You just can't make this stuff up.
Pearson VUE is the division of the massive corporation that actually delivers tests to a computer screen near you. They are, for instance, the folks who handle the actually administration of the GED, but they also handle nursing exams and many financial industry clients.
But you don't stay on top of that industry without being on top of things. So here's a new policy that came out in a February circular from Pearson VUE:
Pearson VUE upholds a high level of security for safeguarding the testing programs offered by our exam sponsors. To maintain this high level, we are continually evaluating our technology and processes to ensure that we are adequately addressing existing and emerging security threats. New technology advancements in eyewear, such as Google Glass, camera glasses and spy glasses,and the availability of this technology have been identified as security risks.
As a result, we conducted a pilot to improve our processes to visually inspect candidate eyeglasses during the admissions process and created specific training on how to identify eyeglasses with built-in technology. The purpose of the pilot was to field test the change in process for visually inspecting all candidate glasses for built-in technology.
Yes, the next time you go to take the GED, you'll have to present your eyeglasses for inspection (though the test administrator is not to actually touch them) to determine that you are not using any spywear.
No sign yet that we'll be imposing similar security measures on students taking the PARCC, but I am now officially not going to be shocked when it happens. Because when you're protecting something as precious as proprietary test information, you just can't be too careful.
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Walker's Education Fairy Tale
Yesterday, Presidential Candidate and Occasional Governor Scott Walker took to the pages of the Des Moines Register to pat himself on the back. His arm was not the only thing getting twisted.
Walker opens with one of the standards of the anti-teacher movement-- the story of a fine young teacher who won a first-year-teacher-of-the-year award and was then furloughed at the end of the year.
Why would they get rid of a new teacher like Sampson — especially in Milwaukee, which was one of the most troubled urban school districts in the nation? Well, under the old union contracts, the last hired was first fired.
In 2011, we changed that broken system in Wisconsin. Today, the requirements for seniority and tenure are gone. Schools can hire based on merit and pay based on performance. That means they can keep the best and the brightest in the classroom
Sigh. First of all, as the husband of an excellent teacher who has just been furloughed because she's the one of the least senior teachers at her district, I think I have a good grasp of just how much that royally sucks. (A lot, is the answer. It sucks with the suckage of a thousand black holes.) But there are three things wrong with Walker's "solution."
First, Sampson (and my wife) didn't lose her job because she was last hired. She lost her job because the state failed to adequately fund her school district, so they decided they'd solve the problem by cutting teaching staff.
Second, the whole empty two-part premise of Walker's solution is the existence of an instrument for measuring which teachers are best and brightest-- and that administrators will use it. But we have no such instrument. VAM and its various forms have been debunked long after the cows came home, ate supper, and turned in for the night. Walker's tiny stack of lost-their-job youngsters is a molehill next to the mountain of tales about excellent teachers whose ratings were crappy.
But of course the efficacy of the measuring stick only matters if someone picks it up. In Walker's universe, teachers can be fired for any reason and paid whatever you feel like paying them. Which means even the best and the brightest can be fired at any time. Which means that--
Third, what good does it tell a young teacher, "Don't worry. You won't be fired just for being the newest," when the next part of that conversation is, "But you could be fired at any time during the entire rest of your career, for any reason. In fact, every raise you get will draw a slightly bigger target on your back. And if you cross the wrong administrator, you'll learn what a (career) killer schedule looks like."
But Walker wants you to know that crushing the unions and destroying teaching as a lifetime profession is totally working. "Scores are going up," he says. "At pretty much the same rate they're going up everywhere else, which is about the same rate they were going up before the current round of reformy foolishness," says anybody who can read the data.
Walker winds up with a plug for choice and local control. As always this is an interesting one-two punch since more choice always seems to equal less local control, because choice is composed of charters that are not controlled by or accountable to the local community. Newark and New Orleans are loaded with choice-ish programs, and yet there is also zero local control.
But mostly Walker wants you to know that he's agin Common Core. This, too, makes an interesting combo with the whole "best and brightest" teacher rating business, since every big teacher-sorting system we have at the moment rests on a big Common Core test. Perhaps Walker is following Chris Christie in demanding that all students be tested on the standards that they are forbidden to be taught.
Walker also supports "moving the money out of Washington," whatever that means. And more vouchers.
It's easy to dismiss Walker as a Koch tool, a bland slice of public-education hating white bread. It's easy to dismiss him until you look around and what he's up against in the GOP. And when we stack him up against the dems-- well, he's more overtly anti-teacher than Hillary, but on choice and charters, I'm not sure I see a heck of a lot of difference between them. This fall's Presidential election is looking worse and worse for public education every day. (Oops-- correction: I mean NEXT fall. It's just that the campaign feels like it's already really in gear.)
Walker opens with one of the standards of the anti-teacher movement-- the story of a fine young teacher who won a first-year-teacher-of-the-year award and was then furloughed at the end of the year.
Why would they get rid of a new teacher like Sampson — especially in Milwaukee, which was one of the most troubled urban school districts in the nation? Well, under the old union contracts, the last hired was first fired.
In 2011, we changed that broken system in Wisconsin. Today, the requirements for seniority and tenure are gone. Schools can hire based on merit and pay based on performance. That means they can keep the best and the brightest in the classroom
Sigh. First of all, as the husband of an excellent teacher who has just been furloughed because she's the one of the least senior teachers at her district, I think I have a good grasp of just how much that royally sucks. (A lot, is the answer. It sucks with the suckage of a thousand black holes.) But there are three things wrong with Walker's "solution."
First, Sampson (and my wife) didn't lose her job because she was last hired. She lost her job because the state failed to adequately fund her school district, so they decided they'd solve the problem by cutting teaching staff.
Second, the whole empty two-part premise of Walker's solution is the existence of an instrument for measuring which teachers are best and brightest-- and that administrators will use it. But we have no such instrument. VAM and its various forms have been debunked long after the cows came home, ate supper, and turned in for the night. Walker's tiny stack of lost-their-job youngsters is a molehill next to the mountain of tales about excellent teachers whose ratings were crappy.
But of course the efficacy of the measuring stick only matters if someone picks it up. In Walker's universe, teachers can be fired for any reason and paid whatever you feel like paying them. Which means even the best and the brightest can be fired at any time. Which means that--
Third, what good does it tell a young teacher, "Don't worry. You won't be fired just for being the newest," when the next part of that conversation is, "But you could be fired at any time during the entire rest of your career, for any reason. In fact, every raise you get will draw a slightly bigger target on your back. And if you cross the wrong administrator, you'll learn what a (career) killer schedule looks like."
But Walker wants you to know that crushing the unions and destroying teaching as a lifetime profession is totally working. "Scores are going up," he says. "At pretty much the same rate they're going up everywhere else, which is about the same rate they were going up before the current round of reformy foolishness," says anybody who can read the data.
Walker winds up with a plug for choice and local control. As always this is an interesting one-two punch since more choice always seems to equal less local control, because choice is composed of charters that are not controlled by or accountable to the local community. Newark and New Orleans are loaded with choice-ish programs, and yet there is also zero local control.
But mostly Walker wants you to know that he's agin Common Core. This, too, makes an interesting combo with the whole "best and brightest" teacher rating business, since every big teacher-sorting system we have at the moment rests on a big Common Core test. Perhaps Walker is following Chris Christie in demanding that all students be tested on the standards that they are forbidden to be taught.
Walker also supports "moving the money out of Washington," whatever that means. And more vouchers.
It's easy to dismiss Walker as a Koch tool, a bland slice of public-education hating white bread. It's easy to dismiss him until you look around and what he's up against in the GOP. And when we stack him up against the dems-- well, he's more overtly anti-teacher than Hillary, but on choice and charters, I'm not sure I see a heck of a lot of difference between them. This fall's Presidential election is looking worse and worse for public education every day. (Oops-- correction: I mean NEXT fall. It's just that the campaign feels like it's already really in gear.)
Showing Up
Teaching is a relationship, and the first rule of relationships is that you have to show up.
Take it from a previously-divorced guy. You cannot maintain a relationship through proxies, in absentia, on autopilot, or by wearing a big, thick mask. You have to be present. You have to be honest. You have to show up.
Many teacher-reforming ideas trip over this simple truth.
Attempts to "teacher-proof" classrooms by using carefully constructed lessons and word-for-word scripting are attempts to make showing up irrelevant. Whoever shows up in the classroom, the reasoning goes, the lesson will go on exactly the same. But teacher-proofing a classroom is like husband-proofing a marriage, trying to come up with some set of rules so that it won't matter who shows up to fill the husband role, the marriage will work just fine. That's crazy talk. If the teacher doesn't really show up as a living, breathing human being, students cannot be engaged.
Likewise, I doubt the usefulness of computer-based learning. Certainly for limited amounts of drill or simple instruction, a computer screen works as well as a book. But if there is no context of a relationship to go with it, nothing happens. I can imagine a day when something might-- after all, readers enter relationships with the works that they read. But that's because the authors enter their own works as living human voices. The default in computerland is still to create an inhuman, person-free voice, and when it comes to relationship, that will always make a better barrier than a door.
I don't mean to suggest that we show up in the classroom like a raw exposed nerve or searching to have our own needs met. It is still a teacher's role to be a responsible, professional adult.
But we have to be honest. We have to be available. We have to be present. We cannot be effective with messages such as "I would be honest with you, but we have to move on with this lesson plan" or "I'm not going to be open to what you have to say because it's not on my script."
Showing up, really listening, really looking, speaking honestly-- these are all the most fundamental way we show that we care. To follow the script or the mandated pacing plan is to send the message, intentional or not, that we don't really care about our students or what is going on in our classroom.
This is the scary challenge that some teacher wanna-be's can't bring themselves to face. I remember still the moment during student teaching when I realized that I could not just keep the important parts of myself locked safely away from the classroom, only to be used when I was out of school. Not if I ever wanted to be any good. I would have to listen-- not just pretend to listen or try to construct some proper but artificial response. This is one of the reasons that we can all use the down time of summer-- it is hard to be in a classroom when you aren't sure how to be in the world.
One of the fatal flaws of almost every teacher reform program is an soul-strangling inauthenticity, a desire to have the teacher perform certain tasks almost by remote control, without actually showing up in the classroom.
But by showing up, by being our actual selves (still, mind you, grown up professionals), and by being present with our students, we actually model for them a whole approach to life. And we model courage. Because hiding behind a mask sends a message of, "Don't go out there-- it's not safe," but walking out into the world, head up, eyes wide, tells them that the world (even this little classroom corner of it) is a place where they can thrive and grow and more fully be themselves. The most fundamental thing we all teach is how to be more fully human in the world, and to do that we must be present, in a relationship with the world and the people in it.
We must show up.
Originally posted at View from the Cheap Seats
Take it from a previously-divorced guy. You cannot maintain a relationship through proxies, in absentia, on autopilot, or by wearing a big, thick mask. You have to be present. You have to be honest. You have to show up.
Many teacher-reforming ideas trip over this simple truth.
Attempts to "teacher-proof" classrooms by using carefully constructed lessons and word-for-word scripting are attempts to make showing up irrelevant. Whoever shows up in the classroom, the reasoning goes, the lesson will go on exactly the same. But teacher-proofing a classroom is like husband-proofing a marriage, trying to come up with some set of rules so that it won't matter who shows up to fill the husband role, the marriage will work just fine. That's crazy talk. If the teacher doesn't really show up as a living, breathing human being, students cannot be engaged.
Likewise, I doubt the usefulness of computer-based learning. Certainly for limited amounts of drill or simple instruction, a computer screen works as well as a book. But if there is no context of a relationship to go with it, nothing happens. I can imagine a day when something might-- after all, readers enter relationships with the works that they read. But that's because the authors enter their own works as living human voices. The default in computerland is still to create an inhuman, person-free voice, and when it comes to relationship, that will always make a better barrier than a door.
I don't mean to suggest that we show up in the classroom like a raw exposed nerve or searching to have our own needs met. It is still a teacher's role to be a responsible, professional adult.
But we have to be honest. We have to be available. We have to be present. We cannot be effective with messages such as "I would be honest with you, but we have to move on with this lesson plan" or "I'm not going to be open to what you have to say because it's not on my script."
Showing up, really listening, really looking, speaking honestly-- these are all the most fundamental way we show that we care. To follow the script or the mandated pacing plan is to send the message, intentional or not, that we don't really care about our students or what is going on in our classroom.
This is the scary challenge that some teacher wanna-be's can't bring themselves to face. I remember still the moment during student teaching when I realized that I could not just keep the important parts of myself locked safely away from the classroom, only to be used when I was out of school. Not if I ever wanted to be any good. I would have to listen-- not just pretend to listen or try to construct some proper but artificial response. This is one of the reasons that we can all use the down time of summer-- it is hard to be in a classroom when you aren't sure how to be in the world.
One of the fatal flaws of almost every teacher reform program is an soul-strangling inauthenticity, a desire to have the teacher perform certain tasks almost by remote control, without actually showing up in the classroom.
But by showing up, by being our actual selves (still, mind you, grown up professionals), and by being present with our students, we actually model for them a whole approach to life. And we model courage. Because hiding behind a mask sends a message of, "Don't go out there-- it's not safe," but walking out into the world, head up, eyes wide, tells them that the world (even this little classroom corner of it) is a place where they can thrive and grow and more fully be themselves. The most fundamental thing we all teach is how to be more fully human in the world, and to do that we must be present, in a relationship with the world and the people in it.
We must show up.
Originally posted at View from the Cheap Seats
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
Atlanta Superintendent Deeply Confused
Dr. Meria Castarphen, superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools, thinks everyone is completely misunderstanding the situation.
APS has just announced the slashing of eighteen band and orchestra teachers from the elementary school system, and possibly the funding for those programs as well (the reportage on the latter is a little fuzzy).
That news spread pretty quickly, and Dr. Castarphen took to her personal blog to offer an explanation. Kind of.
Yes, eighteen positions were cut. That was just part of a district "right-sizing" (lordy, but I just live for the day that some boss announces "right-sizing" as an explanation for hiring more people). This right-sizing included cutting 368 positions, including a chunk from the central office. But cutting music?! No!! Well, maybe. Sort of. Yes.
In our cluster planning and our move to a new operating system, APS has given clusters and schools more freedom and flexibility to choose how they staff their schools in order to meet the specific needs of their students. This includes the decision about which arts and music instruction to offer students.
For example, if principal A observed high interest in band over orchestra in their elementary school, that principal could choose to enhance the band program and remove the orchestra program. If principal B saw a growing interest in visual arts, principal B could decide to invest more in visual arts, eliminating band and orchestra. If principal C was interested in enhancing band and orchestra programs, principal C could choose to increase school class sizes in order to offer a more robust fine arts program.
See, even if the school doesn't have a band program. It could be taught by, I don't know, pixies, or regular classroom teachers on their lunch hours, or traveling street musicians who were coaxed into the building. Because students can be taught to play instruments, particularly as beginners, by pretty much anybody.
Maybe students will get really interested in a band, which I suppose could happen despite the fact that they have no band or band teacher in the building to pique that interest-- maybe they'll read about bands in books or see some compelling band music on tv or those same instrument-teaching pixies will visit them in their sleep.
Also, please note that middle school and high school band and orchestra are not being cut. Nosirree. They will still be there, thriving despite the fact that students will arrive from the elementary school without any knowledge of playing in a music ensemble or playing an instrument. Because middle and high school programs don't depend on feeder programs in the elementary at all.
She tried to clarify her position in other interviews
"That doesn't mean you eliminate programming because you eliminated a positon. You can still do the programming with one person instead of two people," said Carstarphen. "We allow those teachers and those principals to still offer band and orchestra as part of their design if they are able to do it with what they have as a student population, available resources and the interest of the school."
See? They can have a music program. Just not with enough qualified teachers or resources. We aren't taking the puppy to the pound-- we just aren't going to feed it ever, and you can still keep it once it's a dog.
Oh, yeah. And she's in charge of converting Atlanta to an all-charter system. You can read their whole presentation and application for charter status here.
Reading her plaintive pleas for understanding, I could only think of one question--
Is this woman really that clueless?
It doesn't seem possible; in her blog post, she identifies herself as an oboe player. An oboe. The kind of advanced (and expensive) instrument that students generally move onto only in high school after they have mastered a more standard instrument in elementary and middle school.
I mean, there are only two possibilities here. Either she doesn't understand the implications of these cuts, or she understands and she's trying to lie and bluff her way past this.
There are limited clues. Castarphen was hired just a year ago, to replace the superintendent who replaced the superintendent who presided over the Atlanta cheating scandal. When Castarphen was hired, "embattled" turned up often as a descriptor of APS. Previously Castarphen led the Austin school system for five years, a system twice as big as Atlanta's. According to some sources, Atlanta pursued her; but her Austin contract had not been renewed and would be running out now. In 2012, district leaders "admonished" her to build better relationships with staff, parents and community. In fact, she was the only candidate the board brought forward after a process some called "opaque."
In Austin, Castarphen came under fire for a "closed leadership style" and "there are those who believe Carstarphen's hard-charging methods are aimed at bullying people to get her way." That stood in contrast to her defense of No Child Left Behind as a program providing necessary transparency. "And that's at the heart of what the spirit of the law is about: Transparency. Are we doing the job or not?
Before Austin, Castarphen was head of St. Paul Public Schools, where critics accused her of a combative style (the word "bullying" turns up again) and over half the administrators there in 2006 when she arrived left before her departure three years later.
Castarphen's teaching routes go back to teaching middle school Spanish. Studied at Tulane, Harvard. Affiliated with ETS, Council of Great City Schools.
I don't see it. Maybe it's just not her style to say, "We are strapped for cash, and as much as I hate to cut any program off at the knees, I've decided that instrumental music is going to take a gut shot so we can try to save the district." That might have been more honest, but I suppose it would have invited debate, and Castarphen doesn't seem to be a fan. Of course, she now finds herself embroiled in a debate about whether or not musical yetis riding on unicorns will keep Atlanta's music program alive and well. She probably should just stick to a debate about reality.
Upon arriving in Atlanta, she told staff, "You're going to work harder than you ever have before. But we'll try to make it fun, we'll try to make it exciting and we'll try to make it rewarding."
APS has just announced the slashing of eighteen band and orchestra teachers from the elementary school system, and possibly the funding for those programs as well (the reportage on the latter is a little fuzzy).
That news spread pretty quickly, and Dr. Castarphen took to her personal blog to offer an explanation. Kind of.
Yes, eighteen positions were cut. That was just part of a district "right-sizing" (lordy, but I just live for the day that some boss announces "right-sizing" as an explanation for hiring more people). This right-sizing included cutting 368 positions, including a chunk from the central office. But cutting music?! No!! Well, maybe. Sort of. Yes.
In our cluster planning and our move to a new operating system, APS has given clusters and schools more freedom and flexibility to choose how they staff their schools in order to meet the specific needs of their students. This includes the decision about which arts and music instruction to offer students.
For example, if principal A observed high interest in band over orchestra in their elementary school, that principal could choose to enhance the band program and remove the orchestra program. If principal B saw a growing interest in visual arts, principal B could decide to invest more in visual arts, eliminating band and orchestra. If principal C was interested in enhancing band and orchestra programs, principal C could choose to increase school class sizes in order to offer a more robust fine arts program.
See, even if the school doesn't have a band program. It could be taught by, I don't know, pixies, or regular classroom teachers on their lunch hours, or traveling street musicians who were coaxed into the building. Because students can be taught to play instruments, particularly as beginners, by pretty much anybody.
Maybe students will get really interested in a band, which I suppose could happen despite the fact that they have no band or band teacher in the building to pique that interest-- maybe they'll read about bands in books or see some compelling band music on tv or those same instrument-teaching pixies will visit them in their sleep.
Also, please note that middle school and high school band and orchestra are not being cut. Nosirree. They will still be there, thriving despite the fact that students will arrive from the elementary school without any knowledge of playing in a music ensemble or playing an instrument. Because middle and high school programs don't depend on feeder programs in the elementary at all.
She tried to clarify her position in other interviews
"That doesn't mean you eliminate programming because you eliminated a positon. You can still do the programming with one person instead of two people," said Carstarphen. "We allow those teachers and those principals to still offer band and orchestra as part of their design if they are able to do it with what they have as a student population, available resources and the interest of the school."
See? They can have a music program. Just not with enough qualified teachers or resources. We aren't taking the puppy to the pound-- we just aren't going to feed it ever, and you can still keep it once it's a dog.
Oh, yeah. And she's in charge of converting Atlanta to an all-charter system. You can read their whole presentation and application for charter status here.
Reading her plaintive pleas for understanding, I could only think of one question--
Is this woman really that clueless?
It doesn't seem possible; in her blog post, she identifies herself as an oboe player. An oboe. The kind of advanced (and expensive) instrument that students generally move onto only in high school after they have mastered a more standard instrument in elementary and middle school.
I mean, there are only two possibilities here. Either she doesn't understand the implications of these cuts, or she understands and she's trying to lie and bluff her way past this.
There are limited clues. Castarphen was hired just a year ago, to replace the superintendent who replaced the superintendent who presided over the Atlanta cheating scandal. When Castarphen was hired, "embattled" turned up often as a descriptor of APS. Previously Castarphen led the Austin school system for five years, a system twice as big as Atlanta's. According to some sources, Atlanta pursued her; but her Austin contract had not been renewed and would be running out now. In 2012, district leaders "admonished" her to build better relationships with staff, parents and community. In fact, she was the only candidate the board brought forward after a process some called "opaque."
In Austin, Castarphen came under fire for a "closed leadership style" and "there are those who believe Carstarphen's hard-charging methods are aimed at bullying people to get her way." That stood in contrast to her defense of No Child Left Behind as a program providing necessary transparency. "And that's at the heart of what the spirit of the law is about: Transparency. Are we doing the job or not?
Before Austin, Castarphen was head of St. Paul Public Schools, where critics accused her of a combative style (the word "bullying" turns up again) and over half the administrators there in 2006 when she arrived left before her departure three years later.
Castarphen's teaching routes go back to teaching middle school Spanish. Studied at Tulane, Harvard. Affiliated with ETS, Council of Great City Schools.
I don't see it. Maybe it's just not her style to say, "We are strapped for cash, and as much as I hate to cut any program off at the knees, I've decided that instrumental music is going to take a gut shot so we can try to save the district." That might have been more honest, but I suppose it would have invited debate, and Castarphen doesn't seem to be a fan. Of course, she now finds herself embroiled in a debate about whether or not musical yetis riding on unicorns will keep Atlanta's music program alive and well. She probably should just stick to a debate about reality.
Upon arriving in Atlanta, she told staff, "You're going to work harder than you ever have before. But we'll try to make it fun, we'll try to make it exciting and we'll try to make it rewarding."
My Question for Hillary
I'll keep it brief.
Candidate Clinton has indicated in talks with NEA president Lily Eskelsen Garcia that she will absolutely listen to teachers. That's a great promise, but let me pare that down to a more direct question.
Last year, after years of failed administration education policies, the NEA general membership called for the resignation of Arne Duncan. So here's my question:
If you had been President, would you have required the resignation of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education?
Okay, I realize that's a little in-your-face and involves some hypotheticals (such as, would you have ever appointed the guy in the first place), so let me ask a question, because I really want to understand how your administration would represent a break from the destructive policies of the past two administrations:
If you had been President for the past eight years, and knowing what you know now, how would your education policies have been different from the policies that we've actually had?
Please, please please please PLEASE, be specific. Talk about the ESEA rewrite or Common Core or financial incentives for states. But tell us something. If you had been our President for the past eight years, how would US education have been different. Because-- and again, I'm not sure if you get this-- education policy for the last sixteen years has not been good for public education in this country.
I await your response.
Candidate Clinton has indicated in talks with NEA president Lily Eskelsen Garcia that she will absolutely listen to teachers. That's a great promise, but let me pare that down to a more direct question.
Last year, after years of failed administration education policies, the NEA general membership called for the resignation of Arne Duncan. So here's my question:
If you had been President, would you have required the resignation of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education?
Okay, I realize that's a little in-your-face and involves some hypotheticals (such as, would you have ever appointed the guy in the first place), so let me ask a question, because I really want to understand how your administration would represent a break from the destructive policies of the past two administrations:
If you had been President for the past eight years, and knowing what you know now, how would your education policies have been different from the policies that we've actually had?
Please, please please please PLEASE, be specific. Talk about the ESEA rewrite or Common Core or financial incentives for states. But tell us something. If you had been our President for the past eight years, how would US education have been different. Because-- and again, I'm not sure if you get this-- education policy for the last sixteen years has not been good for public education in this country.
I await your response.
Common Core's Sad Birthday
Man, there's nothing quite as sad as having a birthday that everybody ignores. Nobody throws you a party, nobody sings you a song, nobody even plunks a candy in a store-bought cupcake.
You may have missed it, but June 2 was technically the Common Core State Standards fifth birthday.
You may have missed it because nobody threw the Core a party. The closest we got was a piece in Huffington Post in which Rebecca Klein did a listicle of five of the sillier arguments made against the Core. It was an odd piece, a nostalgic call-back to the days when Core opponents could be broad-brushed with the image of tin-hat reactionaries.
Mercedes Schneider responded with her own birthday piece, reminding us of such highlights as Common Core's enthusiastic adoption by states before it was even actually written. Schneider's piece also recaps the various bogus claims (it will emphasize critical thining!), its tortured creation by a small group of not-teachers, and its odd ownership and copyright by a pair of lobbying groups. Oh, and it's sponsorship by Bill Gates and super-but-totally-not-illegal support form the feds.
This is not the sort of valedictory salute that we'd expect for a five-year-old piece of policy that was going to revitalize public education in this country. But it's not exactly a surprise.
First of all, in order to have that kind of celebration, you need to be able to point to your big successes. And as we survey the five-plus years of Common Core, we can see... well, nothing. The CCSS advocates can't point to a single damn accomplishment. Nothing.
Yes, we get the periodic pieces from classroom teachers lauding the standards. These pieces follow a simple outline:
1) It used to be that I didn't know what the heck I was doing in the classroom, but then
2) I discovered Common Core and so I
3) Began doing [insert teaching techniques that any competent teacher already knew about long before the Core ever happened]
These aren't convincing a soul, and other than these various testimonials, we have been treated to exactly zero evidence that US education has been improved in any way by the Core.
Second, it's hard to throw a party for someone who has no friends. The game has tilted against the Core, and the same "friends" who embraced it when such embraces served a political purpose have now dis-embraced it for the same reason. In fact, the Core has been pierced repeatedly by the same swords it once wielded; for example, having used politics to get the Core installed, supporters now routinely complain that politics are being used against it. So yeah, some of the complaints against the Core are, in fact, crazy and unfounded and even bizarre (CCSS has been created by the One World Order to turn everyone into a gay atheist Commie, etc)-- but the Core boosters created a playing field where that kind of foolishness was fair game, and now they get to pay the price.
Even the Core's reformy allies have dumped it. The Core was going to be useful to push charters, but they no longer need it. Test manufacturers are getting more traction from civil rights rhetoric and the "college and career ready" line. Data overlords have been thwarted by direct opposition and the collapse of the National Test Dream; though they aren't giving up any time soon, the Core is no longer as useful a tool for them.
With the exception of Jeb Bush who, God bless him, may not be right, but at least he's loyal, the Core is out of high profile friends who will so much as speak its name in public.
We come not to praise the Core, but to bury it
As I noted back in March, the term "Common Core" is now essentially meaningless. It means whatever people in a particular place and time want it to mean, and because its creators have moved on to other profitable jobs, there isn't anybody to keep an eye on how the term is used.
We have multiple tests all claiming to be CCSS aligned, none of which are able to assess all the standards. Except for the ones that are aligned to state standards that are kind of the same as Common Core and kind of not. We have a mountain of textbooks claiming to be Common Core aligned with varying degrees of accuracy. We have a whole host of people who have fuzzied up the question of whether it is standards or curriculum. We have tens of thousands of local versions of the Core and programs allegedly aligned. And we have the Core itself swathed in lies like "internationally benchmarked."
Ze'ev Wurman, from the Bush administration, pointed out in Breitbart that the Core is dead because states have slowly but surely reclaimed their right to local control, effectively ending the dream of having every state on the same educational page. He's right in particular because the real driver of curriculum and standards is the Big Standardized Test, and states have been slowly but surely stepping away from the Big National Test dream and installing their own version of a large pointless standardized test that gathers no real useful data but does waste lots of time and money (because all the cool kids want one). Since the test is the curriculum and standards guide, different tests means different standards and curriculum.
So happy fifth birthday and/or wake, Common Core. I could say we never knew you, but the truth is, the better we got to know you, the less we liked you (and we didn't like you very much to begin with). There will be a variety of educational initiatives floating around that take your name in vain, but as a national policy uniting the country behind a single set of clear standards, you are dead as a month-old smear of roadkill.
You may have missed it, but June 2 was technically the Common Core State Standards fifth birthday.
You may have missed it because nobody threw the Core a party. The closest we got was a piece in Huffington Post in which Rebecca Klein did a listicle of five of the sillier arguments made against the Core. It was an odd piece, a nostalgic call-back to the days when Core opponents could be broad-brushed with the image of tin-hat reactionaries.
Mercedes Schneider responded with her own birthday piece, reminding us of such highlights as Common Core's enthusiastic adoption by states before it was even actually written. Schneider's piece also recaps the various bogus claims (it will emphasize critical thining!), its tortured creation by a small group of not-teachers, and its odd ownership and copyright by a pair of lobbying groups. Oh, and it's sponsorship by Bill Gates and super-but-totally-not-illegal support form the feds.
This is not the sort of valedictory salute that we'd expect for a five-year-old piece of policy that was going to revitalize public education in this country. But it's not exactly a surprise.
First of all, in order to have that kind of celebration, you need to be able to point to your big successes. And as we survey the five-plus years of Common Core, we can see... well, nothing. The CCSS advocates can't point to a single damn accomplishment. Nothing.
Yes, we get the periodic pieces from classroom teachers lauding the standards. These pieces follow a simple outline:
1) It used to be that I didn't know what the heck I was doing in the classroom, but then
2) I discovered Common Core and so I
3) Began doing [insert teaching techniques that any competent teacher already knew about long before the Core ever happened]
These aren't convincing a soul, and other than these various testimonials, we have been treated to exactly zero evidence that US education has been improved in any way by the Core.
Second, it's hard to throw a party for someone who has no friends. The game has tilted against the Core, and the same "friends" who embraced it when such embraces served a political purpose have now dis-embraced it for the same reason. In fact, the Core has been pierced repeatedly by the same swords it once wielded; for example, having used politics to get the Core installed, supporters now routinely complain that politics are being used against it. So yeah, some of the complaints against the Core are, in fact, crazy and unfounded and even bizarre (CCSS has been created by the One World Order to turn everyone into a gay atheist Commie, etc)-- but the Core boosters created a playing field where that kind of foolishness was fair game, and now they get to pay the price.
Even the Core's reformy allies have dumped it. The Core was going to be useful to push charters, but they no longer need it. Test manufacturers are getting more traction from civil rights rhetoric and the "college and career ready" line. Data overlords have been thwarted by direct opposition and the collapse of the National Test Dream; though they aren't giving up any time soon, the Core is no longer as useful a tool for them.
With the exception of Jeb Bush who, God bless him, may not be right, but at least he's loyal, the Core is out of high profile friends who will so much as speak its name in public.
We come not to praise the Core, but to bury it
As I noted back in March, the term "Common Core" is now essentially meaningless. It means whatever people in a particular place and time want it to mean, and because its creators have moved on to other profitable jobs, there isn't anybody to keep an eye on how the term is used.
We have multiple tests all claiming to be CCSS aligned, none of which are able to assess all the standards. Except for the ones that are aligned to state standards that are kind of the same as Common Core and kind of not. We have a mountain of textbooks claiming to be Common Core aligned with varying degrees of accuracy. We have a whole host of people who have fuzzied up the question of whether it is standards or curriculum. We have tens of thousands of local versions of the Core and programs allegedly aligned. And we have the Core itself swathed in lies like "internationally benchmarked."
Ze'ev Wurman, from the Bush administration, pointed out in Breitbart that the Core is dead because states have slowly but surely reclaimed their right to local control, effectively ending the dream of having every state on the same educational page. He's right in particular because the real driver of curriculum and standards is the Big Standardized Test, and states have been slowly but surely stepping away from the Big National Test dream and installing their own version of a large pointless standardized test that gathers no real useful data but does waste lots of time and money (because all the cool kids want one). Since the test is the curriculum and standards guide, different tests means different standards and curriculum.
So happy fifth birthday and/or wake, Common Core. I could say we never knew you, but the truth is, the better we got to know you, the less we liked you (and we didn't like you very much to begin with). There will be a variety of educational initiatives floating around that take your name in vain, but as a national policy uniting the country behind a single set of clear standards, you are dead as a month-old smear of roadkill.
Threading Cake (Part II)
Ordinarily when I get into these sorts of cyber-dialogues, I try to make each piece stand on its own. I'm making no such attempt here-- this is part of an ongoing dialogue with Nate Bowling and assorted other folks. You can find the first installments here and here. I'm responding to Bowling's latest entry in this discussion.
Bowling reflects on how cool it is that these kinds of layered and nuanced conversation can break out (I agree-- this to me remains one of the most amazing things about the internet) and then he moves on one of his bedrock assertions, in bold type.
I wholeheartedly reject the geographical determinism and “poor kids can’t” thinking
I think the "geography" issue is a real area of controversy and concern. I bristle at the "helping kids escape their zip code" rhetoric for a couple of reason. One, folks who push that are never talking about rescuing ALL students-- just a few, and in the process of rescuing those few, they make the situation worse for those left behind. That's not a solution. Two, I believe there is enormous power in community and the "social capital" that's built by community, and it worries me that so much "reform" is done in ways that erode that community-- taking away local control, dispersing children to the four corners of other communities. I believe these approaches are in the long term corrosive and destructive, and I also find it concerning that the implication is that there are certain zip codes that we should just go ahead a write off. This strikes me as an even larger, worse version of "poor kids can't"-- "that entire community can't."
At the same time, I recognize that we're on the clock, and telling parents, "Just leave your kids in that burning building while we try to fix the whole structure," isn't going to help them. Man, if we could just bring the kind of resolve we bring to wars-- whip up a few billion dollars, hire the personnel, and just drop a huge educational "surge" into our poorest communities.
As for "poor kids can't"-- I still feel that on this point people in the edu-debate are talking past each other (and some, frankly, are pretending not to understand what other folks are saying). Let's say that one set of kids is living in lower Manhattan and another is living in Sandusky, Ohio. All of them want to go to Philadelphia. Here's the conversation between their parents:
Manhattan Mom: It's easy. You just pick up the Megabus on 34th between 11th and 12th Avenue. It will take less than three hours.
Sandusky Dad: We can't get to that bus stop. But we can take the train and it will take us about fourteen hours.
Manhattan Mom: What do you mean, your kids can't possibly go to Philadelphia.
All of our students are starting from different places (actually, they're going to different places, too, but I'm trying not to over-torture the metaphor), and so they all have different requirements for the trip. Yes, there are people who write certain kids of for one reason or another. I like to call those people "Persons Who Don't Belong in Education." But the problem with most of our large-scale testing is that it checks progress toward Philadelphia by having everybody check in as they pass through Buffalo, which means that both the Manhattan and the Sandusky students have to travel far out of their way just to make the check-in (which doesn't yield any useful information anyway).
Side note on Pro Public Ed
Nate, you dislike my use of "Pro public education," and I understand why. The whole education debate is hampered by the lack of good labeling. I've resisted the use of "reform" for that same reason-- using it admits that public ed is messed up in a major way, and while I agree that constant and eternal moving and searching and growing is required, I reject the notion that public ed is infested with such a deep dysfunctional evil that it needs to be reformed. For my side of things, I've moved on from "resistance" (which seems too reactive) to "pro public education" because it at least hits what I am in favor of. I recognize that there are people who are in favor of certain reformy things who are public ed (and also many who do, in fact, want to dismantle public ed as we know it).
But in this case, I should have simply identified myself as anti-testing, which was the pertinent part of what I was talking about.
Moving toward a solution
I appreciated the comment from Bowling's student, which mirrors what many of my own students say. Testing is so focused on a small piece of the whole person, like taking a picture of their left forefinger knuckle as a way of judging their attractiveness.
As always, I recognize that I am far to one side on the testing issue-- I see no value in standardized testing to justify its use, and I would simply scrap the whole business. It's wasting our time and resources, and that is particularly damaging in communities where time and resources are already scarce and stretched.
Yet I agree that the public (all the public and not just parents) should know how schools are doing. (This is actually one of the reasons I'm also largely anti-charter-- because charter schools as currently practiced are less accountable than public schools).
So how do we do that without standardized tests?
1) Trust classroom teachers. Bowling offers a challenge to design an EOC test for Bio, and my answer would be that I can't create that test unless I taught the class. My own classes do not unfold exactly the same year after year (Hamlet, for instance, is "about" something different every year I teach it) and my tests reflect the shape of the year. I can predict the general shape (think strange attractors in chaos theory).
But to some extent my students shape what the course does. And I create assessments based on what we learned. My instruction drives assessment. If you're going to ask, "But how can you compare students across boundaries of city, state, and time," I'm going to ask, "Why do we need to?"
2) Transparency. The best bosses do not demand that their people drop their work and create and present a report about what they're doing. To do that is to live in a Dilbertesque world in which people can't get work done because they're constantly preparing reports on why their project is behind.
No, the best bosses go and see. Any administrator, parent, elected official-- anybody at all who wants to come sit in my classroom every single day and watch is perfectly welcome. And my students quickly learn that if they ask, "Why are we doing this" I will tell them. Much of the time I tell them even when they don't ask.
Schools should be glass houses. Why did you teach that? What were the test questions? Why doesn't that teacher have enough books? Why isn't that ceiling fixed? How did you use your time today? What did you learn in class today? How much do the suppliers charge for this material? Schools should be able to answer any and all questions.
The more authetically transparent a school is, the less time it has to waste on creating "reports" that are mainly proof that somebody is good at writing reports. And the Big Standardized Tests are just reports with an extra step.
Bowling promises that his next installment will offer some solutions to the testing issues. I look forward to seeing what he has to say.
Bowling reflects on how cool it is that these kinds of layered and nuanced conversation can break out (I agree-- this to me remains one of the most amazing things about the internet) and then he moves on one of his bedrock assertions, in bold type.
I wholeheartedly reject the geographical determinism and “poor kids can’t” thinking
I think the "geography" issue is a real area of controversy and concern. I bristle at the "helping kids escape their zip code" rhetoric for a couple of reason. One, folks who push that are never talking about rescuing ALL students-- just a few, and in the process of rescuing those few, they make the situation worse for those left behind. That's not a solution. Two, I believe there is enormous power in community and the "social capital" that's built by community, and it worries me that so much "reform" is done in ways that erode that community-- taking away local control, dispersing children to the four corners of other communities. I believe these approaches are in the long term corrosive and destructive, and I also find it concerning that the implication is that there are certain zip codes that we should just go ahead a write off. This strikes me as an even larger, worse version of "poor kids can't"-- "that entire community can't."
At the same time, I recognize that we're on the clock, and telling parents, "Just leave your kids in that burning building while we try to fix the whole structure," isn't going to help them. Man, if we could just bring the kind of resolve we bring to wars-- whip up a few billion dollars, hire the personnel, and just drop a huge educational "surge" into our poorest communities.
As for "poor kids can't"-- I still feel that on this point people in the edu-debate are talking past each other (and some, frankly, are pretending not to understand what other folks are saying). Let's say that one set of kids is living in lower Manhattan and another is living in Sandusky, Ohio. All of them want to go to Philadelphia. Here's the conversation between their parents:
Manhattan Mom: It's easy. You just pick up the Megabus on 34th between 11th and 12th Avenue. It will take less than three hours.
Sandusky Dad: We can't get to that bus stop. But we can take the train and it will take us about fourteen hours.
Manhattan Mom: What do you mean, your kids can't possibly go to Philadelphia.
All of our students are starting from different places (actually, they're going to different places, too, but I'm trying not to over-torture the metaphor), and so they all have different requirements for the trip. Yes, there are people who write certain kids of for one reason or another. I like to call those people "Persons Who Don't Belong in Education." But the problem with most of our large-scale testing is that it checks progress toward Philadelphia by having everybody check in as they pass through Buffalo, which means that both the Manhattan and the Sandusky students have to travel far out of their way just to make the check-in (which doesn't yield any useful information anyway).
Side note on Pro Public Ed
Nate, you dislike my use of "Pro public education," and I understand why. The whole education debate is hampered by the lack of good labeling. I've resisted the use of "reform" for that same reason-- using it admits that public ed is messed up in a major way, and while I agree that constant and eternal moving and searching and growing is required, I reject the notion that public ed is infested with such a deep dysfunctional evil that it needs to be reformed. For my side of things, I've moved on from "resistance" (which seems too reactive) to "pro public education" because it at least hits what I am in favor of. I recognize that there are people who are in favor of certain reformy things who are public ed (and also many who do, in fact, want to dismantle public ed as we know it).
But in this case, I should have simply identified myself as anti-testing, which was the pertinent part of what I was talking about.
Moving toward a solution
I appreciated the comment from Bowling's student, which mirrors what many of my own students say. Testing is so focused on a small piece of the whole person, like taking a picture of their left forefinger knuckle as a way of judging their attractiveness.
As always, I recognize that I am far to one side on the testing issue-- I see no value in standardized testing to justify its use, and I would simply scrap the whole business. It's wasting our time and resources, and that is particularly damaging in communities where time and resources are already scarce and stretched.
Yet I agree that the public (all the public and not just parents) should know how schools are doing. (This is actually one of the reasons I'm also largely anti-charter-- because charter schools as currently practiced are less accountable than public schools).
So how do we do that without standardized tests?
1) Trust classroom teachers. Bowling offers a challenge to design an EOC test for Bio, and my answer would be that I can't create that test unless I taught the class. My own classes do not unfold exactly the same year after year (Hamlet, for instance, is "about" something different every year I teach it) and my tests reflect the shape of the year. I can predict the general shape (think strange attractors in chaos theory).
But to some extent my students shape what the course does. And I create assessments based on what we learned. My instruction drives assessment. If you're going to ask, "But how can you compare students across boundaries of city, state, and time," I'm going to ask, "Why do we need to?"
2) Transparency. The best bosses do not demand that their people drop their work and create and present a report about what they're doing. To do that is to live in a Dilbertesque world in which people can't get work done because they're constantly preparing reports on why their project is behind.
No, the best bosses go and see. Any administrator, parent, elected official-- anybody at all who wants to come sit in my classroom every single day and watch is perfectly welcome. And my students quickly learn that if they ask, "Why are we doing this" I will tell them. Much of the time I tell them even when they don't ask.
Schools should be glass houses. Why did you teach that? What were the test questions? Why doesn't that teacher have enough books? Why isn't that ceiling fixed? How did you use your time today? What did you learn in class today? How much do the suppliers charge for this material? Schools should be able to answer any and all questions.
The more authetically transparent a school is, the less time it has to waste on creating "reports" that are mainly proof that somebody is good at writing reports. And the Big Standardized Tests are just reports with an extra step.
Bowling promises that his next installment will offer some solutions to the testing issues. I look forward to seeing what he has to say.
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