There will always be great schools in this country. On that point, you need not worry. There will always be great schools, just as there will always be excellent health care and great libraries. These things will always exist.
Well, at least, they will always exist for the rich.
The rich will always have access to the finest version of these things, these items that we all believe are an important part of society. In fact, even when it comes to controversial services (like abortion) or even items that are almost universally frowned upon (like recreational drugs), the rich have always had full access to the best, and they always will.
So when we talk about now to get the best value per dollar for schools (or healthcare), the question we're really asking is, "How much should we pay, how should we pay it, and how much education should we buy for people who aren't rich?"
Throughout all of the current battles over public education in this country, we have never debated how to reform educational programs for the rich, how to cut costs in schools that serve the rich, or what sort of testing we should be using to measure the education of the rich. Our whole long wrangle has been about what to do in the schools that are for everybody else.
I'm not saying it's the only lens that works, but the whole reformster movement makes sense if we view it through the lens of rich folks saying, "Look, what's the bare minimum I have to spend educating Those People's Kids, and what's the most basic education I can get with my money. Oh-- and is there a way we could set it up so I get some of my money back, with interest?"
I am not actually a hard-core progressive (nor do I play one on tv). I don't think having the government take a boatload of money from rich people and spend it on everyone else is a great thing. First, confiscatory policies can be brutally unjust. Second, when the government gets its hands on big piles of money, it tends to do stupid things with it (including, but not limited to, handing it over to some private corporation in the hopes that it might provide some tiny modicum of service). I do not think there's any hope of making America a better place by building a federally financed Phillips Academy in every town.
However, there's a whole discussion we're steadily not having when it comes to education (and a few other things, but let's focus for now)-- a discussion about our obligation to educate all members of our society, which is itself an obligation to our whole society. We have let-- even encouraged-- reformsters to talk about education as if it's a service provided to parents, like waxing their car or cleaning their teeth. CCSS and its boosters, all the way up to President Obama, have reframed education as a sort of job training service, as if making everyone a manager at 7-11 is the best way to transform America into a stronger, healthier society. We have moved far away from the idea that education is a basic building block of culture, of society, of informed politics, of better relationships, of better, clearer, stronger connections to our world and the other human beings in it.
We all have, to greater and lesser degrees, the power to help make that happen. And in this world, like it or not, some people have more power than others. And as the great philosopher Stan Lee wrote about a half century ago, "With great power comes great responsibility."
There's a mini-lecture that my hapless students trigger from time to time with a seemingly harmless question, and it goes like this:
What I hear you asking, hapless student, is a roundabout way of asking "What's the absolute minimum I have to do on this assignment to get by?" That is a bad question to ask. Do you sit want your parents to do the least possible for you? Do you dream of the day you find a romantic partner who will do the absolute least they have to in your relationship? If you go to the hospital some day, will you say to the doctors, "Please give me the least healing help you think you can get away with."
No. You want people to do their best, to give all they can, to show what they can accomplish when they put their heart and back into it. Impress me. Amaze me. Dare to be awesome.
I don't know the secret of getting people to give their all and pull their weight in society. I only know a couple of tricks.
1) Be an example. Stop talking about the power you don't have and start exercising the power you do have.
2) Raise the bar for "good enough." "Good enough to get by" in society often means "good enough that people won't start raising a fuss." Don't accept half a loaf. Raise a fuss until you get a whole one.
And finally, insist that we talk about what we're really talking about. One of the reformster tricks is to use smoke-and-mirror language, to pretend that we're talking about "protecting excellent teachers" instead of "breaking the union and getting rid of lifers in the classroom." If we want to talk as a society about how much of a burden for educating everybody should be borne by taxpayers in general and wealthy taxpayers in particular, that's a legitimate conversation to have-- but let's actually have it. It's a waste of everybody's time to pretend we're talking about making education better when we're really talking about how to make it less dependent on tax dollars, less expensive in general, and more profitable for the corporations.
Don't worry about the rich. They'll be fine. The real question is, who should pay to educate Those Peoples' children, and how much should they pay to do it?
Friday, June 20, 2014
How Charters Fake Success
Jersey Jazzman is one of the premiere edubloggers out there, and I rarely mention him here because I generally don't have anything to add except, "Yeah. What he said. Read that." But his post from yesterday about a subtle way in which charters can cook the books is extra worth taking another look-- and I think I can add some value for the stats-impaired readers.
I'll start by echoing his point that all charters are NOT money-grubbing scams, and that a well-done charter school can be a great addition to a school system.
But some insist on trying other routes to success, some more subtle than others.
The technique that the Jazzman lays out is more subtle than, say, paying yourself rent for the building. But here's how you do it:
1) Open up charter in urban high poverty area.
2) Accept only a small percentage of high poverty students
3) Compare your low/high needs student ration to the state, rather than the local district
4) Compare your results to the local district rather than the state
The Jazzman lays this out meticulously with charts and data. But some folks don't speak statistics fluently (I know, because I live with one of them), so let me see if I can turn this into an analogy.
Let's say that in our state of Curmudgistan, low ability, high poverty students are blue, and high ability, low poverty students are red. If we look at the state as a whole, the ratio is about 1:1 (the figures in this example are all manufactured for effect, not perfect accuracy). So my state, on average, is a lovely purple.
But in the urban center of Grumpville, the ratio is more like 3:1. Grumpville is just a slightly violet shade of blue.
So I start Grumpville Academy. I recruit high income students like crazy, and I take a small number of high needs, high poverty students. My ratio is 1:1. "Look!" I declare. "We're not skimming at all. We have the same numbers as Curmudgistan."
And then when my results come in, I declare, "Look! We are a lovely purple, while the rest of Grumpville is pretty much blue. Clearly we are a far better school that the public school system of Grumpville. Yay, us!"
Two things to note about this:
1) The results are not scaleable to all of Grumpville. Because the ratio in Grumpville is 3:1, and my success is based on a 1:1 ratio. Put another way, if I want to make purple, and I've got 300 gallons of blue and 100 gallons of red, I either have to go to the store and get more red, or I have to throw away 200 gallons of blue.
2) The mix matters. This is a subject that deserves its own attention, but school culture and climate matter. If I take a cup of blue, what happens next to it depends on whether I pour it into a vat or more blue, or into a vat of red. We don't talk nearly enough about students in this context, and instead keep insisting that the school culture can be completely controlled by teachers an administrators who are, in my analogy, the buckets.
Again-- to get a more data-y and smart explanation of all this, go read the original Jazzamn post (and then read the rest of his blog as well).
I'll start by echoing his point that all charters are NOT money-grubbing scams, and that a well-done charter school can be a great addition to a school system.
But some insist on trying other routes to success, some more subtle than others.
The technique that the Jazzman lays out is more subtle than, say, paying yourself rent for the building. But here's how you do it:
1) Open up charter in urban high poverty area.
2) Accept only a small percentage of high poverty students
3) Compare your low/high needs student ration to the state, rather than the local district
4) Compare your results to the local district rather than the state
The Jazzman lays this out meticulously with charts and data. But some folks don't speak statistics fluently (I know, because I live with one of them), so let me see if I can turn this into an analogy.
Let's say that in our state of Curmudgistan, low ability, high poverty students are blue, and high ability, low poverty students are red. If we look at the state as a whole, the ratio is about 1:1 (the figures in this example are all manufactured for effect, not perfect accuracy). So my state, on average, is a lovely purple.
But in the urban center of Grumpville, the ratio is more like 3:1. Grumpville is just a slightly violet shade of blue.
So I start Grumpville Academy. I recruit high income students like crazy, and I take a small number of high needs, high poverty students. My ratio is 1:1. "Look!" I declare. "We're not skimming at all. We have the same numbers as Curmudgistan."
And then when my results come in, I declare, "Look! We are a lovely purple, while the rest of Grumpville is pretty much blue. Clearly we are a far better school that the public school system of Grumpville. Yay, us!"
Two things to note about this:
1) The results are not scaleable to all of Grumpville. Because the ratio in Grumpville is 3:1, and my success is based on a 1:1 ratio. Put another way, if I want to make purple, and I've got 300 gallons of blue and 100 gallons of red, I either have to go to the store and get more red, or I have to throw away 200 gallons of blue.
2) The mix matters. This is a subject that deserves its own attention, but school culture and climate matter. If I take a cup of blue, what happens next to it depends on whether I pour it into a vat or more blue, or into a vat of red. We don't talk nearly enough about students in this context, and instead keep insisting that the school culture can be completely controlled by teachers an administrators who are, in my analogy, the buckets.
Again-- to get a more data-y and smart explanation of all this, go read the original Jazzamn post (and then read the rest of his blog as well).
Thursday, June 19, 2014
TNTP Evaluates NCTQ
It's a rare day when one titan reformsylvania decides to critique another's work, but that's what we have over at the TNTP blog, where Karolyn Belcher suggests that the NCTQ evaluation of teacher programs could use some tweaks.
Mind you, they think that NCTQ is doing God's work, and doing it well. Their ratings will stir up controversy and "it's the right conversation to have on a critical issue." TNTP is also excited " to see NCTQ begin to put alternative programs on equal footing with traditional programs, and welcome the outside scrutiny." And they did okay, ratings-wise ("solid Bs").
So, really, they don't want to complain. But they have some suggestions, some things deserving of tweakery (aka some ways they would look better). Do tell! Let's see the list!
A more focused approach to evaluating teacher support.
NCTQ dinged TNTP for not providing a co-teaching period for their recruits. "That’s fine in principle, but there is little or no evidence connecting it to improved practice or student learning. Other approaches, such as focused coaching (even in virtual environments), have a broader research base."
I left the links in that quote so you could see TNTP's support. The first unfortunately leads to a log-in page. Next we get a study of literacy coaches in a Florida middle school, a coaching "experiment run in the NOLA RSD, and a study of coaching in choice schools. You can wade through them, or you can take my word for it that they are not exactly a mountain of compelling evidence.
A more nuanced view of content preparation.
TNTP agrees that teachers should know what the hell their talking about in their content area (I'm paraphrasing) but takes umbrage that NCTQ suggests more coursework and tests than the state requires, because the research doesn't support it.And by research, once again, we mean "proof that it raises test scores." Keep that in mind because number three is--
A stronger push for evidence of effectiveness.
We know that NCTQ shares our belief that the best measure of a program’s effectiveness isn’t what programs put into their candidates, but whether the teachers it prepares advance student learning. NCTQ rightfully incorporated value-added data in its assessments of programs where available.
VAM is like the flippin' educational bureaucrat zombie. Kill it over and over again and it just keeps coming back. Take mountains of evidence of VAM's uselessness as a measure of teacher effective, and pile that mountain on top of VAM and it just claws its way out and stumbles onward.
But as bizarre as it is that anyone would think you could go a step further and evaluate the program that created a teacher based on the standardized test score of that teacher's students, it is even more bizarre that TNTP would insist on being judged by it, that they would stand there, in the middle of the street screaming, "Come here, zombie VAM! Come and eat OUR brains!!"
It's like insisting on playing Russian Roulette because you are certain you have a method to beat the game. It is at times like this that I suspect TNTP leadership does not have a brain in its collective head. Maybe they are Wile E. Coyote smart; perhaps they feel that public schools will take more damage than they will with this bogus instrument, or that their superior marketing will withstand it (after all, their titular launcher is a woman who still carries weight in the education world despite never having succeeded at anything in education except making money).
The article wraps up with general glad-handing. Glad to work with NCTQ. Everybody should do it (but bring your shiny evidence-like research). And in the meantime, don't forget that NCTQ is giving pretty much everybody a bad grade.
Mind you, they think that NCTQ is doing God's work, and doing it well. Their ratings will stir up controversy and "it's the right conversation to have on a critical issue." TNTP is also excited " to see NCTQ begin to put alternative programs on equal footing with traditional programs, and welcome the outside scrutiny." And they did okay, ratings-wise ("solid Bs").
So, really, they don't want to complain. But they have some suggestions, some things deserving of tweakery (aka some ways they would look better). Do tell! Let's see the list!
A more focused approach to evaluating teacher support.
NCTQ dinged TNTP for not providing a co-teaching period for their recruits. "That’s fine in principle, but there is little or no evidence connecting it to improved practice or student learning. Other approaches, such as focused coaching (even in virtual environments), have a broader research base."
I left the links in that quote so you could see TNTP's support. The first unfortunately leads to a log-in page. Next we get a study of literacy coaches in a Florida middle school, a coaching "experiment run in the NOLA RSD, and a study of coaching in choice schools. You can wade through them, or you can take my word for it that they are not exactly a mountain of compelling evidence.
A more nuanced view of content preparation.
TNTP agrees that teachers should know what the hell their talking about in their content area (I'm paraphrasing) but takes umbrage that NCTQ suggests more coursework and tests than the state requires, because the research doesn't support it.And by research, once again, we mean "proof that it raises test scores." Keep that in mind because number three is--
A stronger push for evidence of effectiveness.
We know that NCTQ shares our belief that the best measure of a program’s effectiveness isn’t what programs put into their candidates, but whether the teachers it prepares advance student learning. NCTQ rightfully incorporated value-added data in its assessments of programs where available.
VAM is like the flippin' educational bureaucrat zombie. Kill it over and over again and it just keeps coming back. Take mountains of evidence of VAM's uselessness as a measure of teacher effective, and pile that mountain on top of VAM and it just claws its way out and stumbles onward.
But as bizarre as it is that anyone would think you could go a step further and evaluate the program that created a teacher based on the standardized test score of that teacher's students, it is even more bizarre that TNTP would insist on being judged by it, that they would stand there, in the middle of the street screaming, "Come here, zombie VAM! Come and eat OUR brains!!"
It's like insisting on playing Russian Roulette because you are certain you have a method to beat the game. It is at times like this that I suspect TNTP leadership does not have a brain in its collective head. Maybe they are Wile E. Coyote smart; perhaps they feel that public schools will take more damage than they will with this bogus instrument, or that their superior marketing will withstand it (after all, their titular launcher is a woman who still carries weight in the education world despite never having succeeded at anything in education except making money).
The article wraps up with general glad-handing. Glad to work with NCTQ. Everybody should do it (but bring your shiny evidence-like research). And in the meantime, don't forget that NCTQ is giving pretty much everybody a bad grade.
Lessons from EdCamp
Tom Murray, from the Alliance for Excellence in Education in DC, shared a "What I Learned at EdCamp" post over at the USDOE blog, and it's a striking study in how disconnected the work of the USDOE is from its words.
Murray lists five takeaways from the DOE's convocation of teachers from all over the place.
Relationships and Culture Matter at All Levels
Personally, how will I foster relationships with those at the ED, those in Congress and the Senate, State Departments of Ed, so that we can collectively work to provide students with the access they need and staff with the professional learning needed to effectively shift instructional pedagogy?
It's a good question. A better question is how anybody in the field such as, say, classroom teachers in far-off places like Pennsylvania can ever get their voices heard if they don't have the resources or opportunities to go make relationships with people in power. Why is it necessary to know somebody personally in order to get anything done? And if it is necessary, then why isn't the DOE trying to figure out a bridge to the thousands of school systems filled with millions of teachers? You cannot oversee ALL the people you're responsible for if you only respond to the ones you meet personally.
I realize this is a larger-than-education problem, but it has always bugged me-- this endless parade of "I was always against mugwumpery until I met a mugwump, and now I understand." Human beings are supposed to be smarter, more empathetic than that. We're supposed to have the mental and empathic capacity to comprehend things beyond just what's directly in front of our faces.
How can anybody approach any area of federal governance with an attitude of, "I know I have millions of constituents with many concerns, but I'm only going to focus on things I know about personally."
Connected Educators Are My Educational Family
Okay, I get that. I certainly have experienced that as I've wormed my way into the bloggosphere. But again-- is the implication that educators I'm not personally connected to are just strangers on the street. Can't we do better? I expect the USDOE to do better.
It's Not the Technology; It's the Learning
Murray is a tech guy, and I think tech guys have to learn this all over again about every six weeks. That's okay, but wouldn't it be great if the reformster world could grab ahold of it instead of insisting that standardized tests on computers are a good idea, even for eight year olds, because, you know, computers!
Personalized PD Is Essential
Yes, great idea. And the exact opposite of what is being fostered by USDOE. We have spent a lot of time and money establishing a one-size-fits-all world, a world where the scripting of teacher lessons actually looks like a good idea to some people.
Simply put, the traditional, top-down, one-size fits all approach to PD is outdated and a waste of time. It must be replaced with a model that is meaningful, engaging and relevant, where teacher voice is an important part of the process and owership is shared by all.
And I agree. And absolutely nothing about the high stakes test-driven standardized status quo in education supports this. Instead, personalization has taken on a new meaning for teachers and students-- it now means that we are going to figure out how you can personally adapt yourself to fit in the same identical path as everyone else.
We Have a Leadership Crisis
Murray identifies one other recurring need that came up at camp: "the need for high-octane educational leaders who create environments that promote risk-taking and innovation in their schools, who focus on the whole child not just state test scores, and who are models for the staff and students they serve."
Again, I have to say that this seems like nice talk, but every single thing going on in the world of education reforminess works against this.
It used to be risk-taking could result in a principal taking nasty phone calls, or dealing with an angry staff, or having to admit he'd failed. Nowadays, risk takers are risking their entire careers. At the same time, we've lowered the bar considerably on what constitutes a risk. In some districts, a teacher is a risk-taker if he does the Tuesday lesson on Monday or Wednesday, and if he does it more than once, he'll get a special risk-taking letter of reprimand in his file.
Meanwhile, in some areas, a child's test score will decide whether the child flunks or not. So again-- nice thought that the child is not just a test score, a thought which I expect is shared by every single solitary teacher and administrator in the country.
It's a puzzler. If there is no teacher or principal anywhere saying, "The only thing that matters about our students is their test scores," then why are so many acting as if they believe that? Who, oh who, convinced them, cajoled them, threatened them, held their careers hostage unless they acted as if they believed nothing matters more than test scores?
EdCamp is supposed to be more than just plain old PD. You know Plain Old PD-- it's when you go learn some stuff that would be really cool in some alternate universe where you had the time, resources, environment and support to make it happen. But you don't live in that alternate universe, so it all goes away.
Murray has a list of pledges that correspond to his five takeaways, and while I wish him well, it sure looks like a typical PD list-- plenty of cool ideas from an alternate universe and little in place to make them real in this universe.
Murray lists five takeaways from the DOE's convocation of teachers from all over the place.
Relationships and Culture Matter at All Levels
Personally, how will I foster relationships with those at the ED, those in Congress and the Senate, State Departments of Ed, so that we can collectively work to provide students with the access they need and staff with the professional learning needed to effectively shift instructional pedagogy?
It's a good question. A better question is how anybody in the field such as, say, classroom teachers in far-off places like Pennsylvania can ever get their voices heard if they don't have the resources or opportunities to go make relationships with people in power. Why is it necessary to know somebody personally in order to get anything done? And if it is necessary, then why isn't the DOE trying to figure out a bridge to the thousands of school systems filled with millions of teachers? You cannot oversee ALL the people you're responsible for if you only respond to the ones you meet personally.
I realize this is a larger-than-education problem, but it has always bugged me-- this endless parade of "I was always against mugwumpery until I met a mugwump, and now I understand." Human beings are supposed to be smarter, more empathetic than that. We're supposed to have the mental and empathic capacity to comprehend things beyond just what's directly in front of our faces.
How can anybody approach any area of federal governance with an attitude of, "I know I have millions of constituents with many concerns, but I'm only going to focus on things I know about personally."
Connected Educators Are My Educational Family
Okay, I get that. I certainly have experienced that as I've wormed my way into the bloggosphere. But again-- is the implication that educators I'm not personally connected to are just strangers on the street. Can't we do better? I expect the USDOE to do better.
It's Not the Technology; It's the Learning
Murray is a tech guy, and I think tech guys have to learn this all over again about every six weeks. That's okay, but wouldn't it be great if the reformster world could grab ahold of it instead of insisting that standardized tests on computers are a good idea, even for eight year olds, because, you know, computers!
Personalized PD Is Essential
Yes, great idea. And the exact opposite of what is being fostered by USDOE. We have spent a lot of time and money establishing a one-size-fits-all world, a world where the scripting of teacher lessons actually looks like a good idea to some people.
Simply put, the traditional, top-down, one-size fits all approach to PD is outdated and a waste of time. It must be replaced with a model that is meaningful, engaging and relevant, where teacher voice is an important part of the process and owership is shared by all.
And I agree. And absolutely nothing about the high stakes test-driven standardized status quo in education supports this. Instead, personalization has taken on a new meaning for teachers and students-- it now means that we are going to figure out how you can personally adapt yourself to fit in the same identical path as everyone else.
We Have a Leadership Crisis
Murray identifies one other recurring need that came up at camp: "the need for high-octane educational leaders who create environments that promote risk-taking and innovation in their schools, who focus on the whole child not just state test scores, and who are models for the staff and students they serve."
Again, I have to say that this seems like nice talk, but every single thing going on in the world of education reforminess works against this.
It used to be risk-taking could result in a principal taking nasty phone calls, or dealing with an angry staff, or having to admit he'd failed. Nowadays, risk takers are risking their entire careers. At the same time, we've lowered the bar considerably on what constitutes a risk. In some districts, a teacher is a risk-taker if he does the Tuesday lesson on Monday or Wednesday, and if he does it more than once, he'll get a special risk-taking letter of reprimand in his file.
Meanwhile, in some areas, a child's test score will decide whether the child flunks or not. So again-- nice thought that the child is not just a test score, a thought which I expect is shared by every single solitary teacher and administrator in the country.
It's a puzzler. If there is no teacher or principal anywhere saying, "The only thing that matters about our students is their test scores," then why are so many acting as if they believe that? Who, oh who, convinced them, cajoled them, threatened them, held their careers hostage unless they acted as if they believed nothing matters more than test scores?
EdCamp is supposed to be more than just plain old PD. You know Plain Old PD-- it's when you go learn some stuff that would be really cool in some alternate universe where you had the time, resources, environment and support to make it happen. But you don't live in that alternate universe, so it all goes away.
Murray has a list of pledges that correspond to his five takeaways, and while I wish him well, it sure looks like a typical PD list-- plenty of cool ideas from an alternate universe and little in place to make them real in this universe.
Another CCSS Writer Awakens
Psychology Today ran a great interview in January, talking to Dr. Louisa Moats, a psychologist, teacher, and researcher who was a contributing writer for the Common Core Standards, that is now making the rounds. The interview is worth reading in its entirety, but let me entice you with some highlights. And let me start by noting that David Coleman recruited Dr. Moats to work on the project, so this is someone that Coleman thought was knowledgeable enough to be a CCSS consultant.
Dr. Moats worked primarily on the K-5 ELA standards. Dr. Moats went into the project with a fair amount of optimism and good intentions.
I saw the confusing inconsistencies among states’ standards, the lowering of standards overall, and the poor results for our high school kids in international comparisons. I also believed that the solid consensus in reading intervention research could be reflected in standards and that we could use the CCSS to promote better instruction for kids at risk.
There were two shocks in store for the doctor.
One was the onslaught of monied interests into the field of testing production. "I never imagined when we were drafting standards in 2010 that major financial support would be funneled immediately into the development of standards-related tests. How naïve I was."
The other was the application of the standards. Moats seems to have thought that she was writing "aspirational" goals for the top students. "Realistically, at least half, if not the majority, of students are not going to meet those standards as written." For those students who can not meet these standards, many other paths to education and career are needed. Imagine-- multiple paths and not just one size fits all.
If I could take all the money going to the testing companies and reinvest it, I’d focus on the teaching profession – recruitment, pay, work conditions, rigorous and on-going training.
Dr. Moats also advocate for a strong foundation of fundamentals for the lower levels, with the more complex texts saved for the upper grades. This dovetails with what seems to be her greatest criticism-- that CCSS has tossed aside much of what we were and are learning about how students learn to read in favor of approaches that are not actually research based at all. From reading instruction to writing instruction, we are not making use of the research that is out there. Dr. Moats asserts that we should be training teachers in that research and the application of it rather than running teachers through "poorly designed workshops on teaching comprehension of difficult text or getting kids to compose arguments and essays."
Dr. Moats also confirms what hundreds of teachers have sensed are issues with the standards here:
The standards obscure the critical causal relationships among components, chiefly the foundational skills and the higher level skills of comprehension that depend on fluent, accurate reading. Foundations should be first! The categories of the standards obscure the interdependence of decoding, spelling, and knowledge of language.
And here:
The standards treat the foundational language, reading, and writing skills as if they should take minimal time to teach and as if they are relatively easy to teach and to learn. They are not.
What is implied in the interview is that the standards that emerged are the work of amateurs who did not understand or did not use the available research about reading and writing. What is repeatedly sold as research-based is, in fact, research-deprived. And what substance is there is further hampered by the fact that teachers lack the training to implement it-- are, in fact, getting training that makes matters worse. To be clear, I don't know that I'd be doing a happy dance if Dr. Moats got to rewrite the standards as she wishes, but as the CCSS battle rages on, her voice is important to hear.
So yet another CCSS co-creator emerges to say
A) That was not what I signed up for
B) The end product is seriously defective
Dr. Moats worked primarily on the K-5 ELA standards. Dr. Moats went into the project with a fair amount of optimism and good intentions.
I saw the confusing inconsistencies among states’ standards, the lowering of standards overall, and the poor results for our high school kids in international comparisons. I also believed that the solid consensus in reading intervention research could be reflected in standards and that we could use the CCSS to promote better instruction for kids at risk.
There were two shocks in store for the doctor.
One was the onslaught of monied interests into the field of testing production. "I never imagined when we were drafting standards in 2010 that major financial support would be funneled immediately into the development of standards-related tests. How naïve I was."
The other was the application of the standards. Moats seems to have thought that she was writing "aspirational" goals for the top students. "Realistically, at least half, if not the majority, of students are not going to meet those standards as written." For those students who can not meet these standards, many other paths to education and career are needed. Imagine-- multiple paths and not just one size fits all.
If I could take all the money going to the testing companies and reinvest it, I’d focus on the teaching profession – recruitment, pay, work conditions, rigorous and on-going training.
Dr. Moats also advocate for a strong foundation of fundamentals for the lower levels, with the more complex texts saved for the upper grades. This dovetails with what seems to be her greatest criticism-- that CCSS has tossed aside much of what we were and are learning about how students learn to read in favor of approaches that are not actually research based at all. From reading instruction to writing instruction, we are not making use of the research that is out there. Dr. Moats asserts that we should be training teachers in that research and the application of it rather than running teachers through "poorly designed workshops on teaching comprehension of difficult text or getting kids to compose arguments and essays."
Dr. Moats also confirms what hundreds of teachers have sensed are issues with the standards here:
The standards obscure the critical causal relationships among components, chiefly the foundational skills and the higher level skills of comprehension that depend on fluent, accurate reading. Foundations should be first! The categories of the standards obscure the interdependence of decoding, spelling, and knowledge of language.
And here:
The standards treat the foundational language, reading, and writing skills as if they should take minimal time to teach and as if they are relatively easy to teach and to learn. They are not.
What is implied in the interview is that the standards that emerged are the work of amateurs who did not understand or did not use the available research about reading and writing. What is repeatedly sold as research-based is, in fact, research-deprived. And what substance is there is further hampered by the fact that teachers lack the training to implement it-- are, in fact, getting training that makes matters worse. To be clear, I don't know that I'd be doing a happy dance if Dr. Moats got to rewrite the standards as she wishes, but as the CCSS battle rages on, her voice is important to hear.
So yet another CCSS co-creator emerges to say
A) That was not what I signed up for
B) The end product is seriously defective
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
CT's Choice of Evils
Connecticut teacher-voters are facing the Choice Between Evils for the gubernatorial race, and the AFT isn't making things any easier.
ICYMI, Connecticut voters face a choice between current Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy and GOP challenger Tom Foley. This problematic because Malloy is co-president with NY Governor Andrew Cuomo of the So What If I'm a Democrat; Public Schools and Their Stupid Teachers Can Smooch My Tuchus Club. Put another way, if being a Democratic supporter of public education were a crime, it would be impossible to convict Malloy.
As it turns out, Connecticut voters actually have a third choice. Jonathan Pelto, whose blog Wait! What? has long served as an encyclopedic chronicle of Malloy's misbehavior, has mounted a third party challenge. And union leaders would rather you didn't hear about it.
At the AFL-CIO gathering, it qualified as news that Randi Weingarten actually mentioned Pelto's name. Barred from speaking and blown off by CT teacher union leaders, Pelto has not exactly been welcomed as a voice in the political conversation. Said the head of Connecticut's AFL-CIO, "Third party candidates don't win. They spoil."
The spoiler label always strikes me as an admission that the political system is seriously messed up. After all, we're not arguing that a spoiler's platform is too ridiculous to be taken seriously. The spoiler label is a tacit admission that the candidate will be taken seriously, that in fact the spoiler candidate is speaking to real concerns that the "real" candidate is not.
Put another way, labeling someone a spoiler is an admission that your "real" candidate cannot win on his own merit. And if that's your problem, maybe you'd better address it. If Malloy can only win the election by sweeping up the "Well, he's better than voting for my dog" vote, then here's a hot flash for you-- he sucks.
The proper response to a credible threat from a third party "spoiler" candidate is to say, "Damn-- this guys speaks to some concerns that a lot of people apparently share. Maybe we should address those concerns." The proper response is not, "Somebody shut that sumbitch up!"
I get the concerns here. Dems are claiming that Foley would Wisconsinize Connecticut and crush labor laws left and right. But, again, if your candidate can only beat him if you basically force a bunch of people to vote against him, you have problems, serious problems, huge problems that cannot be papered over with a highly manufactured election win.
The AFL-CIO did not even wring any concessions from Malloy in exchange for their fealty. At least Working Families in NY got a promise from Cuomo to act as if he's sort of a Democrat, a pledge that he honored for almost a full 24 hours after commandeering their endorsement.
Sooner or later this kind of political charade needs to end. Believe it or not, I am not actually a hard-core die-hard union guy, but doggone it-- if unions want to address their ever-dwindling membership and support, perhaps it might help to present themselves as something other than an extension of the political establishment, with no apparent function except to dole out endorsements and photo ops in exchange for, well, a sort of promise from politicians to consider punching union workers in the face instead of in the throat (and the chance for union leaders to be Really Important People).
Look, I'm not in Connecticut. I don't know the territory. Maybe votes for Pelto will make Foley governor and bring on the apocalypse. But I've read more than enough to know that when it comes to education, Malloy sucks, sucks like an industrial shop-vac powered by a hundred black holes. Pro-VAM, pro-CCSS, pro-charters, anti-teacher, anti-tenure, pro-testing-- is there anything about public education that he's not dead wrong about?
I just dream of the day when a candidate waves his Democratic Party badge at teachers, followed by a song and dance entitled "Watch Out For the Scary Republican Over There- Booga Booga" and teachers reply, "No, sorry. That's not enough."
So, good luck to Jonathan Pelto. May he be a huge pain in the ass throughout this campaign.
ICYMI, Connecticut voters face a choice between current Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy and GOP challenger Tom Foley. This problematic because Malloy is co-president with NY Governor Andrew Cuomo of the So What If I'm a Democrat; Public Schools and Their Stupid Teachers Can Smooch My Tuchus Club. Put another way, if being a Democratic supporter of public education were a crime, it would be impossible to convict Malloy.
As it turns out, Connecticut voters actually have a third choice. Jonathan Pelto, whose blog Wait! What? has long served as an encyclopedic chronicle of Malloy's misbehavior, has mounted a third party challenge. And union leaders would rather you didn't hear about it.
At the AFL-CIO gathering, it qualified as news that Randi Weingarten actually mentioned Pelto's name. Barred from speaking and blown off by CT teacher union leaders, Pelto has not exactly been welcomed as a voice in the political conversation. Said the head of Connecticut's AFL-CIO, "Third party candidates don't win. They spoil."
The spoiler label always strikes me as an admission that the political system is seriously messed up. After all, we're not arguing that a spoiler's platform is too ridiculous to be taken seriously. The spoiler label is a tacit admission that the candidate will be taken seriously, that in fact the spoiler candidate is speaking to real concerns that the "real" candidate is not.
Put another way, labeling someone a spoiler is an admission that your "real" candidate cannot win on his own merit. And if that's your problem, maybe you'd better address it. If Malloy can only win the election by sweeping up the "Well, he's better than voting for my dog" vote, then here's a hot flash for you-- he sucks.
The proper response to a credible threat from a third party "spoiler" candidate is to say, "Damn-- this guys speaks to some concerns that a lot of people apparently share. Maybe we should address those concerns." The proper response is not, "Somebody shut that sumbitch up!"
I get the concerns here. Dems are claiming that Foley would Wisconsinize Connecticut and crush labor laws left and right. But, again, if your candidate can only beat him if you basically force a bunch of people to vote against him, you have problems, serious problems, huge problems that cannot be papered over with a highly manufactured election win.
The AFL-CIO did not even wring any concessions from Malloy in exchange for their fealty. At least Working Families in NY got a promise from Cuomo to act as if he's sort of a Democrat, a pledge that he honored for almost a full 24 hours after commandeering their endorsement.
Sooner or later this kind of political charade needs to end. Believe it or not, I am not actually a hard-core die-hard union guy, but doggone it-- if unions want to address their ever-dwindling membership and support, perhaps it might help to present themselves as something other than an extension of the political establishment, with no apparent function except to dole out endorsements and photo ops in exchange for, well, a sort of promise from politicians to consider punching union workers in the face instead of in the throat (and the chance for union leaders to be Really Important People).
Look, I'm not in Connecticut. I don't know the territory. Maybe votes for Pelto will make Foley governor and bring on the apocalypse. But I've read more than enough to know that when it comes to education, Malloy sucks, sucks like an industrial shop-vac powered by a hundred black holes. Pro-VAM, pro-CCSS, pro-charters, anti-teacher, anti-tenure, pro-testing-- is there anything about public education that he's not dead wrong about?
I just dream of the day when a candidate waves his Democratic Party badge at teachers, followed by a song and dance entitled "Watch Out For the Scary Republican Over There- Booga Booga" and teachers reply, "No, sorry. That's not enough."
So, good luck to Jonathan Pelto. May he be a huge pain in the ass throughout this campaign.
Inauthentic Reading Assessment
Does it seem as if test writers come up with the most obscure, boring, reading-resistant passages possible for standardized test? It's not just you. It's a deliberate choice, and not necessarily an ill-intended one, but the result is a completely unreal inauthentic reading experience that real humans don't have anywhere except on standardized tests.
One goal in test design is to steer the ship of assessment past the shoals of "prior knowledge." After all, if I'm Pittsburgh and my test includes a reading passage about the Steelers with questions about Troy Polamalu's career stats, I won't know if the students answered correctly because they read the passage or because they already know the stats.
So I am looking for a passage that my test-takers are unlikely to have prior knowledge about. In fact, since I'm trying to create a standardized test on the national scale, my third grade testing goal is to find selections for which no eight year old anywhere in America would have prior knowledge.
That's how eight year olds end up taking tests on selections explaining the village politics of ancient Turkey.
But let's look at just how inauthentic that is.
In school, we always present new material by connecting it to old material. We do this because A) we are trained educators and B) we are not idiots. The most fundamental way of absorbing new material is to connect it to what we already know. As teachers, we use that to our advantage, and we model it for our students. They aren't just learning to read-- they're learning how to learn. Part of the whole business of becoming an educated person is acquiring enough background that no matter what New Stuff we encounter, we have the foundation of knowledge to connect the New Stuff to Stuff We Already Know.
We also model attack skills, the skills needed to make sense of things that do not, initially, make sense. Ask somebody. And in the 21st century-- get out your device and look it up.
In real life, we read things we are interested in, which means we already have some prior knowledge about the content before we even start. And our real-world presentation of reading materials always involves some reader prep, from the blurbs on the back cover of a book to the pull-quotes and sub-headlines in non-fiction articles.
I just looked at a wired article about photochrons with a blurb calling them the instagrams of the 1800s, which is not exactly accurate, but it immediately communicates where we're going for everyone who doesn't already know about photochrons (aka "pretty much everyone"). That connecting idea would be a complete no-no in standardized test land, yet in the real world, it's exactly what a good editor does.
Where in real life do we ever pick up something that has no connection to anything we already know, and then read it without the ability to do simple look-it-up research to make sense of the hard parts?
Nowhere. The type of reading we demand students do on reading tests is a type of reading that isn't done anywhere except on reading tests. Well, and of course now, also, in all the classrooms that are trying to get students ready for these inauthentic reading tests. The perversion of close reading that insists on teaching students short excerpts with no scaffolding or preparation has nothing to do with teaching readers and everything to do with test prep.
It has been said many many times, but it's important enough that somebody should be saying it, again, every week. Reading instruction is a casualty of testing, twisted into test prep that does not teach our students how real readers read in the real world. It is not aimed at preparing lifetime readers, but at preparing test takers.
One goal in test design is to steer the ship of assessment past the shoals of "prior knowledge." After all, if I'm Pittsburgh and my test includes a reading passage about the Steelers with questions about Troy Polamalu's career stats, I won't know if the students answered correctly because they read the passage or because they already know the stats.
So I am looking for a passage that my test-takers are unlikely to have prior knowledge about. In fact, since I'm trying to create a standardized test on the national scale, my third grade testing goal is to find selections for which no eight year old anywhere in America would have prior knowledge.
That's how eight year olds end up taking tests on selections explaining the village politics of ancient Turkey.
But let's look at just how inauthentic that is.
In school, we always present new material by connecting it to old material. We do this because A) we are trained educators and B) we are not idiots. The most fundamental way of absorbing new material is to connect it to what we already know. As teachers, we use that to our advantage, and we model it for our students. They aren't just learning to read-- they're learning how to learn. Part of the whole business of becoming an educated person is acquiring enough background that no matter what New Stuff we encounter, we have the foundation of knowledge to connect the New Stuff to Stuff We Already Know.
We also model attack skills, the skills needed to make sense of things that do not, initially, make sense. Ask somebody. And in the 21st century-- get out your device and look it up.
In real life, we read things we are interested in, which means we already have some prior knowledge about the content before we even start. And our real-world presentation of reading materials always involves some reader prep, from the blurbs on the back cover of a book to the pull-quotes and sub-headlines in non-fiction articles.
I just looked at a wired article about photochrons with a blurb calling them the instagrams of the 1800s, which is not exactly accurate, but it immediately communicates where we're going for everyone who doesn't already know about photochrons (aka "pretty much everyone"). That connecting idea would be a complete no-no in standardized test land, yet in the real world, it's exactly what a good editor does.
Where in real life do we ever pick up something that has no connection to anything we already know, and then read it without the ability to do simple look-it-up research to make sense of the hard parts?
Nowhere. The type of reading we demand students do on reading tests is a type of reading that isn't done anywhere except on reading tests. Well, and of course now, also, in all the classrooms that are trying to get students ready for these inauthentic reading tests. The perversion of close reading that insists on teaching students short excerpts with no scaffolding or preparation has nothing to do with teaching readers and everything to do with test prep.
It has been said many many times, but it's important enough that somebody should be saying it, again, every week. Reading instruction is a casualty of testing, twisted into test prep that does not teach our students how real readers read in the real world. It is not aimed at preparing lifetime readers, but at preparing test takers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)