Periodically you will hear teachers complain about VAM and similar test-and-punish versions of evaluation by saying, "Imagine how ridiculous it would be if they did this to doctors. That would be so stupid they'd never even consider it." These are teachers who don't have friends and family in the medical field. Because (bad news alert) the Powers That Be have totally been doing the same crap to doctors that they've been doing to us.
The idea has been kicking around since the eighties, but one backbone of the Affordable Care Act (and many other proposed health care reforms) is an informed customer base that is able to choose physicians based on solid ratings. This would also, not coincidentally, allow the behemoths who manage the highly-profitable non-profit health care providers to have a data-based means of deciding which doctors to keep and which to boot.
Of course, the key here is coming up with a metric-- or metrics-- to determine which doctors are effective and which are not effective. And that turns out to be hard.
You know the arguments-- you've already made them. Can we judge a doctor on how effective he is with a patient who is high risk and who insists on engaging in risky behavior? Is it fair to give a lower score to a physician who works with more difficult patients-- and will she keep taking more difficult patients if they will make her rating look bad?
Well, we may not know how to measure physician effectiveness, but we know what happens when we try to measure effectiveness with a crappy instrument.
The New York Times ran a piece referring us to some of the research done on the effects of mandatory surgeon report cards that are based on patient outcomes. You will be Not Shocked to discover that it makes things worse. The top surgeons focus on low-risk patients, and innovation and risk-taking are squelched. Top surgeons who took the tough cases, the patients who had no other hope, sometimes found themselves with low ratings and a loss of operating privileges.
The whole story is completely recognizable to those of us in the education world, the major difference being that nobody-- yet-- is forcing doctors to treat patients that will hurt their numbers in order to force those physicians out so that they can be replaced by low-cost under-trained temps. But the principle is the same-- when you set up a system that punishes professionals for trying to help the most needy, you get crappy results.
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Is New Orleans a Success?
With the release of the latest bundle of number crunching, Doug Harris and the Education Research Alliance have once again launched the Debate of the Decade-- is the New Orleans privatization experiment a success or a failure?
The Argument for Success
The ERA is a project of Tulane University where Harris is a professor of economics, and I want not to hold that against him, but the number of economists who have declared themselves educational experts over the past couple of decades is staggering and worthy of its own study.
Harris's argument for success is fairly simple. Before Katrina, test scores in NOLA were really low. Now they are performing at the level they "ought to be" performing as compared to models of imaginary similar students.
So. Test scores were low. Now they're not. Success!
What else?
No, that's it. That's the whole argument. Students in NOLA are getting better scores on standardized math and reading tests. That's the whole thing.
So. Any reasons we shouldn't be excited about this news?
Glad you asked. We could get into a long and involved discussion of ERA's data and the crunching thereof. But if that's your cup of tea, I recommend the work of Mercedes Schneider and Crazy Crawfish, just for starters.
But for the sake or argument, let's go ahead and accept Harris's numbers as accurate and move on. Can we still call the Great NOLA Privatization Experiment a success?
Yes, even if we accept that the numbers are correct, Harris acknowledges that the pursuit of test scores has led to some dicey practices, and NOLA does seem rife with tales of push-outs and creaming, as school principals strive to make their data points.
But there's a bigger question (though no less important) than whether or the numbers are legit. The bigger question is, even if the numbers are legit, are they worth the cost?
Disenfranchised public
Journalist Jennifer Berkshire's recent trip to New Orleans provides a vivid picture of how thoroughly NOLA reformsters have pushed locals aside-- even locals who agree with the charterfication agenda. Parents, community leaders, and, of course, the 7,000 teachers who used to work in the system.
It's not just that this leads to the bizarre spectacle of a predominantly brown and black local communities having their "public" schools run by mostly white outsiders. It's that the entire democratic structure has been tossed out, suspended as surely as if New Orleans were some 18th century island nation where a foreign power had landed, planted its flag, and declared itself the new local government.
Berkshire quotes New Orleans parent advocate Ashana Bigard: "It's like there is no place for New Orleanians at the table."
Destablizing the community
The 7,000 local teachers, middle class members of community, have been replaced by edutourists, modern-day classroom carpetbaggers, often Teach for America temps. They may very well have the best of intentions-- but those intentions too rarely include "move to New Orleans and make it my home for the rest of my life."
More insidiously, New Orleans communities no longer have community schools. What serves as a central anchor, a tie that helps connect the people who live near each other-- that anchor is gone. Students disperse each morning in a crazy web of bus routes and come home, late in the day, to a neighborhood of strangers. And the parents associated with a particular school can no longer gather easily to share concerns and take action, because they too are spread across the city.
And of course the charters themselves come and go as they rise and fall. A true public school is a long term commitment that a community makes to its children. Charters commit to stay only as long as it make business sense.
Personal enrichment
Head over to twitter and look at the hashtag #NOLAedwarning. There's an awful lot to absorb, but the tales include school leaders and charter operators who are being paid truckloads of money.
NOLA is often discussed as a charter experiment, but I think it's more accurate to think of it as a privatization experiment. NOLA answers the question, "What would a school system look like if every single decision were a business decision?"
I will never argue business is automatically evil. But if schools are businesses, then they must have an adversarial relationship with their students-- every dollar spent on a student is a dollar that doesn't go into the business's bank account.
Repurposing education
When reformsters swept in and took over the New Orleans school system, they didn't just decide how the system would be run-- the decided what the purpose of the system would be.
The role of schools in building community, schools as a democratic expression of a local community's goals for its children, schools as a broad tapestry of possibilities and enrichment for individual students, schools as institutions that enriched the life of a neighborhood, schools as a hothouse in which to grow local leaders, schools as the most fundamental expression of our democratic values in a pluralistic society, schools as a path for students to pursue their own self-directed broad range of personal life goals, schools as institutions of support and growth cenetered around the needs of the child-- those roles were all jettisoned, tossed out the window.
Instead, reformsters remade NOLA schools around one roles-- the purpose of schools is to get students to score well on a standardized math and reading test.
The real question
As the fooferaw over the ERA report continues, arguments will center around whether or not the report is accurate, trustworthy, believable. In other states, it will feed the continued push to export the NOLA model by declaring that the model was successful.
But the real question, the important question, the question that must be asked again and again, is whether the NOLA concept of success-- pursuing test scores by sacrificing every single value we traditionally associate with public schools-- whether that success is even worth pursuing in the first place.
Let's not spend so much time discussing whether or not NOLA won the race that we forget to ask whether the race was ever worth running in the first place.
Originally posted at View from the Cheap Seats
The Argument for Success
The ERA is a project of Tulane University where Harris is a professor of economics, and I want not to hold that against him, but the number of economists who have declared themselves educational experts over the past couple of decades is staggering and worthy of its own study.
Harris's argument for success is fairly simple. Before Katrina, test scores in NOLA were really low. Now they are performing at the level they "ought to be" performing as compared to models of imaginary similar students.
So. Test scores were low. Now they're not. Success!
What else?
No, that's it. That's the whole argument. Students in NOLA are getting better scores on standardized math and reading tests. That's the whole thing.
So. Any reasons we shouldn't be excited about this news?
Glad you asked. We could get into a long and involved discussion of ERA's data and the crunching thereof. But if that's your cup of tea, I recommend the work of Mercedes Schneider and Crazy Crawfish, just for starters.
But for the sake or argument, let's go ahead and accept Harris's numbers as accurate and move on. Can we still call the Great NOLA Privatization Experiment a success?
Yes, even if we accept that the numbers are correct, Harris acknowledges that the pursuit of test scores has led to some dicey practices, and NOLA does seem rife with tales of push-outs and creaming, as school principals strive to make their data points.
But there's a bigger question (though no less important) than whether or the numbers are legit. The bigger question is, even if the numbers are legit, are they worth the cost?
Disenfranchised public
Journalist Jennifer Berkshire's recent trip to New Orleans provides a vivid picture of how thoroughly NOLA reformsters have pushed locals aside-- even locals who agree with the charterfication agenda. Parents, community leaders, and, of course, the 7,000 teachers who used to work in the system.
It's not just that this leads to the bizarre spectacle of a predominantly brown and black local communities having their "public" schools run by mostly white outsiders. It's that the entire democratic structure has been tossed out, suspended as surely as if New Orleans were some 18th century island nation where a foreign power had landed, planted its flag, and declared itself the new local government.
Berkshire quotes New Orleans parent advocate Ashana Bigard: "It's like there is no place for New Orleanians at the table."
Destablizing the community
The 7,000 local teachers, middle class members of community, have been replaced by edutourists, modern-day classroom carpetbaggers, often Teach for America temps. They may very well have the best of intentions-- but those intentions too rarely include "move to New Orleans and make it my home for the rest of my life."
More insidiously, New Orleans communities no longer have community schools. What serves as a central anchor, a tie that helps connect the people who live near each other-- that anchor is gone. Students disperse each morning in a crazy web of bus routes and come home, late in the day, to a neighborhood of strangers. And the parents associated with a particular school can no longer gather easily to share concerns and take action, because they too are spread across the city.
And of course the charters themselves come and go as they rise and fall. A true public school is a long term commitment that a community makes to its children. Charters commit to stay only as long as it make business sense.
Personal enrichment
Head over to twitter and look at the hashtag #NOLAedwarning. There's an awful lot to absorb, but the tales include school leaders and charter operators who are being paid truckloads of money.
NOLA is often discussed as a charter experiment, but I think it's more accurate to think of it as a privatization experiment. NOLA answers the question, "What would a school system look like if every single decision were a business decision?"
I will never argue business is automatically evil. But if schools are businesses, then they must have an adversarial relationship with their students-- every dollar spent on a student is a dollar that doesn't go into the business's bank account.
Repurposing education
When reformsters swept in and took over the New Orleans school system, they didn't just decide how the system would be run-- the decided what the purpose of the system would be.
The role of schools in building community, schools as a democratic expression of a local community's goals for its children, schools as a broad tapestry of possibilities and enrichment for individual students, schools as institutions that enriched the life of a neighborhood, schools as a hothouse in which to grow local leaders, schools as the most fundamental expression of our democratic values in a pluralistic society, schools as a path for students to pursue their own self-directed broad range of personal life goals, schools as institutions of support and growth cenetered around the needs of the child-- those roles were all jettisoned, tossed out the window.
Instead, reformsters remade NOLA schools around one roles-- the purpose of schools is to get students to score well on a standardized math and reading test.
The real question
As the fooferaw over the ERA report continues, arguments will center around whether or not the report is accurate, trustworthy, believable. In other states, it will feed the continued push to export the NOLA model by declaring that the model was successful.
But the real question, the important question, the question that must be asked again and again, is whether the NOLA concept of success-- pursuing test scores by sacrificing every single value we traditionally associate with public schools-- whether that success is even worth pursuing in the first place.
Let's not spend so much time discussing whether or not NOLA won the race that we forget to ask whether the race was ever worth running in the first place.
Originally posted at View from the Cheap Seats
What Failing Schools?
Education Next is trotting out its Big Fat Survey of Educational Stuff for 2015, and for eduwonks it's twenty-three pages of interesting stuff. I'm sure many of us will be parsing, mining and massaging the results, as well as discussing how much the reform-loving sponsors of the survey can be trusted. But as I poked through it, two results jumped out at me immediately.
So, where are the failing schools?
The whole premise of our ongoing onslaught of reformy forces against public education is that we are awash in a sea of terrible schools. So where are they? Where are all the people saying, "Yes, my school is failing."
Even the folks grading Other People's Schools-- it's a regular thing in these surveys that folks think their own schools are better than the national picture, but the difference here is a blip (the only interesting blip is that more African-Americans think their local schools are failing than think the nation's are).
I mean, we can expect a certain percentage of people to think schools are failing for the usual cranky reasons-- school doesn't teach cursive, or it let's pregnant ladies teach, or it didn't play Chris enough on first string, or school officials kept fining them for truancy, or teachers kept flunking Chris just cause Chris never did assigned work and flunked all the tests. Add to that the constant barrage over the last fifteen years that US public schools are terrible, that they must be reformed, that students must be rescued from these deep pits of failing failure.
So why aren't more people convinced? Why aren't more people giving schools a failing grade?
What about teachers?
This, unfortunately, is a less clear data set. Note that the question is different, so I'm not sure how to read the chart. Does the 9% F rating under parents mean that 9% of the parents would give F's, or that on average, parents would give 9% of the teachers in their school an F? Either way, the numbers are higher than you'd like them to be (although once again we find that the teachers people don't know are worse than the ones they do). But they are way lower than the numbers generated by the theory, favored by Andrew Cuomo and others, that if 70% of students get low test scores, 70% of the teachers must suck.
There are certainly aspects of these data that are unbragworthy. But it is still worth noting that the reformsters narrative of terrible schools staffed with horrible teachers is not what most folks see-- certainly not the level of disaster needed to really jumpstart a good round of disaster capitalist roulette. Perhaps that's why some folks have to work so very hard to create the impression of educational disaster.
The whole premise of our ongoing onslaught of reformy forces against public education is that we are awash in a sea of terrible schools. So where are they? Where are all the people saying, "Yes, my school is failing."
Even the folks grading Other People's Schools-- it's a regular thing in these surveys that folks think their own schools are better than the national picture, but the difference here is a blip (the only interesting blip is that more African-Americans think their local schools are failing than think the nation's are).
I mean, we can expect a certain percentage of people to think schools are failing for the usual cranky reasons-- school doesn't teach cursive, or it let's pregnant ladies teach, or it didn't play Chris enough on first string, or school officials kept fining them for truancy, or teachers kept flunking Chris just cause Chris never did assigned work and flunked all the tests. Add to that the constant barrage over the last fifteen years that US public schools are terrible, that they must be reformed, that students must be rescued from these deep pits of failing failure.
So why aren't more people convinced? Why aren't more people giving schools a failing grade?
What about teachers?
There are certainly aspects of these data that are unbragworthy. But it is still worth noting that the reformsters narrative of terrible schools staffed with horrible teachers is not what most folks see-- certainly not the level of disaster needed to really jumpstart a good round of disaster capitalist roulette. Perhaps that's why some folks have to work so very hard to create the impression of educational disaster.
Monday, August 17, 2015
Watts: Presence, Present and Future
Near the top of my list of not-exactly-education sites is Maria Popova's Brain Pickings, a site that consistently provides great writing and insights about how to be fully human in the world-- which of course means it really is about education after all.
Here's a post that lifts from the work of Alan Watts (1915-1973), the writer who helped bring much Asian philosophy thought into our part of the world. In particular, you'll find his work tied closely to the idea of presence or mindfulness. It is of course a concept that has often taken root in the US, even back with the calls of Emerson and Thoreau to live deliberately and simply.
Watts wrote The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for the Age of Anxiety way back in 1951, but boy does it have some things to say to us today, particularly for those of us in education.
If to enjoy even an enjoyable present we must have the assurance of a happy future, we are “crying for the moon.” We have no such assurance. The best predictions are still matters of probability rather than certainty, and to the best of our knowledge every one of us is going to suffer and die. If, then, we cannot live happily without an assured future, we are certainly not adapted to living in a finite world where, despite the best plans, accidents will happen, and where death comes at the end.
And yet, we are enmeshed in an educational system that wants to be able to predict the future with certainty. "If your eight year old makes the score on this standardized test, we can assure you that she's on her way to college," claim our reformy liberators.
Here's another way of understanding why the current reformster ideals are so wrong-- they are devoted to predicting and insuring a particular future for students, instead of preparing them for whatever future may come. "Score well on the test," we want to promise, "and college, a good job, all of it will just fall into place." Instead of arming students with a whole toolbox full of varied and wonderful implements, we hand them a screwdriver and say, "We guarantee that with this in your hand, nothing bad will ever happen and you'll never need anything else."
And we reduce school to a period in which students are not actually present and living their lives, but simply absently preparing for a future, forfeiting today for the promise of a guaranteed tomorrow. And so along with all the other things we don't teach our students, we don't teach them to be present in the moment, to be aware, to be alive.
Or consider this quote from Watts:
The working inhabitants of a modern city are people who live inside a machine to be batted around by its wheels. They spend their days in activities which largely boil down to counting and measuring, living in a world of rationalized abstraction which has little relation to or harmony with the great biological rhythms and processes. As a matter of fact, mental activities of this kind can now be done far more efficiently by machines than by men — so much so that in a not too distant future the human brain may be an obsolete mechanism for logical calculation.
I remind you-- Watts was writing in 1951. But now we live in times in which our policy leaders want to jam education inside the machine and reduce all teaching and learning activities to counting and measuring (and suggesting that these activities can, in fact, be managed by machines).
Popova has lifted one other great quote from Watts that, in the context of modern redformy education, hollers out to me.
If we are to continue to live for the future, and to make the chief work of the mind prediction and calculation, man must eventually become a parasitic appendage to a mass of clockwork.
Though I might suggest one revision. While it's undeniable that education is increasingly about grafting humans onto a mass of ticking machinery, maybe it's not the humans who are the parasites, but instead it's the clockwork that is the parasitic appendage.
Here's a post that lifts from the work of Alan Watts (1915-1973), the writer who helped bring much Asian philosophy thought into our part of the world. In particular, you'll find his work tied closely to the idea of presence or mindfulness. It is of course a concept that has often taken root in the US, even back with the calls of Emerson and Thoreau to live deliberately and simply.
Watts wrote The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for the Age of Anxiety way back in 1951, but boy does it have some things to say to us today, particularly for those of us in education.
If to enjoy even an enjoyable present we must have the assurance of a happy future, we are “crying for the moon.” We have no such assurance. The best predictions are still matters of probability rather than certainty, and to the best of our knowledge every one of us is going to suffer and die. If, then, we cannot live happily without an assured future, we are certainly not adapted to living in a finite world where, despite the best plans, accidents will happen, and where death comes at the end.
And yet, we are enmeshed in an educational system that wants to be able to predict the future with certainty. "If your eight year old makes the score on this standardized test, we can assure you that she's on her way to college," claim our reformy liberators.
Here's another way of understanding why the current reformster ideals are so wrong-- they are devoted to predicting and insuring a particular future for students, instead of preparing them for whatever future may come. "Score well on the test," we want to promise, "and college, a good job, all of it will just fall into place." Instead of arming students with a whole toolbox full of varied and wonderful implements, we hand them a screwdriver and say, "We guarantee that with this in your hand, nothing bad will ever happen and you'll never need anything else."
And we reduce school to a period in which students are not actually present and living their lives, but simply absently preparing for a future, forfeiting today for the promise of a guaranteed tomorrow. And so along with all the other things we don't teach our students, we don't teach them to be present in the moment, to be aware, to be alive.
Or consider this quote from Watts:
The working inhabitants of a modern city are people who live inside a machine to be batted around by its wheels. They spend their days in activities which largely boil down to counting and measuring, living in a world of rationalized abstraction which has little relation to or harmony with the great biological rhythms and processes. As a matter of fact, mental activities of this kind can now be done far more efficiently by machines than by men — so much so that in a not too distant future the human brain may be an obsolete mechanism for logical calculation.
I remind you-- Watts was writing in 1951. But now we live in times in which our policy leaders want to jam education inside the machine and reduce all teaching and learning activities to counting and measuring (and suggesting that these activities can, in fact, be managed by machines).
Popova has lifted one other great quote from Watts that, in the context of modern redformy education, hollers out to me.
If we are to continue to live for the future, and to make the chief work of the mind prediction and calculation, man must eventually become a parasitic appendage to a mass of clockwork.
Though I might suggest one revision. While it's undeniable that education is increasingly about grafting humans onto a mass of ticking machinery, maybe it's not the humans who are the parasites, but instead it's the clockwork that is the parasitic appendage.
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Anti-Opt-Out Pushback
With the news that last year's Giant Wall of Big Standardized Testing in New York was shot full of holes thanks to a huge number of opt-outs, the anti-opt-folks started throwing a sackful of old baloney at the wall hoping that something would stick well enough plug a hole or two.
The New York Times led the charge, but America's newspaper of record apparently just dipped back into that record to dig out every worn out old defense of the BS Tests they could locate.
This ill-conceived boycott could damage educational reform — desperately needed in poor and rural communities — and undermine the Common Core standards adopted by New York and many other states. The standards offer the best hope for holding school districts accountable for educating all students, regardless of race or income.
This is kind of hilarious. Undermine the Common Core? Heavens to murgatroyd! Of all the nouns in this paragraph to which the modifier "ill-conceived" could be attached, "boycott" seems to least deserve it. And if the NYT is concerned about holding people accountable for educating all students, they might talk about how the state has boycotted fairly funding small city schools, finally driving those cities to file a lawsuit that the state has paid big bucks to fight.
The editorial goes on to toss other stale baloney at the wall-- parents won't know how their kids are doing in school (because, I guess, parents are dopes), the school won't be fully represented to its state overlords, excessive testing is the fault of local tests, and the feds might penalize districts financially (though, again, the state's unwillingness to fairly fund districts is not an issue). Perhaps the editorial board ran out of room before they could add, "And this could go on your permanent record."
But when all is said and done, the NYT is a bunch of ed reform amateurs. What are the reformsters floating as anti-opt-out talking points?
For that we can turn to the Collaboration for Student Success, a group affiliated with all the usual subjects and deeply committed to the reformster agenda. And they have a nice webpage up asking whether you would opt your child out or not. Say "opt in" (which is actually an interesting idea-- what if states only administered the BS Tests to students who actively signed up for them, like the SAT or ACT) and the site delivers an attaboy. But opt out--
Choose opt out, and you're taken to this page. There's a video from a perky teacher of the year who tells us that these new tests have gone beyond bubble tests blah blah critical thinking blah problem solving. Has she actually seen the test?
CSS lists four talking points about what an opted-out family is doing:
* "Surrendering the opportunity to have an objective snapshot" of how the child is doing. So the test is just a snapshot? Not anything deeper or more useful? "Objective" snapshot. No.
* "Denying their student’s teachers, this year and next, the opportunity to measure what skills and subjects their child is adept at, and to discover where he or she needs extra help." If the student's teacher does not already know how to do this without the benefit of a BS Test, the student's teacher should not be anybody's teacher.
* The state will have an incomplete picture of the school's achievement, and that might affect what the school gets when it comes time for budgeting support, they say. Because test results are part of the funding formula. Also, remember that time a school's test results showed it was underfunded and undersupported, so the state rushed to its aid with additional funding and support? No, of course you don't, for the same reason I don't remember the time Angelina Jolie showed up at my front door begging to take her in when she left Brad Pitt for me.
* "Jeopardizing their school from receiving crucial federal funds to support your child’s school..." Yes, this page is a little confused about pronouns and general word use. But remember-- you don't want to lose those Title I funds that so far the feds haven't withheld from anyone, ever (and which are not awarded based on test results.)
CSS wraps up with the civil rights pitch, noting that letter supporting testing sent by twelve national civil rights groups. They neglected to mention the letter opposing testing signed by considerably more than twelve civil rights leaders.
If this is the best set of arguments the pro-testing folks can muster, that would explain why New York commissioner of education MaryEllen Elia skipped straight over reasoning and winning hearts and minds and went straight to threats. If this is the best the pro-test folks can do, the BS Tests are in big trouble.
The New York Times led the charge, but America's newspaper of record apparently just dipped back into that record to dig out every worn out old defense of the BS Tests they could locate.
This ill-conceived boycott could damage educational reform — desperately needed in poor and rural communities — and undermine the Common Core standards adopted by New York and many other states. The standards offer the best hope for holding school districts accountable for educating all students, regardless of race or income.
This is kind of hilarious. Undermine the Common Core? Heavens to murgatroyd! Of all the nouns in this paragraph to which the modifier "ill-conceived" could be attached, "boycott" seems to least deserve it. And if the NYT is concerned about holding people accountable for educating all students, they might talk about how the state has boycotted fairly funding small city schools, finally driving those cities to file a lawsuit that the state has paid big bucks to fight.
The editorial goes on to toss other stale baloney at the wall-- parents won't know how their kids are doing in school (because, I guess, parents are dopes), the school won't be fully represented to its state overlords, excessive testing is the fault of local tests, and the feds might penalize districts financially (though, again, the state's unwillingness to fairly fund districts is not an issue). Perhaps the editorial board ran out of room before they could add, "And this could go on your permanent record."
But when all is said and done, the NYT is a bunch of ed reform amateurs. What are the reformsters floating as anti-opt-out talking points?
For that we can turn to the Collaboration for Student Success, a group affiliated with all the usual subjects and deeply committed to the reformster agenda. And they have a nice webpage up asking whether you would opt your child out or not. Say "opt in" (which is actually an interesting idea-- what if states only administered the BS Tests to students who actively signed up for them, like the SAT or ACT) and the site delivers an attaboy. But opt out--
Choose opt out, and you're taken to this page. There's a video from a perky teacher of the year who tells us that these new tests have gone beyond bubble tests blah blah critical thinking blah problem solving. Has she actually seen the test?
CSS lists four talking points about what an opted-out family is doing:
* "Surrendering the opportunity to have an objective snapshot" of how the child is doing. So the test is just a snapshot? Not anything deeper or more useful? "Objective" snapshot. No.
* "Denying their student’s teachers, this year and next, the opportunity to measure what skills and subjects their child is adept at, and to discover where he or she needs extra help." If the student's teacher does not already know how to do this without the benefit of a BS Test, the student's teacher should not be anybody's teacher.
* The state will have an incomplete picture of the school's achievement, and that might affect what the school gets when it comes time for budgeting support, they say. Because test results are part of the funding formula. Also, remember that time a school's test results showed it was underfunded and undersupported, so the state rushed to its aid with additional funding and support? No, of course you don't, for the same reason I don't remember the time Angelina Jolie showed up at my front door begging to take her in when she left Brad Pitt for me.
* "Jeopardizing their school from receiving crucial federal funds to support your child’s school..." Yes, this page is a little confused about pronouns and general word use. But remember-- you don't want to lose those Title I funds that so far the feds haven't withheld from anyone, ever (and which are not awarded based on test results.)
CSS wraps up with the civil rights pitch, noting that letter supporting testing sent by twelve national civil rights groups. They neglected to mention the letter opposing testing signed by considerably more than twelve civil rights leaders.
If this is the best set of arguments the pro-testing folks can muster, that would explain why New York commissioner of education MaryEllen Elia skipped straight over reasoning and winning hearts and minds and went straight to threats. If this is the best the pro-test folks can do, the BS Tests are in big trouble.
10 Things Smart Teachers Don't Do
Over at the Inc website, contributing editor Jeff Haden last week contributed "10 Things the Smartest People Never Do." It's business-oriented, but it actually translates well into the teaching world as well. Here's the teacherfied version of the list of things that smart people never do.
1. Thoughlessly waste other people's time.
This doesn't just apply to our colleagues-- it applies to our students as well. I actually make this explicit promise to my students every fall, and if they demand an explanation of why something I've asked them to do is not a waste of their time, I give them one. It is easy to view our students as essentially trapped in school, and so it doesn't matter how we spend their time because they never had any control over their schedule anyway. Wrong. We're talking about minutes of fellow human beings' lives. Don't waste them.
2. Ignore people "beneath" your level.
Every beginning teacher gets that important advice-- make friends with the office secretary and the janitor for your hall. But the word "ignore" is key here. For many of our students, the worst thing about life is that they are invisible to their peers and to much of the world they encounter. Haden advises to see people, and I believe that applies to students as well. It doesn't necessarily take a huge fifteen-minute interaction with them-- just a quick exchange that translates as, "I actually see you." It is one of the most powerful things we can do.
3. Ask for too much (especially too soon).
Do not be the teacher who depends on all other teachers to take care of your business for you. Do not require everyone else on staff to cover your butt. Take care of your business and more people will be more inclined to give you more help.
4. Ignore people in genuine need.
This includes colleagues and students. This can be hard because we are always tight on time and genuine need never arrives at a convenient moment. Haden offers this observation:
Though I don’t necessarily believe in karma, I do believe good things always come back to you, in the form of feeling good about yourself.
For teachers, the stakes are much higher, because we work with people who are often in genuine need.
5. Ask a question just so you can talk.
You know that guy. You hate that guy. Don't be that guy in the classroom. There is enormous power that can be unlocked in a classroom by asking real questions with the real intent to hear what students really say (see #2 and #4). Yes, that's a challenge with six-year-olds, who have a tendency to engage in what we could call free form non-linear verbal behavior. But by the time students get to me at the high school, many of them have learned that there's no point in speaking or writing because nobody gives a shit what they think or feel.
Ask questions so your students can answer them.
6. Pull the "Do you know who I am."
Okay, of Haden's list items, I thought this was the least translatable at first. But then I had unpleasant memories of playing the authority card, where the teacher (let's call him Mr. Cartman) says, "I am the teacher and I have the power to just roll right over you. So shut up and respect my authority." Which is our version of "Do you know who I am." It's rarely very effective, particularly in the long term.
7. Forget to dial it back.
Haden's point is that quirkiness and wacky individuality can be great until they're not. And I love this line
Knowing when the situation requires you to stop justifying your words or actions with an unspoken “Hey, that’s just me being me” can often be the difference between being likable and being an ass.
It's great to be that dynamic, energizing, rock star teacher (I imagine), but at some point you have to leave enough air in the room for everyone else to breathe.
8. Mistake self-deprecation for permission.
Oh, man. Learning this goes double for my students. What he means is that just because somebody makes self-deprecating jokes about being overweight, that doesn't mean it's okay for you to start calling him "Tubby." Students really need to know this about each other, but teachers also need to know it about students. Treat them like their best selves, even if they do not.
9. Humblebrag
I had a student teacher once who had one simple problem-- he didn't want to be the teacher nearly as much as he just wanted to be the smartest kid in the room. And honestly-- I think it generally helps when teachers have a little mystery about them. Be confident, but don't waste time trying your students to know how awesome you are. If there's anything awesome about you to be discovered, they'll be much more impressed if they discover it on their own (and they will set the bar low, as hen they are amazed to find you in a grocery store, buying groceries!! amazeballs!!)
10. Push your opinions.
Man, this is hard. Well, it's hard for me, anyway-- maybe you do great with it. I have a hard and fast rule for some of my writing assignments. We do a lot of practice writing argument essays, and I never assign a topic on which I think I know what the Correct Answer is, because I have to assess how well they made their case, not how well they said what I agree with. I'm a big believer that if things really are True, everyone will arrive at that conclusion in their own way at their own time-- if they pursue an open and honest path with integrity, and that means no trying to force a conclusion that hasn't arrived yet.
And this is doubly the rule outside of your content area and classroom. Respect your students' right to have their own views of things.
There you have it.
Do go ahead and check out Haden's original piece. It's a little food for thought as the year begins.
1. Thoughlessly waste other people's time.
This doesn't just apply to our colleagues-- it applies to our students as well. I actually make this explicit promise to my students every fall, and if they demand an explanation of why something I've asked them to do is not a waste of their time, I give them one. It is easy to view our students as essentially trapped in school, and so it doesn't matter how we spend their time because they never had any control over their schedule anyway. Wrong. We're talking about minutes of fellow human beings' lives. Don't waste them.
2. Ignore people "beneath" your level.
Every beginning teacher gets that important advice-- make friends with the office secretary and the janitor for your hall. But the word "ignore" is key here. For many of our students, the worst thing about life is that they are invisible to their peers and to much of the world they encounter. Haden advises to see people, and I believe that applies to students as well. It doesn't necessarily take a huge fifteen-minute interaction with them-- just a quick exchange that translates as, "I actually see you." It is one of the most powerful things we can do.
3. Ask for too much (especially too soon).
Do not be the teacher who depends on all other teachers to take care of your business for you. Do not require everyone else on staff to cover your butt. Take care of your business and more people will be more inclined to give you more help.
4. Ignore people in genuine need.
This includes colleagues and students. This can be hard because we are always tight on time and genuine need never arrives at a convenient moment. Haden offers this observation:
Though I don’t necessarily believe in karma, I do believe good things always come back to you, in the form of feeling good about yourself.
For teachers, the stakes are much higher, because we work with people who are often in genuine need.
5. Ask a question just so you can talk.
You know that guy. You hate that guy. Don't be that guy in the classroom. There is enormous power that can be unlocked in a classroom by asking real questions with the real intent to hear what students really say (see #2 and #4). Yes, that's a challenge with six-year-olds, who have a tendency to engage in what we could call free form non-linear verbal behavior. But by the time students get to me at the high school, many of them have learned that there's no point in speaking or writing because nobody gives a shit what they think or feel.
Ask questions so your students can answer them.
6. Pull the "Do you know who I am."
Okay, of Haden's list items, I thought this was the least translatable at first. But then I had unpleasant memories of playing the authority card, where the teacher (let's call him Mr. Cartman) says, "I am the teacher and I have the power to just roll right over you. So shut up and respect my authority." Which is our version of "Do you know who I am." It's rarely very effective, particularly in the long term.
7. Forget to dial it back.
Haden's point is that quirkiness and wacky individuality can be great until they're not. And I love this line
Knowing when the situation requires you to stop justifying your words or actions with an unspoken “Hey, that’s just me being me” can often be the difference between being likable and being an ass.
It's great to be that dynamic, energizing, rock star teacher (I imagine), but at some point you have to leave enough air in the room for everyone else to breathe.
8. Mistake self-deprecation for permission.
Oh, man. Learning this goes double for my students. What he means is that just because somebody makes self-deprecating jokes about being overweight, that doesn't mean it's okay for you to start calling him "Tubby." Students really need to know this about each other, but teachers also need to know it about students. Treat them like their best selves, even if they do not.
9. Humblebrag
I had a student teacher once who had one simple problem-- he didn't want to be the teacher nearly as much as he just wanted to be the smartest kid in the room. And honestly-- I think it generally helps when teachers have a little mystery about them. Be confident, but don't waste time trying your students to know how awesome you are. If there's anything awesome about you to be discovered, they'll be much more impressed if they discover it on their own (and they will set the bar low, as hen they are amazed to find you in a grocery store, buying groceries!! amazeballs!!)
10. Push your opinions.
Man, this is hard. Well, it's hard for me, anyway-- maybe you do great with it. I have a hard and fast rule for some of my writing assignments. We do a lot of practice writing argument essays, and I never assign a topic on which I think I know what the Correct Answer is, because I have to assess how well they made their case, not how well they said what I agree with. I'm a big believer that if things really are True, everyone will arrive at that conclusion in their own way at their own time-- if they pursue an open and honest path with integrity, and that means no trying to force a conclusion that hasn't arrived yet.
And this is doubly the rule outside of your content area and classroom. Respect your students' right to have their own views of things.
There you have it.
Do go ahead and check out Haden's original piece. It's a little food for thought as the year begins.
Backpacks for Clueless Parents
Over at Getting Smart, a website devoted to selling educational product, guest writer Aimee Rogstad Guidera makes her case for more data collection for each student-- because it's what parents want.
Parents are eager for information about their child’s education. As a mom, I want to know if my daughter is struggling in math before she comes home in tears. I need information to support my child’s learning at home, and to support my child and her teacher in making the best decisions for her learning in the classroom.
Maybe I just don't get it, but I'm inclined to think that if you didn't know your child was having trouble in math before the coming-home-in-tears part, you're just not paying attention. I have heard this pitch enough times to make me occasionally wonder if there is, in fact, some place where teachers keep every scrap of information carefully hoarded, students never speak to their parents about school, parents never ask about school, and all parent requests for conferences and information are denied by all school personnel. Maybe there is some place where parents are so deeply clueless and helpless that they have no idea how their students are doing.
Or maybe Guidera is the CEO and President of the Data Quality Campaign, a group interested in student data and funded by the Gates Foundation, the Waltons, the Dells, and the Ford Foundation. They do have some rules about how such data should be kept in a safe lockbox, but they are clearly Big Data fans.
Guidera is advocating for student data backpacks-- little (or not so little) bundles of data that just follow students around, providing parents with all sorts of longitudinal data (because, again, parents don't know much about their own children).
Guidera says the backpack should be available, timely, portable, secure and understandable, and none of that sounds unreasonable until you start thinking about how it's going to work.
First, the data itself. I'm a fan of transparency-- my school makes our electronic gradebook accessible to parents, so my students' families are able to log on and see their student's current grade-by-grade standing in my class. That's a high level of transparency, but my data isn't any more granular than that-- there are no copies of the work on line, nor does the grade break down to anything other than the grade itself. Of course, my students are able to take their work home, and parents who want further clarification can email me or call.
Why is the data not more detailed and specific? Because there are only twenty-four hours in the day. If you want me (as some Big Data folks do) to tag every single item on every single assignment and test with the exact standard number (which may well have been part of the original intent of Common Core), then you have just tripled the time involved in creating and recording every assignment.
If we somehow accomplish that feat (who knows-- maybe I'm finally getting an administrative assistant), that backpack is chock full of data. It exists. It's out there. And as a parent who works in education, I'm not going to be moved by all the assurances on the planet that the data will only be used for purposes I approve of. Major corporations and the US Government can't keep critical information secure; a school district that has to hire IT guys who will settle for far less than the going rate has no chance.
Is there a huge payoff from the data backpack that would justify the risk? In a word-- no.
Look, what are the two questions that the vast majority of parents want answers to?
1) Is my kid doing okay?
2) If not, what does she need help with?
Can anybody think of a reason that the classroom teacher could not handle both of those questions? Anybody?
Yes, I can think of one reason-- the teacher is not competent. And you know what? If the teacher is not competent to answer those two questions, the teacher is certainly not competent to carefully tag and bag and process the detailed data of assignments and tests and etc.
Likewise, a parent who is incapable of communicating with her own child or with that child's teacher is unlikely to be adept and unpacking the data in the backpack.
I don't think student data backpacks serve the interests of parents or teachers. Here are the groups that I think data backpacks might serve.
1) People who are neither the parents, the teachers or the students, but who would still really like to get their hands on that sweet, sweet data.
2) School operators who would like to "teacher-proof" their classrooms by hiring warm bodies and saying, "No, you don't have to know what you're doing. Just unpack the box, deliver the packaged content lessons, administer the pre-written assessments, and enter the data. The software will do the rest."
3) School operators who want to make parents go away and leave them alone. "No, Mrs. Wassamatta, you don't need to schedule a conference. Everything you need is right there in the data backpack. Go look at that and just leave us alone."
4) People who want to market and sell data backpack software.
My advice to Ms. Guidera-- put down the backpack and pick up the phone.
UPDATE: Leonie Haimson reminds me that the student data backpack is straight out of model legislation by ALEC. So you know it's all about educational excellence, and not about ways to leverage fake education reform into great profit-generating possibilities. Nossiree.
Parents are eager for information about their child’s education. As a mom, I want to know if my daughter is struggling in math before she comes home in tears. I need information to support my child’s learning at home, and to support my child and her teacher in making the best decisions for her learning in the classroom.
Maybe I just don't get it, but I'm inclined to think that if you didn't know your child was having trouble in math before the coming-home-in-tears part, you're just not paying attention. I have heard this pitch enough times to make me occasionally wonder if there is, in fact, some place where teachers keep every scrap of information carefully hoarded, students never speak to their parents about school, parents never ask about school, and all parent requests for conferences and information are denied by all school personnel. Maybe there is some place where parents are so deeply clueless and helpless that they have no idea how their students are doing.
Or maybe Guidera is the CEO and President of the Data Quality Campaign, a group interested in student data and funded by the Gates Foundation, the Waltons, the Dells, and the Ford Foundation. They do have some rules about how such data should be kept in a safe lockbox, but they are clearly Big Data fans.
Guidera is advocating for student data backpacks-- little (or not so little) bundles of data that just follow students around, providing parents with all sorts of longitudinal data (because, again, parents don't know much about their own children).
Guidera says the backpack should be available, timely, portable, secure and understandable, and none of that sounds unreasonable until you start thinking about how it's going to work.
First, the data itself. I'm a fan of transparency-- my school makes our electronic gradebook accessible to parents, so my students' families are able to log on and see their student's current grade-by-grade standing in my class. That's a high level of transparency, but my data isn't any more granular than that-- there are no copies of the work on line, nor does the grade break down to anything other than the grade itself. Of course, my students are able to take their work home, and parents who want further clarification can email me or call.
Why is the data not more detailed and specific? Because there are only twenty-four hours in the day. If you want me (as some Big Data folks do) to tag every single item on every single assignment and test with the exact standard number (which may well have been part of the original intent of Common Core), then you have just tripled the time involved in creating and recording every assignment.
If we somehow accomplish that feat (who knows-- maybe I'm finally getting an administrative assistant), that backpack is chock full of data. It exists. It's out there. And as a parent who works in education, I'm not going to be moved by all the assurances on the planet that the data will only be used for purposes I approve of. Major corporations and the US Government can't keep critical information secure; a school district that has to hire IT guys who will settle for far less than the going rate has no chance.
Is there a huge payoff from the data backpack that would justify the risk? In a word-- no.
Look, what are the two questions that the vast majority of parents want answers to?
1) Is my kid doing okay?
2) If not, what does she need help with?
Can anybody think of a reason that the classroom teacher could not handle both of those questions? Anybody?
Yes, I can think of one reason-- the teacher is not competent. And you know what? If the teacher is not competent to answer those two questions, the teacher is certainly not competent to carefully tag and bag and process the detailed data of assignments and tests and etc.
Likewise, a parent who is incapable of communicating with her own child or with that child's teacher is unlikely to be adept and unpacking the data in the backpack.
I don't think student data backpacks serve the interests of parents or teachers. Here are the groups that I think data backpacks might serve.
1) People who are neither the parents, the teachers or the students, but who would still really like to get their hands on that sweet, sweet data.
2) School operators who would like to "teacher-proof" their classrooms by hiring warm bodies and saying, "No, you don't have to know what you're doing. Just unpack the box, deliver the packaged content lessons, administer the pre-written assessments, and enter the data. The software will do the rest."
3) School operators who want to make parents go away and leave them alone. "No, Mrs. Wassamatta, you don't need to schedule a conference. Everything you need is right there in the data backpack. Go look at that and just leave us alone."
4) People who want to market and sell data backpack software.
My advice to Ms. Guidera-- put down the backpack and pick up the phone.
UPDATE: Leonie Haimson reminds me that the student data backpack is straight out of model legislation by ALEC. So you know it's all about educational excellence, and not about ways to leverage fake education reform into great profit-generating possibilities. Nossiree.
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