I often criticize the core (and other standards-- while I know some decent, intelligent people like the idea of some sort of national standards, I do not) by calling it a "one size fits all" solution.But I'm wrong.
It's a handy shorthand phrase-- just four words and everybody knows what you mean. But it's not precisely correct.
"One size fits all" imagines a world where tailors make suits in just one size. People come put on the suit-- the suit is too small or too large or not correctly shaped for them. So the tailor says, "Oh well, you'll just have to make do," and we have a world of people walking around in misshapen ill-fitting suits.
But that's not what's going on.
Imagine instead a world where the tailors only make suits in one size. One tall man comes in to try on the suit, and it's too short for him. "We will fix that," says the tailor, who pulls out a saw and cuts six inches out of the middle of the man's legs. Another man comes in who is, well, fluffy. The suit is tight. "You," says the tailor sternly, "you must go sit in the basement. You may not have a job or go out into the world until you fit in that suit." Another man comes in and he's too short. The tailor calls up the police, gives the man's address, and sends the police to arrest his mother for giving birth to a too-short man.
Education under a CCSS regime is not "one size fits all." It's "all must fit one size." It's not "We'll ty this on for size and if it doesn't fit, it sucks to be you." It's "You must fit this, or there will be consequences. You will be punished for not fitting what we made for you."
What is sold as "individualization" is not an offer to re-tailor the suit to fit, but a series of protocol for teaching tall customers how to slouch and fluffy customers to suck in their gut. Personalized education programs are not about adjusting the one size at all.
The CCSS is the worst kind of regime, the kind that views individual strengths and weaknesses and interests and skills as a problem to be fixed. We are not centered on the needs of the students; we are supposed to make the students serve the system, the standards, the test. We will not measure the success of education by how well it meets the students' needs; we'll now measure education by how well it makes the students adjust to the needs of the system.
"One size fits all" would actually be an improvement. What the CCSS regime offers is far worse.
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Pearson Eats PARCC
Relax and stop resisting. You will be assimilated.
Yesterday PARCC, one of the two giant consortia of high stakes standardized testing, announced that they will become part of the giant corporate beast that is Pearson. PARCC's negotiator described the contract as having "unprecedented scale." Pearson has promised a price cut ($24 per student, marked down from $29.50) but the scale of this product sale will be so huge. So huge. And really-- if you're producing a single standardized test for tens of millions of "customers," what does it really cost you to produce per unit? What is Pearson's markup on this product? I'm guessing that's information we won't have soon.
There were no competing bids. As Mercedes Schneider points out, we have now achieved the "economies of scale" that Bill Gates touted as one of the reasons to have education reform.
This has always been part of the point. It's so pesky to have to deal with all those different school districts as customers. Let's rig the system so that every customer must buy the same thing. Think of how much easier, how much more profitable the auto industry would be, if federal law mandated that we all buy the same make and model car with the same features in the same color. It would suck for us as customers, but it would be great for the corporations trying to make a buck.
Historically, robber barons love the free market until they don't. John D. Rockefeller loved the way the free market allowed him to scarf up pieces of the oil industry until he had them all, at which point the Standard's corporate goal was to make sure that no other players could get on the field. This has always been the pattern (a good read on that subject is Matthew Josephson's 1934 book The Robber Barons), from Vanderbilt through Gates. Competition is healthy-- until I'm big enough to crush it.
Pearson is achieving the kind of vertical industry dominance that Rockefeller dreamed of, but the Standard Oil Company fell victim to a US Congress that actually passed anti-trust laws. Pearson, like any good 21st century corporation, has nothing to fear from the US Congress. Pearson publishes the books, writes the tests, writes the programs. You may have missed this one, but Pearson now owns the GED and runs it for a profit. Pearson owns the programs for certifying teachers. And now it runs the PARCC.
So our children will learn the name of Pearson from cradle through career. All our children. And when they screw something up (as they've already done many times) they will screw it up for everybody. Because our children are increasingly growing up in a standardized world.
There are so many things wrong with this. So many things.
We used to complain about how the Japanese were buying our country. Then we got all patriotically incensed about how much US debt is owned by the Chinese. How about having the entire United States education system owned and operated by a British company.
Biologists have been sounding the alarm about biodiversity. Crops like bananas have been engineered down from a wealth of varieties to just one basic "version." The lack of biodiversity is an "all your eggs in one basket" kind of threat-- if something happens to that one strain of banana, the entire world's banana crop is in danger.
Lack of economic diversity is even worse. When one banana becomes a dominant strain, it doesn't travel the world trying to snuff out the life of other strains. But if the next Bill Gates comes along today, he will have a hell of a time getting his start-up launched. Giant corporations raise the admission fee for playing the game to unimaginable heights.
I can find you several hundred teachers who could all create better teaching and testing materials than Pearson. What I can't find you is the giant pile of money they would need to enter the market.
If there were no other criticism to be leveled against the Common Core, if there were no other issues with that push for national standards, if the Core were actually educationally sound, this alone would still be enough reason to fight against it. The CCSS, the push for national standards, has made it possible-- actually, more likely-- for one giant corporation to buy American public education from top to bottom. That alone is enough reason to oppose it.
Yesterday PARCC, one of the two giant consortia of high stakes standardized testing, announced that they will become part of the giant corporate beast that is Pearson. PARCC's negotiator described the contract as having "unprecedented scale." Pearson has promised a price cut ($24 per student, marked down from $29.50) but the scale of this product sale will be so huge. So huge. And really-- if you're producing a single standardized test for tens of millions of "customers," what does it really cost you to produce per unit? What is Pearson's markup on this product? I'm guessing that's information we won't have soon.
There were no competing bids. As Mercedes Schneider points out, we have now achieved the "economies of scale" that Bill Gates touted as one of the reasons to have education reform.
This has always been part of the point. It's so pesky to have to deal with all those different school districts as customers. Let's rig the system so that every customer must buy the same thing. Think of how much easier, how much more profitable the auto industry would be, if federal law mandated that we all buy the same make and model car with the same features in the same color. It would suck for us as customers, but it would be great for the corporations trying to make a buck.
Historically, robber barons love the free market until they don't. John D. Rockefeller loved the way the free market allowed him to scarf up pieces of the oil industry until he had them all, at which point the Standard's corporate goal was to make sure that no other players could get on the field. This has always been the pattern (a good read on that subject is Matthew Josephson's 1934 book The Robber Barons), from Vanderbilt through Gates. Competition is healthy-- until I'm big enough to crush it.
Pearson is achieving the kind of vertical industry dominance that Rockefeller dreamed of, but the Standard Oil Company fell victim to a US Congress that actually passed anti-trust laws. Pearson, like any good 21st century corporation, has nothing to fear from the US Congress. Pearson publishes the books, writes the tests, writes the programs. You may have missed this one, but Pearson now owns the GED and runs it for a profit. Pearson owns the programs for certifying teachers. And now it runs the PARCC.
So our children will learn the name of Pearson from cradle through career. All our children. And when they screw something up (as they've already done many times) they will screw it up for everybody. Because our children are increasingly growing up in a standardized world.
There are so many things wrong with this. So many things.
We used to complain about how the Japanese were buying our country. Then we got all patriotically incensed about how much US debt is owned by the Chinese. How about having the entire United States education system owned and operated by a British company.
Biologists have been sounding the alarm about biodiversity. Crops like bananas have been engineered down from a wealth of varieties to just one basic "version." The lack of biodiversity is an "all your eggs in one basket" kind of threat-- if something happens to that one strain of banana, the entire world's banana crop is in danger.
Lack of economic diversity is even worse. When one banana becomes a dominant strain, it doesn't travel the world trying to snuff out the life of other strains. But if the next Bill Gates comes along today, he will have a hell of a time getting his start-up launched. Giant corporations raise the admission fee for playing the game to unimaginable heights.
I can find you several hundred teachers who could all create better teaching and testing materials than Pearson. What I can't find you is the giant pile of money they would need to enter the market.
If there were no other criticism to be leveled against the Common Core, if there were no other issues with that push for national standards, if the Core were actually educationally sound, this alone would still be enough reason to fight against it. The CCSS, the push for national standards, has made it possible-- actually, more likely-- for one giant corporation to buy American public education from top to bottom. That alone is enough reason to oppose it.
Friday, May 2, 2014
Is This CCSS Criticism Fair?
The supporters of Common Core have eaten so much cheese with their whine that we may have to call a whaaaambulance.
Their complaints have been percolating for a while, but the heat of the Louis C.K. flame-up has brought their big bowl of treacly tears to a roiling boil. The criticisms are not fair. Those stupid examples of bad assignments have nothing to do with the Core, and the terrible tests are separate from the Core, and an idiot misprint could happen to anybody no matter what federally-coerced education program they were trying to implement.
Do the Core supporters have a point?
Yes. Yes, they do.
All along, people have been holding up bad assignments and worksheets and lessons as examples of Common Core that could have come from anywhere. When supporters say that CCSS do not mandate particular stupid instructional strategies, they are correct. Reformsters who decry the linkage of standards and The Test are not technically wrong. And pinning a bad print job on the Core, as if no printers error could have occurred in a land of local control, is kind of silly. In short, trying to act as if no teacher or school district ever did anything stupid in the days before Common Core is a ridiculous argument.
However.
However. The Core supporters asked for this.
First. First, the creators of the CCSS wrote the damn things and then just walked away. They promised publishers and ed corporations a massive payday for anyone who would slap "CCSS Ready" on teaching materials, and then they walked away. And when those corporations started cranking out all manner of sloppy crap and calling it CCSS material, there was nobody minding the store. Instead of standing over their creation and saying, "Woah woah WOAH! Let's just all take it slow. You fellas line up and let us make sure you're getting this right," Coleman and the rest had clocked out and headed off to their own big payday, pausing just long enough to toss a "Have fun, boys" back over their shoulders.
Second, because the CCSS Reformsters made sure they had control of the playing field since day one, they made the rules. These are the rules they made:
* Making up shit to sway the public is okay (e.g. "You can trust the Core Standards because they were written by professional teachers")
* Using people who control large audiences but have no actual expertise in education is fine. If they have a large audience, that's all the right they need to speak on subjects in which they have no professional expertise. Bill Gates and US Chamber of Commerce, meet Louis C. K.
* Blur the line between standards, curriculum and lessons as it suits you. CCSS supporters have referred to the Common Core Curriculum, touted Common Core Lessons, and talked incessantly about how the Core will guarantee that students in Alaska, Tennessee and Maine will all learn the same thing (a promise that sounds like it's about lessons and curriculum to most anybody). How did the public get the idea that the Core and all these lessons are different parts of the same big elephant? The people busy trying to cash in on CCSS told them so.
* Link the CCSS to the Big Tests. The federal gummint made testing and CCSS part of the same get-out-of-NCLB-jail-free card. Advocates for the Core told states that they HAD to have high stakes testing in place for the Core to do any good.
* Link the standards to teaching. Keep claiming that the standards will fix all the crappy teachers, that teachers will be held accountable for their work by the use of the Common Core. Publish glowing articles about how the Core has made Mrs. McUberteacher do the best teaching of her life because the core has transformed her classroom.
* Inflate the importance of piddly shit when it suits you. Throw around obscure baloney like PISA scores and keep telling the public that it's hugely importance. Blow up the statistical importance of classroom teachers to students success. Basically, establish the rule that any small detail that helps prove your point can be magnified a thousandfold.
* Directly connecting what the Core says and what students do. We've been told repeatedly-- the Common Core Standards mean that students will do more rigorous work. It will be hard. they might cry. But this Common Core work will be good for them. This rhetoric, repeated repeatedly, has established a clear and direct link between the standards in the Core and the worksheets on Johnny's desk.
* Teachers must teach to the test. You didn't mean to make this a rule, but you couldn't help yourselves. But how else will any sentient being interpret, "Your students will do well on this test, or we will flunk them and fire your ass." Nobody-- NOBODY-- thinks the next line in that poem is, "So don't teach to the test."
* Mock opponents rather than engage them. As in, characterizing all CCSS opponents as tin hat crazypants tea partiers or whiny moms or lying teachers.
For years, CCSS supporters established that these would be the rules by which we conducted all discourse about the standards and their attendant complex of core-created crap. And now, those same rules of discourse are being used against them. Aspects of education that they repeatedly linked to Common Core? They would like those unlinked now, please. Stop calling us names and just talk to us! And let's start sticking to facts. Sorry, but that's not following the rules that have been in place for the past several years.
Are these rules fair? No, of course not. We've been saying so for years now. But you supporters always replied, "Tough shit. We're winning, so tough shit." Only as the tide has turned against you have you started saying, "Hey, let's talk about the quality of discourse in this conversation."
Too late, boys. I actually agree with you-- we do need a better quality of conversation to rescue public education from the Reformy Status Quo you've saddled us with. There are so many reasons of substance, importance educational reasons that CCSS etc should be scrapped beyond the sometimes-trivial odds and ends currently being torn apart. But you never created any way for that discussion to be had, no method for revision or review ever, and anyway, there aren't that many reasonable folks like me around, and for the time being, we're not going to carry the day.
Karma's a bitch, isn't it.
Their complaints have been percolating for a while, but the heat of the Louis C.K. flame-up has brought their big bowl of treacly tears to a roiling boil. The criticisms are not fair. Those stupid examples of bad assignments have nothing to do with the Core, and the terrible tests are separate from the Core, and an idiot misprint could happen to anybody no matter what federally-coerced education program they were trying to implement.
Do the Core supporters have a point?
Yes. Yes, they do.
All along, people have been holding up bad assignments and worksheets and lessons as examples of Common Core that could have come from anywhere. When supporters say that CCSS do not mandate particular stupid instructional strategies, they are correct. Reformsters who decry the linkage of standards and The Test are not technically wrong. And pinning a bad print job on the Core, as if no printers error could have occurred in a land of local control, is kind of silly. In short, trying to act as if no teacher or school district ever did anything stupid in the days before Common Core is a ridiculous argument.
However.
However. The Core supporters asked for this.
First. First, the creators of the CCSS wrote the damn things and then just walked away. They promised publishers and ed corporations a massive payday for anyone who would slap "CCSS Ready" on teaching materials, and then they walked away. And when those corporations started cranking out all manner of sloppy crap and calling it CCSS material, there was nobody minding the store. Instead of standing over their creation and saying, "Woah woah WOAH! Let's just all take it slow. You fellas line up and let us make sure you're getting this right," Coleman and the rest had clocked out and headed off to their own big payday, pausing just long enough to toss a "Have fun, boys" back over their shoulders.
Second, because the CCSS Reformsters made sure they had control of the playing field since day one, they made the rules. These are the rules they made:
* Making up shit to sway the public is okay (e.g. "You can trust the Core Standards because they were written by professional teachers")
* Using people who control large audiences but have no actual expertise in education is fine. If they have a large audience, that's all the right they need to speak on subjects in which they have no professional expertise. Bill Gates and US Chamber of Commerce, meet Louis C. K.
* Blur the line between standards, curriculum and lessons as it suits you. CCSS supporters have referred to the Common Core Curriculum, touted Common Core Lessons, and talked incessantly about how the Core will guarantee that students in Alaska, Tennessee and Maine will all learn the same thing (a promise that sounds like it's about lessons and curriculum to most anybody). How did the public get the idea that the Core and all these lessons are different parts of the same big elephant? The people busy trying to cash in on CCSS told them so.
* Link the CCSS to the Big Tests. The federal gummint made testing and CCSS part of the same get-out-of-NCLB-jail-free card. Advocates for the Core told states that they HAD to have high stakes testing in place for the Core to do any good.
* Link the standards to teaching. Keep claiming that the standards will fix all the crappy teachers, that teachers will be held accountable for their work by the use of the Common Core. Publish glowing articles about how the Core has made Mrs. McUberteacher do the best teaching of her life because the core has transformed her classroom.
* Inflate the importance of piddly shit when it suits you. Throw around obscure baloney like PISA scores and keep telling the public that it's hugely importance. Blow up the statistical importance of classroom teachers to students success. Basically, establish the rule that any small detail that helps prove your point can be magnified a thousandfold.
* Directly connecting what the Core says and what students do. We've been told repeatedly-- the Common Core Standards mean that students will do more rigorous work. It will be hard. they might cry. But this Common Core work will be good for them. This rhetoric, repeated repeatedly, has established a clear and direct link between the standards in the Core and the worksheets on Johnny's desk.
* Teachers must teach to the test. You didn't mean to make this a rule, but you couldn't help yourselves. But how else will any sentient being interpret, "Your students will do well on this test, or we will flunk them and fire your ass." Nobody-- NOBODY-- thinks the next line in that poem is, "So don't teach to the test."
* Mock opponents rather than engage them. As in, characterizing all CCSS opponents as tin hat crazypants tea partiers or whiny moms or lying teachers.
For years, CCSS supporters established that these would be the rules by which we conducted all discourse about the standards and their attendant complex of core-created crap. And now, those same rules of discourse are being used against them. Aspects of education that they repeatedly linked to Common Core? They would like those unlinked now, please. Stop calling us names and just talk to us! And let's start sticking to facts. Sorry, but that's not following the rules that have been in place for the past several years.
Are these rules fair? No, of course not. We've been saying so for years now. But you supporters always replied, "Tough shit. We're winning, so tough shit." Only as the tide has turned against you have you started saying, "Hey, let's talk about the quality of discourse in this conversation."
Too late, boys. I actually agree with you-- we do need a better quality of conversation to rescue public education from the Reformy Status Quo you've saddled us with. There are so many reasons of substance, importance educational reasons that CCSS etc should be scrapped beyond the sometimes-trivial odds and ends currently being torn apart. But you never created any way for that discussion to be had, no method for revision or review ever, and anyway, there aren't that many reasonable folks like me around, and for the time being, we're not going to carry the day.
Karma's a bitch, isn't it.
Petrilli's Kool-Aid Stand Still Open
I have a confession to make-- I kind of like Mike Petrilli. I've never met him. I've never met any of the big names in the ed biz, because I'm a high school English teacher in small town USA (isn't the internet cool), so I depend on long-distance close-reading of all these folks, and while many of the Reformsters seem lost or confused or walking in that kind of dull cloud that people fall into when they practice self-delusion for long periods of time, Petrilli always seems sharp and peppy, like he really gets a charge out of running a marketing group pretending to be a thinky tank and bouncing around the country to sell folks (particularly the conservative ones) on the glories of the Common Core. I admire his pep and his occasional flashes of wit (the House of Cards parody in which he plays an evil genius who dupes the Secretary of Ed into making a dumb comment about white suburban moms is kind of funny).And he is sometimes willing to check the kool-aid for seeds before he drinks it.
But at the end of the day, he drinks it. And TBF has made a good living selling that same CCSS kool-aid to others.
Take this latest entry on the School Administrator website. His thesis-- there hasn't been enough change under Common Core. It's one of his longer trips around the block, so it will take me a few words to unpack the fertilizer.
Setting Up the Case
Petrilli leads off with a popular new talking point-- the debate about CCSS is all about politics, and not that responsible professional educators think the CCSS complex is bad education. He also nods to conservatives-- "to be sure" we have to keep the feds from meddling in curriculum and messing things up as they have in other areas.
And here's a cool new argument. Top down centralized reforms never produce uniformity anyway, so the complaint that CCSSetc is a top-down centralized reform can be dismissed. And when people try to shoot other people with handguns from over fifty feet away, they usually miss, so if someone is shooting at you, you shouldn't be alarmed.
Moving Testimony
Petrilli tells the story of some moving anti-CCSS testimony from a student in Ohio, and he pulls no punches. But his point ultimately is this: while what happened with the student sucks, can it really be blamed on CCSS? Sure, the materials involved were sold by Pearson as "written entirely to the Common Core Standards," but given the time frame, is it possible that Pearson was fibbing a tad there?
The political problem is that everything bad is being blamed on CCSS, just as ten years ago everything bad was blamed on NCLB. This might be a good place to discuss just how much these two initiatives do in fact deserve to be blamed for much educational malpractice, but that's not where Petrilli is going.
But it also highlights the fragmented, decentralized nature of Common Core implementation. In a system that prizes local control over curricular decisions, 10,000 school boards will be making the most critical calls over Common Core implementation. Will they make good choices?
Short Answer: No
The Fordham Institute published a study finding that while many teachers think they are aligning to CCSS, they are not.
Petrilli's first example is a great illustration of how many real problems intersect. He points out that the standards clearly indicate that elementary teachers should assign texts based on grade level, not reading level, and yet teachers keep assigning texts "leveled texts."
There are several problems with Petrilli's point. One is that assigning texts based on grade level without regard for the student's reading level is educational malpractice. There isn't a shred of evidence on the planet that teachers can improve reading ability by demanding that students read texts above their level. Teachers don't require third-graders to do that for the same reason they don't require third-graders to be five feet tall-- it's developmentally inappropriate, which is a fancy way of saying that it doesn't do any good. Challenging, sure. Above a student's frustration level, simply destructive and demoralizing.
But here's the other problem-- the standards do not clearly indicate any such thing. Just to be sure, I went back and looked just at the third grade standards for reading literature, non-fiction and foundational skills. None mention text complexity level at all-- except to say that the students should reading and comprehending texts "at the high end of the grades 2-3 text complexity band independently and proficiently" by the end of the year.
Petrilli and I agree on one thing here-- the universe is loaded with people who see things in the CCSS that are not there. Petrilli, for all his thinky tank standards-studying wonkery, is one more of those people. And he goes on in that same paragraph to contradict more CCSS conventional wisdom.
Furthermore, the standards encourage teachers to focus on text selection first and building skills second. Yet most teachers continue to do it the other way around, picking a skill to teach and then finding a text to help them accomplish that.
I think it's hugely arguable that the standards "encourage" any such thing. But why do people think otherwise? Because the alignment process in schools all over the country is the same-- it is, in fact, the same process that high-priced "consultants" hired by states and districts come fully packed and prepared to implement.
Step One-- Look at the standard and "unpack" what skill it's really talking about.
Step Two-- Find the box in the chart next to that standard/skill
Step Three-- Fill in the box with whatever content you're going to use to teach that standard
Pick the standard-- the skill-- first, then plug in some content to go with it.
The problem, it appears, is that the standards are turning into something of a Rorschach test for educators. Many of us like to see the standards as endorsing our own view of effective teaching and learning. So we focus on the parts we like and overlook the parts we don’t. We revise and adapt them to our own priorities and preconceptions.
Well, yes. Of course. That's what we've always done. That's especially what we do when the standards are imposed top-down style, because a guaranteed feature of any set of standards is that only the people who were in the room to write them know for sure, exactly, what they meant. So all reforms of this sort come filtered down through layers of thinky tanks and consultants and college professors and administrators and department chairs until they finally arrive on the desk of the classroom teacher who must, as always, look the actual children in the eyes and decide what is in their best interest. This is just one of many reasons that it's best to have a seasoned, trained professional educator at the bottom of that chain (instead of, say, a dewy eyed untrained product of a five week training session).
But we should set aside our own priorities and preconceptions and replace them with the priorities and preconceptions of the writers of the CCSS because.... well, nobody ever has a good answer for this. A teacher's professional judgment is not okay, but David Coleman's amateur judgment should be the law of the land. Because, standards.
The Test
Petrilli correctly identifies the other part of this problem: "...educators might be setting themselves up for a rude awakening when their students face the new Common Core–aligned assessments—and they’ve only been prepared for a fraction of the items."
We are all waiting on The Test, because The Test is the curriculum.
We know the Test will be a rude awakening. You can already hear the noise from the many people who have been rudely awakened just in the last couple of months.
We already know that portions of the CCSS won't be on the test. Collaboration will not be on the test. For all the talk about content-rich text, students will not be reading anything longer than a page or so, and for all the talk about deep close reading, what students will actually have to do is pull deep understanding out of a text in 10-15 minutes.
So while the CCSS may tell me that building a curriculum around three or four great novels that we study at considerable depth over a great deal of time, working in groups, and writing extensive papers built around long careful study of the text, what the CCSS Test tells me is that I better drill my students on how to mine a few boring context-free paragraphs for particular types of details to answer multiple choice quickly, and do it quickly.
It is one of the huge disconnects under CCSS, as it was under NCLB-- the assessments do not line up with the standards. In fact, national assessments don't line up with much of anything useful at all. But suggesting that working the standards real hard will lead to great test scores is like suggesting that combing your hair every day will lead to stronger thigh muscles.
Helpy Things
Petrilli's advice is aimed at school administrators. It comes in two parts.
1) Study the standards carefully.
2) Buy some consulty materials from an outfit like, say, Student Achievement Partners (an outfit founded by CCSS writers David Coleman, Susan Pimentel and Jason Zimba to help cash in the artificially-created demand for educational Core and curriculum consultants).
Stay true to the spirit of the Common Core and prepare students for what comes next. What he fails to acknowledge is that those are two separate and unrelated activities.
Did I Mention "No National Curriculum"
Petrilli closes with a reminder that CCSS will not lead to a national curriculum, and local control is still the rightful Boss of All Education.
What Did We Learn
Don't fear CCSS, because it won't actually work. But do be concerned because it's not working properly now. Use your local judgment, but only after you've infused it with the nationally-based judgment of Wiser Persons. And beware the test.
Petrilli's writing always leaves me with the same odd feeling-- the feeling that he's just made another convincing argument for dumping the Core, and yet he seems to be sure he's done the opposite. Hey. At least he's well paid and having a great time.
But at the end of the day, he drinks it. And TBF has made a good living selling that same CCSS kool-aid to others.
Take this latest entry on the School Administrator website. His thesis-- there hasn't been enough change under Common Core. It's one of his longer trips around the block, so it will take me a few words to unpack the fertilizer.
Setting Up the Case
Petrilli leads off with a popular new talking point-- the debate about CCSS is all about politics, and not that responsible professional educators think the CCSS complex is bad education. He also nods to conservatives-- "to be sure" we have to keep the feds from meddling in curriculum and messing things up as they have in other areas.
And here's a cool new argument. Top down centralized reforms never produce uniformity anyway, so the complaint that CCSSetc is a top-down centralized reform can be dismissed. And when people try to shoot other people with handguns from over fifty feet away, they usually miss, so if someone is shooting at you, you shouldn't be alarmed.
Moving Testimony
Petrilli tells the story of some moving anti-CCSS testimony from a student in Ohio, and he pulls no punches. But his point ultimately is this: while what happened with the student sucks, can it really be blamed on CCSS? Sure, the materials involved were sold by Pearson as "written entirely to the Common Core Standards," but given the time frame, is it possible that Pearson was fibbing a tad there?
The political problem is that everything bad is being blamed on CCSS, just as ten years ago everything bad was blamed on NCLB. This might be a good place to discuss just how much these two initiatives do in fact deserve to be blamed for much educational malpractice, but that's not where Petrilli is going.
But it also highlights the fragmented, decentralized nature of Common Core implementation. In a system that prizes local control over curricular decisions, 10,000 school boards will be making the most critical calls over Common Core implementation. Will they make good choices?
Short Answer: No
The Fordham Institute published a study finding that while many teachers think they are aligning to CCSS, they are not.
Petrilli's first example is a great illustration of how many real problems intersect. He points out that the standards clearly indicate that elementary teachers should assign texts based on grade level, not reading level, and yet teachers keep assigning texts "leveled texts."
There are several problems with Petrilli's point. One is that assigning texts based on grade level without regard for the student's reading level is educational malpractice. There isn't a shred of evidence on the planet that teachers can improve reading ability by demanding that students read texts above their level. Teachers don't require third-graders to do that for the same reason they don't require third-graders to be five feet tall-- it's developmentally inappropriate, which is a fancy way of saying that it doesn't do any good. Challenging, sure. Above a student's frustration level, simply destructive and demoralizing.
But here's the other problem-- the standards do not clearly indicate any such thing. Just to be sure, I went back and looked just at the third grade standards for reading literature, non-fiction and foundational skills. None mention text complexity level at all-- except to say that the students should reading and comprehending texts "at the high end of the grades 2-3 text complexity band independently and proficiently" by the end of the year.
Petrilli and I agree on one thing here-- the universe is loaded with people who see things in the CCSS that are not there. Petrilli, for all his thinky tank standards-studying wonkery, is one more of those people. And he goes on in that same paragraph to contradict more CCSS conventional wisdom.
Furthermore, the standards encourage teachers to focus on text selection first and building skills second. Yet most teachers continue to do it the other way around, picking a skill to teach and then finding a text to help them accomplish that.
I think it's hugely arguable that the standards "encourage" any such thing. But why do people think otherwise? Because the alignment process in schools all over the country is the same-- it is, in fact, the same process that high-priced "consultants" hired by states and districts come fully packed and prepared to implement.
Step One-- Look at the standard and "unpack" what skill it's really talking about.
Step Two-- Find the box in the chart next to that standard/skill
Step Three-- Fill in the box with whatever content you're going to use to teach that standard
Pick the standard-- the skill-- first, then plug in some content to go with it.
The problem, it appears, is that the standards are turning into something of a Rorschach test for educators. Many of us like to see the standards as endorsing our own view of effective teaching and learning. So we focus on the parts we like and overlook the parts we don’t. We revise and adapt them to our own priorities and preconceptions.
Well, yes. Of course. That's what we've always done. That's especially what we do when the standards are imposed top-down style, because a guaranteed feature of any set of standards is that only the people who were in the room to write them know for sure, exactly, what they meant. So all reforms of this sort come filtered down through layers of thinky tanks and consultants and college professors and administrators and department chairs until they finally arrive on the desk of the classroom teacher who must, as always, look the actual children in the eyes and decide what is in their best interest. This is just one of many reasons that it's best to have a seasoned, trained professional educator at the bottom of that chain (instead of, say, a dewy eyed untrained product of a five week training session).
But we should set aside our own priorities and preconceptions and replace them with the priorities and preconceptions of the writers of the CCSS because.... well, nobody ever has a good answer for this. A teacher's professional judgment is not okay, but David Coleman's amateur judgment should be the law of the land. Because, standards.
The Test
Petrilli correctly identifies the other part of this problem: "...educators might be setting themselves up for a rude awakening when their students face the new Common Core–aligned assessments—and they’ve only been prepared for a fraction of the items."
We are all waiting on The Test, because The Test is the curriculum.
We know the Test will be a rude awakening. You can already hear the noise from the many people who have been rudely awakened just in the last couple of months.
We already know that portions of the CCSS won't be on the test. Collaboration will not be on the test. For all the talk about content-rich text, students will not be reading anything longer than a page or so, and for all the talk about deep close reading, what students will actually have to do is pull deep understanding out of a text in 10-15 minutes.
So while the CCSS may tell me that building a curriculum around three or four great novels that we study at considerable depth over a great deal of time, working in groups, and writing extensive papers built around long careful study of the text, what the CCSS Test tells me is that I better drill my students on how to mine a few boring context-free paragraphs for particular types of details to answer multiple choice quickly, and do it quickly.
It is one of the huge disconnects under CCSS, as it was under NCLB-- the assessments do not line up with the standards. In fact, national assessments don't line up with much of anything useful at all. But suggesting that working the standards real hard will lead to great test scores is like suggesting that combing your hair every day will lead to stronger thigh muscles.
Helpy Things
Petrilli's advice is aimed at school administrators. It comes in two parts.
1) Study the standards carefully.
2) Buy some consulty materials from an outfit like, say, Student Achievement Partners (an outfit founded by CCSS writers David Coleman, Susan Pimentel and Jason Zimba to help cash in the artificially-created demand for educational Core and curriculum consultants).
Stay true to the spirit of the Common Core and prepare students for what comes next. What he fails to acknowledge is that those are two separate and unrelated activities.
Did I Mention "No National Curriculum"
Petrilli closes with a reminder that CCSS will not lead to a national curriculum, and local control is still the rightful Boss of All Education.
What Did We Learn
Don't fear CCSS, because it won't actually work. But do be concerned because it's not working properly now. Use your local judgment, but only after you've infused it with the nationally-based judgment of Wiser Persons. And beware the test.
Petrilli's writing always leaves me with the same odd feeling-- the feeling that he's just made another convincing argument for dumping the Core, and yet he seems to be sure he's done the opposite. Hey. At least he's well paid and having a great time.
Another Plutocrat for USDOE
Alyson Klein at EdWeek reports that Robert Gordon has been chosen to serve as assistant secretary for planning, evaluation and policy development at the US DOE.
Gordon's previous work credits include the Office of Management and Budget, where he seems to have been a man behind the scenes for the various Fiscal Cliff negotiations. More recently he's been a guest scholar at the Brookings Institute, and we know what great fans of public education those guys are.
It doesn't get any better. His pre-government work is with the Center for American Progress, which is a liberal-leaning thinky tank specializing in economics-related argle-blargle, originally headed up by John Podesta. In 2008, Time magazine credited them with being the outside group with major influence over the formation of the Obama administration.
In 2006, Gordon co-authored "Identifying Effective Teachers Using Performance on the Job,” a paper which floated the idea of finding effective teachers by looking at student test scores, so perhaps this new job is in recognition of how awesomely THAT has worked out. Just over a month ago he wrote this article for the New Republic that explains how Head Start can be fixed (short answer-- more strictly focused performance outcomes). In short, Gordon has almost a decade of soaking in Reformy goodness under his belt.
Klein notes in passing that "ironically," the man Gordon will be replacing is Carmel Martin, who is now an executive vice-president at CAP. This is not so much irony as business-as-usual, or a reflection on the way that education has become like the military-industrial complex or the food industry-- folks pass back and forth through a revolving door that runs between the offices that write policy, the offices that pass policy, and the offices that make money from that policy.
I almost didn't bother to write this, because there's really nothing new to see here. But as this same thing happens over and over again and as the Obama administration tells us plainly, again and again, how much they support the attack on public education and as the DOE is repeatedly staffed by people with no connection to schools whatsoever-- well, it's monotonous, but we need to pay attention. We need to remember that it's not getting better, that other voices are not being heard, that promise are being kept-- but not the ones made to teachers and parents and students.
And-- sorry Democrat friends-- this goes in my file of "One More Damn Reason That The Federal Department of Education Really Ought To Go Away." Federal level bureaucracies will always be populated by federal level plutocrats, not actual educators. US DOE officials will always be from the federal government, and they will never be here to help us.
Gordon's previous work credits include the Office of Management and Budget, where he seems to have been a man behind the scenes for the various Fiscal Cliff negotiations. More recently he's been a guest scholar at the Brookings Institute, and we know what great fans of public education those guys are.
It doesn't get any better. His pre-government work is with the Center for American Progress, which is a liberal-leaning thinky tank specializing in economics-related argle-blargle, originally headed up by John Podesta. In 2008, Time magazine credited them with being the outside group with major influence over the formation of the Obama administration.
In 2006, Gordon co-authored "Identifying Effective Teachers Using Performance on the Job,” a paper which floated the idea of finding effective teachers by looking at student test scores, so perhaps this new job is in recognition of how awesomely THAT has worked out. Just over a month ago he wrote this article for the New Republic that explains how Head Start can be fixed (short answer-- more strictly focused performance outcomes). In short, Gordon has almost a decade of soaking in Reformy goodness under his belt.
Klein notes in passing that "ironically," the man Gordon will be replacing is Carmel Martin, who is now an executive vice-president at CAP. This is not so much irony as business-as-usual, or a reflection on the way that education has become like the military-industrial complex or the food industry-- folks pass back and forth through a revolving door that runs between the offices that write policy, the offices that pass policy, and the offices that make money from that policy.
I almost didn't bother to write this, because there's really nothing new to see here. But as this same thing happens over and over again and as the Obama administration tells us plainly, again and again, how much they support the attack on public education and as the DOE is repeatedly staffed by people with no connection to schools whatsoever-- well, it's monotonous, but we need to pay attention. We need to remember that it's not getting better, that other voices are not being heard, that promise are being kept-- but not the ones made to teachers and parents and students.
And-- sorry Democrat friends-- this goes in my file of "One More Damn Reason That The Federal Department of Education Really Ought To Go Away." Federal level bureaucracies will always be populated by federal level plutocrats, not actual educators. US DOE officials will always be from the federal government, and they will never be here to help us.
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Sorry, Newsweek, But You're wrong About Louis C. K.
My first thought when I read Alexander Nazaryan's response to Louis C. K.'s Common Core tirade was, "Wow! What an ass!"
This is not an insult. Readers of this blog know that the what-an-ass writing style is one of my favorites, and I have been an ass frequently. I don't have the luxury of being an ass for a national newsmaga-- well, newsthingy. But it's a skill I respect.
Unfortunately, the alternate title for this blog entry is "Newsweek Presents the Same Old Shit With Some Extra Sass on the Side."
Nazaryan leads off with a summary of Louis's work that makes a simple point-- pretending to be mad about shit is this guy's shtick (so his anger on this occasion probably has no authentic roots in actual anger). Nazaryan then gives a quick summary of Louis's twitter tear. From there, we move on to the usual Common Core talking points. With extra sass.
Mockery of both sides of the opposition? Check. The conservative CCSS opponents are fringe nuts, and the lefties are all teachers worried that they will be judged based on real data. He notes that the standards are "especially loathed" by teachers' unions, thereby keeping up with the new narrative that teacher unions (you know, like the AFT and NEA who have endorsed CCSS right along) are the biggest threat (dethroning the previous champs, tin hat tea partiers).And--ha!-- conspiracy theorists who think Pearson is somehow making big bucks off all this. Yes, that's certainly far-fetched.
A few paragraphs later, he will reduce CCSS opponents to union shills and far-left crazies.
Comparing CCSS to the ACA? Check. Nice line here-- both are necessary but "poorly executed, dropped like a lowing cow into the den of starving lions that is the modern political scene." Which means we've also tagged the "CCSS fooferaw is all about politics, not the innate suckery of the Common Core itself."
Nazaryan admires Louis C. K.'s bullshit detector, but finds it dismaying (to....someone?) that he has used his audience to "malign an earnest effort at education reform, one that is far too young to be judged so harshly." I am not sure how much older CCSS must be before we are allowed to malign it. I was not aware that there was a grace periods for programs that show every sign of being destructive failures, but Nazaryan does not get into that scheduling issue.
Referencing "my time in the classroom"? Check. Nazaryan logged five years in Brooklyn, so good for him. Unfortunately, only he and a few colleagues didn't suck. Everything else was a sea of mediocrity. Damn, but it's tough to be better than everyone else; five years were enough to make him tired, cynical, and, I guess, equally mediocre.
Nominal admission that waves of tests can't fix things, without going so far as to continue on to "so maybe we should stop". Check.
Blithe statement of unproven assumptions? Check. "But introducing a set of national standards is a first step toward widespread accountability, toward the clearly worthy goal of having a teacher in Alaska teach more or less the same thing as a teacher in Alabama." Why are national standards clearly worthy? Seriously? There's not a lick of research to suggest that national standards help anybody learn anything.
Baseless International panic button? Check. The Chinese are leaving us in the dust. Soon we will not be the international test-taking champs. And the connection between that and anything is where...?
Call for teacher accountability without an actual plan? Check. We need "for those teachers to have to account for what their charges learned." Because teachers are the only factor in what students learn? And we can call for teacher accountability all day, but since nobody has a clue (well, that's not true-- I have a plan, but nobody listens to me). Teacher accountability = great. No plan = waste of words.
Grumpy complaint about Kids These Days and how they need to have it rougher? Check.
Staging scenes from Of Mice and Men isn’t going to catch us up to China anytime soon. Nor are art projects or iPads. It was dismaying to hear the new New York City schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, recently complain that our students are deprived of “joy” in the classroom. Joy, our twerking young ones know. Trigonometry, not so much.
Now it's my bullshit detector that's going off. Are Louis's daughters problems tough? Nazaryan says that's as it should be. No. Wrong. Challenging is great, and appropriate. Batshit crazy, pointless, senseless, developmentally inappropriate, just plain stupid-- these are not okay. "Tough" is not in and of itself a pedagogical virtue. Having no food is tough. Living in a car is tough. Having your life held hostage to questions with no sensible answer is tough. That does not mean these are what we should aspire to provide our children.
But no-- here's one more Reformster who says, "If this makes your kids sad and their school day joyless, good! That's how life is supposed to be, ya little whiners."
Use of the word "rigor?" Patronizing comments about lower class children? Double check. "It's the kids in the South Bronx or the South Side who would benefit from a little more rigor in the classroom." Really? Really?? So it's them poor brown kids that need to get their asses kicked and shaped up? Why not go all in and call them "shiftless," too?
Clueless irony? Check. "The saddest thing about all this is that C.K.’s children will be fine, as will mine and, probably, yours." This is true-- because those well-to-do children have the privilege and wealth necessary to shield them from the Common Core, because they won't have some well-heeled magazineything editor telling the world that they need to get rigorously shaped up with some pedagogical toughness, and because they will be able to avoid the very shit you're saying they should be gleefully pursuing!
Closing zinger that allows commentator to be an ass back atcha? Check.
For the most part, the complaints against Common Core and the charter-school movement have come from upper-middle-class parents whose objections are largely ideological, not pedagogical. It’s fun to get angry when you’ve got nothing to lose.
Well, yes, as you've so ably demonstrated, it is.
Here's what great about Louis C. K.'s critique. It takes us back to most basic level. Skip the pedagogical jargon and the educrat gobbledeegook and the marketing blitz and the political white wash. Just ask a simple question-- does this stuff look like it makes sense? Does it look like it would work? A reasonably famous layman with a well-tuned bullshit detector says, "no." Cool.
This is not an insult. Readers of this blog know that the what-an-ass writing style is one of my favorites, and I have been an ass frequently. I don't have the luxury of being an ass for a national newsmaga-- well, newsthingy. But it's a skill I respect.
Unfortunately, the alternate title for this blog entry is "Newsweek Presents the Same Old Shit With Some Extra Sass on the Side."
Nazaryan leads off with a summary of Louis's work that makes a simple point-- pretending to be mad about shit is this guy's shtick (so his anger on this occasion probably has no authentic roots in actual anger). Nazaryan then gives a quick summary of Louis's twitter tear. From there, we move on to the usual Common Core talking points. With extra sass.
Mockery of both sides of the opposition? Check. The conservative CCSS opponents are fringe nuts, and the lefties are all teachers worried that they will be judged based on real data. He notes that the standards are "especially loathed" by teachers' unions, thereby keeping up with the new narrative that teacher unions (you know, like the AFT and NEA who have endorsed CCSS right along) are the biggest threat (dethroning the previous champs, tin hat tea partiers).And--ha!-- conspiracy theorists who think Pearson is somehow making big bucks off all this. Yes, that's certainly far-fetched.
A few paragraphs later, he will reduce CCSS opponents to union shills and far-left crazies.
Comparing CCSS to the ACA? Check. Nice line here-- both are necessary but "poorly executed, dropped like a lowing cow into the den of starving lions that is the modern political scene." Which means we've also tagged the "CCSS fooferaw is all about politics, not the innate suckery of the Common Core itself."
Nazaryan admires Louis C. K.'s bullshit detector, but finds it dismaying (to....someone?) that he has used his audience to "malign an earnest effort at education reform, one that is far too young to be judged so harshly." I am not sure how much older CCSS must be before we are allowed to malign it. I was not aware that there was a grace periods for programs that show every sign of being destructive failures, but Nazaryan does not get into that scheduling issue.
Referencing "my time in the classroom"? Check. Nazaryan logged five years in Brooklyn, so good for him. Unfortunately, only he and a few colleagues didn't suck. Everything else was a sea of mediocrity. Damn, but it's tough to be better than everyone else; five years were enough to make him tired, cynical, and, I guess, equally mediocre.
Nominal admission that waves of tests can't fix things, without going so far as to continue on to "so maybe we should stop". Check.
Blithe statement of unproven assumptions? Check. "But introducing a set of national standards is a first step toward widespread accountability, toward the clearly worthy goal of having a teacher in Alaska teach more or less the same thing as a teacher in Alabama." Why are national standards clearly worthy? Seriously? There's not a lick of research to suggest that national standards help anybody learn anything.
Baseless International panic button? Check. The Chinese are leaving us in the dust. Soon we will not be the international test-taking champs. And the connection between that and anything is where...?
Call for teacher accountability without an actual plan? Check. We need "for those teachers to have to account for what their charges learned." Because teachers are the only factor in what students learn? And we can call for teacher accountability all day, but since nobody has a clue (well, that's not true-- I have a plan, but nobody listens to me). Teacher accountability = great. No plan = waste of words.
Grumpy complaint about Kids These Days and how they need to have it rougher? Check.
Staging scenes from Of Mice and Men isn’t going to catch us up to China anytime soon. Nor are art projects or iPads. It was dismaying to hear the new New York City schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, recently complain that our students are deprived of “joy” in the classroom. Joy, our twerking young ones know. Trigonometry, not so much.
Now it's my bullshit detector that's going off. Are Louis's daughters problems tough? Nazaryan says that's as it should be. No. Wrong. Challenging is great, and appropriate. Batshit crazy, pointless, senseless, developmentally inappropriate, just plain stupid-- these are not okay. "Tough" is not in and of itself a pedagogical virtue. Having no food is tough. Living in a car is tough. Having your life held hostage to questions with no sensible answer is tough. That does not mean these are what we should aspire to provide our children.
But no-- here's one more Reformster who says, "If this makes your kids sad and their school day joyless, good! That's how life is supposed to be, ya little whiners."
Use of the word "rigor?" Patronizing comments about lower class children? Double check. "It's the kids in the South Bronx or the South Side who would benefit from a little more rigor in the classroom." Really? Really?? So it's them poor brown kids that need to get their asses kicked and shaped up? Why not go all in and call them "shiftless," too?
Clueless irony? Check. "The saddest thing about all this is that C.K.’s children will be fine, as will mine and, probably, yours." This is true-- because those well-to-do children have the privilege and wealth necessary to shield them from the Common Core, because they won't have some well-heeled magazineything editor telling the world that they need to get rigorously shaped up with some pedagogical toughness, and because they will be able to avoid the very shit you're saying they should be gleefully pursuing!
Closing zinger that allows commentator to be an ass back atcha? Check.
For the most part, the complaints against Common Core and the charter-school movement have come from upper-middle-class parents whose objections are largely ideological, not pedagogical. It’s fun to get angry when you’ve got nothing to lose.
Well, yes, as you've so ably demonstrated, it is.
Here's what great about Louis C. K.'s critique. It takes us back to most basic level. Skip the pedagogical jargon and the educrat gobbledeegook and the marketing blitz and the political white wash. Just ask a simple question-- does this stuff look like it makes sense? Does it look like it would work? A reasonably famous layman with a well-tuned bullshit detector says, "no." Cool.
Teacher Merit Badges
Earlier this week, Metro Nashville Public Schools unveiled a new virtual merit badge system to reward teachers who take on extras. The idea was facing resistance about fifteen seconds after it was introduced.
Kelly Henderson, the districts executive director of instruction, compared the system to Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts. Jill Speering of the school board responded, "I'm sorry-- that doesn't impress me. Teachers are adults. They don't need a badge. It's almost a slap in the face."
This tells me one thing-- neither Henderson nor Speering have an XBox in their homes.
In the world of XBox gaming (this may also be true for Playstation, but we are an xbox & wii home), programmers stumbled upon a way to increase a game's replayability (the number of times you can be entertained by thrashing the same imaginary monster). That was to create achievements. Once you have finished a game, you can still go back and unlock achievements by completing the game without any extra power-ups, or blowing up all the left-handed mugwumps, or never driving your virtual car into a tree, or any number of things so silly you'd think I was making them up. And to commemorate each of your achievements, you get a little virtual badge on your Big Wall O'Achievements.
People love this. Love. It. There are corners of the interwebs filled with people just showing off their Big Walls O' Achievements. Some are skill, and some are luck, but people will sit and replay a game they've already beaten a zillion times just to get the badge for capturing all the pink fluffy mini-godzillas (at least, that's what I hear).
So I think the actual problem with the Nashville plan is that it doesn't go far enough. Virtual badges for continuing ed is swell, but let's really apply ourselves. Let's set some real challenges and have some fun. Here's my list of proposed achievements.
* Teaches entire unit without once using copies of publisher-produced materials
* Teaches for an entire week without shushing anyone
* Goes an entire month without doing any room prep on weekends (elementary only)
* Goes an entire month without running out of kleenex in room (bonus if month is March)
* Teaches an entire week without saying "When I was your age..." (over-30)
* Teaches an entire week without saying "When I was in college..." (under-30)
* For a full week, every student brings a writing utensil to class
* For a full week, computer tech does what it's supposed to every single time
* Calls every single parent in one week
* Goes entire week in the lounge without discussing students
* Correctly writes all standards tags on lesson plan without looking them up
* Turns in all office paperwork-eforms on time for an entire week
* Avoids least favorite colleague for a full week
* Goes a full day without being on the receiving end of student over-sharing
* Gets a different student to say, "Wow! I learned something!" every day for a week
* Successfully clears printer jam
* Successfully gets old mimeograph machine to work when printer suffers jam fatality
* Has worksheets and materials all run off and ready to go full month before needed
* Goes three months without a drop or add in classroom
* Get room full of six-year-olds ready for bus in December in less than ten minutes
* Get at least ten sixteen-year-olds to say, "This Shakespeare guy is okay."
* Goes full week without hearing, "Why do we have to learn this stuff, anyway?"
* Teach in nothing but sports metaphors for a full day
* Says, "Good job, [student name]" 150 times in one day
Teachers would compete like crazy to have their webpage on the school district site drowned in an avalanche of merit badge festoonery, and every day in the classroom would be like a big video game. If you've got more ideas for teacher achievements, leave them in the comments, or perhaps we can float the hashtag #teachermeritbadge.
Kelly Henderson, the districts executive director of instruction, compared the system to Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts. Jill Speering of the school board responded, "I'm sorry-- that doesn't impress me. Teachers are adults. They don't need a badge. It's almost a slap in the face."
This tells me one thing-- neither Henderson nor Speering have an XBox in their homes.
In the world of XBox gaming (this may also be true for Playstation, but we are an xbox & wii home), programmers stumbled upon a way to increase a game's replayability (the number of times you can be entertained by thrashing the same imaginary monster). That was to create achievements. Once you have finished a game, you can still go back and unlock achievements by completing the game without any extra power-ups, or blowing up all the left-handed mugwumps, or never driving your virtual car into a tree, or any number of things so silly you'd think I was making them up. And to commemorate each of your achievements, you get a little virtual badge on your Big Wall O'Achievements.
People love this. Love. It. There are corners of the interwebs filled with people just showing off their Big Walls O' Achievements. Some are skill, and some are luck, but people will sit and replay a game they've already beaten a zillion times just to get the badge for capturing all the pink fluffy mini-godzillas (at least, that's what I hear).
So I think the actual problem with the Nashville plan is that it doesn't go far enough. Virtual badges for continuing ed is swell, but let's really apply ourselves. Let's set some real challenges and have some fun. Here's my list of proposed achievements.
* Teaches entire unit without once using copies of publisher-produced materials
* Teaches for an entire week without shushing anyone
* Goes an entire month without doing any room prep on weekends (elementary only)
* Goes an entire month without running out of kleenex in room (bonus if month is March)
* Teaches an entire week without saying "When I was your age..." (over-30)
* Teaches an entire week without saying "When I was in college..." (under-30)
* For a full week, every student brings a writing utensil to class
* For a full week, computer tech does what it's supposed to every single time
* Calls every single parent in one week
* Goes entire week in the lounge without discussing students
* Correctly writes all standards tags on lesson plan without looking them up
* Turns in all office paperwork-eforms on time for an entire week
* Avoids least favorite colleague for a full week
* Goes a full day without being on the receiving end of student over-sharing
* Gets a different student to say, "Wow! I learned something!" every day for a week
* Successfully clears printer jam
* Successfully gets old mimeograph machine to work when printer suffers jam fatality
* Has worksheets and materials all run off and ready to go full month before needed
* Goes three months without a drop or add in classroom
* Get room full of six-year-olds ready for bus in December in less than ten minutes
* Get at least ten sixteen-year-olds to say, "This Shakespeare guy is okay."
* Goes full week without hearing, "Why do we have to learn this stuff, anyway?"
* Teach in nothing but sports metaphors for a full day
* Says, "Good job, [student name]" 150 times in one day
Teachers would compete like crazy to have their webpage on the school district site drowned in an avalanche of merit badge festoonery, and every day in the classroom would be like a big video game. If you've got more ideas for teacher achievements, leave them in the comments, or perhaps we can float the hashtag #teachermeritbadge.
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