One the great unexamined assumptions of the test-driven accountability fans is that students will actually give a rat's rear about the tests.
I'm not sure why the test fans make this assumption. Maybe they were the kinds of students who took every single test with the utmost seriousness, whether it mattered or not. Maybe they have convinced themselves that the tests are super-duper important and they can't imagine how anyone would think otherwise. Maybe it's been a really long time since they met someone who was fifteen years old.
If you like your "news" in anecdote form, there's this piece that's been bouncing around the internet that gathers a few choice tweets about the PARCC. Not exactly conclusive, but I'm betting few high school teachers read it and shake their heads, thinking, "My land, but I never heard of students saying such a thing." No, in high school land, we already know that one of the challenges of the Big Standardized Test is convincing students it isn't a complete waste of their time.
But this unexamined assumption really hits the fan when we get to adaptive testing.
The idea of an adaptive test is, of course, that it adjusts to the student level-- the smarter the student appears to be, the more the test ramps up the question.
But that only works if the student is motivated to do his best no matter what, if his reward is knowing he's done the best he could possibly do. However, if a student thinks the reward associated with the test is to be done with the test, adaptive testing looks completely different.
If my reward is to be done with a minimum of fuss, then I can adapt to my adaptive test easily, because here's the deal-- the more questions I answer incorrectly, the easier the questions get, and the quicker I can finish. And as I was writing this this morning, stories are starting to wander into facebook of exactly this happening-- students who have been burned out on endless pointless testing are starting to figure out how to game the new super-duper tests.
My reward for answering questions well is that the test gets longer and harder.
Adaptive tests can only work for a body of students who are driven to do their very best and show that impersonal, inhuman, pointless, no-stakes, computerized test just what they're made of. It's for students who are incapable of analyzing and adapting to their testing environment, but who are simply stuck in a default full-on setting. For everyone else, this is like some bizarro video game where the more fights you lose, the sooner you get to the final boss and the easier he is to beat. Tell me my students don't have the critical thinking skills to figure that one out, or the adaptive response skills to adjust to it.
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Doublespeak Studies: "Student Achievement"
If you frame the argument, you win the argument before it even starts. And the best way to frame the argument is to choose the language that will be used to argue.
That's why, for instance, there's so much wrestling over whether to talk about "pro-choice" or "pro-life"-- because each term tilts the playing field.
Reformsters have framed the argument with precisely this technique, and nowhere have they been as successful as with the term "student achievement." It's a great re-construction, like renaming life-obliterating nuclear weapons as peacekeeper missiles, or remarketing GI Joe's not as dolls for boys, but as action figures.
The essence of doublespeak is to use a word that has two meanings-- one is the meaning that I actually have in mind when I use the term, and the other meaning is the one the audience will supply based on their own assumptions (which are based on what the word ordinarily means). So I tell my prom date we're taking a "limo" because to most people, "limo" means big elegant fancy car; but I actually mean a hotel-owned van. I use the language to conjure up a happy picture in your head, rather than confront you with smelly reality.
If you asked any 100 random people to explain what they thought student achievement meant, you would likely get a rich and varied set of answers. Student achievement sounds like it covers the full range of accomplishments, talents, skills and knowledge that we would find within a student body. It might echo the way in which I sometimes describe classes of students as a Legion of Super-Heroes (my personal preference over the Avengers or Justice League)-- a group of accomplished individuals, each with a different but exciting super power. Student achievement sounds great. It sounds like lots of young folks Getting Things Done and Fulfilling Their Promise.
But of course that's not what student achievement means at all.
"Student achievement" means "student test scores."
That's all. That's it. But reformsters have been excrutiatingly effective in getting people to think we're talking about actual student achievement while we're only talking about student test scores.
A google of "student achievement" returns 37,700,000 results. They are not encouraging.
Lots of folks want to talk about the student achievement gap. This always means the student test score gap.
When Arne Duncan tells audiences that the nation must "focus on improving teacher quality and support in order to boost student achievement," he means "to boost student test scores."
When a study last year asserted that teacher strikes hurt student achievement, fully reading the study shows that they mean the strike hurt student test scores (they didn't prove it, but they meant it).
Whenever a study talks about whether or not TFA boosts student achievement, the study is inevitably talking about whether or not TFA boost student test scores.
Whenever there's an attempt to connect teacher tenure to effects on student achievement, we turn out to actually be talking about correlations between tenure and student test scores.
In short, it has become commonplace to say "student achievement" when we really, honestly mean "student test scores." It serves reformsters well, because few people are really all that concerned about student standardized tests scores. "Chris seemed happy and thriving at school, and was coming home excited about new learning every day. Chris was just blossoming and becoming a great little person. But Chris kept got a low standardized test score last year, so we had no choice but to look for another school," said no parent ever. Ever!
As advocates for public education, here's one of the things we need to keep doing. When reformsters start saying student achievement, we need to speak up and ask, "So are you really just talking about student test scores?" Over and over.
By allowing them to say "achievement" when they mean "test scores" we are allowing them to skip over the entire discussion of whether or not the Big Standardized Test measures anything worth measuring. We allow them to skip over the discussion of whether the BS Test can be a useful proxy for anything (spoiler alert: it can't).
One of the ways to control a conversation is not to say what you mean, but to say something else so that your audience will hear something else, something different from what you are really saying. Let's stop saying "student achievement" when we're really talking about "student test scores."
That's why, for instance, there's so much wrestling over whether to talk about "pro-choice" or "pro-life"-- because each term tilts the playing field.
Reformsters have framed the argument with precisely this technique, and nowhere have they been as successful as with the term "student achievement." It's a great re-construction, like renaming life-obliterating nuclear weapons as peacekeeper missiles, or remarketing GI Joe's not as dolls for boys, but as action figures.
The essence of doublespeak is to use a word that has two meanings-- one is the meaning that I actually have in mind when I use the term, and the other meaning is the one the audience will supply based on their own assumptions (which are based on what the word ordinarily means). So I tell my prom date we're taking a "limo" because to most people, "limo" means big elegant fancy car; but I actually mean a hotel-owned van. I use the language to conjure up a happy picture in your head, rather than confront you with smelly reality.
If you asked any 100 random people to explain what they thought student achievement meant, you would likely get a rich and varied set of answers. Student achievement sounds like it covers the full range of accomplishments, talents, skills and knowledge that we would find within a student body. It might echo the way in which I sometimes describe classes of students as a Legion of Super-Heroes (my personal preference over the Avengers or Justice League)-- a group of accomplished individuals, each with a different but exciting super power. Student achievement sounds great. It sounds like lots of young folks Getting Things Done and Fulfilling Their Promise.
But of course that's not what student achievement means at all.
"Student achievement" means "student test scores."
That's all. That's it. But reformsters have been excrutiatingly effective in getting people to think we're talking about actual student achievement while we're only talking about student test scores.
A google of "student achievement" returns 37,700,000 results. They are not encouraging.
Lots of folks want to talk about the student achievement gap. This always means the student test score gap.
When Arne Duncan tells audiences that the nation must "focus on improving teacher quality and support in order to boost student achievement," he means "to boost student test scores."
When a study last year asserted that teacher strikes hurt student achievement, fully reading the study shows that they mean the strike hurt student test scores (they didn't prove it, but they meant it).
Whenever a study talks about whether or not TFA boosts student achievement, the study is inevitably talking about whether or not TFA boost student test scores.
Whenever there's an attempt to connect teacher tenure to effects on student achievement, we turn out to actually be talking about correlations between tenure and student test scores.
In short, it has become commonplace to say "student achievement" when we really, honestly mean "student test scores." It serves reformsters well, because few people are really all that concerned about student standardized tests scores. "Chris seemed happy and thriving at school, and was coming home excited about new learning every day. Chris was just blossoming and becoming a great little person. But Chris kept got a low standardized test score last year, so we had no choice but to look for another school," said no parent ever. Ever!
As advocates for public education, here's one of the things we need to keep doing. When reformsters start saying student achievement, we need to speak up and ask, "So are you really just talking about student test scores?" Over and over.
By allowing them to say "achievement" when they mean "test scores" we are allowing them to skip over the entire discussion of whether or not the Big Standardized Test measures anything worth measuring. We allow them to skip over the discussion of whether the BS Test can be a useful proxy for anything (spoiler alert: it can't).
One of the ways to control a conversation is not to say what you mean, but to say something else so that your audience will hear something else, something different from what you are really saying. Let's stop saying "student achievement" when we're really talking about "student test scores."
Monday, February 23, 2015
Students As Vending Machines
One of the most pernicious yet subtle side effects of test-driven accountability is that it flips the mission of a school on its head.
The proper view of a school is that it exists to serve the students, to help them become the people they can best be, to become better wiser citizens and members of the community. A school's mission is to help with that process.
But under a regime of high stakes testing, that mission is thrown out. The school's mission is to Get Good Numbers out of the students. The institution is no longer there to meet the needs of the students-- the students are there to meet the needs of the institution. The students are there to produce the numbers that the school needs to produce.
Proponents of test-driven accountability will say that there's no problem. The drive to get good test scores out of students will motivate schools to meet the student's needs. This kind of reasoning would also suggest that there's no difference between a person who is your friend because he likes you and a person who is your friend because he wants to get money from you. If you cannot tell the difference between those two relationships, I would rather not be your friend.
In the upside-down world of high stakes testing, schools only need to care about student needs that might affect test scores. They need only give the students what will get the school what it wants-- a good score on a bad test of a narrow sliver of skills.
In the world of test-driven accountability, students are simply vending machines. Put in the correct change. Kick and shake the machine a little if the candy won't fall all the way to the bottom.
If you haven't witnessed this, it's hard to imagine how pervasive the effect can become. Let's assign students to teachers based not on who would be a good fit, but who might get the best scores out of the kid. Let's structure the day, the curriculum, the organization of grades within the district strictly on what will generate the best numbers.
What the students want or need from us doesn't matter. What matters is what we want from them-- good numbers. They are no longer customers or clients; they are employees. Meeting their needs is no longer our goal; their needs are now an obstacle in the path of our goal, which is to get good numbers.
There's no question that not all schools have always embodied my high ideals for schools. But there's no question that test-driven accountability moves us further from that ideal, not closer.
The proper view of a school is that it exists to serve the students, to help them become the people they can best be, to become better wiser citizens and members of the community. A school's mission is to help with that process.
But under a regime of high stakes testing, that mission is thrown out. The school's mission is to Get Good Numbers out of the students. The institution is no longer there to meet the needs of the students-- the students are there to meet the needs of the institution. The students are there to produce the numbers that the school needs to produce.
Proponents of test-driven accountability will say that there's no problem. The drive to get good test scores out of students will motivate schools to meet the student's needs. This kind of reasoning would also suggest that there's no difference between a person who is your friend because he likes you and a person who is your friend because he wants to get money from you. If you cannot tell the difference between those two relationships, I would rather not be your friend.
In the upside-down world of high stakes testing, schools only need to care about student needs that might affect test scores. They need only give the students what will get the school what it wants-- a good score on a bad test of a narrow sliver of skills.
In the world of test-driven accountability, students are simply vending machines. Put in the correct change. Kick and shake the machine a little if the candy won't fall all the way to the bottom.
If you haven't witnessed this, it's hard to imagine how pervasive the effect can become. Let's assign students to teachers based not on who would be a good fit, but who might get the best scores out of the kid. Let's structure the day, the curriculum, the organization of grades within the district strictly on what will generate the best numbers.
What the students want or need from us doesn't matter. What matters is what we want from them-- good numbers. They are no longer customers or clients; they are employees. Meeting their needs is no longer our goal; their needs are now an obstacle in the path of our goal, which is to get good numbers.
There's no question that not all schools have always embodied my high ideals for schools. But there's no question that test-driven accountability moves us further from that ideal, not closer.
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Russ Walsh: Checking the PARCC and SBA
Russ Walsh is a reading specialist who also maintains a mighty fine blog. While Russ is always worth reading, over the last two weeks he has produced a series of posts that you need to bookmark, store, steal, link--whatever it is you do with posts that you want to be able to use a reference works in the future.
Walsh ventured where surprisingly few have dared to tread. He looked at the readability levels of the Two Not-As-Big-As-They-Used-To-Be tests-- the PARCC and the SBA.
The PARCC came first, and he took three pieces to do it justice.
In Part I, Walsh looks at readability levels of the PARCC reading selections, using several of the standard readability measures. That's no small chunk of extra homework to self-assign, but the results are revealing. Walsh finds that most of the selections are significantly above the stated grade level, the very definition of frustration level. Not a good way to scare up useful or legitimate data.
In Part 2, Walsh looks at readability levels of PARCC questions, looking at the types of tasks they involve and what extra challenges they may contain. Again, some serious homework and analysis here. Walsh finds the PARCC questions wanting in this area as well.
In Part 3, Walsh goes looking into PARCC from the standpoint of the reader. Does the test show a cultural bias, or favor students with a particular body of prior knowledge? That would be a big fat yes on both. Plus, the test involves some odd choices that add extra roadblocks for readers.
Walsh followed this series up with a post looking at the SBA. In some ways this was the most surprising post, because Walsh finds the SBA test.... not so bad. While we may think of PARCC (by Pearson) and SBA (by AIR) as Tweedledee and Tweedledum, it appears that what we actually have is Tweedledee and Bob.
These posts are literate, rational, and professional (everything that my feisty but personal reading of PARCC was not) and consequently hugely useful. This is hard, solid analysis presented clearly and objectively, which makes these posts perfect for answering the questions of civilians and administrators alike. I have been reading Russ Walsh for a while, and he never disappoints, but these four posts belong in some sort of edublogger hall of fame. Read them!
Walsh ventured where surprisingly few have dared to tread. He looked at the readability levels of the Two Not-As-Big-As-They-Used-To-Be tests-- the PARCC and the SBA.
The PARCC came first, and he took three pieces to do it justice.
In Part I, Walsh looks at readability levels of the PARCC reading selections, using several of the standard readability measures. That's no small chunk of extra homework to self-assign, but the results are revealing. Walsh finds that most of the selections are significantly above the stated grade level, the very definition of frustration level. Not a good way to scare up useful or legitimate data.
In Part 2, Walsh looks at readability levels of PARCC questions, looking at the types of tasks they involve and what extra challenges they may contain. Again, some serious homework and analysis here. Walsh finds the PARCC questions wanting in this area as well.
In Part 3, Walsh goes looking into PARCC from the standpoint of the reader. Does the test show a cultural bias, or favor students with a particular body of prior knowledge? That would be a big fat yes on both. Plus, the test involves some odd choices that add extra roadblocks for readers.
Walsh followed this series up with a post looking at the SBA. In some ways this was the most surprising post, because Walsh finds the SBA test.... not so bad. While we may think of PARCC (by Pearson) and SBA (by AIR) as Tweedledee and Tweedledum, it appears that what we actually have is Tweedledee and Bob.
These posts are literate, rational, and professional (everything that my feisty but personal reading of PARCC was not) and consequently hugely useful. This is hard, solid analysis presented clearly and objectively, which makes these posts perfect for answering the questions of civilians and administrators alike. I have been reading Russ Walsh for a while, and he never disappoints, but these four posts belong in some sort of edublogger hall of fame. Read them!
ESEA: Time To Speak Out (Again)
Word on the street is that as soon as this coming Friday (February 27), the House of Representatives could be voting on H.R. 5- The Student Success Act. That means it's time for defenders of US public education to speak up. In a few paragraphs, I am going to tell you just how easy it is to speak up this time, but first let me make my case for why you need to do it.
H.R. 5 is the House GOP proposal for rewriting ESEA, and while the Legislation Currently Known As NCLB desperately needs to be rewritten, this is the not the rewrite we've been looking for.
The proposal is almost 600 pages long; even so, many smart people have read through that monster (Mercedes Schneider got through 52 of the more important pages and you should look at what she found). But the four big fire engine red flags are:
1) A requirement for Big Standardized Testing in every year from grade 3 through grade 8, plus once in high school. This gives the BS Testing the force of law, enshrining what we know to be unproven, unnecessary, and unhelpful.
2) Title I funding would be portable, which is a less-alarming way to say that Title I would become a student voucher, inevitably making poor schools even poorer.
3) Cuts way back on Title II funding for class size reduction. Because if we're going to support BS Testing, for which there's no proof of benefits, why not even things out by unsupporting smaller classes, for which there is proof of benefits.
4) Expands support for charter schools and charter school companies. Because politicians hate throwing money at public schools, but throwing money at charters is awesome.
So. It's time, again, to write your Representative. I know you're a teacher and it's not really your thing to be politically active. I know you have a lot of other things to take care of. But you know who doesn't have anything else to worry about except politics and legislation? Lobbyists.
This is part of why we struggle uphill on this reformster stuff. We've got classes to teach and papers to grade and lessons to plan and lunch money to collect and school plays to direct and paying attention to politics, following politics, speaking out to our politicians-- those are all things we have to squeeze in around the edges. But meanwhile, there are people out there who literally have absolutely nothing to do all day except agitate for their causes.
If we are going to counterbalance an army of corporate shills and well-paid lobbyists who spend every single day explaining to legislators why America really needs to support test corporations and charter companies and everyone else trying to divert public education tax dollars into private corporate pockets-- if we're going to be a counterforce to those people, we have to speak. And speak. And speak.
Because, I have to tell you, this is not the last time we'll be called on to speak up. This is a marathon, not a sprint, and the reauthorization of ESEA is going to spawn a long windy parade of bad ideas auditioning for the role of Actual Law, and we're going to have to speak up every single time one rolls its parade float past our door. And we have to be tough and relentless because there will always be those paid lobbyists for the corporations getting up every morning with nothing to do except try to move legislation to their employers' benefit.
We can't count on someone else to do it. It wish we could count on our national teachers' unions, but they keep getting confused about what they support.
Fortunately, this time there's an easy approach.
The Network for Public Education, a group of public education supporters to which I proudly belong, has set up a quick an easy way to make your voice heard. Follow this link. Don't know for sure who your rep is? You'll type in your zip code and automatically get a form addressed to your representative's email. Not sure what to say or how to say it? The letter is already written; send it as is, edit it to suit, or erase it and write your own. And while you're at it, you can join NPE if you haven't already. Which you should.
Heaven only knows how long it will take to get an ESEA rewrite through both houses, or how long it will be before the next rewrite. But whatever comes out of this round will be the law we live with for years. It will be hard to get Congress to listen to us, and we may not succeed in all the ways we want to. But nobody is going to hear us if we don't speak. Raise your voice now.
H.R. 5 is the House GOP proposal for rewriting ESEA, and while the Legislation Currently Known As NCLB desperately needs to be rewritten, this is the not the rewrite we've been looking for.
The proposal is almost 600 pages long; even so, many smart people have read through that monster (Mercedes Schneider got through 52 of the more important pages and you should look at what she found). But the four big fire engine red flags are:
1) A requirement for Big Standardized Testing in every year from grade 3 through grade 8, plus once in high school. This gives the BS Testing the force of law, enshrining what we know to be unproven, unnecessary, and unhelpful.
2) Title I funding would be portable, which is a less-alarming way to say that Title I would become a student voucher, inevitably making poor schools even poorer.
3) Cuts way back on Title II funding for class size reduction. Because if we're going to support BS Testing, for which there's no proof of benefits, why not even things out by unsupporting smaller classes, for which there is proof of benefits.
4) Expands support for charter schools and charter school companies. Because politicians hate throwing money at public schools, but throwing money at charters is awesome.
So. It's time, again, to write your Representative. I know you're a teacher and it's not really your thing to be politically active. I know you have a lot of other things to take care of. But you know who doesn't have anything else to worry about except politics and legislation? Lobbyists.
This is part of why we struggle uphill on this reformster stuff. We've got classes to teach and papers to grade and lessons to plan and lunch money to collect and school plays to direct and paying attention to politics, following politics, speaking out to our politicians-- those are all things we have to squeeze in around the edges. But meanwhile, there are people out there who literally have absolutely nothing to do all day except agitate for their causes.
If we are going to counterbalance an army of corporate shills and well-paid lobbyists who spend every single day explaining to legislators why America really needs to support test corporations and charter companies and everyone else trying to divert public education tax dollars into private corporate pockets-- if we're going to be a counterforce to those people, we have to speak. And speak. And speak.
Because, I have to tell you, this is not the last time we'll be called on to speak up. This is a marathon, not a sprint, and the reauthorization of ESEA is going to spawn a long windy parade of bad ideas auditioning for the role of Actual Law, and we're going to have to speak up every single time one rolls its parade float past our door. And we have to be tough and relentless because there will always be those paid lobbyists for the corporations getting up every morning with nothing to do except try to move legislation to their employers' benefit.
We can't count on someone else to do it. It wish we could count on our national teachers' unions, but they keep getting confused about what they support.
Fortunately, this time there's an easy approach.
The Network for Public Education, a group of public education supporters to which I proudly belong, has set up a quick an easy way to make your voice heard. Follow this link. Don't know for sure who your rep is? You'll type in your zip code and automatically get a form addressed to your representative's email. Not sure what to say or how to say it? The letter is already written; send it as is, edit it to suit, or erase it and write your own. And while you're at it, you can join NPE if you haven't already. Which you should.
Heaven only knows how long it will take to get an ESEA rewrite through both houses, or how long it will be before the next rewrite. But whatever comes out of this round will be the law we live with for years. It will be hard to get Congress to listen to us, and we may not succeed in all the ways we want to. But nobody is going to hear us if we don't speak. Raise your voice now.
PARCC Loves Monsanto?
It's been two weeks since I ploughed through the PARCC sample test items, and the swelling in my brain has mostly subsided. But there has been one thing that has nagged at me ever since, and today I'd like to revisit that.
The first set of questions deal with a selection about the use of DNA with crops-- not, as you might guess, strictly with developing better crops through genetic manipulation, which is its own kettle of two-headed fish, but through something else...
DNA testing, the technique which has helped solve high-profile murder cases, may now help to solve crop crimes.
You might well ask-- what the hell is a crop crime? Did somebody find a bunch of cows pummeled to death with no evidence except traces of corn stalks? Are there unsolved bank robberies out there where the only clue is a small pile of wheat? The selection doesn't provide much of a hint, other than to mention theft in passing.
But for several years I've had my students read Fast Food Nation and we follow it up with Food, Inc-- so the idea of a crop crime definitely rang a bell. Here's a clip from the film.
Because Monsanto owns certain crops, it reserves the right to track down anyone they think might be using their patented seeds without having paid for it. This would include someone who has had GMO pollen blown into their field by the wind.
But of course corn and soybeans just look like corn and soybean. If Monsanto thought you had grabbed some of their DNA, how would they prove it (so they could take you to court and stomp on you)? They would need some DNA testing to catch you perpetrating this crop crime.
PARCC has been criticized for including "product placement" in its testing, with brand names and logos included in the questions. But this is even creepier-- a selection that includes a whole corporate philosophy. The issues here are huge and difficult and complex-- Should a corporation own a life form, or the DNA of a life form? Should the legal system let itself be used as corporate cops? Does our need for plentiful food justify extra protections for food corporations? And that's before we get into How the Justice System Works questions.
But the PARCC question slips right past that and buries a host of challenging assumptions in this reading test. For my money (and hey-- I'm a taxpayer, so it is my money), this is far creepier than the root beer logo, and adds a whole extra problematic level for students who are knowledgeable about the issues the reading selection blithely raises.
Maybe it's simply that Monsanto has done its job so well that PARCC writers included the selection without question. Or maybe this is just how the corporate club helps keep its own point of view out there. But for me it's just one more huge PARCC fail.
The first set of questions deal with a selection about the use of DNA with crops-- not, as you might guess, strictly with developing better crops through genetic manipulation, which is its own kettle of two-headed fish, but through something else...
DNA testing, the technique which has helped solve high-profile murder cases, may now help to solve crop crimes.
You might well ask-- what the hell is a crop crime? Did somebody find a bunch of cows pummeled to death with no evidence except traces of corn stalks? Are there unsolved bank robberies out there where the only clue is a small pile of wheat? The selection doesn't provide much of a hint, other than to mention theft in passing.
But for several years I've had my students read Fast Food Nation and we follow it up with Food, Inc-- so the idea of a crop crime definitely rang a bell. Here's a clip from the film.
Because Monsanto owns certain crops, it reserves the right to track down anyone they think might be using their patented seeds without having paid for it. This would include someone who has had GMO pollen blown into their field by the wind.
But of course corn and soybeans just look like corn and soybean. If Monsanto thought you had grabbed some of their DNA, how would they prove it (so they could take you to court and stomp on you)? They would need some DNA testing to catch you perpetrating this crop crime.
PARCC has been criticized for including "product placement" in its testing, with brand names and logos included in the questions. But this is even creepier-- a selection that includes a whole corporate philosophy. The issues here are huge and difficult and complex-- Should a corporation own a life form, or the DNA of a life form? Should the legal system let itself be used as corporate cops? Does our need for plentiful food justify extra protections for food corporations? And that's before we get into How the Justice System Works questions.
But the PARCC question slips right past that and buries a host of challenging assumptions in this reading test. For my money (and hey-- I'm a taxpayer, so it is my money), this is far creepier than the root beer logo, and adds a whole extra problematic level for students who are knowledgeable about the issues the reading selection blithely raises.
Maybe it's simply that Monsanto has done its job so well that PARCC writers included the selection without question. Or maybe this is just how the corporate club helps keep its own point of view out there. But for me it's just one more huge PARCC fail.
Cabin Fever and Search for Real Differences
Over the last two weeks, Rick Hess (conservative thinky tank AEI) and Peter Cunningham (former official Duncan voice) ran series called Cabin Fever at both EdWeek and Cunningham's reformerster PR flack attack machine Education Post. The premise was a conversation between two friends on opposite ends of the political spectrum considering aspects of ESEA reauthorization.
It's not news that public education is under attack from both self-identified liberals and conservatives, so it's interesting to read a side-by-side comparison and see whether real differences, or if we're simply in a Coke vs. Pepsi situation here. So let's take a quick look at each entry in the series.
Testing and Transparency
This one is easy. Hess and Cunningham started with a subject on which they fully agree-- keep all that testing in place and provide lots of data and transparency. That includes a requirement to report everything schools have spent and what they've spent it on (I'm not sure what we're after here-- here in Pennsylvania any taxpayer can walk into their school district office and demand a financial report or, actually, pretty much any document the district possesses that's not an issue of, say, student privacy.)
We'd also like to see states required to provide a broader bucket of consistent metrics on school and system outcomes like numbers of students taking and passing Advanced Placement courses or completing career certifications, and operational factors like turnover, experience, and benefit costs.
So, on this issue, no difference.
Should the USED set goals for adequate school performance?
Cunningham is sure that states will screw it all up, lie and cheat and fake their way to adequate performance levels if the feds aren't on their case. But he acknowledges that top-down fed goals have been a bust, so he recommends "negotiations." The feds don't dictate, I guess, but still have to be satisfied. How that doesn't turn into "the feds dictate" he does not make clear.
Hess has several good lines in this series, and here's one of them:
The problem with federal involvement is that federal officials have no responsibility for meeting the goals they insist upon and no accountability if schools fail to do so. All the blame falls on local educators and on local and state officials. The result is that it's all too easy for D.C. officials to insist upon ridiculous goals.
E.g., 100% proficiency for NCLB. Then this:
The NFL season just ended. Over the next couple months, coaches should sit with their executives and owners in order to set goals regarding the kind of performance they expect to see. That process is valuable and I heartily endorse it. At the same time, I don't think it would be constructive for the Pennsylvania legislature to declare that the Eagles and Steelers need to go at least 11-5 next year.
What Hess doesn't address is the question of what difference it makes whether that unrealistically specific goal comes from federal, state or local authorities, other than the implication that such a goal best comes from someone who will lose his job if the goal is not met.
Should the feds tell states how to turn schools around?
Cunningham likes the School Improvement Grants, and he thinks conservatives and liberals should, too. He thinks conservatives don't because it's federal intrusion and liberals don't because it will get teachers fired. He fails to note that because it's a competitive grant, it's a federal commitment to help only some schools.
"Children only have one chance for an education," opines Cunningham. He fails to explain why that chance should rest on a local administrator's ability to fill out paperwork to fed's satisfaction.
Hess's argument is simply that the feds have no business dictating how schools should be turned around because the feds don't have the faintest clue how to do it.
Should Title I fund follow students (aka vouchers 3.12)?
Cunningham says no, which frankly surprises me, given Education Post's deep love for charter schools, which live only by draining the funds of traditional public schools through one portability mechanism or another. Maybe I'm missing something here, but Cunningham says A) even though we know it costs more to educate poor kids than rich kids, we spend the other way around and B) if poor kids pool their funds, it allows those funds to get more done.
Hess is an unequivocal yes, which does not surprise me.
Neither questions the assumption that once education dollars leave taxpayers hands, those dollars somehow attach or belong to individual students, as if schools are service provided for individual students and their parents and not a public service provided for the benefit of all members of a community. And neither brings up the question of how the federal could or should guarantee full funding for schools across the country.
Should the feds have a role in teacher evaluation?
Teacher evaluation that includes some measure of student growth on tests simply would not be happening without federal pressure. If we remove the federal role, it will disappear. The losers will be not only children who desperately need more effective teachers, but also the teachers themselves. Absent real accountability, teachers will be denied the resources, recognition, and respect they need and deserve.
That's Cunningham, encapsulating every wrong argument about teacher evaluation in the reformster canon. Well, okay-- he's correct that test-based evaluation wouldn't exist without federal pressure, but that's because every single respectable authority on the matter recognizes that such value-added test-based measures are evaluatory crap. So the federal insistence on them is a big fat fail for the feds. I suggest Cunningham look at the story of Sheri Lederman, a top NY teacher who is actually a terrible failure according to New York's test-based system. Then Cunningham can explain how Lederman and her students are benefiting from this federally-pushed malarkey.
His argument just gets worse. "Just as annual assessments help parents and teachers understand where students are at and how to get them where they need to go--" and you can just hold it right there, because annual assessments don't actually do that.
Hess agrees that anything that helps teachers be better is a Good Thing. But as always, he argues that the feds don't know jack squat about how to do that, so they should stay out of it.
Should the feds support education innovation?
No real separation on this issue. Both believe that the feds should fund innovation; they just express a disagreement about how carefully directed such innovation searching should be. In other words, should the feds be telling innovators what sort of innovation they should be innovating, or should they just look for people who are Doing Good Stuff and throw money at them?
There's probably a good conversation to be had about how much money to spend and what else we could otherwise be spending it on. At the very least, it would be nice to acknowledge that the search for a startling new idea that will all by itself revolutionize education is an exercise in unicorn farming. There are always ways in which public education can grow and strengthen and become better, but if you tell me you've come up with something that will completely change the face of public education and radically improve schools, I'm going to assume that you're either smoking something or selling something.
What is the proper role of the feds in education?
Cunningham just can't keep himself from speaking bite-sized chunks of PR baloney.
My view is clear: the core federal role is to protect kids.
Well, that's a pretty thought-- but what does it actually mean.
Returning oversight to the states will put millions of at-risk kids at even greater risk. The notion that getting the feds out of the way will suddenly trigger a renaissance of innovation, accountability, and equity is a fairy tale.
Straw man. I've read few writers who suggested that there is a state ed renaissance waiting to emerge from under the federal boots. That's not the point. The point is that the feds aren't helping, at all. Plus the notion that federal bureaucrats are somehow more wise, virtuous, and corruption-free than state ones is simultaneously hilarious and insulting.
Hess redefines the question.
I'd say that our discussion has been about what Washington can do usefully and well within our federal system. The question is when federal activity will help schools, given all of their complexity, layers of governance, and dependence on personal relationships and local cultures, and when it's more likely to fuel rigidity, bad decisions, and counterproductive compliance.
Of course, a couple of their ideas for DC do rather match up. From Cunningham
Choice is an effective but limited strategy. Charters and vouchers will never serve all kids. We must also get better at improving traditional schools.
From Hess:
Play an active role in "trust-busting" and bureaucracy-taming—freeing up educators and enabling promising new providers to get a fair shot.
What did they miss?
I don't see much here that highlights a difference between the "conservative" or "liberal" position, because this conversation stayed clear of the area where these guys most agree. Modern education "reform" is the application of government principles pioneered by the military-industrial complex and later moved into social program arenas from the treatment of adults with mental issues to the management of the food system.
First, we declare that the government has an obligation to make sure that widgets are provided to all citizens who need them. Nominal liberals nod and say, that's great. Government should do something about the widget problem. Then policymakers create an assortment of widget-related programs that are co-created by folks in the widget industry; these are sold as solutions to the widget problem. Then the administration of these programs is handed over to corporations, and nominal conservatives nod because, hey, free market private sector solutions.
From that point on, it's simply an ongoing negotiation between government and corporate functionaries about how the money is going to flow. The corporate interest is in functioning with minimal government interference, while the government's only source of power is its ability to control that money flow. Add a revolving door so that it's hard to keep track of which offices the players are working out of, and you have the system in place.
It plays out in public as a battle of virtuous idealism versus heartless pragmatism, and that's reflected in this series of posts. Hess wins in terms of practical, specific, pragmatic, smart comments. Cunningham puts out more pretty thoughts with high moral purpose with no hint of how to really make it happen.
But all in all, this is a discussion that assumes more than it debates and it reads more like to VP's from the same corporation discussing the best distribution of corner offices than a deep-level discussion of the corporations fundamental direction. The two agree on what should be done-- charters, privatization, test-driven accountability-- they're just arguing over who should get to say exactly how these things should be done, and not whether these things should be done in the first place. This is all about tweaking the ESEA-- neither is proposing any serious large transformation.
When it comes to "liberals" and "conservatives" and ed reform, we really are in a Coke and Pepsi world, with public schools the RC Cola of the marketplace. Or maybe we're actually milk-- a good healthy alternative that nobody even talks or thinks about until we finally come up with a cheesy PR campaign of our own.
It's not news that public education is under attack from both self-identified liberals and conservatives, so it's interesting to read a side-by-side comparison and see whether real differences, or if we're simply in a Coke vs. Pepsi situation here. So let's take a quick look at each entry in the series.
Testing and Transparency
This one is easy. Hess and Cunningham started with a subject on which they fully agree-- keep all that testing in place and provide lots of data and transparency. That includes a requirement to report everything schools have spent and what they've spent it on (I'm not sure what we're after here-- here in Pennsylvania any taxpayer can walk into their school district office and demand a financial report or, actually, pretty much any document the district possesses that's not an issue of, say, student privacy.)
We'd also like to see states required to provide a broader bucket of consistent metrics on school and system outcomes like numbers of students taking and passing Advanced Placement courses or completing career certifications, and operational factors like turnover, experience, and benefit costs.
So, on this issue, no difference.
Should the USED set goals for adequate school performance?
Cunningham is sure that states will screw it all up, lie and cheat and fake their way to adequate performance levels if the feds aren't on their case. But he acknowledges that top-down fed goals have been a bust, so he recommends "negotiations." The feds don't dictate, I guess, but still have to be satisfied. How that doesn't turn into "the feds dictate" he does not make clear.
Hess has several good lines in this series, and here's one of them:
The problem with federal involvement is that federal officials have no responsibility for meeting the goals they insist upon and no accountability if schools fail to do so. All the blame falls on local educators and on local and state officials. The result is that it's all too easy for D.C. officials to insist upon ridiculous goals.
E.g., 100% proficiency for NCLB. Then this:
The NFL season just ended. Over the next couple months, coaches should sit with their executives and owners in order to set goals regarding the kind of performance they expect to see. That process is valuable and I heartily endorse it. At the same time, I don't think it would be constructive for the Pennsylvania legislature to declare that the Eagles and Steelers need to go at least 11-5 next year.
What Hess doesn't address is the question of what difference it makes whether that unrealistically specific goal comes from federal, state or local authorities, other than the implication that such a goal best comes from someone who will lose his job if the goal is not met.
Should the feds tell states how to turn schools around?
Cunningham likes the School Improvement Grants, and he thinks conservatives and liberals should, too. He thinks conservatives don't because it's federal intrusion and liberals don't because it will get teachers fired. He fails to note that because it's a competitive grant, it's a federal commitment to help only some schools.
"Children only have one chance for an education," opines Cunningham. He fails to explain why that chance should rest on a local administrator's ability to fill out paperwork to fed's satisfaction.
Hess's argument is simply that the feds have no business dictating how schools should be turned around because the feds don't have the faintest clue how to do it.
Should Title I fund follow students (aka vouchers 3.12)?
Cunningham says no, which frankly surprises me, given Education Post's deep love for charter schools, which live only by draining the funds of traditional public schools through one portability mechanism or another. Maybe I'm missing something here, but Cunningham says A) even though we know it costs more to educate poor kids than rich kids, we spend the other way around and B) if poor kids pool their funds, it allows those funds to get more done.
Hess is an unequivocal yes, which does not surprise me.
Neither questions the assumption that once education dollars leave taxpayers hands, those dollars somehow attach or belong to individual students, as if schools are service provided for individual students and their parents and not a public service provided for the benefit of all members of a community. And neither brings up the question of how the federal could or should guarantee full funding for schools across the country.
Should the feds have a role in teacher evaluation?
Teacher evaluation that includes some measure of student growth on tests simply would not be happening without federal pressure. If we remove the federal role, it will disappear. The losers will be not only children who desperately need more effective teachers, but also the teachers themselves. Absent real accountability, teachers will be denied the resources, recognition, and respect they need and deserve.
That's Cunningham, encapsulating every wrong argument about teacher evaluation in the reformster canon. Well, okay-- he's correct that test-based evaluation wouldn't exist without federal pressure, but that's because every single respectable authority on the matter recognizes that such value-added test-based measures are evaluatory crap. So the federal insistence on them is a big fat fail for the feds. I suggest Cunningham look at the story of Sheri Lederman, a top NY teacher who is actually a terrible failure according to New York's test-based system. Then Cunningham can explain how Lederman and her students are benefiting from this federally-pushed malarkey.
His argument just gets worse. "Just as annual assessments help parents and teachers understand where students are at and how to get them where they need to go--" and you can just hold it right there, because annual assessments don't actually do that.
Hess agrees that anything that helps teachers be better is a Good Thing. But as always, he argues that the feds don't know jack squat about how to do that, so they should stay out of it.
Should the feds support education innovation?
No real separation on this issue. Both believe that the feds should fund innovation; they just express a disagreement about how carefully directed such innovation searching should be. In other words, should the feds be telling innovators what sort of innovation they should be innovating, or should they just look for people who are Doing Good Stuff and throw money at them?
There's probably a good conversation to be had about how much money to spend and what else we could otherwise be spending it on. At the very least, it would be nice to acknowledge that the search for a startling new idea that will all by itself revolutionize education is an exercise in unicorn farming. There are always ways in which public education can grow and strengthen and become better, but if you tell me you've come up with something that will completely change the face of public education and radically improve schools, I'm going to assume that you're either smoking something or selling something.
What is the proper role of the feds in education?
Cunningham just can't keep himself from speaking bite-sized chunks of PR baloney.
My view is clear: the core federal role is to protect kids.
Well, that's a pretty thought-- but what does it actually mean.
Returning oversight to the states will put millions of at-risk kids at even greater risk. The notion that getting the feds out of the way will suddenly trigger a renaissance of innovation, accountability, and equity is a fairy tale.
Straw man. I've read few writers who suggested that there is a state ed renaissance waiting to emerge from under the federal boots. That's not the point. The point is that the feds aren't helping, at all. Plus the notion that federal bureaucrats are somehow more wise, virtuous, and corruption-free than state ones is simultaneously hilarious and insulting.
Hess redefines the question.
I'd say that our discussion has been about what Washington can do usefully and well within our federal system. The question is when federal activity will help schools, given all of their complexity, layers of governance, and dependence on personal relationships and local cultures, and when it's more likely to fuel rigidity, bad decisions, and counterproductive compliance.
Of course, a couple of their ideas for DC do rather match up. From Cunningham
Choice is an effective but limited strategy. Charters and vouchers will never serve all kids. We must also get better at improving traditional schools.
From Hess:
Play an active role in "trust-busting" and bureaucracy-taming—freeing up educators and enabling promising new providers to get a fair shot.
What did they miss?
I don't see much here that highlights a difference between the "conservative" or "liberal" position, because this conversation stayed clear of the area where these guys most agree. Modern education "reform" is the application of government principles pioneered by the military-industrial complex and later moved into social program arenas from the treatment of adults with mental issues to the management of the food system.
First, we declare that the government has an obligation to make sure that widgets are provided to all citizens who need them. Nominal liberals nod and say, that's great. Government should do something about the widget problem. Then policymakers create an assortment of widget-related programs that are co-created by folks in the widget industry; these are sold as solutions to the widget problem. Then the administration of these programs is handed over to corporations, and nominal conservatives nod because, hey, free market private sector solutions.
From that point on, it's simply an ongoing negotiation between government and corporate functionaries about how the money is going to flow. The corporate interest is in functioning with minimal government interference, while the government's only source of power is its ability to control that money flow. Add a revolving door so that it's hard to keep track of which offices the players are working out of, and you have the system in place.
It plays out in public as a battle of virtuous idealism versus heartless pragmatism, and that's reflected in this series of posts. Hess wins in terms of practical, specific, pragmatic, smart comments. Cunningham puts out more pretty thoughts with high moral purpose with no hint of how to really make it happen.
But all in all, this is a discussion that assumes more than it debates and it reads more like to VP's from the same corporation discussing the best distribution of corner offices than a deep-level discussion of the corporations fundamental direction. The two agree on what should be done-- charters, privatization, test-driven accountability-- they're just arguing over who should get to say exactly how these things should be done, and not whether these things should be done in the first place. This is all about tweaking the ESEA-- neither is proposing any serious large transformation.
When it comes to "liberals" and "conservatives" and ed reform, we really are in a Coke and Pepsi world, with public schools the RC Cola of the marketplace. Or maybe we're actually milk-- a good healthy alternative that nobody even talks or thinks about until we finally come up with a cheesy PR campaign of our own.
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