it's the result of the inevitable, inescapable Rightness of the Core. Relax. One way or another, you will all be assimilated.
What about states that want to keep the Core and ditch the Tests? Petrilli warns that new tests will be really, really expensive (not like the PARCC and SBA with their annual massive per-student costs added on top of a complete rebuild of computer infrastructure-- those things were a damn bargain).
What about the criticism that we aren't allowed to change or alter the Core. Of all the people who have pointed this True Thing out, Petrilli picks Phyllis Schafly (!!!) to carry that quote. He says, sure, states can make changes, like how some states added cursive writing, and I guess Petrelli conveniently forgot the 15% rule on additions. Though honestly-- he probably has a point here. If you do mess with the Core exactly who is going to come after you, and with what?
"Is there a better way forward?" Short Petrilli answer-- no. Leaders should grasp the business case for the Core (not the educational one, Mike?) "Half measures designed to mollify the critics will not cut it. The best that policymakers can do is to give voice to their concerns and then get out of the way." And so we return to one of the recurring themes of the Reformsters-- Democracy sucks, and people who aren't as wise as their betters should just be ignored.
It's worth noting that the CCSS support has shifted. From "Don't even go near that door" we've shifted to "Don't even put your hand on the doorknob" to "Okay, well, you may have turned the handle, but you better not pull the door the rest -- no no-- don't open it any more!!" You'll be sorry. Big costs and much inconvenience, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!I look forward to his next column, "Wait Till Your Father Gets Home."
[Edited: Apparently I don't know how to spell Mike Petrilli's name before I've had my morning bagel]
Monday, April 28, 2014
Branding Education
What if we were serious about treating education like a business?
I recently finished an advance copy of What Great Brands Do by Denise Lee Yohn. It is a book that has absolutely nothing to do with education. Instead, Yohn looks at how brands from Kodak to Nike fail or succeed, and how building a brand leads to a higher level of real success.
Yohn has been around through several decades of corporate work from Frito-Lay through the rescue work of Sony. She is a business uber-expert. So let's see what happens if we measure the Education Reform Brand with the yardsticks delievered in her book. Yohn presents seven brand-building principles, and it takes her a whole book to do it, so I'll be grossly over-simplifying here. So what else is new.
Great Brands Start Inside
This chapter was the one that immediately made me think of education reform. She is loaded with great pull quotes.
It's always easier to change what you say about your company than it is to actually change your company.
Or this quote she passes on from Sam Palmisano at IBM:
When your business is primarily based on knowledge, [then] people-- rather than products-- become your brand.
Yohn tells the story of IBM's reboot to underline the need to build a brand that grows from the inside, that is an outgrowth of the culture of the people who do the work of the company. She shows a process in which the company starts by finding out what their culture is (not insisting on what they think it is, or should be) and then generating a new culture by starting with employees as the foundational building blocks.
In other words, brand building can't be done as a top-down imposition with an eye on the customer experience and making that customer experience reflect the values.
In the case of the Reformy Status Quo, we already know how much the people on the inside have been involved in creating the brand culture-- not at all. But this view also shows how the brand fails. No matter what Reformsters say about their brand, the customer experience of students is high stakes standardized testing and the preparation for it.
We can see this in the tenor of the current push back. For most of the customers of Reformy Status Quo, the Test is the ultimate expression of what the whole brand is about.
Yohn quotes Jim Collins: "The great companies are internally driven, externally aware." Ed Reform has been deaf to the voices of teachers inside the system, and blind to the results for students outside of it.
Great Brands Avoid Selling Products
Yohn opens with the story of Nike's momentous decision to scrap an ad campaign about how Nike started the fitness revolution and instead launched "Just Do It."
We humans are emotional creatures. We make our purchases based on how products make us feel. That's why great brands succeed by seeking intimate emotional connection with customers. Either the product satisfies and emotional need I have ("I want to feel healthy and successful") or it offers me access to a self-identity that I want to experience and express ("I'm an athlete").
Education should be able to lock into this-- we are all about helping students fulfill desires and express self-identity. But RSQ has deliberately rejected all of this.
We know what David Coleman has to say about what you feel and think ("Nobody gives a shit") and the whole RSQ movement has been like. We don't care about feelings, emotions-- we want data, meeting standards, hitting benchmarks. We want kids to show grit, not whine. Once I started thinking about this, I was struck by how completely RSQ has worked to strip all emotional language from discussion of education. How your child feels about going to school and getting an education is immaterial. Be college and career ready as a mechanical meeting of a standard requirement, not because it will allow you to realize hopes and dreams about yourself, to become the person you dream of being.
It's striking, the degree to which RSQ passed up the chance to make the debate all about hopes and dreams and aspirations and emotions. Instead, the message has been charts and data and, when feelings are mentioned, it's only to suggest that students should feel bad (and get rigor). In that context, one of Yohn's sub-headings really jumps out--
Emotions Trump Efficacy
Great brands are built on feelings, an emotional connection between the customer and the company. Not unlike the emotional connection that so many people feel for their local school, the emotional connection that so many Reformsters believe an obstacle rather than the point.
Great Brands Ignore Trends
If you follow trends, you are always behind. RSQ goes one step behinder by following trends that are already fading because they have failed. Vouchers, VAM, stack ranking, standardized testing-- all trends borrowed from the business world and all being dropped just as RSQ is setting them in cement.
Yohn points out the value of being a challenge brand, and to their credit the Reformsters have tried to frame themselves as challengers of the status quo. They just.... aren't. As one of Yohn's subheadings notes,
It's Not the Data; It's What You Do With It
Great Brands Don't Chase Customers
The idea here is that having a strong brand attracts customers. A "lighthouse brand" doesn't chase customers, but rather lets them come.
Oddly enough, old school charter schools (back before the primary metric for a charter was ROI) used this. Be very good at something, wait for students who want that thing to sign up. But "without a strong sense of self, a brand doesn't inspire success." What projects a strong sense of self? If we go back to the top, we're reminded that the projection comes from the customer experience and relationship with the brand employees who are suffused with the brand culture.
Meanwhile, the RSQ chases students with butterfly nets, trying to grab them up with all manner of charter takeovers and faux parent triggers.
Great Brands Sweat the Small Stuff
Attention to detail. Attention to design. Making sure that every choice is an expression of the brand culture. "The mark of a great brand is not being obsessive compulsive; it is being intentional."
This also means that a brand's dysfunctional qualities will be reflected in the details, which is where we are with RSQ. CCSS supporters complain that critics are picking away at tiny details, but it is in the tiny details that they reveal themselves. In fact, in some details (like the lack of any real plan for how RSQ will affect special needs students), they reveal what they think is tiny and unimportant (answer: special needs student population).
Yohn has advice on how to catch this: experience your brand like a customer. If Reformsters want to really experience the brand, they need to get in a classroom, take a PARCC. Yohn also talks about silos, and how disconnected parts of the company lead to a clunky, just-plain-bad customer experience. Such as when standards development is disconnected from testing is disconnected from materials development is disconnected from staff development (if any).
Great Brands Commit and Stay Committed
This is the story, for instance, of how Krispy Kreme gets more interested in expanding and making big bucks than in making especially good donuts. The problem about commitment with RSQ is that Reformsters are committed to things like political power, making money, pushing their agenda, and winning. Lots of things other than education.
Commitment to education would look like, "We are going to find the best practices, no matter how much we have to search, who we have to talk to, how many of our pet theories we have to abandon." Instead, Reformsters make commitments like "Nobody can change the CCSS at all."
What you commit to, no matter what, is what identifies your brand. Reformsters are not comitted to education.
If you made a list of all the things your brand is able to do, you'd probably find that the list is quite long. Now try compiling another list, the list of what your brand was made to do.
Common Core and the testing regime attached to it are defined around what we are able to do. Try to find me a teacher, even a CCSS-supporting teacher, who looks at the Core and says, "This is what I was made to do." Commitment is about identifying core competencies and staying focused on them. RSQ has defined education's core competency as data generation and testing. This is not what we were born to do.
Great Brands Never Have To "Give Back"
"Great brands are themselves becoming a force for positive social change, rather than simply supporting external programs."
Yohn lists four traits to consider when looking at this aspect of a brand:
*Success-- quality products and financially strong
*Fairness-- well-priced, good value, honest and decent relationships with customers
*Responsibility-- respectful of employees
*Trust-- consistently delivers on promises about products and services
So, zero out of four for the Reformsters.
What Have We Learned
Yohn certainly isn't the only business consultant in the world, and I am certainly the last person in the world to argue that education should be measured with the yardstick of the business world.
But at the very least, this look at an actual book about current business theory demonstrates that EVEN BY BUSINESS STANDARDS, the Reformsters are failing. Many other writers and I have spun out light-years of wordage to demonstrate that Reformsters have failed by our standards, by the standards of the education world. But it is well worth noting that they have also failed by their own standards, by the standards of good brand management.
I recently finished an advance copy of What Great Brands Do by Denise Lee Yohn. It is a book that has absolutely nothing to do with education. Instead, Yohn looks at how brands from Kodak to Nike fail or succeed, and how building a brand leads to a higher level of real success.
Yohn has been around through several decades of corporate work from Frito-Lay through the rescue work of Sony. She is a business uber-expert. So let's see what happens if we measure the Education Reform Brand with the yardsticks delievered in her book. Yohn presents seven brand-building principles, and it takes her a whole book to do it, so I'll be grossly over-simplifying here. So what else is new.
Great Brands Start Inside
This chapter was the one that immediately made me think of education reform. She is loaded with great pull quotes.
It's always easier to change what you say about your company than it is to actually change your company.
Or this quote she passes on from Sam Palmisano at IBM:
When your business is primarily based on knowledge, [then] people-- rather than products-- become your brand.
Yohn tells the story of IBM's reboot to underline the need to build a brand that grows from the inside, that is an outgrowth of the culture of the people who do the work of the company. She shows a process in which the company starts by finding out what their culture is (not insisting on what they think it is, or should be) and then generating a new culture by starting with employees as the foundational building blocks.
In other words, brand building can't be done as a top-down imposition with an eye on the customer experience and making that customer experience reflect the values.
In the case of the Reformy Status Quo, we already know how much the people on the inside have been involved in creating the brand culture-- not at all. But this view also shows how the brand fails. No matter what Reformsters say about their brand, the customer experience of students is high stakes standardized testing and the preparation for it.
We can see this in the tenor of the current push back. For most of the customers of Reformy Status Quo, the Test is the ultimate expression of what the whole brand is about.
Yohn quotes Jim Collins: "The great companies are internally driven, externally aware." Ed Reform has been deaf to the voices of teachers inside the system, and blind to the results for students outside of it.
Great Brands Avoid Selling Products
Yohn opens with the story of Nike's momentous decision to scrap an ad campaign about how Nike started the fitness revolution and instead launched "Just Do It."
We humans are emotional creatures. We make our purchases based on how products make us feel. That's why great brands succeed by seeking intimate emotional connection with customers. Either the product satisfies and emotional need I have ("I want to feel healthy and successful") or it offers me access to a self-identity that I want to experience and express ("I'm an athlete").
Education should be able to lock into this-- we are all about helping students fulfill desires and express self-identity. But RSQ has deliberately rejected all of this.
We know what David Coleman has to say about what you feel and think ("Nobody gives a shit") and the whole RSQ movement has been like. We don't care about feelings, emotions-- we want data, meeting standards, hitting benchmarks. We want kids to show grit, not whine. Once I started thinking about this, I was struck by how completely RSQ has worked to strip all emotional language from discussion of education. How your child feels about going to school and getting an education is immaterial. Be college and career ready as a mechanical meeting of a standard requirement, not because it will allow you to realize hopes and dreams about yourself, to become the person you dream of being.
It's striking, the degree to which RSQ passed up the chance to make the debate all about hopes and dreams and aspirations and emotions. Instead, the message has been charts and data and, when feelings are mentioned, it's only to suggest that students should feel bad (and get rigor). In that context, one of Yohn's sub-headings really jumps out--
Emotions Trump Efficacy
Great brands are built on feelings, an emotional connection between the customer and the company. Not unlike the emotional connection that so many people feel for their local school, the emotional connection that so many Reformsters believe an obstacle rather than the point.
Great Brands Ignore Trends
If you follow trends, you are always behind. RSQ goes one step behinder by following trends that are already fading because they have failed. Vouchers, VAM, stack ranking, standardized testing-- all trends borrowed from the business world and all being dropped just as RSQ is setting them in cement.
Yohn points out the value of being a challenge brand, and to their credit the Reformsters have tried to frame themselves as challengers of the status quo. They just.... aren't. As one of Yohn's subheadings notes,
It's Not the Data; It's What You Do With It
Great Brands Don't Chase Customers
The idea here is that having a strong brand attracts customers. A "lighthouse brand" doesn't chase customers, but rather lets them come.
Oddly enough, old school charter schools (back before the primary metric for a charter was ROI) used this. Be very good at something, wait for students who want that thing to sign up. But "without a strong sense of self, a brand doesn't inspire success." What projects a strong sense of self? If we go back to the top, we're reminded that the projection comes from the customer experience and relationship with the brand employees who are suffused with the brand culture.
Meanwhile, the RSQ chases students with butterfly nets, trying to grab them up with all manner of charter takeovers and faux parent triggers.
Great Brands Sweat the Small Stuff
Attention to detail. Attention to design. Making sure that every choice is an expression of the brand culture. "The mark of a great brand is not being obsessive compulsive; it is being intentional."
This also means that a brand's dysfunctional qualities will be reflected in the details, which is where we are with RSQ. CCSS supporters complain that critics are picking away at tiny details, but it is in the tiny details that they reveal themselves. In fact, in some details (like the lack of any real plan for how RSQ will affect special needs students), they reveal what they think is tiny and unimportant (answer: special needs student population).
Yohn has advice on how to catch this: experience your brand like a customer. If Reformsters want to really experience the brand, they need to get in a classroom, take a PARCC. Yohn also talks about silos, and how disconnected parts of the company lead to a clunky, just-plain-bad customer experience. Such as when standards development is disconnected from testing is disconnected from materials development is disconnected from staff development (if any).
Great Brands Commit and Stay Committed
This is the story, for instance, of how Krispy Kreme gets more interested in expanding and making big bucks than in making especially good donuts. The problem about commitment with RSQ is that Reformsters are committed to things like political power, making money, pushing their agenda, and winning. Lots of things other than education.
Commitment to education would look like, "We are going to find the best practices, no matter how much we have to search, who we have to talk to, how many of our pet theories we have to abandon." Instead, Reformsters make commitments like "Nobody can change the CCSS at all."
What you commit to, no matter what, is what identifies your brand. Reformsters are not comitted to education.
If you made a list of all the things your brand is able to do, you'd probably find that the list is quite long. Now try compiling another list, the list of what your brand was made to do.
Common Core and the testing regime attached to it are defined around what we are able to do. Try to find me a teacher, even a CCSS-supporting teacher, who looks at the Core and says, "This is what I was made to do." Commitment is about identifying core competencies and staying focused on them. RSQ has defined education's core competency as data generation and testing. This is not what we were born to do.
Great Brands Never Have To "Give Back"
"Great brands are themselves becoming a force for positive social change, rather than simply supporting external programs."
Yohn lists four traits to consider when looking at this aspect of a brand:
*Success-- quality products and financially strong
*Fairness-- well-priced, good value, honest and decent relationships with customers
*Responsibility-- respectful of employees
*Trust-- consistently delivers on promises about products and services
So, zero out of four for the Reformsters.
What Have We Learned
Yohn certainly isn't the only business consultant in the world, and I am certainly the last person in the world to argue that education should be measured with the yardstick of the business world.
But at the very least, this look at an actual book about current business theory demonstrates that EVEN BY BUSINESS STANDARDS, the Reformsters are failing. Many other writers and I have spun out light-years of wordage to demonstrate that Reformsters have failed by our standards, by the standards of the education world. But it is well worth noting that they have also failed by their own standards, by the standards of good brand management.
The Gates Wants Higher Ed To Take a Stand
Over at Inside Higher Ed, Dan Greenstein and Vicki Phillips are making yet another pitch for the Core on behalf of the Gates Foundation (Greenstein is director of postsecondary success and Pillips is director of education). I would love to tell you that they have shiny new talking points to offer, but no-- it's the same old fluffernuttery. Here's the breakdown.
They begin with a mystery-- why, they have wondered, don't more young people who start college actually earn degrees. They had reams of data (really? like what, pray tell) but they wanted to hear from college leaders, and let me say that it's refreshing to hear reformsters say that sometimes you just have to ignore the data and actually talk to people.
So they asked college leaders what the barriers to success were, and shockingly, college leaders responded with a resounding, "Hey, it's not our fault. It's those damn high schools." G & P note that the complaint was most prevalent at community colleges, which I take as a big fat hint. I've discussed the college unreadiness phenomenon before, but here's my short theory-- college freshmen are increasingly unready for college because colleges are increasingly accepting students who are clearly not ready for college. This might be related to the increasing college full court marketing press aimed at convincing every student on the planet that OMGZ they must has college or they will fail and be poor.
And about the P word-- the research tells us repeatedly that what is linked to school achievement? What's that, boys and girls? Yes, poverty. And which students are most likely to enroll in community colleges? That's right-- poor ones. So two graphs in, I'm ready to solve this mystery for them. But no-- they are headed in another direction.
So, is this view an attack on high school educators? Not at all. We see this as a reason for K-12 and higher education leaders to work together on behalf of students. It’s exactly why higher education leaders must engage with the Common Core State Standards — the biggest and boldest effort in a generation to ensure every student is prepared to succeed in college and the workforce.
For too long, they opine, we have taught to standards that don't match knowledge and skills needed for post-secondary success. The CCSS were designed to address this by providing rrrrrigorous goals for all students. No matter where they live or what they want to do after school, this one size will fit all. HOW do we know the CCSS match the knowledge and skills needed for post-secondary success? Because we just do, shut up.
The new standards move far beyond memorizing facts and figures. They challenge our students to develop a deeper understanding of subject matter, to think critically, and to apply what they are learning to the real world.
And thank God for that, because in my classroom we have never done anything but memorize stuff and poke rocks with sticks. Yes, a critical part of the CCSS sales pitch remains the implication that all schools and teachers have been mired in stone-age teaching techniques and general stupidity. Tell me again the part about how this is not an attack on high school educators.
Specifically, the full and faithful implementation of the Common Core could all but eliminate the need for colleges to provide academic remediation to students enrolling in college immediately after graduating from high school.
I am out of words. This sentence is like a black hole of dumb that just sucks the air out of my brain.
CCSS is not curriculum, nor does it prescribe content, I hear. But any student going to any college who earned any grades from any courses at any high school will be fully prepared to be a freshman at any college. Even in the fantasyland that reformsters occupy, how does that work. How. Does. That. Work.
G & P follow up with the news that Kentucky adopted the Core and their percentage of grads ready for college and career increased from 38% to 47% in a single year, a statement is only true if you believe that a single bubble test will tell you whether someone is college and career ready or not. I don't. You don't. Bill "We'll have to wait a decade to see if this works" Gates doesn't. And I don't believe that G & P believe it either.
This imaginary college readiness will reduce the college time and save students lots of money, and I am sure that the colleges who are trying to con my former students into taking extra remedial course they don't need will welcome the chance to make less income with wide open arms.
G & P say another swell benefit of the Core will be purposeful connection between high schools and colleges and I say, bring it on, since colleges currently ignore us when we do everything attach a blinking red sign on transcripts that screams "This student is not ready for college!" Of course, we often talk about our students preparing themselves for college, and clearly they bear no responsibility at all.
But now to the action item portion of this piece.
Many colleges are working to align their freshman course to fit the new high school course standards and-- wait! what? Let me see if I follow this.
We rewrote high school standards to better match expectations of college freshman courses. Now we are rewriting freshman course expectations to match the new high school standards. So in fact the Core Standards are actually written on a Moebius strip? The back of the Worm Ouroborus? Or somebody just made them up from air and is now using circular reasoning to make it look like they have some objective basis. One of those three. Got it.
Anyway, G & P want to sound the alarm, because some groups are "working to purposefully undermine them with misinformation that isn't about quality." Critics continue to claim that CCSS are improper federal overreach, that educators weren't involved in creating them, and that they dictate curriculum. And here we arrive at the plea of this article:
The higher education community is in a unique position to reinforce what matters most, affirming the quality of the Common Core State Standards and attesting that the standards are aligned to better prepare students for credit-bearing courses.
They begin with a mystery-- why, they have wondered, don't more young people who start college actually earn degrees. They had reams of data (really? like what, pray tell) but they wanted to hear from college leaders, and let me say that it's refreshing to hear reformsters say that sometimes you just have to ignore the data and actually talk to people.
So they asked college leaders what the barriers to success were, and shockingly, college leaders responded with a resounding, "Hey, it's not our fault. It's those damn high schools." G & P note that the complaint was most prevalent at community colleges, which I take as a big fat hint. I've discussed the college unreadiness phenomenon before, but here's my short theory-- college freshmen are increasingly unready for college because colleges are increasingly accepting students who are clearly not ready for college. This might be related to the increasing college full court marketing press aimed at convincing every student on the planet that OMGZ they must has college or they will fail and be poor.
And about the P word-- the research tells us repeatedly that what is linked to school achievement? What's that, boys and girls? Yes, poverty. And which students are most likely to enroll in community colleges? That's right-- poor ones. So two graphs in, I'm ready to solve this mystery for them. But no-- they are headed in another direction.
So, is this view an attack on high school educators? Not at all. We see this as a reason for K-12 and higher education leaders to work together on behalf of students. It’s exactly why higher education leaders must engage with the Common Core State Standards — the biggest and boldest effort in a generation to ensure every student is prepared to succeed in college and the workforce.
For too long, they opine, we have taught to standards that don't match knowledge and skills needed for post-secondary success. The CCSS were designed to address this by providing rrrrrigorous goals for all students. No matter where they live or what they want to do after school, this one size will fit all. HOW do we know the CCSS match the knowledge and skills needed for post-secondary success? Because we just do, shut up.
The new standards move far beyond memorizing facts and figures. They challenge our students to develop a deeper understanding of subject matter, to think critically, and to apply what they are learning to the real world.
And thank God for that, because in my classroom we have never done anything but memorize stuff and poke rocks with sticks. Yes, a critical part of the CCSS sales pitch remains the implication that all schools and teachers have been mired in stone-age teaching techniques and general stupidity. Tell me again the part about how this is not an attack on high school educators.
Specifically, the full and faithful implementation of the Common Core could all but eliminate the need for colleges to provide academic remediation to students enrolling in college immediately after graduating from high school.
I am out of words. This sentence is like a black hole of dumb that just sucks the air out of my brain.
CCSS is not curriculum, nor does it prescribe content, I hear. But any student going to any college who earned any grades from any courses at any high school will be fully prepared to be a freshman at any college. Even in the fantasyland that reformsters occupy, how does that work. How. Does. That. Work.
G & P follow up with the news that Kentucky adopted the Core and their percentage of grads ready for college and career increased from 38% to 47% in a single year, a statement is only true if you believe that a single bubble test will tell you whether someone is college and career ready or not. I don't. You don't. Bill "We'll have to wait a decade to see if this works" Gates doesn't. And I don't believe that G & P believe it either.
This imaginary college readiness will reduce the college time and save students lots of money, and I am sure that the colleges who are trying to con my former students into taking extra remedial course they don't need will welcome the chance to make less income with wide open arms.
G & P say another swell benefit of the Core will be purposeful connection between high schools and colleges and I say, bring it on, since colleges currently ignore us when we do everything attach a blinking red sign on transcripts that screams "This student is not ready for college!" Of course, we often talk about our students preparing themselves for college, and clearly they bear no responsibility at all.
But now to the action item portion of this piece.
Many colleges are working to align their freshman course to fit the new high school course standards and-- wait! what? Let me see if I follow this.
We rewrote high school standards to better match expectations of college freshman courses. Now we are rewriting freshman course expectations to match the new high school standards. So in fact the Core Standards are actually written on a Moebius strip? The back of the Worm Ouroborus? Or somebody just made them up from air and is now using circular reasoning to make it look like they have some objective basis. One of those three. Got it.
Anyway, G & P want to sound the alarm, because some groups are "working to purposefully undermine them with misinformation that isn't about quality." Critics continue to claim that CCSS are improper federal overreach, that educators weren't involved in creating them, and that they dictate curriculum. And here we arrive at the plea of this article:
The higher education community is in a unique position to reinforce what matters most, affirming the quality of the Common Core State Standards and attesting that the standards are aligned to better prepare students for credit-bearing courses.
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