So is the Common Core a national curriculum or not?
The Common Core is not a national curriculum, because it is not a curriculum at all. It is only a set of standards, and that's completely different from the scope and sequence of curriculum planning.
As angry villagers storm the Common Core Castle with pointy sticks and burny things, CCSS defenders keep repeating the curriculum/standards explanation over and over. And here's the thing-- theoretically, they aren't wrong. But like that terrible match.com date you went on, the standards-curriculum distinction only looks good on paper. Even though the Common Core shouldn't have to lead to a nationalized curriculum, they almost certainly will.
I am not a scholar or expert in this field, so I'm going to approach this from a layman's perspective. Let's look at how this is going to work.
What Are Standards?
In manufacturing, standards generally are physical and functional. We have an agreed-upon standard for electrical plugs-- what shape, size and configuration they will have. We can actually see the effect of standards change with plugs; the standard was changed at one point so that one prong was wider than the other, and if you are trying to jam a new plug into an old outlet, you experience what frustration changes in standards can cause.
But education is not manufacturing, so educational standards are basically the children of educational outcomes (hands up, all you other greyhairs who remember Outcome Based Education). They are generally a list of behaviors that we expect the students to display.
Humans Are Fuzzy
Human standards tend to get fuzzy because they tend to fall into subjective terminology. For instance, your standard for a boyfriend might be "He will give me an appropriate gift on my birthday." This will become problematic if you think roses are appropriate and he thinks new shag carpet in his van is appropriate.
Except When They Aren't
Humans can get very specific. Your boyfriend requirement might include, "He will call me every day between 5 and 7 o'clock and talk to me for at least fifteen minutes."
What Is Curriculum?
There are people who get doctorates in this stuff, but the simple layman's explanation is that curriculum is the big list of what we're going to do, when we're going to do it, and how long we're going to take. That's it. It's a big, fat to-do list.
How Are Standards and Curriculum Related?
Standards are your destination. Curriculum is your road map. Standards say "You will be at the corner of East 9th and Superior in Cleveland on Sunday at noon." Curriculum is the directions you pulled up on mapquest and the travel plans you made with them.
The more specific my standards, the less freedom I have to create curriculum. What if the standards say that I will travel to Cleveland in less than three hours using only large highways, arriving with no food in the care and at least five gallons of gas in the tank? Now all manner of details about the trip, from vehicle to route to travel speed have all been pre-decided for me.
However, fuzzy standards also tend to limit freedom in writing curriculum, particularly when coupled with large penalties. If your girlfriend gets in the car and says, "Take me some place fun," you may not know exactly where she wants you to go, but you might feel secure making your best guess or even discussing it. If a carjacker gets in the car and says, "Take me some place fun or I will shoot you," you are going to feel an enormous amount of pressure to discern and match the carjacker's idea of fun.
So... Common Core State Standards?
Right. The Core features a mixture of the very specific and the very fuzzy. Let's look at some examples.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.1.a
Introduce
precise, knowledgeable claim(s), establish the significance of the
claim(s), distinguish the claim(s) from alternate or opposing claims,
and create an organization that logically sequences claim(s),
counterclaims, reasons, and evidence.
This is not a standard for writing; this is an outline. In classrooms that adhere to the Core, this may well be used as a template. It gets as close to dictating the actual curriculum as possible without listing actual topics to write about.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.1.b
Develop
claim(s) and counterclaims fairly and thoroughly, supplying the most
relevant evidence for each while pointing out the strengths and
limitations of both in a manner that anticipates the audience's
knowledge level, concerns, values, and possible biases.
This is "drive me someplace fun." "Fairly," "thoroughly," "most relevant," "strengths," and "limitations" are all subjectively assessed qualities. And that's before we even get to the psychic activity involved in working to our imaginary audience's biases etc.
In my own classroom, this standard would not make me uncomfortable. As the assessor of their writing, I would be obliged to share with my students what I meant by all of these subjective terms. We might even discuss them. And that would be cool.
But this is the roadtrip with the carjacker. Somewhere out there, in a triangle roughly between David Coleman, Pearson and Arne Duncan, is somebody with a specific idea of what he thinks those terms mean, and my students and I must nail that interpretation correctly. What we think doesn't matter-- only what that Font of Standards Knowledge thinks.
So how does that fuzziness lead to specific curriculum? Because we don't want to make the carjacker upset, so we look for every possible hint we can find about where he wants to go.
Vagueness screams out for explanation, and explanation is best served by specifics. We plead with the carjacker-- what do you mean by "someplace fun"? He answers, "Oh, someplace like Cedar Point." At that point, looking at the gun, we don't try to think of a place "like" Cedar Point, because we don't really know what particular Cedar Point trait is the fun-maker, anyway. No, we just head straight for Cedar Point.
Let's look at another example that is happening even as we speak.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.10
By
the end of grade 11, read and comprehend literature, including stories,
dramas, and poems, in the grades 11-CCR text complexity band
proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
The standards are clear that Some Stuff must be read. Appendix B, the famous text exemplars list, gives us some examples. "They are just examples," insist the Core advocates. "It's not an assigned reading list." But everybody is afraid of the carjacker with the gun. So what has happened? The numbers already indicate that school districts are treating Appendix B as an assigned reading list.
What Are We Supposed To Do
District after district is asking this question. The tenor of the top-down standards, imposed from on high, combined with the high stakes tests waiting at the end of the road, creates the strong impression that while there is no explicit Common Core curriculum, there is an implied one hiding somewhere between the lines. States and districts are desperate to be compliant to come up with a curriculum that properly reflects the Core the way it is supposed to.
From Middle Men To Grand Scale
Where the CCSS are broad and vague and subjective, middle men are leaping into the highly profitable breach. Textbooks, pre-built units, and various consulting firms are all leaping up to say, "We can give you the tools to create a CCSS-aligned curriculum. Or we can walk you through it step by step. Or we can just sell you one out of the box."
This isn't a bug; it's a feature. Remember one of the points of CCSS was to create economies of scale, to allow textbook publishers, for instance, to design textbooks that could be sold in all fifty states. The adoption of national standards insures, for the first time in US history, that one national curriculum could work. In fact, one national curriculum created by one vendor would probably be quicker, easier, and cheaper than everyone figuring out their own individual way of meeting the standards.
Sure, it's a level playing field. Any small company or in-house school district committee is free to compete with the hugest educational corporation in the world. Pearson's capture of the PARCC test contract without a single opposing bid can serve as a preview of coming attractions. The highly rigid and tightly structured instructional modules of engageNY really are the most efficient and simple way to align to the Core.
And corporations like Pearson are not just huge-- they have a head start. Because the standards were rammed through quickly and alignments are required yesterday, schools don't really have the time to do long careful curriculum development. But you know who has had several years to get ready? The corporations that were in the room to write the standards.
Other Connections?
Some of the goals of national standards supporters cannot be met by national standards. For instance, the idea that a student should be able to move from Tennessee to Utah without missing a beat-- you don't fix that "problem" with standards. You can only fix it with curriculum.
The Big Load of Cement
Of course, the other connector between standards and curriculum is the Big Test. High stakes tests push everyone closer to the same curriculum, because the curriculum is test prep.
Nobody believes that all the CCSS must be observed. Standards that promote collaboration are sweet, but they will never be on the test and therefor they don't matter. We all learned under NCLB that the testmakers love some standards and don't care so much about others, and it's the ones they love that we'll spend a chunk of the year teaching to.
So, Bottom Line?
Critics who say charge the Common Core is really a national curriculum (and supporters who accidentally say so) are not correct. The standards are not a curriculum. However-
Supporters who say that the Core is just completely divorced from a national curriculum and of course all curriculum control stays local are being disingenuous. CCSS does not mandate a national curriculum, but it ploughs the road, opens the path, greases the skids, and directs traffic toward it. The Core Standards make it hugely likely that we will not only have a national curriculum, but also that it will created by some corporation (best bet-- one whose name starts with "P" and end s with "earson").
That process may happen organically, or at some point the feds (or their designated agents) may step up and say, "The individual states have created a patchwork or policies that are inconsistent and vary too much from state to state. To bring consistent excellence to all states, we need to make the same high quality learning program available in all states." In other words, exactly the same argument used to push the Core can be rolled out again to push a national curriculum. It's entirely possible that we are only at the halfway mark on a very long road trip with a carjacker who is as patient as he is dangerous.
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Testing Does Not Improve Instruction
In an ongoing cultural debate, it is always interesting to watch the shift and change of talking points. The battle for public education is no different.
Many talking points are retired voluntarily. Common Core supporters have shifted from "all CCSS opposition comes from the tin hat tea party wing" to "it's those damn teachers and their unholy alliance with the tea party." Just in the last week, charter fans retired that old classic "Charter schools will be more efficient and save the taxpayer money" and replaced it with "Give charters all the monies that you spend on public schools."
Some talking points should be taken out of rotation. Like "Call Me Maybe," they keep rattling on long after everyone is over them. Maybe the CCSS supporters out on the fringes are late getting the memos. Maybe they just don't realize that the talking points have lost their power to move. Whatever the reason, this talking point needs to be retired Right Now.
High stakes test help improve instruction.
Defenders of high stakes standardized tests repeatedly assert that these will be great because they will aid instruction. Teachers will look at test results and incorporate that feedback into our classroom plans and strategies. Let's take a look at one specific school-- my own-- for an example of all the ways that this is wrong.
We will be taking our state's version of The Test next week (we could have done it a week or two earlier, but this is the state's testing window). So test results-- if they were instantaneous--would help me modify my instruction over the last twenty days of school.
Of course, they won't be instantaneous. We'll get them some time next fall, and by then I will be looking at a completely different group of students in my classroom. Heck, in the case of many members of my department, they won't even be teaching the same grade level or class. So entirely different students and entirely different curriculum.
Can I break down the test results to collect more pearls of pedagogical wisdom? Of course not-- The Test is under super-duper high security, and nobody's allowed to see, touch, taste or smell it. So I will just have to take some test-providers word for it when they tell me that my students aren't very good at meeting Standard A.34-Q7B.01.
Imagine if I did my own student assessment like that-- handed tests back to them with just a grade but no explanation of which questions they missed or why. What could I expect them to learn from that?
More importantly-- do I need to have these test results to analyze? Am I such a disaster as a teacher, such a dud as a sentient being, that I am unable to make educational judgments about the people right in front of me? Is my daily exposure to them, my regular assessment of them, my continued work with them-- is all that so completely insufficient that only by shining the bright light of a standardized test can I hope to see into the murky gloom of my class?
I do understand that helping me is not actually the goal, that we are trying to move toward the dream of a day when the student takes a test on the computer and the computer "individualizes" the student's program. This is a dumb idea for a variety of reasons, but the most notable feature of the idea is that it's not what we're doing. It's a waste of time to sit and play with the remote control for a tv that you expect to own some day in the future, but don't have yet.
And it should go without saying, but I'm going to say it anyway, that if the test is a terrible rotten lousy no good very bad test, then none of the rest of this discussion matters one whit.
Standardized testing does not help teaching. It does not improve instruction. Supporters of the Reformy Status Quo should stop saying it does.
Many talking points are retired voluntarily. Common Core supporters have shifted from "all CCSS opposition comes from the tin hat tea party wing" to "it's those damn teachers and their unholy alliance with the tea party." Just in the last week, charter fans retired that old classic "Charter schools will be more efficient and save the taxpayer money" and replaced it with "Give charters all the monies that you spend on public schools."
Some talking points should be taken out of rotation. Like "Call Me Maybe," they keep rattling on long after everyone is over them. Maybe the CCSS supporters out on the fringes are late getting the memos. Maybe they just don't realize that the talking points have lost their power to move. Whatever the reason, this talking point needs to be retired Right Now.
High stakes test help improve instruction.
Defenders of high stakes standardized tests repeatedly assert that these will be great because they will aid instruction. Teachers will look at test results and incorporate that feedback into our classroom plans and strategies. Let's take a look at one specific school-- my own-- for an example of all the ways that this is wrong.
We will be taking our state's version of The Test next week (we could have done it a week or two earlier, but this is the state's testing window). So test results-- if they were instantaneous--would help me modify my instruction over the last twenty days of school.
Of course, they won't be instantaneous. We'll get them some time next fall, and by then I will be looking at a completely different group of students in my classroom. Heck, in the case of many members of my department, they won't even be teaching the same grade level or class. So entirely different students and entirely different curriculum.
Can I break down the test results to collect more pearls of pedagogical wisdom? Of course not-- The Test is under super-duper high security, and nobody's allowed to see, touch, taste or smell it. So I will just have to take some test-providers word for it when they tell me that my students aren't very good at meeting Standard A.34-Q7B.01.
Imagine if I did my own student assessment like that-- handed tests back to them with just a grade but no explanation of which questions they missed or why. What could I expect them to learn from that?
More importantly-- do I need to have these test results to analyze? Am I such a disaster as a teacher, such a dud as a sentient being, that I am unable to make educational judgments about the people right in front of me? Is my daily exposure to them, my regular assessment of them, my continued work with them-- is all that so completely insufficient that only by shining the bright light of a standardized test can I hope to see into the murky gloom of my class?
I do understand that helping me is not actually the goal, that we are trying to move toward the dream of a day when the student takes a test on the computer and the computer "individualizes" the student's program. This is a dumb idea for a variety of reasons, but the most notable feature of the idea is that it's not what we're doing. It's a waste of time to sit and play with the remote control for a tv that you expect to own some day in the future, but don't have yet.
And it should go without saying, but I'm going to say it anyway, that if the test is a terrible rotten lousy no good very bad test, then none of the rest of this discussion matters one whit.
Standardized testing does not help teaching. It does not improve instruction. Supporters of the Reformy Status Quo should stop saying it does.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Oh Nos!! NAEP Sadness!
Wednesday unleashed a torrent of bureaucratic sadness as the newest batch of NAEP numbercrunching shambled out into the light of day. NAEP stands for National Assessment of Educational Progress (and not, as I always assumed, No Actual Educational Purpose), and it involves giving math and science tests to students throughout their educational career.
The Big Sadness is because high school seniors have stayed flat. While fourth and eighth grade test results have inched up for the past couple of decades, senior results stay stuck pretty much in the same corner of the testing results sargasso sea. And we are so very dismayed!!
"Our high schools take kids who have made incredible progress in fourth grade and eighth grade," said Mark Schneider, a vice president at the American Institutes of Research who previously led the government arm that administered NAEP. "Whatever good we did is gone."
Experts are scrambling to take a shot at explaining this development. Schneider himself has a pair of theories. "Either our high schools are doing a terrible job, or 12th graders don't care about NAEP."
Oh, Mark. Marky Mark Mark. Let's play a little thought experiment. You are a high school senior in the two-thousand-teens. You have been taking standardized tests your entire school career, tests that you understand aren't really related to your education. But now you are a senior. There's prom and maybe college and some parties and that cute boy/girl that you've got only so much time left to ask out. Nothing left stands between you and your graduation. And here comes one more standardized dumb test that you know has absolutely nothing to do with your life, your future, or anything that you care about. The only thing special about it is that, out of 14,283 standardized tests you've faced down, this is one you can finally safely tell to take a flying leap.
What do you think, Mark? Do you think, "Boy, I had better do my level best to generate some really good, valid data for those number-crunching technocrats to look at. I don't want to disappoint them, so no matter how tough I will just bear down and-- wow, Sandy is looking really cute today!"
Caring is the great missing link in standardized test validity. Test oracles (oh, can I please call them testacles for short) are so devoted to their super duper magical mystical testing programs that it just doesn't occur to them that the world is filled with people who can look at big beautiful standardized tests and just not give a rat's ass. Every test result we ever look at starts with the assumption that the student cared enough to really try.
On some level, testacles know students don't. That's why we keep ramping up the stakes all the way to "Pass this test or you don't get to move out of this grade"-- because we know that without some sort of stick, the students would just start playing ACDC and doodling Spongebob pictures.
Course, not everybody gets that. Joy Resmovits quotes Cornelia Orr of the National Assessment Governing Board calling the senior disengagement an urban myth. After all (I swear I am not making this up), they see a motivational video first! Now, I should not scoff motivational videos. In high school we all saw drivers ed movies including Signal 30 and Mechanized Death and these automotive snuff films motivated us to want to walk everywhere for the rest of our lives (we got over it). So maybe the motivational film depicts Jimmy, a young man who fails to take the NAEP test seriously and ends up impaled on a stack of frozen moray eels at the prom.
There are other possible explanations for where all the awesomeness of the earlier results is vanishing to. One is that the whole model of educational scaffolding is just wrong, and that we can't just jump ahead of one developmental step and expect to stay ahead the rest of our educational career. If you're running a marathon, running your first five miles ten minutes faster than you usually do does NOT mean that you will finish the entire race ten minutes faster than usual.
Another is that the lower grades are loaded with all manner of test prep, which makes fourth and eighth graders particularly ready to ride the train to bubbleland. Meanwhile, schools have pretty much stopped the test prep stuff for seniors, whose bubblicious days are behind them.
Peggy Carr, an NAEP administrator, has an interesting theory-- since many students who would have dropped/flunked out in the past are now sticking it out, they are contributing lower scores to the aggregate and bringing down the overall awesomeness. Of course, her theory assumes that the awesome new grad rate numbers are not statistical shenanigans and hoary hocus-pocus; unfortunately, this article by smart person Julian Vasquez Heilig suggests that the new numbers are baloney.
Let me wrap up with one more quote from Mark Schneider.
"Students aren't learning what they should be learning in high school."
Students aren't learning? We don't really know that, do we? We just know they aren't getting the preferred answers on questions that purport to measure whether or not they have learned certain things. What they should be learning? Wow, there is a whole mountain of assumption in that one-- exactly whose idea of what they should be learning are we chasing here?
There is one thing I do know. We've had the test-centric federal-driven top-down standardized status quo in place for over a decade, and reformsters have had the chance to redesign schools as they wish. We have spent over a decade devoting the entire educational system to churning out exemplary standardized test-takers, and apparently we are bad at it. If stagnant NAEP results prove anything at all, they prove that the reformster agenda is a failure.
The Big Sadness is because high school seniors have stayed flat. While fourth and eighth grade test results have inched up for the past couple of decades, senior results stay stuck pretty much in the same corner of the testing results sargasso sea. And we are so very dismayed!!
"Our high schools take kids who have made incredible progress in fourth grade and eighth grade," said Mark Schneider, a vice president at the American Institutes of Research who previously led the government arm that administered NAEP. "Whatever good we did is gone."
Experts are scrambling to take a shot at explaining this development. Schneider himself has a pair of theories. "Either our high schools are doing a terrible job, or 12th graders don't care about NAEP."
Oh, Mark. Marky Mark Mark. Let's play a little thought experiment. You are a high school senior in the two-thousand-teens. You have been taking standardized tests your entire school career, tests that you understand aren't really related to your education. But now you are a senior. There's prom and maybe college and some parties and that cute boy/girl that you've got only so much time left to ask out. Nothing left stands between you and your graduation. And here comes one more standardized dumb test that you know has absolutely nothing to do with your life, your future, or anything that you care about. The only thing special about it is that, out of 14,283 standardized tests you've faced down, this is one you can finally safely tell to take a flying leap.
What do you think, Mark? Do you think, "Boy, I had better do my level best to generate some really good, valid data for those number-crunching technocrats to look at. I don't want to disappoint them, so no matter how tough I will just bear down and-- wow, Sandy is looking really cute today!"
Caring is the great missing link in standardized test validity. Test oracles (oh, can I please call them testacles for short) are so devoted to their super duper magical mystical testing programs that it just doesn't occur to them that the world is filled with people who can look at big beautiful standardized tests and just not give a rat's ass. Every test result we ever look at starts with the assumption that the student cared enough to really try.
On some level, testacles know students don't. That's why we keep ramping up the stakes all the way to "Pass this test or you don't get to move out of this grade"-- because we know that without some sort of stick, the students would just start playing ACDC and doodling Spongebob pictures.
Course, not everybody gets that. Joy Resmovits quotes Cornelia Orr of the National Assessment Governing Board calling the senior disengagement an urban myth. After all (I swear I am not making this up), they see a motivational video first! Now, I should not scoff motivational videos. In high school we all saw drivers ed movies including Signal 30 and Mechanized Death and these automotive snuff films motivated us to want to walk everywhere for the rest of our lives (we got over it). So maybe the motivational film depicts Jimmy, a young man who fails to take the NAEP test seriously and ends up impaled on a stack of frozen moray eels at the prom.
There are other possible explanations for where all the awesomeness of the earlier results is vanishing to. One is that the whole model of educational scaffolding is just wrong, and that we can't just jump ahead of one developmental step and expect to stay ahead the rest of our educational career. If you're running a marathon, running your first five miles ten minutes faster than you usually do does NOT mean that you will finish the entire race ten minutes faster than usual.
Another is that the lower grades are loaded with all manner of test prep, which makes fourth and eighth graders particularly ready to ride the train to bubbleland. Meanwhile, schools have pretty much stopped the test prep stuff for seniors, whose bubblicious days are behind them.
Peggy Carr, an NAEP administrator, has an interesting theory-- since many students who would have dropped/flunked out in the past are now sticking it out, they are contributing lower scores to the aggregate and bringing down the overall awesomeness. Of course, her theory assumes that the awesome new grad rate numbers are not statistical shenanigans and hoary hocus-pocus; unfortunately, this article by smart person Julian Vasquez Heilig suggests that the new numbers are baloney.
Let me wrap up with one more quote from Mark Schneider.
"Students aren't learning what they should be learning in high school."
Students aren't learning? We don't really know that, do we? We just know they aren't getting the preferred answers on questions that purport to measure whether or not they have learned certain things. What they should be learning? Wow, there is a whole mountain of assumption in that one-- exactly whose idea of what they should be learning are we chasing here?
There is one thing I do know. We've had the test-centric federal-driven top-down standardized status quo in place for over a decade, and reformsters have had the chance to redesign schools as they wish. We have spent over a decade devoting the entire educational system to churning out exemplary standardized test-takers, and apparently we are bad at it. If stagnant NAEP results prove anything at all, they prove that the reformster agenda is a failure.
Or Else
"Well, my child won't be like that."
Are there any more hilarious words to come out of the mouths of not-quite-yet parents? Many an actual parent has enjoyed the spectacle of non-parents making pronouncements about a child they haven't even met yet, combined with criticism of the parenting skills of people whose children are actually here.
"Well, I would never let my child get away with that. My child will eat exactly what I put in front of him."
"My child will certainly not still be wearing diapers at that age."
"My child will never, ever behave like that."
"With what we now know about cognitive development, I will have my child ready to read and analyze 19th century Russian novels in their original language by age three."
As all actual parents know, this kind of predicting is hilarious because, as it turns out, children are less like programmable toaster-ovens and more like actual independently-functioning live human beings.And for real live human beings, developmental milestones come when they come. You may have your heart set on recording Junior's first steps before his first birthday, but he's going to walk when he's ready to walk.
These developmental milestones are not really negotiable. Your thirteen-month-old child is not sitting there on his butt because he has decided to Fight the Power and Stick It To the Man. You can certainly help his development either by providing the positives of help and support and a loving, safe environment. But in the end, he's going to walk when he's ready and able to walk.
You know what won't help him walk? Threats.
We've seen those parents. They're so invested in being right, so frustrated that this child who is making them look foolish and ineffectual by not delivering on their "Not my kid" pronouncement, so angry that their will is being thwarted by this child. So they go to threats.
You are going to do this, they say, or else.
Or else doesn't work, not really. It never has. History is filled with proof. You will switch to being right-handed instead of left-handed, or else. You will convert to the True Faith, or else. You will stop falling in love with the Wrong People, or else. The most you can hope for is compliance. Or else never gets you real change.
Or else only gets you compliance if it's possible. Grow a foot taller, or else, is a waste of energy.When compliance is not possible, we can expect to foster anger or resentment or a deep sense of personal failure or a complete loss of respect for us, and for our stupid, impossible demands.
So where do you think it gets us to turn to the eight-year-olds of America and say, "You must be able to read as well as we say by the date we pick in the spring. Or else."
What do the state legislators who passed "reading guarantee" laws imagine was going on-- that a great pack of third graders were out there perfectly capable of reading, but just refusing to learn out of laziness and spite, waiting for someone to kick their little tushies and get them in gear? Did they imagine we are awash in a nation of elementary teachers whose attitude is, "I don't really care if my kids learn anything. I'm just in this for the money and the recess."
Why not a height guarantee law? Let's guarantee every parent that their child will be forty-five inches tall or we will keep flunking the kid till he grows properly. Let's flunk any child is over or under weight according to the growth charts. Let's flunk any left-handed kid until he finally switches to the proper hand.
Or else is a terrible way to raise children. Having expectations that are so rigid that you have already mapped out the child's life before you meet the child-- that's no way to parent, and it's certainly no way to run a school system.
Are there any more hilarious words to come out of the mouths of not-quite-yet parents? Many an actual parent has enjoyed the spectacle of non-parents making pronouncements about a child they haven't even met yet, combined with criticism of the parenting skills of people whose children are actually here.
"Well, I would never let my child get away with that. My child will eat exactly what I put in front of him."
"My child will certainly not still be wearing diapers at that age."
"My child will never, ever behave like that."
"With what we now know about cognitive development, I will have my child ready to read and analyze 19th century Russian novels in their original language by age three."
As all actual parents know, this kind of predicting is hilarious because, as it turns out, children are less like programmable toaster-ovens and more like actual independently-functioning live human beings.And for real live human beings, developmental milestones come when they come. You may have your heart set on recording Junior's first steps before his first birthday, but he's going to walk when he's ready to walk.
These developmental milestones are not really negotiable. Your thirteen-month-old child is not sitting there on his butt because he has decided to Fight the Power and Stick It To the Man. You can certainly help his development either by providing the positives of help and support and a loving, safe environment. But in the end, he's going to walk when he's ready and able to walk.
You know what won't help him walk? Threats.
We've seen those parents. They're so invested in being right, so frustrated that this child who is making them look foolish and ineffectual by not delivering on their "Not my kid" pronouncement, so angry that their will is being thwarted by this child. So they go to threats.
You are going to do this, they say, or else.
Or else doesn't work, not really. It never has. History is filled with proof. You will switch to being right-handed instead of left-handed, or else. You will convert to the True Faith, or else. You will stop falling in love with the Wrong People, or else. The most you can hope for is compliance. Or else never gets you real change.
Or else only gets you compliance if it's possible. Grow a foot taller, or else, is a waste of energy.When compliance is not possible, we can expect to foster anger or resentment or a deep sense of personal failure or a complete loss of respect for us, and for our stupid, impossible demands.
So where do you think it gets us to turn to the eight-year-olds of America and say, "You must be able to read as well as we say by the date we pick in the spring. Or else."
What do the state legislators who passed "reading guarantee" laws imagine was going on-- that a great pack of third graders were out there perfectly capable of reading, but just refusing to learn out of laziness and spite, waiting for someone to kick their little tushies and get them in gear? Did they imagine we are awash in a nation of elementary teachers whose attitude is, "I don't really care if my kids learn anything. I'm just in this for the money and the recess."
Why not a height guarantee law? Let's guarantee every parent that their child will be forty-five inches tall or we will keep flunking the kid till he grows properly. Let's flunk any child is over or under weight according to the growth charts. Let's flunk any left-handed kid until he finally switches to the proper hand.
Or else is a terrible way to raise children. Having expectations that are so rigid that you have already mapped out the child's life before you meet the child-- that's no way to parent, and it's certainly no way to run a school system.
Charter$ & Ca$hing In
Since the President has declared this week National Charter School Appreciation & General Ain't Charters Swell Week, you are probably thinking, "How can I be part of the charter school excitement?"
In the past, many charters were launched that focused solidly on providing unique and exciting educational experiences for their communities. These schools were innovative. These schools were connected to their communities. These schools were icing on the public school system cake. And these schools were run by chumps. There's only one question you need to answer to gauge the success of your charter school-- am I making money.
Here's how to properly cash in on the charter school movement.
Diversify!
Not the school-- your portfolio. Set up multiple companies. Create a holding company that owns the building, and charge the school rent and facilities fees. Create a school management company, and hire yourself to run your school. Form your own custodial contracting company. Write your own textbooks, and then sell them to yourself. Buy a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter and set yourself up as a lunch concession with ten dollar sandwiches.
Don't Overlook the Obvious
"Non-profit" just means "not wasting money by throwing it away on stockholders." Taking money hand over fist that you can't call profit? Just put it all in a big wheelbarrow and pay it to yourself as a salary. There's no legal limit to what you can be paid as the charter school operator. The only limits to your salary are the limits set by your own sense of shame. If you have no shame, then ka-ching, my friend. Ka. Ching.
Ain't Too Proud To Beg
Have a fundraiser. When you wave schools and children at people, they fork over money like crazy, whether you actually need it or not. The only way it could work any better would be if you found a way to work in the American flag and puppies.
Students Are Marketing Tools
Students have a job at your charter, and that's to make your charter look good and marketable. If they won't do the job, fire them. If they aren't for sure going to graduate, fire them before senior year (100% graduation rate makes great ad copy). If they are going to create bad press for disciplinary reasons, fire them.
Students Are Also The Revenue Stream
The other function of students is to bring money in while not costing any more than is absolutely necessary. Never take students with special needs (unless you can use them to make the school look good without incurring extra costs). If a student will require extra disciplinary or academic intervention, fire him.
Always remember, however, that students need to be fired during Firing Season-- late enough to hold onto the money they bring, but early enough that they won't hurt your numbers.
Only Use McTeachers
Personnel costs will eat up your revenue. Make sure your teachers are young, cheap, and easily replaced. Remember-- with the proper programs in a box, teaching requires no more training and expertise than bagging up an order of fries. Why pay New Cadillac wages when all you need are Used Yugos. It should go without saying, but they should never, ever be allowed to organize. Keep them too demoralized to cause trouble, and if someone insists on causing trouble, fire her. Pro tip: TFA can be a great source of people who don't even want to be teachers and will gladly take themselves out of your way.
Remember-- You Are A Public School
You are entitled to public money, public resources, public buildings, public anything you can get them to give you. Never pay a cost out of your pocket when you can get the taxpayers to foot the bill. You also want to accent the "public" in your marketing, as it helps reduce parents' reluctance to screw over the actual public schools.
Remember-- You Are A Private School
Never let anybody see your financials, ever. This is your business, and nobody-- especially not the taxpayers who pay you-- is entitled to know anything about how you run it. "Transparency" is a dirty, dirty word.
In general, rules are for chumps. Make sure you are only playing by the ones that best serve your ROI.
Make the Right Friends
It's true that not everybody can afford to buy, say, an entire legislature or the governor of a state, but even outside of New York, it's possible to use the giant pile of money you've accumulated to help important people understand what a great public service you're performing.
We've come a long way from the days when charter school operators made the mistake of thinking that their schools should focus on educating young men and women. In Modern Times, we better understand that a well-run charter operation can contribute to an important job-- the business of taking money away from undeserving taxpayers and putting it in the hands of the deserving rich. By focusing on the One True Function of charter schools-- making money-- you can develop a robust business that will make it possible for you to send your own children to real private schools that provide the kind of education that, thank goodness, you will never try to incorporate into your own charter operation.
In the past, many charters were launched that focused solidly on providing unique and exciting educational experiences for their communities. These schools were innovative. These schools were connected to their communities. These schools were icing on the public school system cake. And these schools were run by chumps. There's only one question you need to answer to gauge the success of your charter school-- am I making money.
Here's how to properly cash in on the charter school movement.
Diversify!
Not the school-- your portfolio. Set up multiple companies. Create a holding company that owns the building, and charge the school rent and facilities fees. Create a school management company, and hire yourself to run your school. Form your own custodial contracting company. Write your own textbooks, and then sell them to yourself. Buy a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter and set yourself up as a lunch concession with ten dollar sandwiches.
Don't Overlook the Obvious
"Non-profit" just means "not wasting money by throwing it away on stockholders." Taking money hand over fist that you can't call profit? Just put it all in a big wheelbarrow and pay it to yourself as a salary. There's no legal limit to what you can be paid as the charter school operator. The only limits to your salary are the limits set by your own sense of shame. If you have no shame, then ka-ching, my friend. Ka. Ching.
Ain't Too Proud To Beg
Have a fundraiser. When you wave schools and children at people, they fork over money like crazy, whether you actually need it or not. The only way it could work any better would be if you found a way to work in the American flag and puppies.
Students Are Marketing Tools
Students have a job at your charter, and that's to make your charter look good and marketable. If they won't do the job, fire them. If they aren't for sure going to graduate, fire them before senior year (100% graduation rate makes great ad copy). If they are going to create bad press for disciplinary reasons, fire them.
Students Are Also The Revenue Stream
The other function of students is to bring money in while not costing any more than is absolutely necessary. Never take students with special needs (unless you can use them to make the school look good without incurring extra costs). If a student will require extra disciplinary or academic intervention, fire him.
Always remember, however, that students need to be fired during Firing Season-- late enough to hold onto the money they bring, but early enough that they won't hurt your numbers.
Only Use McTeachers
Personnel costs will eat up your revenue. Make sure your teachers are young, cheap, and easily replaced. Remember-- with the proper programs in a box, teaching requires no more training and expertise than bagging up an order of fries. Why pay New Cadillac wages when all you need are Used Yugos. It should go without saying, but they should never, ever be allowed to organize. Keep them too demoralized to cause trouble, and if someone insists on causing trouble, fire her. Pro tip: TFA can be a great source of people who don't even want to be teachers and will gladly take themselves out of your way.
Remember-- You Are A Public School
You are entitled to public money, public resources, public buildings, public anything you can get them to give you. Never pay a cost out of your pocket when you can get the taxpayers to foot the bill. You also want to accent the "public" in your marketing, as it helps reduce parents' reluctance to screw over the actual public schools.
Remember-- You Are A Private School
Never let anybody see your financials, ever. This is your business, and nobody-- especially not the taxpayers who pay you-- is entitled to know anything about how you run it. "Transparency" is a dirty, dirty word.
In general, rules are for chumps. Make sure you are only playing by the ones that best serve your ROI.
Make the Right Friends
It's true that not everybody can afford to buy, say, an entire legislature or the governor of a state, but even outside of New York, it's possible to use the giant pile of money you've accumulated to help important people understand what a great public service you're performing.
We've come a long way from the days when charter school operators made the mistake of thinking that their schools should focus on educating young men and women. In Modern Times, we better understand that a well-run charter operation can contribute to an important job-- the business of taking money away from undeserving taxpayers and putting it in the hands of the deserving rich. By focusing on the One True Function of charter schools-- making money-- you can develop a robust business that will make it possible for you to send your own children to real private schools that provide the kind of education that, thank goodness, you will never try to incorporate into your own charter operation.
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Dear Sasha Growick
Dear Sasha;
I read your entry in the ongoing Louis CK bloggy wars. It's so monumentally special that I just had to send you a little fan mail.
Your intro is fine. Blah blah blah Louis CK's twitter rant blah blah as a third grade teacher blah blah I don't want to throw gas on the fire, but I feel compelled to, somehow.
You followed that up with what you're doing in third grade math, and underlined that the Core are "a new set of multi-state learning standards that challenge students to think rather than compute." I like that "multi-state" thing-- great way to skate around the term "national standards," which sure doesn't fly with some folks these days. And that "think rather than compute"-- boy, that really gets to the heart of it. Who wants kids who can actually do math when we can get them to just think about it. I'm kind of surprised that it has taken us this long to adapt Professor Harold Hill's think system to math.
Then you gave proof that the strategies work. Once again, nail-head-ouch! New test prep aligned with new tests can only lead to better scores-- how can people not get that?
Does all this create stress for teachers, students, parents, lawyers, corporate test writers, you asked (I think). Sure it does! They should suck it up. And if they can't suck it up, they should just do what you folks at the highly effective Success Academies do-- throw the losers out on the street (well, or back into a public school). When the going gets tough, the tough get to bounce third graders back to whatever loser factory they crawled out of. "As teachers, we can’t afford to stand around complaining that the new standards are too hard. We have kids to inspire," or to force out of school-- whichever is going to make our numbers look best.
Next you brought up grit. Boy, am I glad you did that. People just don't understand that grit is magical; it's like a cleanser that scrubs away any need for kindness, support, or empathy. At least I think it gets rid of empathy. I can't really get a sense of what other people are thinking and feeling (but you know, who give a s#!%?).
And then, my favorite part-- you scold Louis CK.
"But a Twitter tirade doesn’t help anybody, least of all students. " You say, and boy that's dead on. The only thing that really helps people is a blog scolding; twitter tirades don't do a damn thing. Also, remember that the math world is hard on girls-- some day Louis CK will be glad that school roughed up his daughter and made her tough enough to succeed with her mathy thoughts.
"So to you, Sir, I say: Your daughter can do it. Her tears will not break her. Sometimes, caring means comforting and sheltering our kids—but sometimes it means challenging them, too"
Excellent finish. As a seven-year veteran of the classroom, and as someone who is a complete stranger to Louis CK and his daughter, you are clearly the best person to tell him what his daughter needs and what she will benefit from, as well as how best to show he cares about her. If there's anything parents need to understand about the brave new CCSS world, it's that complete strangers who don't know them or their children are clearly the best people to make educational prescriptions for them.
So you go, young woman. Using CK's daughter as a prop to make points about the Core may seem excessively ballsy to some, but I say, if you have to sell a program without any actual facts, data or support to back yourself up, sheer ballsiness is just what you need.
I read your entry in the ongoing Louis CK bloggy wars. It's so monumentally special that I just had to send you a little fan mail.
Your intro is fine. Blah blah blah Louis CK's twitter rant blah blah as a third grade teacher blah blah I don't want to throw gas on the fire, but I feel compelled to, somehow.
You followed that up with what you're doing in third grade math, and underlined that the Core are "a new set of multi-state learning standards that challenge students to think rather than compute." I like that "multi-state" thing-- great way to skate around the term "national standards," which sure doesn't fly with some folks these days. And that "think rather than compute"-- boy, that really gets to the heart of it. Who wants kids who can actually do math when we can get them to just think about it. I'm kind of surprised that it has taken us this long to adapt Professor Harold Hill's think system to math.
Then you gave proof that the strategies work. Once again, nail-head-ouch! New test prep aligned with new tests can only lead to better scores-- how can people not get that?
Does all this create stress for teachers, students, parents, lawyers, corporate test writers, you asked (I think). Sure it does! They should suck it up. And if they can't suck it up, they should just do what you folks at the highly effective Success Academies do-- throw the losers out on the street (well, or back into a public school). When the going gets tough, the tough get to bounce third graders back to whatever loser factory they crawled out of. "As teachers, we can’t afford to stand around complaining that the new standards are too hard. We have kids to inspire," or to force out of school-- whichever is going to make our numbers look best.
Next you brought up grit. Boy, am I glad you did that. People just don't understand that grit is magical; it's like a cleanser that scrubs away any need for kindness, support, or empathy. At least I think it gets rid of empathy. I can't really get a sense of what other people are thinking and feeling (but you know, who give a s#!%?).
And then, my favorite part-- you scold Louis CK.
"But a Twitter tirade doesn’t help anybody, least of all students. " You say, and boy that's dead on. The only thing that really helps people is a blog scolding; twitter tirades don't do a damn thing. Also, remember that the math world is hard on girls-- some day Louis CK will be glad that school roughed up his daughter and made her tough enough to succeed with her mathy thoughts.
"So to you, Sir, I say: Your daughter can do it. Her tears will not break her. Sometimes, caring means comforting and sheltering our kids—but sometimes it means challenging them, too"
Excellent finish. As a seven-year veteran of the classroom, and as someone who is a complete stranger to Louis CK and his daughter, you are clearly the best person to tell him what his daughter needs and what she will benefit from, as well as how best to show he cares about her. If there's anything parents need to understand about the brave new CCSS world, it's that complete strangers who don't know them or their children are clearly the best people to make educational prescriptions for them.
So you go, young woman. Using CK's daughter as a prop to make points about the Core may seem excessively ballsy to some, but I say, if you have to sell a program without any actual facts, data or support to back yourself up, sheer ballsiness is just what you need.
NWEA: Teachers Think Testing Sucks Slightly Less
Northwest Evaluation Association just released some poll-based research about testing. It's not exactly a shocker, but get ready to watch its results get spun like marbles in a blender.
NWEA is a testing form that has been around since the pre-computer days, so they are not your typical CCSS cash-in operation, but they have picked up the language quickly, perhaps from some of their corporate partners including Edmentum, Achieve3000, Silverback and Triumphlearning. In some parts of the country, you know them as the MAP folks.
The new research covers attitudes about testing. On the only slightly surprising front, we have the news that fewer teachers think too much time is spent on testing than in 2011, though the majority still believe that too much time is being spent on testing.
1) Administrators, educators and policymakers need to engage with students when they're designing this stuff, especially when making test mandates at--wait?! What!! Engage with students??!! That's crazy talk!
2) Realign assessment priorities in support of teaching and learning. In less fancy words, stop designing tests around all this other baloney and create tests that actually help with education. One and two taken together translate as, "Design and deliver tests more like teachers and less like corporate bureaucrats."
3) There's a lot of gobbledeegook in this one, but I think it paraphrases roughly as "Train teachers better in how to sell these state tests, because students aren't properly absorbing the propaganda about what is going on."
4) Make educator collaboration a priority in every school and district. I honestly don't see where this one is coming from.
5) Prioritize technology readiness.
The title of the report is Making Assessment Matter. That title includes a message (hint: why are there no reports "Making Water Wet"?)-- you don't have to "make" something become what it already is. The contents of the report are clear-- the majority of students and teachers have figured out that state assessments don't matter, not when it comes to actual education.
NWEA is a testing form that has been around since the pre-computer days, so they are not your typical CCSS cash-in operation, but they have picked up the language quickly, perhaps from some of their corporate partners including Edmentum, Achieve3000, Silverback and Triumphlearning. In some parts of the country, you know them as the MAP folks.
The new research covers attitudes about testing. On the only slightly surprising front, we have the news that fewer teachers think too much time is spent on testing than in 2011, though the majority still believe that too much time is being spent on testing.
Look for this to be spun as a trend. EdWeek went with the mostly-misleading headline "Survey: More Educators Think 'Just the Right Amount' of Time Is Spent on Testing."
The online survey also turned up some responses from students regarding the purpose and value of testing, and this next chart is interesting because it shows that students know the difference between the classroom teacher's tests and the High Stakes Standardized Tests.
Note that for students, state tests only really serve the intent of evaluating student levels and evaluating teachers, schools, and administrators. For all other purposes, they are at best redundant and at most unnecessary, because classroom tests have it covered.
And given the framing of the question, this isn't even about the actual utility of the tests, but instead addresses the student perception of why the test is given. In other words, despite years of sales pitches, most students don't believe that states are administering these tests to help them with their education. Or, to frame it another way, students uniformly trust their classroom teacher more than the state to be giving tests that serve a useful educational intent.
Or more simply, even students understand that state standardized tests serve no educational purpose.
Or more simply, even students understand that state standardized tests serve no educational purpose.
Teachers and administrators have different perceptions and levels of understanding about the role of assessment in their work, and students demonstrate a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of assessment than their teachers believe.
Ya think? NWEA has five recommendations based on the study results.1) Administrators, educators and policymakers need to engage with students when they're designing this stuff, especially when making test mandates at--wait?! What!! Engage with students??!! That's crazy talk!
2) Realign assessment priorities in support of teaching and learning. In less fancy words, stop designing tests around all this other baloney and create tests that actually help with education. One and two taken together translate as, "Design and deliver tests more like teachers and less like corporate bureaucrats."
3) There's a lot of gobbledeegook in this one, but I think it paraphrases roughly as "Train teachers better in how to sell these state tests, because students aren't properly absorbing the propaganda about what is going on."
4) Make educator collaboration a priority in every school and district. I honestly don't see where this one is coming from.
5) Prioritize technology readiness.
The title of the report is Making Assessment Matter. That title includes a message (hint: why are there no reports "Making Water Wet"?)-- you don't have to "make" something become what it already is. The contents of the report are clear-- the majority of students and teachers have figured out that state assessments don't matter, not when it comes to actual education.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)