Over at EdWeek Seven Sawchuk writes about NEA's new push to reverse a steady decline in membership. It's about time.
Membership is down a reported 230,000 teachers over the last three years. And that's before you even start counting the "reluctant" members. As far as I know, NEA doesn't keep track of this (and is probably happier not knowing), but not every NEA member actually wants to be an NEA member An unscientific poll of People I Know reveals that two reasons for reluctant membership are 1) in the current crazy-ass education world, I want to have some liability insurance and 2) if I've got to pay that damn Fair Share, I might as well kick in a few more bucks and have a vote. These are not the motivations that promote active passionate membership.
Sawchuk reports that the NEA is trying to shift some of its focuses. It has become mostly a service organization--IOW, an organization that provides certain services to its members. Leadership is looking to create a more activist organization. The article also suggests that the NEA has made some tactical errors, failing, for instance, to be out in front of the teacher evaluation issues.
There are practical problems. In many locals, the EA is "that group that is always spending our dues money defending those two idiots who want to grieve every damn stupid thing in the world." That is not a group anybody wants to join.
The most hopeful aspect of the article is a veiled acknowledgment that the NEA has a culture problem. Which would be a good thing to acknowledge, because the NEA has a huge culture problem.
I've written about this before when I compared today's NEA to yesterday's GOP. Specifically, I wrote "Today's NEA is not your father's NEA. It's more like your grandfather's NEA." Technologically backward, the NEA has become a huge corporate entity that is no more connected to actual classroom teachers than are the faceless bureaucrats who make teachers live miserable. The headquarters of NEA are no closer to my classroom that the headquarters of Pearson.
Trust in national leadership is low. When reformsters and the USDOE stepped up to say, "Teachers in American public ed are failing, our schools are failing, and the whole system needs an overhaul like CCSS," our leaders did not stand up for us. They bellied up to the government-corporate bar and said, "You are correct, sir. Our teachers are a sorry lot and desperately need your guidance."
I will never, ever forgive Dennis van Roekel for responding to complaints about Common Core with, "Well, then what do you want to do instead," as if the failure of American teachers, NEA teachers, was a known fact, a true thing not even open to discussion. Shame on him, and shame on NEA leadership, for completely deserting its members at the beginning of one of the most difficult and demoralizing assaults on public education in America's history.
But NEA has culture problems that go beyond our current issues or the present administration. It is a culture of micro-management, a culture of back-room stage managed decision making, where nothing ever comes up to a vote that hasn't been sorted out and planned through ahead of time, and the outcome of officer elections is never in doubt even before the first vote is cast.
When NEA says that we must all work together, that unity must be our watchword, that invariably means, "We'll tell you what to do and we expect you to fall in line."
This translates to a serious recruiting problem. "We want to hear your voice. We want you to come and share your input," the sales pitch begins. But once the new recruits come to meetings, the other shoe drops: "Well, not really. Just take a seat over there and listen."
If a new recruit makes it past that stage, we send him off to conferences and rallies, to wine and dine and party and most of all make best buddies with the leadership so that he's inclined to trust and follow his new BFFs.
If the NEA really wants to reach out to new recruits, it has to accept that the organization with those new recruits in it may take on a shape or tenor that the old leadership can neither anticipate nor control. Until then the NEA will still be your aged aunt saying that she would really like you to come over and visit, but please don't sit on the furniture or touch any woodwork.
Sawchuk describes a move to transform NEA into a force for positive change in education. That would be a great change, but that means changing the whole face of NEA and making a conscious effort to NOT do stupid things like acting as fronts for destructive "reforms" like the mess that comes stapled to CCSS.
As the last few years have unfolded, I think we've all had some version of the conversation where teachers wax wistful. If only there were a way for teachers to band together, to push for positive change, to stand up against corporate privateer profiteer baloney like Common Core. If only we could create a nationwide group of teachers who stood up for the profession, who were a mighty force for making public education better, to fight back this assault. It should tell NEA leaders something that this conversation never makes people think of the NEA as anything other than an organization that should be doing these things-- and isn't.
Actually, the NEA shouldn't be trying to figure out how to get people to join the ranks. It should be trying to figure out how it can get itself to join the battle (already in progress) on the right side.
Thursday, June 5, 2014
FEE: A Floridian Trip through the Reformster Swamp
In twenty-one short paragraphs, Patricia Levesque of FEE (Foundation for Excellence in Education) manages to set a new record for sheer Density of Wrong. This seems to be FEE's specialty; in the vast coal mine of Common Core Carbonized Crap, FEE demonstrates the Supermaniacal ability to squeeze the raw materials of wrong into a shining diamond of dopiness. Today's sweepstakes entry, "Student Success Depends on Testing and Accountability," is so thoroughly wrong-headed and saturated with what a charitable person might call "unfortunate misstatements" (and a less-charitable person might call "whopping lies") that it deserves special treatment. Because remember-- FEE's major mission is to make Jeb Bush look wise and Presidential when it comes to education.
Background
I apologize in advance, because this will be neither brief nor pretty. We are going to wade through the length and breadth of Florida swamp, looking for our special lovely Shady Acres and (spoiler alert) we will come up empty. But to appreciate just what a deep and miserable swamp it is, we have to see it all. Before we wade, a little background.
Patricia Levesque is a woman of considerable bureaucratic qualifications. She is the CEO of FEE and has served Governor Bush as "deputy chief of staff of education, enterprise solutions for government, minority procurement and business and professional regulation." I am sure that "minority procurement" is hard to imagine in a context that does not make it an awful thing, but hey-- I'm not a professional bureaucrat.
I also want to note that the blog itself is called the Edfly because-- why?? A clever pun on Fordham Instistute's "Gadfly" moniker? Because edflies are drawn to edshit? Boy, guys-- I feel like we really didn't think this through.
We have met FEE before in this blog-- trying to launch a special education initiative and then trying to rustle up some grass roots support by using that twitter thing all the kids are talking about, plus they've also given us some spectacularly dumb testing advice.
So let's go. Or as I say all too often, let me read through this so that you don't have to.
The Setup
The opening paragraph sets the standard for this piece of writing:
The Common Core State Standards raise the academic bar in our K-12 classrooms with their focus on in-depth learning and critical thinking. That has been a rare point of agreement among most school superintendents, teachers, teachers’ unions, school reformers and others involved in the public education debate.
So, two sentences, both wrong. The CCSS do no such thing and have no such focus. I am kind of tired of this repeated insistence that the CCSS emphasize in-depth learning or critical thinking. Somebody please direct me to exactly which language in which standard mentions critical thinking. I think there's just as much support in the standards for "The Common Core standards support punching your mother in the face."
It is true that this has been a "rare point of agreement" in the sense that the parties listed have rarely agreed with it. Otherwise, no, there's a whole lot of us who think your first statement is thickly sliced baloney.
Levesque asserts that disagreements begin when we discuss accountability because, "Simply put, there are those who want assessments that measure mastery of the standards to matter in evaluating schools and teachers. And there are those who don’t." It's an interesting way to frame the disagreement, like saying "There are some people who want us to avoid sailing off the edge of the world and plummeting onto the back of the turtle supporting us, and there are those who don't" or "There are those of us who want to make Santa feel welcome in our homes, and those who don't."
Stupid Argument, Part One
Among those who don't support letting Sasquatch take a ride on the back of the Loch Ness Monster, says Levesque, are Randi Weingarten and Linda Darling-Hammond. Levesque casts the evil eye at them, causing me to think that among her many cognitive challenges is an inability to distinguish between friend and foe. Attacking Randi Weingarten for being soft on Common Core is like attacking President Obama for being too mean to Wall Street corporate types.
Levesque bores in on their statement that one end-of-the-year test cannot possibly measure the full range of a student's achievement. Balderdash, she says. Then what about AP tests and SATs and ACTs and bar exams and military entrance exams and she starts gathering so many disparate examples that I fully expect urine test to appear on the list. But sure. The SATs, long known to tell more about socio-economic class than achievement and less predictive of college success than high school grades-- those are a great example of how you are wrong.
But "well-crafted tests can provide an objective measure of what students and professionals know" she says, which allows us to skip right over the question of whether or not tests like the PARCC or SBA are, in fact, well-crafted. (Spoiler alert- all early indications are that they are not).
She's not done.
Like it or not, success in life depends to a large degree on success in passing tests. Testing children early ensures they are prepared for the world awaiting them, that they are mastering the basic skills necessary for success in later grades, college and beyond.
Got that? Taking big stupid tests is a life skill-- an essential life skill, a basic life skill. I mean, sure, we all remember the stories. Lincoln, using an oil lamp to stay up late and study for his standardized test. Bill Gates figuring out how to design Microsoft Windows by completing a standardized test. John D. Rockefeller naming Standard Oil in honor of the standardized tests that made him rich. General Patton led troops to victory in WWII by his superior display of bubbling prowess. And when corporations are searching for their next CEOs, they break out the standardized tests to see who gets the job.
But Why Settle for Being Merely Stupid When You Can Also Be Offensive?
Opponents of accountability do not want to hold adults responsible for teaching children. They want guaranteed paychecks and optional effectiveness. Adoption of the Common Core State Standards has given them an opening to once again pursue this agenda.
It's true. Teachers all went into teaching because they hate children and see them as simply a path to riches. I often reflect on how much I hate actual teaching as I drive around in my Lexus, slurping up Grey Poupon.
Levesque reminisces about the bad old days, when teachers and students would go into classrooms but "whether the former were effective or the latter learned anything was optional and unknown." Because if a student learns calculus in forest and his government overlords don't see his test results, does he know anything? Unknown by whom? Were students staggering around saying, "Well, I might have learned how to read, but I just am not sure. If only I could take a standardized test-- then I would know!"
Levesque remembers when 70% of Florida's low-income and minority Fourth Graders were functionally illiterate. I do not have access to the pertinent facts and figures, but I'm going to call bullshit on this. If I turn out to be wrong, I'll retract it.
But Florida tried to fix this with testing (because taking tests is totally how nine-year-olds become literate) and it didn't work. Nothing worked until the tests were accompanied by serious threats. Then, magically, Florida turned into a wonderland of educational success. Well, they got higher test scores anyway. Maybe. Bush said he was willing to abuse children to get them, and the state proved that with its repeated harassment of critically ill children. They have used testing to solidify racial divisions while claiming the opposite. Add their love of Tony Bennett, noted educational book cooker, and the Florida miracle looks more and more like imaginary vaporware. For a full well-researched rundown of what's not miraculous about Floridian education, check out this post from the invaluable Mercedes Schneider.
And Levesque wants you to know that they did it all cheaply.
That's Your Support?
Levesque embarks on an oddly-constructed side trip in which she points out that Weingarten and Darling-Hammond accuse the execrable state exams for a backlash against CCSS, wrapping up with "How do you support standards one year, and then abandon them the next?" Also, a bicycle, because a vest has no sleeves. I think what we're seeing is that Levesque is all in. Where other reformsters are frantically attempting decoupling (no no no! the test and the standards and the books are all completely different things), Levesque is doubling down on bundling-- it's all one package, and you have to love it all. This may be the closest she comes to saying something I agree with.
In the process of "debunking" the New York state backlash against the Core, Levesque cites-- Success Academy!
Did you know that last year, 82% of SA students tested proficient in math. This is much better than their peers in the rest of the state, which of course includes all the peers that were shoved out of SA schools before they could mess up those numbers.
We End Where We Started
I skipped over the title of this piece when I started; I invite you to go back and look at it again. Student success depends on testing and accountability. Not teaching. Not learning. Not supportive homes. Not a supportive classroom environment. Not good pedagogical technique. Not a positive, nurturing relationship with a teacher. Just tests. Tests with big fat punishments attache to failure.
Perhaps what we need is an all-test district. Every day students file in, receive their punishments for the previous test results, take a new test. I mean, if testing is the whole key to learning, the whole key to a successful life itself, then why are we wasting classroom time on anything else? Let's just test, all day, every day.
This piece would be funny if it weren't such a blazing, insulting attack on teachers and common sense, and if it weren't a picture of what folks working with He Who Would Be President think sound education policy would be. Some folks say that Jeb's support of Common Core will cost him the Presidency. I can only hope that it's true and that we can then send Ms. Levesque back to the Floridian swamp that spawned this insulting mess.
Background
I apologize in advance, because this will be neither brief nor pretty. We are going to wade through the length and breadth of Florida swamp, looking for our special lovely Shady Acres and (spoiler alert) we will come up empty. But to appreciate just what a deep and miserable swamp it is, we have to see it all. Before we wade, a little background.
Patricia Levesque is a woman of considerable bureaucratic qualifications. She is the CEO of FEE and has served Governor Bush as "deputy chief of staff of education, enterprise solutions for government, minority procurement and business and professional regulation." I am sure that "minority procurement" is hard to imagine in a context that does not make it an awful thing, but hey-- I'm not a professional bureaucrat.
I also want to note that the blog itself is called the Edfly because-- why?? A clever pun on Fordham Instistute's "Gadfly" moniker? Because edflies are drawn to edshit? Boy, guys-- I feel like we really didn't think this through.
We have met FEE before in this blog-- trying to launch a special education initiative and then trying to rustle up some grass roots support by using that twitter thing all the kids are talking about, plus they've also given us some spectacularly dumb testing advice.
So let's go. Or as I say all too often, let me read through this so that you don't have to.
The Setup
The opening paragraph sets the standard for this piece of writing:
The Common Core State Standards raise the academic bar in our K-12 classrooms with their focus on in-depth learning and critical thinking. That has been a rare point of agreement among most school superintendents, teachers, teachers’ unions, school reformers and others involved in the public education debate.
So, two sentences, both wrong. The CCSS do no such thing and have no such focus. I am kind of tired of this repeated insistence that the CCSS emphasize in-depth learning or critical thinking. Somebody please direct me to exactly which language in which standard mentions critical thinking. I think there's just as much support in the standards for "The Common Core standards support punching your mother in the face."
It is true that this has been a "rare point of agreement" in the sense that the parties listed have rarely agreed with it. Otherwise, no, there's a whole lot of us who think your first statement is thickly sliced baloney.
Levesque asserts that disagreements begin when we discuss accountability because, "Simply put, there are those who want assessments that measure mastery of the standards to matter in evaluating schools and teachers. And there are those who don’t." It's an interesting way to frame the disagreement, like saying "There are some people who want us to avoid sailing off the edge of the world and plummeting onto the back of the turtle supporting us, and there are those who don't" or "There are those of us who want to make Santa feel welcome in our homes, and those who don't."
Stupid Argument, Part One
Among those who don't support letting Sasquatch take a ride on the back of the Loch Ness Monster, says Levesque, are Randi Weingarten and Linda Darling-Hammond. Levesque casts the evil eye at them, causing me to think that among her many cognitive challenges is an inability to distinguish between friend and foe. Attacking Randi Weingarten for being soft on Common Core is like attacking President Obama for being too mean to Wall Street corporate types.
Levesque bores in on their statement that one end-of-the-year test cannot possibly measure the full range of a student's achievement. Balderdash, she says. Then what about AP tests and SATs and ACTs and bar exams and military entrance exams and she starts gathering so many disparate examples that I fully expect urine test to appear on the list. But sure. The SATs, long known to tell more about socio-economic class than achievement and less predictive of college success than high school grades-- those are a great example of how you are wrong.
But "well-crafted tests can provide an objective measure of what students and professionals know" she says, which allows us to skip right over the question of whether or not tests like the PARCC or SBA are, in fact, well-crafted. (Spoiler alert- all early indications are that they are not).
She's not done.
Like it or not, success in life depends to a large degree on success in passing tests. Testing children early ensures they are prepared for the world awaiting them, that they are mastering the basic skills necessary for success in later grades, college and beyond.
Got that? Taking big stupid tests is a life skill-- an essential life skill, a basic life skill. I mean, sure, we all remember the stories. Lincoln, using an oil lamp to stay up late and study for his standardized test. Bill Gates figuring out how to design Microsoft Windows by completing a standardized test. John D. Rockefeller naming Standard Oil in honor of the standardized tests that made him rich. General Patton led troops to victory in WWII by his superior display of bubbling prowess. And when corporations are searching for their next CEOs, they break out the standardized tests to see who gets the job.
But Why Settle for Being Merely Stupid When You Can Also Be Offensive?
Opponents of accountability do not want to hold adults responsible for teaching children. They want guaranteed paychecks and optional effectiveness. Adoption of the Common Core State Standards has given them an opening to once again pursue this agenda.
It's true. Teachers all went into teaching because they hate children and see them as simply a path to riches. I often reflect on how much I hate actual teaching as I drive around in my Lexus, slurping up Grey Poupon.
Levesque reminisces about the bad old days, when teachers and students would go into classrooms but "whether the former were effective or the latter learned anything was optional and unknown." Because if a student learns calculus in forest and his government overlords don't see his test results, does he know anything? Unknown by whom? Were students staggering around saying, "Well, I might have learned how to read, but I just am not sure. If only I could take a standardized test-- then I would know!"
Levesque remembers when 70% of Florida's low-income and minority Fourth Graders were functionally illiterate. I do not have access to the pertinent facts and figures, but I'm going to call bullshit on this. If I turn out to be wrong, I'll retract it.
But Florida tried to fix this with testing (because taking tests is totally how nine-year-olds become literate) and it didn't work. Nothing worked until the tests were accompanied by serious threats. Then, magically, Florida turned into a wonderland of educational success. Well, they got higher test scores anyway. Maybe. Bush said he was willing to abuse children to get them, and the state proved that with its repeated harassment of critically ill children. They have used testing to solidify racial divisions while claiming the opposite. Add their love of Tony Bennett, noted educational book cooker, and the Florida miracle looks more and more like imaginary vaporware. For a full well-researched rundown of what's not miraculous about Floridian education, check out this post from the invaluable Mercedes Schneider.
And Levesque wants you to know that they did it all cheaply.
That's Your Support?
Levesque embarks on an oddly-constructed side trip in which she points out that Weingarten and Darling-Hammond accuse the execrable state exams for a backlash against CCSS, wrapping up with "How do you support standards one year, and then abandon them the next?" Also, a bicycle, because a vest has no sleeves. I think what we're seeing is that Levesque is all in. Where other reformsters are frantically attempting decoupling (no no no! the test and the standards and the books are all completely different things), Levesque is doubling down on bundling-- it's all one package, and you have to love it all. This may be the closest she comes to saying something I agree with.
In the process of "debunking" the New York state backlash against the Core, Levesque cites-- Success Academy!
Did you know that last year, 82% of SA students tested proficient in math. This is much better than their peers in the rest of the state, which of course includes all the peers that were shoved out of SA schools before they could mess up those numbers.
We End Where We Started
I skipped over the title of this piece when I started; I invite you to go back and look at it again. Student success depends on testing and accountability. Not teaching. Not learning. Not supportive homes. Not a supportive classroom environment. Not good pedagogical technique. Not a positive, nurturing relationship with a teacher. Just tests. Tests with big fat punishments attache to failure.
Perhaps what we need is an all-test district. Every day students file in, receive their punishments for the previous test results, take a new test. I mean, if testing is the whole key to learning, the whole key to a successful life itself, then why are we wasting classroom time on anything else? Let's just test, all day, every day.
This piece would be funny if it weren't such a blazing, insulting attack on teachers and common sense, and if it weren't a picture of what folks working with He Who Would Be President think sound education policy would be. Some folks say that Jeb's support of Common Core will cost him the Presidency. I can only hope that it's true and that we can then send Ms. Levesque back to the Floridian swamp that spawned this insulting mess.
An Open Letter To Michelle Labuski
It must have been some time yesterday that you and your colleagues discovered this post, taking you to task for your pro-Common Core post on engageNY. You responded on twitter with a simple "Not okay. And hurtful." A few of your colleagues responded in my comments section. You were all gentler, kinder, and more amenable to reason than I was in the original post.
I understand how you might feel beaten up by the post, and given a do-over, I would have paid more attention to the fact that, as a guest poster on a commercial website, you might not be fully prepared for the kind of punch-in-the-face discourse of the bloggosphere. But I don't want to issue one of those non-apology apologies. Your feelings got hurt, and I'm the one who hurt them, and I am sorry that I did not extend at least a bit more professional consideration for them.
But while I can regret my tone, I do not regret my message. I'm going to explain why.
While reasonable people can have arguments about the content of the Common Core, the foundation of the Core, the whole premise on which they were launched and the states were strong-armed into adopting them, is fairly simple:
American public school teachers are failing. They don't know how to do their jobs. They don't know how to teach. They suck.
It's not just a false narrative, but a profoundly insulting one, both personally and professionally. The Core were not presented as "Our teachers are mostly great, but they need a bit of help" or "We have found the secret to taking our excellent teachers to the next level" but "Our schools are failing because our teachers are failing and our only hope is to tell them how to do their jobs." (At worst., we also get "They just want a paycheck. They are the biggest obstacle to education in this country") It's a gross insult, a slap in the face. And it's just not true.
The "How Common Core Made Me a Great Teacher" essay has become its own genre, with enough similarities between the entries that one wonders whether or not they are prompted by some official saying, "Why don't you write a piece about how the Core helped you, and here's an outline you could follow." Many of the teachers who write these essays seem quite sincere, and most of them appear to be teachers who were doing quite well in the classroom already, which is why the type of essay is so galling.
Because intentionally or not, the subtext is clear: "What you've heard is true. I did not know how to do my job until the Core came along to show me the way. I am here to tell you that the narrative is correct, that my colleagues and I don't know how to do our jobs, and that every good thing I've done in a classroom has only happened because the Core came along to straighten me out."
So while it may have been the furthest intention from your mind, I found your original essay (and the essays like it, of which I read about one a month) both not okay and hurtful.
Now, did I have to be an ass about it? No, probably not. But being an ass on this blog is how I vent the steam that builds up as I watch the profession I love torn down and excellent teachers smacked around until they apologize for existing. (And sometimes I'm just kind of an ass.)
I wish that you had written a piece about your excellent career, about your fine achievements, about all the things you were and are able to accomplish because of your own professional dedication. But of course then engageNY would not have put your essay on the web, because it would not have fit the narrative.
You seem like a nice lady and a good teacher. I'm sorry I hurt your feelings, but I'm also sorry that you wrote that promotional piece for Common Core. I hope that your summer is professionally and personally rewarding.
I understand how you might feel beaten up by the post, and given a do-over, I would have paid more attention to the fact that, as a guest poster on a commercial website, you might not be fully prepared for the kind of punch-in-the-face discourse of the bloggosphere. But I don't want to issue one of those non-apology apologies. Your feelings got hurt, and I'm the one who hurt them, and I am sorry that I did not extend at least a bit more professional consideration for them.
But while I can regret my tone, I do not regret my message. I'm going to explain why.
While reasonable people can have arguments about the content of the Common Core, the foundation of the Core, the whole premise on which they were launched and the states were strong-armed into adopting them, is fairly simple:
American public school teachers are failing. They don't know how to do their jobs. They don't know how to teach. They suck.
It's not just a false narrative, but a profoundly insulting one, both personally and professionally. The Core were not presented as "Our teachers are mostly great, but they need a bit of help" or "We have found the secret to taking our excellent teachers to the next level" but "Our schools are failing because our teachers are failing and our only hope is to tell them how to do their jobs." (At worst., we also get "They just want a paycheck. They are the biggest obstacle to education in this country") It's a gross insult, a slap in the face. And it's just not true.
The "How Common Core Made Me a Great Teacher" essay has become its own genre, with enough similarities between the entries that one wonders whether or not they are prompted by some official saying, "Why don't you write a piece about how the Core helped you, and here's an outline you could follow." Many of the teachers who write these essays seem quite sincere, and most of them appear to be teachers who were doing quite well in the classroom already, which is why the type of essay is so galling.
Because intentionally or not, the subtext is clear: "What you've heard is true. I did not know how to do my job until the Core came along to show me the way. I am here to tell you that the narrative is correct, that my colleagues and I don't know how to do our jobs, and that every good thing I've done in a classroom has only happened because the Core came along to straighten me out."
So while it may have been the furthest intention from your mind, I found your original essay (and the essays like it, of which I read about one a month) both not okay and hurtful.
Now, did I have to be an ass about it? No, probably not. But being an ass on this blog is how I vent the steam that builds up as I watch the profession I love torn down and excellent teachers smacked around until they apologize for existing. (And sometimes I'm just kind of an ass.)
I wish that you had written a piece about your excellent career, about your fine achievements, about all the things you were and are able to accomplish because of your own professional dedication. But of course then engageNY would not have put your essay on the web, because it would not have fit the narrative.
You seem like a nice lady and a good teacher. I'm sorry I hurt your feelings, but I'm also sorry that you wrote that promotional piece for Common Core. I hope that your summer is professionally and personally rewarding.
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
Why Your Evaluation Is Dumb
As you contemplate your end of the year evaluation paperwork, you are probably thinking (and not for the first time), "This doesn't make any sense." And you are correct. Current practices in teacher evaluation do not make sense-- if you assume that the purpose of these evals is to actually evaluate teachers accurately and effectively.
A good evaluation system gives the employees clear and useful feedback-- a picture of what they do well, and a plan for what they can improve. A good evaluation system also provides management with a clear picture of their organization's strengths and weaknesses. Current thought in teacher evaluation is not interested in either of these.
Proving What We Already Think We Know
Reformsters are sure that schools are failing, and that they are failing because they are packed floor to ceiling with stinky bad teachers. So evaluations don't need to be created in order to answer the question, "How are we doing?" Reformsters already know how we're doing-- we're failing. What they need is an evaluation system that confirms what we already know.
Hence stack ranking for schools. Stack ranking (ICYMI) is a now-discredited corporate model that involved determining the distribution of rankings before anyone was even evaluated. If there are ten employees in your department, we know before we even start the process that two are excellent, two are poor, and six are fair-to-middlin'.
In teacher eval land, this crops up as statements like "You don't live in excellent/distinguished/super-duper. You just visit." This is not a comment on your actual ability; the system starts with the assumption that there are very few teachers who are really good, and probably only in occasional moments. We are not looking to find excellence, because we already know it is not there.
This is just like deciding, before you even hand out the test, exactly which grades will be given, and the grading the tests by matching each test to one of the pre-determined grades. Whether your students all ace it or all flunk it, the pre-determined grades rule the outcome.
The Illusion of Objectivity
Reformsters think numbers are magical, and that only concrete objects are real (this is one of many reasons that one tends to assume that reformsters have rather sad and shallow inner lives).
If an administrator sees something with his own eyes that he can write down on paper, that must be objective. If an administrator is looking at an artifact that he can touch with his own hands, and he assigns it a number, that must be objective. Because, numbers.
I imagine the people who design these kinds of systems sitting at home evaluating the relationships in their lives. "Well, spousal unit, we performed sexual intercourse a total of two times this month, with an average duration of seventeen minutes. I cross-checked this with the video record of those events and determined that your facial expression shows a 5.7 on the arousal scale, giving us a solid 42 scale intimacy rating for this month. This compares to a 46 rating in April and a 51 in March, by which I must conclude that we are experiencing a significant decrease in marital satisfaction, and -- wait? why are you packing??"
Objectivity in teacher evaluation is an illusion. Because, human beings. If your boss hates you and is out to get you, no system in the world can keep him from finding a way to game your evaluation to hurt you. If she's a decent person who is trying to do the best for her people, no system can keep her from doing so (though we're trying hard to come up with a system that keeps her from succeeding.)
Even if we hand evaluators a specific list of behaviors to check off as signifiers of teacher quality, that list is itself a reflection of the bias of the person who made it, and the observer's own biases will affect what he does or doesn't see. There is no such thing as an objective measure of teacher quality. It does not exist. It has never existed. It will never exist. To present a system and claim that it is objective is in and of itself a demonstration of subjective biases about teaching.
Baloney Out Of Your Control
Depending on your location, you are subject to a bunch of evaluative baloney beyond your control.
This is simply hostage-taking. We want you to take these stupid pointless useless high stakes tests seriously, so we will hold your job rating hostage until you do. We want you to think AP courses are worth spending money on, so we will give you a job rating bump if you give us money.
It's also building in a safety for Reformsters. If we left it up to things that are in your control, it would be harder to get the results that we want. Throwing in some X factors helps guarantee that you won't somehow game the system and keep us from finding the widespread failure that the system exists to "reveal."
Saving for a Rainy Day
In Pennsylvania, we go through a long convoluted process to arrive at a pass-fail grade for teachers. Many other states have also chosen a relatively low-impact approach to evaluating, and so teachers feel relatively unthreatened by the process. Don't be fooled. The data is there, showing a wide range of teacher ability and "proving" that there's a vast pulsating pool of teacherly awfulness. Just because they haven't put the data in your local newspaper yet doesn't mean they won't get around to it.
A good evaluation system gives the employees clear and useful feedback-- a picture of what they do well, and a plan for what they can improve. A good evaluation system also provides management with a clear picture of their organization's strengths and weaknesses. Current thought in teacher evaluation is not interested in either of these.
Proving What We Already Think We Know
Reformsters are sure that schools are failing, and that they are failing because they are packed floor to ceiling with stinky bad teachers. So evaluations don't need to be created in order to answer the question, "How are we doing?" Reformsters already know how we're doing-- we're failing. What they need is an evaluation system that confirms what we already know.
Hence stack ranking for schools. Stack ranking (ICYMI) is a now-discredited corporate model that involved determining the distribution of rankings before anyone was even evaluated. If there are ten employees in your department, we know before we even start the process that two are excellent, two are poor, and six are fair-to-middlin'.
In teacher eval land, this crops up as statements like "You don't live in excellent/distinguished/super-duper. You just visit." This is not a comment on your actual ability; the system starts with the assumption that there are very few teachers who are really good, and probably only in occasional moments. We are not looking to find excellence, because we already know it is not there.
This is just like deciding, before you even hand out the test, exactly which grades will be given, and the grading the tests by matching each test to one of the pre-determined grades. Whether your students all ace it or all flunk it, the pre-determined grades rule the outcome.
The Illusion of Objectivity
Reformsters think numbers are magical, and that only concrete objects are real (this is one of many reasons that one tends to assume that reformsters have rather sad and shallow inner lives).
If an administrator sees something with his own eyes that he can write down on paper, that must be objective. If an administrator is looking at an artifact that he can touch with his own hands, and he assigns it a number, that must be objective. Because, numbers.
I imagine the people who design these kinds of systems sitting at home evaluating the relationships in their lives. "Well, spousal unit, we performed sexual intercourse a total of two times this month, with an average duration of seventeen minutes. I cross-checked this with the video record of those events and determined that your facial expression shows a 5.7 on the arousal scale, giving us a solid 42 scale intimacy rating for this month. This compares to a 46 rating in April and a 51 in March, by which I must conclude that we are experiencing a significant decrease in marital satisfaction, and -- wait? why are you packing??"
Objectivity in teacher evaluation is an illusion. Because, human beings. If your boss hates you and is out to get you, no system in the world can keep him from finding a way to game your evaluation to hurt you. If she's a decent person who is trying to do the best for her people, no system can keep her from doing so (though we're trying hard to come up with a system that keeps her from succeeding.)
Even if we hand evaluators a specific list of behaviors to check off as signifiers of teacher quality, that list is itself a reflection of the bias of the person who made it, and the observer's own biases will affect what he does or doesn't see. There is no such thing as an objective measure of teacher quality. It does not exist. It has never existed. It will never exist. To present a system and claim that it is objective is in and of itself a demonstration of subjective biases about teaching.
Baloney Out Of Your Control
Depending on your location, you are subject to a bunch of evaluative baloney beyond your control.
This is simply hostage-taking. We want you to take these stupid pointless useless high stakes tests seriously, so we will hold your job rating hostage until you do. We want you to think AP courses are worth spending money on, so we will give you a job rating bump if you give us money.
It's also building in a safety for Reformsters. If we left it up to things that are in your control, it would be harder to get the results that we want. Throwing in some X factors helps guarantee that you won't somehow game the system and keep us from finding the widespread failure that the system exists to "reveal."
Saving for a Rainy Day
In Pennsylvania, we go through a long convoluted process to arrive at a pass-fail grade for teachers. Many other states have also chosen a relatively low-impact approach to evaluating, and so teachers feel relatively unthreatened by the process. Don't be fooled. The data is there, showing a wide range of teacher ability and "proving" that there's a vast pulsating pool of teacherly awfulness. Just because they haven't put the data in your local newspaper yet doesn't mean they won't get around to it.
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
The Least
I have a friend who posits a simple rule for relationships-- the person who has the least concern has the most power. The person who has less interest has more control.
I'm not sure how useful the rule is for understanding romance, but it certainly does deconstruct plenty of other relationships. If dishes in the sink don't bother me, I can let them sit well past the science experimenty point at which you will snap and do them.
And if I care way more than you do whether teaching is done well or not, you are in the driver's seat. Folks look at actions like the North Carolina legislature's stated intention of rendering teaching non-viable as a career and ask, "Don't they realize this will destroy teaching, that nobody will ever want to teach in this state?!" And the answer is they probably do know-- they just don't care. We are often so caught up in our own values that we assume only people who don't understand the situation could be so uncaring. Teachers repeatedly get caught in versions of the following conversation:
Teacher: So there's the explanation. Do you see now how much damage you'll be doing? Do you see how that will just wreck the system and fly in the face of everything we know about education? Do you see what you're doing?
Reformster: Well, sure I see what I'm doing. What's your point?
Teacher: Fine, then. I'll just quit and you'll have to find some brain-damaged drunken slacker to come in and teach the students in my place, and he won't even try to work as hard at it as I have.
Reformster: Cool! Sounds good!
Reformsters don't care about public education, and certainly not about the teachers who work in it, other than the amount of "care" that is wrapped up in a desire to wipe something out. Supporters of public ed will always find dialogue with reformsters frustrating because the reformsters just don't give a rats tiny little posterior.
When someone cares less about something than you do, you have no leverage. That's why folks often open a negotiation by trying to find some leverage
For instance, it became shockingly clear that students do not feel an inherent need to work try their very best to generate useful data on standardized testing instruments-- almost as if they recognized that these tests are a big fat waste of student time and #2 pencil lead. So to take back control of the situation, reformsters made the tests necessary to get out of high school (or, in the most lunatic situations, to get out of third grade).
To make people care more than you do, take hostages. Take their diplomas hostage, or their careers.
What can advocates for public education do? What hostage can we take? Well, the reformsters are mostly about money and power. These are not easy things to take hostage. But I seriously doubt that anything else will move the needle.
I'm not sure how useful the rule is for understanding romance, but it certainly does deconstruct plenty of other relationships. If dishes in the sink don't bother me, I can let them sit well past the science experimenty point at which you will snap and do them.
And if I care way more than you do whether teaching is done well or not, you are in the driver's seat. Folks look at actions like the North Carolina legislature's stated intention of rendering teaching non-viable as a career and ask, "Don't they realize this will destroy teaching, that nobody will ever want to teach in this state?!" And the answer is they probably do know-- they just don't care. We are often so caught up in our own values that we assume only people who don't understand the situation could be so uncaring. Teachers repeatedly get caught in versions of the following conversation:
Teacher: So there's the explanation. Do you see now how much damage you'll be doing? Do you see how that will just wreck the system and fly in the face of everything we know about education? Do you see what you're doing?
Reformster: Well, sure I see what I'm doing. What's your point?
Teacher: Fine, then. I'll just quit and you'll have to find some brain-damaged drunken slacker to come in and teach the students in my place, and he won't even try to work as hard at it as I have.
Reformster: Cool! Sounds good!
Reformsters don't care about public education, and certainly not about the teachers who work in it, other than the amount of "care" that is wrapped up in a desire to wipe something out. Supporters of public ed will always find dialogue with reformsters frustrating because the reformsters just don't give a rats tiny little posterior.
When someone cares less about something than you do, you have no leverage. That's why folks often open a negotiation by trying to find some leverage
For instance, it became shockingly clear that students do not feel an inherent need to work try their very best to generate useful data on standardized testing instruments-- almost as if they recognized that these tests are a big fat waste of student time and #2 pencil lead. So to take back control of the situation, reformsters made the tests necessary to get out of high school (or, in the most lunatic situations, to get out of third grade).
To make people care more than you do, take hostages. Take their diplomas hostage, or their careers.
What can advocates for public education do? What hostage can we take? Well, the reformsters are mostly about money and power. These are not easy things to take hostage. But I seriously doubt that anything else will move the needle.
Monday, June 2, 2014
When You're in a Hole...
Valerie Strauss covers the news from OK that one more state is Mighty Unhappy with Common Core. Unlike the pretend rejection of the Core happening in other states, the OK legislature has laid out a set of standards for how it shall be determined that the new standards do not resemble the Common Core Standards. They are rejecting both CCSS and the horse they rode in on.
That piece of legislative legerdemain awaits a gubernatorial pen stroke (or lack thereof) to determine its fate. That'll be fun to watch. But in the meantime, I was struck by the appearance in Strauss's article of a hot new talking point that is a serious contender for Dumbest Argument in Favor of Keeping CCSS.
The Oklahoman newspaper quoted Steven Crawford, executive director of the Cooperative Council for Oklahoma School Administration, as predicting that “chaos” would ensue if the Core is rescinded. One middle school math teacher, Heather Sparks, Oklahoma’s 2009 Teacher of the Year, was quoted as saying:
“For next year, we’ve already written our curriculum map and the pacing guides for the Common Core standards. It’s kind of disheartening. If these are repealed, we’ll have to go backward.”
We've seen this on a couple of occasions now, including John White's spirited defense of those poor Louisiana teachers facing the totally confusing and disorienting CCSS defection of Gov. Jindal.
The argument seems to be that, having come this far, we just have too much invested in time and effort and blood and sweat and, well, if not tears, a little bit of mistiness right at the corner of our eyeballs, right there-- anyway, we've put so much into this, we can't just back out now.
So, you know, it's a good idea to throw good money after bad. And we've got yourself dug deep in a hole, you should totally keep digging. If you're stuck waist deep in the Big Muddy, you should totally listen when the big fool says to push on. When the snake oil salesman says you need to buy just a few cases more to get your health back, well, then, buy a hundred cases! When you've already lost your car and home, it's a great idea to keep feeding coins into the one-armed bandit.
It's not that Core opponents aren't sympathetic to this disinclination to change direction. After all, a few of us may have expressed a similar sentiment back when we were being told that we needed to dump out everything we'd done in the past and get with the Common Core program right now, right this moment, build-the-plane-while-we-fly-it immediately.
The difference is that back then, we had no reason at all to believe that jumping on the Common Core school bus would take us anywhere we wanted to go. We know with a high degree of certainty that it is a one-way trip to Education Malpracticeland.
So, pro tip for Heather Sparks and other CCSS boosters-- if the best thing you can say about your product is, "Well, you've already thrown a bunch of money away on it. You shouldn't back out now!" and not something like, say, "Let me tell you how great this is working," you are doing a very poor sales job. It may be that you're a lousy salesperson, or it may be that you've got a product that no salesman could make attractive, but either way, you're in a hole and you should stop digging.
That piece of legislative legerdemain awaits a gubernatorial pen stroke (or lack thereof) to determine its fate. That'll be fun to watch. But in the meantime, I was struck by the appearance in Strauss's article of a hot new talking point that is a serious contender for Dumbest Argument in Favor of Keeping CCSS.
The Oklahoman newspaper quoted Steven Crawford, executive director of the Cooperative Council for Oklahoma School Administration, as predicting that “chaos” would ensue if the Core is rescinded. One middle school math teacher, Heather Sparks, Oklahoma’s 2009 Teacher of the Year, was quoted as saying:
“For next year, we’ve already written our curriculum map and the pacing guides for the Common Core standards. It’s kind of disheartening. If these are repealed, we’ll have to go backward.”
We've seen this on a couple of occasions now, including John White's spirited defense of those poor Louisiana teachers facing the totally confusing and disorienting CCSS defection of Gov. Jindal.
The argument seems to be that, having come this far, we just have too much invested in time and effort and blood and sweat and, well, if not tears, a little bit of mistiness right at the corner of our eyeballs, right there-- anyway, we've put so much into this, we can't just back out now.
So, you know, it's a good idea to throw good money after bad. And we've got yourself dug deep in a hole, you should totally keep digging. If you're stuck waist deep in the Big Muddy, you should totally listen when the big fool says to push on. When the snake oil salesman says you need to buy just a few cases more to get your health back, well, then, buy a hundred cases! When you've already lost your car and home, it's a great idea to keep feeding coins into the one-armed bandit.
It's not that Core opponents aren't sympathetic to this disinclination to change direction. After all, a few of us may have expressed a similar sentiment back when we were being told that we needed to dump out everything we'd done in the past and get with the Common Core program right now, right this moment, build-the-plane-while-we-fly-it immediately.
The difference is that back then, we had no reason at all to believe that jumping on the Common Core school bus would take us anywhere we wanted to go. We know with a high degree of certainty that it is a one-way trip to Education Malpracticeland.
So, pro tip for Heather Sparks and other CCSS boosters-- if the best thing you can say about your product is, "Well, you've already thrown a bunch of money away on it. You shouldn't back out now!" and not something like, say, "Let me tell you how great this is working," you are doing a very poor sales job. It may be that you're a lousy salesperson, or it may be that you've got a product that no salesman could make attractive, but either way, you're in a hole and you should stop digging.
Civic Irresponsibility
For the true opponents of public education, these are heady times, because as the battle for public education heats up, these folks can see nothing but clear sailing. It's not a question of finding a path to victory-- it's just a matter of deciding which path of many they would like to follow and which allies they would like to invite to the after-party.
On the one hand, they could continue to buddy up to the Reformsters. The Reformsters have done them the favor of strapping public education into a straightjacket of reformy nonsense-- a set of lame, amateur standards tied to punitive high stakes tests of no educational value, used to create a punishing system of evaluations. The Reformsters are sure that public schools and public school teachers are failing, and they are going to keep making up data gathering systems based on how well those systems prove that failure exists. Reformsters are determined to drive career teachers away and hamstring the ones who stay. The Reformsters will use Common Core as the backbone of a system designed to reform public education into oblivion.
On the other hand, we have the Tin Hat crowd who oppose CCSS and all that comes with it-- because it all proves that government schools cannot be trusted and have always been waiting to indoctrinate young people into evil ways. They don't see reformy stuff as a perversion of public ed, but as an expression of public education's true nature, and they are arming themselves to fight back against the evil beast.
In other words, if public education is the girl next door, Reformsters are the ones who dress her up like a twenty-dollar hooker to "help fix her up," and the Tin Hat crowd are the ones pointing and hollering, "I told you! I always knew she was a dirty whore!"
Waiting in the wings? The moustache-twirling uncle who has been planning to steal her inheritance.
There's another group, a group for whom the problem of public education is similar to the problem of welfare, health care, and other social programs. The problem is simple. They don't want the government taking their money just to turn around and spend it on the little people, the poor people, Those People, the people whose lowly station in life is just proof that they are inferior and undeserving.
So they work both sides. They're busy whispering in ears one one side ("Hey, maybe you should have her show even more boobage!") and while tickling earlobes on the other ("Oh my God! Do you believe how trampy that trampy tramp is?!")
Watch out!! The feds are destroying local control-- destroy the Department of Education!! Beware! The standards aren't being pushed strongly enough-- make those school districts toe the line!
Then there are occasional moments like this extraordinary tweet from Neal McClusky of the Cato Institute
I'm thinking of the story from Frederick Douglass's autobiography. His owner's wife had taken to teaching the little boy to read; her husband took her aside to instruct her strictly in the proper non-education of slaves. Because throughout history, people who have wanted to maintain control of their lessers have understood that withholding education from the lower classes is an excellent way to keep them in their place.
What's American is to make the tools of socio-economic mobility, starting with education, available to all. It is an ideal that we have had trouble living up to at times for a variety of reasons including gender and racial prejudice.
But these days public ed is in more peril than ever. We have people who want to dismantle it and make money from the parts. We have people who want to tear it all down. And we have people who simply don't want to have to use their good money to educate Those People. Say what you will about Rockefeller and Carnegie-- they had at least a rudimentary sense of civic responsibility. These days we're looking at people who believe that civic responsibility is great as long as they don't have to actually give up money or power to indulge it.
They will call themselves champions of freedom, and they are, sort of. But it's the freedom of poor folks to take on the great grinding engine of life and society with nothing but a pea-shooter loaded with grit. And they are fans of their own freedom-- the freedom to be in complete control of their own lives, free from any need to worry or care about what happens to the lesser beings who are their countrymen in name only.
On the one hand, they could continue to buddy up to the Reformsters. The Reformsters have done them the favor of strapping public education into a straightjacket of reformy nonsense-- a set of lame, amateur standards tied to punitive high stakes tests of no educational value, used to create a punishing system of evaluations. The Reformsters are sure that public schools and public school teachers are failing, and they are going to keep making up data gathering systems based on how well those systems prove that failure exists. Reformsters are determined to drive career teachers away and hamstring the ones who stay. The Reformsters will use Common Core as the backbone of a system designed to reform public education into oblivion.
On the other hand, we have the Tin Hat crowd who oppose CCSS and all that comes with it-- because it all proves that government schools cannot be trusted and have always been waiting to indoctrinate young people into evil ways. They don't see reformy stuff as a perversion of public ed, but as an expression of public education's true nature, and they are arming themselves to fight back against the evil beast.
In other words, if public education is the girl next door, Reformsters are the ones who dress her up like a twenty-dollar hooker to "help fix her up," and the Tin Hat crowd are the ones pointing and hollering, "I told you! I always knew she was a dirty whore!"
Waiting in the wings? The moustache-twirling uncle who has been planning to steal her inheritance.
There's another group, a group for whom the problem of public education is similar to the problem of welfare, health care, and other social programs. The problem is simple. They don't want the government taking their money just to turn around and spend it on the little people, the poor people, Those People, the people whose lowly station in life is just proof that they are inferior and undeserving.
So they work both sides. They're busy whispering in ears one one side ("Hey, maybe you should have her show even more boobage!") and while tickling earlobes on the other ("Oh my God! Do you believe how trampy that trampy tramp is?!")
Watch out!! The feds are destroying local control-- destroy the Department of Education!! Beware! The standards aren't being pushed strongly enough-- make those school districts toe the line!
Then there are occasional moments like this extraordinary tweet from Neal McClusky of the Cato Institute
I have exact opposite view of @palan57: http://t.co/2vONgqLQuU U.S. built on individual liberty - gov schooling fundamentally un-American
— Neal McCluskey (@NealMcCluskey) June 2, 2014
I'm thinking of the story from Frederick Douglass's autobiography. His owner's wife had taken to teaching the little boy to read; her husband took her aside to instruct her strictly in the proper non-education of slaves. Because throughout history, people who have wanted to maintain control of their lessers have understood that withholding education from the lower classes is an excellent way to keep them in their place.
What's American is to make the tools of socio-economic mobility, starting with education, available to all. It is an ideal that we have had trouble living up to at times for a variety of reasons including gender and racial prejudice.
But these days public ed is in more peril than ever. We have people who want to dismantle it and make money from the parts. We have people who want to tear it all down. And we have people who simply don't want to have to use their good money to educate Those People. Say what you will about Rockefeller and Carnegie-- they had at least a rudimentary sense of civic responsibility. These days we're looking at people who believe that civic responsibility is great as long as they don't have to actually give up money or power to indulge it.
They will call themselves champions of freedom, and they are, sort of. But it's the freedom of poor folks to take on the great grinding engine of life and society with nothing but a pea-shooter loaded with grit. And they are fans of their own freedom-- the freedom to be in complete control of their own lives, free from any need to worry or care about what happens to the lesser beings who are their countrymen in name only.
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