It's only May, and the Pennsylvania State Education Association is already in the weeds for this year's gubernatorial election.
Democrats in Pennsylvania have been pretty excited about the chance to run a candidate against Tom "Most Beatable Republican in the Country" Corbett. Several started throwing hats at the ring a while ago, and for reasons that are not entirely clear out here in the cheap seats, PSEA made their choice early on, offering a "recommendation," which is three scoshes short of an endorsement, but two smidgens greater than a "looks favorably upon."
That happened back in February, and the flop sweat started showing almost immediately. The leading Democrat has been Tom Wolf, a businessman from York, PA who has a pleasant smile and the ugliest website since myspace threw up all over a 90s boy band. However, when you google any candidate for governor, Wolf is the sponsored result at the top. This highlights one of Wolf's greatest qualifications for public office-- he is rich.
McCord has been state treasurer for some ungodly number of years. The other two candidates include Congresswoman Allyson Schwatrz, who reportedly tanked the PSEA interview and generally projects all the likeability of a cranky librarian, and Some Other Person who has failed to register on the radar.
Wolf's wealth has been a big help, allowing him to subject Pennsylvanians to a prodigious media blitz. McCord decided to counter that with a big dose of negative dumb. In the late stages of the campaign, McCord has tried to smear Wolf with his connection to a former York mayor who may at best have been rather a racist and at worst may have murdered a lady. This has been a spectacular display of tone deaf politics, as the charge has come out basically as, "He stuck by a friend when he should have had the political sense to drop the friendship like a hot rock."
But PA politics is often about rural vs city (and by city, we mean Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and the Kingdom of Philadelphia which some Pennsylvanians would like to cut loose and give to New Jersey). Wolf is a small town boy made good (or at least rich), and in rural areas, "He stuck by his friend and failed to act like a professional politician" is not exactly a searing indictment.
Why did PSEA throw lukewarm support behind a guy who was, at best, a long shot? Well, McCord has good answers when it comes to charters and some reformy stuff, so his nomination is at least a sign that PSEA might not be as lost in the weeds as NEA. Wolf's only government experience was with Smilin' Ed Rendell, a guy who had no more use for teachers than he had for smallpox. Part of Wolf's copy on education says
we must provide every child with a world-class education that equips
them with the skills to succeed in the 21st century. To do this, the
commonwealth needs a leader who will ensure that every school is held to
the same high standards, is funded appropriately, and graduates
students with the skills needed to go on to college or enter the
workforce.
So, more reformy goodness there. Grrreat.
So in the fall we'll face a choice between a candidate the union previously spurned whose not very friendly to public education, and a candidate who has proven to be actively hostile to public ed. I am not excited.
PSEA has always shared the national union's unfortunate tendency to give up important positions for "a place at the table" and justify our support of anti-teacher politicians with that old standard "it would have been worse with the other guy." I suppose we'll go make nice with Wolf once he handsd McCord his head, and all the Dems have promised that once the primary is over, they will make nice and try not to discuss all the work they've now done for the GOP. If I had my way (which I won't, but a boy can dream), PSEA would just sit this one out, arms folded, off in the corner declaring "We won't help any of you jerks until you actually support public education and teachers who provide it."
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Better Teacher Training
The US DOE recently revived an initiative for improving teacher training in this country. It's a dumb initiative. Pearson offers edTPA, basically a new gateway into the profession, to insure that only the qualified enter the profession. edTPA is a dumb program. TFA is only the most prominent of the many "alternative paths" into teaching. As a means of creating great teaching professionals, TFA is the very essence of dumb.
"So, Mr. Smart Ass Blogger," you ask, "do you have a better idea?"
And I answer (because you called me by name), "Yes. Yes, I do."
I went to Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania,and I chose them so that I could go through their teacher program. I was an English major, with minimal education classwork before I entered student teaching. But I never regretted that I didn't have more pre-student teaching coursework in "How To Make a Bulletin Board" or "Favorite Professorial Theories That I Imagine Might Work in a Classroom."
We all student taught in schools in the Metro Cleveland area, and lived in an apartment building at East 9th and Superior (with a boarded up ball room in the basement, but that's another story). We took methods courses while student teaching right down the hall in the classrooms that the college rented. Our student teaching supervisor saw us in a classroom usually at least once a week, and for more than one class-- that supervisor also taught one of the methods classes, where instead of talking about cloudy hypotheticals, we talked about how to handle a situations that had just happened in our classes.
After graduation (with a BA in English) I immediately entered the college's Master's in Education program. I started course work that summer while looking for my first job. My first job had to be within forty miles of downtown Cleveland, because while my school district considered me a first year teacher, the college considered me an intern. I took coursework (meeting less frequently) at that same field office and was regularly visited (but less frequently) by the same man who had supervised me in student teaching. So again, my coursework was practical and based on what I was actually dealing with; it also gave me a bi-monthly meeting with other first year teachers.
After that first year, I still had coursework to complete, but those first experiences, with strong support and training anchored in the real world-- that's what set me up for success as a teacher.
As you might guess, the program no longer exists. Two full time faculty (elementary and secondary) and a satellite office for a relatively small program (there were about fifteen of us in my graduating class) was not cost-effective, and certainly did not generate the kind of robust revenue stream that some of our state teacher farms can crank out. But my experience than and since has given me some definite ideas about what features would be included in a great teacher prep program:
1) Investment. We cannot train great teachers on the cheap. Teacher training has to stop being the mass market college cash cow.
2) Content base. Fewer classes like "Great Untested Pedagogical Theories" and more courses about the actual subject you're going to teach. Confidence in the classroom, control of the classroom, is best based in knowing what you're talking about. And yes-- the pedagogy vs. content balance can't be the same for elementary and secondary.
3) Screening. Every single working teacher has had that conversation, talking about some student teacher and asking, "How did he ever make it this far?" Answer: his checks don't bounce. If we aren't ever going to wash anybody out of programs, the very least we can do is sit down with them and have a little Come To Jesus talk about their particular challenges and how they must be addressed. Too often, it has somehow come down to me-- the barely paid part-time university helper who serves as the last stop on this journey-- to supply the career counseling that the college, its professors, its department chair, etc never provided.
4) Massive support. Our current system depends on luck. Did you get a good cooperating teacher? And is that co-op a good fit for style and personality? Is the part-time field observation guy who you'll see two or three times really committed to the job, or did it look like an easy way to make some quick retirement money? Luck is not enough. Take steps to make sure that every student teacher has strong, focused support.
Additionally, let me note that it is not helpful to assess the future teacher's ability to take standardized tests or put on dog and pony shows. This is like testing political candidates' ability to stage a "debate"-- it may be a useful skill, but it has nothing to do with performing the job for which you're being considered.
We could implement these items many ways. Some people like the educational version of a teaching hospital. Some people like the notion of career steps that allow teacher mentoring to be a real job with real pay and real time to do it instead of a fake job with a tiny stipend paid for work that you squeeze in around the edges of your actual job.
"So, Mr. Smart Ass Blogger," you ask, "do you have a better idea?"
And I answer (because you called me by name), "Yes. Yes, I do."
I went to Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania,and I chose them so that I could go through their teacher program. I was an English major, with minimal education classwork before I entered student teaching. But I never regretted that I didn't have more pre-student teaching coursework in "How To Make a Bulletin Board" or "Favorite Professorial Theories That I Imagine Might Work in a Classroom."
We all student taught in schools in the Metro Cleveland area, and lived in an apartment building at East 9th and Superior (with a boarded up ball room in the basement, but that's another story). We took methods courses while student teaching right down the hall in the classrooms that the college rented. Our student teaching supervisor saw us in a classroom usually at least once a week, and for more than one class-- that supervisor also taught one of the methods classes, where instead of talking about cloudy hypotheticals, we talked about how to handle a situations that had just happened in our classes.
After graduation (with a BA in English) I immediately entered the college's Master's in Education program. I started course work that summer while looking for my first job. My first job had to be within forty miles of downtown Cleveland, because while my school district considered me a first year teacher, the college considered me an intern. I took coursework (meeting less frequently) at that same field office and was regularly visited (but less frequently) by the same man who had supervised me in student teaching. So again, my coursework was practical and based on what I was actually dealing with; it also gave me a bi-monthly meeting with other first year teachers.
After that first year, I still had coursework to complete, but those first experiences, with strong support and training anchored in the real world-- that's what set me up for success as a teacher.
As you might guess, the program no longer exists. Two full time faculty (elementary and secondary) and a satellite office for a relatively small program (there were about fifteen of us in my graduating class) was not cost-effective, and certainly did not generate the kind of robust revenue stream that some of our state teacher farms can crank out. But my experience than and since has given me some definite ideas about what features would be included in a great teacher prep program:
1) Investment. We cannot train great teachers on the cheap. Teacher training has to stop being the mass market college cash cow.
2) Content base. Fewer classes like "Great Untested Pedagogical Theories" and more courses about the actual subject you're going to teach. Confidence in the classroom, control of the classroom, is best based in knowing what you're talking about. And yes-- the pedagogy vs. content balance can't be the same for elementary and secondary.
3) Screening. Every single working teacher has had that conversation, talking about some student teacher and asking, "How did he ever make it this far?" Answer: his checks don't bounce. If we aren't ever going to wash anybody out of programs, the very least we can do is sit down with them and have a little Come To Jesus talk about their particular challenges and how they must be addressed. Too often, it has somehow come down to me-- the barely paid part-time university helper who serves as the last stop on this journey-- to supply the career counseling that the college, its professors, its department chair, etc never provided.
4) Massive support. Our current system depends on luck. Did you get a good cooperating teacher? And is that co-op a good fit for style and personality? Is the part-time field observation guy who you'll see two or three times really committed to the job, or did it look like an easy way to make some quick retirement money? Luck is not enough. Take steps to make sure that every student teacher has strong, focused support.
Additionally, let me note that it is not helpful to assess the future teacher's ability to take standardized tests or put on dog and pony shows. This is like testing political candidates' ability to stage a "debate"-- it may be a useful skill, but it has nothing to do with performing the job for which you're being considered.
We could implement these items many ways. Some people like the educational version of a teaching hospital. Some people like the notion of career steps that allow teacher mentoring to be a real job with real pay and real time to do it instead of a fake job with a tiny stipend paid for work that you squeeze in around the edges of your actual job.
Monday, May 12, 2014
Edutopia Serves Up Grits (With Maple Syrup)
If you have been looking for ways to grittify your classroom, edutopia has you covered with a new addition to its "Research Made Relevant" series. But beyond the lesson materials, the site provides a study in contrasts.
Now, I've burned some bandwidth criticizing the grit movement, but in fact I think there are good things to say about grit. It is good to be resilient, to have stick-to-itivity, to see things through, to keep going, to tough it out, to push forward through adversity, to do your own laundry, to climb your own mountains. But when it comes to grittology and its programatic application to schools, I have some misgivings. Grit the quality is swell; grittology is problematic.
On the plus side, the material comes primarily from Amy Lyon, a real live thirty-year veteran public elementary school teacher in rural NH, where she keeps animals and serves in the volunteer fire department (and lives not far from Claremont, where I grew up, but I will not let that influence my faux journalist judgment).
Edutopia features a slick six-minute video (copyrighted by the George Lucas Educational Foundation) , featuring a ten-year old former student of Lyon's who does his own maple sugaring, complete with a team of steers dragging the sled, then moves on to Lyon's work of directly instructing her students in grit. Looking at her materials and her website "bit of Grit", I get the impression that Lyons is just advocating good old-fashioned character education-- teach students not to give up, to set goals and work toward them, to focus on long-term success and not short-term frustrations, to not quit. One of her lessons is called the Perserverance Walk, and it's basically preparing and conducting an interview with someone has worked hard toward a long term goal. So her version of grit lives somewhere at the intersection of the Foxfire project and that old coach yelling "Quitters never win, and winners never quit!" Nothing radical to see here.
On the other hand, edutopia has also pulled in the Founding Mother of Grittology, Angela Duckworth. Duckworth's preternaturally youthful face (seriously-- did she earn her PhD at age 15, or is she Pharrell's sister) appears in the video, and that's where the cogitive dissonance starts to set in.
...at the beginning of life, your job is to figure out what you're gonna do, the little place that you're gonna hold in the world and how you're going to add value and survive.
Yes, as a small child I often bounced on my daddy's knee and asked, "Daddy, when will I be big enough to cross the street by myself, swim in the deep end of the pool, and add value."
Duckworth also plugs her research partnership with KIPP schools. Too bad. While Lyon's seems interested in helping foster character, KIPP doesn't so much build character as judge it and blame the lack of it for, well, everything. Their teaching expertise has been all married up with Duckworth Lab's (that's a thing, with a cute logo and everything) scientific expertise.
And perhaps it is the scientific expertise that puts me off grittology. I cannot decide if Duckworth has found a way to give some of the oldest conventional wisdom in the book a credible base, or if she is running the biggest scholarly scam in proprietary pseudo-science that ever prepped someone for the tenure track. So much grittological research appears circular to me-- we select a group of subjects who have balorgnia; we identify them for selection by screening for brown hair; we check to see what all balorgnians have in common and, voila, it's brown hair.When you've rated a hundred five year olds for grittiness and then followed them around for forty years, I'll be impressed. But grittology is a young science, the toddler of sciences, really.
Duckworth looks young enough to be my daughter, but her message is basically the same as my grandmother's-- work hard, don't quit, stick to it, bounce back from problems, set goals, persevere, stay focused. But I suppose you don't get giant research grants and speaking engagements and your own research group walking around saying, "You should just listen to your grandmother."
But meanwhile, in New Hampshire (where my grandmother was a state legislator for a million years), a teacher took something she found interesting and turned it into classroom activities that she, and others, find useful, and which she implements with apparent caring an concern for each of her students, and that's pretty much my idea of how the education world should work. There is something cute about nine-year-old dreams (each very different in a not-one-size-fits-all way) and the kind of obstacles they imagine might get in their way, and I'm a little worried that Lyon's approach runs the risk of turning grit into a quality these children will someday file away as a childish dream, but you know what-- she knows her students far better than I, and so she should make that judgment call. And as the other actual teacher in the video says, "You're doing it already." You just need to highlight it a bit, organically.
Meanwhile, Angela Duckworth wants to spackle academic gobbledeegook all over grandmotherly advice, or imagine a gritty bridge between a ten-year-old rural kid in New Hampshire and a ten-year-old urban kid in the Bronx because there are materials and articles to sell and a college research department to fund. This silly attempt to create a proprietary brand out of things everybody already knows would simply be amusing if it cross over into an excuse to blame students for their own rough patches in life, or an excuse to dry up kindness, support and empathy, or marketing copy for charter chains.
Grit as practiced in Amy Lyon's classroom doesn't bother me a bit, but as practiced by KIPP ("Kick In the Pupil's Pants") it should stop yesterday. You can try to slap the same label on both practices, but that doesn't make them the same thing. This page is probably meant to help us associate the pseudo-science of grittology with actual teaching practice; instead it highlights the gulf between real teaching and gimmicky market research.
Now, I've burned some bandwidth criticizing the grit movement, but in fact I think there are good things to say about grit. It is good to be resilient, to have stick-to-itivity, to see things through, to keep going, to tough it out, to push forward through adversity, to do your own laundry, to climb your own mountains. But when it comes to grittology and its programatic application to schools, I have some misgivings. Grit the quality is swell; grittology is problematic.
On the plus side, the material comes primarily from Amy Lyon, a real live thirty-year veteran public elementary school teacher in rural NH, where she keeps animals and serves in the volunteer fire department (and lives not far from Claremont, where I grew up, but I will not let that influence my faux journalist judgment).
Edutopia features a slick six-minute video (copyrighted by the George Lucas Educational Foundation) , featuring a ten-year old former student of Lyon's who does his own maple sugaring, complete with a team of steers dragging the sled, then moves on to Lyon's work of directly instructing her students in grit. Looking at her materials and her website "bit of Grit", I get the impression that Lyons is just advocating good old-fashioned character education-- teach students not to give up, to set goals and work toward them, to focus on long-term success and not short-term frustrations, to not quit. One of her lessons is called the Perserverance Walk, and it's basically preparing and conducting an interview with someone has worked hard toward a long term goal. So her version of grit lives somewhere at the intersection of the Foxfire project and that old coach yelling "Quitters never win, and winners never quit!" Nothing radical to see here.
On the other hand, edutopia has also pulled in the Founding Mother of Grittology, Angela Duckworth. Duckworth's preternaturally youthful face (seriously-- did she earn her PhD at age 15, or is she Pharrell's sister) appears in the video, and that's where the cogitive dissonance starts to set in.
...at the beginning of life, your job is to figure out what you're gonna do, the little place that you're gonna hold in the world and how you're going to add value and survive.
Yes, as a small child I often bounced on my daddy's knee and asked, "Daddy, when will I be big enough to cross the street by myself, swim in the deep end of the pool, and add value."
Duckworth also plugs her research partnership with KIPP schools. Too bad. While Lyon's seems interested in helping foster character, KIPP doesn't so much build character as judge it and blame the lack of it for, well, everything. Their teaching expertise has been all married up with Duckworth Lab's (that's a thing, with a cute logo and everything) scientific expertise.
And perhaps it is the scientific expertise that puts me off grittology. I cannot decide if Duckworth has found a way to give some of the oldest conventional wisdom in the book a credible base, or if she is running the biggest scholarly scam in proprietary pseudo-science that ever prepped someone for the tenure track. So much grittological research appears circular to me-- we select a group of subjects who have balorgnia; we identify them for selection by screening for brown hair; we check to see what all balorgnians have in common and, voila, it's brown hair.When you've rated a hundred five year olds for grittiness and then followed them around for forty years, I'll be impressed. But grittology is a young science, the toddler of sciences, really.
Duckworth looks young enough to be my daughter, but her message is basically the same as my grandmother's-- work hard, don't quit, stick to it, bounce back from problems, set goals, persevere, stay focused. But I suppose you don't get giant research grants and speaking engagements and your own research group walking around saying, "You should just listen to your grandmother."
But meanwhile, in New Hampshire (where my grandmother was a state legislator for a million years), a teacher took something she found interesting and turned it into classroom activities that she, and others, find useful, and which she implements with apparent caring an concern for each of her students, and that's pretty much my idea of how the education world should work. There is something cute about nine-year-old dreams (each very different in a not-one-size-fits-all way) and the kind of obstacles they imagine might get in their way, and I'm a little worried that Lyon's approach runs the risk of turning grit into a quality these children will someday file away as a childish dream, but you know what-- she knows her students far better than I, and so she should make that judgment call. And as the other actual teacher in the video says, "You're doing it already." You just need to highlight it a bit, organically.
Meanwhile, Angela Duckworth wants to spackle academic gobbledeegook all over grandmotherly advice, or imagine a gritty bridge between a ten-year-old rural kid in New Hampshire and a ten-year-old urban kid in the Bronx because there are materials and articles to sell and a college research department to fund. This silly attempt to create a proprietary brand out of things everybody already knows would simply be amusing if it cross over into an excuse to blame students for their own rough patches in life, or an excuse to dry up kindness, support and empathy, or marketing copy for charter chains.
Grit as practiced in Amy Lyon's classroom doesn't bother me a bit, but as practiced by KIPP ("Kick In the Pupil's Pants") it should stop yesterday. You can try to slap the same label on both practices, but that doesn't make them the same thing. This page is probably meant to help us associate the pseudo-science of grittology with actual teaching practice; instead it highlights the gulf between real teaching and gimmicky market research.
Sunday, May 11, 2014
Smart People Problems
"He doesn't understand how anyone can not understand."
My daughter and I were discussing why somebody would make a lousy teacher, and this was her observation. I realized that I have seen student teachers with this problem-- they do not understand how anybody can NOT understand the concept at hand, and so they have no idea how to teach it.
This is a smart person's problem. Some smart people never learn to be reflective, and they never look at their own process. Or they do look at their process, and to them, the process of building understanding goes kind of like this:
1) Look at something
2) Understand it
This leads to lousy teaching, the kind of teaching where a math teacher puts a problem on the board and a student asks a question about how to solve it and the teacher just says (with no small amount of exasperation), "Well, just look at it!" As any student who has ever been on the receiving end of this approach can tell you, this is not super-effective pedagogy.
The effects of this attitude are worse than simple bad teaching. Because if I believe that all learning requires is to just look at the stuff and just, you know, try to understand, and I have students who say they don't understand (and prove it on assessments), then I can only reach one conclusion-- the little buggers just aren't trying. I begin to resent them for withholding work and achievement (they could do it if they wanted to). I snap at them for asking questions, because they only ask questions because they are too lazy to understand. Some of them have stories about obstacles, like not having homework done because their father threw them out of the house last night. This is just excuse making, like the whole "I don't understand" thing. If they really wanted to try, they could tough it out (because we all know that it's not really that hard to understand stuff).
Sadly, most of us probably know at least one teacher like this, but even more sadly, we can recognize this complex of attitudes from some of the Reformsters. It's the whole attitude that schools are failing because students and teachers just aren't trying. Try, dammit. Try harder.
We've been asking for years now how such smart people can come up with so many dumb ideas about fixing schools, but I would submit that they come up with these dumb ideas precisely because they are smart people-- smart people who have no idea what it's like to not understand something.
In some cases, they don't even remember what it was ever like to not know certain things. The funny gaps in some CCSS materials might be there because smart people figure everybody "just knows" that. Directly teach six-year-olds how to set up addition of three-digit numbers? Not necessary-- they can just figure it out. Everybody just knows how you do that.
There is noise periodically about how not enough teachers come from the top percentages of college classes, and it may or may not be true, but why do we care-- do we not all remember the teacher who was really, really smart, but a terrible teacher because he couldn't explain anything?
Now, smart people can also be excellent teachers. One of their best tricks is to be able to see multiple paths to understanding, a hundred different sets of tracks to follow through the forest of confusion. And it is a great teaching gift to be able to see where exactly in those not-so-lovely but oh-so-dark-and-deep woods the student is lost. There's no reason that such gifts can't go hand in hand with smartness.
But people who do not understand what it's like not to understand, people who think you just try and you know, people who believe the only way to fail a test is to be too lazy and shiftless to have tried-- these people may be smart, but they make lousy teachers. They make even lousier education policy.
My daughter and I were discussing why somebody would make a lousy teacher, and this was her observation. I realized that I have seen student teachers with this problem-- they do not understand how anybody can NOT understand the concept at hand, and so they have no idea how to teach it.
This is a smart person's problem. Some smart people never learn to be reflective, and they never look at their own process. Or they do look at their process, and to them, the process of building understanding goes kind of like this:
1) Look at something
2) Understand it
This leads to lousy teaching, the kind of teaching where a math teacher puts a problem on the board and a student asks a question about how to solve it and the teacher just says (with no small amount of exasperation), "Well, just look at it!" As any student who has ever been on the receiving end of this approach can tell you, this is not super-effective pedagogy.
The effects of this attitude are worse than simple bad teaching. Because if I believe that all learning requires is to just look at the stuff and just, you know, try to understand, and I have students who say they don't understand (and prove it on assessments), then I can only reach one conclusion-- the little buggers just aren't trying. I begin to resent them for withholding work and achievement (they could do it if they wanted to). I snap at them for asking questions, because they only ask questions because they are too lazy to understand. Some of them have stories about obstacles, like not having homework done because their father threw them out of the house last night. This is just excuse making, like the whole "I don't understand" thing. If they really wanted to try, they could tough it out (because we all know that it's not really that hard to understand stuff).
Sadly, most of us probably know at least one teacher like this, but even more sadly, we can recognize this complex of attitudes from some of the Reformsters. It's the whole attitude that schools are failing because students and teachers just aren't trying. Try, dammit. Try harder.
We've been asking for years now how such smart people can come up with so many dumb ideas about fixing schools, but I would submit that they come up with these dumb ideas precisely because they are smart people-- smart people who have no idea what it's like to not understand something.
In some cases, they don't even remember what it was ever like to not know certain things. The funny gaps in some CCSS materials might be there because smart people figure everybody "just knows" that. Directly teach six-year-olds how to set up addition of three-digit numbers? Not necessary-- they can just figure it out. Everybody just knows how you do that.
There is noise periodically about how not enough teachers come from the top percentages of college classes, and it may or may not be true, but why do we care-- do we not all remember the teacher who was really, really smart, but a terrible teacher because he couldn't explain anything?
Now, smart people can also be excellent teachers. One of their best tricks is to be able to see multiple paths to understanding, a hundred different sets of tracks to follow through the forest of confusion. And it is a great teaching gift to be able to see where exactly in those not-so-lovely but oh-so-dark-and-deep woods the student is lost. There's no reason that such gifts can't go hand in hand with smartness.
But people who do not understand what it's like not to understand, people who think you just try and you know, people who believe the only way to fail a test is to be too lazy and shiftless to have tried-- these people may be smart, but they make lousy teachers. They make even lousier education policy.
Mixing With Politics
There's a great line, usually attributed to Rev Gene Carlson of Wichita, about religious getting involved in politics:
When you mix religion and politics, you get politics.
His point was that while you may think that political power gives you leverage you need to engineer the social changes you want (in Carlson's case, conservative Christian changes), politics always ends up in the driver's seat.
The first job, the primary imperative, of all political power is to collect and preserve political power. And that means wherever politics enters the picture, political considerations always rule. Politics is like a big ugly rude guest who comes to the party and demands that the celebration, whatever it is, be repurposed as a birthday party for him.
I thought of this this morning as I read Diane Ravitch's piece about the political reasons that we are stuck with No Child Left Behind hanging over our collective heads (a reaction to this piece brought to her attention by the indispensible Mercedes Schneider, because the blogosphere is cool that way). It boils downs to politics-- No Child Left Behind is such genius political rhetoric that it is impervious to all educational sense.
We have mixed education and politics, and we are getting politics.
I remember how genius it was. Even in the earliest days of NCLB you would sit in a training and some professor or trainer or DOE whiz would be explaining how all children were going to learn and casually slide by the requirement that 100% of our students would be above average in 2014 and some poor soul would ask, "But isn't that just impossible," and the response would come back, straight into the questioner's face, "Well, which children do YOU want to leave behind?" NCLB is terrible education policy, but brilliant politics.
The basic formula for applying bad political solutions is to mix one part good idea and one part fantasy. You make yourself champion of the good part, and when the ship of fantasy runs aground on the hard rocks of reality, you make that disaster the fault of your enemies.
In education this has been easy because who doesn't like the dream of every child-- their own child, their neighbor's child-- bright and happy and full of hope and going to college and becoming a brilliant scientist who is then elected President before retiring to run a bazillion-dollar corporation. All the politicians had to do was sell that dream and blame someone for its failure.
The pitfall for teachers has been that we were made the scapegoats, either so lazy or incompetent that we were killing the dream. The pitfall for politicians is less obvious, but now that they're standing at the bottom of that particular pit, perhaps they can see it.
They have to provide a plausible path to the dream. You garner political power by yelling to the crowd, "We're in terrible danger! Follow me and I will lead you to safety." And the crowd gathers and they acclaim your awesomeness and name you Grand High Poobah, and that's all great, but then you have to lead them somewhere.
The crowd is gathered, clamoring for politicians to lead us to the Golden Land of Education, and instead we're stuck in the Swamp of High Stakes Bad Tests and on the Cliffs of Collapsing Teaching Profession and the Cul de Sac of Crappy Common Core. And while Fearless Leader may want to tell his crowd, "Just wait a minute. Just a minute. I have to think--" he can't because, like a bad SF scientist, he created an NCLB monster to scare the crowd, and now he can't control it.
I don't know the answer to this mess. Should we still seek political solutions, to work with politicians? I expect it's a better alternative than letting them run loose, but we'd be foolish to ever imagine that politicians will set their political concerns aside to tend to our educational worries. I know that the US DOE will never be a help because it's a federal bureaucracy, and people will only thrive there by being good at politics, not by being good at education. And the problems are worse now than twenty years ago because there is one thing you can mix with politics that politics will bend to.
Money.
As long as we look to politics for help with education, we will get political solutions to educational problems. And as long as we live under Citizens United et al, our political solutions will be the ones favored by the folks holding the checkbook.
When you mix religion and politics, you get politics.
His point was that while you may think that political power gives you leverage you need to engineer the social changes you want (in Carlson's case, conservative Christian changes), politics always ends up in the driver's seat.
The first job, the primary imperative, of all political power is to collect and preserve political power. And that means wherever politics enters the picture, political considerations always rule. Politics is like a big ugly rude guest who comes to the party and demands that the celebration, whatever it is, be repurposed as a birthday party for him.
I thought of this this morning as I read Diane Ravitch's piece about the political reasons that we are stuck with No Child Left Behind hanging over our collective heads (a reaction to this piece brought to her attention by the indispensible Mercedes Schneider, because the blogosphere is cool that way). It boils downs to politics-- No Child Left Behind is such genius political rhetoric that it is impervious to all educational sense.
We have mixed education and politics, and we are getting politics.
I remember how genius it was. Even in the earliest days of NCLB you would sit in a training and some professor or trainer or DOE whiz would be explaining how all children were going to learn and casually slide by the requirement that 100% of our students would be above average in 2014 and some poor soul would ask, "But isn't that just impossible," and the response would come back, straight into the questioner's face, "Well, which children do YOU want to leave behind?" NCLB is terrible education policy, but brilliant politics.
The basic formula for applying bad political solutions is to mix one part good idea and one part fantasy. You make yourself champion of the good part, and when the ship of fantasy runs aground on the hard rocks of reality, you make that disaster the fault of your enemies.
In education this has been easy because who doesn't like the dream of every child-- their own child, their neighbor's child-- bright and happy and full of hope and going to college and becoming a brilliant scientist who is then elected President before retiring to run a bazillion-dollar corporation. All the politicians had to do was sell that dream and blame someone for its failure.
The pitfall for teachers has been that we were made the scapegoats, either so lazy or incompetent that we were killing the dream. The pitfall for politicians is less obvious, but now that they're standing at the bottom of that particular pit, perhaps they can see it.
They have to provide a plausible path to the dream. You garner political power by yelling to the crowd, "We're in terrible danger! Follow me and I will lead you to safety." And the crowd gathers and they acclaim your awesomeness and name you Grand High Poobah, and that's all great, but then you have to lead them somewhere.
The crowd is gathered, clamoring for politicians to lead us to the Golden Land of Education, and instead we're stuck in the Swamp of High Stakes Bad Tests and on the Cliffs of Collapsing Teaching Profession and the Cul de Sac of Crappy Common Core. And while Fearless Leader may want to tell his crowd, "Just wait a minute. Just a minute. I have to think--" he can't because, like a bad SF scientist, he created an NCLB monster to scare the crowd, and now he can't control it.
I don't know the answer to this mess. Should we still seek political solutions, to work with politicians? I expect it's a better alternative than letting them run loose, but we'd be foolish to ever imagine that politicians will set their political concerns aside to tend to our educational worries. I know that the US DOE will never be a help because it's a federal bureaucracy, and people will only thrive there by being good at politics, not by being good at education. And the problems are worse now than twenty years ago because there is one thing you can mix with politics that politics will bend to.
Money.
As long as we look to politics for help with education, we will get political solutions to educational problems. And as long as we live under Citizens United et al, our political solutions will be the ones favored by the folks holding the checkbook.
Saturday, May 10, 2014
Common Core Leads To Use of Food and Air
Okay, that headline may be a slight overstatement, but it was my first response when I stumbled upon this item on the engageNY blog.
In "Connecting Parents to the Classroom," we meet Michelle Labuski, a twenty-year teaching veteran currently teaching sixth grade in Smithtown. Apparently for all of those twenty years, Labuski has been wondering how to communicate with parents about what is happening in her math class. Boy, that is a stumper. If only, sometime during the last two decades, somebody had created a technology that facilitated quick, cheap communication over some sort of network of interconnected electronic devices. Or even, I don't know, paper and printing.
But never fear-- Labuski has found a solution!
The transition to the Common Core Standards presented the perfect opportunity to provide additional resources for parents so they can experience the lessons firsthand and better support their children at home. I did this by creating a math blog.
Yes, it's Common Core the rescue. Thanks to the Common Core, teachers can now blog. Before, you see, we couldn't because without CCSS magic electronic waves beamed into classrooms to allow teachers and students to use the internet, teacher blogging was impossible. IM-possible. Lordy, when I think back to all those nights I just sat staring at my computer screen, whacking away at my keyboard with rocks and trying to jam pop tarts into my floppy disc drive and--ARE YOU KIDDING ME, Michelle Labuski!!??! I have to believe that you are better than this; your blog concept is pretty solid, and I am going to assume you are a decent teacher and a nice human being. Why in heaven's name hand the credit over to CCSS?
Look Common Core supporters-- you can't have it both ways. If you are going to be typing with your one hand about how critics of the CCSS are off base to conflate all sorts of things with the Core and beating up the Core with all manner of wacky examples of things that aren't actually the core, you cannot, at the same time keep pumping out these breathless testimonials from teachers saying, "Yes, before Common Core I had to teach class in a barrel because I did not know how to dress myself. Often I would collapse during the day because, without Common Core, I could not feed myself."
You cannot keep claiming that Common Core is somehow related to every single thing that any sentient breathing teacher ever did. I will not be surprised when you trot someone out to claim that Common Core invented the internet and implemented the use of books, light and air in classrooms.
But you, Common Core shills, cannot keep asking why, oh why, do people hold CCSS responsible for everything in schools from greasy pizza to poor wax jobs in the gym. If you keep making these ridiculous claims, you cannot be upset that some people listen to you, although honestly I think I am more upset than you because, seriously, for Common Core to take credit for everything since the invention of the wheel, as if no teacher ever knew how to do anything ever, is its own special level of obnoxious.
In "Connecting Parents to the Classroom," we meet Michelle Labuski, a twenty-year teaching veteran currently teaching sixth grade in Smithtown. Apparently for all of those twenty years, Labuski has been wondering how to communicate with parents about what is happening in her math class. Boy, that is a stumper. If only, sometime during the last two decades, somebody had created a technology that facilitated quick, cheap communication over some sort of network of interconnected electronic devices. Or even, I don't know, paper and printing.
But never fear-- Labuski has found a solution!
The transition to the Common Core Standards presented the perfect opportunity to provide additional resources for parents so they can experience the lessons firsthand and better support their children at home. I did this by creating a math blog.
Yes, it's Common Core the rescue. Thanks to the Common Core, teachers can now blog. Before, you see, we couldn't because without CCSS magic electronic waves beamed into classrooms to allow teachers and students to use the internet, teacher blogging was impossible. IM-possible. Lordy, when I think back to all those nights I just sat staring at my computer screen, whacking away at my keyboard with rocks and trying to jam pop tarts into my floppy disc drive and--ARE YOU KIDDING ME, Michelle Labuski!!??! I have to believe that you are better than this; your blog concept is pretty solid, and I am going to assume you are a decent teacher and a nice human being. Why in heaven's name hand the credit over to CCSS?
Look Common Core supporters-- you can't have it both ways. If you are going to be typing with your one hand about how critics of the CCSS are off base to conflate all sorts of things with the Core and beating up the Core with all manner of wacky examples of things that aren't actually the core, you cannot, at the same time keep pumping out these breathless testimonials from teachers saying, "Yes, before Common Core I had to teach class in a barrel because I did not know how to dress myself. Often I would collapse during the day because, without Common Core, I could not feed myself."
You cannot keep claiming that Common Core is somehow related to every single thing that any sentient breathing teacher ever did. I will not be surprised when you trot someone out to claim that Common Core invented the internet and implemented the use of books, light and air in classrooms.
But you, Common Core shills, cannot keep asking why, oh why, do people hold CCSS responsible for everything in schools from greasy pizza to poor wax jobs in the gym. If you keep making these ridiculous claims, you cannot be upset that some people listen to you, although honestly I think I am more upset than you because, seriously, for Common Core to take credit for everything since the invention of the wheel, as if no teacher ever knew how to do anything ever, is its own special level of obnoxious.
Computerized Grit & Snake Oil
At last! Students can learn grit on their computers!!
EduGuide (Motto: One more company that figured out how to work "edu" into its name!) is proud to announce "The nonprofit, evidence-based online training program that strengthens core learning skills." So, with trembling, excited fingers, I am going to scroll down this very long page and see what the secret of teaching grit with a computer might be!
I google-learned that EduGuide is out of Lansing, MI, and "has been recognized for Distinguished Achievement by the School Public Relations Association." Their funders have included Kellogg, Ford and Google. In 2012 Lumina gave them 155K "to provide an online and mobile platform that enables college access programs to multyiply their reach, contact hours, manpower and collaborative impact in a measurable and scalable way." So these guys sound like loads of fun!
But how does the program work? Scrolling.... oh wait. Here we go! "How It Works!"
1) Engage. Students do on-line activities 15+ minutes weekly
2) Interact. Teachers and other partners interact with students on their activities
3) Grow. Attitudes shift; behavior changes. Students grow; achievement goes up.
4) Persist. Each year students tackle new activities, proactively preparing them for bigger challenges.
So, magic. Let's keep scrolling. Maybe there will be-- nope. Here's a quote from the founders of Grittology, the inscrutable Duckworth and Quinn. Now we're going to the research section. Says EduGuide, "EduGuide's activities are based on more than a decade of evidence on how to change students' mindsets and the passion they bring to challenging work and long term goals." So, our answer to the question "What research is behind this?" is "There is research behind this!"
OH NO MY EYES!! "Go deeper to reach students where they're at." As I've been known to tell my students, it sure is a good thing they included that "at" because if they had just said "reach students where they are" nobody would have had any idea what they were talking about. (And before you go running to the comments section, professional copy writers are totally subject to kibbitzing by grammar/usage nazis.)
Had enough vague advertising snake oily blather yet? But wait-- there's more. This as yet unnamed program will save you time two ways. 1) "EduGuide's ready-made activities mean you can put students right to work without a lot of preparation, knowing the innovative online system ensures fidelity to the research model." I have several resources like this. They're called "books," but okay. 2) "The activities do double duty by meeting core curriculum requirements for critical thinking and reflective writing with multimedia informational text." So, this stuff is infused with CCSS-ready magic, buzzword buzzword.
And it just keeps going. The mystery program is like strength training. And there are many quotes from satisfied customers. There's a list of features including "On-call support during business hours" and (my favorite) "Impact guarantee." EduGuide says your students will be noticeably improved within a year, or your money back. That is highlighted by a gold seal with spikey edges (like a picture of the sun) that says "100% satisfaction guarantee," and I'm convinced, because nobody would make a graphic like that if they weren't confident.
Finally, the FAQ (which I'm guessing don't include "Can you say offer even one actual specific about this program"). From the FAQ, we can gather that this is basically a collection of computer-delivered (because a worksheet on a computer is a technologically forward learning experience) fifteen minute lessons that you can do often or not, for longer than fifteen minute spans, or not. You can use them in middle, high or college schools. Your cloud basedworksheets software comes with a personal EduGuides Results Choice, who will come hang out and provide support in ways that are totes different from, say, a company sales rep.
How do they know it works?
The activities are based on more than a decade of research on exercises that have increased student GPA by .3 grade points, improved academic behaviors, increased degree completion and closed achievement gaps by as much as half.
Increased GPA by .3!!!! Wait! Wait!! I want to buy stock in this company! No wait-- I can't because it's a nonprofit. Regular folks think "nonprofit" means "We will never charge more for our product than it costs to make it, and if we accidentally make money, we will give it to some charity that buys puppies for orphans." Of course, "nonprofit" actually means, "I don't have to share this pile of money with stockholders or anybody else-- it's mine, mine, all mine!!" So someone at EduGuide is going to get rich because-- .3!!
So we're at the bottom of the page, and still not a hint about what the program actually does. Gee, can we at least have one last blast or corporate ad copy?
EduGuide’s system has been designed to deliver these activities with fidelity and to amplify their impact with the unique features of our online platform. Thanks to multiple national grants we’ve been able to research, design, develop and scale this model to deepen its impact.
Hey, nobody could possibly write that unless they knew the secret of grit. And yet, I can't help but admire how that exact copy could be used to sell pretty much anything. It will be handy when we've dropped grit and moved on to the next big thing-- these guys won't have to alter their ad copy at all. So I guess that's a practical display of grit, or testicle, or something profitable.
EduGuide (Motto: One more company that figured out how to work "edu" into its name!) is proud to announce "The nonprofit, evidence-based online training program that strengthens core learning skills." So, with trembling, excited fingers, I am going to scroll down this very long page and see what the secret of teaching grit with a computer might be!
I google-learned that EduGuide is out of Lansing, MI, and "has been recognized for Distinguished Achievement by the School Public Relations Association." Their funders have included Kellogg, Ford and Google. In 2012 Lumina gave them 155K "to provide an online and mobile platform that enables college access programs to multyiply their reach, contact hours, manpower and collaborative impact in a measurable and scalable way." So these guys sound like loads of fun!
But how does the program work? Scrolling.... oh wait. Here we go! "How It Works!"
1) Engage. Students do on-line activities 15+ minutes weekly
2) Interact. Teachers and other partners interact with students on their activities
3) Grow. Attitudes shift; behavior changes. Students grow; achievement goes up.
4) Persist. Each year students tackle new activities, proactively preparing them for bigger challenges.
So, magic. Let's keep scrolling. Maybe there will be-- nope. Here's a quote from the founders of Grittology, the inscrutable Duckworth and Quinn. Now we're going to the research section. Says EduGuide, "EduGuide's activities are based on more than a decade of evidence on how to change students' mindsets and the passion they bring to challenging work and long term goals." So, our answer to the question "What research is behind this?" is "There is research behind this!"
OH NO MY EYES!! "Go deeper to reach students where they're at." As I've been known to tell my students, it sure is a good thing they included that "at" because if they had just said "reach students where they are" nobody would have had any idea what they were talking about. (And before you go running to the comments section, professional copy writers are totally subject to kibbitzing by grammar/usage nazis.)
Had enough vague advertising snake oily blather yet? But wait-- there's more. This as yet unnamed program will save you time two ways. 1) "EduGuide's ready-made activities mean you can put students right to work without a lot of preparation, knowing the innovative online system ensures fidelity to the research model." I have several resources like this. They're called "books," but okay. 2) "The activities do double duty by meeting core curriculum requirements for critical thinking and reflective writing with multimedia informational text." So, this stuff is infused with CCSS-ready magic, buzzword buzzword.
And it just keeps going. The mystery program is like strength training. And there are many quotes from satisfied customers. There's a list of features including "On-call support during business hours" and (my favorite) "Impact guarantee." EduGuide says your students will be noticeably improved within a year, or your money back. That is highlighted by a gold seal with spikey edges (like a picture of the sun) that says "100% satisfaction guarantee," and I'm convinced, because nobody would make a graphic like that if they weren't confident.
Finally, the FAQ (which I'm guessing don't include "Can you say offer even one actual specific about this program"). From the FAQ, we can gather that this is basically a collection of computer-delivered (because a worksheet on a computer is a technologically forward learning experience) fifteen minute lessons that you can do often or not, for longer than fifteen minute spans, or not. You can use them in middle, high or college schools. Your cloud based
How do they know it works?
The activities are based on more than a decade of research on exercises that have increased student GPA by .3 grade points, improved academic behaviors, increased degree completion and closed achievement gaps by as much as half.
Increased GPA by .3!!!! Wait! Wait!! I want to buy stock in this company! No wait-- I can't because it's a nonprofit. Regular folks think "nonprofit" means "We will never charge more for our product than it costs to make it, and if we accidentally make money, we will give it to some charity that buys puppies for orphans." Of course, "nonprofit" actually means, "I don't have to share this pile of money with stockholders or anybody else-- it's mine, mine, all mine!!" So someone at EduGuide is going to get rich because-- .3!!
So we're at the bottom of the page, and still not a hint about what the program actually does. Gee, can we at least have one last blast or corporate ad copy?
EduGuide’s system has been designed to deliver these activities with fidelity and to amplify their impact with the unique features of our online platform. Thanks to multiple national grants we’ve been able to research, design, develop and scale this model to deepen its impact.
Hey, nobody could possibly write that unless they knew the secret of grit. And yet, I can't help but admire how that exact copy could be used to sell pretty much anything. It will be handy when we've dropped grit and moved on to the next big thing-- these guys won't have to alter their ad copy at all. So I guess that's a practical display of grit, or testicle, or something profitable.
To
provide an online and mobile platform that enables college access
programs to multiply their reach, contact hours, manpower and
collaborative impact in a measurable and scalable way. - See more at:
http://www.luminafoundation.org/luminagrants/eduguide_lansing_mi/#sthash.uDgeH5Og.dpuf
To
provide an online and mobile platform that enables college access
programs to multiply their reach, contact hours, manpower and
collaborative impact in a measurable and scalable way. - See more at:
http://www.luminafoundation.org/luminagrants/eduguide_lansing_mi/#sthash.uDgeH5Og.dpuf
To
provide an online and mobile platform that enables college access
programs to multiply their reach, contact hours, manpower and
collaborative impact in a measurable and scalable way. - See more at:
http://www.luminafoundation.org/luminagrants/eduguide_lansing_mi/#sthash.uDgeH5Og.dpuf
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)