Mark Garrison is a helluva guy. He lists scholar, activist, evaluator and artist as his businesses, and lists two books and three albums among his achievements. He has clearly put a whole lot of thought into the current state of education policy, with a particular sharp eye for the problems of Trying To Measure Stuff. Garrison says many things I agree with, but he says it all smarter.
In "Metric Morality," Garrison addresses the issue of just what can be measured, and why the current educational measurements are doomed to fail. I love this stuff, because it cuts to why the whole concept of educational metrics is, as he puts it, "fraudulent."
"They confound properties of individuals, individual schools and individual school systems with the relations those individuals, individual schools and individual school systems have with their social contexts." In other words, they talk about qualities like "wetness" as being properties of the individual and not as they are related to whether one is standing inside, under an umbrella, or outside naked in a monsoon.
They "follow the long discredited practice of defining the object of measurement 'operationally'; that is, things and phenomena are defined by how they are 'measured'." Garrison's example is perfect-- the definition of "intelligence" is the ability to do well on an intelligence test. Yay, tautology.
They use the "flawed definition" of measurement which is the process of assigning numbers according to some rule. This, Garrison says, ties directly to the notion that everything that exists must exist in some amount. "This would mean, for example, that we accept the proposition that humans exist in their degree of human-ness. Some of us are more human than others. Thankfully, the testers will select the chosen ones!"
They confuse ranking with measurement. Garrison seems to attribute this to confusion; I'm inclined to think reformsters do it on purpose. As noted a gazzillion times-- the fact that a school falls in that fatal bottom 5% does not mean it's a bad school-- just that it is ranked below the other 95%. The best rock band in Uraguay may still be a lousy rock band. Rank is not measurement.
Also, cut scores are baloney, and nobody even pretends to understand what "validity" and "reliability" mean -- or used to mean-- in the testing world.
Garrison considers the way in which leaders like Elia of New York have equated allegiance to the testing regime with morality and ethic. He might as easily noted Pennsylvania, where our test administration instructions are called "Ethical Standards of Test Administration," as if our role in overseeing the holy test is one founded on ethical principles rather than compliance to power and money.
But this takes him right to our old buddy, behaviorism.
In "The Behaviorist Origin of Close Reading," Garrison travels back to the twenties and the roots of the original close reading. Garrison sides with the critics who assert that close reading founding father I. A. Richards was directly tied to the behaviorist work of John Watson.
Some of us were learning all about behaviorism in teacher school back in the seventies, but it's not a popular term these days, so we can talk about personalized learning and game-based learning without ever noting the similarity to a big, computerized Skinner box. And just as sure as TSWBAT means "the student will be able to display an observable behavior that will be the entire basis for measuring the educational results," behaviorism has made a comeback.
Common Core reading is all about observable skills, and what we cannot see or measure does not count. One of Garrison's very best lines is actually a subheading from this essay:
Behaviorism: Yearning for Skill Without Consciousness
Garrison explains the disregard for consciousness in behaviorism:
A key tenet is this: Behaviorists have in common disregard for or denial of human consciousness. Because consciousness is not something one “does”, it is not “observable”; its existence or importance is denied in favor of fixing attention on behavior itself.
Or as David Coleman put it, "Nobody gives a shit what you think or feel." Or, he might have added, what you know. Just what you can do.
The behaviorists didn't much care for words like "consciousness" or "intent." They can't be seen or measured, and as I heard repeatedly in more than one college course, you don't need them to explain human behavior. Somewhere in my house, I still have my copy of Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity(1971) in which Skinner makes the case that our devotion to these tired old notions of free will and individual moral agency are keeping us from using scientific techniques like operant conditioning to modify behavior so that we can have a happier and more orderly society. Skinner's idea was a form of determinism, the notion that human behavior was just a collection of behavioral tics created by conditioning, and with the proper conditioning, we could get people to have the proper tics.
"Skill" is a nice term for a particular tic, a tic that humans are trained to perform when given the appropriate stimulus.
So. Is any of this sounding familiar?
Close Reading, says Garrison, adopted much of the behaviorist creed. First, treat the text as a behavior. It is, in fact, a perfect example, since the page has no consciousness or intent, and we are instructed to deliberately ignore the author's intent. The reader's response is a reaction to the behavior-- the behavior that the behavior elicits. In this model, there is nothing to analyze (and certainly nothing to understand, since understanding is all about consciousness and intent and moral agency) except how exactly the behavior elicited the response. It's simply figuring out what about the hot stove made you holler and yank your hand away; there is nothing more to reading Shakespeare or Morrison than setting your hand on a stove and seeing what you do next.
As Garrison puts it:
For Richards, “all mental events — including literature — occur in the
course of processes of adaptation somewhere between stimulus and
response”. Thus we have the basis for a method that renders the skill of reading necessarily devoid of consciousness.
My friends and I were not fans of behaviorism in college. It has its initial charm-- the surprise of a simple and clear explanation for much messiness of human existence-- but it's just so dehumanizing, cold, and ethically empty. It certainly has its place; there is much human behavior that becomes more comprehensible through the behaviorist lens. Ultimately it's too inhuman and inhumane, while suffering from a serious "if your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" problem. I could never understand why behaviorists didn't just say, "We can explain some aspects of human behavior, but beyond certain points we don't have enough tools in our box." (And don't even get me started on Walden Two, Skinner's 1948 big middle finger to Thoreau and the very concept of a human soul).
Garrison has done a good job of illuminating the connection between bad metrics, bad behaviorism, and the hollow futility of some current reformster ideals. And he affirms what many folks had already figured out for themselves-- that much of the current reformster regime feels counter-intuitive and anti-human because it is.
Friday, January 8, 2016
Getting Low Income Students to College
The issue was raised again last summer in Hechinger's in a story that in turn called back to a book from 2014, so this is not a new issue. But as Benjamin L. Castleman and Lindsay C. Page noted in Summer Melt, we don't just have a problem getting low-income students to aspire to college or apply to college-- we have a problem getting them to show up once they're in.
Back in August, Meredith Kolodner wrote the piece "Why are low income students not showing up to college, even though they have been accepted?" but August is not the time to think about the problem because by August, it's too late.
Students are applying. Students are being accepted. And then, Castleman and Page report, 40% of the accepted students just don't show up at campus in the fall.
This is a problem.
Kolodner reports that financial issues are often a leading culprit. Financial issues can be more than simply not having the money. Navigating the FAFSA is hard. Figuring out the loan system is hard. For a first generation college student, college loans can add up to the biggest amount of money the family has borrowed ever, and that can be scary as hell.
Financial issues for poor families also include just about anything unexpected. An unanticipated medical bill is enough to trash a family's finances and make borrowing five figure amounts seem irresponsible.
And as often noted, many poor and first-time-college families just don't know how to navigate the bureaucratic highways and byways of attending college. Meeting deadlines, knowing what fees are necessary and which are optional, knowing what to expect-- these may all seem like second nature to families with a history and knowledge of higher education, but can leave other families as confused as a yacht club member at a NASCAR rally.
And that's just when things go as they should. Kolodner tells stories of students who get caught up in and frustrated by bureaucratic screw-ups. It takes institutional comfort to deal with these-- in other words, someone who's not used to dealing with this kind of screw-up might accidentally assume that the college admissions office or financial aid office or any other sort of college knows what it's doing all the time. More savvy and experienced parents will tell tales of having to repeatedly call and push and call again until some paperwork snafu is finally fixed. It is the kind of Kafka-esque nightmare that can be hugely irritating for some (the school my nephews attended had better never call my sister and ask for a contribution if they know what's good for them) but completely demoralizing for others. And low-income families that are used to being on the powerless end of the stick can be especially susceptible to just giving up.
Are there things we can do?
Kolodner reports that some colleges and universities have created coaching models and/or peer-to-peer network models that provide a native guide for low-income enrollees. That seems like a good idea, though even better would be work by those of us in high schools. It is easy as college-educated grown-ups who work with plenty of college-bound and college-savvy students and families to stop keeping an eye out for students who just don't know what to do or how to do it. Too much information about the process is framed in a "this makes sense if you already know it" manner.
Listening, watching, paying attention, asking-- we need to be doing all those things. It's January, and in the next month or two, there will be students sitting, looking in frustration at college applications they can't figure out and hearing announcements about things they don't understand. This is not because they're stupid, but because the Going To College culture is one they aren't familiar with. They are no more stupid for not knowing how to navigate the artifacts of college culture than my mother is stupid for not knowing the difference between East Coast and West Coast rap.
It starts today, because yesterday the e-mails went out for PSAT scores, which means that many students are now smack in the center of powerful marketing cross-hairs. This is the other challenge of prepping students for the college transition, one that Kolodner doesn't address-- the vast amount of information aimed at students is aimed at them by people with something to sell. It's like having consumers get all of their information about housing loans from companies that profit housing loans (and that's never ended badly).
It's not our job as high schools to just launch students in the general; direction of college by pulling the slingshot back and blindly letting it rip, then brushing off our hands and saying, "Well, we did our part." And it's definitely not useful to educate them in a no-excuses, follow-orders, keep -quiet-and-do-as-you're-told environment that gives them zero preparation for the independent college life they will have to navigate. We need to give them all the information and guidance, paired with strength and confidence, that we can to increase the odds that next fall, students who want and need to be on college campuses will be there.
Back in August, Meredith Kolodner wrote the piece "Why are low income students not showing up to college, even though they have been accepted?" but August is not the time to think about the problem because by August, it's too late.
Students are applying. Students are being accepted. And then, Castleman and Page report, 40% of the accepted students just don't show up at campus in the fall.
This is a problem.
Kolodner reports that financial issues are often a leading culprit. Financial issues can be more than simply not having the money. Navigating the FAFSA is hard. Figuring out the loan system is hard. For a first generation college student, college loans can add up to the biggest amount of money the family has borrowed ever, and that can be scary as hell.
Financial issues for poor families also include just about anything unexpected. An unanticipated medical bill is enough to trash a family's finances and make borrowing five figure amounts seem irresponsible.
And as often noted, many poor and first-time-college families just don't know how to navigate the bureaucratic highways and byways of attending college. Meeting deadlines, knowing what fees are necessary and which are optional, knowing what to expect-- these may all seem like second nature to families with a history and knowledge of higher education, but can leave other families as confused as a yacht club member at a NASCAR rally.
And that's just when things go as they should. Kolodner tells stories of students who get caught up in and frustrated by bureaucratic screw-ups. It takes institutional comfort to deal with these-- in other words, someone who's not used to dealing with this kind of screw-up might accidentally assume that the college admissions office or financial aid office or any other sort of college knows what it's doing all the time. More savvy and experienced parents will tell tales of having to repeatedly call and push and call again until some paperwork snafu is finally fixed. It is the kind of Kafka-esque nightmare that can be hugely irritating for some (the school my nephews attended had better never call my sister and ask for a contribution if they know what's good for them) but completely demoralizing for others. And low-income families that are used to being on the powerless end of the stick can be especially susceptible to just giving up.
Are there things we can do?
Kolodner reports that some colleges and universities have created coaching models and/or peer-to-peer network models that provide a native guide for low-income enrollees. That seems like a good idea, though even better would be work by those of us in high schools. It is easy as college-educated grown-ups who work with plenty of college-bound and college-savvy students and families to stop keeping an eye out for students who just don't know what to do or how to do it. Too much information about the process is framed in a "this makes sense if you already know it" manner.
Listening, watching, paying attention, asking-- we need to be doing all those things. It's January, and in the next month or two, there will be students sitting, looking in frustration at college applications they can't figure out and hearing announcements about things they don't understand. This is not because they're stupid, but because the Going To College culture is one they aren't familiar with. They are no more stupid for not knowing how to navigate the artifacts of college culture than my mother is stupid for not knowing the difference between East Coast and West Coast rap.
It starts today, because yesterday the e-mails went out for PSAT scores, which means that many students are now smack in the center of powerful marketing cross-hairs. This is the other challenge of prepping students for the college transition, one that Kolodner doesn't address-- the vast amount of information aimed at students is aimed at them by people with something to sell. It's like having consumers get all of their information about housing loans from companies that profit housing loans (and that's never ended badly).
It's not our job as high schools to just launch students in the general; direction of college by pulling the slingshot back and blindly letting it rip, then brushing off our hands and saying, "Well, we did our part." And it's definitely not useful to educate them in a no-excuses, follow-orders, keep -quiet-and-do-as-you're-told environment that gives them zero preparation for the independent college life they will have to navigate. We need to give them all the information and guidance, paired with strength and confidence, that we can to increase the odds that next fall, students who want and need to be on college campuses will be there.
Thursday, January 7, 2016
Rules for Tools
Tom Vander Ark is as prolific as hell, so I have to admire his tenacity and energy, but every time I read his stuff, I'm driven to conclude that he's kind of a tool.
I don't intend to make a personal judgment-- for all I know, he's a delightful gentleman. But he often seems to achieve the near-perfect expression of the corporate tool approach to the education biz. This is unsurprising-- Vander Ark has been the executive director of education for the Gates Foundation, an education venture capitalist, and the head of a retail chain start-up.
If you want a taste of Vander Ark's corporate tool approach to education, you can check out his latest thoughts at Huffington Post-- "21 Things Education Leaders Should Do Right Now"
Well, actually, twenty-one things ed leaders should do in the next 180 days or so. Vander Ark has broken the Things into three groups of seven.
First Ninety Days
I don't intend to make a personal judgment-- for all I know, he's a delightful gentleman. But he often seems to achieve the near-perfect expression of the corporate tool approach to the education biz. This is unsurprising-- Vander Ark has been the executive director of education for the Gates Foundation, an education venture capitalist, and the head of a retail chain start-up.
If you want a taste of Vander Ark's corporate tool approach to education, you can check out his latest thoughts at Huffington Post-- "21 Things Education Leaders Should Do Right Now"
Well, actually, twenty-one things ed leaders should do in the next 180 days or so. Vander Ark has broken the Things into three groups of seven.
First Ninety Days
1. Make good first impressions. Visit every school.
2. Check out your leadership team. Get rid of anybody necessary in order to build a "high trust, high capacity team."
3. Hone your personal narrative. (Seriously-- this is how Vander Ark writes). "You'll have a hundred opportunities to share your story during your first ninety days," particularly if you don't waste time listening to people.
4. Open your political capital bank account and make initial deposits. He's talking about making political connections outside the school. You know-- with important people.
5. Create transparency and candor. Get people to talk about what's working or not. "Let the community experience you as a learner."
6. Put some heavy thinks into "a couple of symbolic acts that let the community know who you are and what you're about."
7. Signal priorities early while remaining open. "Address obvious inequities. Don't wait to harvest low hanging fruit."
But enough about me. Let's talk about me. Notice that this language is largely indistinguishable from instructions on how to launch yourself as the CEO of any corporation, This is one of the views that has been carried into the "education leader" world from the corporate world, where it has become usual to assert that a great CEO will be a great CEO whether he's in charge of an oil company, a toy company, or a soup company. Why not just add "school district" to the list of companies you can run? Expertise in the company's work is not needed-- an awesome EO can run anything.
Second Ninety Days
8. Build on "as much of the old stuff as possible." Assuming, I guess, that you have any ability to evaluate the old stuff. "Continuity counts."
9. Clarify roles and goals for staff members.
10. Hold community conversations. "Balance improvement and innovation."
11. Communicate "twice as much as you think you need to." Interesting idea here-- if "you're missing the empathy gene" get someone internal to "preview your messaging." I have other advice. If you're missing the empathy gene, get out of education.
12. Well, this is creepy. "Find and leverage teacher leaders" and "use management of strategic projects to reward and test emerging leaders."
13. Don't just use test scores to measure. "Measure what matters even if it's hard." No word on what to do if you have no clue how to measure it.
14. And when you're hit by "inevitable barrage of criticism., remember it's probably not about you, it's about the job." Hmmm, no. It's probably about you.
I always have the same reach ton to reading Vander Ark's stuff-- who talks like this with a straight face. When I worked for a mining machinery manufacturer manual production department, we used to create lampoon versions of corporate baloney-speak. They sounded a lot like Vander Ark.
Transformation
Now Vander Ark will give us seven quick steps for transforming a school or district.
1. Do a mindset check. Make sure you believe in a growth mindset. "If leaders want teachers and students to develop an innovation mindset, they should start by examining their own approach to the work." I can't help feeling that Vander Ark has substituted "students" for "engineer" or "worker" or "drone" or "meat widget" in some copy-and-pasted CEO training manual.
2. Share your next generation vision. This seems to mean "personalized learning," and Vander Ark offers Denver and Harlem Success Academy as exemplars.
3. Develop talent. Not human beings, apparently. Just talent. Also personalized learning. Badges!
Competency based! Micro-credentials! So, literally, develop some talents, and hire the right mat widgets to carry those talents around.
4. Plan for access. Blended learning! Digital conversions for every district! Get all meat widgets plugged into talent development stations.
5. Supported school models, because reasons. Fine new school models can be found by consulting New Schools Venture Fund and other capitalists who may not know a damn thing about schools and education, but they know all about moving money around in useful ways. KA-ching!
6. Partnering for progress. "Schools can't do this work alone." Really? Because schools got us through most of the 20th century, including becoming an emerging world power and putting a man on the moon without having to call for help because we just couldn't hack it without a helpful corporate partner to further education by sucking Return on Investment out of schools.
7. Stick around! After Vander Ark transformed from CEO to superintendent (you can get a look at how disastrously and quickly that went right here), he acquired the phrase "served as public school superintendent" in all his bio material. Yet, that doesn't seem to have been a lifetime career move. How long does he mean? Well, "real equity producing progress takes time-- a broad web of leadership maintained over a decade." Wow! A whole decade!! So, a third of a regular teaching career. Suddenly I'm hugely impressed by the many people who have taught their entire adult lives in the same school.
So if it ever seems as if ed reform involves a bunch of aliens coming from some other planet to occupy our schools, just read some Tom Vander Ark-- it will help confirm that you are absolutely correct.
Core: Back Off, Parents
The Hechinger Report ran a piece with the somewhat confrontational title, "Back off parents: It’s not your job to teach Common Core math when helping with homework."
In the piece, Kathlenn Lucadamo argues that parents just need to get out of the business of trying to teach math at home. Her subheading is "What should parents do when they don't understand their kids' Common Core homework?" Her answers? Don't try to be a math guru, talk to the teacher, and teach what you know without stepping on toes.
Some of this advice comes courtesy of Jason Zimba, architect of the Common Core math.
“The math instruction on the part of parents should be low. The teacher is there to explain the curriculum,” said Zimba.
In the piece, Kathlenn Lucadamo argues that parents just need to get out of the business of trying to teach math at home. Her subheading is "What should parents do when they don't understand their kids' Common Core homework?" Her answers? Don't try to be a math guru, talk to the teacher, and teach what you know without stepping on toes.
Some of this advice comes courtesy of Jason Zimba, architect of the Common Core math.
“The math instruction on the part of parents should be low. The teacher is there to explain the curriculum,” said Zimba.
And we're not just talking about calculus.
The struggle seems to bubble in third grade, said experts, when the math becomes more sophisticated. “It’s when it looks more different. It’s not just counting beans,” said Bibb Hubbard, founder of Learning Heroes, a group for parents.
Sigh.
On the one hand, I'm sympathetic with Common Core math instructors, who have been blamed for everything from global warming to the terrible... well, everything in The Phantom Menace. There are "look at this awful math assignments" memes blaming the Common Core for assignments designed by John Dewey's grandma.
On the other hand, if your brilliant idea about how to teach math is incomprehensible to grown-ups, you may be barking up the wrong tree. And if your response to children' parents when they want to be active and involved is, "back off!" you perhaps don't understand your job.
[UPDATE: Check below in the comments, where Zimba has stopped by to clarify his quote. ]
[UPDATE: Check below in the comments, where Zimba has stopped by to clarify his quote. ]
Wednesday, January 6, 2016
Superintendents: Federal Failure
Gallup does an occasional survey of school superintendents, and the results from the November 2015 survey are interesting. They used a list of 11,750 superintendents, and weighted the responses from the 1,255 who actually got back to them to correct for for region and setting of schools. You can read the whole report (it's brief, with lots of tables) right here, but let me touch on some highlights for you.
Superintendents are pretty sure that parents just don't understand.
On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being total agreement and 1 being complete notional rejection, superintendents mostly rejected the statement "Parents in my school district understand how our school is evaluated by our state's school accountability system." Only 16% of superintendents gave a 4 or 5 for that one, with 52% opting for 1 or 2. 71% said that parents need more information.
Likewise, on 32% gave parents a 4 or 5 for understanding the academic model and curriculum of the district.
Test Prep Tyranny
Two thirds of the superintendents said that their schools are spending more classroom time getting ready for the Big Standardized Tests. The top reason offered was that the test have changed (64%) followed closely by an increase in the number of tests (61%) and low BS Test results in the district (60%). Increased emphasis on test results by the state was still more than half (57%).
Comparing
Is the ability to compare results a big deal? Bigger than I might have guessed
Course offerings
I'm happy to see that 79% of superintendents still offer career and technical education, though I think 100% would be a better number to shoot for, but 57% of the supers said they have plans to expand. . 62% offer SAT or ACT prep, which is discouraging (do schools really need to become part of a corporate marketing strategy?) Entrepreneurship is in 45% of the responding districts.
Feds Take the Heat
But nothing brought out the superunanimity like the feds. In response to "How would you rate the job the federal government has done with K-12 education policy in the last five years?" only 1% said "excellent," followed by a piddly 9% for "good." They did not use any kind of follow-up to indicate what exact area of policy suckage they were bothered by. But Acting Pretend Secretary of Education John "Stay the Course" King might want to consider this result while he's contemplating operating as Duncan 2.0 in the USED office.
Superintendents are pretty sure that parents just don't understand.
On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being total agreement and 1 being complete notional rejection, superintendents mostly rejected the statement "Parents in my school district understand how our school is evaluated by our state's school accountability system." Only 16% of superintendents gave a 4 or 5 for that one, with 52% opting for 1 or 2. 71% said that parents need more information.
Likewise, on 32% gave parents a 4 or 5 for understanding the academic model and curriculum of the district.
Test Prep Tyranny
Two thirds of the superintendents said that their schools are spending more classroom time getting ready for the Big Standardized Tests. The top reason offered was that the test have changed (64%) followed closely by an increase in the number of tests (61%) and low BS Test results in the district (60%). Increased emphasis on test results by the state was still more than half (57%).
Comparing
Is the ability to compare results a big deal? Bigger than I might have guessed
Course offerings
I'm happy to see that 79% of superintendents still offer career and technical education, though I think 100% would be a better number to shoot for, but 57% of the supers said they have plans to expand. . 62% offer SAT or ACT prep, which is discouraging (do schools really need to become part of a corporate marketing strategy?) Entrepreneurship is in 45% of the responding districts.
Feds Take the Heat
But nothing brought out the superunanimity like the feds. In response to "How would you rate the job the federal government has done with K-12 education policy in the last five years?" only 1% said "excellent," followed by a piddly 9% for "good." They did not use any kind of follow-up to indicate what exact area of policy suckage they were bothered by. But Acting Pretend Secretary of Education John "Stay the Course" King might want to consider this result while he's contemplating operating as Duncan 2.0 in the USED office.
The Core vs. Content
Since the Core first popped its tiny head out of its crinkly shell, advocates have insisted that CCSS ELA standards, demand rich content. Meanwhile, I have become increasingly convinced that the demands for rich content and the assertions that rich content must be part of Core implementation rise up precisely because the Core actually has a giant gaping hole where rich content should be.
In other words, rich content Core-o-philes are like guys looking at an automobile with no wheels saying, "Well, obviously the makers of this car intend for us to put on wheels." It's not that the wheels are in evidence; it's that their absence is an obvious fatal flaw. Or to put it another way, surely the emperor must mean for us to buy him some clothes.
But the longer the Core sticks around out in the field, the more obvious it becomes that the Core is anti-content-- particularly once you throw in the Core-based standards-measuring Big Standardized Tests.
Consider this article, written by someone whose intent is to show us how the Core is perfectly swell, even as it explains that part of the swellness is how it "eases literary classics to the sidelines."
Consider some of these quotes:
“It is true that the days for ‘Moby Dick’ or ‘Great Expectations’ might be numbered, but the question that teachers have to ask themselves is ‘What is the purpose of reading this text?’" said Mark Gardner, a high school English teacher in Clarke County, Washington.
“While it may seem like sacrilege, there are many goals that can be achieved by digging deeply into a series of well-curated selections of a text rather than all of it, and then relying on teacher lecture, lessons or even Sparknotes to fill in the gaps,” Gardner said in an interview.
As an AP English and composition teacher in Montgomery County, Maryland, Ambereen Khan-Baker has included political cartoons and shorter, more complex texts while cutting out longer novels. Using multiple texts instead of focusing on one book has allowed her to teach diverse opinions.
The article is presenting, uncritically and with a light tone of "you old fossils need to understand the new, cool way of doing things," the idea of trimming the classics down to a chapter or two. I've encountered this more than a few times-- cover a couple of key chapters in depth and fill in the rest with a summary or even, I swear, sparknotes.
Making such changes could be a positive thing if it provides students the opportunity to deepen their knowledge of literature and the skills that can be applied to reading non-fiction, according to Gardner, who said that is a key reason the classics are taught in the first place.
This is what the Core promotes and requires-- reading as a conduit for transmitting certain skills to students, and because it's teamed with the BS Tests, the skills do not include wrestling with full-length texts in any sort of depth. And apparently we can't think of any reason that classics are classic and need to be taught. Because it's easier to work on relevant themes and skills by folding in current YA hits.
Look, there's a whole worthwhile (and generally unending) conversation to be had among language-teaching professionals about the canon and what should be in the canon and what makes a classic classic and why we teach anything that was written before our students were born and how we should teach it. But the Core's contribution to that conversation is to say, "Screw content. Just teach them the skills they need for the test."
When I write lesson plans and plug in the standards, it makes absolutely no difference what actual content I'm teaching-- the standards are completely divorced from content and I can recycle the same standards-aligned plan over and over again, just plugging in some piece, any piece, of reading.
And in turns of getting great "student achievement" results (aka high test scores) I could spend the whole year having students read nothing but newspaper extracts and single pages ripped from any current fiction. If I totally lost my mind and any sense of why I actually became an English teacher, I could crank out students with great BS Tests scores who knew absolutely nothing about the literature, history and culture of their own country (or any other).
The article closes with another quote from Gardner: "We don't read books in school so we can write papers or do projects about that book; rather, we read books in school so we can more deeply understand all of the texts – books, blogs or advertisements – that we will face beyond school.”
I think Gardner is half right-- we don't read books in school just to do projects or papers. But if we only read in school so that we can practice skills we'll need to read things later in life, what will we be reading those works later in life for? If there are no riches to be found in Great Expectations or Hamlet or The Crucible or Song of Solomon or To Kill a Mockingbird, why read them just to get some practice with reading skills? If they have nothing to say to any of us about understanding what it means to be fully human and more fully ourselves, if they have nothing to tell us about the human experience as it has unspooled throughout human history, if they have nothing to say about the power of language to communicate across the gaps that separate us, if they have nothing to say about culture, if they have nothing to say about the rich heritage of the English language, if they have nothing to say about understanding the universal and the specific in human life, about how to grow beyond our own immediate experience-- if they are, in fact, nothing more than fodder for test prep, then what the hell are we doing?
The article sets out to address the effect of the Core on the classics, but it only addresses the question of how much the standards push in non-fiction and many, multiple short texts. What the article does not address is how the Core assaults the very notion of why we bother to teach reading or writing or literature in the first place. Instead, like so many Core-ophiles, it assumes that such an assault is appropriate. Rich content fans are correct to believe that the empty head and empty heart at the center of the Core screams out to be filled with real study of real literature, but they are missing the fact that the Core itself thinks that vast emptiness is a good thing, a feature instead of a bug.
In other words, rich content Core-o-philes are like guys looking at an automobile with no wheels saying, "Well, obviously the makers of this car intend for us to put on wheels." It's not that the wheels are in evidence; it's that their absence is an obvious fatal flaw. Or to put it another way, surely the emperor must mean for us to buy him some clothes.
But the longer the Core sticks around out in the field, the more obvious it becomes that the Core is anti-content-- particularly once you throw in the Core-based standards-measuring Big Standardized Tests.
Consider this article, written by someone whose intent is to show us how the Core is perfectly swell, even as it explains that part of the swellness is how it "eases literary classics to the sidelines."
Consider some of these quotes:
“It is true that the days for ‘Moby Dick’ or ‘Great Expectations’ might be numbered, but the question that teachers have to ask themselves is ‘What is the purpose of reading this text?’" said Mark Gardner, a high school English teacher in Clarke County, Washington.
“While it may seem like sacrilege, there are many goals that can be achieved by digging deeply into a series of well-curated selections of a text rather than all of it, and then relying on teacher lecture, lessons or even Sparknotes to fill in the gaps,” Gardner said in an interview.
As an AP English and composition teacher in Montgomery County, Maryland, Ambereen Khan-Baker has included political cartoons and shorter, more complex texts while cutting out longer novels. Using multiple texts instead of focusing on one book has allowed her to teach diverse opinions.
The article is presenting, uncritically and with a light tone of "you old fossils need to understand the new, cool way of doing things," the idea of trimming the classics down to a chapter or two. I've encountered this more than a few times-- cover a couple of key chapters in depth and fill in the rest with a summary or even, I swear, sparknotes.
Making such changes could be a positive thing if it provides students the opportunity to deepen their knowledge of literature and the skills that can be applied to reading non-fiction, according to Gardner, who said that is a key reason the classics are taught in the first place.
This is what the Core promotes and requires-- reading as a conduit for transmitting certain skills to students, and because it's teamed with the BS Tests, the skills do not include wrestling with full-length texts in any sort of depth. And apparently we can't think of any reason that classics are classic and need to be taught. Because it's easier to work on relevant themes and skills by folding in current YA hits.
Look, there's a whole worthwhile (and generally unending) conversation to be had among language-teaching professionals about the canon and what should be in the canon and what makes a classic classic and why we teach anything that was written before our students were born and how we should teach it. But the Core's contribution to that conversation is to say, "Screw content. Just teach them the skills they need for the test."
When I write lesson plans and plug in the standards, it makes absolutely no difference what actual content I'm teaching-- the standards are completely divorced from content and I can recycle the same standards-aligned plan over and over again, just plugging in some piece, any piece, of reading.
And in turns of getting great "student achievement" results (aka high test scores) I could spend the whole year having students read nothing but newspaper extracts and single pages ripped from any current fiction. If I totally lost my mind and any sense of why I actually became an English teacher, I could crank out students with great BS Tests scores who knew absolutely nothing about the literature, history and culture of their own country (or any other).
The article closes with another quote from Gardner: "We don't read books in school so we can write papers or do projects about that book; rather, we read books in school so we can more deeply understand all of the texts – books, blogs or advertisements – that we will face beyond school.”
I think Gardner is half right-- we don't read books in school just to do projects or papers. But if we only read in school so that we can practice skills we'll need to read things later in life, what will we be reading those works later in life for? If there are no riches to be found in Great Expectations or Hamlet or The Crucible or Song of Solomon or To Kill a Mockingbird, why read them just to get some practice with reading skills? If they have nothing to say to any of us about understanding what it means to be fully human and more fully ourselves, if they have nothing to tell us about the human experience as it has unspooled throughout human history, if they have nothing to say about the power of language to communicate across the gaps that separate us, if they have nothing to say about culture, if they have nothing to say about the rich heritage of the English language, if they have nothing to say about understanding the universal and the specific in human life, about how to grow beyond our own immediate experience-- if they are, in fact, nothing more than fodder for test prep, then what the hell are we doing?
The article sets out to address the effect of the Core on the classics, but it only addresses the question of how much the standards push in non-fiction and many, multiple short texts. What the article does not address is how the Core assaults the very notion of why we bother to teach reading or writing or literature in the first place. Instead, like so many Core-ophiles, it assumes that such an assault is appropriate. Rich content fans are correct to believe that the empty head and empty heart at the center of the Core screams out to be filled with real study of real literature, but they are missing the fact that the Core itself thinks that vast emptiness is a good thing, a feature instead of a bug.
Tuesday, January 5, 2016
Friedrichs for Dummies
So you've been hearing about Friedrichs vs California Teachers Association, but not paying close attention. You know the unions are upset about it (but when aren't the unions upset about something), and you've heard that the Supreme Court is going to hear it, but you've put off learning more because it all seems so contentious and does anybody really want to seek out more conflict in the education world these days? Besides, you aren't in California.
But lately you've been thinking you should tune in and sort this out. Luckily for you, the Wall Street Journal gave one of the vocal-but-not-lead plaintiffs, Harlan Elrich, room to lay out his case, and we can use it as an entry point.
Elrich lays out his own teaching history, which is not unlike my own--over thirty years, local involvement, not always happy with union choices (though I suspect for different reasons).
Elrich is unhappy with the union's political bent, and though he's less direct about this, the actual direction of that bent. He doesn't want to give money to the union's political activities that work against his own leanings. By law, unions must allow members to opt-out of such contributions (here in PA, contributions for political activities are an opt-in fund separate from dues), but Elrich believes essentially that all union activities, right down to local negotiations, are political. In a sense, that's true-ish-- matters of policy that are set by elected officials cannot avoid a hint of politics, and in the world of education, that means everything.
But Elrich's definition of "political decisions he doesn't agree with" is hugely broad. He does not like that the union gets him too high a salary at the expense of either his economically struggling neighbors or conditions such as class size.
Elrich hits another recurring theme in Friedrich plaintiff complaints, which is the evils of tenure. He tells a story of a teacher who clearly should have been gone from the classroom, but because the union negotiated all these protections, he was not released. Plaintiff Friedrich tells a similar story about a physically abusive teacher who was protected by the union.
Unions are swell, Elrich concludes. But he doesn't want to forced to pay any fees to them. He is careful not to say "dues" because, in fact, the law does not require him to pay dues-- only the "fair share" of his local union's administrative and negotiating costs. And it's not just himself-- the plaintiffs don't want any teachers in the twenty-three states that allow fair share to be "forced" to pay fees.
You may be wondering how ten teachers end up bringing this case before the Supreme Court. The answer is a not-unusual bit of case-trolling, in this instance apparently by Supreme Alito. You can read a more thorough explanation here, but the basic process is this-- a justice lets it be known that he'd love to hear a case that would give him a chance to make new law or undo the old, and then a high-powered law firm goes and scares up some plaintiffs. In this case, the lawyering comes courtesy of the Center for Individual Rights, a right-of-right group that appears to see this case as a chance to toss public unions on the dustbin of history, and the skids have been greased to bring this right-to-work road show straight to the highest court in the land. The list of interested parties who have filed amicus briefs is instructive-- it includes the Cato Institute, the National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation, Governor Susana Martinez, Governor Bruce Rauner, the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, and seventeen states including Michigan, Wisconsin, Atlanta and Georgia (whose legal departments are presumably supported by taxpayers who may not agree with this political action).
In short, this is largely a shadow play, one more battle between the big unions and the folks who want them to go away.
So what about Elrich's claims? After all, doesn't it sound reasonable not to be forced to pay money to an organization that you don't support as a term of employment?
Well, despite his worries about strains on district finances, he's not suing the state of California for its chronic underfunding of schools. And his concern for the cash-strapped families of his district doesn't seem to be accompanied by tales of how he donates his undeserved "extra" salary for their aid. Still, that's not necessarily something you trumpet in public.
No, the real whiff of bovine fecal matter comes, as always, from the tenure-and-job-protection argument. Is it impossible to fire a teacher because of union rules? No. No, it is not. It may require administrators to do some work. Fine; that's why they're paid the big bucks. My saying remains-- behind every teacher who shouldn't have a job is an administrator who isn't doing his.
And both arguments sit on the fiction that unions somehow negotiate contracts on their own, as if the local district has no presence, no seat at the negotiating table, certainly no high-priced labor attorney there to do the work for the board (during our contract talks, I never got over the surreal spectacle of a third-grade teacher at the end of her full work day squaring off against a big-time lawyer in a thousand dollar suit who had done nothing all day but get ready to take her on).
More importantly, there is a fundamental disconnect between the two parts of Elrich's argument. He complains about the union's political activities-- and then he goes on to describe the union negotiating for wages and conditions for its members. On the first point, I fully appreciate his dismay-- few things annoy me as much as my union calling to tell me for whom to vote without a legitimate explanation of why, and I don't need my union to take stands on issues unrelated to education. I haven't contributed a political dollar to the union in years not only because I don't like having them pick candidates for me, but because they are so bad at it (Yeah, Ed Rendell and Barack Obama worked out super-great for teachers) and because they insist on trading educational interests for a useless seat at the table, and I'll just cut short my rant to say that yes, when it comes to not caring for political choices of the union, I feel ya, bro. I've been a local union president, and I get all too well that local and teacher interests do not always overlap fully with the state and national union interests.
But then the jump. If Elrich doesn't it like it when his local negotiates wages or working conditions, exactly what does he think the union should do? What union activities would not offend him? Picnics? Hors D'oeuvres on the lawn?
Elrich is objecting to having the union perform its most basic function. He objections about union activities are like objecting to cupcakes for being made of cake and shaped like a cup. "I don't want to kill unions," he's saying. "I just wish they would stop doing all the things they exist to do."
Of course, part of the genius of this shadow play is that Elrich, Friedrich and the rest aren't saying they want to kill unions. They are perfectly fine if some people want to form a union. But of course, one other basic function of a union is that it includes everybody with skin in the game. A union that only includes some members of the group is not a union-- it's just a clique with dues and a logo. And a powerless one at that.
That has to be the expectation. Neither Friedrich nor Elrich or any of the rest seem to be arguing, "Look, you guys go ahead and negotiate a contract without me, and if that means my wages get cut in half or I'm the first to be laid off, I'm okay with that because at least I won't have to pay you dues." No, the expectation is that the union will be left hamstrung and unable to wreak the unjust havoc caused by organized workers.
If the union can't convince everybody to join and pay, doesn't that just mean it deserves to die because it can't sell its product. It's an appealing argument, but it assumes a level playing field that doesn't exist. Once the union is weakened, keeping it ineffectual is as easy as letting each new hire know that his job depends on his willingness to stay out of the union. The freedom to join or not join a union equals the freedom of the bosses to cut unions off through coercion.
And that's not just bad for teachers. Proponents of teacher union-busting could score huge points by demonstrating that right-to-work, no-union-here states are leading the nation in educational awesomeness, but they can't demonstrate that any more than they can demonstrate how to teach a Yeti to ride a unicorn.
The teacher unions, particularly on the state and national level, have some real, serious problems. But here's what we know-- at no point in the history of this country have employees ever been given a concession, a benefit, or better treatment and wages out of the sheer generosity and good spirit of the employers.We know, for instance, the history of how districts behave when they hire and fire at will-- they hire and fire for reasons from race to politics to won't-give-the-board-members-kid-an-A. And now the business model for privatizing education and strip-mining public schools for private enrichment depends on busting the unions.
The legal argument is one against "compelled speech"-- that being forced even to pay fees for a union (which is, at least in Pennsylvania, forced to represent every teacher in the local school system) is a violation of free speech rights. But if I want to be a practicing Christian, I have to go to a church where I my speech might be co-opted in favor of issues with which I disagree. If I want to be an American, I am compelled to pay taxes that support all manner of crap I disagree with. If I want to be a parent, I'm compelled to pay for my kid's support-- heck, if I want to have sex, I may end up becoming a parent even though I didn't want to and being compelled to pay support.
I get that losing part of your voice by becoming part of a collective may seem anti-American, but insisting that your money can only be spent the way you want it to be and you should never have to do anything that you don't absolutely agree with is anti-grown up.
But that's my logical argument, and this will be decided in a court of law. If Friedrich and her powerful backers win, the result will be a huge step toward transforming every state into a "right to work" state. The battle is going to be fought by the lawyers, but the casualties are going to be in the schools.
But lately you've been thinking you should tune in and sort this out. Luckily for you, the Wall Street Journal gave one of the vocal-but-not-lead plaintiffs, Harlan Elrich, room to lay out his case, and we can use it as an entry point.
Elrich lays out his own teaching history, which is not unlike my own--over thirty years, local involvement, not always happy with union choices (though I suspect for different reasons).
Elrich is unhappy with the union's political bent, and though he's less direct about this, the actual direction of that bent. He doesn't want to give money to the union's political activities that work against his own leanings. By law, unions must allow members to opt-out of such contributions (here in PA, contributions for political activities are an opt-in fund separate from dues), but Elrich believes essentially that all union activities, right down to local negotiations, are political. In a sense, that's true-ish-- matters of policy that are set by elected officials cannot avoid a hint of politics, and in the world of education, that means everything.
But Elrich's definition of "political decisions he doesn't agree with" is hugely broad. He does not like that the union gets him too high a salary at the expense of either his economically struggling neighbors or conditions such as class size.
Elrich hits another recurring theme in Friedrich plaintiff complaints, which is the evils of tenure. He tells a story of a teacher who clearly should have been gone from the classroom, but because the union negotiated all these protections, he was not released. Plaintiff Friedrich tells a similar story about a physically abusive teacher who was protected by the union.
Unions are swell, Elrich concludes. But he doesn't want to forced to pay any fees to them. He is careful not to say "dues" because, in fact, the law does not require him to pay dues-- only the "fair share" of his local union's administrative and negotiating costs. And it's not just himself-- the plaintiffs don't want any teachers in the twenty-three states that allow fair share to be "forced" to pay fees.
You may be wondering how ten teachers end up bringing this case before the Supreme Court. The answer is a not-unusual bit of case-trolling, in this instance apparently by Supreme Alito. You can read a more thorough explanation here, but the basic process is this-- a justice lets it be known that he'd love to hear a case that would give him a chance to make new law or undo the old, and then a high-powered law firm goes and scares up some plaintiffs. In this case, the lawyering comes courtesy of the Center for Individual Rights, a right-of-right group that appears to see this case as a chance to toss public unions on the dustbin of history, and the skids have been greased to bring this right-to-work road show straight to the highest court in the land. The list of interested parties who have filed amicus briefs is instructive-- it includes the Cato Institute, the National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation, Governor Susana Martinez, Governor Bruce Rauner, the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, and seventeen states including Michigan, Wisconsin, Atlanta and Georgia (whose legal departments are presumably supported by taxpayers who may not agree with this political action).
In short, this is largely a shadow play, one more battle between the big unions and the folks who want them to go away.
So what about Elrich's claims? After all, doesn't it sound reasonable not to be forced to pay money to an organization that you don't support as a term of employment?
Well, despite his worries about strains on district finances, he's not suing the state of California for its chronic underfunding of schools. And his concern for the cash-strapped families of his district doesn't seem to be accompanied by tales of how he donates his undeserved "extra" salary for their aid. Still, that's not necessarily something you trumpet in public.
No, the real whiff of bovine fecal matter comes, as always, from the tenure-and-job-protection argument. Is it impossible to fire a teacher because of union rules? No. No, it is not. It may require administrators to do some work. Fine; that's why they're paid the big bucks. My saying remains-- behind every teacher who shouldn't have a job is an administrator who isn't doing his.
And both arguments sit on the fiction that unions somehow negotiate contracts on their own, as if the local district has no presence, no seat at the negotiating table, certainly no high-priced labor attorney there to do the work for the board (during our contract talks, I never got over the surreal spectacle of a third-grade teacher at the end of her full work day squaring off against a big-time lawyer in a thousand dollar suit who had done nothing all day but get ready to take her on).
More importantly, there is a fundamental disconnect between the two parts of Elrich's argument. He complains about the union's political activities-- and then he goes on to describe the union negotiating for wages and conditions for its members. On the first point, I fully appreciate his dismay-- few things annoy me as much as my union calling to tell me for whom to vote without a legitimate explanation of why, and I don't need my union to take stands on issues unrelated to education. I haven't contributed a political dollar to the union in years not only because I don't like having them pick candidates for me, but because they are so bad at it (Yeah, Ed Rendell and Barack Obama worked out super-great for teachers) and because they insist on trading educational interests for a useless seat at the table, and I'll just cut short my rant to say that yes, when it comes to not caring for political choices of the union, I feel ya, bro. I've been a local union president, and I get all too well that local and teacher interests do not always overlap fully with the state and national union interests.
But then the jump. If Elrich doesn't it like it when his local negotiates wages or working conditions, exactly what does he think the union should do? What union activities would not offend him? Picnics? Hors D'oeuvres on the lawn?
Elrich is objecting to having the union perform its most basic function. He objections about union activities are like objecting to cupcakes for being made of cake and shaped like a cup. "I don't want to kill unions," he's saying. "I just wish they would stop doing all the things they exist to do."
Of course, part of the genius of this shadow play is that Elrich, Friedrich and the rest aren't saying they want to kill unions. They are perfectly fine if some people want to form a union. But of course, one other basic function of a union is that it includes everybody with skin in the game. A union that only includes some members of the group is not a union-- it's just a clique with dues and a logo. And a powerless one at that.
That has to be the expectation. Neither Friedrich nor Elrich or any of the rest seem to be arguing, "Look, you guys go ahead and negotiate a contract without me, and if that means my wages get cut in half or I'm the first to be laid off, I'm okay with that because at least I won't have to pay you dues." No, the expectation is that the union will be left hamstrung and unable to wreak the unjust havoc caused by organized workers.
If the union can't convince everybody to join and pay, doesn't that just mean it deserves to die because it can't sell its product. It's an appealing argument, but it assumes a level playing field that doesn't exist. Once the union is weakened, keeping it ineffectual is as easy as letting each new hire know that his job depends on his willingness to stay out of the union. The freedom to join or not join a union equals the freedom of the bosses to cut unions off through coercion.
And that's not just bad for teachers. Proponents of teacher union-busting could score huge points by demonstrating that right-to-work, no-union-here states are leading the nation in educational awesomeness, but they can't demonstrate that any more than they can demonstrate how to teach a Yeti to ride a unicorn.
The teacher unions, particularly on the state and national level, have some real, serious problems. But here's what we know-- at no point in the history of this country have employees ever been given a concession, a benefit, or better treatment and wages out of the sheer generosity and good spirit of the employers.We know, for instance, the history of how districts behave when they hire and fire at will-- they hire and fire for reasons from race to politics to won't-give-the-board-members-kid-an-A. And now the business model for privatizing education and strip-mining public schools for private enrichment depends on busting the unions.
The legal argument is one against "compelled speech"-- that being forced even to pay fees for a union (which is, at least in Pennsylvania, forced to represent every teacher in the local school system) is a violation of free speech rights. But if I want to be a practicing Christian, I have to go to a church where I my speech might be co-opted in favor of issues with which I disagree. If I want to be an American, I am compelled to pay taxes that support all manner of crap I disagree with. If I want to be a parent, I'm compelled to pay for my kid's support-- heck, if I want to have sex, I may end up becoming a parent even though I didn't want to and being compelled to pay support.
I get that losing part of your voice by becoming part of a collective may seem anti-American, but insisting that your money can only be spent the way you want it to be and you should never have to do anything that you don't absolutely agree with is anti-grown up.
But that's my logical argument, and this will be decided in a court of law. If Friedrich and her powerful backers win, the result will be a huge step toward transforming every state into a "right to work" state. The battle is going to be fought by the lawyers, but the casualties are going to be in the schools.
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