The interwebs are currently blowing up with reaction to the Vergara verdict in California which, and there's no way to soft-pedal this, rips the guts out of tenure and seniority for teachers. If this stands, we will all be at-will employees soon enough.
My default setting is to assume that people mean well, or at least mean to do what they believe is right. I find it kind of rage-inducing to encounter people who willfully lie and destroy, who feel justified in simply declaring themselves heroes for blowing up an orphanage. I don't know what could possibly be going on in their brain, and I have to assume that they know they're full of baloney but they don't care. They are going to punch you in the nose and lie about it because they can and it makes them feel-- I don't know- powerful?
So when She Who Will Not Be Named or Students(never)First or DFER start tweeting about how this is a victory for students and equity, my blood pressure goes up because-- really? Really??
If they are so concerned about equity in California schools, where was the lawsuit to force the state to redistribute tax dollars so that poor schools have the resources they need? Oh yeah-- that would mean that rich folks would have to foot the bill to educate Those People, and that's the last thing we want.
What we want is to break the teaching profession, so we'll say we're protecting excellent teachers.
We want to impose the will of billionaires on the state, so we'll use some teenagers as set dressing. "Victory for students" my ass.
We want to create a lower-tier school system for the poor, so we'll call it equity.
We want to cut the poor off without a cent (because, Those People), so we'll call this social justice.
I mean, bloody hell, guys? Do we all have "stupid" written on our foreheads? Can you not even do me the respect of telling me convincing lies?
It's like talking to that kid in the third row who just punched another student in the face and is now sitting there smiling, laughing and saying "I never touched him" with that fish-eating grin that says, "Go on. I'm lying straight to you, and you're not going to do anything about it because my dad's on the school board and-- oh yeah-- you don't have tenure."
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
What Do We Do About Bad Teachers?
I believe bad teachers exist. I believe that on any given day, in many schools in this country, there's a person standing in a classroom doing a lousy job. I just spent a chunk of bandwidth explaining that I don't believe Find and Fire is the correct policy response to bad teaching. So what do I propose instead?
The Heart of the Problem
I'm going to spend the least amount of time on the hugest part of the problem, which is identifying the Bad Teachers. I've actually laid out my teacher evaluation plan elsewhere; if you want to start me off on a consulting career, give me a call. In the meantime, I'm going to talk about some of the reasons that it's hard to do useful evaluations, because wrestling with those difficulties helps us figure out what we need to do about our Problem Educators.
What Do You Want Them To Do
Here's what teaching feels like some days. You show up on a work site, and then a supervisor hands you a hammer and points you at a pile of lumber. "Build something," he says. "I'll be back in a few weeks to tell you how you're doing."
One of the more subtle things that reformsters have quietly done is to simplify education. Common Core redefines education as simple vocational training, and various VAMs redefining teaching as test prep. If we thought a teacher's job was just to get kids to get a good score on the Big Test, it would be easy to measure job performance. But that would be a stupid definition of a teacher's job, and so student test scores are a stupid measure of teach effectiveness.
Before you can judge teachers, you have to decide what you want them to do. That turns out to be rally complicated and difficult and wildly varied from parent to taxpayer to administrators to bureaucrats. It even varies within families-- what I want you to accomplish with my oldest child may be way different from what I want you to accomplish with my youngest.
Because this is so hugely difficult, we mostly just don't do it. We collective wave our hands in the general directions of students and say, "I don't know. Go do teachy things." If you want to evaluate people on job performance, you have to decide what job you want them to perform.
Teachers Are Humans
My point is NOT that humans are frail and flawed. My point is that humans are dynamic, growing, changing persons. You cannot take a snapshot of a person at one moment and say, "Well, that's who they are all the time forever."
I mean-- that's the whole premise of schools. If we handled students with the same Find and Fire method reformsters like for teachers, we would sit down in October and say, "Well, Chris and Pat don't appear to know very much, so let's just fire them." That would be crazy! (Well, unless you're a charter school. Then it would be standard policy.)
No, we say that if Chris and Pat are problematic, we will find ways to teach them.
People change. If you have taught for more than a decade, you have probably worked with some or all of the following teachers:
-- The teacher who was great for most of a career, except for a couple of years when they hit a rough patch and took a while to bounce back
-- The teacher who was pretty mediocre at first, but eventually caught on and became quite good
-- The teacher who started out pretty strong, but just kind of lost interest after a few years
-- The teacher who stayed a few years too long
-- The teacher who was awful from day one and couldn't be helped
-- The teacher who was awful from day one, but really wanted to get good, and so did
The smaller your sample (a single 30-minute observation, a 10-minute video clip), the less true your evaluation. Teacher performance varies over time. Teachers can get better or worse. Teachers are humans. Humans change.
Teaching Is About Relationships
Teaching is about the relationship between the teacher and the student. Not every relationship will be the same, and some of them will not be good.
At various times in my career, I have been exactly the right teacher at the right time for particular students. At other times, I have been exactly wrong for a particular student. Don't get me wrong-- I can teach anybody up to a certain point. I'm a professional, and that's my job. But I have no doubt that there are students out in the world telling their "Worst Teacher I Ever Had" stories about me.
So. What Do We Do?
We don't give up on finding and addressing weak areas. I said finding bad teaching is hard. I didn't say it was impossible. So let's pretend we did it, and discovered a pocket of bad teaching in Room 147. Now what?
First, we try to fix it.
I know reformsters want to just fire folks left and right. That's wasteful, and just means we'll have to start from scratch with a new trainee anyway. Let's see if we can salvage the investment of time and money we've already made in this teacher. After all-- some bad teaching is done by good teachers.
Coaching. Support. Team teaching. An experienced teacher works with Room 147 every single day. We know how to do all this, and we even know that it works. We just don't like it because it costs money, and districts are really fond of teacher remediation programs that don't cost a cent. Well, you get what you pay for. And if you fire and replace, you're going to have to pay for a mentor teacher again anyway. Maybe you'll hire somebody who is super-duper awesome all on their own from day one. But probably not.
Not everybody will be salvageable, and we will have to let those go. But for the rest-- isn't this just another version of our mission to educate and help young people become their best, most capable selves?
There are a handful of people who will be excellent teachers from day one (in thirty-five years, I've met exactly one), and a handful of people who will somehow get a job even though they will never get good at doing it (again, exactly one in thirty-five years). Most will fall somewhere in the middle and will either rise up or drop down depending on the random factors that fall across their path-- the particular teachers they fall in with, the classes they draw, the help they do or don't get in their first years teaching.
We don't have to leave the careers of those people in the middle up to chance. With support and mentoring and gentle pushing, we can make decent career teachers out of them, and isn't that a hell of a lot more use to the world than one more unemployed supposedly not-very-good teacher?
The Heart of the Problem
I'm going to spend the least amount of time on the hugest part of the problem, which is identifying the Bad Teachers. I've actually laid out my teacher evaluation plan elsewhere; if you want to start me off on a consulting career, give me a call. In the meantime, I'm going to talk about some of the reasons that it's hard to do useful evaluations, because wrestling with those difficulties helps us figure out what we need to do about our Problem Educators.
What Do You Want Them To Do
Here's what teaching feels like some days. You show up on a work site, and then a supervisor hands you a hammer and points you at a pile of lumber. "Build something," he says. "I'll be back in a few weeks to tell you how you're doing."
One of the more subtle things that reformsters have quietly done is to simplify education. Common Core redefines education as simple vocational training, and various VAMs redefining teaching as test prep. If we thought a teacher's job was just to get kids to get a good score on the Big Test, it would be easy to measure job performance. But that would be a stupid definition of a teacher's job, and so student test scores are a stupid measure of teach effectiveness.
Before you can judge teachers, you have to decide what you want them to do. That turns out to be rally complicated and difficult and wildly varied from parent to taxpayer to administrators to bureaucrats. It even varies within families-- what I want you to accomplish with my oldest child may be way different from what I want you to accomplish with my youngest.
Because this is so hugely difficult, we mostly just don't do it. We collective wave our hands in the general directions of students and say, "I don't know. Go do teachy things." If you want to evaluate people on job performance, you have to decide what job you want them to perform.
Teachers Are Humans
My point is NOT that humans are frail and flawed. My point is that humans are dynamic, growing, changing persons. You cannot take a snapshot of a person at one moment and say, "Well, that's who they are all the time forever."
I mean-- that's the whole premise of schools. If we handled students with the same Find and Fire method reformsters like for teachers, we would sit down in October and say, "Well, Chris and Pat don't appear to know very much, so let's just fire them." That would be crazy! (Well, unless you're a charter school. Then it would be standard policy.)
No, we say that if Chris and Pat are problematic, we will find ways to teach them.
People change. If you have taught for more than a decade, you have probably worked with some or all of the following teachers:
-- The teacher who was great for most of a career, except for a couple of years when they hit a rough patch and took a while to bounce back
-- The teacher who was pretty mediocre at first, but eventually caught on and became quite good
-- The teacher who started out pretty strong, but just kind of lost interest after a few years
-- The teacher who stayed a few years too long
-- The teacher who was awful from day one and couldn't be helped
-- The teacher who was awful from day one, but really wanted to get good, and so did
The smaller your sample (a single 30-minute observation, a 10-minute video clip), the less true your evaluation. Teacher performance varies over time. Teachers can get better or worse. Teachers are humans. Humans change.
Teaching Is About Relationships
Teaching is about the relationship between the teacher and the student. Not every relationship will be the same, and some of them will not be good.
At various times in my career, I have been exactly the right teacher at the right time for particular students. At other times, I have been exactly wrong for a particular student. Don't get me wrong-- I can teach anybody up to a certain point. I'm a professional, and that's my job. But I have no doubt that there are students out in the world telling their "Worst Teacher I Ever Had" stories about me.
So. What Do We Do?
We don't give up on finding and addressing weak areas. I said finding bad teaching is hard. I didn't say it was impossible. So let's pretend we did it, and discovered a pocket of bad teaching in Room 147. Now what?
First, we try to fix it.
I know reformsters want to just fire folks left and right. That's wasteful, and just means we'll have to start from scratch with a new trainee anyway. Let's see if we can salvage the investment of time and money we've already made in this teacher. After all-- some bad teaching is done by good teachers.
Coaching. Support. Team teaching. An experienced teacher works with Room 147 every single day. We know how to do all this, and we even know that it works. We just don't like it because it costs money, and districts are really fond of teacher remediation programs that don't cost a cent. Well, you get what you pay for. And if you fire and replace, you're going to have to pay for a mentor teacher again anyway. Maybe you'll hire somebody who is super-duper awesome all on their own from day one. But probably not.
Not everybody will be salvageable, and we will have to let those go. But for the rest-- isn't this just another version of our mission to educate and help young people become their best, most capable selves?
There are a handful of people who will be excellent teachers from day one (in thirty-five years, I've met exactly one), and a handful of people who will somehow get a job even though they will never get good at doing it (again, exactly one in thirty-five years). Most will fall somewhere in the middle and will either rise up or drop down depending on the random factors that fall across their path-- the particular teachers they fall in with, the classes they draw, the help they do or don't get in their first years teaching.
We don't have to leave the careers of those people in the middle up to chance. With support and mentoring and gentle pushing, we can make decent career teachers out of them, and isn't that a hell of a lot more use to the world than one more unemployed supposedly not-very-good teacher?
Firing the Right People
One theory of education that reformsters like to put forward is the idea that if we fire the right people, schools will get better.
We hear this refrain every time reformsters go after tenure and FILO (as they are currently doing in Pennsylvania) with the usual anecdotal evidence that [insert school district here] had to lay off [insert number here] fantastic young teachers because of that stupid FILO. First In, Last Out is bad, we are told, because it leads to firing the wrong people.
We should be firing the right people, the worst teachers. And you know, that might have some merit if we could reasonably identify the worst teachers. But that's a big If, a huge If, an If into which you could drop the Grand Canyon, the Rock of Gibraltar and my brother's 1953 Buick (which is, trust me, a huge vehicle) and that If would still have room to swing a herd of cats while running a marathon.
Reformsters are sure they've got a great secret sauce which combines diverse metrics from "How much money will you pay the College Board this year?" to VAM. It is hard to believe that we are seriously still talking about VAM despite the fact that it has been discredited by virtually everybody who understands how it works (or doesn't).
Bottom line: the reformster measures of teacher effectiveness suck. I will see your "young teachers who were laid off" and raise you "experienced great award-winning teachers who were given poor evaluations."
Over at EdWeek, Rick Hess (one of my favorite writers that I often disagree with) has been conducting a long-running and often fascinating conversation with John Thompson, and in the latest installment Thompson made the observation, "It's not hard to identify bad teaching. Hold educators accountable for what they do or don't do. Fire bad teachers for their behavior and we'll rid schools of 'ineffective' teachers."
I don't know if that's entirely true. Part of the challenge of teaching is that it involves two people (teacher, student) and so different combinations yield different results. I have been a very good teacher for some students, but I'm pretty sure I've been a terrible teacher for some others.
Nor do any of these evaluation approaches seriously look at the systemic issues; administration and building culture have the power to make an average teacher rise to greatness or sink to suckiness. And one of the problems with the reformy nonsense sweeping the nation and various states is that it creates a rules-bound climate in which teachers can't do a great job. The rising tide of resignations is essentially a whole batch of teachers saying, "In this climate, under these rules, I will be a lousy teacher, so I am firing myself."
Test-driven high stakes accountability, the kind of thing that results in eight-year-olds needing high-pressure test prep to avoid failing third grade-- this doesn't just allow bad teaching. It requires it. It demands it.
Not only that, but the current climate of education, the current status quo of test-driven cookie-cutter one-size-fits-all pseudo-teaching combined with other reformster nonsense is drying up the talent pool. In the midst of a teacher shortage, how will you replace all those supposedly bad teachers that you fired?
The private sector figured out that you can't fire your way to excellence years ago. Reformsters have decided that they will not only embrace management-by-firing, but they will create an educational system where teaching excellence is neither fostered nor recognized (and I don't mean "recognized" as in "given a testimonial" but that they literally do not know it when they see it).
Coaches do not create winning teams by humiliating and cutting the worst players. They foster excellence, they help the best get better and the mediocre get good, and they create an atmosphere where excellence is valued. They certainly do not create an atmosphere where all players must worry about being punished for some random factors beyond their control.
The people we most need to get rid of are not in classrooms-- they're in boardrooms and superintendent offices and state ed department suites and the US DOE. We need to fire the people who are intent on breaking down the American public education system by destroying the profession that makes it work (and I don't mean professional politicians). We do need to fire the right people.
We hear this refrain every time reformsters go after tenure and FILO (as they are currently doing in Pennsylvania) with the usual anecdotal evidence that [insert school district here] had to lay off [insert number here] fantastic young teachers because of that stupid FILO. First In, Last Out is bad, we are told, because it leads to firing the wrong people.
We should be firing the right people, the worst teachers. And you know, that might have some merit if we could reasonably identify the worst teachers. But that's a big If, a huge If, an If into which you could drop the Grand Canyon, the Rock of Gibraltar and my brother's 1953 Buick (which is, trust me, a huge vehicle) and that If would still have room to swing a herd of cats while running a marathon.
Reformsters are sure they've got a great secret sauce which combines diverse metrics from "How much money will you pay the College Board this year?" to VAM. It is hard to believe that we are seriously still talking about VAM despite the fact that it has been discredited by virtually everybody who understands how it works (or doesn't).
Bottom line: the reformster measures of teacher effectiveness suck. I will see your "young teachers who were laid off" and raise you "experienced great award-winning teachers who were given poor evaluations."
Over at EdWeek, Rick Hess (one of my favorite writers that I often disagree with) has been conducting a long-running and often fascinating conversation with John Thompson, and in the latest installment Thompson made the observation, "It's not hard to identify bad teaching. Hold educators accountable for what they do or don't do. Fire bad teachers for their behavior and we'll rid schools of 'ineffective' teachers."
I don't know if that's entirely true. Part of the challenge of teaching is that it involves two people (teacher, student) and so different combinations yield different results. I have been a very good teacher for some students, but I'm pretty sure I've been a terrible teacher for some others.
Nor do any of these evaluation approaches seriously look at the systemic issues; administration and building culture have the power to make an average teacher rise to greatness or sink to suckiness. And one of the problems with the reformy nonsense sweeping the nation and various states is that it creates a rules-bound climate in which teachers can't do a great job. The rising tide of resignations is essentially a whole batch of teachers saying, "In this climate, under these rules, I will be a lousy teacher, so I am firing myself."
Test-driven high stakes accountability, the kind of thing that results in eight-year-olds needing high-pressure test prep to avoid failing third grade-- this doesn't just allow bad teaching. It requires it. It demands it.
Not only that, but the current climate of education, the current status quo of test-driven cookie-cutter one-size-fits-all pseudo-teaching combined with other reformster nonsense is drying up the talent pool. In the midst of a teacher shortage, how will you replace all those supposedly bad teachers that you fired?
The private sector figured out that you can't fire your way to excellence years ago. Reformsters have decided that they will not only embrace management-by-firing, but they will create an educational system where teaching excellence is neither fostered nor recognized (and I don't mean "recognized" as in "given a testimonial" but that they literally do not know it when they see it).
Coaches do not create winning teams by humiliating and cutting the worst players. They foster excellence, they help the best get better and the mediocre get good, and they create an atmosphere where excellence is valued. They certainly do not create an atmosphere where all players must worry about being punished for some random factors beyond their control.
The people we most need to get rid of are not in classrooms-- they're in boardrooms and superintendent offices and state ed department suites and the US DOE. We need to fire the people who are intent on breaking down the American public education system by destroying the profession that makes it work (and I don't mean professional politicians). We do need to fire the right people.
Monday, June 9, 2014
Test + Punish = Real Accountability
Over at the StudentsFirst blog, Jacob Waters opens the door to more disingenuous flimflammery with a post entitled "Some Much-Needed Honesty on Accountability."
The post is one more entry in the "Let's beat up Weingarten and Darling-Hammond for daring to break ranks" sweepstakes that has been running all week. The sweepstakes is a bit bizarre, since all the two hard core Core fans have suggested is that the accountability side of the reformster program is in danger of killing off the CCSS. Maybe it is time for the Dennis Quaid of reform to cut loose the Jay O. Sanders of testing before he drags them all down into the abandoned shopping mall of broken dreams.
This "cut loose the testing before it kills the Core" is not a new idea-- various conservative pundits have been tossing it out for months. But you would think Weingarten and Darling-Hammond had actually wised up enough to abandon the CCSS (no such luck, campers). Instead, they call for a "support-and-improve" model, which is a weak soup indeed, leaving the reformsters' fundamentally flawed approach in place.
Anthony Cody has effectively shown why the Weingarten-Darling-Hammond piece is too little of the wrong fix. But Waters effectively distills what the reformsters object to in their proposal.
And of course we need to do a better job providing classroom support. But this masks their true goal: passing the buck on our educational failings.
We are reminded, once again, that StudentsFirst really doesn't give a tiny rat-sized tuchus about students. What they really want to see is teacher tuchuses kicked, and kicked hard, preferably to the nearest curb.
Note the article of faith in Waters's sentence-- we know that we have educational failings. Even though the accountability measures we need have been barely present in NY (our model state) and in fact this whole argument because California has NOT put the measures in place, we just know, we know with our guts, our heart, our very marrow that schools are filled from bottom to top with loads of failing teachers. There is no question of if. We know they're there, like monsters in the closet.
The piece Waters lauds for its honesty is here in HuffPost, cranked out by Kati Haycock and Russlyn Ali (drum majors from two more of the endless parade of corporate Core-horn-tooting marching bands) in defense poor, picked-on John King. Those two paint King as a dedicated crusader for the educational rights of black, brown and poor students. Meanwhile, in California, whose "educational system has for years been gripped by a kind of 'pobrecito' phenomenon, where hugging kids is too often considered an acceptable substitute for teaching them." Yes, those damn California teachers, with their terrible hugging and niceness and grit-destroying kindness.
As for the W/D-H charge that King's approach is "test and punish," Haycock and Ali deftly dismantle that charge by calling it "preposterous" and then listing-- well, no, actually, all they have for proof is an adjective.
The essential difference between New York and California is that educators in the latter state will never feel consequences themselves. In New York, educators and schools who don't grow their students after years of feedback and support will face consequences. Unless California changes course, their counterparts there will be able to continue doing damage for decades to come.
The reformsters want to see teachers punished for low test scores, and they want to see it now. Nothing else will do. No other method of helping students achieve, nor of measuring that achievement, will do. We must test students, then we must punish their teachers (oh! "test then punish" not "test and punish"!). Only that is "real accountability." Also, knock off that damn hugging.
The post is one more entry in the "Let's beat up Weingarten and Darling-Hammond for daring to break ranks" sweepstakes that has been running all week. The sweepstakes is a bit bizarre, since all the two hard core Core fans have suggested is that the accountability side of the reformster program is in danger of killing off the CCSS. Maybe it is time for the Dennis Quaid of reform to cut loose the Jay O. Sanders of testing before he drags them all down into the abandoned shopping mall of broken dreams.
This "cut loose the testing before it kills the Core" is not a new idea-- various conservative pundits have been tossing it out for months. But you would think Weingarten and Darling-Hammond had actually wised up enough to abandon the CCSS (no such luck, campers). Instead, they call for a "support-and-improve" model, which is a weak soup indeed, leaving the reformsters' fundamentally flawed approach in place.
Anthony Cody has effectively shown why the Weingarten-Darling-Hammond piece is too little of the wrong fix. But Waters effectively distills what the reformsters object to in their proposal.
And of course we need to do a better job providing classroom support. But this masks their true goal: passing the buck on our educational failings.
We are reminded, once again, that StudentsFirst really doesn't give a tiny rat-sized tuchus about students. What they really want to see is teacher tuchuses kicked, and kicked hard, preferably to the nearest curb.
Note the article of faith in Waters's sentence-- we know that we have educational failings. Even though the accountability measures we need have been barely present in NY (our model state) and in fact this whole argument because California has NOT put the measures in place, we just know, we know with our guts, our heart, our very marrow that schools are filled from bottom to top with loads of failing teachers. There is no question of if. We know they're there, like monsters in the closet.
The piece Waters lauds for its honesty is here in HuffPost, cranked out by Kati Haycock and Russlyn Ali (drum majors from two more of the endless parade of corporate Core-horn-tooting marching bands) in defense poor, picked-on John King. Those two paint King as a dedicated crusader for the educational rights of black, brown and poor students. Meanwhile, in California, whose "educational system has for years been gripped by a kind of 'pobrecito' phenomenon, where hugging kids is too often considered an acceptable substitute for teaching them." Yes, those damn California teachers, with their terrible hugging and niceness and grit-destroying kindness.
As for the W/D-H charge that King's approach is "test and punish," Haycock and Ali deftly dismantle that charge by calling it "preposterous" and then listing-- well, no, actually, all they have for proof is an adjective.
The essential difference between New York and California is that educators in the latter state will never feel consequences themselves. In New York, educators and schools who don't grow their students after years of feedback and support will face consequences. Unless California changes course, their counterparts there will be able to continue doing damage for decades to come.
The reformsters want to see teachers punished for low test scores, and they want to see it now. Nothing else will do. No other method of helping students achieve, nor of measuring that achievement, will do. We must test students, then we must punish their teachers (oh! "test then punish" not "test and punish"!). Only that is "real accountability." Also, knock off that damn hugging.
Before We Get Too Excited About Crumbling CCSS
As the Common Core takes hit after hit, it's easy to get excited. We shouldn't. There are dangers to public education waiting in the wings.
When the Lion Sleeps, the Jackals Feed
An antelope may fight off a lion, may even convince the lion that it's not worth the trouble. But the fight with the lion may leave the antelope weakened and easy prey for other predators.
I've written before about the folks who feel that CCSS is simply the "government schools" showing their true oppressive colors. As Common Core is pushed back, these folks are not going to say, "Okay, well now that we've chased CCSS out of here, our work is done and we can go home." They are going to say, "While we have the gummint on the run, it's time to clean these schools up for good."
That may mean upping the choice ante so that they can rescue their children from government schools. It may mean a level of school oversight unlike anything we've ever seen-- after all, if they can successfully challenge that awful PARCC test, why not also challenge Mrs. Guttershmidt's awful test about Shakespearean literature? It may involve replacing public schools entirely with a network of privatization and homeschooling.
Public school supporters who have been fighting the enemy in front of them had better be prepared to swing around to cover their flanks quickly.
Getting Rid of Practices Doesn't Change Premises
North Carolina, a state that has proven itself spectacularly hostile to public school and public school teachers, is making noise about canning the Core. Does anybody really think that what would come next would be good news for public education?
There are plenty of people opposing Common Core who still believe that
-- we need some sort of nationalized standards and/or curriculum
-- we need some sort of test-based acountability
-- that our schools are failing and they need a swift kick in the ass
-- and that it's teachers' collective fault
Getting rid of the Common Core Complex without altering the premises that powered it is like trying to deal with your aged-whitened hair by shaving your head-- it's just going to grow back. Mow the dandelions in your yard, and they'll just grow back. If we don't address the ideas that allowed CCSS to take root, we will just grow more of the same.
$$$$$$$$$
Concurrent with the rise of the Core is the discovery that American public education is a giant cash cow just waiting to be milked. Pearson et al will not be saying, "Oh, so, never mind? That's cool. We'll just pack our stuff and go home."
Part of what has appealed to the biz community about CCSS complex stuff is that A) it reflects a dog-eat-dog, stack and rank, winners and losers, sticks and carrots world view and B) it costs money to implement it. But A) the dog-eat-dog competitive worldview is a lousy idea for educating children, and B) we need to focus our limited resources on things that actually help educate students.
Folks in the edubiz world have found beautiful new Lexus-spawning business model. It's the golden goose, the magic beans, the pot of gold that keeps on giving. They are not going to walk away from that easily or ever.
It's a New World
CCSS supporters were right about one thing-- we can't go back to the way things were. Not because it's a bad idea, but because the landscape has changed. The CCSS will collapse, sooner or later, because even the giant pile of money being fed into them will not compensate for reformsters' ever-growing record of failure. But when they collapse, we will be in a new place, a place that will still be shaped by what the reformsters have done.
It's ironic. Even people who disagree with the reformsters' ideas for solutions have quietly accepted the reformsters' framing of the problem. If we want to really change the conversation about public education, that's where we will need to focus our energy.
When the Lion Sleeps, the Jackals Feed
An antelope may fight off a lion, may even convince the lion that it's not worth the trouble. But the fight with the lion may leave the antelope weakened and easy prey for other predators.
I've written before about the folks who feel that CCSS is simply the "government schools" showing their true oppressive colors. As Common Core is pushed back, these folks are not going to say, "Okay, well now that we've chased CCSS out of here, our work is done and we can go home." They are going to say, "While we have the gummint on the run, it's time to clean these schools up for good."
That may mean upping the choice ante so that they can rescue their children from government schools. It may mean a level of school oversight unlike anything we've ever seen-- after all, if they can successfully challenge that awful PARCC test, why not also challenge Mrs. Guttershmidt's awful test about Shakespearean literature? It may involve replacing public schools entirely with a network of privatization and homeschooling.
Public school supporters who have been fighting the enemy in front of them had better be prepared to swing around to cover their flanks quickly.
Getting Rid of Practices Doesn't Change Premises
North Carolina, a state that has proven itself spectacularly hostile to public school and public school teachers, is making noise about canning the Core. Does anybody really think that what would come next would be good news for public education?
There are plenty of people opposing Common Core who still believe that
-- we need some sort of nationalized standards and/or curriculum
-- we need some sort of test-based acountability
-- that our schools are failing and they need a swift kick in the ass
-- and that it's teachers' collective fault
Getting rid of the Common Core Complex without altering the premises that powered it is like trying to deal with your aged-whitened hair by shaving your head-- it's just going to grow back. Mow the dandelions in your yard, and they'll just grow back. If we don't address the ideas that allowed CCSS to take root, we will just grow more of the same.
$$$$$$$$$
Concurrent with the rise of the Core is the discovery that American public education is a giant cash cow just waiting to be milked. Pearson et al will not be saying, "Oh, so, never mind? That's cool. We'll just pack our stuff and go home."
Part of what has appealed to the biz community about CCSS complex stuff is that A) it reflects a dog-eat-dog, stack and rank, winners and losers, sticks and carrots world view and B) it costs money to implement it. But A) the dog-eat-dog competitive worldview is a lousy idea for educating children, and B) we need to focus our limited resources on things that actually help educate students.
Folks in the edubiz world have found beautiful new Lexus-spawning business model. It's the golden goose, the magic beans, the pot of gold that keeps on giving. They are not going to walk away from that easily or ever.
It's a New World
CCSS supporters were right about one thing-- we can't go back to the way things were. Not because it's a bad idea, but because the landscape has changed. The CCSS will collapse, sooner or later, because even the giant pile of money being fed into them will not compensate for reformsters' ever-growing record of failure. But when they collapse, we will be in a new place, a place that will still be shaped by what the reformsters have done.
It's ironic. Even people who disagree with the reformsters' ideas for solutions have quietly accepted the reformsters' framing of the problem. If we want to really change the conversation about public education, that's where we will need to focus our energy.
Never Mind the SAT
Today's Slate includes an intriguing report of the non-traditional application process for Bard College. Rebecca Shuman presents the new elective small-college alternative:
Bard College, a highly selective liberal-arts school in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, is about to enter the second year of a revolutionary college-admissions experiment: four wickedly challenging essays, 2,500 words each, reviewed by Bard faculty (who, I assume, enjoy grading papers). All four essays get a B+ or higher? You’re in, period. No standardized test, no GPA, no CV inflated with disingenuous volunteer work.
How cool is that?!
There are some additional safeguards; incoming freshmen take a pre-matriculation language and thinking workshop. If their work there doesn't seem to measure up to (read "come from the same person as") their admissions essays, their entrance into the freshman class just doesn't happen.
The program is not huge at this point-- only forty-some prospective freshmen took the essay route last year. But it is a great example of what can happen when a college decides to create an authentic measure of the skills they want for their incoming students, instead of simply processing some off-the-shelf data points gathered by third parties whose main interest is their own business and not the interests of either the college or the students.
It is, of course, the opposite of where we're headed. The pull quote from the article is:
It’s preposterous to determine a young person’s entire future based on her choices as a 14-year-old.
If Shuman thinks that is preposterous, she's going to love the brave new world in which we tell seven year olds whether or not they are "on track" for college.
Bard College, a highly selective liberal-arts school in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, is about to enter the second year of a revolutionary college-admissions experiment: four wickedly challenging essays, 2,500 words each, reviewed by Bard faculty (who, I assume, enjoy grading papers). All four essays get a B+ or higher? You’re in, period. No standardized test, no GPA, no CV inflated with disingenuous volunteer work.
How cool is that?!
There are some additional safeguards; incoming freshmen take a pre-matriculation language and thinking workshop. If their work there doesn't seem to measure up to (read "come from the same person as") their admissions essays, their entrance into the freshman class just doesn't happen.
The program is not huge at this point-- only forty-some prospective freshmen took the essay route last year. But it is a great example of what can happen when a college decides to create an authentic measure of the skills they want for their incoming students, instead of simply processing some off-the-shelf data points gathered by third parties whose main interest is their own business and not the interests of either the college or the students.
It is, of course, the opposite of where we're headed. The pull quote from the article is:
It’s preposterous to determine a young person’s entire future based on her choices as a 14-year-old.
If Shuman thinks that is preposterous, she's going to love the brave new world in which we tell seven year olds whether or not they are "on track" for college.
Takeaways from Layton's Gates Interview
If you have not yet read Lyndsey Layton's extraordinary piece about How Gates Did It, or watched the video of the interview itself, you must do so. (And when you're done, also take a look at Mercedes Schneider's simple question-- why is the interview being published three months after it actually happened?)
The article is a nice piece of work, and I'm not going to rehash it here. But I am going to underline just a few of the pieces that jumped out at me.
Money and Connections
The article underlines what many of us have said many times-- if the money dried up today, support for Common Core would dry up tomorrow. Every step of the process, every bit of spreading of support has been a function of money.
I actually agree with Gates when he says that he doesn't pay people to agree with him. I don't how that is how it works. If I were rich, I wouldn't say, "Agree with me and I'll give you money." But I would look to give my money to people who agree with me, or at least fake it well enough to convince me.
But the entire story of Common Core's success is a combination of "We got a grant" and "I know a guy." The CCSS world is a tight, incestuous community of likeminded people who call on each other when a job needs to be done. Reformsters used connection in Kentucky to get them on board, and they used connections in the business community to get on board, and money gave it all a slick, glossy, well-backed look, as well as making all the leg work, paper work, and meeting work free!
This article notes, as many have, that the onset of CCSS was quiet, initially unnoticed. That's because CCSS never made its way through the marketplace of ideas. It never had to sweep through the public, nor was it ever run by people in the education community. Money, power and connections allowed it to leapfrog right past all of that.
Federal Program
Raise your hand is you're surprised to read that Race to the Top almost included a Common Core requirement until someone realized that would be illegal. Yeah, me neither.
The notion that this is state-led is one of the most transparently ridiculous fictions of the whole reformster movement. It's nice to see that laid out in print.
Gates Is Human
Maybe I'm projecting. Maybe I'm compensating (disclosure-- a member of my family works for Microsoft). But it seems that Gates shares a completely ordinary perception problem-- once he has bought into a certain view, he does not modify it.
When he says, "There’s a lot of work that’s gone into making these [standards] good," I don't get the sense he's deliberately lying. I get the impression that he's a guy who has convinced himself that it's so. I think he's developed a mental image of how these worked, how they arrived, what they do, and what they will accomplish, and now it's just a matter of exercising will (and money and power) to make it so.
I get that. It's how you turn Windows into the OS that rules most of the computer world. Unfortunately, it is also how you end up spending millions producing the Zune.
So Gates has invested huge amounts of time and money into a process and product that is fundamentally flawed and terminally wrong-- so wrong that its continued survival depends on continued financial support. And on top of being already dead wrong, the process has been co-opted and twisted by profiteers who see their chance-- outfits like Pearson and the Data Overlords and hedge fund charter operators who see helping the great Gates as a way to get a free pass on the gravy train. One way of viewing our current mess is that Common Core is the disease and the rest is a mass of opportunistic infections.
Because there's a problem with a program that survives only because of money. It ends up being pushed and supported by people who believe, not in the program, but in money. It's money that they're faithful to, and money that they follow, and if it comes down to a choice between making some more money and staying faithful to Gates's vision of a better educational world, they'll choose the money every time. It only makes matters worse that the vision is so wrong to begin with.
I don't believe that Gates is some sort of Evil Genius, and I don't think he really cares if he makes more money on all of this. I do think he is a rich and powerful guy who is used to being right and used to getting his way, and he's is uniquely and specially blind to how completely wrong he is on Common Core and all the evil to which it has opened the door. IOW, I don't think it's greed; I think it's hubris.
It's hubris that makes humans stop paying attention. It's hubris that makes humans say, "I don't need any new information. I just need to preserve my vision of what I know is right. Any challenge to that is a challenge to me, and I will fight it just like an attack on my person." Add a ton of money, and people will fall over themselves telling you just how right you are.
Best Quote in the Article
The best quote for me in the article comes from Jay P. Greene.
"Really rich guys can come up with ideas that they think are great, but there is a danger that everyone will tell them they’re great, even if they’re not,” Greene said.
That's the big takeaway. CCSS is not about education, it's not about research, it's not about educational experts, it's not about actual results in school, it's not about looking out for the rights of students--
It's about money and power.
The article is a nice piece of work, and I'm not going to rehash it here. But I am going to underline just a few of the pieces that jumped out at me.
Money and Connections
The article underlines what many of us have said many times-- if the money dried up today, support for Common Core would dry up tomorrow. Every step of the process, every bit of spreading of support has been a function of money.
I actually agree with Gates when he says that he doesn't pay people to agree with him. I don't how that is how it works. If I were rich, I wouldn't say, "Agree with me and I'll give you money." But I would look to give my money to people who agree with me, or at least fake it well enough to convince me.
But the entire story of Common Core's success is a combination of "We got a grant" and "I know a guy." The CCSS world is a tight, incestuous community of likeminded people who call on each other when a job needs to be done. Reformsters used connection in Kentucky to get them on board, and they used connections in the business community to get on board, and money gave it all a slick, glossy, well-backed look, as well as making all the leg work, paper work, and meeting work free!
This article notes, as many have, that the onset of CCSS was quiet, initially unnoticed. That's because CCSS never made its way through the marketplace of ideas. It never had to sweep through the public, nor was it ever run by people in the education community. Money, power and connections allowed it to leapfrog right past all of that.
Federal Program
Raise your hand is you're surprised to read that Race to the Top almost included a Common Core requirement until someone realized that would be illegal. Yeah, me neither.
The notion that this is state-led is one of the most transparently ridiculous fictions of the whole reformster movement. It's nice to see that laid out in print.
Gates Is Human
Maybe I'm projecting. Maybe I'm compensating (disclosure-- a member of my family works for Microsoft). But it seems that Gates shares a completely ordinary perception problem-- once he has bought into a certain view, he does not modify it.
When he says, "There’s a lot of work that’s gone into making these [standards] good," I don't get the sense he's deliberately lying. I get the impression that he's a guy who has convinced himself that it's so. I think he's developed a mental image of how these worked, how they arrived, what they do, and what they will accomplish, and now it's just a matter of exercising will (and money and power) to make it so.
I get that. It's how you turn Windows into the OS that rules most of the computer world. Unfortunately, it is also how you end up spending millions producing the Zune.
So Gates has invested huge amounts of time and money into a process and product that is fundamentally flawed and terminally wrong-- so wrong that its continued survival depends on continued financial support. And on top of being already dead wrong, the process has been co-opted and twisted by profiteers who see their chance-- outfits like Pearson and the Data Overlords and hedge fund charter operators who see helping the great Gates as a way to get a free pass on the gravy train. One way of viewing our current mess is that Common Core is the disease and the rest is a mass of opportunistic infections.
Because there's a problem with a program that survives only because of money. It ends up being pushed and supported by people who believe, not in the program, but in money. It's money that they're faithful to, and money that they follow, and if it comes down to a choice between making some more money and staying faithful to Gates's vision of a better educational world, they'll choose the money every time. It only makes matters worse that the vision is so wrong to begin with.
I don't believe that Gates is some sort of Evil Genius, and I don't think he really cares if he makes more money on all of this. I do think he is a rich and powerful guy who is used to being right and used to getting his way, and he's is uniquely and specially blind to how completely wrong he is on Common Core and all the evil to which it has opened the door. IOW, I don't think it's greed; I think it's hubris.
It's hubris that makes humans stop paying attention. It's hubris that makes humans say, "I don't need any new information. I just need to preserve my vision of what I know is right. Any challenge to that is a challenge to me, and I will fight it just like an attack on my person." Add a ton of money, and people will fall over themselves telling you just how right you are.
Best Quote in the Article
The best quote for me in the article comes from Jay P. Greene.
"Really rich guys can come up with ideas that they think are great, but there is a danger that everyone will tell them they’re great, even if they’re not,” Greene said.
That's the big takeaway. CCSS is not about education, it's not about research, it's not about educational experts, it's not about actual results in school, it's not about looking out for the rights of students--
It's about money and power.
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