Starr Sackstein is over at Education Week trying to make a case for the Core once again. And I'm going to disagree with her, once again.
Sackstein has apparently evolved. The last time I responded to her, she was espousing the old "teach to the standards and the tests will take care of themselves" line. She has now moved on to "Well, yes, the tests are not good, but the Core is still delightful." So, she's moved a bit, but she's still wrong.
Arguing against testing but for the Core always produces arguments with sudden jumps of logic (because that's the only way you can produce such an argument). Sackstein puts hers right in plain sight.
Granted, no one likes to change curriculum maps that have taken them
forever to generate, but when one looks closely at what the Common Core
is saying, it's not really bad... not bad at all.
As a matter of fact, most of us do it already and advocate for it. [her emphasis]
Which brings me back to my same old question. If all the Core is really asking us to do is stuff that all fine teachers are already doing, why do we need it. Why should we change curriculum maps and buy new materials and generally spend a buttload of the taxpayers' money if we already have sound educational practices in place? Either we are wasting a whole lot of taxpayer money that could be spent elsewhere, or we aren't really already doing what the Core says we're supposed to. Pick A or B-- I cannot think of any other options.
To pivot to the next part of her argument, Sackstein asks a rhetorical question:
If each of us is trying to prepare students for life, why not have a
common set of standards nationally that help to define what those
standards are?
First, the question needs a rewrite, because when we discuss CCSS, we're not talking about anything that is trying to "help us define" the standards. So here's the question Sackstein means to ask:
If each of us is trying to prepare students for life, why not have a common set of standards nationally mandated so that all schools and teachers must follow them?
Sackstein's version of the question sidesteps one of the central issues of the Core, which is that they are mandated, top-down standards, imposed from above. Sackstein either doesn't know or chooses to gloss over that concern. For instance, earlier in the piece, she says, in defense of the infamous 70/30 split, "They [the standards] put the emphasis on non-fiction texts, presumably to prepare students for career or college readiness."
Presumably? Who exactly is doing the presuming? And why do we have to presume? Isn't there some research to back up that presumption? (spoiler alert: no)
See, this is where Sackstein and I part ways. She seems to assume that standards come from some objective, trustworthy Higher Source, as if they were delivered on stone tablets and a burning bush. She has reproduced a paragraph's worth of the Core's own puffery to show how reasonable the standards are. Let me interrupt in red to demonstrate my issues:
"As a natural outgrowth (natural according to whom) of meeting the charge (whose charge is that, and who gave it to the chargees?) to define college and career readiness, the Standards also lay out (the standards did not lay out a thing-- some guys in a committee did that) a vision (their vision) of what it means to be a literate person in the twenty-first century (based on what-- what special prescient skills did the people on the committee have that lets them see this more clearly than anyone else?). Indeed, the skills and understandings students are expected (by whom?) to demonstrate have wide applicability outside the classroom or workplace. Students who meet the Standards readily undertake the close, attentive reading that is at the heart of understanding and enjoying complex works of literature (who says so?). " (Taken from the Common Core website)
Nothing in that paragraph suggests that a teacher will be stifled by
these new standards. It's about moving education into the 21st century.
It's about making kids viable in this world.
Oddly enough, I find that most of that paragraph suggests that teachers will be stifled, because what I see is a group of faceless individuals hiding behind a mask of Objective Standards in order to impose their ideas about what an educated American citizen should look like. I don't see a call for dialogue or an attempt to sway my professional judgment. Instead I see a requirement that I not only ignore the man behind the curtain, but pretend there is no man and no curtain, just the great and powerful Wizard of CCSS.
Like the Constitution, it's all about interpretation. Here are the
standards, how we define and implement them in our classes is on each of
us.
Except that it isn't. And it was never going to be, and to fulfill the promise of the Core, it can't be.
The whole point of having national-level standards is to get everyone the same page, to make sure that education is one-size-fits-all across the country. And that means we cannot have people deciding on their own how to define and implement the standards. Check out the unusually candid Rob Saxton, Oregon Deputy Superintendent, explaining that he will not tolerate "independent contractors."
And he has a point. If each teacher is going to come up with her own definition of the standards, why do we need the standards?
No, the Core promised that we would all be on the same page. It promised that one textbook would be marketable in every state in the union. And it promised to hold us all accountable for doing What We're Supposed To Do (as determined by the men behind the curtain). And that means tests-- big fat standardized tests, all across the country.
To reiterate, the standards are NOT the tests, even if the testing
companies have adopted and abused them. We can't let testing companies
control how we run our classrooms or how we interpret the standards.
Sackstein is sort of correct-- the standards are not the tests so much as the tests are, in fact, the standards. Particularly in those states where the tests will determine school closings, teacher job security, and teacher pay, the testing companies are in fact telling us exactly how we are supposed to run our classrooms and interpret the standards.
Without testing, the Core Standards are nothing but a list full of mild suggestions, pointless, unnecessary (and as Sackstein says in her piece-- twice-- things we are already doing, anyway). The people who created the CCSS had no intention of letting them languish as mild suggestions that teachers might interpret (or ignore) as they wished. A national-scale accountability measure-- a standardized test-- has to be part of the CCSS program, or the Core will just be a waste of everybody's time. High stakes testing are like a law threatening imprisonment for anyone who fails to describe the Emperor's new clothes correctly.
It should not surprise us that the Core and testing go hand in hand. Not when so many people tied to the testing industry are among the men behind the curtain.
Monday, August 18, 2014
Sanders's Charter School Not Ready for Prime Time
The problem of athletic academies that push sports and ignore academics is not a new one.
One recent growth industry has been the post-grad prep school, schools set up so that athletes who failed to make the necessary scores to qualify for NCAA play can take another year to make their numbers while still maintaining their sports edge. That tightening in standards grows out of repeated "discovery" by NCAA schools of athletes who can barely read. But private sports academies that gave students full days of practice with scant language or math studies were around long before the current growth in the charter school biz.
There has been an allure for decades in the prospect of finding fame and fortune on the court or the field. Add a famous name to the mix, and you have marketing gold for a rising charter enterprise.
Prime Prep Academy was just such an enterprise, launched to cash in on the charter movement and the star power of Hall of Fame cornerback Deion Sanders. In the New York Times, reporter Michael Powell lays out the crashing and burning of that Texas enterprise. You should read the story-- it's a great piece of reporting.
The goal of a powerhouse sports giant that would rank nationally-- that they achieved. Academics, not so much. Instead, athletes receive the grades they need to stay eligible, and the staff and faculty who stay work in an atmosphere-- well, the former executive director is quoted in the article "I would say there was not a culture of safety at that school.”
The lesson here is twofold. One lesson we already know-- turning the charter school business into a handy way to get rich without having to actually prove that you know what you're doing is not healthy for schools. And really-- there's nothing else like it going on in any other sector. No state has said, "Sure, pretty much anybody can set up a law practice or a hospital." In state after state (I'm looking at you, Ohio) we are seeing charter authorizers who are less vigilant than my dog (who would greet a burglar with invitations to play with his chew toys and share slobber). "Hey, this guy is famous" is not much of a charter school plan. And yet as the article makes clear, that was the plan.
The second lesson is for free market school choice fans. One of the articles of faith in the choice crowd is the notion that the market, once freed from its government-forged chains, would rise up and demand educational excellence. What we find again and again is that a fair-sized portion of the market rises up and demands things like a school where students can play sports all day and don't have to worry about ever being challenged in academic classes. And the we get scholastic train wrecks like the Prime Prep Academy.
One recent growth industry has been the post-grad prep school, schools set up so that athletes who failed to make the necessary scores to qualify for NCAA play can take another year to make their numbers while still maintaining their sports edge. That tightening in standards grows out of repeated "discovery" by NCAA schools of athletes who can barely read. But private sports academies that gave students full days of practice with scant language or math studies were around long before the current growth in the charter school biz.
There has been an allure for decades in the prospect of finding fame and fortune on the court or the field. Add a famous name to the mix, and you have marketing gold for a rising charter enterprise.
Prime Prep Academy was just such an enterprise, launched to cash in on the charter movement and the star power of Hall of Fame cornerback Deion Sanders. In the New York Times, reporter Michael Powell lays out the crashing and burning of that Texas enterprise. You should read the story-- it's a great piece of reporting.
The goal of a powerhouse sports giant that would rank nationally-- that they achieved. Academics, not so much. Instead, athletes receive the grades they need to stay eligible, and the staff and faculty who stay work in an atmosphere-- well, the former executive director is quoted in the article "I would say there was not a culture of safety at that school.”
The lesson here is twofold. One lesson we already know-- turning the charter school business into a handy way to get rich without having to actually prove that you know what you're doing is not healthy for schools. And really-- there's nothing else like it going on in any other sector. No state has said, "Sure, pretty much anybody can set up a law practice or a hospital." In state after state (I'm looking at you, Ohio) we are seeing charter authorizers who are less vigilant than my dog (who would greet a burglar with invitations to play with his chew toys and share slobber). "Hey, this guy is famous" is not much of a charter school plan. And yet as the article makes clear, that was the plan.
The second lesson is for free market school choice fans. One of the articles of faith in the choice crowd is the notion that the market, once freed from its government-forged chains, would rise up and demand educational excellence. What we find again and again is that a fair-sized portion of the market rises up and demands things like a school where students can play sports all day and don't have to worry about ever being challenged in academic classes. And the we get scholastic train wrecks like the Prime Prep Academy.
Accountability in the Age of the High Stakes Test
We've marched steadily toward accountability for over a decade now. Teachers must be held accountable. Schools must be held accountable.
And not just in some fuzzy, non-specific manner. This accountability must come with real, hard consequences, say reformsters. Accountability means real consequences, financial consequences. If teachers aren't doing a great job, they should not get paid more. If they do a lousy job, they should be subject to losing their jobs. If schools fail to provide excellence, we should be able to close them, replace them with new schools that will promise to do better.
Because, you know, that's how things work in the business world.
Unless, of course, you're a educational testing corporation.
News has broken of the latest Pearson testing mistake, and this one in particular gives us a picture of corporate accountability in this new age. The mistake itself is the result of an actually-understandable screw-up. A civics and economics test in Virginia included a question for which the answer changed between the writing and the scoring (can VA residents register to vote online). The answer key was incorrect, and many students who should have passed were marked as failing.
Virginia and Pearson were both quick to explain the problem. Pearson is just a contractor, and they just do what they're told.
This is an interesting position to take in our new accountariffic education world of today. I am wondering if it would work for low-rated teachers in NY. Can they say, "Hey, I delivered the engageNY lessons exactly as they are laid out on the website. I followed the instructions to the letter-- if the students scored poorly on The Test, that is not on me."
We're just the contractor. We were just following orders. These do not sound like slogans for the Age of Accountability to me.
This event in VA is of course not just a one-off. Tales of Pearson's screw-ups are legion (here's one list). In one case they offered $600K of "scholarship money," which is an amount I imagine they have rattling around a receptionist's desk in loose change. Sometimes they have to pay a fine, though you generally have to take them to court to get that to work. Mostly life just goes on.
Look, Pearson is a huge corporation. I expect they're going to make mistakes, and I personally accept mistakes as part of the cost of being in the world. But if our new philosophy is that failure is not an option, and that teachers and schools need to be beaten into shape with the big stick of accountability, then let's wave that stick at everybody.
If accountability is not for 800 pound gorilla corporations (or certain select charters, but that's another essay), then what we're living in is not a new Age of Accountability at all, but just the same old Age of Money Talks.
And not just in some fuzzy, non-specific manner. This accountability must come with real, hard consequences, say reformsters. Accountability means real consequences, financial consequences. If teachers aren't doing a great job, they should not get paid more. If they do a lousy job, they should be subject to losing their jobs. If schools fail to provide excellence, we should be able to close them, replace them with new schools that will promise to do better.
Because, you know, that's how things work in the business world.
Unless, of course, you're a educational testing corporation.
News has broken of the latest Pearson testing mistake, and this one in particular gives us a picture of corporate accountability in this new age. The mistake itself is the result of an actually-understandable screw-up. A civics and economics test in Virginia included a question for which the answer changed between the writing and the scoring (can VA residents register to vote online). The answer key was incorrect, and many students who should have passed were marked as failing.
Virginia and Pearson were both quick to explain the problem. Pearson is just a contractor, and they just do what they're told.
This is an interesting position to take in our new accountariffic education world of today. I am wondering if it would work for low-rated teachers in NY. Can they say, "Hey, I delivered the engageNY lessons exactly as they are laid out on the website. I followed the instructions to the letter-- if the students scored poorly on The Test, that is not on me."
We're just the contractor. We were just following orders. These do not sound like slogans for the Age of Accountability to me.
This event in VA is of course not just a one-off. Tales of Pearson's screw-ups are legion (here's one list). In one case they offered $600K of "scholarship money," which is an amount I imagine they have rattling around a receptionist's desk in loose change. Sometimes they have to pay a fine, though you generally have to take them to court to get that to work. Mostly life just goes on.
Look, Pearson is a huge corporation. I expect they're going to make mistakes, and I personally accept mistakes as part of the cost of being in the world. But if our new philosophy is that failure is not an option, and that teachers and schools need to be beaten into shape with the big stick of accountability, then let's wave that stick at everybody.
If accountability is not for 800 pound gorilla corporations (or certain select charters, but that's another essay), then what we're living in is not a new Age of Accountability at all, but just the same old Age of Money Talks.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
The Opposite of Excellence
It's not really news, and it has certainly been commented on a million times, but I don't think we can be reminded too many times. We've heard it, but it's a slippery well-greased pig of a fact, a detail so unbelievably stupid that it literally numbs the mind and slips away like a half-remembered dream. Unconsciously, our brain's filter says, "Well, that can't be right," and we go back to arguing about bigger picture details.
But at the root of everything-- the attempts to measure teacher effectiveness, the programs to regulate student advancement between grades, the declarations of college readiness, the shutting down of public schools because they aren't good enough-- is a simple definition.
Excellence is high scores on standardized tests of reading and math.
That's it. That is how the current corporation-serving high-stakes test-driven reformster status quo defines excellence for every single child in America (well, almost every child-- as always, children of the rich are exempt).
Think about that. Think. About. That.
If you are a teacher, think about every student you've ever taught that you would have called excellent. The outstanding musician who went on to a creative career entertaining and uplifting thousands. The gifted welder who was in such demand that he had his pick of cities to travel to. The student with such exceptional people skills you knew she would be an awesome doctor. The student who could jump higher and run faster than anybody, or the student who competed athletically on the state level. The student who was a genius at coding.
None of them can be called excellent-- unless they also score well on a standardized math and reading test.
If you are a person living in this world on this planet, think of everybody you know who you would call excellent. The single parent who manages to raise several healthy, happy, capable children while working hard to provide them with a stable life. The married parents who make an awesome team while creating a home for their children. The community volunteer whose donation of hours and time and sweat makes your corner of the world a better place. The local politicians or business leaders who set aside their own lives to work at making everybody's lives better. The doctor. The lawyer. The garage mechanic. The chef. The artist. The ambulance driver. The plumber. Hell, even the teacher.
A vast tapestry of people bringing varied, rich, awesome talents and accomplishments to make the world a better place to be. A great gallumphing mass of individuals who let us understand what it means to be fully human, to fully realize what we can best do with the precious moments given to us. to show the myriad ways in which we grasp our lives and create bright beautiful displays of who we are, what we are, what we can be, what we can settle on for our own purpose, even as we help other people realize their own unique vision for their own unique future.
And the best we can come up with for measuring everything great and excellent in human beings is some scores on a standardized reading and math test (and not even good tests, at that).
Reformsters like to talk about raising the bar and really creating high standards for our young people, because, you know, young people, you may have all sorts of dreams and aspirations and talents and hopes and strengths that you want to realize and express but, really, you know-- what you need to be thinking about is your standardized test scores.
Raising the bar, my ass.
What CCSS and its attendant clamoring kudzu of reforms really offers is a tiny, cramped vision of humanity. We should be taking our young people to the edge of the Grand Canyon and saying, "Your life is out there somewhere. Let's go explore." Instead, reformers hold out a suitcase and say, "Okay, get in here. Just curl up and make yourself as small as possible."
Human beings are huge. We contain multitudes. CCSS and its various slices of baloney are devoted to making students small, to measuring them with the tiniest of rulers.
Remember. When they talk about highly effective teachers and excellent schools and proficient students, all they are talking about is the scores on a standardized math and reading test. That's it. It would be a joke if it weren't twisting American public education out of shape. Because if life really is a multiple choice test, it's one with a gazillion answers, and every one of them could be correct. But reformsters want us to bubble in just one. And that is the opposite of excellence.
But at the root of everything-- the attempts to measure teacher effectiveness, the programs to regulate student advancement between grades, the declarations of college readiness, the shutting down of public schools because they aren't good enough-- is a simple definition.
Excellence is high scores on standardized tests of reading and math.
That's it. That is how the current corporation-serving high-stakes test-driven reformster status quo defines excellence for every single child in America (well, almost every child-- as always, children of the rich are exempt).
Think about that. Think. About. That.
If you are a teacher, think about every student you've ever taught that you would have called excellent. The outstanding musician who went on to a creative career entertaining and uplifting thousands. The gifted welder who was in such demand that he had his pick of cities to travel to. The student with such exceptional people skills you knew she would be an awesome doctor. The student who could jump higher and run faster than anybody, or the student who competed athletically on the state level. The student who was a genius at coding.
None of them can be called excellent-- unless they also score well on a standardized math and reading test.
If you are a person living in this world on this planet, think of everybody you know who you would call excellent. The single parent who manages to raise several healthy, happy, capable children while working hard to provide them with a stable life. The married parents who make an awesome team while creating a home for their children. The community volunteer whose donation of hours and time and sweat makes your corner of the world a better place. The local politicians or business leaders who set aside their own lives to work at making everybody's lives better. The doctor. The lawyer. The garage mechanic. The chef. The artist. The ambulance driver. The plumber. Hell, even the teacher.
A vast tapestry of people bringing varied, rich, awesome talents and accomplishments to make the world a better place to be. A great gallumphing mass of individuals who let us understand what it means to be fully human, to fully realize what we can best do with the precious moments given to us. to show the myriad ways in which we grasp our lives and create bright beautiful displays of who we are, what we are, what we can be, what we can settle on for our own purpose, even as we help other people realize their own unique vision for their own unique future.
And the best we can come up with for measuring everything great and excellent in human beings is some scores on a standardized reading and math test (and not even good tests, at that).
Reformsters like to talk about raising the bar and really creating high standards for our young people, because, you know, young people, you may have all sorts of dreams and aspirations and talents and hopes and strengths that you want to realize and express but, really, you know-- what you need to be thinking about is your standardized test scores.
Raising the bar, my ass.
What CCSS and its attendant clamoring kudzu of reforms really offers is a tiny, cramped vision of humanity. We should be taking our young people to the edge of the Grand Canyon and saying, "Your life is out there somewhere. Let's go explore." Instead, reformers hold out a suitcase and say, "Okay, get in here. Just curl up and make yourself as small as possible."
Human beings are huge. We contain multitudes. CCSS and its various slices of baloney are devoted to making students small, to measuring them with the tiniest of rulers.
Remember. When they talk about highly effective teachers and excellent schools and proficient students, all they are talking about is the scores on a standardized math and reading test. That's it. It would be a joke if it weren't twisting American public education out of shape. Because if life really is a multiple choice test, it's one with a gazillion answers, and every one of them could be correct. But reformsters want us to bubble in just one. And that is the opposite of excellence.
Local vs. Global
One of the advantages that the reformsters have in the ongoing debate is that their POV is one-size-fits-all large scale national by its very nature, while those of us in the resistance are fighting largely local battles. And each one of those is different. It's a single ocean on one side and a million Dutch boys and girls on the other, each with a finger in a different hole in a different part of the dike.
This plays out in many ways. My home state of Pennsylvania is always a study is divisive politics-- on every issue you find Philly-Pittsburgh-Harrisburg on one side and every other place in the state elsewhere. Where we are not urban, we are exceptionally rural. The district covered by my House Representative is huge-- to drive along either the east-west or north-south axis would take a good three hours.
So while I would love to say that the rural teachers of PA totally have the backs of the teachers in Philly, I'm not sure that's true. Because PA's divisions run through everything on the state level, including PSEA. But here in the northwestern corner of the state, we don't know much about what it's like to be in Philly's setting. We're also kind of prickly about how we tend to be ignored. Retailers, media outlets, just plain people from Pittsburgh either ignore us completely or talk about us as if we are a suburb of the Burgh, as if, of course, we want to be part of the city, even though we are a 90 minute drive away.
There are whole different issues between city and country. In rural areas, homelessness is far less of a problem than a lack of transportation. Racial issues look different. Employment issues look different. And education issues look different.
Community works differently. In small towns, every relationship is several relationships. In other words, your boss is also your sister's neighbor and your nephew's godparent and your co-chair on that church committee and the person you play in town band with. Strong-arm tactics that work well in big cities are overkill with far too much collateral damage in a small town, while small town quiet leveraging of relationships would accomplish nothing in a big city.
Rural voices are often shut out of conversations, and rural voices often contribute to the problem by enjoying our quiet isolation a little too much . On top of that we can throw in the mid-size cities like Erie and Altoona, and you get a very broad range of issues in schools overlaid with a difficult struggle for voice, resources and attention. And that's just one state.
And the reformsters, by the very nature of what they're pushing, can come into the state and treat all of those many and varied communities as identical widgets in a machine. "Does your district face unique challenges? Don't care. Everybody drink this snake oil down. It fixes all problems."
Meanwhile, all the different local communities struggle to pull together. We argue over priorities and perspective (this issue that matters hugely to us should matter to everybody). Identifying the concerns that should unite all of us is an ongoing conversation. Meanwhile, the reformsters have no such stumbling block in their paths.
Still, their strength can easily become their weakness. They are not well tooled for dealing with a hundred different little problems in a hundred different places, and they are not well-equipped to put out a hundred little fires. Fordham can only send its response team so many places.
So I don't have a dream that everyone in the resistance will join hands, sing Kum Bay Yah and unite behind one universally accepted vision or set of tactics. Personally, I have always thought part of the beauty of American public education is that is NOT one monolithic vision, but a big messy conglomeration of visions and goals and strengths and weaknesses reflecting people and places and hopes and dreams. I know that there will always be people who want to neaten it all up and get it organized, and God bless them, their inevitable failure is an interesting thing to watch.
Point is, it's natural and normal and a point of strength that we can't all agree on the same exact priorities or methods. It's natural and normal that we all have to fight our own local battles, but it is powerful when we can share what we know, what we understand, what we see. That kind of power is only unleashed when we listen without dismissing people for seeing different things or being in a different place.
This plays out in many ways. My home state of Pennsylvania is always a study is divisive politics-- on every issue you find Philly-Pittsburgh-Harrisburg on one side and every other place in the state elsewhere. Where we are not urban, we are exceptionally rural. The district covered by my House Representative is huge-- to drive along either the east-west or north-south axis would take a good three hours.
So while I would love to say that the rural teachers of PA totally have the backs of the teachers in Philly, I'm not sure that's true. Because PA's divisions run through everything on the state level, including PSEA. But here in the northwestern corner of the state, we don't know much about what it's like to be in Philly's setting. We're also kind of prickly about how we tend to be ignored. Retailers, media outlets, just plain people from Pittsburgh either ignore us completely or talk about us as if we are a suburb of the Burgh, as if, of course, we want to be part of the city, even though we are a 90 minute drive away.
There are whole different issues between city and country. In rural areas, homelessness is far less of a problem than a lack of transportation. Racial issues look different. Employment issues look different. And education issues look different.
Community works differently. In small towns, every relationship is several relationships. In other words, your boss is also your sister's neighbor and your nephew's godparent and your co-chair on that church committee and the person you play in town band with. Strong-arm tactics that work well in big cities are overkill with far too much collateral damage in a small town, while small town quiet leveraging of relationships would accomplish nothing in a big city.
Rural voices are often shut out of conversations, and rural voices often contribute to the problem by enjoying our quiet isolation a little too much . On top of that we can throw in the mid-size cities like Erie and Altoona, and you get a very broad range of issues in schools overlaid with a difficult struggle for voice, resources and attention. And that's just one state.
And the reformsters, by the very nature of what they're pushing, can come into the state and treat all of those many and varied communities as identical widgets in a machine. "Does your district face unique challenges? Don't care. Everybody drink this snake oil down. It fixes all problems."
Meanwhile, all the different local communities struggle to pull together. We argue over priorities and perspective (this issue that matters hugely to us should matter to everybody). Identifying the concerns that should unite all of us is an ongoing conversation. Meanwhile, the reformsters have no such stumbling block in their paths.
Still, their strength can easily become their weakness. They are not well tooled for dealing with a hundred different little problems in a hundred different places, and they are not well-equipped to put out a hundred little fires. Fordham can only send its response team so many places.
So I don't have a dream that everyone in the resistance will join hands, sing Kum Bay Yah and unite behind one universally accepted vision or set of tactics. Personally, I have always thought part of the beauty of American public education is that is NOT one monolithic vision, but a big messy conglomeration of visions and goals and strengths and weaknesses reflecting people and places and hopes and dreams. I know that there will always be people who want to neaten it all up and get it organized, and God bless them, their inevitable failure is an interesting thing to watch.
Point is, it's natural and normal and a point of strength that we can't all agree on the same exact priorities or methods. It's natural and normal that we all have to fight our own local battles, but it is powerful when we can share what we know, what we understand, what we see. That kind of power is only unleashed when we listen without dismissing people for seeing different things or being in a different place.
The Non-fiction vs. Fiction Issue
Since Common Core first shambled onto the education stage, teachers (particularly language teachers) have sounded the alarm about the infamous 70/30 split between fiction and non-fiction. "We'll have to drop studying Shakespeare to make room for reading instructions for IKEA shelving assembly," goes the complaint.
As a high school English teacher, I'm not very concerned about this requirement of the Core. If it's something that troubles you, I have a suggestion for how to deal with it.
Ignore it.
Seriously. First, the 70/30 split is supposed to represent the student's entire program, so you can legitimately count on every other class in the student's schedule to provide the non-fiction content. Second, this split is part of what I call the unenforced content of the Core.
The 70/30 split is like collaboration-- sure, it's in the CCSS, but if you don't do it, then.... what? Someone from the US/Pearson Dept of Ed will stop by the room to look at you sternly? [Edit-- yeah, I know. In some places, teachers have already lost control of their own teaching and are required to stick to the script. That does raise this issue to a whole new level, and I'm sorry if you are stuck in such a place, because that sucks hugely. I was writing this post for the people who are still arguing about the issue, and I jumped to the assumption that where there is an argument, there are still options.]
I mean, if the 70/30 split were coming from a group of educational experts who had done extensive research and determined that there will be real education benefits for students from a 70/30 split, then I would look at it long and hard and think about ways to incorporate it into my practice. But the 70/30 split, like the rest of the ELA standards came from a bunch of civilians-- most particularly one guy who has fewer educational credentials than my last student teacher and no research to back up his personal choices. The 70/30 split recommendation carries no more weight than the guy who stops me in the grocery store to suggest that I need to have my students read more books about hunting, cause he likes hunting. I'm going to go ahead and use my best professional judgment to select readings (both fiction and non) based on what will best serve the educational needs of my students, thanks.
If your administration is really sold on the 70/30 split, just keep asking why. Other than David Coleman put it in the CCSS because he thinks it's a good idea, what sound educational basis can your admins point to as support for the split?
Of course, you'll likely find yourself back at the Ultimate Justification for all educational choices these days-- we need to get ready for The Test.
And that brings us to the real problem with CCSS reading.
I am not nearly as worried about the emphasis on non-fiction as I am in terrible, short, context-free, boring-as-hell excerpt reading, which is what is actually on the test and consequently what is being fobbed off a "close reading" when in fact it is some sort of twisted hybrid-- Close Reading 2.0.
The continued emphasis on short short selections or excerpts, with a special focus on items that students are unlikely to have previous knowledge of (or interest in), presented by teachers who deliberately don't give any sort of background material, as well as an insistence on staying within the four corners of the text-- all of these add up to soul-crushing experiences designed to kill any love of reading.
And that's not even getting the mandate, most damaging at the elementary level, to force students to read grade-level materials, even if those are also frustration-level materials. It doesn't matter to Pat whether it's fiction or non-fiction if it's all Greek.
Again, none of this is designed on a bedrock of research and expertise. Well, reading or teaching expertise. The expertise on display here is test-design expertise, because what we've done with CCSS is define good reading skills as "those reading related skills that can be measured on a standardized test."
This is like declaring that good runners can run a 50 yard dash in six seconds; distance runners are by definition bad runners. Or by decreeing that the only good pets are scaly ones that fit in a showbox.
So don't expect me to get excited about the whole fiction vs. non-fiction thing. I am far more concerned about the need to, say, do away with reading entire books because we need more time to do our daily one-page-plus-multiple-choice-questions drill for reading test prep, or to just generally teach reading in a manner guaranteed to make students hate it.
As a high school English teacher, I'm not very concerned about this requirement of the Core. If it's something that troubles you, I have a suggestion for how to deal with it.
Ignore it.
Seriously. First, the 70/30 split is supposed to represent the student's entire program, so you can legitimately count on every other class in the student's schedule to provide the non-fiction content. Second, this split is part of what I call the unenforced content of the Core.
The 70/30 split is like collaboration-- sure, it's in the CCSS, but if you don't do it, then.... what? Someone from the US/Pearson Dept of Ed will stop by the room to look at you sternly? [Edit-- yeah, I know. In some places, teachers have already lost control of their own teaching and are required to stick to the script. That does raise this issue to a whole new level, and I'm sorry if you are stuck in such a place, because that sucks hugely. I was writing this post for the people who are still arguing about the issue, and I jumped to the assumption that where there is an argument, there are still options.]
I mean, if the 70/30 split were coming from a group of educational experts who had done extensive research and determined that there will be real education benefits for students from a 70/30 split, then I would look at it long and hard and think about ways to incorporate it into my practice. But the 70/30 split, like the rest of the ELA standards came from a bunch of civilians-- most particularly one guy who has fewer educational credentials than my last student teacher and no research to back up his personal choices. The 70/30 split recommendation carries no more weight than the guy who stops me in the grocery store to suggest that I need to have my students read more books about hunting, cause he likes hunting. I'm going to go ahead and use my best professional judgment to select readings (both fiction and non) based on what will best serve the educational needs of my students, thanks.
If your administration is really sold on the 70/30 split, just keep asking why. Other than David Coleman put it in the CCSS because he thinks it's a good idea, what sound educational basis can your admins point to as support for the split?
Of course, you'll likely find yourself back at the Ultimate Justification for all educational choices these days-- we need to get ready for The Test.
And that brings us to the real problem with CCSS reading.
I am not nearly as worried about the emphasis on non-fiction as I am in terrible, short, context-free, boring-as-hell excerpt reading, which is what is actually on the test and consequently what is being fobbed off a "close reading" when in fact it is some sort of twisted hybrid-- Close Reading 2.0.
The continued emphasis on short short selections or excerpts, with a special focus on items that students are unlikely to have previous knowledge of (or interest in), presented by teachers who deliberately don't give any sort of background material, as well as an insistence on staying within the four corners of the text-- all of these add up to soul-crushing experiences designed to kill any love of reading.
And that's not even getting the mandate, most damaging at the elementary level, to force students to read grade-level materials, even if those are also frustration-level materials. It doesn't matter to Pat whether it's fiction or non-fiction if it's all Greek.
Again, none of this is designed on a bedrock of research and expertise. Well, reading or teaching expertise. The expertise on display here is test-design expertise, because what we've done with CCSS is define good reading skills as "those reading related skills that can be measured on a standardized test."
This is like declaring that good runners can run a 50 yard dash in six seconds; distance runners are by definition bad runners. Or by decreeing that the only good pets are scaly ones that fit in a showbox.
So don't expect me to get excited about the whole fiction vs. non-fiction thing. I am far more concerned about the need to, say, do away with reading entire books because we need more time to do our daily one-page-plus-multiple-choice-questions drill for reading test prep, or to just generally teach reading in a manner guaranteed to make students hate it.
Saturday, August 16, 2014
A Curmudgucation Birthday
I made my first post here one year ago today (this is post #485). Several, in fact. Do us both a favor and don't go read them; it was a month or so before I started to figure out what the hell I was doing. Still working on it.
I was fortunate to find some audience fairly quickly. I joined BATs back when there were around 1600 members, and the responses I garnered there were encouraging. I was fortunate to be welcomed into that group. Anthony Cody was the first A-lister to ask to reprint me. Then Diane Ravitch saw something worthwhile in my work and has connected me with a much larger audience. I have been fortunate to have her backing and support. More recently, Bryan Maygers accepted me into the stable of Huffington Post bloggers, which has also let me reach even more folks. Here on the mother ship, this post has pulled about 5,300 views. On the HuffPo, it's been translated into three other languages and pulled about 450,000 likes. That would be my personal best. Soon, I'll be starting work to reach yet another audience by blogging at Education Week.
I have fans, bizarre as that seems to me, many of whom make up the small army of proofreaders who help me avoid looking too wrong for too long. I'm fast, but not always precise. I appreciate all of them as well, and that they care enough to help me do better.
I would be lying if I said it wasn't personally gratifying to have an audience. The only thing I ever wanted to be as much as I wanted to be a teacher was a writer (what tipped the scale was that I also wanted to be a Person Who Eats).
But I've been writing for a variety of audiences for decades. I've never had the material pouring with the volume it does here, nor felt so fired up when I work. That's not because I'm cranked up with dreams of fame and fortune (which is just as well)-- it's because I'm saying things that I believe are important directly to the people who want or need to hear them. The two most gratifying pieces of feedback I get are "You made me think about this differently" and "You put into words what I wanted to say but had trouble expressing."
I've never met any of the people in person that I have "met" on line. As an English teacher, I find it absolutely gutbustingly awesome that we live in an age where so much can be done just through the written word. I haven't found an audience because of my sparkling charm or a multi-million dollar PR campaign. I have a small gift for stringing words together, and I was fortunate enough to connect with people who connect with it. I never cease to find it unutterably cool that we live in a world in which such things can happen.
I'm proud to have connected with so many people, to have written words that help inform some people's opinions and understanding of their work. I'm also a little flabbergasted; I'm at about 550,000 hits on the blog-- how the heck did that happen.
But I'm not what's important here. What's important is the cause, the resistance, the continuing marathon that is the work of making American public education live up to everything it can be. What's important is to find our way as teachers, as parents, as students, in a world that has somehow twisted itself into an attack on its own best hopes and aspirations.What's important is education and teaching and doing it the best way we know how, and doing it every day better than we did it the day before. That's what's important. The attention that my posts get is not because I'm anybody-- it's because people care deeply, passionately about the issues that I write about.
I'm using the blog birthday to spend some time thinking about where I really want to focus, and what I issues I have failed to highlight effectively and see if I can't do better moving forward. I owe a huge debt to public education; I want to keep trying to pay it back.
I'm also resolved to do a better job of promoting other voices. When I was starting out, I felt awkward about hooking onto other people's stuff-- it felt like trying to grab coattails to draw an audience. But I am increasingly aware of the enormous value in amplifying all the voices of the resistance. There are a lot of good, thoughtful writers, each with his or her own strengths to bring to the table. At this point, I have an audience of my own, and I want to direct them to some of the other great stuff that's out there. If I am showing them people they already know, that's okay, too. Linkage and referrals raise a writer's profile on line, and as we've seen, it is good for public education when its advocates cannot be dismissed as a small splinter cell, but must be seen for what we are-- a large and diverse crowd of many and varied voices. Just as my students are better served if I don't close the door and ignore my colleagues, the cause of public education is better served if I don't just sit in my own corner and post nothing but my own thoughts from my own head. Dialogue, discussion, sharing, sass-- those are the building blocks of good edublogging.
This post, like pretty much everything I post, is about getting my thoughts organized and out of my head, to give me a place I can go read a note to myself to refocus and renew (without getting ridiculous). Every year I try to do everything a little better-- better teacher, better father, better trombone player, better husband, better non-jackass. This year I'll also try to be a better blogger.
I was fortunate to find some audience fairly quickly. I joined BATs back when there were around 1600 members, and the responses I garnered there were encouraging. I was fortunate to be welcomed into that group. Anthony Cody was the first A-lister to ask to reprint me. Then Diane Ravitch saw something worthwhile in my work and has connected me with a much larger audience. I have been fortunate to have her backing and support. More recently, Bryan Maygers accepted me into the stable of Huffington Post bloggers, which has also let me reach even more folks. Here on the mother ship, this post has pulled about 5,300 views. On the HuffPo, it's been translated into three other languages and pulled about 450,000 likes. That would be my personal best. Soon, I'll be starting work to reach yet another audience by blogging at Education Week.
I have fans, bizarre as that seems to me, many of whom make up the small army of proofreaders who help me avoid looking too wrong for too long. I'm fast, but not always precise. I appreciate all of them as well, and that they care enough to help me do better.
I would be lying if I said it wasn't personally gratifying to have an audience. The only thing I ever wanted to be as much as I wanted to be a teacher was a writer (what tipped the scale was that I also wanted to be a Person Who Eats).
But I've been writing for a variety of audiences for decades. I've never had the material pouring with the volume it does here, nor felt so fired up when I work. That's not because I'm cranked up with dreams of fame and fortune (which is just as well)-- it's because I'm saying things that I believe are important directly to the people who want or need to hear them. The two most gratifying pieces of feedback I get are "You made me think about this differently" and "You put into words what I wanted to say but had trouble expressing."
I've never met any of the people in person that I have "met" on line. As an English teacher, I find it absolutely gutbustingly awesome that we live in an age where so much can be done just through the written word. I haven't found an audience because of my sparkling charm or a multi-million dollar PR campaign. I have a small gift for stringing words together, and I was fortunate enough to connect with people who connect with it. I never cease to find it unutterably cool that we live in a world in which such things can happen.
I'm proud to have connected with so many people, to have written words that help inform some people's opinions and understanding of their work. I'm also a little flabbergasted; I'm at about 550,000 hits on the blog-- how the heck did that happen.
But I'm not what's important here. What's important is the cause, the resistance, the continuing marathon that is the work of making American public education live up to everything it can be. What's important is to find our way as teachers, as parents, as students, in a world that has somehow twisted itself into an attack on its own best hopes and aspirations.What's important is education and teaching and doing it the best way we know how, and doing it every day better than we did it the day before. That's what's important. The attention that my posts get is not because I'm anybody-- it's because people care deeply, passionately about the issues that I write about.
I'm using the blog birthday to spend some time thinking about where I really want to focus, and what I issues I have failed to highlight effectively and see if I can't do better moving forward. I owe a huge debt to public education; I want to keep trying to pay it back.
I'm also resolved to do a better job of promoting other voices. When I was starting out, I felt awkward about hooking onto other people's stuff-- it felt like trying to grab coattails to draw an audience. But I am increasingly aware of the enormous value in amplifying all the voices of the resistance. There are a lot of good, thoughtful writers, each with his or her own strengths to bring to the table. At this point, I have an audience of my own, and I want to direct them to some of the other great stuff that's out there. If I am showing them people they already know, that's okay, too. Linkage and referrals raise a writer's profile on line, and as we've seen, it is good for public education when its advocates cannot be dismissed as a small splinter cell, but must be seen for what we are-- a large and diverse crowd of many and varied voices. Just as my students are better served if I don't close the door and ignore my colleagues, the cause of public education is better served if I don't just sit in my own corner and post nothing but my own thoughts from my own head. Dialogue, discussion, sharing, sass-- those are the building blocks of good edublogging.
This post, like pretty much everything I post, is about getting my thoughts organized and out of my head, to give me a place I can go read a note to myself to refocus and renew (without getting ridiculous). Every year I try to do everything a little better-- better teacher, better father, better trombone player, better husband, better non-jackass. This year I'll also try to be a better blogger.
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