One of the most unsuccessful initiatives of the Great Education Makeover is the attempt to reduce writing to a skill set that can be assessed by a standardized test.
Making language is like making music-- there is definitely a technical component, but at the end of the day, technical mastery is not enough. I can play all the notes on the page and still be boring, lifeless, and unlikely to engage any audience. I can write something that fits the technical definition of an essay, and it can still be a terrible piece of writing.
All writing is problem solving, and like any problem solving activity, the most important step is defining the problem that you intend to solve.
The vast majority of student writing failures are not actually composition failures, but thinking failures. I often tell my students that they are having trouble with an assignment because they are starting with the wrong question. They are asking "what can I write to satisfy this assignment" or "how can I fill up this piece of paper" or "what can I use to fill in five paragraph-sized blanks," and these are all the wrong question to start with.
The correct problem that writing should solve is "How can I communicate what I want to communicate in a meaningful way?"
I choose "meaningful" because it's a fuzzy word. We may find meaning in being moved emotionally or challenged intellectually. Whatever meaning may be, our goal is to create an experience for another human (and because writing is also time travel, that other human might even be our future self).
There are certainly technical aspects to this operation. In fact, much of the history of literature is the history of writers inventing new techniques and forms to better communicate meaningfully. But technical skills by themselves are not only meaningless, but have no purpose if not used for some meaningful pursuit. That's why you don't pay money to sit in a concert hall and watch great musicians run scales and warm-up exercises.
The standardized testing approach to writing, both in "writing" assessments and in the open-ended response format now creeping into other tests, gets virtually nothing right at all. Nothing. The goal is itself a meager one-- let's just measure student technical skill-- and even that is not measured particularly well. Test writing is the opposite of good writing. The problem the student is trying to solve is not "How do I create a meaningful expression" but "How do I provide what the test scorer wants to see" or "What words can I use to fill up this space."
Students are supposed to react to the prompt or stimulus (yes, I've seen that word used, as if students are lab rats) with the appropriate response, and their response should not be side tracked by any attempt on their part to make the response meaningful. It is literally meant to be meaningless, as if stripping meaning from writing somehow leaves us with pure, measurable technique. This is like somehow sucking the bones from a human being on the theory that without the skeleton in place, we can get a better pure measurement of muscle tone.
Every teacher of writing has been saying the same thing for years-- standardized writing tests encourage and reward bad writing. "So what?" comes my least favorite response. "If they're really good writers, they ought to be able to fake the testing stuff, right?" Wrong on two counts.
First, while great writers may be able to "fake it," less great writers may not, and all writers run the risk of becoming hornswoggled into believing that Bad Writing is really the ideal. "Faking it" assumes some understanding that we're imitating something bogus. I'm concerned about students who don't recognized the bogus nature of test writing.
Second-- even if they can fake it, that's not a good thing. This is like saying that people who are really good at kissing their spouses would probably be equally good at kissing any random stranger. And, well-- do we really want anybody to be good at that? If the best kiss is one filled with meaning and significance, then why would we want to send the message that good kissing is just a matter of the right pucker and moisture and what it actually means is not even on the table. Who cares whose lips you're smooshing up against as long as your technique is good? Who cares about context or purpose or intent or any of the rest of it? Just pucker up and smoosh facial areas.
Sure, there are technical minimums that have to be reached. "Don't smoosh your lips against your partner's eyeball" is probably good technical kissing advice. "Don't write sentences composed entirely of prepositions" is also good advice. But as the ever-awesome Les Perelman has repeatedly demonstrated, standardized tests have a huge tolerance for meaningless gibberish that is technically proficient.
I remained convinced that it is absolutely impossible to create a useful cheap standardized test for writing. The repeated attempts to do so are a destructive expression of a nearly nihilistic impulse, the thinking of people who believe a picture of a bear rug is as good as a bear.
Monday, December 1, 2014
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Mystifying the Personality
One concept I've borrowed from Thomas Newkirk's excellent "Speaking Back to the Common Core" is the idea of mystification.
We are already seeing at work a process I call “mystification”—taking a practice that was once viewed as within the normal competence of a teacher and making it seem so technical and advanced that a new commercial product (or form of consultation) is necessary.
He called that one in 2013, and we've seen it ramp up steadily since. We've seen it used for consulting (you need to hire somebody to come in and show your teachers how to "unpack" the standards) and for testing (parents and teachers have no clue how the student is doing until they see standardized test results). We even see it as a textbook marketing strategy (you'd better have somebody from the publisher come train your teachers in how to use the new textbook series because, you know, textbooks are hard, and they're only teachers).
But all of that was mystification of the curriculum and content. Reformsters are inching across a bold new boundary when it comes to mystification. They are mystifying the personality of children.
The Rise of Non-Cognitive Skills
We've been playing with NCS for a while, most notably with the new science of Grittology. Our basic premise is that there are non-content skills or abilities or traits that determine a child's future success just as well or better than the child's ability to perform like a well-trained monkey on a standardized test. Sometimes we fall back on old words like "character," but most of the discussion has been in the vein of the Brookings report that asserts that A) character is important and B) poor people don't have it so C) that's why they're poor.
But these discussions of NCS have generally been about blame. Students fail because they lack character and grit, so it's pretty much their own fault (well, theirs and their teachers') and society has no obligation to provide support or resources or any of those things that require money.
The things is, though, there's plenty of real research that NCS are actually important (plus anecdotal evidence from every single human being who ever worked with other human beings). The folks who are building that cradle-to-career pipeline are aware that NCS are are part of the grease that will keep the pipeline running smoothly, so we have got to talk about these non-cognitives as something other than an excuse not to help poor people.
New America Steps Up
So here comes one notable attempt to fill that gap. Working for the folks at New America, Melissa Tooley and Laura Bornfreund have authored "Skills for Success: Supporting and Assessing Key Habits, Mindsets, and Skills in PreK-12." What is New America?
New America is dedicated to the renewal of American politics, prosperity, and purpose in the Digital Age. We carry out our mission as a nonprofit civic enterprise: an intellectual venture capital fund, think tank, technology laboratory, public forum, and media platform. Our hallmarks are big ideas, impartial analysis, pragmatic policy solutions, technological innovation, next generation politics, and creative engagement with broad audiences.
Their education policy wing is funded by, among others, the Joyce Foundation, the Gates, Lumina Foundation,the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The latter footed the bill for this particular report.
Skills for Success: Why Care (or Assess)?
The authors start out by lumping all the non-cognitives, from grit through emotional intelligence, under the Skills For Success (SFS) brand (they have a nice pair of charts here, one of which was adapted from CA's waiver application). The authors make the case that prudence and grit (they don't use the words, but that's what they're talking about) are necessary for college success, and now that everybody is supposed to go to college, well...
They note that SFS are often imparted in pre-K, but not so much in K-12, noting that some people would argue this makes sense because these can only be instilled early in life. No, say the authors-- people are malleable and we could totes develop these into young adulthood (the authors have done yeoman's work in avoiding the verb "teach" when it comes to SFS).
The Big Leap appears to be the hallmark of Tooley and Bornfreund. Right after saying that there are "some promising approaches available" for supporting SFS growth, they declare, "one thing is clear: school and classroom climate can either help promote or deter the development of SFS." So, from promising to proven in just a few sentences.
But the Biggest Leap is embedded so heavily that the authors don't address it directly. They go straight from "SFS should be supported by schools" to "SFS should be assessed by schools." There's a lot of this sort of thing in the paper:
To be effective, any SFS approach must be clearly aligned with local needs and goals and be implemented with fidelity. A system of assessments can help achieve these goals. Needs assessments can help inform decisions about strategies to reach SFS goals, while implementation assessments can provide feedback on the quality of strategy implementation and the level of progress associated with those strategies. Well-run schools are already using these types of assessments in other areas to ensure that they are helping move all students toward their full potential.
They allow that SFS assessment is an imperfect science at the moment and "it may not currently possible to assess certain skills at all." But that's no reason not to assess.
What do they propose doing with the assessment? Nothing that directly impacts the student-- for instance, no pass-fail a grade decisions based on the students' standardized Are You a Jerk or a Nice Person Test (Pearson pat. pending). However, "since schools and teachers can positively or negatively influence the development of students’ SFS, teacher observations and school environment ratings should—over time—be incorporated into educator and school accountability systems, Pre-K–12th grade."
The paper comes with recommendations. For the feds, they recommend 1) more money spent on experiments in fostering and assessing SFS, 2) promoting a more holistic approach to school evals, 3) encouraging shift in teacher focus, and 4) promote more holistic student evaluations that include formative information for teachers, parents, and students.
What Are We Really Talking About Here?
Let's go back to the chart and look at some of the specifics they include.
We have empathy, integrity, and compassion. Self-awareness, self-regulation, and responsible decision making. If you want to be sure to freak out your conservative friends, use this one: "Sense of belonging in one's community which contributes to one's willingness to adopt established norms."
We are really talking about character, personality. We are asking, "Is your kid a good kid?"
The Mystification of Personality
There are really two issues here. The first is an old one-- we'd like schools to teach children to be decent human beings. This is not new, nor are the controversies that go with it. The authors acknowledge that there's liable to be some pushback, that the same people who feel Common Core is some sort of indoctrination program are probably not going to be delighted to hear that the school is trying to teach their child "proper values." But this is an issue as old as the hills and generations of "values" education.
The second issue is the new one. Because what we're saying here is that parents and teachers need to see test results in order to know whether or not a child is kind or not. This report suggests that parents and teachers are sitting, twiddling their thumbs, thinking, "Well, I think Chris is a pleasant, kind, decent kid, but I guess I won't know till I get the Pearson SFS Test results back." It imagines a teachers lounge conversation that includes, "You know, I thought that Jenkins kid was all right, but I just got his test scores back and apparently he's kind of a dick."
It's true that adult evaluations of children are not always spot on. Mrs. Cleaver thought Eddie Haskell was a nice boy. Of course, if you don't think Eddie Haskell could totally game whatever SFS test was thrown at him, I have a unicorn farm I'd like to sell you.
This is one of those reformster ideas that is so stunningly dumb that it's hard to grasp. But let's say it again-- these folks are proposing that parents and teachers do not know what kind of people their children are unless some expertly produced standardized test tells them! Teachers will stumble through the first several weeks of class, and when someone asks them what kind of class they have, they'll just shrug and say, "I have no idea. I'm waiting to get their scores back." Parents will look at their three year old and say, "Boy, I can't wait to send this kid to school so he can take that test and we'll know what kind of person we're raising."
This is beyond mystifying the content and academics of school. This is mystifying the personality of children. This is saying that teachers and parents lack the qualifications to make judgments about the personality of a child, and that they must call in the experts to answer the question, "What kind of person is this?"
What's Really Going On?
The only thing that rescues this idea from total dumbosity is that, in the end, it's just a cover story.
Well, two things. The first thing is that they can't do it. Because if there were great SFS assessment tools, people would be using them. Somebody would be getting rich using it in an on-line matchmaking service. Employers would be using them to scan every potential employee.
And that's our big hint. Remember-- we agreed way up front that these skills really do matter for employment success.
The reformsters do not want to give these students a standardized Are You A Good Person test in order to share the data with parents or teachers. The main market for that information would be the employers waiting at the other end of the cradle to career pipeline. That pipeline will be working smoothly when "applying" for a job just means letting an HR department click on a link to your permanent on-line file that includes your math and English scores since you were three, side by side with the scores that indicate whether you're too nice, not nice at all, or just nice enough.
To get the cradle to career pipeline up and running and fully useful to corporate human resource departments, it needs to include a complete picture of each future drone, and that means all your SFS scores as well. My slightly paranoid, somewhat cranky and non-compliant side (at least, I think I have that side-- it's hard to know what kind of person I am without a professional standardized test analysis) thinks that THAT is the purpose of all this noise, and the reason we're going to hear how schools must foster and test-- but mostly test-- these very important skills.
We are already seeing at work a process I call “mystification”—taking a practice that was once viewed as within the normal competence of a teacher and making it seem so technical and advanced that a new commercial product (or form of consultation) is necessary.
He called that one in 2013, and we've seen it ramp up steadily since. We've seen it used for consulting (you need to hire somebody to come in and show your teachers how to "unpack" the standards) and for testing (parents and teachers have no clue how the student is doing until they see standardized test results). We even see it as a textbook marketing strategy (you'd better have somebody from the publisher come train your teachers in how to use the new textbook series because, you know, textbooks are hard, and they're only teachers).
But all of that was mystification of the curriculum and content. Reformsters are inching across a bold new boundary when it comes to mystification. They are mystifying the personality of children.
The Rise of Non-Cognitive Skills
We've been playing with NCS for a while, most notably with the new science of Grittology. Our basic premise is that there are non-content skills or abilities or traits that determine a child's future success just as well or better than the child's ability to perform like a well-trained monkey on a standardized test. Sometimes we fall back on old words like "character," but most of the discussion has been in the vein of the Brookings report that asserts that A) character is important and B) poor people don't have it so C) that's why they're poor.
But these discussions of NCS have generally been about blame. Students fail because they lack character and grit, so it's pretty much their own fault (well, theirs and their teachers') and society has no obligation to provide support or resources or any of those things that require money.
The things is, though, there's plenty of real research that NCS are actually important (plus anecdotal evidence from every single human being who ever worked with other human beings). The folks who are building that cradle-to-career pipeline are aware that NCS are are part of the grease that will keep the pipeline running smoothly, so we have got to talk about these non-cognitives as something other than an excuse not to help poor people.
New America Steps Up
So here comes one notable attempt to fill that gap. Working for the folks at New America, Melissa Tooley and Laura Bornfreund have authored "Skills for Success: Supporting and Assessing Key Habits, Mindsets, and Skills in PreK-12." What is New America?
New America is dedicated to the renewal of American politics, prosperity, and purpose in the Digital Age. We carry out our mission as a nonprofit civic enterprise: an intellectual venture capital fund, think tank, technology laboratory, public forum, and media platform. Our hallmarks are big ideas, impartial analysis, pragmatic policy solutions, technological innovation, next generation politics, and creative engagement with broad audiences.
Their education policy wing is funded by, among others, the Joyce Foundation, the Gates, Lumina Foundation,the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The latter footed the bill for this particular report.
Skills for Success: Why Care (or Assess)?
The authors start out by lumping all the non-cognitives, from grit through emotional intelligence, under the Skills For Success (SFS) brand (they have a nice pair of charts here, one of which was adapted from CA's waiver application). The authors make the case that prudence and grit (they don't use the words, but that's what they're talking about) are necessary for college success, and now that everybody is supposed to go to college, well...
They note that SFS are often imparted in pre-K, but not so much in K-12, noting that some people would argue this makes sense because these can only be instilled early in life. No, say the authors-- people are malleable and we could totes develop these into young adulthood (the authors have done yeoman's work in avoiding the verb "teach" when it comes to SFS).
The Big Leap appears to be the hallmark of Tooley and Bornfreund. Right after saying that there are "some promising approaches available" for supporting SFS growth, they declare, "one thing is clear: school and classroom climate can either help promote or deter the development of SFS." So, from promising to proven in just a few sentences.
But the Biggest Leap is embedded so heavily that the authors don't address it directly. They go straight from "SFS should be supported by schools" to "SFS should be assessed by schools." There's a lot of this sort of thing in the paper:
To be effective, any SFS approach must be clearly aligned with local needs and goals and be implemented with fidelity. A system of assessments can help achieve these goals. Needs assessments can help inform decisions about strategies to reach SFS goals, while implementation assessments can provide feedback on the quality of strategy implementation and the level of progress associated with those strategies. Well-run schools are already using these types of assessments in other areas to ensure that they are helping move all students toward their full potential.
They allow that SFS assessment is an imperfect science at the moment and "it may not currently possible to assess certain skills at all." But that's no reason not to assess.
What do they propose doing with the assessment? Nothing that directly impacts the student-- for instance, no pass-fail a grade decisions based on the students' standardized Are You a Jerk or a Nice Person Test (Pearson pat. pending). However, "since schools and teachers can positively or negatively influence the development of students’ SFS, teacher observations and school environment ratings should—over time—be incorporated into educator and school accountability systems, Pre-K–12th grade."
The paper comes with recommendations. For the feds, they recommend 1) more money spent on experiments in fostering and assessing SFS, 2) promoting a more holistic approach to school evals, 3) encouraging shift in teacher focus, and 4) promote more holistic student evaluations that include formative information for teachers, parents, and students.
What Are We Really Talking About Here?
Let's go back to the chart and look at some of the specifics they include.
We are really talking about character, personality. We are asking, "Is your kid a good kid?"
The Mystification of Personality
There are really two issues here. The first is an old one-- we'd like schools to teach children to be decent human beings. This is not new, nor are the controversies that go with it. The authors acknowledge that there's liable to be some pushback, that the same people who feel Common Core is some sort of indoctrination program are probably not going to be delighted to hear that the school is trying to teach their child "proper values." But this is an issue as old as the hills and generations of "values" education.
The second issue is the new one. Because what we're saying here is that parents and teachers need to see test results in order to know whether or not a child is kind or not. This report suggests that parents and teachers are sitting, twiddling their thumbs, thinking, "Well, I think Chris is a pleasant, kind, decent kid, but I guess I won't know till I get the Pearson SFS Test results back." It imagines a teachers lounge conversation that includes, "You know, I thought that Jenkins kid was all right, but I just got his test scores back and apparently he's kind of a dick."
It's true that adult evaluations of children are not always spot on. Mrs. Cleaver thought Eddie Haskell was a nice boy. Of course, if you don't think Eddie Haskell could totally game whatever SFS test was thrown at him, I have a unicorn farm I'd like to sell you.
This is one of those reformster ideas that is so stunningly dumb that it's hard to grasp. But let's say it again-- these folks are proposing that parents and teachers do not know what kind of people their children are unless some expertly produced standardized test tells them! Teachers will stumble through the first several weeks of class, and when someone asks them what kind of class they have, they'll just shrug and say, "I have no idea. I'm waiting to get their scores back." Parents will look at their three year old and say, "Boy, I can't wait to send this kid to school so he can take that test and we'll know what kind of person we're raising."
This is beyond mystifying the content and academics of school. This is mystifying the personality of children. This is saying that teachers and parents lack the qualifications to make judgments about the personality of a child, and that they must call in the experts to answer the question, "What kind of person is this?"
What's Really Going On?
The only thing that rescues this idea from total dumbosity is that, in the end, it's just a cover story.
Well, two things. The first thing is that they can't do it. Because if there were great SFS assessment tools, people would be using them. Somebody would be getting rich using it in an on-line matchmaking service. Employers would be using them to scan every potential employee.
And that's our big hint. Remember-- we agreed way up front that these skills really do matter for employment success.
The reformsters do not want to give these students a standardized Are You A Good Person test in order to share the data with parents or teachers. The main market for that information would be the employers waiting at the other end of the cradle to career pipeline. That pipeline will be working smoothly when "applying" for a job just means letting an HR department click on a link to your permanent on-line file that includes your math and English scores since you were three, side by side with the scores that indicate whether you're too nice, not nice at all, or just nice enough.
To get the cradle to career pipeline up and running and fully useful to corporate human resource departments, it needs to include a complete picture of each future drone, and that means all your SFS scores as well. My slightly paranoid, somewhat cranky and non-compliant side (at least, I think I have that side-- it's hard to know what kind of person I am without a professional standardized test analysis) thinks that THAT is the purpose of all this noise, and the reason we're going to hear how schools must foster and test-- but mostly test-- these very important skills.
Balance
Hello, I am a trainee teacher. I read the article. It was an interesting
read. I have a question. How can a teacher attain a work life balance,
given that she wants to do so much and that she is expected to do so
much?
--Meena Valli
Since it started running the Huffington Post, my piece about how teachers face the challenge of Not Enough has brought responses like this, asking if I know the secret to work-life balance for teachers. I've not responded to them for a while, mostly because I'm not sure that I have anything useful to say (and Meena-- you appear to be in India, so I'm really not sure how much of what I could say translates across cultural boundaries). So this post is personal, and may not be useful for anybody except me.
The short answer:
No, I don't know the secret. I'm not any smarter or wiser than the average shmoe.
The long answer:
I can pass along what experience and observation suggest works, or at least helps.
Don't Count on the Job To Fill You Up
It's okay to love your job. It's desirable and even necessary that a teacher love teaching. But you have to be careful, because as much as you love teaching, teaching will never love you back. Teacher lore is filled with tales of stirring moments-- the note from a student, the special recognition at a meeting, the stirring movie-style public honoring of a teacher at the end of his career. We all have these stories, and we treasure them precisely because they are as common as Sasquatch sightings.
My community is pretty supportive of teaching, but if I am counting on my school community to be so moved by my dedication that they devote themselves to giving me all the support, cover and assistance I could ever need to fill up my emotional tank, I are going to be running on empty. This is not because everyone is evil or stunted or awful. You're a lifeguard at a beach with a dozen other lifeguards and a hundred people floundering in the water. There's too much work for the lifeguards to do for them to be worrying about the other lifeguards.
The job is great, but it's only for a while. As beloved as I may be right now, three years after I leave my building, I will be "that guy who used to teach here." There may be a voice inside you that thinks, "I spend all my time at work nurturing other people. When is it going to be my turn to be nurtured?" The answer is the same for you as it is for every other working professional in the country-- you may have a place of nurturing, but it's not at work.
The Students Are Not There For You
How many teachers have I watched burn out because they viewed their students as their emotional support system? Too many. Almost as bad are the teachers who sacrifice their effectiveness-- once your students figure out that you need their approval or approbation to make it through the day, they know they're driving the bus (or they become uncomfortable knowing that nobody is driving the bus).
Have Other Passions
It doesn't matter what, but have something. I play in a town band, work with community theater, write for the newspaper, kayak, bike, read and other odds and ends. These have many good side effects, not the least of which is giving me a life outside of my classroom. How can I ever hope to teach my students about how to be in the world if I never spend any time there myself? How can I possibly relate to their struggle to acquire and perfect new skills when I haven't had the experience of developing new skills myself in the last twenty years? How can I bring anything into my classroom if I never really leave it?
Have Non-teacher Friends
Some things we deal with in teaching are unique to teaching. Some are not. Perspective is helpful. Some of the challenges we face come from being teachers, but some of them come from being human. Spend some time with your fellow humans to build your outside-the-classroom life. My relationships with people in other fields give me a useful understanding of what's going on in the working world my students want to enter as well as reminding me about the ways in which I have it pretty good. (Pro tip: don't ever, ever complain about going back to school after your twelve week summer break in front of your working friends who will only get ten vacation days all year.)
Work and Don't Work
Boy, was I terrible at this one when I started. I worked all the time, including the time that I was theoretically doing not-work. I knew that I needed to take some time to unwind, but I felt guilty about not working, so I would take work along for the not-working. Consequently, I wouldn't really get much work done and what was done was half-assed, but since I had been trying to work, I didn't really get the benefit of the unwinding time either. I managed to get the worst of both worlds. When you work, work. When you don't, don't.
Decide What Matters and Don't Waste Time on the Rest
When I started out, I thought I needed to say yes to everything, and so I acquired a lot of tasks that I just didn't care about. Your time is precious; use it for the things that matter to you. This is not always an easy call-- your friend Pat may love curling and you may not think that curling is important at all, but because you believe that Pat is important, you spend time on curling. You may want to earn some points with your principal, but do you really want to devote hours and hours to the Restroom Sink Cleaning Committee? If it's not important to you, don't throw away your time and effort on it.
And the primary relationships in your life? Take care of those. Teachers can become just as tunnel-visioned as any stereotypical work-obsessed executive in movies.
I'm often asked how I am able to blog so much. It's because the need to express what's in my head and gut in words is an itch I have to scratch (playing music is another must-scratch itch for me); working my thoughts out here literally clears my head. That matters, so I find the time for it.
Don't Buy Tickets for the Guilt Train
It will always be possible to compare yourself unfavorably with what you think you're supposed to be doing. Thirty-five years in, I can still list for you the areas where I am lacking as a teacher. I can give you a whole verse and chorus about what I ought to be doing that I am not. I could spend a lot of time feeling guilty about that. I could spend every single moment that I'm not doing classroom stuff (like this moment, for instance) feeling guilty about it, or I could just decide I won't ever do anything ever except teacher stuff, but neither stance is sustainable in the long run. This goes back to the original post-- I could give teaching everything 24/7 and it still wouldn't be enough. In fact, I'm pretty sure that trying to live without any life outside my classroom would actually move me backwards as a teacher. The trick is knowing how much I can sustain.
In fact, if I were going to boil everything down to just one line of advice, it would be
Know your limits and accept living within them.
But Also Stretch Them
I have to grow. So every year, I stretch something. I accomplish something or master something or change something or strengthen something. I believe that in life, in all things, there is only moving forward or moving backwards-- there is no standing still.And that's part of what insures that
Balance Is an Ongoing Process
Finding this balance is not like setting up one of those cool stacks of balanced stones. It's like walking a tightrope while juggling pumpkins while somebody keeps stacking bricks on your feet and head. I have to constantly self-evaluate and adjust and there are times still when I get that feeling that lets me know I've lost control. Plus there are times when some aspect of my life just blows up and I have no choice but to live an unbalanced life for a while. Getting a good work-life balance looks a lot different right now with grown children far away and a newish marriage here at home than it did when I was single dad of high school age kids, and it certainly looks different than when I was dealing with divorce.
In short, my balance is never something I get to just wrap up and say, "Okay, that's settled. I never have to think about it again." I can't balance on autopilot, and I don't think many people can.
Teaching is an awesome job, and I would never have been as happy doing something else. But teaching will take everything you have to give and then yell for more. You must have a well-built boundary between your self and the job, or it will simply consume you and spit you out. You are the goose that is laying the golden egg, and if you cut yourself open to get more eggs out faster, that will be the end of both you and the gold. Or you're a lifeguard and you can't save others if you're drowning yourself. Pick a metaphor you like, but like people in many human service work, you have to have a part of yourself that you keep safe and whole, or you'll be done. At least, that's how it looks to me.
--Meena Valli
Since it started running the Huffington Post, my piece about how teachers face the challenge of Not Enough has brought responses like this, asking if I know the secret to work-life balance for teachers. I've not responded to them for a while, mostly because I'm not sure that I have anything useful to say (and Meena-- you appear to be in India, so I'm really not sure how much of what I could say translates across cultural boundaries). So this post is personal, and may not be useful for anybody except me.
The short answer:
No, I don't know the secret. I'm not any smarter or wiser than the average shmoe.
The long answer:
I can pass along what experience and observation suggest works, or at least helps.
Don't Count on the Job To Fill You Up
It's okay to love your job. It's desirable and even necessary that a teacher love teaching. But you have to be careful, because as much as you love teaching, teaching will never love you back. Teacher lore is filled with tales of stirring moments-- the note from a student, the special recognition at a meeting, the stirring movie-style public honoring of a teacher at the end of his career. We all have these stories, and we treasure them precisely because they are as common as Sasquatch sightings.
My community is pretty supportive of teaching, but if I am counting on my school community to be so moved by my dedication that they devote themselves to giving me all the support, cover and assistance I could ever need to fill up my emotional tank, I are going to be running on empty. This is not because everyone is evil or stunted or awful. You're a lifeguard at a beach with a dozen other lifeguards and a hundred people floundering in the water. There's too much work for the lifeguards to do for them to be worrying about the other lifeguards.
The job is great, but it's only for a while. As beloved as I may be right now, three years after I leave my building, I will be "that guy who used to teach here." There may be a voice inside you that thinks, "I spend all my time at work nurturing other people. When is it going to be my turn to be nurtured?" The answer is the same for you as it is for every other working professional in the country-- you may have a place of nurturing, but it's not at work.
The Students Are Not There For You
How many teachers have I watched burn out because they viewed their students as their emotional support system? Too many. Almost as bad are the teachers who sacrifice their effectiveness-- once your students figure out that you need their approval or approbation to make it through the day, they know they're driving the bus (or they become uncomfortable knowing that nobody is driving the bus).
Have Other Passions
It doesn't matter what, but have something. I play in a town band, work with community theater, write for the newspaper, kayak, bike, read and other odds and ends. These have many good side effects, not the least of which is giving me a life outside of my classroom. How can I ever hope to teach my students about how to be in the world if I never spend any time there myself? How can I possibly relate to their struggle to acquire and perfect new skills when I haven't had the experience of developing new skills myself in the last twenty years? How can I bring anything into my classroom if I never really leave it?
Have Non-teacher Friends
Some things we deal with in teaching are unique to teaching. Some are not. Perspective is helpful. Some of the challenges we face come from being teachers, but some of them come from being human. Spend some time with your fellow humans to build your outside-the-classroom life. My relationships with people in other fields give me a useful understanding of what's going on in the working world my students want to enter as well as reminding me about the ways in which I have it pretty good. (Pro tip: don't ever, ever complain about going back to school after your twelve week summer break in front of your working friends who will only get ten vacation days all year.)
Work and Don't Work
Boy, was I terrible at this one when I started. I worked all the time, including the time that I was theoretically doing not-work. I knew that I needed to take some time to unwind, but I felt guilty about not working, so I would take work along for the not-working. Consequently, I wouldn't really get much work done and what was done was half-assed, but since I had been trying to work, I didn't really get the benefit of the unwinding time either. I managed to get the worst of both worlds. When you work, work. When you don't, don't.
Decide What Matters and Don't Waste Time on the Rest
When I started out, I thought I needed to say yes to everything, and so I acquired a lot of tasks that I just didn't care about. Your time is precious; use it for the things that matter to you. This is not always an easy call-- your friend Pat may love curling and you may not think that curling is important at all, but because you believe that Pat is important, you spend time on curling. You may want to earn some points with your principal, but do you really want to devote hours and hours to the Restroom Sink Cleaning Committee? If it's not important to you, don't throw away your time and effort on it.
And the primary relationships in your life? Take care of those. Teachers can become just as tunnel-visioned as any stereotypical work-obsessed executive in movies.
I'm often asked how I am able to blog so much. It's because the need to express what's in my head and gut in words is an itch I have to scratch (playing music is another must-scratch itch for me); working my thoughts out here literally clears my head. That matters, so I find the time for it.
Don't Buy Tickets for the Guilt Train
It will always be possible to compare yourself unfavorably with what you think you're supposed to be doing. Thirty-five years in, I can still list for you the areas where I am lacking as a teacher. I can give you a whole verse and chorus about what I ought to be doing that I am not. I could spend a lot of time feeling guilty about that. I could spend every single moment that I'm not doing classroom stuff (like this moment, for instance) feeling guilty about it, or I could just decide I won't ever do anything ever except teacher stuff, but neither stance is sustainable in the long run. This goes back to the original post-- I could give teaching everything 24/7 and it still wouldn't be enough. In fact, I'm pretty sure that trying to live without any life outside my classroom would actually move me backwards as a teacher. The trick is knowing how much I can sustain.
In fact, if I were going to boil everything down to just one line of advice, it would be
Know your limits and accept living within them.
But Also Stretch Them
I have to grow. So every year, I stretch something. I accomplish something or master something or change something or strengthen something. I believe that in life, in all things, there is only moving forward or moving backwards-- there is no standing still.And that's part of what insures that
Balance Is an Ongoing Process
Finding this balance is not like setting up one of those cool stacks of balanced stones. It's like walking a tightrope while juggling pumpkins while somebody keeps stacking bricks on your feet and head. I have to constantly self-evaluate and adjust and there are times still when I get that feeling that lets me know I've lost control. Plus there are times when some aspect of my life just blows up and I have no choice but to live an unbalanced life for a while. Getting a good work-life balance looks a lot different right now with grown children far away and a newish marriage here at home than it did when I was single dad of high school age kids, and it certainly looks different than when I was dealing with divorce.
In short, my balance is never something I get to just wrap up and say, "Okay, that's settled. I never have to think about it again." I can't balance on autopilot, and I don't think many people can.
Teaching is an awesome job, and I would never have been as happy doing something else. But teaching will take everything you have to give and then yell for more. You must have a well-built boundary between your self and the job, or it will simply consume you and spit you out. You are the goose that is laying the golden egg, and if you cut yourself open to get more eggs out faster, that will be the end of both you and the gold. Or you're a lifeguard and you can't save others if you're drowning yourself. Pick a metaphor you like, but like people in many human service work, you have to have a part of yourself that you keep safe and whole, or you'll be done. At least, that's how it looks to me.
Saturday, November 29, 2014
Report Shows Huge $$ In Ed Testing
I know, I know. Later I'll do a post in which we learn that water is wet.
This report comes from the education division of the Software and Information Industry Association, "the principal trade association for the software and digital content industries." (h/t to Jim Horn at Schools Matter) It's an extension of their annual survey of their members, so this is how the education market looks to the people who hope to make money from it. This is not the hypothetical fretting of those of us in the education biz.
The survey covers a three-year span, and the findings are simple and stark. During a period marked by "difficult economic times during an overall PreK-12 budget and spending decline," the industry saw an increase in testing and assessment sales of 57%. And the three years in the survey are 2010-2011 through 2012-2013. Anybody want to place bets on how the trend continued in 2013-2014?
In dollar amounts, the 2012-2013 dollar figures is around $2,500,000,000. Two and a half billion. With a "b."
The executive summary is available on line (the full report seems to have been released only to member companies), and there's not a great deal to see there. It's not even very slick and pretty, kind of like it was an actual industry group report and not some sort of thinky tank advertising brochure masquerading as a report. At any rate, that means we can only see the broad outlines, and those simply confirm what common sense already told us.
Participants in the survey identified four factors contributing to the huge mountain of money they now find themselves perched atop.
1. The Common Core Standards are changing curricula
2. The rollout of Common Core Assessments are [sic] galvanizing activity
3. There is widespread demand for more and better formative assessment
4. Testing and assessment is [sic] leading the transition from print to digital
I'll subtract points for the subject-verb agreement problems, but they get some back for using "galvanizing." Nice word. In other words, Common Core has cracked open the market so that money can pour out. Note also that as far as these guys are concerned, Common Core Assessments are a thing, so those who insist that the standards and the tests are two discrete and unconnected issues are contradicted for the sixty gazzilionth time. The mandate that testing be done on line is having the expected effect of making huge money for the digital stuff industry. The widespread demand for more formative assessment? I'm not sure who out here is hollering for more tests, but these four factors were noted "almost universally" by respondents. Four less commonly noted factors were
1. School districts are requiring interoperability
2. Big Data and Analytics are driving infrastructure
3. Real-time digital assessments are actionable
4. Linking assessments to content holds the promise of personalization
The first two reinforce the idea that our Data Overlords and their government minions continue to holler "Feed me!" The third item reinforces that English is a second language to these guys; it means, I believe, that getting instant test results is a thing that could be done. Four is the unicorn hunt of personalization; the idea that a program can look at all of a student's answers on the computer-based assessment and then spit out just the right instructional plan for that student is exactly the sort of thing that people who don't have any real knowledge of teaching and education think would be really cool and actionable.
The report ranks various product lines in terms of revenue generation. Summative testing is most of the mountain, which serves as one more sign that the reformster baloney about how one purpose of the High Stakes Testing is to guide and tweak instruction is Just Not So. That would be formative testing, which is runner up in the Making Us Money contest, followed distantly by psychological testing and test prep products.
They also offer two cautions against irrational exuberance. First, people are starting to get seriously antsy about the massive threats to and violations of student privacy. Second, the market for summative testing seems to be slowing and perhaps close to filled.
The full report appears to address all ten of these points in greater detail. If anybody's got a copy lying around, I'd be glad to have a look. But it appears that this report offers less Shocking Surprise Revelation and more Confirmation of What You Already Were Pretty Sure Was True.
This report comes from the education division of the Software and Information Industry Association, "the principal trade association for the software and digital content industries." (h/t to Jim Horn at Schools Matter) It's an extension of their annual survey of their members, so this is how the education market looks to the people who hope to make money from it. This is not the hypothetical fretting of those of us in the education biz.
The survey covers a three-year span, and the findings are simple and stark. During a period marked by "difficult economic times during an overall PreK-12 budget and spending decline," the industry saw an increase in testing and assessment sales of 57%. And the three years in the survey are 2010-2011 through 2012-2013. Anybody want to place bets on how the trend continued in 2013-2014?
In dollar amounts, the 2012-2013 dollar figures is around $2,500,000,000. Two and a half billion. With a "b."
The executive summary is available on line (the full report seems to have been released only to member companies), and there's not a great deal to see there. It's not even very slick and pretty, kind of like it was an actual industry group report and not some sort of thinky tank advertising brochure masquerading as a report. At any rate, that means we can only see the broad outlines, and those simply confirm what common sense already told us.
Participants in the survey identified four factors contributing to the huge mountain of money they now find themselves perched atop.
1. The Common Core Standards are changing curricula
2. The rollout of Common Core Assessments are [sic] galvanizing activity
3. There is widespread demand for more and better formative assessment
4. Testing and assessment is [sic] leading the transition from print to digital
I'll subtract points for the subject-verb agreement problems, but they get some back for using "galvanizing." Nice word. In other words, Common Core has cracked open the market so that money can pour out. Note also that as far as these guys are concerned, Common Core Assessments are a thing, so those who insist that the standards and the tests are two discrete and unconnected issues are contradicted for the sixty gazzilionth time. The mandate that testing be done on line is having the expected effect of making huge money for the digital stuff industry. The widespread demand for more formative assessment? I'm not sure who out here is hollering for more tests, but these four factors were noted "almost universally" by respondents. Four less commonly noted factors were
1. School districts are requiring interoperability
2. Big Data and Analytics are driving infrastructure
3. Real-time digital assessments are actionable
4. Linking assessments to content holds the promise of personalization
The first two reinforce the idea that our Data Overlords and their government minions continue to holler "Feed me!" The third item reinforces that English is a second language to these guys; it means, I believe, that getting instant test results is a thing that could be done. Four is the unicorn hunt of personalization; the idea that a program can look at all of a student's answers on the computer-based assessment and then spit out just the right instructional plan for that student is exactly the sort of thing that people who don't have any real knowledge of teaching and education think would be really cool and actionable.
The report ranks various product lines in terms of revenue generation. Summative testing is most of the mountain, which serves as one more sign that the reformster baloney about how one purpose of the High Stakes Testing is to guide and tweak instruction is Just Not So. That would be formative testing, which is runner up in the Making Us Money contest, followed distantly by psychological testing and test prep products.
They also offer two cautions against irrational exuberance. First, people are starting to get seriously antsy about the massive threats to and violations of student privacy. Second, the market for summative testing seems to be slowing and perhaps close to filled.
The full report appears to address all ten of these points in greater detail. If anybody's got a copy lying around, I'd be glad to have a look. But it appears that this report offers less Shocking Surprise Revelation and more Confirmation of What You Already Were Pretty Sure Was True.
The New Butterfly Effect
Old Butterfly Effect: A butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil, and the result is a tornado in Oklahoma.
Now that US ED wants to link everything together, we need a revision. New Butterfly Effect:
A butterfly flaps its wings against the window of a school room where students are taking the High Stakes Test. Several of the students are so excited (they just had a unit about butterflies and grew some in their room that they then released into the wild at recess-- is this one of ours? does he remember us and want to come back? look! Look!!) that they actually get up to look. The test proctor scolds them and makes them sit down, but between the excitement of the butterfly and the hurt feelings for the scolding, they have lost their focus for the day. All of them do poorly on the test.
Because several of the students do poorly, their teacher's VAM score is low.
A phys ed teacher and a music teacher also get low evaluations. They don't teach these kids, but the convoluted evaluation formula causes the student scores to lower the teacher evaluation scores.
Because at least one of these teachers is on the second year of a low evaluation score, that teacher is fired.
Two of these teachers got their degree from a local college education department ten years ago. Because Arne Duncan's plan to evaluate colleges by the test scores of their former students' students, that local college ed department gets a lower evaluation.
Because of the lower test score, the department loses financial support from the feds. They also suffer a bout of negative publicity because they are on the fed's Naughty List. They have already been struggling with recruitment, and so they cut their program and raise tuition.
Without an affordable local program, several local high school seniors decide not to pursue a goal of a teaching degree after all. Instead they just go straight into the workforce.
And so by next summer, former teachers and high school graduates are all looking for a job.
And so, because a butterfly flaps its wings, Wal-mart has a large enough labor pool to continue hiring workers for 20-hours-a-week at minimum wage.
Now that US ED wants to link everything together, we need a revision. New Butterfly Effect:
A butterfly flaps its wings against the window of a school room where students are taking the High Stakes Test. Several of the students are so excited (they just had a unit about butterflies and grew some in their room that they then released into the wild at recess-- is this one of ours? does he remember us and want to come back? look! Look!!) that they actually get up to look. The test proctor scolds them and makes them sit down, but between the excitement of the butterfly and the hurt feelings for the scolding, they have lost their focus for the day. All of them do poorly on the test.
Because several of the students do poorly, their teacher's VAM score is low.
A phys ed teacher and a music teacher also get low evaluations. They don't teach these kids, but the convoluted evaluation formula causes the student scores to lower the teacher evaluation scores.
Because at least one of these teachers is on the second year of a low evaluation score, that teacher is fired.
Two of these teachers got their degree from a local college education department ten years ago. Because Arne Duncan's plan to evaluate colleges by the test scores of their former students' students, that local college ed department gets a lower evaluation.
Because of the lower test score, the department loses financial support from the feds. They also suffer a bout of negative publicity because they are on the fed's Naughty List. They have already been struggling with recruitment, and so they cut their program and raise tuition.
Without an affordable local program, several local high school seniors decide not to pursue a goal of a teaching degree after all. Instead they just go straight into the workforce.
And so by next summer, former teachers and high school graduates are all looking for a job.
And so, because a butterfly flaps its wings, Wal-mart has a large enough labor pool to continue hiring workers for 20-hours-a-week at minimum wage.
Feds Committed To Preserving Crappy Colleges
You may recall that the Corinthian College for-profit chain was in trouble. Specifically, they were in trouble for 1) running a massive scam and 2) not even running it successfully.
For-profit colleges are a great study in how a voucher system really works. The feds grant higher ed vouchers to a sector of potential students, and then various institutions compete to get those vouchers. Do they compete by being the most awesome providers of the most excellent education? Don't be ridiculous. Do Coke and Pepsi compete by trying to create the most excellent, healthful beverage, or by piling on the marketing and putting in just enough sugary sweetness to trigger the monkey pleasure centers in our brains?
So these for-profit colleges specialized in marketing techniques like Empty Promises and Lying About Previous Results.
And of course, there's one significant difference between this system of vouchers as compared to the usual-- these are vouchers that students have to pay back with interest (which turns out to be difficult when you've sunk all your money in an education that doesn't get you a good job).
Anyway, the full story is here. Short version: feds threatened to shut down predatory loan-sucking for-profit scam schools, but decided to bail them out instead. Kind of like finding people in a burning building and saying, "You guys just stay there inside. We're going to hire someone to paint the place."
Now we've arrived at Chapter 2. After bailing Corinthian out so that students could continue to stay warm and toasty inside the burning building, the feds are supporting a new deal. As reported in the Washington Post, a chunk of the chain has been bought up by----- a debt collection company!
“What we are seeing is an unprecedented attempt on the part of a regulator to prop up one of the very worst companies in the industry,” said Barmak Nassirian, director of federal relations and policy analysis for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. “You could debate which is better — allowing a predatory operation to collapse, or keeping it on life support so that it could victimize more people. That is what the federal government has done.”
Nassirian is being generous-- I'm not sure exactly what the argument for allowing predatory operations to collapse, other than it would be disruptive for the students sooner than letting them finish school and then finding out that they've been had.
Educational Credit Management Corporation is the buyer, and if you've heard horror stories about students being relentlessly pursued to pay up school debts, these guys were probably the monster under those stairs. They've been spanked a few times for overzealous pursuit of the money. They might seem to be, to say the least, an odd choice to own and operate a for-profit college chain.
ECMC is an odd choice to run chunks of Corinthian only if you think the purpose of these schools is to provide an education. If you understand that the whole for-profit college biz exists only to move school loan money around so that outfits can make money from the process every time the dollars change hands. For-profits exists in order to convince students to go into debt; the school collects the principal, and the owners of the loans collect the interest, and the students collect the debt. It is a great model for privatizing profit while sloughing the risk and debt off on citizens. So ECMC, as a debt collector, is simply getting into some vertical integration, making money from the loans both coming and going (earlier this year they also acquired College Abacus "the kayak.com of college loans). They can hire somebody to maintain the illusion that there is an actual school at the center of this giant scam, and do it through their own Zenith Education Group subsidiary so that not a single delicious dollar leaks out of any of the seams.
How do federal authorities feel about these efforts to keep a shark in the educational waters? Are you kidding? They helped broker the deal. Because in all of this, it's far more important that the for-profits remain intact and viable than the futures of tens of thousands of students be safeguarded. This is as if Gerber laced a hundred thousand jars of baby food with arsenic and the fed's first priority was to make sure the company was okay while leaving the babies to just fend for themselves.
I'm sure that the obscene profits that the fed makes from student loans has nothing to do with this. It couldn't be that nobody called it a bad idea, because many, many people have spoken out at every step of this process. From the Huffington Post:
“While bailing out 56 schools, the sale treats the more than 30,000 students like financial assets,” said Maggie Thompson, manager of the Higher Ed, Not Debt campaign.
“If you’re supposedly a regulatory agency, and your mission is to protect students, why wouldn’t you want students to know that?” said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at policy organization Demos. The Education Department, in effect, allowed Corinthian to enroll as many students as it wanted, even as it teetered on insolvency -- ignoring the demands of a dozen Democratic senators.
From the Washington Post:
“Corinthian faced enrollment challenges and regulatory scrutiny common to other for-profits, but the thing that did them in at the end of the day was plain old mismanagement,” [Trace Urdan, a higher education analyst at Wells Fargo Securities] said. “They failed to cut costs like they needed to, operating under the assumption that next year would be better — and it never was.”
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) said he was “shocked” that the Education Department would support the deal and questioned whether keeping Corinthian open under any management was in the best interest of students or taxpayers.
“To prop up a school whose main purpose seems to be to get federal money is a misguided use of federal funds,” Cohen said. “When a school like [Corinthian] that has a checkered history is on the mat, throw in the towel. It’s over.”
But here's who liked it:
“We are glad that Corinthian has reached an agreement with ECMC Group and believe that this transition will allow students to maintain progress toward achieving their educational and career goals and protect taxpayers’ investment, while Corinthian moves out of the business,” Undersecretary of Education Ted Mitchell said in a statement.
The whole Corinthian mess is as clear an example as we've ever seen of the federal government putting corporate interests ahead of the interests of citizens. It's also a fine example of the federal policy of say one thing, do another. Just last month, Arne Duncan said
“Career colleges must be a stepping stone to the middle class. But too many hard-working students find themselves buried in debt with little to show for it. That is simply unacceptable.”
It's unacceptable. But not so unacceptable that we're going to do anything about it.
It's not complicated. If you want an example of for-profit colleges that bury hard-working least-able-to-afford it students under debt while giving them nothing to show for it, you could not find a clearer example than Corinthian. If the feds couldn't bring themselves to intervene on behalf of students in this situation, they never will. The US ED can talk all it wants, but its actions show the truth, and the truth is that predatory for-profit schools get no punishment and plenty of profitable help from Arne Duncan's department.
For-profit colleges are a great study in how a voucher system really works. The feds grant higher ed vouchers to a sector of potential students, and then various institutions compete to get those vouchers. Do they compete by being the most awesome providers of the most excellent education? Don't be ridiculous. Do Coke and Pepsi compete by trying to create the most excellent, healthful beverage, or by piling on the marketing and putting in just enough sugary sweetness to trigger the monkey pleasure centers in our brains?
So these for-profit colleges specialized in marketing techniques like Empty Promises and Lying About Previous Results.
And of course, there's one significant difference between this system of vouchers as compared to the usual-- these are vouchers that students have to pay back with interest (which turns out to be difficult when you've sunk all your money in an education that doesn't get you a good job).
Anyway, the full story is here. Short version: feds threatened to shut down predatory loan-sucking for-profit scam schools, but decided to bail them out instead. Kind of like finding people in a burning building and saying, "You guys just stay there inside. We're going to hire someone to paint the place."
Now we've arrived at Chapter 2. After bailing Corinthian out so that students could continue to stay warm and toasty inside the burning building, the feds are supporting a new deal. As reported in the Washington Post, a chunk of the chain has been bought up by----- a debt collection company!
“What we are seeing is an unprecedented attempt on the part of a regulator to prop up one of the very worst companies in the industry,” said Barmak Nassirian, director of federal relations and policy analysis for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. “You could debate which is better — allowing a predatory operation to collapse, or keeping it on life support so that it could victimize more people. That is what the federal government has done.”
Nassirian is being generous-- I'm not sure exactly what the argument for allowing predatory operations to collapse, other than it would be disruptive for the students sooner than letting them finish school and then finding out that they've been had.
Educational Credit Management Corporation is the buyer, and if you've heard horror stories about students being relentlessly pursued to pay up school debts, these guys were probably the monster under those stairs. They've been spanked a few times for overzealous pursuit of the money. They might seem to be, to say the least, an odd choice to own and operate a for-profit college chain.
ECMC is an odd choice to run chunks of Corinthian only if you think the purpose of these schools is to provide an education. If you understand that the whole for-profit college biz exists only to move school loan money around so that outfits can make money from the process every time the dollars change hands. For-profits exists in order to convince students to go into debt; the school collects the principal, and the owners of the loans collect the interest, and the students collect the debt. It is a great model for privatizing profit while sloughing the risk and debt off on citizens. So ECMC, as a debt collector, is simply getting into some vertical integration, making money from the loans both coming and going (earlier this year they also acquired College Abacus "the kayak.com of college loans). They can hire somebody to maintain the illusion that there is an actual school at the center of this giant scam, and do it through their own Zenith Education Group subsidiary so that not a single delicious dollar leaks out of any of the seams.
How do federal authorities feel about these efforts to keep a shark in the educational waters? Are you kidding? They helped broker the deal. Because in all of this, it's far more important that the for-profits remain intact and viable than the futures of tens of thousands of students be safeguarded. This is as if Gerber laced a hundred thousand jars of baby food with arsenic and the fed's first priority was to make sure the company was okay while leaving the babies to just fend for themselves.
I'm sure that the obscene profits that the fed makes from student loans has nothing to do with this. It couldn't be that nobody called it a bad idea, because many, many people have spoken out at every step of this process. From the Huffington Post:
“While bailing out 56 schools, the sale treats the more than 30,000 students like financial assets,” said Maggie Thompson, manager of the Higher Ed, Not Debt campaign.
“If you’re supposedly a regulatory agency, and your mission is to protect students, why wouldn’t you want students to know that?” said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at policy organization Demos. The Education Department, in effect, allowed Corinthian to enroll as many students as it wanted, even as it teetered on insolvency -- ignoring the demands of a dozen Democratic senators.
From the Washington Post:
“Corinthian faced enrollment challenges and regulatory scrutiny common to other for-profits, but the thing that did them in at the end of the day was plain old mismanagement,” [Trace Urdan, a higher education analyst at Wells Fargo Securities] said. “They failed to cut costs like they needed to, operating under the assumption that next year would be better — and it never was.”
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) said he was “shocked” that the Education Department would support the deal and questioned whether keeping Corinthian open under any management was in the best interest of students or taxpayers.
“To prop up a school whose main purpose seems to be to get federal money is a misguided use of federal funds,” Cohen said. “When a school like [Corinthian] that has a checkered history is on the mat, throw in the towel. It’s over.”
But here's who liked it:
“We are glad that Corinthian has reached an agreement with ECMC Group and believe that this transition will allow students to maintain progress toward achieving their educational and career goals and protect taxpayers’ investment, while Corinthian moves out of the business,” Undersecretary of Education Ted Mitchell said in a statement.
The whole Corinthian mess is as clear an example as we've ever seen of the federal government putting corporate interests ahead of the interests of citizens. It's also a fine example of the federal policy of say one thing, do another. Just last month, Arne Duncan said
“Career colleges must be a stepping stone to the middle class. But too many hard-working students find themselves buried in debt with little to show for it. That is simply unacceptable.”
It's unacceptable. But not so unacceptable that we're going to do anything about it.
It's not complicated. If you want an example of for-profit colleges that bury hard-working least-able-to-afford it students under debt while giving them nothing to show for it, you could not find a clearer example than Corinthian. If the feds couldn't bring themselves to intervene on behalf of students in this situation, they never will. The US ED can talk all it wants, but its actions show the truth, and the truth is that predatory for-profit schools get no punishment and plenty of profitable help from Arne Duncan's department.
Friday, November 28, 2014
PA Axes Reading Specialist Programs
Turns out there is more than one way to reduce the job requirements for teaching.
Pennsylvania's Department of Education has apparently announced its intention to cut Reading Specialists off at the knees. In an email dated November 5, the department apparently indicated that they would add the Reading Specialist Certificate to the Added By Test list. In other words, it will no longer be necessary to go out and do a Master's Degree's worth of college coursework to become a reading specialist. Instead, aspiring reading specialists would just take a test.
The Keystone State Reading Association is not delighted. Neither are the colleges and universities that make money by training reading specialists. And neither should the rest of us be.
I find the whole concept a little bizarre. I've been an English teacher for 35-ish years and while I know a thing or two about reading, I wouldn't call myself a specialist.
If I wanted to be a specialist, I would take some classes because reading is a highly technical and complicated field, and I would benefit from taking courses with other practitioners as well as having structured opportunities to work on my technique with actual live human beings. I don't think my quest to be a highly competent reading specialist would be improved by the alternative of grabbing a Praxis-style cram book and then hoping to correctly answer a brace of questions on an adult-aimed standardized test.
Why allow for such an approach to the readings specialist certificate? Certainly not to make life easier for teachers-- here in PA teachers have to do a Master's Degree's worth of work to keep our teaching credentials (plus more hours every several years), so why not pick something directed and useful? Is it for students and their families? Are parents calling Harrisburg to complain that their child's reading specialist knows too much as is too well-trained for the job? I'm going to bet the answer is "none of the above."
So who benefits? Could it be perhaps anybody who wanted to operate a school but wanted to cut back on the costs of things like, say, reading specialists? Is this one more move intended to make charter staffing easier and cheaper? Granted, it's less destructive than the Ohio plan for just doing away with the requirement for specialists entirely, but it still does nothing to elevate the profession, the teaching of reading, or the quality of instruction here in the Keystone State.
The KSRA has a nifty link to letters that you can fill in and send to anybody in Harrisburg who might conceivably help. It's true that this is probably one of the major battle fronts in the struggle to preserve public education, but it is one more thing to chip chip chip away at the level of professionalism and expertise required to work with students. It's one more way to create a world in which anybody can stand in a classroom and be a content delivery specialist, at least for a year or two, as long as they've gotten some clearances and some paperwork done.
Why not demand that reading specialists be trained, and trained well, in their field? Passing some test is not enough. Harrisburg is wrong on this one. Reading specialist should mean more than "passed a special test."
Pennsylvania's Department of Education has apparently announced its intention to cut Reading Specialists off at the knees. In an email dated November 5, the department apparently indicated that they would add the Reading Specialist Certificate to the Added By Test list. In other words, it will no longer be necessary to go out and do a Master's Degree's worth of college coursework to become a reading specialist. Instead, aspiring reading specialists would just take a test.
The Keystone State Reading Association is not delighted. Neither are the colleges and universities that make money by training reading specialists. And neither should the rest of us be.
I find the whole concept a little bizarre. I've been an English teacher for 35-ish years and while I know a thing or two about reading, I wouldn't call myself a specialist.
If I wanted to be a specialist, I would take some classes because reading is a highly technical and complicated field, and I would benefit from taking courses with other practitioners as well as having structured opportunities to work on my technique with actual live human beings. I don't think my quest to be a highly competent reading specialist would be improved by the alternative of grabbing a Praxis-style cram book and then hoping to correctly answer a brace of questions on an adult-aimed standardized test.
Why allow for such an approach to the readings specialist certificate? Certainly not to make life easier for teachers-- here in PA teachers have to do a Master's Degree's worth of work to keep our teaching credentials (plus more hours every several years), so why not pick something directed and useful? Is it for students and their families? Are parents calling Harrisburg to complain that their child's reading specialist knows too much as is too well-trained for the job? I'm going to bet the answer is "none of the above."
So who benefits? Could it be perhaps anybody who wanted to operate a school but wanted to cut back on the costs of things like, say, reading specialists? Is this one more move intended to make charter staffing easier and cheaper? Granted, it's less destructive than the Ohio plan for just doing away with the requirement for specialists entirely, but it still does nothing to elevate the profession, the teaching of reading, or the quality of instruction here in the Keystone State.
The KSRA has a nifty link to letters that you can fill in and send to anybody in Harrisburg who might conceivably help. It's true that this is probably one of the major battle fronts in the struggle to preserve public education, but it is one more thing to chip chip chip away at the level of professionalism and expertise required to work with students. It's one more way to create a world in which anybody can stand in a classroom and be a content delivery specialist, at least for a year or two, as long as they've gotten some clearances and some paperwork done.
Why not demand that reading specialists be trained, and trained well, in their field? Passing some test is not enough. Harrisburg is wrong on this one. Reading specialist should mean more than "passed a special test."
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