Last week the National Governor's Association (NGA) released their idea of what the new ESEA should look like. The document is only six pages long, but it has some remarkable features, and while the NGA may not ultimately carry a great deal of weight in this discussion, they certainly don't carry any less weight than Arne Duncan and the USED, and we've talked about their ideas. So fair is fair.
NGA, you may recall, is notable for being the copyright holders of the Common Core as well as being one of the groups that supposedly hired David Coleman, Jason Zimba, and some other gifted amateurs to punch up the nation's education system. So the first thing that we'll note is that the phrase "Common Core" does not appear anywhere in their proposal.
So what's the major upshot of this proposal from the folks who helped start the ball rolling on the federal take-over of fifty separate public education systems? The major upshot is this:
Give us back our schools.
Here are the more specific breakdowns of the proposal.
Governance and Educational Alignment
Governors and state legislatures believe that a student's success is determined by much more than time spent in elementary and high school. Students need a supportive, seamless progression from preschool through college to lifelong learning and successful employment.
So there's your fetus-to-fertilizer pipeline. The NGA loves it-- they just don't think it can be managed very well from DC. After all, he's called Big Brother, not Big Uncle or Big Second Cousin Once Removed on Your Mother's Side. Race to the Top was great for modernizing the approach to education, but "it is time to take the next step" by rewriting ESEA so that it "supports students in all phases of life." Yeah, that's not creepy and stalkery at all.
Does it seem like I'm over-reacting by thinking that this proposes to make the schools a cog in the worker supply chain? Well, here's a quote from their press release:
“The Elementary and Secondary Education Act will allow states to align
our needs through early education to higher education with the needs of
our innovative businesses, developing a stronger workforce development
pipeline, expanding opportunity for all of our people and ensuring that
students are prepared for success in all phases of life,” said New
Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan, vice chair of the committee.”
Specifically, the NGA recommends that ESEA gives state-level leaders the authority to align, leverage, and finance their way to greater efficiency. Give states the tools to lump pre- and post- secondary education into the mix, as well as workforce development; break down silos, and allow flexibility for "public-private partnership." So, loosen up the rules so we can outsource to whatever vendor suits us.
Accountability and Testing
NGA would like to move away from "label and punish" and get with a more supportive framework-- for each student. For accountability to work, "federal prescriptions must be replaced with a federal, state and local partnership that makes certain every child counts."
So keep the public reporting of progress, and keep disaggregating results. But dump the "rigid structure" of Annual Measurable Objectives and Adequate Yearly Progress and let the states come up with their own systems that ensure ambitious targets, use multiple measures, account for college and career readiness, check districts' annual progress, gets public input from all constituencies, and allows states to cut a deal with individual districts.
Also, the state's assessment system should be one that "prohibits the US Secretary of Education from influencing or dictating the state's development of goals under ESEA." So, memo from NGA to Arne Duncan: Suck it.
The states should also get to create their own intervention process that does not necessarily hold Title I funds hostage, allows the state to partner with a failing district, but requires the state to flat out intervene after things stay too bad too long. The Title I non-hostage clause would be enough all by itself to get the federal monkey off the states' back.
Also, states should be able to pick or substitute their own alternatives to any federally-required assessments, and they should be able to do it without seeking the permission of the Secretary of Education. So, again-- Arne, suck it.
High Quality Education for All Students
Governors and state legislators want students to succeed and believe that all can (at high levels). We still think the transparency and disaggregatiness of NCLB are just fine, thanks.
So NGA advocates ensuring a high-quality education for all by continuing testing and reporting results, which is kind of backwards, like saying we'll make sure you get a good meal by cleaning the plates afterwards. NGA also advocates allowing some fancy footwork with aggregating, and getting rid of "cumbersome" government paperwork.
Also (I don't know why this is hiding here), they want you to know that "states" include US territories and outside regions. So, congratulations Kwajalein-- you get a piece of this, too.
NGA also recommends that students with disabilities not be left out of this, as well as English language learners. As with the rest of the high-quality delivery system, the states want flexibility to sort things out.
School Improvement
States have been researching ways to "lift up" failing schools like crazy and even trying ways to keep those that are circling the drain from failing. The feds should help us fund scaling up these various techniques (I presume that NGA meant to add "in case we ever find one that actually works, other than obvious things like getting money and resources to schools in trouble"). "The current limited federal menu of options for school improvement" keeps us from doing what we think we'd rather.
However, the feds should still send money. We may want to change other parts of this, but that sending money part? We would like to keep doing that. Then we will spend the money on turnaround specialists or state partnerships with the district or a menu of strategies. Also, we'd like to let successful districts export their ideas to unsuccessful ones (presumably NGA imagines strategies other than "build your school in a wealthy neighborhood" coming to light).
Districts might also use that funding to recruit some awesome high-quality school leaders and then gift them with flexible resources (aka folding money).
Schools would have three years to turn things around, unless they "partnered" with the state, in which case the time frame is open to negotiation. The state will figure out which data markers will determine success.
Empowering Teachers and School Leaders
Teachers and school leaders and the state should be co-developers of an evaluation system and professional development. Districts should be able to use federal money to build partnerships with postsecondary partners (because we all teach in districts right next to colleges).
The feds should scrap their definition of a highly qualified teacher and let the states go back to determining that for themselves. The evaluation system will likewise be a state thing that would give "meaningful weight" to "multiple-measures of teacher and principal performance" (I do not know what the hyphen is doing in there) as well as evidence of student learning and "contributing factors" to student growth. The state, working with educators at all levels, would decide what to do with evaluation results.
Also, "the Secretary may not dictate or require any methodology as part of a state's teacher and school leader evaluation system." So, a third time, NGA says suck it, Arne.
NGA says fine on retaining the requirement to distribute teachers equitably across the state (an requirement that nobody has ever even pretended to implement) but they would like the freedom to spend the money for that on, well, pretty much anything. "Efforts" to increase number of great teachers in a school-- heck, I can fob anything of as an "effort" to do anything.
State and Local Flexibility
States and schools must be given increased flexibility to meet the individual needs of students and prepare them to compete in a highly-skilled workforce.
Well, that certainly lowers the bar for what we want from an educated public, doesn't it. Just get 'em ready for a job. If their future employers are happy, that's all we need? The entire US public education system isn't here to serve students or parents or taxpayers-- it's here to serve businesses?
This part of the proposal is about flexibility in how states have to deal with the feds.
For instance, we spend a third of a page talking about federal approval of the state plan request. The Secretary must have a team to review these plans. The Secretary may not add academic requirements. The Secretary get the plan reviewed and back in sixty days or it is automatically approved. And the Secretary cannot disapprove a plan unless he can "provide substantive, research-based evidence that the plan will negatively affect children's education."
And in the event that we're still doing waivers, the Secretary is again given a list of restrictions, finishing with being forbidden to deny a waiver "for conditions outside the scope of the waiver request," nor may he add additional requirements not covered in ESEA. So in other words, under NGA's version of the law, the current waiver requirements that Arne has saddled everyone with would be illegal (or, if you like, more clearly illegal than they already are).
So, once more, and with gusto, Arne is cordially invited to suck it.
Two Thoughts
Two things occur to me reading this document (well, three, if you count how very much the governors want Arne to get bent).
One is that the governors don't seem to have a great deal of faith in the authority of the state. It seems that if they were really feeling their oats, they would just do some of the things on this list instead of asking if the feds might allow them a small cup of rights. "Please, sir, may I have some more," hardly seems like the stance for a full-scale American governor.
Second, the NGA seems surprised to be here, as if they can't imagine how education ever got in such a heavily-federalized mess. They've tried selling this "Who, us?" narrative before, but it was the governors who laid out what would be the framework of Race to the Top, and they did it back in 2008, before Duncan and Obama had made their unsuccessful attempt to get ESEA rewritten, before Race to the Top was devised as an end run around it. If the governor's don't like the current reformy scenery, well, we've arrived exactly where they wanted to take us. A piece of my heart will go out to any US Congress member who calls the governors on that.
The best final word on the NGA Christmas list comes from Anne Gassel at Missouri Education Watchdog, so I'll let her wrap this up by putting this newest reformy proposal in its proper context:
Outcome Based Education, School To Work, Goals 2000, NCLB are all signs
that the federal government is incapable of drafting workable or
effective laws regarding education. Reform at this level will not work.
Such laws, by the very fact that they require central control (and
accountability), are destined not to work for education and need to be
eliminated. Unfortunately our Governors don’t recognize that they
already have all the authority they need to do what they want and
instead are asking for permission, thereby granting control to the feds.
This is not leadership Governors. This is middle management at best.
Monday, February 16, 2015
Why Are Suburban Moms Agitated
Laura McKenna is a former poli-sci professor, pretty entertaining blogger and suburban mother of a child with special needs. She is, by her own admission, not an expert on curriculum, but she also did PhD work on education policy and vouchery stuff. She claims to have done her reading up on the subject, but that expertise is not on display in her article last week for the Atlantic, "Suburbia and Its Common Core Conspiracy Theories."
McKenna gets a lot wrong. A lot. But she's in a mainstream magazine, and so we need to pay attention because this is part of the narrative that's Out There. Let's look at the story as McKenna tells it.
Who doesn't love the Core?
Common Core standards are, "of course, a set of broad, universal academic goals in math and English-language arts for public school children of all ages." They're connected to tests which are scaring everyone and giving rise to all sorts of pushback. So far, so good.
McKenna uses the old template for characterizing CCSS opponents-- they're mostly Tea Party crazies. She dismisses the idea that the Core initiative represents federal overreach, and she collects a list of the most indefensible foolishness with which the Core has been-- it will turn kids gay, Muslim, communist and anti-American. So you know we can ignore those folks. CCSS is also opposed by politicians who are afraid that kids in their district will stack up unfavorably against others. She suggests they have reason to worry.
But there are also suburban moms. She happens to be one, and she thinks Arne Duncan may have been onto something when he made his infamous White Suburban Moms comment. Those moms are angry. And they're angry because they don't know what the heck they're talking about. So McKenna is here to address their many and varied misconceptions caused by all those other crazed and/or self-serving Core opponents mentioned previously.
She ticks off the many foolish misconceptions that these ladies post, email, and agitate about, in the process revealing that maybe she's a little behind on her recent reading on the subject. It is an unfortunate fact of life in the debate for public education that there are some cray-cray people opposed to CCSS for some reality-impaired reasons. It would be useful not to lump them in with every other argument against the Core.
Common Core is ruining childhood and eliminating recess. Well, yes. Teachers "drill irrelevant facts into kids' heads in order to game the testing results." Well, no. Test prep is more insidious than that-- teachers now teach a kind of reading and writing that is only useful for test-taking, and we spend time teaching students how to outwit the gotcha questions that new tests come loaded with.
"And since the new exams will be taken on computers, hackers might even reveal the test results to colleges." Are you kidding, Ms. McKenna? Hackers will not be required-- the dream here is a cradle to career pipeline in which a mountain of data is collected for each child, to be lovingly curated and made available (for a price) to government agencies and employers. This is not conspiracy-style reading-between-the-spaces-between-the-lines. Just google cradle to career pipelines and meet all the agencies and groups that are already working on it. Go read about Pearson's plans for Big Data, or watch a Knewton exec explain how the dream is to be able to tell a child what to eat for breakfast on test day.
Nothing to worry about! Just calm down!
While maybe there's some truth in the concerns, the protests have become "irrational, hysterical" (oh, that word). McKenna is concerned that all these fears have led to real action (which is an artful construction-- can you fill in this blank? "_______ fears have led to real actions." McKenna does an careful job throughout the article of calling the moms foolish and wrong without saying it directly).
But these folks are getting worked up for nothing:
I’m not an expert on curriculum, so I can’t tell you whether or not this particular system is way better than other programs. I trust the experts on this one. And, as I also said, the experts came from diverse political groups and from all areas of education.
McKenna gets a lot wrong. A lot. But she's in a mainstream magazine, and so we need to pay attention because this is part of the narrative that's Out There. Let's look at the story as McKenna tells it.
Who doesn't love the Core?
Common Core standards are, "of course, a set of broad, universal academic goals in math and English-language arts for public school children of all ages." They're connected to tests which are scaring everyone and giving rise to all sorts of pushback. So far, so good.
McKenna uses the old template for characterizing CCSS opponents-- they're mostly Tea Party crazies. She dismisses the idea that the Core initiative represents federal overreach, and she collects a list of the most indefensible foolishness with which the Core has been-- it will turn kids gay, Muslim, communist and anti-American. So you know we can ignore those folks. CCSS is also opposed by politicians who are afraid that kids in their district will stack up unfavorably against others. She suggests they have reason to worry.
But there are also suburban moms. She happens to be one, and she thinks Arne Duncan may have been onto something when he made his infamous White Suburban Moms comment. Those moms are angry. And they're angry because they don't know what the heck they're talking about. So McKenna is here to address their many and varied misconceptions caused by all those other crazed and/or self-serving Core opponents mentioned previously.
She ticks off the many foolish misconceptions that these ladies post, email, and agitate about, in the process revealing that maybe she's a little behind on her recent reading on the subject. It is an unfortunate fact of life in the debate for public education that there are some cray-cray people opposed to CCSS for some reality-impaired reasons. It would be useful not to lump them in with every other argument against the Core.
Common Core is ruining childhood and eliminating recess. Well, yes. Teachers "drill irrelevant facts into kids' heads in order to game the testing results." Well, no. Test prep is more insidious than that-- teachers now teach a kind of reading and writing that is only useful for test-taking, and we spend time teaching students how to outwit the gotcha questions that new tests come loaded with.
"And since the new exams will be taken on computers, hackers might even reveal the test results to colleges." Are you kidding, Ms. McKenna? Hackers will not be required-- the dream here is a cradle to career pipeline in which a mountain of data is collected for each child, to be lovingly curated and made available (for a price) to government agencies and employers. This is not conspiracy-style reading-between-the-spaces-between-the-lines. Just google cradle to career pipelines and meet all the agencies and groups that are already working on it. Go read about Pearson's plans for Big Data, or watch a Knewton exec explain how the dream is to be able to tell a child what to eat for breakfast on test day.
Nothing to worry about! Just calm down!
While maybe there's some truth in the concerns, the protests have become "irrational, hysterical" (oh, that word). McKenna is concerned that all these fears have led to real action (which is an artful construction-- can you fill in this blank? "_______ fears have led to real actions." McKenna does an careful job throughout the article of calling the moms foolish and wrong without saying it directly).
But these folks are getting worked up for nothing:
The reality of the Common Core model is much
more boring. America’s schools could be better, no doubt. They could be
more equal. They could be more effective in preparing kids for the new,
global economy and the ever-growing rigors of higher education. But
there is no evidence that one set of standards, that a single
standardized test, will alter the basic school experience of children.
They will probably still have to do book reports on Abraham Lincoln and To Kill a Mockingbird.
They almost certainly will still have time to joke around on the
playground with their buddies. They will be evaluated by teachers’ exams
and rubrics and probably won’t be penalized by the Common Core tests.
Worrying about this new batch of tests is silly. Students already take lots of standardized tests, and they still spend more time playing Super Mario. So why are suburban moms and dads so concerned about them? I can't speak for New Jersey (where McKenna is located) but I'm pretty sure that in PA part of the concern is that the Big Standardized Test will soon become a graduation requirement. And it's a lousy test. So I'm thinking that could be a factor.
So why are the suburbs uproarified?
But her answer, ultimately, is that it's a matter of parental protectiveness plus parental misinformation, stoked up by "click-bait" articles, and she provides some examples without discussing whether or not those titles ("Parents Opting Kids Out of Common Core Face Threats From Schools," or "Common Core Test Fail Kids In New York Again. Here’s How," or "5 Reasons the Common Core Is Ruining Childhood.") lead to articles that include facts. (And as click-bait these seem pretty tame to me-- not a single "and what happens next will astound you" or a Kardashian in the bunch).
McKenna makes a comparison to anti-vaxxer panic, but she skips the critical step in that comparison. Yes, the motivations may be similar-- but what about the facts behind them? That would be the way to make this point, and McKenna doesn't.
McKenna next notes the teacher role in all this, and gets it wrong again. She says teachers unions were initially "very supportive," which is technically correct-- leadership of NEA and AFT threw their support behind the Core (and to date have not yet really unthrown it), and they have taken increasing amounts of grief from actual teachers because of it. She also says that teachers helped shape the goals of Common Core, and that piece of cheese is years old at this point. I am not sure where McKenna found a source that still tries to sell that story.
She indicates that teacher support waned as test results were tied to punishments. Teacher evaluations are now tied to test results per federal mandate. School evaluations have been tied to test results per federal mandate for over a decade, and now those evaluations are being used as justification for closing schools.
How do we calm these mothers down?
Without political and education leaders providing valid, fact-based justifications for the new testing system and a clear, jargon-free explanation of new teaching strategies, suburban parents are easily influenced by others.
Here's part of the problem. No such valid fact-based justifications exist. All that exists is a nation of schools cutting programs and losing funding and scrambling to keep test scores up over all else, for tests that have not been proven to indicate anything at all.
McKenna wants to get simple facts out there, like "the Common Core does not prescribe certain textbooks." But that's not so simple. Depending on your state and district, some text or "program" with Common Core approval will be enforced. It's like Henry Ford's "you can have a Model T in any color you like, as long as it's black." And since there are teaching materials out there available from the exact same company that produced the test, what are the odds that well-off districts will feel compelled to buy them. Your spouse is technically free to sleep with anyone else at all, but it might lead to some serious marital problems. Technically "any textbooks you want" is a choice, just like "any bedmate you want." But practically speaking, it is not a choice at all.
McKenna notes that suburban schools generally do fine on these test thing, and that seems like a point she might have pursued, thereby noting that the best predictor of standardized test results is socio-economic class and thereby questioning whether the test is a valid measure or a biased crapshoot, but no, she seems content with "Bad things like test failures don't happen to us in the suburbs, so let's just simmer down and forget about it." When the test results are published (because, they've all been super secret so far??), suburban moms will see that all is as it has always been, and they'll calm down.
Petrilli offers perspective and monkeys
Mike Petrilli at the Fordham also took a look at this article, and while he gives the "any books you want" point an uncritically supportive pass, he sees something else.
Suburban moms, he says, may contain some of the expressionist parents. These are what we might call the artsy-fartsy types (the illustration is, I kid you not, a pair of hippie monkeys, playing sitar and flute and wearing a headband and tie-dye). Expressionist parents may just be focused on artsy stuff and not academics and test results and so want their children not to be stamped into conformity.
That's okay, says Petrilli. "One size fits most." And within broad parameters, I'd be inclined to agree with him. But we aren't looking at a system that's set up for most kids. We're looking at a system that is supposed to cover all students, every last one (well, except for the wealthy kids that go to un-core-ified private schools). We're looking at a system that doesn't see students who are "different." It sees students who are "deficient" or "just plain wrong" or, in some cases "not going to graduate" and "on the path to fail at life." Until we fix that feature, talking about One Size Fits Most is not a sufficient defense.
But that's the response to suburban moms. Calm down, honey. You're getting all hysterical over nothing. You'll see. Everything will just be like it's always been, and this won't be any big deal. And if that's really the defense of Common Core, then why are we bothering? You can't have it both ways. Either Common Core (and the testing that is irreversibly welded to it) are going to shake things up and rock the educational world with systemic changes that will unearth and root out all sort of issues-- in which case parents are correct to be concerned about how their children may get caught in the destruction-- or it's just business as usual, keep moving, nothing to see here, in which case it's the most expensive nothing we've ever launched. It can't be both.
McKenna closes her blog discussion of this article with these words
I’m not an expert on curriculum, so I can’t tell you whether or not this particular system is way better than other programs. I trust the experts on this one. And, as I also said, the experts came from diverse political groups and from all areas of education.
Well, no. They didn't. The "experts" came from the industry leaders who most stood to profit from a systemic overhaul of education, and they have since been joined by more "experts" who hope to profit from privatizing every aspect of public education.
So perhaps suburban moms are responding to a growing sense that their previous bundle of joy is being viewed and treated as a piece of meat, a commodity to be bought and sold and squeezed for the profit of corporations or the survival of the school. Perhaps suburban moms are sensing that schools no longer devote as much time and attention to protecting the children because too much of the school's energy goes into protecting itself.
McKenna says she's looked at the issue. I suggest she go back and look some more, and not start with the assumption that her fellow moms are just hysterical.
Katrina Is Headed for Atlanta
Over the weekend, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran an advertisement for article about New Orleans charterfied school district, because the Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia would like to get rid of his own public school system. He's just not fortunate enough to have a major hurricane tear up his state. But don't worry, Georgians-- you, too, can have your own disaster area.
The article, among other things, shows that charter marketing is improving. For instance, they've learned that they need to talk more about being connected to the community and less about escaping the tyranny of zip codes. This helps them conceal that charter schools are not neighborhood schools, disconnected from any particular community (if you want to read a scholarly look at this in New Orleans, here's Brian Beabout's "Reconciling Student Outcomes and Community Self-Reliance in Modern School Reform Contexts.") Sarrio says that unnamed Louisiana educators recommend making the community part of the decisions, which seems to conflict with this NPR coverage of the district entitled "The End of Neighborhood Schools."
But the basic sales pitch is the same as always. Talking about the Arthur Ashe charter, Jaime Sarrio writes:
Advocates of the model say Ashe and schools like it show what’s possible when elected school boards, unions and poorly run school systems get out of the way and let school leaders decide how to educate students.
How exactly does one square getting rid of locally elected school boards with being connected to your community? "We are happy to work with members of the community just so long as they never get to make any decisions"? It's that damned democracy-- it so cramps a "school leader's" style.
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal wants voters to create a state-run district to take over struggling schools.
This sort of thing must give hard-core conservatives a fit. Replace schools with a state-run system?! Who runs the current system? Keebler elves? But of course, Deal means to cut local control out of the loop, so that state-level bureaucrats can apply their higher levels of wisdom, because local school boards are all tied up in elections and regulations and such. Also, it's easier for charter operators to have one stop shopping.
The "freedom from rules" argument is an old one for charters, and after all these years it still makes zero sense. The government has tied public schools' hands with all these terrible rules, so we need new schools, say the legislators who tied schools' hands in the first place. Couldn't we just, I don't know, untie some hands? This is like locking a bunch of people in a room, throwing a molotov cocktail in there with them, then standing outside the door with the keys and saying, "Well, I guess we have to build another set of doors." Use the damn keys (and stop throwing molotov cocktails)!
Sarrio's article includes a short history of NOLA's Recovery School District. I've read a lot about the district; this history seems like the version you would get only by reading the press releases of the charter boosters. Here's state board member and charter cheerleader Leslie Jacobs:
“The philosophy behind the recovery school district is very simple: Take the same kids, the same building, the same amount of money, give it to someone else to operate to prove we can do better,” Jacobs said. They wanted to make “the risk of doing nothing in the face of failure more painful than the risk of trying something that doesn’t work.”
Let's be honest-- we're talking about sub-contracting a government function to a money-making entity. And unless I missed something, this "same building, same kids" stuff is high grade baloney.
Sarrio's article includes the same old charter dog whistles:
“You have to have people who believe all kids can learn regardless of where they come from, and we believe that,” said Erin Hames, education policy advisor for Gov. Nathan Deal.
Right. Because teachers don't believe any such thing. If you want people who really believe in the educational promise of children, you don't want adults who have dedicated their professional lives to teaching-- you want businessmen and bureaucrats.
Sarrio visits a KIPP school and takes a hard-hitting guided tour and discovers that-- surprise-- KIPP school is awesome! Computers! And most importantly, autonomy-- KIPP school leaders can do whatever the hell they want! Because democracy is a drag, and accountability is for lesser operations tied to that foolish democracy model.
The article also talks to "consultant" Paul Pastorek, former LA state superintendent now cashing in as an "expert" in how to charterize a school system. He indicates that such a system isn't a good fit for just any state (only the special ones, I guess). He notes that Georgia has the advantage of a "strong accountability system," which in privatization-speak means "good system for labeling schools failures so that they can be targeted for takeover."
Unnamed Louisiana school leader types also note that Georgia would need to grow itself some more school leaders, which in charter-speak usually seems to mean "people who are prepared to operate like CEOs rather than professional educators." I recommend a system like the one being launched in Ohio, which will give candidates one year of interning resulting in an MBA and a principal's certificate.
Did Sarrio discover anything in New Orleans that would suggest that the charterization was anything less than awesome. Well, she did note that some folks claimed that charters were " unevenly expelling or threatening to expel problem students in an attempt to inflate test scores." But we can relax, because "the district has made changes to address these concerns." Oh, and that lawsuit brought by parents of students with disabilities was totally settled, so that's okay now.
She did get a quote from parent advocate Karen Harper Royal suggesting that there are better ways to improve "as opposed to this game we’re playing with school roulette, closing schools and opening schools." Which is just confusing because I thought charters were totes community schools now.
Sarrio also talked to Erika McConduit-Diggs, president of the Urban League of Greater New Orleans, who "said the speed of the changes and the the dismissal of almost 7,000 Orleans Parish teachers, which courts later ruled unlawful, left a scar on the community that hasn’t healed."
The overall tone, however, is to suggest that the RSD is a success. Sarrio and her sources are careful not to call it a miracle, but settle for the impression that it's a modest success that is ever-so-much-better than what it replaced, and surely it will be a great idea for Georgia. I would recommend that before the next time she writes about New Orleans, Sarrio read through the works of Mercedes Schneider, Crazy Crawfish and Geauxteacher, just for starters.
Sarrio has missed a lot. A lot. In fact, if you are only going to read one other account of what's going on in NOLA, I recommend that NPR article mentioned above. In that article you can read about just how cut off these schools are from any community. You can read about the horrific process of trying to get your child into a school (and the hope that you won't be putting your child on a bus at 6 AM for a hour-plus ride). You can read about Douglass Harris and Beth Sondel and their findings that what tiny test improvements shown by RSD are the result of a narrowing of curriculum, a growing skill in teaching to the test. You can read about the hyper-repressive test-prep atmosphere of a KIPP school. You can read about how counseling out students helps grow test scores. You can read about the system's dependence on outside money to support its higher-than-state-average per pupil spending.
And this is NPR, which has not proven to be particularly loyal to the traditional public school model. And yet it seems clear that Leslie Jacobs characterization of the NOLA plan given a close-to-lede spot in Sarrio's article-- Take the same kids, the same building, the same amount of money, give it to someone else to operate to prove we can do better-- is incorrect on all counts. They sorted the kids, closed the buildings, and spent more money to hire charter operators who have not, as yet, shown any great measure of success.
The business interests who want to take a big bite of Georgia peach did a nice job with this coverage, but the voters, taxpayers, parents, children, and community members of Georgia deserve a better, clearer, more accurate look at the public education disaster headed their way.
The article, among other things, shows that charter marketing is improving. For instance, they've learned that they need to talk more about being connected to the community and less about escaping the tyranny of zip codes. This helps them conceal that charter schools are not neighborhood schools, disconnected from any particular community (if you want to read a scholarly look at this in New Orleans, here's Brian Beabout's "Reconciling Student Outcomes and Community Self-Reliance in Modern School Reform Contexts.") Sarrio says that unnamed Louisiana educators recommend making the community part of the decisions, which seems to conflict with this NPR coverage of the district entitled "The End of Neighborhood Schools."
But the basic sales pitch is the same as always. Talking about the Arthur Ashe charter, Jaime Sarrio writes:
Advocates of the model say Ashe and schools like it show what’s possible when elected school boards, unions and poorly run school systems get out of the way and let school leaders decide how to educate students.
How exactly does one square getting rid of locally elected school boards with being connected to your community? "We are happy to work with members of the community just so long as they never get to make any decisions"? It's that damned democracy-- it so cramps a "school leader's" style.
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal wants voters to create a state-run district to take over struggling schools.
This sort of thing must give hard-core conservatives a fit. Replace schools with a state-run system?! Who runs the current system? Keebler elves? But of course, Deal means to cut local control out of the loop, so that state-level bureaucrats can apply their higher levels of wisdom, because local school boards are all tied up in elections and regulations and such. Also, it's easier for charter operators to have one stop shopping.
The "freedom from rules" argument is an old one for charters, and after all these years it still makes zero sense. The government has tied public schools' hands with all these terrible rules, so we need new schools, say the legislators who tied schools' hands in the first place. Couldn't we just, I don't know, untie some hands? This is like locking a bunch of people in a room, throwing a molotov cocktail in there with them, then standing outside the door with the keys and saying, "Well, I guess we have to build another set of doors." Use the damn keys (and stop throwing molotov cocktails)!
Sarrio's article includes a short history of NOLA's Recovery School District. I've read a lot about the district; this history seems like the version you would get only by reading the press releases of the charter boosters. Here's state board member and charter cheerleader Leslie Jacobs:
“The philosophy behind the recovery school district is very simple: Take the same kids, the same building, the same amount of money, give it to someone else to operate to prove we can do better,” Jacobs said. They wanted to make “the risk of doing nothing in the face of failure more painful than the risk of trying something that doesn’t work.”
Let's be honest-- we're talking about sub-contracting a government function to a money-making entity. And unless I missed something, this "same building, same kids" stuff is high grade baloney.
Sarrio's article includes the same old charter dog whistles:
“You have to have people who believe all kids can learn regardless of where they come from, and we believe that,” said Erin Hames, education policy advisor for Gov. Nathan Deal.
Right. Because teachers don't believe any such thing. If you want people who really believe in the educational promise of children, you don't want adults who have dedicated their professional lives to teaching-- you want businessmen and bureaucrats.
Sarrio visits a KIPP school and takes a hard-hitting guided tour and discovers that-- surprise-- KIPP school is awesome! Computers! And most importantly, autonomy-- KIPP school leaders can do whatever the hell they want! Because democracy is a drag, and accountability is for lesser operations tied to that foolish democracy model.
The article also talks to "consultant" Paul Pastorek, former LA state superintendent now cashing in as an "expert" in how to charterize a school system. He indicates that such a system isn't a good fit for just any state (only the special ones, I guess). He notes that Georgia has the advantage of a "strong accountability system," which in privatization-speak means "good system for labeling schools failures so that they can be targeted for takeover."
Unnamed Louisiana school leader types also note that Georgia would need to grow itself some more school leaders, which in charter-speak usually seems to mean "people who are prepared to operate like CEOs rather than professional educators." I recommend a system like the one being launched in Ohio, which will give candidates one year of interning resulting in an MBA and a principal's certificate.
Did Sarrio discover anything in New Orleans that would suggest that the charterization was anything less than awesome. Well, she did note that some folks claimed that charters were " unevenly expelling or threatening to expel problem students in an attempt to inflate test scores." But we can relax, because "the district has made changes to address these concerns." Oh, and that lawsuit brought by parents of students with disabilities was totally settled, so that's okay now.
She did get a quote from parent advocate Karen Harper Royal suggesting that there are better ways to improve "as opposed to this game we’re playing with school roulette, closing schools and opening schools." Which is just confusing because I thought charters were totes community schools now.
Sarrio also talked to Erika McConduit-Diggs, president of the Urban League of Greater New Orleans, who "said the speed of the changes and the the dismissal of almost 7,000 Orleans Parish teachers, which courts later ruled unlawful, left a scar on the community that hasn’t healed."
The overall tone, however, is to suggest that the RSD is a success. Sarrio and her sources are careful not to call it a miracle, but settle for the impression that it's a modest success that is ever-so-much-better than what it replaced, and surely it will be a great idea for Georgia. I would recommend that before the next time she writes about New Orleans, Sarrio read through the works of Mercedes Schneider, Crazy Crawfish and Geauxteacher, just for starters.
Sarrio has missed a lot. A lot. In fact, if you are only going to read one other account of what's going on in NOLA, I recommend that NPR article mentioned above. In that article you can read about just how cut off these schools are from any community. You can read about the horrific process of trying to get your child into a school (and the hope that you won't be putting your child on a bus at 6 AM for a hour-plus ride). You can read about Douglass Harris and Beth Sondel and their findings that what tiny test improvements shown by RSD are the result of a narrowing of curriculum, a growing skill in teaching to the test. You can read about the hyper-repressive test-prep atmosphere of a KIPP school. You can read about how counseling out students helps grow test scores. You can read about the system's dependence on outside money to support its higher-than-state-average per pupil spending.
And this is NPR, which has not proven to be particularly loyal to the traditional public school model. And yet it seems clear that Leslie Jacobs characterization of the NOLA plan given a close-to-lede spot in Sarrio's article-- Take the same kids, the same building, the same amount of money, give it to someone else to operate to prove we can do better-- is incorrect on all counts. They sorted the kids, closed the buildings, and spent more money to hire charter operators who have not, as yet, shown any great measure of success.
The business interests who want to take a big bite of Georgia peach did a nice job with this coverage, but the voters, taxpayers, parents, children, and community members of Georgia deserve a better, clearer, more accurate look at the public education disaster headed their way.
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Not-So-Bright Future for Ohio
In the Mocking Education Reformsters business, it is hard to stay ahead of the curve. I thought I was being pretty sassy last summer when I concocted a "Memo to Three Year Old Slackers" in which I suggested that it was time for toddlers to get off their butts and start the serious business of Pre-Pre-K, or when I suggested that since we were checking to see if five-year-olds were ready for college, we might as well have them fill out applications. but my mockery has been left in the dust by reality. Sometimes real live reformsters can create programs far dumber than anything we could imagine.
With that in mind, let me introduce you to BRIGHT.
BRIGHT (previously "New Leaders for Ohio Schools")is "a bold effort to recruit, train and place committed leaders to head high-poverty public schools" across Ohio. It's a partnership between the Ohio Department of Education, the Ohio Business Roundtable, and the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University. Oversight of the program is proudly provided by a board including Ohio's senate and house leaders, the Ohio state superintendent, and Ohio's great man-child of a governor. Which is only right, because it would take more than just one large organization to come up with a plan this dumb.
The website credits the 2012 report "Failure Is not an Option" from Public Agenda. This report was reviewed by Mark Paige for the National Education Policy Center, and I'm not going to work through that whole review for you. The basic executive summary of the Public Agenda paper is this: if you have a really super-duper principal with awesometastic programs in place, you can totally fix poor kids and their poor school without having to actually spend money doing it. The basic summary of the NEPC review is... well, they gave it one of their coveted Bunkum Awards. Specifically, the "Do You Believe in Miracles" award. Will you be surprised if I tell you Public Agenda's funders include the Joyce Fundation, the Broad Foundation, and Bill and Melinda Gates?
So that little piece of unicorn farming is the basis for this shiny new program. So how does BRIGHT work?
Indeed the landscape in Ohio and across the country is replete with examples, going back twenty years, of "traditional" leadership training programs – some have worked; most have not. Recent pension reforms enacted by the Ohio General Assembly are triggering the retirements of scores of school administrators across Ohio, creating a unique opportunity for Ohio to attract the best and the brightest as school principals.
Yes, all our traditional training methods suck (but we have no ideas about how to fix them, or what is wrong, really). But we have a great opportunity because our stupid reformster ideas in Ohio are driving our school leaders right out of the profession. This is totally not a sign that our reformy ideas are dopey failures; all those departing leaders just don't get how awesome we are.
Who should be signing up to work the miracles? Well, the inaugural class will be selected from "diverse professions." If you've got a bachelor's degree and any sort of leadership experience, step right up. This job is tough but (and, yes, I am quoting here) it's "the toughest job you'll ever love." So, this is just like Peace Corps work, I guess. I have had friends and former students serve with the Peace Corps, so I'm a bit torn about who's being insulted by this appropriation of the old slogan, but at the very least this does not speak well of a bold, innovative new program that somehow couldn't come up with original ad copy.
How will it work? Well, this first group will be placed in athird world country Ohio public school for a twelve-month internship, "working and learning under the mentorship of an accomplished school principal and an executive-level business leader." Why business leader? Because the program isn't just about fast-tracking your way to a principalship, but simultaneously earning an MBA!!
Seriously. BRIGHT's own copy calls principalling a 24/7 life, but apparently somewhere between the 24 and the 7 there's room to do coursework (sixteen of them, in four modules) for the Fisher School's program, which requires three days on campus a month.
What cool things will you do while you're learning how to principal and becoming a certified Master of the Universe? Well, there will be "intensive personal assessment and development experiences such as team-building exercises; 360 feedback surveys; site visits to high-poverty, high-minority, high achieving schools across the country; and learnings from your assigned master principal and outside business mentor – all focused on reinforcing the leadership competencies to be instilled in all BRIGHT Fellows." I am particularly excited about the learnings. I think one of the best things about my teaching job is the many learnings I give to my students. But still-- the chance to actually visit a high-poverty school, all full of minority students! Doesn't that sound ecxiting?
Oh, but what are these leadership competencies of which you speak?
That particular list is hosted on the Ohio Business Roundtable site, which makes sense considering it includes things like Change Leadership and Drive for Results. In fairness, it also includes Caring for Children. I'm intrigued by the Instructional Leadership item, which is explained as "Is able to recognize and coach teachers in constructive efforts to improve teaching effectiveness." First, I do hope that a principal will be able to recognize teachers when he sees them. Second, I'm wondering how this super principal will be able to provide instructional coaching when he has never done a day of teaching in his life, nor taken an education course, either. I think I should drop by the Business Roundtable and offer to tell them how to do their jobs, too.
BRIGHT has just hired a president, Dr. Thomas G. Maridada, formerly a Michigan Superintendent of the Year and more recently working for the Children's Defense Fund. BRIGHT also has several partners including the Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus school systems, as well as New Leaders and (you knew this was coming) TFA.
When all is said and done, our insta-principal will emerge with a fast-tracked certificate and a shiny MBA. He will owe the state of Ohio two years of work as a principal-- it is not entirely clear whether he will have to find his own job or if he will be placed. The state prefers that the insta-principal go to work at a high-poverty school, but it appears that any Ohio public school will meet the requirements.
So, to recap-- we're going to take somebody with a bachelors degree and no experience, let them intern at a school for a year while simultaneously doing grad school work, and at the end of the year, he will go be a principal at some troubled school, where his awesome leadership skills and great MBA-ness will allow him to turn every student into a success without having to spend more money.
I suppose this was inevitable. TFA was providing us with insta-teachers and the Broad Foundation has been cranking out insta-superintendents. There was a real market niche for people to quickly become principals without having to mess around with all that actual experience or training (or actually committing themselves to principalling as their lifetime career). After all, who better to supervise undertrained, inexperienced TFA temps than an undertrained, inexperienced pretend principal. Ohio has stepped into the gap to fill that need.
The one mystery I was not able to solve-- BRIGHT certainly looks like an acronym, but I can't discover what it stands for. Big Reformy Initiative for Getting Highplaced Temps? Business Revenue Interests Getting Hard on Teachers? Whatever it is, I'm sure it will be a great stepping stone for some future business whiz, and a disaster for some poor school.
With that in mind, let me introduce you to BRIGHT.
BRIGHT (previously "New Leaders for Ohio Schools")is "a bold effort to recruit, train and place committed leaders to head high-poverty public schools" across Ohio. It's a partnership between the Ohio Department of Education, the Ohio Business Roundtable, and the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University. Oversight of the program is proudly provided by a board including Ohio's senate and house leaders, the Ohio state superintendent, and Ohio's great man-child of a governor. Which is only right, because it would take more than just one large organization to come up with a plan this dumb.
The website credits the 2012 report "Failure Is not an Option" from Public Agenda. This report was reviewed by Mark Paige for the National Education Policy Center, and I'm not going to work through that whole review for you. The basic executive summary of the Public Agenda paper is this: if you have a really super-duper principal with awesometastic programs in place, you can totally fix poor kids and their poor school without having to actually spend money doing it. The basic summary of the NEPC review is... well, they gave it one of their coveted Bunkum Awards. Specifically, the "Do You Believe in Miracles" award. Will you be surprised if I tell you Public Agenda's funders include the Joyce Fundation, the Broad Foundation, and Bill and Melinda Gates?
So that little piece of unicorn farming is the basis for this shiny new program. So how does BRIGHT work?
Indeed the landscape in Ohio and across the country is replete with examples, going back twenty years, of "traditional" leadership training programs – some have worked; most have not. Recent pension reforms enacted by the Ohio General Assembly are triggering the retirements of scores of school administrators across Ohio, creating a unique opportunity for Ohio to attract the best and the brightest as school principals.
Yes, all our traditional training methods suck (but we have no ideas about how to fix them, or what is wrong, really). But we have a great opportunity because our stupid reformster ideas in Ohio are driving our school leaders right out of the profession. This is totally not a sign that our reformy ideas are dopey failures; all those departing leaders just don't get how awesome we are.
Who should be signing up to work the miracles? Well, the inaugural class will be selected from "diverse professions." If you've got a bachelor's degree and any sort of leadership experience, step right up. This job is tough but (and, yes, I am quoting here) it's "the toughest job you'll ever love." So, this is just like Peace Corps work, I guess. I have had friends and former students serve with the Peace Corps, so I'm a bit torn about who's being insulted by this appropriation of the old slogan, but at the very least this does not speak well of a bold, innovative new program that somehow couldn't come up with original ad copy.
How will it work? Well, this first group will be placed in a
Seriously. BRIGHT's own copy calls principalling a 24/7 life, but apparently somewhere between the 24 and the 7 there's room to do coursework (sixteen of them, in four modules) for the Fisher School's program, which requires three days on campus a month.
What cool things will you do while you're learning how to principal and becoming a certified Master of the Universe? Well, there will be "intensive personal assessment and development experiences such as team-building exercises; 360 feedback surveys; site visits to high-poverty, high-minority, high achieving schools across the country; and learnings from your assigned master principal and outside business mentor – all focused on reinforcing the leadership competencies to be instilled in all BRIGHT Fellows." I am particularly excited about the learnings. I think one of the best things about my teaching job is the many learnings I give to my students. But still-- the chance to actually visit a high-poverty school, all full of minority students! Doesn't that sound ecxiting?
Oh, but what are these leadership competencies of which you speak?
That particular list is hosted on the Ohio Business Roundtable site, which makes sense considering it includes things like Change Leadership and Drive for Results. In fairness, it also includes Caring for Children. I'm intrigued by the Instructional Leadership item, which is explained as "Is able to recognize and coach teachers in constructive efforts to improve teaching effectiveness." First, I do hope that a principal will be able to recognize teachers when he sees them. Second, I'm wondering how this super principal will be able to provide instructional coaching when he has never done a day of teaching in his life, nor taken an education course, either. I think I should drop by the Business Roundtable and offer to tell them how to do their jobs, too.
BRIGHT has just hired a president, Dr. Thomas G. Maridada, formerly a Michigan Superintendent of the Year and more recently working for the Children's Defense Fund. BRIGHT also has several partners including the Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus school systems, as well as New Leaders and (you knew this was coming) TFA.
When all is said and done, our insta-principal will emerge with a fast-tracked certificate and a shiny MBA. He will owe the state of Ohio two years of work as a principal-- it is not entirely clear whether he will have to find his own job or if he will be placed. The state prefers that the insta-principal go to work at a high-poverty school, but it appears that any Ohio public school will meet the requirements.
So, to recap-- we're going to take somebody with a bachelors degree and no experience, let them intern at a school for a year while simultaneously doing grad school work, and at the end of the year, he will go be a principal at some troubled school, where his awesome leadership skills and great MBA-ness will allow him to turn every student into a success without having to spend more money.
I suppose this was inevitable. TFA was providing us with insta-teachers and the Broad Foundation has been cranking out insta-superintendents. There was a real market niche for people to quickly become principals without having to mess around with all that actual experience or training (or actually committing themselves to principalling as their lifetime career). After all, who better to supervise undertrained, inexperienced TFA temps than an undertrained, inexperienced pretend principal. Ohio has stepped into the gap to fill that need.
The one mystery I was not able to solve-- BRIGHT certainly looks like an acronym, but I can't discover what it stands for. Big Reformy Initiative for Getting Highplaced Temps? Business Revenue Interests Getting Hard on Teachers? Whatever it is, I'm sure it will be a great stepping stone for some future business whiz, and a disaster for some poor school.
Looking for Good
One of my recent posts here led to an extended outbreak of good conversation in the comments section. There were several good points made, but one in particular prompted me to think, and now that I've had a bagel that tasted pretty good and am enjoying the view of a good-looking day out my window, I'm going unwind some thoughts.
I was arguing against the necessity of having standardized tests in order to tell parents whether their children were getting a good education. I wrote:
Do I need to compare my performance as a husband to that of other husbands to know whether I have a good marriage or not, or can my wife and I depend on our own judgment of our own circumstances. Every student should get a good education, and that means something different in every situation. Comparison has nothing to do with it.
The author of the piece to which I was responding, Christine Duncan Evans, responded with this:
Most wife beaters will say that they have pretty good marriages too. I’m not saying you’re a wife beater, but I’m saying that not all definitions of ‘good’ – in marriage and in education – are equally valid. (I’ve met history teachers who argue that using the textbook as their only instructional resource is ‘good’ history teaching.) If you’re going to disagree with someone about what constitutes ‘good’ you need a common definition of what ‘good’ is so that you can compare that marriage/education to the common definition.
It's a good point. I've written before about how hard it is to measure merit and how it's much harder than we think to settle on what it means to be an educated person, but Evans is correct to note that not all definitions of "good" are equally good. So how do we distinguish between the good good and the not-so-good? Evans is correct to say that abusive husbands often self-evaluate positively. They're wrong. So what measure could we use that would tell us they were wrong.
First, it wouldn't be a standardized bubble-check test. It wouldn't be a marital checklist that somebody in government whipped up and shipped out to all the married couples in the country. Marriage is complicated and complex. A complex assessment system that could account for all the variety would be nearly impossible to create and use. A simple assessment would be too easy to game.
The true assessment emerges from community. If husband and wife both think they have a good marriage, it seems more likely they're correct. If their children and extended family also think it's a good marriage, that means something. If their extended family and friends and neighbors think they have a good marriage, that means something. Can any assessment of their marriage be perfect? No, never. But can we do a better job by deploying a government functionary with a questionnaire? No, never.
But couldn't we do better with an objective measure of what a good marriage is?
No, because there is no such thing as an objective measure. I believe that something which is destructive and harmful is not good-- but even I have to admit that this judgment represents a moral and ethical judgment on my part. Every single human being has a set of biases, beliefs, values and perspectives that contribute to their subjective view. By the time you factor in all the possible elements, you will not have a sharp, clear straight line graph. Instead, you'll be looking at a blast of scattered points. Will they be completely random and meaningless? No-- you'll have a strange attractor, a fuzzy shape around which the points cluster.
The more data points you have, the clearer the strange attractor will become. This applies both to evaluating the individual child and defining "good" for all students. The more data points you gather, the clearer the shape will become, but you will never reach a point of being able to draw a clear and inarguable line between good and not-good.
So it takes a whole community to develop an idea of what 'good" means in that community. As hokey as it sounds, it really does take a village to raise a child, not a bureaucrat with a clipboard.It takes a wide variety of points of view, perspectives, insights and relationships, all of them informed by the person's experience (an expert is someone who has seen more examples than the average human).
Part of what's wrong with reformster initiatives is that they are based on limited points of view. Common Core was developed by very carefully excluding a variety of viewpoints. And in the reformster narrative, a teacher who has seen thousands of examples of the educational ideas being discussed has no more weight than a reformster who has seen two or one or none.
Judgment is hard. Humans have always wanted to find a shortcut, a checklist, a simple connect-the-dots model that will make it easy. It never works, because it doesn't exist. The mark, the target, the standard shifts and changes every day, depending on the people, the setting, the history, the context, and the only way to make a judgment is to be there, involved, connected and close. The model of having every student accompanied through the year, day in and day out, by a trained, experienced, committed, concerned, experienced teacher-- it is the only model that can possibly answer the question "How is that student doing," and even then it can only give an approximate answer. To have two such professionals speak to each other about comparing their charges would likewise provide a rough approximation for an answer.
I know some folks want more. They can't have it, any more than we can set a standard for judging whether smoke is doing a good job of curling up along the right path from a fire.
Being human is hard. Becoming better at it is hard. That's why we have a whole system set up that pairs young humans up with older humans to help them grow and learn and become. There will always be people who want to make that system codified and standardized, but they will always be frustrated and they will always be wrong.
I was arguing against the necessity of having standardized tests in order to tell parents whether their children were getting a good education. I wrote:
Do I need to compare my performance as a husband to that of other husbands to know whether I have a good marriage or not, or can my wife and I depend on our own judgment of our own circumstances. Every student should get a good education, and that means something different in every situation. Comparison has nothing to do with it.
The author of the piece to which I was responding, Christine Duncan Evans, responded with this:
Most wife beaters will say that they have pretty good marriages too. I’m not saying you’re a wife beater, but I’m saying that not all definitions of ‘good’ – in marriage and in education – are equally valid. (I’ve met history teachers who argue that using the textbook as their only instructional resource is ‘good’ history teaching.) If you’re going to disagree with someone about what constitutes ‘good’ you need a common definition of what ‘good’ is so that you can compare that marriage/education to the common definition.
It's a good point. I've written before about how hard it is to measure merit and how it's much harder than we think to settle on what it means to be an educated person, but Evans is correct to note that not all definitions of "good" are equally good. So how do we distinguish between the good good and the not-so-good? Evans is correct to say that abusive husbands often self-evaluate positively. They're wrong. So what measure could we use that would tell us they were wrong.
First, it wouldn't be a standardized bubble-check test. It wouldn't be a marital checklist that somebody in government whipped up and shipped out to all the married couples in the country. Marriage is complicated and complex. A complex assessment system that could account for all the variety would be nearly impossible to create and use. A simple assessment would be too easy to game.
The true assessment emerges from community. If husband and wife both think they have a good marriage, it seems more likely they're correct. If their children and extended family also think it's a good marriage, that means something. If their extended family and friends and neighbors think they have a good marriage, that means something. Can any assessment of their marriage be perfect? No, never. But can we do a better job by deploying a government functionary with a questionnaire? No, never.
But couldn't we do better with an objective measure of what a good marriage is?
No, because there is no such thing as an objective measure. I believe that something which is destructive and harmful is not good-- but even I have to admit that this judgment represents a moral and ethical judgment on my part. Every single human being has a set of biases, beliefs, values and perspectives that contribute to their subjective view. By the time you factor in all the possible elements, you will not have a sharp, clear straight line graph. Instead, you'll be looking at a blast of scattered points. Will they be completely random and meaningless? No-- you'll have a strange attractor, a fuzzy shape around which the points cluster.
The more data points you have, the clearer the strange attractor will become. This applies both to evaluating the individual child and defining "good" for all students. The more data points you gather, the clearer the shape will become, but you will never reach a point of being able to draw a clear and inarguable line between good and not-good.
So it takes a whole community to develop an idea of what 'good" means in that community. As hokey as it sounds, it really does take a village to raise a child, not a bureaucrat with a clipboard.It takes a wide variety of points of view, perspectives, insights and relationships, all of them informed by the person's experience (an expert is someone who has seen more examples than the average human).
Part of what's wrong with reformster initiatives is that they are based on limited points of view. Common Core was developed by very carefully excluding a variety of viewpoints. And in the reformster narrative, a teacher who has seen thousands of examples of the educational ideas being discussed has no more weight than a reformster who has seen two or one or none.
Judgment is hard. Humans have always wanted to find a shortcut, a checklist, a simple connect-the-dots model that will make it easy. It never works, because it doesn't exist. The mark, the target, the standard shifts and changes every day, depending on the people, the setting, the history, the context, and the only way to make a judgment is to be there, involved, connected and close. The model of having every student accompanied through the year, day in and day out, by a trained, experienced, committed, concerned, experienced teacher-- it is the only model that can possibly answer the question "How is that student doing," and even then it can only give an approximate answer. To have two such professionals speak to each other about comparing their charges would likewise provide a rough approximation for an answer.
I know some folks want more. They can't have it, any more than we can set a standard for judging whether smoke is doing a good job of curling up along the right path from a fire.
Being human is hard. Becoming better at it is hard. That's why we have a whole system set up that pairs young humans up with older humans to help them grow and learn and become. There will always be people who want to make that system codified and standardized, but they will always be frustrated and they will always be wrong.
Tennessee's New CCSS Astroturf
Tennessee has birthed one of the newest astroturf reformster groups in the country, the bright and shiny Tennesseans for Student Success.
Why does need this influx of shiny green? It could be that the state is playing with joining those that have jumped off the Common Core bandwagon. Last week the house subcommittee that watches over academic standards was all set to discuss House Bill 3, a bill that would scrap the Common Core and require the state to start over by developing its own standards in a process that would involve (gasp) teachers.
The bill was proposed by Republic John Forgety, a former teacher and superintendent. Reported Chalkbeat,
“I’m of the opinion that this body (the legislature) should not be in the business of telling a third-grade teacher how to teach,” said Forgety, a former teacher and school superintendent.
The discussion of the bill has been postponed (according to Chalkbeat, another GOP representative asked for a postponement citing, I kid you not, an epiphany). But Tennesseans for Student Success had shown up in force, ready to stand up for the Core.
TSS has been busy other places, as one would respect from any self-respecting well-bankrolled astro-turf group. They have had a facebook page for a month now, with a bit over 1200 likes as I write this. Tennesseans probably got to know them through their television spots, like this one
You can see that the Core is supported by moms and teachers. Clearly this is the kind of group that, even though it reportedly first formed in October and hired an executive director in January, managed to raise enough money to run the above ad during the Super-Bowl. I am sure they had several really awesome bake sales, and maybe a car wash. It could have happened. Well, no. Reportedly the Tennessee Association of Business Foundation helped fund it; the foundation is an offshoot of the TN Chamber of Commerce, which has received grants from the Gates Foundation to help promote Common Core. But these moms still look very determined and stern, particularly about the prospect of being "dragged" back to the bad old days.
TSS is fond of the point that Tennessee has the fastest-improving test scores in the country, which is better if you think test scores are super important and easier if you start out with test scores deep in the toilet.
The actual website is somewhat sparse, but you can sign up for a newsletter. They do list some of their staff. including executive director Jeremy Harrell (ran campaigns for both Gov Bill Haslam and Lamar Alexander, plus other political credits), Ashley Elizabeth Graham (was deputy communications director for Marsha Blackburn), and Weston Burleson (was account exec with Stoneridge Group). All of the listed personnel have connections to GOP lawmakers and campaign work (they also make sure to include a cheer for Tennessee sports teams). The Tennessean reports that the group also employs four lobbyists.
In short, this looks like a team selected for its political campaigning savvy; there appear to be no educators in sight except as props in tv ads and government hearings.
The whole business plays out like a complicated political circus balancing act. Governor Haslam was a for the common Core before he was against it, sort of. Haslam led the early adoption of the Core, but in the last year, the standards are not feeling loved. Anti-core politicians won big in some counties, and a Vanderbilt poll showed that teachers are not fans. So last September, Haslam decided that maybe Common Core needed to be carefully reviewed by a review board that he would set up and , well, you know those movies where the good guy is undercover and his buddy is about get offed by the bad guy so he steps in and punches his buddy first, just to keep both his buddy and his cover story alive...? This looks kind of like that.
So we've got Haslam's review of the Core and a separate rewrite of the Core proposed by a GOP legislator and backed by teachers. Now we have an astro-turf rather transparently run by a handful of Haslam's political operatives agitating to reject Forgety's review and stick with the Governor's. Some pols are apparently asking if the two reviews of standards can be put together. Want to place your bets?
In the meantime, the main event in Tennessee is not the battle over standards, but the push to scrap public education and replace it with a World O'Charters. So this astro-turf sideshow is not necessarily even getting everyone's full attention.
Why does need this influx of shiny green? It could be that the state is playing with joining those that have jumped off the Common Core bandwagon. Last week the house subcommittee that watches over academic standards was all set to discuss House Bill 3, a bill that would scrap the Common Core and require the state to start over by developing its own standards in a process that would involve (gasp) teachers.
The bill was proposed by Republic John Forgety, a former teacher and superintendent. Reported Chalkbeat,
“I’m of the opinion that this body (the legislature) should not be in the business of telling a third-grade teacher how to teach,” said Forgety, a former teacher and school superintendent.
The discussion of the bill has been postponed (according to Chalkbeat, another GOP representative asked for a postponement citing, I kid you not, an epiphany). But Tennesseans for Student Success had shown up in force, ready to stand up for the Core.
TSS has been busy other places, as one would respect from any self-respecting well-bankrolled astro-turf group. They have had a facebook page for a month now, with a bit over 1200 likes as I write this. Tennesseans probably got to know them through their television spots, like this one
You can see that the Core is supported by moms and teachers. Clearly this is the kind of group that, even though it reportedly first formed in October and hired an executive director in January, managed to raise enough money to run the above ad during the Super-Bowl. I am sure they had several really awesome bake sales, and maybe a car wash. It could have happened. Well, no. Reportedly the Tennessee Association of Business Foundation helped fund it; the foundation is an offshoot of the TN Chamber of Commerce, which has received grants from the Gates Foundation to help promote Common Core. But these moms still look very determined and stern, particularly about the prospect of being "dragged" back to the bad old days.
TSS is fond of the point that Tennessee has the fastest-improving test scores in the country, which is better if you think test scores are super important and easier if you start out with test scores deep in the toilet.
The actual website is somewhat sparse, but you can sign up for a newsletter. They do list some of their staff. including executive director Jeremy Harrell (ran campaigns for both Gov Bill Haslam and Lamar Alexander, plus other political credits), Ashley Elizabeth Graham (was deputy communications director for Marsha Blackburn), and Weston Burleson (was account exec with Stoneridge Group). All of the listed personnel have connections to GOP lawmakers and campaign work (they also make sure to include a cheer for Tennessee sports teams). The Tennessean reports that the group also employs four lobbyists.
In short, this looks like a team selected for its political campaigning savvy; there appear to be no educators in sight except as props in tv ads and government hearings.
The whole business plays out like a complicated political circus balancing act. Governor Haslam was a for the common Core before he was against it, sort of. Haslam led the early adoption of the Core, but in the last year, the standards are not feeling loved. Anti-core politicians won big in some counties, and a Vanderbilt poll showed that teachers are not fans. So last September, Haslam decided that maybe Common Core needed to be carefully reviewed by a review board that he would set up and , well, you know those movies where the good guy is undercover and his buddy is about get offed by the bad guy so he steps in and punches his buddy first, just to keep both his buddy and his cover story alive...? This looks kind of like that.
So we've got Haslam's review of the Core and a separate rewrite of the Core proposed by a GOP legislator and backed by teachers. Now we have an astro-turf rather transparently run by a handful of Haslam's political operatives agitating to reject Forgety's review and stick with the Governor's. Some pols are apparently asking if the two reviews of standards can be put together. Want to place your bets?
In the meantime, the main event in Tennessee is not the battle over standards, but the push to scrap public education and replace it with a World O'Charters. So this astro-turf sideshow is not necessarily even getting everyone's full attention.
The Bullying Antidote
I am not a bullying expert, but I have taught teenagers for thirty-five years, so I've had the opportunity to observe it in the field. And much of what we try to do with the goal of stopping it seems counterproductive, even as we engage in behavior that actually re-enforces bullying as an okay Thing.
Bullying is frequently not what it says it's about. Even though we associate bullying with things like "picking on a kid because he has blue hair," I've never seen a "blamed" trait like that present in only bullied kids. Attempting to address bullying by traits rarely works; I'm thinking here of all the schools that post-Columbine watched out for their own school's version of the trenchcoat mafia and tried to deal with the potential bullying problems by making those kids stop acting different.
What seems more common, at least in my part of the universe, is a person is targeted, and then some feature of the individual is used as a hook to hang the bullying on. In other words, first comes "we'll bully that guy" and second comes "we'll pick on him about his hair color."
This is a tricky dynamic because weirdness or oddness can signal weakness or a lack of confidence, and those traits do make a student a potential bullying target. (This is particularly true if the blue hair etc is an affectation, and of course how many teens adopt one affectation or another in their search for their own special voice.)
The critical question for me is this: what makes bullying okay to the bully? I believe most people work things out in their heads so that they feel they are doing the right thing. So what does a bully tell him- or her-self that makes bullying okay.
The answer, I believe, is "He deserves it."
A bully never says he's bullying somebody. He's straightening him out. He's teaching him a lesson. He needs to be taken down a peg. The target deserves it. Bad things should happen to that person; I am just being an instrument of divine and universal judgment.
The reason the target supposedly deserves to be straightened out is also a pointless distraction. Getting in a big argument about whether Chris or Pat deserves to be pushed, punched, humiliated, or frozen out-- this is a huge side discussion that actually makes things worse. Because when we get in an argument whether or not Pat and Chris deserve to be abused, we are accepting the premise that some people do. Any time you tell students, "Chris does not deserve to be bullied," you are also sending the message "But some people DO deserve to be bullied."
And as long as you accept that in this world there are people who deserve to be treated as less-than-human, as others, as whipping posts, then there will always be bullying. You cannot stamp out bullying by trying to make the argument that bullying is only bad when you bully the wrong people.
If you want to stamp out bullying in your classroom, the policy is simple. It is not okay to treat people poorly, to treat them as less-than-human, to try to hurt them in any way on purpose, ever. Ever.
This doesn't mean everyone must hold hands and hug. There are lots of contexts in which people can disagree with each other, dislike each other, and recognize that they have no desire to spend a second more around each other than is absolutely necessary. But all of that can be done in a context that recognizes that everyone in the game is a real, live human being, and it is not okay to treat them like anything less.
It's not always an easy rule to live with; heaven knows I find it a challenge at times. But it is absolutely the best bullying antidote I know. Or as Kurt Vonnegut put it,
Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-God damn it, you've got to be kind.
Bullying is frequently not what it says it's about. Even though we associate bullying with things like "picking on a kid because he has blue hair," I've never seen a "blamed" trait like that present in only bullied kids. Attempting to address bullying by traits rarely works; I'm thinking here of all the schools that post-Columbine watched out for their own school's version of the trenchcoat mafia and tried to deal with the potential bullying problems by making those kids stop acting different.
What seems more common, at least in my part of the universe, is a person is targeted, and then some feature of the individual is used as a hook to hang the bullying on. In other words, first comes "we'll bully that guy" and second comes "we'll pick on him about his hair color."
This is a tricky dynamic because weirdness or oddness can signal weakness or a lack of confidence, and those traits do make a student a potential bullying target. (This is particularly true if the blue hair etc is an affectation, and of course how many teens adopt one affectation or another in their search for their own special voice.)
The critical question for me is this: what makes bullying okay to the bully? I believe most people work things out in their heads so that they feel they are doing the right thing. So what does a bully tell him- or her-self that makes bullying okay.
The answer, I believe, is "He deserves it."
A bully never says he's bullying somebody. He's straightening him out. He's teaching him a lesson. He needs to be taken down a peg. The target deserves it. Bad things should happen to that person; I am just being an instrument of divine and universal judgment.
The reason the target supposedly deserves to be straightened out is also a pointless distraction. Getting in a big argument about whether Chris or Pat deserves to be pushed, punched, humiliated, or frozen out-- this is a huge side discussion that actually makes things worse. Because when we get in an argument whether or not Pat and Chris deserve to be abused, we are accepting the premise that some people do. Any time you tell students, "Chris does not deserve to be bullied," you are also sending the message "But some people DO deserve to be bullied."
And as long as you accept that in this world there are people who deserve to be treated as less-than-human, as others, as whipping posts, then there will always be bullying. You cannot stamp out bullying by trying to make the argument that bullying is only bad when you bully the wrong people.
If you want to stamp out bullying in your classroom, the policy is simple. It is not okay to treat people poorly, to treat them as less-than-human, to try to hurt them in any way on purpose, ever. Ever.
This doesn't mean everyone must hold hands and hug. There are lots of contexts in which people can disagree with each other, dislike each other, and recognize that they have no desire to spend a second more around each other than is absolutely necessary. But all of that can be done in a context that recognizes that everyone in the game is a real, live human being, and it is not okay to treat them like anything less.
It's not always an easy rule to live with; heaven knows I find it a challenge at times. But it is absolutely the best bullying antidote I know. Or as Kurt Vonnegut put it,
Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-God damn it, you've got to be kind.
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