On Memorial Day, there can be no doubt that I live in a small town.
I get up, put on my band uniform, and walk up town to City Hall, where my friends and I in the marching version of our 159-year-old town band grab our hats and our music and get ready to march down the main street (it's named Liberty Street in my town). My brother, sister-in-law, and wife all play in the band; some of the band members are among my oldest friends in the world, and some are former students.
We march down the main drag and end at a tree-covered city park, where folks gather on the grass for a Memorial Day program. Wreaths are laid on crosses, one for each war. The names of all the veterans who died in the last year are read aloud, followed by an honor-guard of local vets firing off a salute, followed by taps (played by two trumpet players, standing in opposite corners of the park, one playing as an echo of the other). You can hear the last echoes of the trumpets fade into the sounds of birds and passing traffic.
There's always a speaker and a speech that may veer off into "next to of course god america i love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth" territory, but I can't get offended by any of it. The list of the dead always includes families, and sometimes individuals, whom I know, and I can't help thinking that whether the war was fought in a good cause or a bad one, these are people who did their duty as best they could understand it, even at the risk of life and limb.
It pops me back to a conversation I had with a teacher at an end-of-year gathering Friday night. We were talking about how younger teachers aren't so involved with union leadership, and he said that it may be in part that some people aren't fighters, that they don't want to make enemies. That may seem like a wimpy reason to my big city brethren and sistren, but here in small towns, it's a part of contract negotiations and strikes and battles over the schools-- the people we sit across a negotiating table from are also literally the people next door, the people we sing in church choir with, even the people we're related to. In small town politics there is no such thing as going at someone unrestrained with both barrels blazing as if we'll never have to face each other again.
So I get the "let's not make enemies" concern. But I've had the same concern myself, back in my union president days, and I already knew the answer before he expressed the concern-- sometimes you already have enemies, and the only question is whether or not you are going to stand up to them.
Memorial Day, for me, is a reminder that you don't always get to choose your battles. Sometimes you battles choose you.
After the ceremony in the park is over, my wife and I walked home, walked the dog, graded some papers, took a nap. Then we walked over to my in-laws, because I live in a small town and on a day like today, I can conduct all my business without ever getting in a car. The in-laws grilled some food, we face-timed my sister-in-law in Hawaii, we talked about Stuff, and then my wife and I headed home.
In the end, Memorial Day also reminds me that I am extraordinarily blessed/privileged/fortunate (pick the one that suits your belief system), the recipient of many advantages and benefits that I haven't really earned. Even my battles are privileged ones-- I know that a year from now nobody is going to be talking about how I died in the service of my country or my cause, nor will I have died because I had the misfortune to be seen as threat requiring a lethal response.
In a way, one of my privileges/blessings/fortunes is that I get at least one more year that a bunch of other folks do not. Memorial Day reminds me not to waste it, to try make good choices, to try not to sleepwalk through it. I live in a small place, a place I'm firmly rooted to, and yet in the last year, I've become more closely connected through this little box to a larger, wider world as well, and been given a chance to use my voice in that world. We are living through interesting times, as many generations before us have. Whatever gifts, battles, blessings, weaknesses, flaws, and struggles have come to me, I want to try to rise and meet them with whatever I have that might be of use. I am not a big deal, and I will not change the world. But none of the people whose names were read today were world-changing titans, either. They just did what they felt they needed to do, and I'm pretty sure that's a plenty tall order all by itself.
Monday, May 25, 2015
The Testing Circus: Whose Fault Is It?
Andrew Rotherham of Bellwether Education Partners, a reformster-filled thinky tank, took to the pages of US News last week to address the Testing Circus and shift the blame for it explain its origins.
The ridiculous pep rallies? The matching t-shirts? The general Test Prep Squeezing Out Actual Education? That's all the fault of the local districts. In fact, Rotherham notes, "a cynic might think it's a deliberate effort to sour parents on the tests." Yes, that's it-- the schools are just making all this up in an attempt to make the public think testing is stupid.
Reformsters have been doing this a lot-- trying to shift the blame for testing frenzy from the policy makers and the reformsters pushing testing policies onto the local teachers and districts. In a video that I cannot, for some reason, link, John White, education boss of Louisiana, argues that it's local tests from teachers and school districts that are muddying the testing water, and so every single test deployed in a classroom ought to come under the control and direction of the state. Or we could go back to Arne Duncan et al suggesting that we need to trim back "unnecessary" tests, which turns out to mean tests developed on the local level.
It is hard to see this working. Can we really mollify Mrs. McGrumpymom by saying, "We know that your child really hated the PARCC and found the whole experience stressful and useless, so we're going to have her teacher stop giving those weekly spelling quizzes. All better, right?"
As with Arne Duncan, who continually seems just oh so mystified about how schools could possibly have gotten so worked up over testing, the reformster mystery here is this: do they really not understand what they've done, or do they understand and are just unleashing the lamest PR campaign ever?
Rotherham blames the Testing Circus on three factors.
First, he thinks it's a matter of capacity. But his explanation suggests that he simply doesn't understand the problem.
What elementary schools are asked to do is daunting though not unreasonable. Getting students to a specific degree of literacy and numeracy is challenging but it can be done.
Bzzzzrtt!! Wrong. Elementary schools were not asked to get students to a specific degree of literacy and numeracy. They were commanded (do it, or else) to raise test scores, and that is what they have devoted themselves to. Achieving a specific degree of literacy and numeracy might help with that goal, but only if the test is a good and valid measure, and that topic is open to debate. On top of achieving the specific degree etc, students have to actually care about the test to the point that they try. Test advocates love to assume this as a given, and they are fools to do so. If I walk into your workplace and assign you a difficult task that seems unrelated to your actual job and which will have no effect on your rating or performance review, exactly how hard will you try?
It is not the reading and numeracy level that is the goal. It is the test score. Test advocates can pretend those are the same thing, but they are not. Schools can hang tough and refuse to start with pep rallies for the tests-- or they can recognize that the nine-year-olds who will decide their fate will do a better job if someone convinces them to try.
Second, new tests. Rotherham repeats a version of a new talking point that makes no sense. The new tests are causing turmoil, stress, and even low scores. These tests are more challenging because they test awesome things like critical thinking and consequently, they are impervious to Test Prep. However, students will do better as everyone gets used to the test. So, the new tests have nothing to do with Test Prep, but students will do better as they are better Prepared for the Test.
Third, new technology. One point for Rotherham, who pretty much admits that making everybody take the test on computer was a bad idea. But I'm going to take the point back because he does not acknowledge that the decision to do so was not a local or classroom foul-up, but a mandate pushed from the highest level of reformsterdom.
Rotherham is correct to argue that some schools have gone berserk on the Testing Circus and some have quietly avoided it. He would like to use this to assert that the Testing Circus is not inevitable, and there I don't think he has a point.
Some states have put more weight on the Big Standardized Test than others. On the local level, some superintendents and principals have gone whole hog on testing and some have done their best to tell teachers, "Just do your job and let the chips fall where they may.'
But Rotherham et al cannot ignore that some pretty big chips are falling. New York teachers are looking at fifty percent of their professional rating coming from test scores, and they are not alone. Nor did states decide to roll test scores into teacher evaluations on a whim-- that 's a federal mandate of Race to the Top and/or NCLB waivers. And all of us the teacher biz can hear the hounds in the not-very-great-distance calling for those same teacher ratings to be used to decide pay and job security.
Nor can Rotherham ignore that some states are invoking considerable punishment for low test scores, using low scores as an excuse to declare that a school is "failing" and must be turned around, replaced, bulldozed, or handed over to charter operators.
Reformsters seem to want the following message to come from somewhere:
"Hey, public schools and public school teachers-- your entire professional future and career rests on the results of these BS Tests. But please don't put a lot of emphasis on the tests. Your entire future is riding on these results, but whatever you do-- don't do everything you can possibly think of to get test scores up."
I have no way of knowing whether Rotherham, Duncan, et al are disingenuous, clueless, or big fat fibbers trying to paper over the bullet wound of BS Testing with the bandaid of PR. But the answer to the question "Who caused this testing circus" is as easy to figure out as it ever was.
Reformy policymakers and politicians and bureaucrats declared that test scores would be hugely important, and ever since, educators have weighed self-preservation against educational malpractice and tried to make choices they could both live with and which would allow them to have a career. And reformsters, who knew all along that the test would be their instrument to drive instruction, have pretended to be surprised testing has driven instruction and pep rallies and shirts. They said, "Get high test scores, or else," and a huge number of schools said, "Yessir!" and pitched some tents and hired some acrobats and lion tamers. Oddly enough, the clowns were already in place.
The ridiculous pep rallies? The matching t-shirts? The general Test Prep Squeezing Out Actual Education? That's all the fault of the local districts. In fact, Rotherham notes, "a cynic might think it's a deliberate effort to sour parents on the tests." Yes, that's it-- the schools are just making all this up in an attempt to make the public think testing is stupid.
Reformsters have been doing this a lot-- trying to shift the blame for testing frenzy from the policy makers and the reformsters pushing testing policies onto the local teachers and districts. In a video that I cannot, for some reason, link, John White, education boss of Louisiana, argues that it's local tests from teachers and school districts that are muddying the testing water, and so every single test deployed in a classroom ought to come under the control and direction of the state. Or we could go back to Arne Duncan et al suggesting that we need to trim back "unnecessary" tests, which turns out to mean tests developed on the local level.
It is hard to see this working. Can we really mollify Mrs. McGrumpymom by saying, "We know that your child really hated the PARCC and found the whole experience stressful and useless, so we're going to have her teacher stop giving those weekly spelling quizzes. All better, right?"
As with Arne Duncan, who continually seems just oh so mystified about how schools could possibly have gotten so worked up over testing, the reformster mystery here is this: do they really not understand what they've done, or do they understand and are just unleashing the lamest PR campaign ever?
Rotherham blames the Testing Circus on three factors.
First, he thinks it's a matter of capacity. But his explanation suggests that he simply doesn't understand the problem.
What elementary schools are asked to do is daunting though not unreasonable. Getting students to a specific degree of literacy and numeracy is challenging but it can be done.
Bzzzzrtt!! Wrong. Elementary schools were not asked to get students to a specific degree of literacy and numeracy. They were commanded (do it, or else) to raise test scores, and that is what they have devoted themselves to. Achieving a specific degree of literacy and numeracy might help with that goal, but only if the test is a good and valid measure, and that topic is open to debate. On top of achieving the specific degree etc, students have to actually care about the test to the point that they try. Test advocates love to assume this as a given, and they are fools to do so. If I walk into your workplace and assign you a difficult task that seems unrelated to your actual job and which will have no effect on your rating or performance review, exactly how hard will you try?
It is not the reading and numeracy level that is the goal. It is the test score. Test advocates can pretend those are the same thing, but they are not. Schools can hang tough and refuse to start with pep rallies for the tests-- or they can recognize that the nine-year-olds who will decide their fate will do a better job if someone convinces them to try.
Second, new tests. Rotherham repeats a version of a new talking point that makes no sense. The new tests are causing turmoil, stress, and even low scores. These tests are more challenging because they test awesome things like critical thinking and consequently, they are impervious to Test Prep. However, students will do better as everyone gets used to the test. So, the new tests have nothing to do with Test Prep, but students will do better as they are better Prepared for the Test.
Third, new technology. One point for Rotherham, who pretty much admits that making everybody take the test on computer was a bad idea. But I'm going to take the point back because he does not acknowledge that the decision to do so was not a local or classroom foul-up, but a mandate pushed from the highest level of reformsterdom.
Rotherham is correct to argue that some schools have gone berserk on the Testing Circus and some have quietly avoided it. He would like to use this to assert that the Testing Circus is not inevitable, and there I don't think he has a point.
Some states have put more weight on the Big Standardized Test than others. On the local level, some superintendents and principals have gone whole hog on testing and some have done their best to tell teachers, "Just do your job and let the chips fall where they may.'
But Rotherham et al cannot ignore that some pretty big chips are falling. New York teachers are looking at fifty percent of their professional rating coming from test scores, and they are not alone. Nor did states decide to roll test scores into teacher evaluations on a whim-- that 's a federal mandate of Race to the Top and/or NCLB waivers. And all of us the teacher biz can hear the hounds in the not-very-great-distance calling for those same teacher ratings to be used to decide pay and job security.
Nor can Rotherham ignore that some states are invoking considerable punishment for low test scores, using low scores as an excuse to declare that a school is "failing" and must be turned around, replaced, bulldozed, or handed over to charter operators.
Reformsters seem to want the following message to come from somewhere:
"Hey, public schools and public school teachers-- your entire professional future and career rests on the results of these BS Tests. But please don't put a lot of emphasis on the tests. Your entire future is riding on these results, but whatever you do-- don't do everything you can possibly think of to get test scores up."
I have no way of knowing whether Rotherham, Duncan, et al are disingenuous, clueless, or big fat fibbers trying to paper over the bullet wound of BS Testing with the bandaid of PR. But the answer to the question "Who caused this testing circus" is as easy to figure out as it ever was.
Reformy policymakers and politicians and bureaucrats declared that test scores would be hugely important, and ever since, educators have weighed self-preservation against educational malpractice and tried to make choices they could both live with and which would allow them to have a career. And reformsters, who knew all along that the test would be their instrument to drive instruction, have pretended to be surprised testing has driven instruction and pep rallies and shirts. They said, "Get high test scores, or else," and a huge number of schools said, "Yessir!" and pitched some tents and hired some acrobats and lion tamers. Oddly enough, the clowns were already in place.
Bell Curve Beatdown
If you are only going to read one blog post this month, it should be this post by Jersey Jazzman about standardized testing. Come for sentences like this one:
This can't be stressed enough in the testing debates: we design tests not based on objective criteria, but on socially constructed frameworks that assume some of us are above average, some of us are below, and most of us are in the middle.
In other words, standardized tests are not designed to answer the question, "How well do these students understand this material." The test manufacturers believe they already know the answer to that question-- some students understand very well, most understand moderately well, and some don't understand at all. If the test results do not confirm that pre-determined result, then the test must be defective, and we have to redesign it.
It's hard to state how contrary that is to common teacher sense. If every student in my class fails a test, I know I need to reteach because I didn't get the material taught. If every student in my class does well, I do a little happy dance because we all nailed that stuff. But in either case, a test manufacturer just blames the test and sends it back for redesign.
And the test manufacturer believes that curve can never change, creating a Sisyphusian task -- we are supposed to make all students above average, and we are supposed to prove it with an instrument that will always, must always, show that only a few excel, a few fail, and most are average. In other words, the standardization crew demands that teachers change the bell curve when they themselves believe that the bell curve can never, ever be changed. Or as Jersey Jazzman puts it-
We're insisting that all children demonstrate high performance on a test that, by design, only allows a few children to demonstrate high performance.
Go read the post. It's a great explanation in plain language of the technical reasons that the standardized testing game is rigged for failure as well as why you have had the nagging sense that the whole testing business is crazy-making and not actually measuring educational effectiveness at all.
This can't be stressed enough in the testing debates: we design tests not based on objective criteria, but on socially constructed frameworks that assume some of us are above average, some of us are below, and most of us are in the middle.
In other words, standardized tests are not designed to answer the question, "How well do these students understand this material." The test manufacturers believe they already know the answer to that question-- some students understand very well, most understand moderately well, and some don't understand at all. If the test results do not confirm that pre-determined result, then the test must be defective, and we have to redesign it.
It's hard to state how contrary that is to common teacher sense. If every student in my class fails a test, I know I need to reteach because I didn't get the material taught. If every student in my class does well, I do a little happy dance because we all nailed that stuff. But in either case, a test manufacturer just blames the test and sends it back for redesign.
And the test manufacturer believes that curve can never change, creating a Sisyphusian task -- we are supposed to make all students above average, and we are supposed to prove it with an instrument that will always, must always, show that only a few excel, a few fail, and most are average. In other words, the standardization crew demands that teachers change the bell curve when they themselves believe that the bell curve can never, ever be changed. Or as Jersey Jazzman puts it-
We're insisting that all children demonstrate high performance on a test that, by design, only allows a few children to demonstrate high performance.
Go read the post. It's a great explanation in plain language of the technical reasons that the standardized testing game is rigged for failure as well as why you have had the nagging sense that the whole testing business is crazy-making and not actually measuring educational effectiveness at all.
This
can't be stressed enough in the testing debates: we design tests not
based on objective criteria, but on socially constructed frameworks that
assume some of us are above average, some of us are below, and most of
us are in the middle. - See more at:
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/05/standardized-tests-symptoms-not-causes.html#sthash.39shNQ3R.dpuf
Sunday, May 24, 2015
Charterdom's Paper Hoops
American Enterprise Institute touched off some arguing this month by releasing a report about the mountain of paperwork that charters must climb to see the light of day. Written by Michael McShane, Jenn Hatfield, and Elizabeth English, "The Paperwork Pile-up" sets out to measure and evaluate the paperwork involved in the charter authorization process by way of explaining what they think the process should look like. This has touched off some healthy debate in the charter community, most notably a dissent from the National Association of Charter Authorizers (a group I didn't even know existed).
Why do charter fans want to landscape the paper mountain?
There is a great deal of tension in the Land O' Charters these days, and that's to be expected. Charter lobbyists and advocates have pushed hard to make charter authorization easier than pie (which would be, I don't know, as easy as a pop tart?), but that has opened the door to such fiascos as Ted Morris, Jr., the 22-year-old Rochester NY man who scored a charter even though he'd never actually graduated from college and had an application filled with spirited inaccuracies. The charter authorizers of NY ended up looking especially dopey because Morris's lies were uncovered by one reporter and a handful of bloggers in less than twenty four hours, using a technique I like to call "looking."
This sort of thing makes everybody in the charter sector look bad, and charter misbehavior is pretty easy to come across (seriously-- just google "charter school misbehavior"), so there's an increasing interest in making the Charter Entrepreneur Club a little more exclusive. At the same time, markets are starting to fill up, and charters now have to battle each other instead of simply suckling on the blood of the public school system. So the charter sector is moving from a position of "give charter authorizations to anyone and everyone who wants one" to a more measured approach. Hence, this report from AEI (who, like most free market fans, like a market that's not so free that any riff-raff can get in).
How does the report look to someone who, like me, thinks charters have lost their way more completely than a overfilled clown car with a busted GPS? "I'll wait until someone asks before I offer my opinion," said no blogger ever. So here we go.
Charter Authorizing Do's
The authors offer a quick list of the things charter authorizers should absolutely do when deciding who gets to be a charterista or not.
First, they should state clear performance measures for the charter school and hold the charter to those goals. And see, we're in trouble already, because none of the things that people most care about in a school are clearly measurable. You can't measure critical thinking skills (seriously, you just can't) and you can't measure emotional growth and well-being, so you are reduced either to ridiculous proxy standards (85% of student body will respond to question "How you doin'?" with "I am happy") or settling for unimportant meaningless things that you can measure while convincing yourself that they actually mean something (hello, PARCC).
Second, they should screen out schools "that have no business educating children." That's evocative, but open to interpretation (I, for instance, would put Success Academy and any "no excuses" school in that category). The authors suggest giving curriculum, the governing board, and the staffing plan the once over. Hold this thought for a few paragraphs.
Third, the authorizers have an obligation to look after the taxpayers' money. "As the conduit of public funds, authorizers must ensure that taxpayer dollars earmarked for charter schools will be used to educate students." The authors sneak in a shot about how government is rife with waste and fraud, but this whole point is here just so they can move on to--
Fourth. AEI, as one of the leading sources of Reasonable Reformsterism, likes this construction very much: "It's perfectly right and reasonable for people to like pancakes. Now let me explain why they should be made to eat waffles." The third point was the pancakes, but the fourth "do" is "asking only for the information that is absolutely necessary to decide whether to grant or with-hold a charter." They are correct that charter applications could run into miles of ridiculous detail. But it is also true, for example, that a charter should openly and transparently account for every single taxpayer dollar it takes in and spends. Every last one. If that leads to an examination of pretty much everything, then so be it. If charters want to be public schools, they must operate with fully transparent complete accounting. If they don't want to do that, they need to stop pretending they are public schools.
Charter Authorizing Don't's
The authors now offer a list of things that charter authorizers should not do.
First, don't act like venture capitalists. This point seems to boil down to, "Don't act like they're spending your money so you're entitled to full accountability." This is kind of hilarious from the folks who have been huge fans of the Schools Run Like Businesses school of reform. It is also hilarious to see conservatives argue, "It's just taxpayer dollars. It's not like it's your own personal money." which I'm pretty sure is on the list of Top Ten Things We Hate About Those Tax and Spend Liberals. Venture capitalists do market research and study up carefully on their prospective business; charter school authorizers should want to foster all sorts of attempts at schooling. If writing this point did not create powerful cognitive dissonance for the AEI folks, they must be taking powerful meds.
Second, charter school authorizers are not management consultants. The writers actually type "they should also avoid taking on the role of a Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company, or McKinsey & Company." Because taking on the role of those firms would cut into those firms' business. Besides, management consultants are for businesses that are "old and ossified" but charters are young and fresh, like baby bunnies romping through fields or new-grown daisies. It's a silly claim given how instrumental all three of those groups have been in ploughing the ground, setting up, and nurturing new charter schools, but hey-- props for the use of "ossified."
Third, authorizers aren't pedagogical experts, so they should back off about that stuff (somehow balancing the off-backing with the need, up in the "do's," to make sure the charter folks have any business teaching children). They don't need to know the why's and wherefore's.
Fourth, authorizers should not use charter granting as an opportunity to embed their favorite issue into the charter's program. Fair enough.
More Don't-ing
There's also a handy chart that shows a list of some specific items that either qualify as Don't or Really, Really Don't. Those items that a charter shouldn't have to do in order to earn authorization include:
* Explain the advertising plan
* Describe any innovations to be used in the school
* Offer a rationale for choosing the specific location/community.
* Commit to meeting all students’ needs
* Explain how the choice of instructional methods will serve students.
* Justify the choice of financial strategies/goals.
I emphasized the word "shouldn't" above because one could easily mistake this for a list of things that a charter should absolutely have to do. Particularly that second one-- if you aren't proposing to do anything special, different, or innovative, why should you be allowed to operate a charter at all?
But there's an assumption that runs throughout this paper-- people have a right to start up a charter if they want to, and the authorizers should meddle no more than absolutely necessary. Authorizers are the bouncers at an exclusive club; they are necessary to keep the rabble out, but they should never interfere with the members enjoying themselves inside.
The Analyses
The chart I mentioned above divided charter application activities into four quadrants. One was green (okay), two were yellow (not cool, dude) and the last was red (complete waste of time). They dug through a giant stack of charter applications and sorted each task by quadrant. The results-- 42.9% green, 33.9% yellow, and 23.2% red-- aren't very compelling, given their classification of different tasks is highly debateable. But, you know, having that point-something in the data makes it look very precise and sciency.
The Lessons
They learned five things.
1) Many authorizers have been able to simplify the paperwork and still keep "quality control."
2) Authorizers tend to mistake length for rigor.
3) There is a lack of clarity about what charter authorizers are actually supposed to do.
4) Authorizers don't always love innovation as much as they say they do.
5) There's more variation within authorizers than between them.
The irony factor here is kind of huge. 1 and 2 seem like excellent advice for Big Standardized Test manufacturers. 3 is supported by this quote: “We love to see innovation, but at the end of the day, it has to make educational and business sense.” In other words, when you set up schools to be run like businesses-- they are. 3 is also ironic because so many charters offer only one innovation-- NOT taking all students.
More Irony Ahead
The report also includes recommendations. Most are in service of the charters-- authorizers should be re-regulated, rebranded, and rededicated as "guardians of autonomy." They should not be so worried about protecting the interests of the taxpayers and spend more time protecting the autonomy of the charters.
That's not ironic. It's just business as usual.
But the last recommendation? An orgy of irony! The report's point is that people should get "smart regulation" out of their vocabulary, because they keep saying, "Well, cool. We'll get rid of the dumb regulations you just pointed out and replace them with smart ones!"
First, “smart” and “dumb” are in the eye of the beholder. There is an unfortunate tendency for those not actually given the task of creating something to underestimate how difficult and time-consuming it can be.
Does that argument sound familiar? Substitute "teaching" or "schools" or "education." Substitute "good and bad" for "smart and dumb."
Second, no raindrop thinks it is responsible for the flood. Individually, each regulation could be sensible and meaningful, but when combined with hundreds of other requirements, the sum becomes incoherent and onerous.
Well, there's a fine explanation of how you can hit schools with a bunch of standards and some new teacher evaluations and budgetary pressures and the onslaught of resource-sucking charters and even if they seem like a good idea to you at the time, they add up to a perfect storm of disaster. Who knew that I would find a great pair of sentences about the huge mess that is modern education reform buried in a paper by leading reformsters?
Of course, there is one more irony here. Because when it comes to onerous and overly-complex application processes being used to make it harder to jump through the necessary hoops, the charters are masters. It is one of the great creaming techniques-- set up a process and paperwork so demanding that only the most committed and capable families will be able to navigate it all. It has worked so well for the charters, and yet apparently they do not enjoy being on the receiving end of it. See? Irony.
Why do charter fans want to landscape the paper mountain?
There is a great deal of tension in the Land O' Charters these days, and that's to be expected. Charter lobbyists and advocates have pushed hard to make charter authorization easier than pie (which would be, I don't know, as easy as a pop tart?), but that has opened the door to such fiascos as Ted Morris, Jr., the 22-year-old Rochester NY man who scored a charter even though he'd never actually graduated from college and had an application filled with spirited inaccuracies. The charter authorizers of NY ended up looking especially dopey because Morris's lies were uncovered by one reporter and a handful of bloggers in less than twenty four hours, using a technique I like to call "looking."
This sort of thing makes everybody in the charter sector look bad, and charter misbehavior is pretty easy to come across (seriously-- just google "charter school misbehavior"), so there's an increasing interest in making the Charter Entrepreneur Club a little more exclusive. At the same time, markets are starting to fill up, and charters now have to battle each other instead of simply suckling on the blood of the public school system. So the charter sector is moving from a position of "give charter authorizations to anyone and everyone who wants one" to a more measured approach. Hence, this report from AEI (who, like most free market fans, like a market that's not so free that any riff-raff can get in).
How does the report look to someone who, like me, thinks charters have lost their way more completely than a overfilled clown car with a busted GPS? "I'll wait until someone asks before I offer my opinion," said no blogger ever. So here we go.
Charter Authorizing Do's
The authors offer a quick list of the things charter authorizers should absolutely do when deciding who gets to be a charterista or not.
First, they should state clear performance measures for the charter school and hold the charter to those goals. And see, we're in trouble already, because none of the things that people most care about in a school are clearly measurable. You can't measure critical thinking skills (seriously, you just can't) and you can't measure emotional growth and well-being, so you are reduced either to ridiculous proxy standards (85% of student body will respond to question "How you doin'?" with "I am happy") or settling for unimportant meaningless things that you can measure while convincing yourself that they actually mean something (hello, PARCC).
Second, they should screen out schools "that have no business educating children." That's evocative, but open to interpretation (I, for instance, would put Success Academy and any "no excuses" school in that category). The authors suggest giving curriculum, the governing board, and the staffing plan the once over. Hold this thought for a few paragraphs.
Third, the authorizers have an obligation to look after the taxpayers' money. "As the conduit of public funds, authorizers must ensure that taxpayer dollars earmarked for charter schools will be used to educate students." The authors sneak in a shot about how government is rife with waste and fraud, but this whole point is here just so they can move on to--
Fourth. AEI, as one of the leading sources of Reasonable Reformsterism, likes this construction very much: "It's perfectly right and reasonable for people to like pancakes. Now let me explain why they should be made to eat waffles." The third point was the pancakes, but the fourth "do" is "asking only for the information that is absolutely necessary to decide whether to grant or with-hold a charter." They are correct that charter applications could run into miles of ridiculous detail. But it is also true, for example, that a charter should openly and transparently account for every single taxpayer dollar it takes in and spends. Every last one. If that leads to an examination of pretty much everything, then so be it. If charters want to be public schools, they must operate with fully transparent complete accounting. If they don't want to do that, they need to stop pretending they are public schools.
Charter Authorizing Don't's
The authors now offer a list of things that charter authorizers should not do.
First, don't act like venture capitalists. This point seems to boil down to, "Don't act like they're spending your money so you're entitled to full accountability." This is kind of hilarious from the folks who have been huge fans of the Schools Run Like Businesses school of reform. It is also hilarious to see conservatives argue, "It's just taxpayer dollars. It's not like it's your own personal money." which I'm pretty sure is on the list of Top Ten Things We Hate About Those Tax and Spend Liberals. Venture capitalists do market research and study up carefully on their prospective business; charter school authorizers should want to foster all sorts of attempts at schooling. If writing this point did not create powerful cognitive dissonance for the AEI folks, they must be taking powerful meds.
Second, charter school authorizers are not management consultants. The writers actually type "they should also avoid taking on the role of a Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company, or McKinsey & Company." Because taking on the role of those firms would cut into those firms' business. Besides, management consultants are for businesses that are "old and ossified" but charters are young and fresh, like baby bunnies romping through fields or new-grown daisies. It's a silly claim given how instrumental all three of those groups have been in ploughing the ground, setting up, and nurturing new charter schools, but hey-- props for the use of "ossified."
Third, authorizers aren't pedagogical experts, so they should back off about that stuff (somehow balancing the off-backing with the need, up in the "do's," to make sure the charter folks have any business teaching children). They don't need to know the why's and wherefore's.
Fourth, authorizers should not use charter granting as an opportunity to embed their favorite issue into the charter's program. Fair enough.
More Don't-ing
There's also a handy chart that shows a list of some specific items that either qualify as Don't or Really, Really Don't. Those items that a charter shouldn't have to do in order to earn authorization include:
* Explain the advertising plan
* Describe any innovations to be used in the school
* Offer a rationale for choosing the specific location/community.
* Commit to meeting all students’ needs
* Explain how the choice of instructional methods will serve students.
* Justify the choice of financial strategies/goals.
I emphasized the word "shouldn't" above because one could easily mistake this for a list of things that a charter should absolutely have to do. Particularly that second one-- if you aren't proposing to do anything special, different, or innovative, why should you be allowed to operate a charter at all?
But there's an assumption that runs throughout this paper-- people have a right to start up a charter if they want to, and the authorizers should meddle no more than absolutely necessary. Authorizers are the bouncers at an exclusive club; they are necessary to keep the rabble out, but they should never interfere with the members enjoying themselves inside.
The Analyses
The chart I mentioned above divided charter application activities into four quadrants. One was green (okay), two were yellow (not cool, dude) and the last was red (complete waste of time). They dug through a giant stack of charter applications and sorted each task by quadrant. The results-- 42.9% green, 33.9% yellow, and 23.2% red-- aren't very compelling, given their classification of different tasks is highly debateable. But, you know, having that point-something in the data makes it look very precise and sciency.
The Lessons
They learned five things.
1) Many authorizers have been able to simplify the paperwork and still keep "quality control."
2) Authorizers tend to mistake length for rigor.
3) There is a lack of clarity about what charter authorizers are actually supposed to do.
4) Authorizers don't always love innovation as much as they say they do.
5) There's more variation within authorizers than between them.
The irony factor here is kind of huge. 1 and 2 seem like excellent advice for Big Standardized Test manufacturers. 3 is supported by this quote: “We love to see innovation, but at the end of the day, it has to make educational and business sense.” In other words, when you set up schools to be run like businesses-- they are. 3 is also ironic because so many charters offer only one innovation-- NOT taking all students.
More Irony Ahead
The report also includes recommendations. Most are in service of the charters-- authorizers should be re-regulated, rebranded, and rededicated as "guardians of autonomy." They should not be so worried about protecting the interests of the taxpayers and spend more time protecting the autonomy of the charters.
That's not ironic. It's just business as usual.
But the last recommendation? An orgy of irony! The report's point is that people should get "smart regulation" out of their vocabulary, because they keep saying, "Well, cool. We'll get rid of the dumb regulations you just pointed out and replace them with smart ones!"
First, “smart” and “dumb” are in the eye of the beholder. There is an unfortunate tendency for those not actually given the task of creating something to underestimate how difficult and time-consuming it can be.
Does that argument sound familiar? Substitute "teaching" or "schools" or "education." Substitute "good and bad" for "smart and dumb."
Second, no raindrop thinks it is responsible for the flood. Individually, each regulation could be sensible and meaningful, but when combined with hundreds of other requirements, the sum becomes incoherent and onerous.
Well, there's a fine explanation of how you can hit schools with a bunch of standards and some new teacher evaluations and budgetary pressures and the onslaught of resource-sucking charters and even if they seem like a good idea to you at the time, they add up to a perfect storm of disaster. Who knew that I would find a great pair of sentences about the huge mess that is modern education reform buried in a paper by leading reformsters?
Of course, there is one more irony here. Because when it comes to onerous and overly-complex application processes being used to make it harder to jump through the necessary hoops, the charters are masters. It is one of the great creaming techniques-- set up a process and paperwork so demanding that only the most committed and capable families will be able to navigate it all. It has worked so well for the charters, and yet apparently they do not enjoy being on the receiving end of it. See? Irony.
PA: Huffman Sells Snake Oil
As i wrote earlier this week, some Pennsylvania legislators have been looking at an Achievement School District for the Quaker State. This is a great idea if you are interested in converting public education into a system of private schools that make investors and operators rich. If your goal is to actually educate children, an ASD is probably not your best shot-- the process disenfranchises local voters and taxpayers and hands their schools over to charter operators.
Kevin Huffman has thrown in his two cents. Huffman is a former Chief for Change, a lawyer who managed to become Tennessee's education head on the strength of two years with Teach for America and plenty of fine connections. He eventually slunk away from that job, but since reformsters seem to only fail upwards, he's still working the circuit, pitching reformsters programs.
That pitchmanship brought him to PA, where he "testified" in favor of the ASD and penned a lovely op-ed for PennLive.
In that piece, he notes that "additional funding is key," which may seem like a violation of the reformster mantra that throwing money at public education is a bad idea. But throwing money is actually an approved reformster idea-- as long as you throw the money at the right people.
Huffman outlines his two-step program for turning schoolsinto healthy investment properties around.
First, we created an Achievement School District (ASD) - a district that has the authority to remove chronically low performing schools and manage them outside of the home school district.
Second, we empowered local districts with district-run Innovation Zones in which schools are given more autonomy to select staff, run different programs, and change the school-day schedule to improve performance.
So first, strip local school boards and voters of authority over their own schools. Second, allow a mixture of innovation and stripping teachers of job security and pay. The stated plan in Tennessee was that the bottom 5% of schools would move into the top 25% within five years. Doesn't that all sound great? But hey-- how is it working out in Tennessee?
That depends (surprise) on who is crunching which numbers, but even the state's own numbers gave the Tennessee ASD the lowest possible score for growth.
In fact, Huffman forgot to mention the newest "technique" proposed to make ASD schools successful-- allow them to recruit students from outside the school's geographical home base. This is the only turnaround model that really has been successful across the nation-- in order to turn a school around, you need to fill it with different students.
Meanwhile, Tennessee is just starting to digest the news of this year's magical increased test scores. Could these be inflated for political reason? Well, duh. You didn't think that cut scores are set by some sort of sound pedagogical process, did you?
Huffman has been known to say Dumb Things. He once claimed that students with disabilities lag behind because they aren't tested often enough. He uses his special Dumb Thing skill to wrap up his op-ed.
When I spoke with Pennsylvania state senators last week about school turnaround work, one senator asked me directly, "When you created the Achievement School District, were you worried that it was too risky?" I responded, "The greatest risk would be to do nothing."
Pretending that any senator actually answered that question, the answer is still dumb. Your child is lying on the sidewalk, bleeding and broken after being struck by a car. A guy in a t-shirt runs up with an axe and makes like he's about to try to lop off your child's legs. "What the hell are you doing?" you holler, and t-shirt guy replies, "Well, the greatest risk would be to do nothing."
Doing Nothing is rarely as great a risk as Doing Something Stupid. Achievement School Districts are dumb ideas that offer no educational benefits and run contrary to the foundational principles of democracy in this country. They are literally taxation without representation. Huffman should move on along to his next gig and leave Pennsylvania alone.
Kevin Huffman has thrown in his two cents. Huffman is a former Chief for Change, a lawyer who managed to become Tennessee's education head on the strength of two years with Teach for America and plenty of fine connections. He eventually slunk away from that job, but since reformsters seem to only fail upwards, he's still working the circuit, pitching reformsters programs.
That pitchmanship brought him to PA, where he "testified" in favor of the ASD and penned a lovely op-ed for PennLive.
In that piece, he notes that "additional funding is key," which may seem like a violation of the reformster mantra that throwing money at public education is a bad idea. But throwing money is actually an approved reformster idea-- as long as you throw the money at the right people.
Huffman outlines his two-step program for turning schools
First, we created an Achievement School District (ASD) - a district that has the authority to remove chronically low performing schools and manage them outside of the home school district.
Second, we empowered local districts with district-run Innovation Zones in which schools are given more autonomy to select staff, run different programs, and change the school-day schedule to improve performance.
So first, strip local school boards and voters of authority over their own schools. Second, allow a mixture of innovation and stripping teachers of job security and pay. The stated plan in Tennessee was that the bottom 5% of schools would move into the top 25% within five years. Doesn't that all sound great? But hey-- how is it working out in Tennessee?
That depends (surprise) on who is crunching which numbers, but even the state's own numbers gave the Tennessee ASD the lowest possible score for growth.
In fact, Huffman forgot to mention the newest "technique" proposed to make ASD schools successful-- allow them to recruit students from outside the school's geographical home base. This is the only turnaround model that really has been successful across the nation-- in order to turn a school around, you need to fill it with different students.
Meanwhile, Tennessee is just starting to digest the news of this year's magical increased test scores. Could these be inflated for political reason? Well, duh. You didn't think that cut scores are set by some sort of sound pedagogical process, did you?
Huffman has been known to say Dumb Things. He once claimed that students with disabilities lag behind because they aren't tested often enough. He uses his special Dumb Thing skill to wrap up his op-ed.
When I spoke with Pennsylvania state senators last week about school turnaround work, one senator asked me directly, "When you created the Achievement School District, were you worried that it was too risky?" I responded, "The greatest risk would be to do nothing."
Pretending that any senator actually answered that question, the answer is still dumb. Your child is lying on the sidewalk, bleeding and broken after being struck by a car. A guy in a t-shirt runs up with an axe and makes like he's about to try to lop off your child's legs. "What the hell are you doing?" you holler, and t-shirt guy replies, "Well, the greatest risk would be to do nothing."
Doing Nothing is rarely as great a risk as Doing Something Stupid. Achievement School Districts are dumb ideas that offer no educational benefits and run contrary to the foundational principles of democracy in this country. They are literally taxation without representation. Huffman should move on along to his next gig and leave Pennsylvania alone.
Saturday, May 23, 2015
Newark: The Civil Rights Lie
Friday, the students of Newark took to the streets. Thousands of students. Students from many different schools within the city. They took to the steps of City Hall, and then they moved to shut down the main drag. And unlike a previous protest in Newark, this one resulted in actual press coverage. In addition to coverage from Bob Braun, who has covered the story in Newark faithfully, the walkout was also covered in the "regular" media here and here.
As always, the students' actions were thoughtful, measured and positive. Their message was vocal and clear. Accountability for superintendent Cami Anderson (skewered in one sign as "$cami"). A return to local control. And end to charter takeover of schools that have no need of takeover.
Imagine you are someone thinking, "I believe that equitable education is the civil rights issue of our era. I believe that students who are not wealthy and not white are not represented and their needs are not respected. I am concerned that without test results, these students will become invisible."
Could you possibly have stood in Newark and said, "Boy, I just wish there were some way to find out what black families and students want, or what they think about the direction of education in Newark."
And yet, per nj.com*, the district had this to say:
"While the District supports our students' right to express their opinions and concerns, we cannot support these actions when they disrupt the regular instructional day," Parmley said in the statement. "The District remains committed to broadening opportunities for Newark's students through expanded learning time and through creating additional professional development opportunities for teachers."
Right. The district remains committed to doing everything except actually listening to their students. They will tell students what they need. They will tell students what they want.
Reports indicate that throughout the district, principals followed a directive to shut the student voices down by any means necessary. Hold lockdowns in the schools. Run long assemblies. Make phonecalls to threaten families with consequences (no prom, no graduation) should a student walk out. In other words-- make sure that those students are neither seen nor heard.
This is the opposite of listening. This is the opposite of making sure students have their civil rights. This is the opposite of treating members of the community as valued partners. This is the opposite of making sure all students are visible.
I am waiting. I am waiting for any of the reformsters who are so deeply concerned about the civil rights issue of the era, who are so concerned that some students might become invisible without certain policies in place, who are so worried that black students will not be heard-- I am waiting for any of those reformsters to speak up and say, "Hey! You have a perfect opportunity in Newark to talk to the people we're all concerned about, people who are clearly motivated by a passion and concern for education and schools. This was the perfect chance to talk to exactly the people we're concerned about, and you blew it. Cami Anderson should get out there and talk to them. Now." I am waiting to hear that.
Reformsters repeatedly claim that they are most concerned about American students like the students of Newark. The students of Newark have given them a chance to put their money where their mouths are, and reformsters have stayed silent. Cami Anderson remains unwilling to so much as talk to the students of Newark, and no leading "reform" voice has stepped up to call her out.
Newark is a clear and vivid demonstration that reformster talk about civil rights and the importance of hearing and responding to the voices of students and families-- it's all a lie. In walking out, the students of Newark have stood up, not just for their own community and schools, but for students and communities all across the country.
*NJ.com also included a completely egregious piece of reporting, noting that several students ran into a Rite-Aid and then later cops were at the Rite-Aid, so of course their reporter asked if there had been looting. Police replied there had been no reports of looting-- so there was nothing to report, and yet this business took up a full paragraph. I suppose it could have been worse-- they could have called the students "thugs."
As always, the students' actions were thoughtful, measured and positive. Their message was vocal and clear. Accountability for superintendent Cami Anderson (skewered in one sign as "$cami"). A return to local control. And end to charter takeover of schools that have no need of takeover.
Imagine you are someone thinking, "I believe that equitable education is the civil rights issue of our era. I believe that students who are not wealthy and not white are not represented and their needs are not respected. I am concerned that without test results, these students will become invisible."
Could you possibly have stood in Newark and said, "Boy, I just wish there were some way to find out what black families and students want, or what they think about the direction of education in Newark."
And yet, per nj.com*, the district had this to say:
"While the District supports our students' right to express their opinions and concerns, we cannot support these actions when they disrupt the regular instructional day," Parmley said in the statement. "The District remains committed to broadening opportunities for Newark's students through expanded learning time and through creating additional professional development opportunities for teachers."
Right. The district remains committed to doing everything except actually listening to their students. They will tell students what they need. They will tell students what they want.
Reports indicate that throughout the district, principals followed a directive to shut the student voices down by any means necessary. Hold lockdowns in the schools. Run long assemblies. Make phonecalls to threaten families with consequences (no prom, no graduation) should a student walk out. In other words-- make sure that those students are neither seen nor heard.
This is the opposite of listening. This is the opposite of making sure students have their civil rights. This is the opposite of treating members of the community as valued partners. This is the opposite of making sure all students are visible.
I am waiting. I am waiting for any of the reformsters who are so deeply concerned about the civil rights issue of the era, who are so concerned that some students might become invisible without certain policies in place, who are so worried that black students will not be heard-- I am waiting for any of those reformsters to speak up and say, "Hey! You have a perfect opportunity in Newark to talk to the people we're all concerned about, people who are clearly motivated by a passion and concern for education and schools. This was the perfect chance to talk to exactly the people we're concerned about, and you blew it. Cami Anderson should get out there and talk to them. Now." I am waiting to hear that.
Reformsters repeatedly claim that they are most concerned about American students like the students of Newark. The students of Newark have given them a chance to put their money where their mouths are, and reformsters have stayed silent. Cami Anderson remains unwilling to so much as talk to the students of Newark, and no leading "reform" voice has stepped up to call her out.
Newark is a clear and vivid demonstration that reformster talk about civil rights and the importance of hearing and responding to the voices of students and families-- it's all a lie. In walking out, the students of Newark have stood up, not just for their own community and schools, but for students and communities all across the country.
*NJ.com also included a completely egregious piece of reporting, noting that several students ran into a Rite-Aid and then later cops were at the Rite-Aid, so of course their reporter asked if there had been looting. Police replied there had been no reports of looting-- so there was nothing to report, and yet this business took up a full paragraph. I suppose it could have been worse-- they could have called the students "thugs."
Is There a Good Standardized Test?
@palan57 serious question: is there any set of standardized tests that you like, you feel are diagnostic/helpful to students & teachers?
— Charles Sahm (@charlessahm) May 22, 2015
It's a fair question, and one I've actually thought about often in the past few years. Have I ever encountered a standardized test that I found useful, or can I even imagine such a thing?
The short answer is, "No." But that also the glib-and-not-very-useful answer, so let me see if i can explain why not? (My previous attempt to answer the question is here.)
Those in existence?
In thinking about existing standardized tests, I don't have much to consider. As a secondary teacher, I historically haven't dealt with nearly so many of these as my elementary brethren and sistren.
Of course, the giant of high school standardized testing has always been the SAT, and we have always understood that it's a lousy measure of what it claims to measure. For years it claimed to test student verbal reasoning skills when, in fact, it mostly just tested vocabulary. It also arguably tested student ability to think like middle class white kids. On top of that, it was, of course, highly gameable, as witnessed by the cottage industry of books, software and coaches generating revenue by helping students raise their scores.
And as omnipresent as the SAT's were and are, if we apply the Beneficial To Students and Teachers test, the SAT's fail. I learn nothing useful about my practice from SAT results, and my students take nothing away except their score. "Hey, these SAT results show the cognitive and knowledge areas in which I need to improve. I think I will take a summer school course in English just so I can work on them," said no high school junior ever.
The closest I've ever come to a useful standardized test would be the materials that came with an excellent literature series that I used years ago. The questioning strategies were excellent-- but that series only provided the questions. I was still grading the materials myself, so not quite a standardized test.
Could I do it, though. Could I finance my retirement by developing a grand and glorious English standardized test that would be useful to students and teachers across America?
I would face two challenge areas-- skills, and knowledge. Let me consider them separately.
Simple Skills
This would seem to be the easy area, at least for measuring simple skills. After all, shouldn't we be able to design a simple and useful standardized test for measuring, say, the skill of properly using commas in a sentence?
Probably not. My typical standardized test question will involve some sort of task involving comma use, say something like this:
Bob (1) you really annoy me (2) when you put the ocelots (3) hamsters (4) and beavers in the bathtub.
Commas should be inserted in
a) 1, 2, 3, 4
b) 1, 3, 4
c) 2, 4, 6, 8
d) The Treaty of Versailles
Except that the skill of answering questions like this one is not the same as the skill of correctly using commas in a sentence. Proof? The millions of English teachers across America pulling their hair about because twenty students who aced the Comma Usage Test then turned in papers with sentences like "The development, of, language use, by, Shakespeare, was highly, influential, in, the Treaty, of Ver,sailles."
The theory is that Comma Use is a skill that can be deployed, like a strike force of Marines, to either attack writing a sentence or answering a test question, and there are certainly some people who can do that. But for a significant portion of the human race, those tasks are actually two entirely separate skill sets, and measuring one by asking it to do the other is like evaluating your plumber based on how well she rewires the chandelier in your dining room.
In other words, in order to turn a task into a measurable activity that can be scaled for both asking the question and scoring the answer, we have to turn the task we want to measure into some other task entirely.
Complex skills
Not a chance. I would like my students to be able to read an entire work and draw out some understanding of themes, character, writing technique, literary devices, and ideas about how the world works; and then to relate to all of that in some meaningful, personal way that they can express clearly and cogently.
The AP test comes as close as anything to handling a complex of skills like this, and they still add the element of "adjust your ideas and the presentation thereof to fit the preferred format and approach of the people delivering the test." The AP test also is delivered to a self-selected sliver of the whole school market-- if we tried to scale it out to every student in America, we would not get useful results.
As I've argued elsewhere, none of these critical thinking skills will ever be on a standardized test.
Knowledge
Well, what about knowledge. Can't we use a standardized test to see if students Know Stuff like the author of The Sun Also Rises or the contents of the Treaty of Versailles?
Probably? Maybe? At least as long as we stick to things that are simple recall. And while knowing a foundation of facts can keep us from saying ridiculous things (like "Hitler and Lincoln signed the Treaty of Versailles" or "American students have the worst test scores in the world"), there's a good argument to be had about the value of simple recall in education.
There's a reason that people associate standardized tests with simple recall and rote learning-- because that's the one thing that standardized tests can actually measure pretty well.
But more complex knowledge and understanding, the kind of knowledge that really only works its way into the world by the use of critical thinking and application-- that kind of knowledge doesn't make it onto a standardized test because it can't.
Context and Shared Language
Designing tests is one of the most challenging part of my job, particularly because years ago I concluded that I needed to stop using tests over from year to year.
See, for any of our higher order work, context and shared language matter, and that changes from year to year.
First, if I am going to be open to my students in my classroom, my instructional focus is going to shift from year to year. Understand, I am not not NOT a teacher who believes in a student-directed classroom. We don't take a vote on what we want to study, and I don't leave them unguided to somehow suss out the layers of Romantic poetry on their own. I am not the Sage on the Stage, but I am the adult in the room who's paid good money to direct and organize the learning, and I am supposed to know more about this stuff than my teenaged students, and pretending I don't is just a silly lie.
But all that said, I have to leave space for them, take cues from them, and sometimes follow their lead. There is no more powerful tool in the classroom than student curiosity, and I would be a fool not to follow it when it rears its rare and beautiful head.
All of which is a long way of saying that my instruction every year is shaped, to a greater or lesser degree by my students, their strengths, their weaknesses, their interests, and the things that just kind of come up. Which leads to
Second, our shared language in the classroom. By the time an assessment rolls around, my students should have an idea of what I mean by "explain" or "support." Heck, by the end of the year, they should know what I mean by "write a few paragraphs" about a topic. One of the most basic functions of an academic pursuit is to develop shared language, or more exactly, a shared understanding of the language. Because anybody who wants to tell you that a word has only one exact meaning that is understood by every single language user-- that person is a dope (though, yes, while we may not agree on exactly what I mean by "dope," you get a general idea).
This is why Test Prep is a thing and will always be a thing-- because the test manufacturers have a special language which has never been shared with the students, and so, somehow (test prep) the students have to enter into that shared language so that they can understand what it is, exactly, the test is asking.
So frequently BS Test results only tell us how well (or not) the student acquired the unshared language of the test manufacturer, and not how much skill or knowledge the students possess. This may well work better for math (though I have doubts), but in reading, literature and writing, there simply is no universally shared academic language, which means that all standardized English tests are written in a special English-ish foreign tongue. That inexactness would not be a big deal if we were not imbuing these tests with superhuman powers of analysis.
A good assessment is the culmination of what we've done, not the the reason we did it in the first place. Bottom line-- I can't write a really good test for students I've never met, unless we've somehow all agreed on the language that we're using and the nature of the content we're testing. Common Core was arguably an attempt to bridge that gap, and, gosh, that's just working out so very well.
Testing Testing
In fact, my classroom practice over the decades has moved slowly and steadily away from testing and toward other sorts of assessment, because all tests ultimately and primarily test the student's ability to take a test. Now, that's not the end of the world-- there are such pointless activities in life and in some cases, testing gets us close enough to the heart of the matter to do.
But any kind of assessment ultimately has to be about the teacher trying to find out what the student knows and can do, not, as is sometimes the case, about making the student prove something to a Higher Authority.
The search for a good, useful assessment (or constellation of assessments) is an ongoing one, a journey that none of us will ever complete. But I am pretty sure that standardized tests lie in the opposite direction. As I said at the top, perhaps when we're dealing with smaller children with fewer filters and simpler skills, there are useful standardized tests (though watching my wife teach first grade, I have my doubts). But at the high school level, I think not. Consider that the use of standardized testing in college classrooms is not exactly widespread.
Poor Charles. Ask a simple question in a 140-character medium, and get this monstrosity of an essay in response. It probably would have been easier just to read the Treaty of Versailles.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)