Over at EdWeek, Alyson Klein examines one possible source of resistance to big changes in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (aka ESEA, aka No Child Left Behind, aka NCLB).
The source is not a surprise, because we've seen it before. Klein says that some special education advocates are strongly opposed to removing the Big Time Testing component of ESEA.
Back in October, as the testing issue was beginning to heat up in Washington,
the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities, which includes the
Council for Exceptional Children, the National Center for Learning
Disabilities, Easter Seals and other organizations, sent a letter to the leaders of the House education committee opposing legislation that would have scaled back the number of tests required in the law.
I'm not surprised. Every time I have written about the testing of students with special needs, I have heard from advocates who argue strenuously tat such testing be continued. The argument is always some variation of this one:
The NCLB law, which requires states to break out student achievement
data by particular groups of students, including those in special
education, "has provided so much good information we never had before
about how students with disabilities are really performing," said
Lindsay Jones, the director of public policy and advocacy for the
National Center for Learning Disabilities.
There is also the occasional reference to how testing will help the students achieve-- Klein includes one such quote in her piece:
There is a great need for educators to have access to actionable,
relevant, and timely information about student performance so that they
can help students achieve.
However, that sentence is followed by this one:
With transparent, easy-to-access, annual data on student performance,
parents and educators are armed with the information needed to promote
effective solutions to systemic issues at the school, district and
policy levels.
I have yet to see a convincing argument that The Big Test will help teachers help students with special needs. Most teachers of students with special needs have a huge battery of regular assessments that they already use. No-- the actual argument is this--
We need to have students with special needs to take these tests so that we can use the data points to help us lobby.
I do not doubt that in many, if not most, cases, we are talking about advocates with good intent, who truly want to find ways to get students with special needs the kind of support and resources that those students need and richly deserve.
Nevertheless, what we're advocating here is not testing for some direct, educational purpose. We are talking about using students to generate data for advocacy and lobbying purposes. We are talking about making students suffer through these tests so that their failure can be used to lobby for more resources. We are talking about punishing them with these tests so that somebody can go to a state capital and wave the results in some lawmakers' face.
There's a legitimate conversation to be had about whether these ends (appropriate resources blasted out of the steely grip of legislatures) justifies these ends (putting students through punitive and inappropriate testing), but to have it, we have to start by being honest. I can respect the desire to not have students with special needs disappear into a sea of collected data, but let's not pretending that generating disaggregated data serves any educational purpose. The people arguing that ESEA must keep the Big Test in place because of students with special needs are not advocating for something that has actual direct educational value. They want to use the students to make a point, and they need to be honest enough to say so.
Thursday, January 8, 2015
I Am Not Charlie
Snow delays and cancellation have given me ample time over the last 48 hours to read about the murders in France, and to follow the spread of "#Je suis Charlie" across France and around the world.
I agree with the sentiment behind that. An attack on freedom of speech anywhere is an attack everywhere, and it is easy to see that nothing good will come of those vicious assaults on magazine writers, editors, cartoonists, and police.
But I can't help reflecting on the degree to which, personally, I am not Charlie Hebdo.
We often fall into the rhetoric of battle in the debate that surrounds public education. We call it a battle. We call it a war. But at times like this I have to take a step back and remember that I am not in an actual war at all.
Part of my privilege as a white male American is the privilege of safely being a pain in the ass.
Whatever else I may believe about Arne Duncan, I don't believe he's going to send a group of armed assassins to my home to kill me. I don't believe that I make blog posts in defiance of a threat to my life.
I'm an adult, so I won't be dismissed for being snotty. And I'm a white guy, so I'm not going to be dismissed as "shrill" and "hysterical." Nor will I be called "angry" in public and "uppity" in private. Nor will other white male bloggers be told that if they want to be taken seriously, they should really try to get me to be more reasonable and proper.
It is routine in our country to inflate rhetoric in order to create a sense of epic conflict around every issue. Our government routinely declares "war" on things; we never get an announcement of "A New Well-calculated Thoughtful Initiative To Create Incremental Solutions To This Complex Problem." I long ago ran out of patience for calling things "rape" that are not (rape is rape; nothing else is rape).I understand this impulse-- when you are in the midst of a struggle, you want to convey to other people your sense of urgency. You want them to feel how important it feels to you. And, if truth be told, sometimes you want to be an Important Person who is doing Very Important Things. And so you up the rhetorical ante for effect. But the words in your mouth do not change the facts on the ground. You cannot borrow the difficulties of others in order to make your own look more dramatic and awesome.
Today, there will be teachers risking their lives just by going to their classrooms. I will not be one of them. Today, there will be people risking their lives by speaking up, making a point, expressing their thoughts. I will conduct my mockery of Power in a safe and comfortable place.
So, I can be Charlie Hebdo in my belief that human beings have a right to speak their truth. But I am not going to try to appropriate those deaths in France to somehow elevate my own importance or dramatize my own endeavors.
Make no mistake. I believe that the work I do in school is supremely important, and I believe the current attempt to crush the tradition of American public education is a terribly wrong thing that threatens some fundamental values of our nation. And I will continue to speak out about it as best I know how. But I will do it from a safe, secure, comfortable seat, and trying to pretend otherwise is a slap in the face to all the people who do not get to stand up in a safe, secure, comfortable place.
I agree with the sentiment behind that. An attack on freedom of speech anywhere is an attack everywhere, and it is easy to see that nothing good will come of those vicious assaults on magazine writers, editors, cartoonists, and police.
But I can't help reflecting on the degree to which, personally, I am not Charlie Hebdo.
We often fall into the rhetoric of battle in the debate that surrounds public education. We call it a battle. We call it a war. But at times like this I have to take a step back and remember that I am not in an actual war at all.
Part of my privilege as a white male American is the privilege of safely being a pain in the ass.
Whatever else I may believe about Arne Duncan, I don't believe he's going to send a group of armed assassins to my home to kill me. I don't believe that I make blog posts in defiance of a threat to my life.
I'm an adult, so I won't be dismissed for being snotty. And I'm a white guy, so I'm not going to be dismissed as "shrill" and "hysterical." Nor will I be called "angry" in public and "uppity" in private. Nor will other white male bloggers be told that if they want to be taken seriously, they should really try to get me to be more reasonable and proper.
It is routine in our country to inflate rhetoric in order to create a sense of epic conflict around every issue. Our government routinely declares "war" on things; we never get an announcement of "A New Well-calculated Thoughtful Initiative To Create Incremental Solutions To This Complex Problem." I long ago ran out of patience for calling things "rape" that are not (rape is rape; nothing else is rape).I understand this impulse-- when you are in the midst of a struggle, you want to convey to other people your sense of urgency. You want them to feel how important it feels to you. And, if truth be told, sometimes you want to be an Important Person who is doing Very Important Things. And so you up the rhetorical ante for effect. But the words in your mouth do not change the facts on the ground. You cannot borrow the difficulties of others in order to make your own look more dramatic and awesome.
Today, there will be teachers risking their lives just by going to their classrooms. I will not be one of them. Today, there will be people risking their lives by speaking up, making a point, expressing their thoughts. I will conduct my mockery of Power in a safe and comfortable place.
So, I can be Charlie Hebdo in my belief that human beings have a right to speak their truth. But I am not going to try to appropriate those deaths in France to somehow elevate my own importance or dramatize my own endeavors.
Make no mistake. I believe that the work I do in school is supremely important, and I believe the current attempt to crush the tradition of American public education is a terribly wrong thing that threatens some fundamental values of our nation. And I will continue to speak out about it as best I know how. But I will do it from a safe, secure, comfortable seat, and trying to pretend otherwise is a slap in the face to all the people who do not get to stand up in a safe, secure, comfortable place.
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Fun with Teacher Evaluation
Jim Popham presents a great little infomercial for the teacher evaluation biz, including such fine products as Five Hour Pedagogy and a Value-added Mystery Model. Save this for when you need a ten-minute lift.
Duncan Stumps Massachusetts
On Monday, Arne Duncan (or somebody in his office) appeared in the Boston Globe pitching some woo-hoo at a couple of his buddies-- school reform, and outgoing Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. A former civil rights lawyer who later moved on to corporate law (Texaco, Coca-Cola), Patrick has been tossed around on the list of possible successors to Eric Holder. But this week Arne was hailing him for fixing education in Massachusetts.
These kinds of puff pieces are interesting because they always include these embedded descriptions of what Duncan thinks education is for.
I have always been impressed by Massachusetts’ deep commitment to education. From the founding of America’s first public schools, through the historic Education Reform Act of 1993 and to today, the state has shown a commitment to improving student outcomes, raising academic standards, closing achievement gaps — and to the opportunities for all that a world-class education can create.
So, education is like a manufacturing process with the purpose of creating opportunities for students, like a shirt constructed for them to wear, and not a growth process that allows them to become a fuller more capable more complete more self-sufficient and fulfilled version of themselves. I know, I know-- it's a definition on which reasonable people can disagree. I just find Duncan's language choices revealing.
He goes on to list some fine current stats that show how awesome Massachusetts is. And he lists some of their super-duper achievements
Over the last several years, the state has also introduced new college and career ready academic standards, with a focus on critical thinking, problem solving skills, has brought approximately 5,000 poor children off waiting lists and into high quality early education, and has worked to make college more affordable.
Oh, poor, unloved Common Core. Nobody will even say your name out loud any more, not even those who were once your most ardent suitors.
It's a glowing piece of puffery, but it took just two days for Jim Stergios of the Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based thinky tank, to pop up in the same pages of the same newspaper call bullshit on Arne.
Who says Common Core advocates don’t like fiction? In his Opinion piece on Jan. 5, US Education Secretary Arne Duncan got one fact right: Massachusetts leads the nation in education. Attributing that progress to Governor Patrick’s leadership is like suggesting that a pinch runner who finds himself on third base hit a triple.
Stergios is here to tell you that all of Massachusetts finest education hours came before Patrick set foot in the governor's office. And he's not afraid to use the "C" name, either.
Since the adoption of Common Core in 2010, sampled national tests show fourth-grade reading scores, the best predictor of future success, falling more significantly in Massachusetts than anywhere else in the country.
During Patrick’s time in office, Massachusetts students’ SAT scores have fallen by 20 points. (Prior to 2007, SAT scores had risen for 13 consecutive years.)
When Patrick took office, 67 percent of third graders scored advanced or proficient on the state’s third-grade reading tests (again, an important marker); that number is now 57 percent.
This would be a good place to remind you that Fordham Institute, a thinky tank that takes back seat to nobody in its love and devotion to the Common Core, compared Massachusetts's old standards to CCSS and found that MA's were better. They said, "Massachusetts’s existing standards are clearer, more thorough, and easier to read than the Common Core standards."
So when we say that the Common Core standards are untested, that's no longer strictly true-- they have been tested all across the country for a few years now. And while I don't agree with the reformsters' measures of success, it's worth noting that by those same measures, the Core have failed in Massachusetts. This is the kind of data reformsters believe important, and by that data, the Core isn't cutting it.
Duncan goes on to note, several times, that Massachusetts is leading the nation in education, and that's not exactly true at the moment. It's more like the national standards are dragging Massachusetts down. So Duncan is essentially congratulating Massachusetts for how well they did in spite of his attempts to stop them. MA is leading the nation in the sense that they already know how to win at this standards game better than the reformsters in DC.
But good luck to Governor Patrick in whatever job awaits him in DC.
These kinds of puff pieces are interesting because they always include these embedded descriptions of what Duncan thinks education is for.
I have always been impressed by Massachusetts’ deep commitment to education. From the founding of America’s first public schools, through the historic Education Reform Act of 1993 and to today, the state has shown a commitment to improving student outcomes, raising academic standards, closing achievement gaps — and to the opportunities for all that a world-class education can create.
So, education is like a manufacturing process with the purpose of creating opportunities for students, like a shirt constructed for them to wear, and not a growth process that allows them to become a fuller more capable more complete more self-sufficient and fulfilled version of themselves. I know, I know-- it's a definition on which reasonable people can disagree. I just find Duncan's language choices revealing.
He goes on to list some fine current stats that show how awesome Massachusetts is. And he lists some of their super-duper achievements
Over the last several years, the state has also introduced new college and career ready academic standards, with a focus on critical thinking, problem solving skills, has brought approximately 5,000 poor children off waiting lists and into high quality early education, and has worked to make college more affordable.
Oh, poor, unloved Common Core. Nobody will even say your name out loud any more, not even those who were once your most ardent suitors.
It's a glowing piece of puffery, but it took just two days for Jim Stergios of the Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based thinky tank, to pop up in the same pages of the same newspaper call bullshit on Arne.
Who says Common Core advocates don’t like fiction? In his Opinion piece on Jan. 5, US Education Secretary Arne Duncan got one fact right: Massachusetts leads the nation in education. Attributing that progress to Governor Patrick’s leadership is like suggesting that a pinch runner who finds himself on third base hit a triple.
Stergios is here to tell you that all of Massachusetts finest education hours came before Patrick set foot in the governor's office. And he's not afraid to use the "C" name, either.
Since the adoption of Common Core in 2010, sampled national tests show fourth-grade reading scores, the best predictor of future success, falling more significantly in Massachusetts than anywhere else in the country.
During Patrick’s time in office, Massachusetts students’ SAT scores have fallen by 20 points. (Prior to 2007, SAT scores had risen for 13 consecutive years.)
When Patrick took office, 67 percent of third graders scored advanced or proficient on the state’s third-grade reading tests (again, an important marker); that number is now 57 percent.
This would be a good place to remind you that Fordham Institute, a thinky tank that takes back seat to nobody in its love and devotion to the Common Core, compared Massachusetts's old standards to CCSS and found that MA's were better. They said, "Massachusetts’s existing standards are clearer, more thorough, and easier to read than the Common Core standards."
So when we say that the Common Core standards are untested, that's no longer strictly true-- they have been tested all across the country for a few years now. And while I don't agree with the reformsters' measures of success, it's worth noting that by those same measures, the Core have failed in Massachusetts. This is the kind of data reformsters believe important, and by that data, the Core isn't cutting it.
Duncan goes on to note, several times, that Massachusetts is leading the nation in education, and that's not exactly true at the moment. It's more like the national standards are dragging Massachusetts down. So Duncan is essentially congratulating Massachusetts for how well they did in spite of his attempts to stop them. MA is leading the nation in the sense that they already know how to win at this standards game better than the reformsters in DC.
But good luck to Governor Patrick in whatever job awaits him in DC.
What Didn't Happen in 2014?
Originally posted in View from the Cheap Seats
We're reaching the end of 2014, close enough that there's nothing left for policymakers to do except a few trying-to-stay-below-the-radar gestures. (Hey, Connecticut! Your governor just gave his appointees an up-to-12 percent raise! Merry Christmas!) But the big events of the year are past us, and I think it's safe to put together our list of Things That Did Not Happen in 2014.
Common Core Did Not Garner More Love
The groundswell of grass roots support for common core seems to have gotten lost in the same dark hole as missing socks, the Iraqis waiting to greet us as liberators, and my hair. There has been more than ample opportunity for teachers across the country to say, "Well, now I can see this is actually awesome," and for opponents of the national standards movement to say, "I have to admit; now that I can see it in action, I might have been too hasty to condemn."
That has not happened. The biggest proponents of the core are still the folks who make a living advocating for the reform movement (and the biggest opponents are folks who don't make a living in the Resistance). There's a related question that remains unanswered this year—if reformsters like Gates and Walton stopped pumping money into CCSS support, would it be able to survive strictly on merit and grassroots love?
Administration Did Not Come Out In Support of Public Education
Duncan and the rest of the Obama administration occasionally make mouth noises that would seem to support public education, but can anybody point to a single policy or action of the department this year (ever, actually, but I'm just writing about this year) that was an unequivocal move in favor of U.S. public education?
They've worked hard for charters. They've gone to the wall and helped cut deals for education corporations. They made sure that predatory for-profit college operators stay afloat. But at no point did Duncan et al advocate for public education or the people who work there.
Next Generation Tests Still Haven't Arrived
It's possible they're just in the mail, because folks have been saying these are coming any minute now for, well, many many minutes. But the tests our students are all taking still encourage test prepping and then measure an inch deep and an inch wide. The only way reformsters get away with the "no more bubble tests" line is because now students click on the multiple choice answer with a mouse instead of bubbling it in with a pencil.
The closest we've gotten to a next generation is the insistence that we can now score essay writing with a computer (spoiler alert: no, we can't).
America Did Not Hit 100% Mark
2014 was, of course, the magical year in which No Child Left Behind would create an America in which 100 percent of our students were above average. We did not do that (we also did not, as a nation, spin straw into gold or master cold fusion or open successful unicorn farms).
Apparently we were not even close. While some states have backed away from Race to the Top and NCLB waivers, they cited reasons such as Evil Federal Overreaching Pinko Naughtiness. Nobody looked at the waivers and said, "No, thanks, but we have this 100 percent of students above average thing totally under control, so NCLB doesn't scare us at all."
Will any of these events finally occur in 2015? Are there other Important Education Events that still haven't happened, despite all our anticipation? Share your list in the comments section.
We're reaching the end of 2014, close enough that there's nothing left for policymakers to do except a few trying-to-stay-below-the-radar gestures. (Hey, Connecticut! Your governor just gave his appointees an up-to-12 percent raise! Merry Christmas!) But the big events of the year are past us, and I think it's safe to put together our list of Things That Did Not Happen in 2014.
Common Core Did Not Garner More Love
The groundswell of grass roots support for common core seems to have gotten lost in the same dark hole as missing socks, the Iraqis waiting to greet us as liberators, and my hair. There has been more than ample opportunity for teachers across the country to say, "Well, now I can see this is actually awesome," and for opponents of the national standards movement to say, "I have to admit; now that I can see it in action, I might have been too hasty to condemn."
That has not happened. The biggest proponents of the core are still the folks who make a living advocating for the reform movement (and the biggest opponents are folks who don't make a living in the Resistance). There's a related question that remains unanswered this year—if reformsters like Gates and Walton stopped pumping money into CCSS support, would it be able to survive strictly on merit and grassroots love?
Administration Did Not Come Out In Support of Public Education
Duncan and the rest of the Obama administration occasionally make mouth noises that would seem to support public education, but can anybody point to a single policy or action of the department this year (ever, actually, but I'm just writing about this year) that was an unequivocal move in favor of U.S. public education?
They've worked hard for charters. They've gone to the wall and helped cut deals for education corporations. They made sure that predatory for-profit college operators stay afloat. But at no point did Duncan et al advocate for public education or the people who work there.
Next Generation Tests Still Haven't Arrived
It's possible they're just in the mail, because folks have been saying these are coming any minute now for, well, many many minutes. But the tests our students are all taking still encourage test prepping and then measure an inch deep and an inch wide. The only way reformsters get away with the "no more bubble tests" line is because now students click on the multiple choice answer with a mouse instead of bubbling it in with a pencil.
The closest we've gotten to a next generation is the insistence that we can now score essay writing with a computer (spoiler alert: no, we can't).
America Did Not Hit 100% Mark
2014 was, of course, the magical year in which No Child Left Behind would create an America in which 100 percent of our students were above average. We did not do that (we also did not, as a nation, spin straw into gold or master cold fusion or open successful unicorn farms).
Apparently we were not even close. While some states have backed away from Race to the Top and NCLB waivers, they cited reasons such as Evil Federal Overreaching Pinko Naughtiness. Nobody looked at the waivers and said, "No, thanks, but we have this 100 percent of students above average thing totally under control, so NCLB doesn't scare us at all."
Will any of these events finally occur in 2015? Are there other Important Education Events that still haven't happened, despite all our anticipation? Share your list in the comments section.
Is This Our House? Why I Engage.
Paul Thomas is one of my favorite bloggers. He's one of the most erudite, scholarly writers in the edubloggoverse (plus, I share his affection for classic comic books), and he has a perspective that I deeply appreciate and with which I usually agree, even if I have to do some thinking to get there.
But yesterday he put up a post that I think, ultimately, I have to disagree with.
In A Call for Social Media Solidarity: “This Is Our House”, Thomas argues for solidarity and a refusal to engage in the ed debates with people who do not belong in "our house."
Over about two years of blogging at my own site and engaging regularly on Twitter and other social media platforms, I have gradually adopted a stance that I do not truck with those who are disproportionately dominating the field of and public discourse about education.
His argument is simple:
Each time we invoke their names, their flawed ideas, or their policies, we are joining the tables they have set.
...
Therefore, I am now asking that educators, scholars, and public education advocates who are active on social media (blogging, Tweeting, etc.) to make an effort to dedicate a day, a week, a month, or as I have done, a policy to creating our own educators’ “white out” on social media—establishing our place for our voices as a model against the mainstream media dedicated to those with authority (elections, appointments, wealth) but without credibility.
Don’t spend blogs rejecting their public claims and education policy.
Don’t engage them on Twitter, or “@” them into a Twitter exchange.
Now, to a certain extent, I absolutely get this. If you think the Kardashians are taking up too much air in the culture, then stop paying attention to them, stop talking about them, stop clicking on stories about them. When you treat people as if they belong at the table, that reinforces their presence at the table. Thomas correctly that this sort of leverage has been used to bring us to a place where many folks treat evolution and creationism as if they represent a simple difference of opinion between two valid and equal points of view.
When the cries for renewed and improved "conversation" between differing sides of the ed debates went out last fall, I pointed out that a legitimate question to ask of some of these folks is, "Why are you even in this discussion?" It is as if a stranger wandered into my classroom and interrupted my class to start offering pedagogical tips like "Wear a brighter colored shirt and comb your hair differently," and instead of having him escorted out, I started talking to him like he had a legitimate cause to start the conversation.
So I've been increasingly mindful of the space that I give to some of the reformster crowd. I started calling the former DC chancellor She Who Will Not Be Named because to even put her name one more time on the internet increases her perceived heft and importance when she is simply a miracle of somehow gathering power and influence without a single, solitary success in her field of alleged expertise. And I never link to Peter Cunningham's reformster-shilling PR website because I'll be damned if I'm going to drive even one more click's worth of web traffic there.
But will I continue to engage certain reformsters directly? Will I continue to respond directly to pieces that appear by arguing, refuting, and wrestling with the points they make? Will I continue to engage? I think I have to. I think many of us have to. Here's why:
Not all reformsters are jerks
I accept as a truth that the world includes many people who disagree with me, but who hold onto their beliefs for reasons just as sincere and decent as my own. I need to talk to those people, and they need to talk to me. It is not always easy to sort those people out from the rest, but I do believe it's worth the effort. I've had some good conversations with reformsters that started with "Here's why I think you're wrong."
It's true that there are reformsters who are self-serving profiteering power-hungry hubris-swollen jerks. But for them it's sometimes useful to remember...
Mockery can be a useful means of deflation
An over-inflated giant balloon of foolishness can be impressive-- until someone gets out a pin. Letting something sit out there looking all impressive and awesome can be a mistake, because not everyone sees that it's all just air.
This is not just our house
This debate is happening in the public sphere. It's happening in front of everybody, and a large part of the audience is still not sure exactly what to believe. In the public sphere, silence is often equated with assent. For the first six months or so, the general public thought the whole Common Core thing must be going okay because they didn't hear anything about it except the press release material that was used to flood the media.
For instance, people heard and believed that the Common Core were written by teachers. Only because that claim was challenged and debunked again and again and again, directly and pointedly, reformsters simply retired it, and it is no longer part of what "everybody knows" about Common Core.
The fight is here
I share Thomas's frustration. We shouldn't have to waste our time arguing teaching methods with people who haven't got a clue what the hell they're talking about. They should be getting no more attention than a airline pilot who walks into the middle of court proceedings and starts telling the judge how to run the trial.
But they are rich and powerful and they have made it happen. We shouldn't be in this fight, but we are. Sometimes you don't choose the fight; the fight just chooses you and your only choice is to fight or get beat up (sometimes you do both). Thomas also says
Symbolic messages matter, and the strongest message we can send about those who shall not be named is exactly that: erase them from the spaces they have dominated without deserving that space.
I don't think that's a viable choice. I don't believe it is in our power to erase them from those spaces, in particular because so many of those spaces are spaces that they own and control. I am concerned that in attempting to erase them and refusing to engage them, what we would really do is surrender the field to them, to leave their voices ringing out without any sort of answer or debate.
I absolutely agree that we should not be having to fight these people, that while every American deserves a voice in the public sphere, it does not follow that really rich and powerful Americans should get to set the agenda for any sector of the country that they take an interest in. The whole business really is a Kafka-esque version of the Emperor's New Clothes. They do not deserve that space.
But they are here, they are fighting, they are powerful, and every small inch of the field that we have reclaimed has come through directly engaging, debating, dialoguing, and I don't see how we can stop.
All that said, I think there are parts of Thomas's point worth holding on to.
We need to be careful when engaging reformsters that we are not elevating people or points of view that don't deserve to be elevated. Watch what you link to. Be careful of whose voice you're amplifying, accidentally or otherwise.
Argue ideas more than people. It really doesn't advance any cause to "prove" that Arne Duncan is an evil doodyhead. This is not always easy-- much of the reformster agenda has been shaped by their personal character-- but to lapse into angry character assault is not useful.
It is not enough to stand against something. We have to stand for something as well. We must keep articulating what we want to see, not just what we don't want to see.
And-- he does give us the option of only following his request for a day or a week. It could serve as an occasional focus and cleansing activity.
Longtime readers of this blog will note that I apparently just hit the Do As I Say, Not As I Do button. It's true-- some of what i know i should do, I don't always do. So while I disagree with much of what Thomas has written here, I respect him for writing it, and will keep it in mind while trying to maintain my own bloggy balance.
But yesterday he put up a post that I think, ultimately, I have to disagree with.
In A Call for Social Media Solidarity: “This Is Our House”, Thomas argues for solidarity and a refusal to engage in the ed debates with people who do not belong in "our house."
Over about two years of blogging at my own site and engaging regularly on Twitter and other social media platforms, I have gradually adopted a stance that I do not truck with those who are disproportionately dominating the field of and public discourse about education.
His argument is simple:
Each time we invoke their names, their flawed ideas, or their policies, we are joining the tables they have set.
...
Therefore, I am now asking that educators, scholars, and public education advocates who are active on social media (blogging, Tweeting, etc.) to make an effort to dedicate a day, a week, a month, or as I have done, a policy to creating our own educators’ “white out” on social media—establishing our place for our voices as a model against the mainstream media dedicated to those with authority (elections, appointments, wealth) but without credibility.
Don’t spend blogs rejecting their public claims and education policy.
Don’t engage them on Twitter, or “@” them into a Twitter exchange.
Now, to a certain extent, I absolutely get this. If you think the Kardashians are taking up too much air in the culture, then stop paying attention to them, stop talking about them, stop clicking on stories about them. When you treat people as if they belong at the table, that reinforces their presence at the table. Thomas correctly that this sort of leverage has been used to bring us to a place where many folks treat evolution and creationism as if they represent a simple difference of opinion between two valid and equal points of view.
When the cries for renewed and improved "conversation" between differing sides of the ed debates went out last fall, I pointed out that a legitimate question to ask of some of these folks is, "Why are you even in this discussion?" It is as if a stranger wandered into my classroom and interrupted my class to start offering pedagogical tips like "Wear a brighter colored shirt and comb your hair differently," and instead of having him escorted out, I started talking to him like he had a legitimate cause to start the conversation.
So I've been increasingly mindful of the space that I give to some of the reformster crowd. I started calling the former DC chancellor She Who Will Not Be Named because to even put her name one more time on the internet increases her perceived heft and importance when she is simply a miracle of somehow gathering power and influence without a single, solitary success in her field of alleged expertise. And I never link to Peter Cunningham's reformster-shilling PR website because I'll be damned if I'm going to drive even one more click's worth of web traffic there.
But will I continue to engage certain reformsters directly? Will I continue to respond directly to pieces that appear by arguing, refuting, and wrestling with the points they make? Will I continue to engage? I think I have to. I think many of us have to. Here's why:
Not all reformsters are jerks
I accept as a truth that the world includes many people who disagree with me, but who hold onto their beliefs for reasons just as sincere and decent as my own. I need to talk to those people, and they need to talk to me. It is not always easy to sort those people out from the rest, but I do believe it's worth the effort. I've had some good conversations with reformsters that started with "Here's why I think you're wrong."
It's true that there are reformsters who are self-serving profiteering power-hungry hubris-swollen jerks. But for them it's sometimes useful to remember...
Mockery can be a useful means of deflation
An over-inflated giant balloon of foolishness can be impressive-- until someone gets out a pin. Letting something sit out there looking all impressive and awesome can be a mistake, because not everyone sees that it's all just air.
This is not just our house
This debate is happening in the public sphere. It's happening in front of everybody, and a large part of the audience is still not sure exactly what to believe. In the public sphere, silence is often equated with assent. For the first six months or so, the general public thought the whole Common Core thing must be going okay because they didn't hear anything about it except the press release material that was used to flood the media.
For instance, people heard and believed that the Common Core were written by teachers. Only because that claim was challenged and debunked again and again and again, directly and pointedly, reformsters simply retired it, and it is no longer part of what "everybody knows" about Common Core.
The fight is here
I share Thomas's frustration. We shouldn't have to waste our time arguing teaching methods with people who haven't got a clue what the hell they're talking about. They should be getting no more attention than a airline pilot who walks into the middle of court proceedings and starts telling the judge how to run the trial.
But they are rich and powerful and they have made it happen. We shouldn't be in this fight, but we are. Sometimes you don't choose the fight; the fight just chooses you and your only choice is to fight or get beat up (sometimes you do both). Thomas also says
Symbolic messages matter, and the strongest message we can send about those who shall not be named is exactly that: erase them from the spaces they have dominated without deserving that space.
I don't think that's a viable choice. I don't believe it is in our power to erase them from those spaces, in particular because so many of those spaces are spaces that they own and control. I am concerned that in attempting to erase them and refusing to engage them, what we would really do is surrender the field to them, to leave their voices ringing out without any sort of answer or debate.
I absolutely agree that we should not be having to fight these people, that while every American deserves a voice in the public sphere, it does not follow that really rich and powerful Americans should get to set the agenda for any sector of the country that they take an interest in. The whole business really is a Kafka-esque version of the Emperor's New Clothes. They do not deserve that space.
But they are here, they are fighting, they are powerful, and every small inch of the field that we have reclaimed has come through directly engaging, debating, dialoguing, and I don't see how we can stop.
All that said, I think there are parts of Thomas's point worth holding on to.
We need to be careful when engaging reformsters that we are not elevating people or points of view that don't deserve to be elevated. Watch what you link to. Be careful of whose voice you're amplifying, accidentally or otherwise.
Argue ideas more than people. It really doesn't advance any cause to "prove" that Arne Duncan is an evil doodyhead. This is not always easy-- much of the reformster agenda has been shaped by their personal character-- but to lapse into angry character assault is not useful.
It is not enough to stand against something. We have to stand for something as well. We must keep articulating what we want to see, not just what we don't want to see.
And-- he does give us the option of only following his request for a day or a week. It could serve as an occasional focus and cleansing activity.
Longtime readers of this blog will note that I apparently just hit the Do As I Say, Not As I Do button. It's true-- some of what i know i should do, I don't always do. So while I disagree with much of what Thomas has written here, I respect him for writing it, and will keep it in mind while trying to maintain my own bloggy balance.
The Backwards School
One of my regrets as a parent is that I did not advocate more strongly for my son when he was in kindergarten. We had several go-rounds about his behavior, and the problem boiled down to this-- in the morning, before the official start of school, she wanted to have peace and quiet to get her materials organized for the day, and so these five-year-olds were expected to come in from the bus and sit quietly at their desks waiting for the start bell to ring. It would have been almost comical except that this power struggle got every day off to a lousy start, and in the end the biggest lesson my son took away from kindergarten was that school was awful and that he was a bad boy. His mother and I pushed back, but I should have pushed back much harder. I had some funny ideas about professional respect between fellow teachers in the district. I don't have those ideas any more.
The classroom was backwards. In that classroom, the students were there to meet the needs of the teacher, not the other way around.
This was almost twenty-five years ago, and there was no school reform agenda to blame it on. Unfortunately, we have always had classrooms, schools, even entire districts that get turned around backwards. We start with a list of things that we need the students to do for us, instead of an honest inquiry into what the students need us to do for them.
The newest ed reform wave did not create this issue, and it's not the first time we've faced it. Public schools in America have always struggled with a balance between what students need in order to become educated adults and the imperative to mold each child into a round peg to fit into society's round holes.
But the newest ed reform wave has done its best to hardwire backwards schooling into the system. The emphasis on testing and test scores means that schools and teachers need students to make the right numbers. Reformsters talk about personalizing or individualizing education, but what they mean is calibrating the one-size-fits-all program to get students to cough up the desired numbers. They will tell students what "success" means, and they will tell the student when he's met that goal; what he needs or wants is nothing more than an obstacle to be overcome in the process of getting him to produce the proper numbers.
I believe that some reformsters, some high stakes testing boosters, actually believe that their approach addresses the very issues I'm talking about. They are wrong. When you say to a teacher, "This kid better get an 85% on this test or you're in big trouble," the teacher is not going to be motivated to listen to the student or look at the student's needs and desires as anything other than an obstacle to getting that score out of that student. The testing mandate is a sure way of pushing that teacher to finally say, "Look! What you want and feel and need don't matter. Just shut up, sit down, and get these questions right!"
The testing mandate turns every student into the real-life equivalent of a videogame boss that the teacher must defeat in order to get a good score. The teacher need only understand the boss well enough to defeat it.
In some urban and charter schools, the backwards schooling extends to every aspect of the student. Not only do we need him to produce the right numbers, but we require him to behave "properly," to line up, to speak. These schools will tell him how to to dress, how to speak, how to sit, how to walk through the halls-- and there will be no excuses when he fails to produce what is demanded of him. And when he fails to produce, that failure is not seen as the school's failure to meet him where he is or adapt to who he is as a human being; instead, it will be seen as his failure to be the person the school demands. In fact, if he's from a particular neighborhood, his failure to meet the school's demands may be seen as defiance, a willful noon-compliance that means he must be stamped down harder, branded as a troublemaker, moved from the school track to the prison track.
When a school system tightens up, it results in the miraculous "discovery" of "defective" students. after all, if my state-approved teaching program is being properly implemented by the classroom content delivery specialist and Chris is still getting poor grades, then Chris must be defective. Have a specialist check Chris for learning disabilities. And if five-year-old Pat is won't sit still in the endurance-development exercises necessary to prepare for the Big Test, perhaps Pat had better be checked for ADHD so we can administer the proper drugs.
I am not advocating that we hand students the keys to the building and let them set up a land of Do As You Please. But when a school stops listening to students, it loses its way. When we pay attention to students, it can throw off carefully sculpted lesson plans and create momentary confusion and even (gasp) lead to situations where we are the Absolute Rulers in our own classrooms. Tough noogies.
Listening to our students, listening to what they need and want, giving them the chance to grow into the people that they, through aspiration, inclination or accident, are going to be-- that's all Job One.
Our students are not here to serve us. They are not here to take tests for us, to make our jobs easy for us, to be the kind of compliant people we would find most convenient to work with. They are not obstacles to our success (regardless of what regulations and evaluations tell us). They are our purpose for being here.
The classroom was backwards. In that classroom, the students were there to meet the needs of the teacher, not the other way around.
This was almost twenty-five years ago, and there was no school reform agenda to blame it on. Unfortunately, we have always had classrooms, schools, even entire districts that get turned around backwards. We start with a list of things that we need the students to do for us, instead of an honest inquiry into what the students need us to do for them.
The newest ed reform wave did not create this issue, and it's not the first time we've faced it. Public schools in America have always struggled with a balance between what students need in order to become educated adults and the imperative to mold each child into a round peg to fit into society's round holes.
But the newest ed reform wave has done its best to hardwire backwards schooling into the system. The emphasis on testing and test scores means that schools and teachers need students to make the right numbers. Reformsters talk about personalizing or individualizing education, but what they mean is calibrating the one-size-fits-all program to get students to cough up the desired numbers. They will tell students what "success" means, and they will tell the student when he's met that goal; what he needs or wants is nothing more than an obstacle to be overcome in the process of getting him to produce the proper numbers.
I believe that some reformsters, some high stakes testing boosters, actually believe that their approach addresses the very issues I'm talking about. They are wrong. When you say to a teacher, "This kid better get an 85% on this test or you're in big trouble," the teacher is not going to be motivated to listen to the student or look at the student's needs and desires as anything other than an obstacle to getting that score out of that student. The testing mandate is a sure way of pushing that teacher to finally say, "Look! What you want and feel and need don't matter. Just shut up, sit down, and get these questions right!"
The testing mandate turns every student into the real-life equivalent of a videogame boss that the teacher must defeat in order to get a good score. The teacher need only understand the boss well enough to defeat it.
In some urban and charter schools, the backwards schooling extends to every aspect of the student. Not only do we need him to produce the right numbers, but we require him to behave "properly," to line up, to speak. These schools will tell him how to to dress, how to speak, how to sit, how to walk through the halls-- and there will be no excuses when he fails to produce what is demanded of him. And when he fails to produce, that failure is not seen as the school's failure to meet him where he is or adapt to who he is as a human being; instead, it will be seen as his failure to be the person the school demands. In fact, if he's from a particular neighborhood, his failure to meet the school's demands may be seen as defiance, a willful noon-compliance that means he must be stamped down harder, branded as a troublemaker, moved from the school track to the prison track.
When a school system tightens up, it results in the miraculous "discovery" of "defective" students. after all, if my state-approved teaching program is being properly implemented by the classroom content delivery specialist and Chris is still getting poor grades, then Chris must be defective. Have a specialist check Chris for learning disabilities. And if five-year-old Pat is won't sit still in the endurance-development exercises necessary to prepare for the Big Test, perhaps Pat had better be checked for ADHD so we can administer the proper drugs.
I am not advocating that we hand students the keys to the building and let them set up a land of Do As You Please. But when a school stops listening to students, it loses its way. When we pay attention to students, it can throw off carefully sculpted lesson plans and create momentary confusion and even (gasp) lead to situations where we are the Absolute Rulers in our own classrooms. Tough noogies.
Listening to our students, listening to what they need and want, giving them the chance to grow into the people that they, through aspiration, inclination or accident, are going to be-- that's all Job One.
Our students are not here to serve us. They are not here to take tests for us, to make our jobs easy for us, to be the kind of compliant people we would find most convenient to work with. They are not obstacles to our success (regardless of what regulations and evaluations tell us). They are our purpose for being here.
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