This is not the blog piece you think it's going to be.
I am not going to write about how the Waltons or the Gates or the Kochs or the Rich Folks Whose Names I Don't Know should live their lives, spend their money, and generally behave themselves. It's not, mind you, that I don't have some thoughts about it. But those are not the wealthy people I'm going to write about today.
I'm going to write about me.
It's fun to focus righteous rage on Those People and condemn the profligate wealthy and their terrible use of their privilege and power and money. But years ago I needed to face up to something. I live in a rural/small town area, one that once upon a time has a decent industrial base, but has lost much of that over the past fifty years. We're not destitute. But we live among the residual pieces of an earlier wealth, the churches and homes and other fine buildings erected 150 years ago by oil barons and captains of industry. Want a beautiful Victorian home dirt cheap? We've got the places for you-- but you need to bring your own job.
As a teacher with thirty years in, I'm pretty well off. I make above the median pay for the county. Hugely above the per capita income for the county. I own my own home, and while it's neither large or without issues, it's also right up against the river and close to the center of town. I have reliable transportation (no small thing-- in the country homelessness isn't nearly as problematic as transportationlessness), and I'm only six minutes from work. I'm not rich in any absolute sense, and I have plenty of bills to pay with a paycheck that doesn't always stretch as far as would be handy. There are things I'd like to have that I can't afford, a level of security and insulation I'd love to provide my family, but can't.
So, to be clear, I am not arguing that I am overpaid and that our next teacher contract should roll our pay back. Because it shouldn't. But that's not what I'm talking about.
It is not easy for me to talk about this. It's not easy to talk about possessing privilege. I don't honestly know how to talk about the benefits I have in life without feeling like I'm bragging, and bragging about things that are just a much a product of luck or grace or whatever you want to call it as any hard work or skill that I brought to the table (and really, how many of my skills are founded on luck of the genetic draw). I have made more than enough mistakes, screwed up more than enough times to have earned a life far less rewarding than the one I've got. And that's before we even get to the things that never happened-- I never developed cancer, never got hit by a bus, never had a heart attack, never lost a limb in a major accident.
Anyway. When I contemplate my lot in life, I feel two things: gratitude and obligation.
It is easy to talk about what obligations Bill Gates should feel because of his wealth. But what should I be doing with my relative wealth? Here are some of the answers I've arrived at.
Think before I open my mouth
Nothing makes me cringe like a teacher complaining about the end of summer vacation. You know who doesn't get much vacation at all? Way too many American workers. Look around. There isn't a holiday left on which workers aren't called in to work a shift. And for people who are on the bottom end of the economic scale, taking a vacation is expensive as hell, because all vacations are without pay. One of the features of the decline of the middle class is that holidays have become a luxury available to only some of the population.
Complaining about the end of summer vacation is like complaining that you get tired walking from one end of your mansion to the other or that you can't get enough sleep because the hot model you live with wants to have sex all the time or that it's just so disappointing when you finally use up the whole stack of $100 bills in your wallet. Nobody who doesn't have a summer vacation wants to hear about it.
I try to think before I talk about my first world problems in front of people who have problems of their own.
Spend money locally
You can't drive past a bunch of local shops on your way to the Big City Mall and then talk about how sad it is that local shops are closing. I spend as much money locally as possible. I eat out at local restaurants, undoubtedly more often than is entirely good for me. I shop at local stores, even when it means I don't necessarily get exactly, precisely the item that I'm looking for.
These people pay my salary. They give up part of their pay to pay me. What a slap in the face for me to take that money and go spend it somewhere else. And at this stage of the game, most places in town employ my former students. If I want to see them become successful, self-supporting parts of the community, how can I not help them do that by spending my money at their workplace?
Support businesses
With more than just money. Everything I said in the previous section I also say to my students. Every dollar you spend is a vote for the kind of businesses that you want to see survive. Speak up in support of the people who finance your school and your job.
Support groups that make the community better
As a teacher, I have money and I have time, and that means I can become involved in parts of the community that add to quality of life. For me, that means playing in a 159-year-old community band and doing a variety of jobs in community theater. These are things I care about, and I care about them in part because I believe they make this community a better place to live.
I know there are teachers who feel once they've put in the school work that they've been paid to do, they are entitled to shut themselves up at home and that they owe the community nothing. I respectfully disagree. I have resources that many people in my community do not, and I have those resources precisely because those people gave some of their resources up. I owe them.
Listen and amplify
Hear other voices. And where privileged to have an audience, try to get those voices heard. This is not the same as speaking for those people, but it is also not sitting back and assuming that they can make themselves heard as easily as I can, so they should just suck it up and get on it.
Don't forget
I try to pay attention to what my students' lives are actually and what challenges their families face, not just with an eye on the academic demands I make, but in understanding how their world looks. I do my best to remember that they don't see things differently because they are defective or wrong, but because I'm standing in a place that gives me a different view. This works both ways-- there are plenty of children in my classroom who are children of professional parents who are just as well-off (or more so) as I am, and so we already tend to speak a similar language, and I have to remember that doesn't mean they're better students or better people than my other students. More importantly, I also have to remember that I'm standing in a place because I have a standard of living that makes it possible for me to stand in that place.
Short form: I'm not better off because I'm better. My wealth gives me some options that not everyone has. That's it.
This is challenging
I wasn't kidding about how hard this is to write about. This has taken way longer than anything on this site ever does, and typing words like "I am wealthy" feels like a display of pride and bragadociousness that just makes my fingers itch.
I am conscious that many teachers are NOT in my situation, that many teachers are struggling financially and are not wealthy by anybody's standards anywhere, and that many teachers give till it hurts and then they give some more. I am also aware that teacher wealth still lags far behind lawyer wealth and doctor wealth. But I want to-- cautiously, gingerly-- point out that some of us are not in that boat, and also that it is always easy to find people that we are poorer than.
It is easy when discussing privilege to dismiss the advantages that we have. We can always find someone who's better off and say, "Well, you don't need to talk to ME about wealth and privilege-- you should be talking to that Gates guy." But if we really want to push toward a world where people make responsible and ethical use of their privilege, doesn't it make sense to start with ourselves, however short our list of blessings may seem to be?
Sunday, March 6, 2016
Saturday, March 5, 2016
Silicon Valley Wunderskool
When we last met Altschool, it was May of 2015 and the new Silicon Valley educational disruptor startup was getting all kinds of press courtesy of some combination of good connections and the contribution of a buttload of Zuckerberg money. Now Rebecca Mead at the New Yorker is letting us know how Altschool has been faring since then.
The short pitch for Altschool is tech-based boutique micro-schooling for rich kids.
When I read about it last May, Altschool immediately reminded me of the free or open schools of the sixties. My aunt, a wonderful woman who had been traditionally trained as a teacher, opened one in Connecticut. The basic idea is that if you place students in resource rich environments and let them follow their interests, education will happen. Altschool is able to really, really up the ante on the whole rich resource portion of the idea, but putting technology in the hands of every child.
The other half of the Altschool idea is to put tech in the hands of the teachers. From Mead's observation of a pre-K class:
Several children were playing “restaurant,” and one girl sat in a chair, her arms outstretched as if holding a steering wheel: she was delivering food orders. “I’m taking a shortcut,” she announced. A teacher sitting on the floor told her, “That’s a good word—you used it correctly.” Then she took out her phone and recorded a video of the moment.
Altschool was founded-started-conceived by Max Ventilla, a former Google project manager who wanted to create a better school for his own tiny human.
The more Ventilla thought about education, the more he thought that he could bring about change—and not just for his own children. Instead of starting a “one-off school,” he would create an educational “ecosystem” that was unusually responsive to the interests of children, feeding them assignments tied to subjects they cared about. Ventilla’s vision fit the prevailing ethos of middle-class child rearing, in which offspring are urged to find their enthusiasms and pursue them into rewarding nonconformity.
All of this was evident when Altschool had its media moment last spring. What was perhaps less evident was just how thoroughly immersive the technological recording and data-collection for students would be. Altschool uses another version of a Competency Based Education model, with learning broken up into many small cells that students must demonstrate mastery of. This allows for a huge level of individualization.
But the demonstration of mastery isn't a matter of stopping school for some sort of test. Instead, teachers are supposed to hunt learning down and capture it.
“We are really shifting the role of an educator to someone who is more of a data-enabled detective.” He defined a traditional teacher as an “artisanal lesson planner on one hand and disciplinary babysitter on the other hand.”
There is a huge software component to Altschool, and that development is ongoing, with software engineers on site and meeting regularly to discuss, debug, debrief, and plan.
In fact, by the time you add up teachers, leaders, software engineers, visiting experts, etc, all deployed for a small number of students, the adult to tiny human ratio is something that poor urban schools can't even dream of. Altschool really is the answer to, "If smart, rich, well-connected people could create a school from scratch, what would it look like?" Altschool is funded by tuition, which is also far above the wildest dreams of any public school's per-pupil spending.
There are issues here. It will come as no surprise to most folks that Mead observes some incidents of technology not working as it's supposed to. How do you move forward if the tech is down and it is the whole spine and soul of your program?
There is a huge-- huge-- amount of data and images and video and just stuff collected for each child, and that's a bit troubling. Okay, maybe a lot troubling.
And as Mead observed, and my aunt learned fifty years ago, sometimes when you turn students loose in a rich environment to follow their own interests and impulses, you get something that's not very much like education at all. What Mead calls the "rabbit hole of the internet" only makes it more problematic.
And while the model is rising and advancing with hopes of more schools opening, it's not clear that anybody has figured out how such an expensive model can be spread to anyone other than the children of the rich. These are not the children most in danger of being lost in a standardized, one size fits all world.
There are things to like about this model (individualization, a reduced need for testing), but things to beware as well (data mining, tech dependency), and most especially, some critical issues that need to be addressed if Altschool is ever to be more than a pricey boutique (cost, scaling, and the eternal question-- how to split the difference between not caging curious kids while still prodding students forward who can use a little prodding and direction). I'm not yet convinced that Altschool is a real answer for US students, but it's a more interesting solution than one-size-fits-all test-driven baloney. We'll see.
The short pitch for Altschool is tech-based boutique micro-schooling for rich kids.
When I read about it last May, Altschool immediately reminded me of the free or open schools of the sixties. My aunt, a wonderful woman who had been traditionally trained as a teacher, opened one in Connecticut. The basic idea is that if you place students in resource rich environments and let them follow their interests, education will happen. Altschool is able to really, really up the ante on the whole rich resource portion of the idea, but putting technology in the hands of every child.
The other half of the Altschool idea is to put tech in the hands of the teachers. From Mead's observation of a pre-K class:
Several children were playing “restaurant,” and one girl sat in a chair, her arms outstretched as if holding a steering wheel: she was delivering food orders. “I’m taking a shortcut,” she announced. A teacher sitting on the floor told her, “That’s a good word—you used it correctly.” Then she took out her phone and recorded a video of the moment.
Altschool was founded-started-conceived by Max Ventilla, a former Google project manager who wanted to create a better school for his own tiny human.
The more Ventilla thought about education, the more he thought that he could bring about change—and not just for his own children. Instead of starting a “one-off school,” he would create an educational “ecosystem” that was unusually responsive to the interests of children, feeding them assignments tied to subjects they cared about. Ventilla’s vision fit the prevailing ethos of middle-class child rearing, in which offspring are urged to find their enthusiasms and pursue them into rewarding nonconformity.
All of this was evident when Altschool had its media moment last spring. What was perhaps less evident was just how thoroughly immersive the technological recording and data-collection for students would be. Altschool uses another version of a Competency Based Education model, with learning broken up into many small cells that students must demonstrate mastery of. This allows for a huge level of individualization.
But the demonstration of mastery isn't a matter of stopping school for some sort of test. Instead, teachers are supposed to hunt learning down and capture it.
“We are really shifting the role of an educator to someone who is more of a data-enabled detective.” He defined a traditional teacher as an “artisanal lesson planner on one hand and disciplinary babysitter on the other hand.”
There is a huge software component to Altschool, and that development is ongoing, with software engineers on site and meeting regularly to discuss, debug, debrief, and plan.
In fact, by the time you add up teachers, leaders, software engineers, visiting experts, etc, all deployed for a small number of students, the adult to tiny human ratio is something that poor urban schools can't even dream of. Altschool really is the answer to, "If smart, rich, well-connected people could create a school from scratch, what would it look like?" Altschool is funded by tuition, which is also far above the wildest dreams of any public school's per-pupil spending.
There are issues here. It will come as no surprise to most folks that Mead observes some incidents of technology not working as it's supposed to. How do you move forward if the tech is down and it is the whole spine and soul of your program?
There is a huge-- huge-- amount of data and images and video and just stuff collected for each child, and that's a bit troubling. Okay, maybe a lot troubling.
And as Mead observed, and my aunt learned fifty years ago, sometimes when you turn students loose in a rich environment to follow their own interests and impulses, you get something that's not very much like education at all. What Mead calls the "rabbit hole of the internet" only makes it more problematic.
And while the model is rising and advancing with hopes of more schools opening, it's not clear that anybody has figured out how such an expensive model can be spread to anyone other than the children of the rich. These are not the children most in danger of being lost in a standardized, one size fits all world.
There are things to like about this model (individualization, a reduced need for testing), but things to beware as well (data mining, tech dependency), and most especially, some critical issues that need to be addressed if Altschool is ever to be more than a pricey boutique (cost, scaling, and the eternal question-- how to split the difference between not caging curious kids while still prodding students forward who can use a little prodding and direction). I'm not yet convinced that Altschool is a real answer for US students, but it's a more interesting solution than one-size-fits-all test-driven baloney. We'll see.
How Is My Test PR Doing?
The test manufacturing industry continues to search for new and creative ways to push back against the opt out movement. Some of this propaganda is pretty pedestrian, but occasionally they come up with stuff that's very extra special. Meet the website "How is my kid doing?"
This PR initiative is being led by the Council for a Strong America, a DC-based umbrella organization composed of "Law enforcement leaders, retired admirals and generals, business executives, pastors and other faith leaders, and athletes, coaches and sports administrators united in our mission to build a stronger nation by preparing all young people to be productive citizens." The umbrella covers five different organizations which correspond to the five groups listed above and which boast "unexpected messengers" who are "extraordinarily effective at reaching policy-makers to help win major victories for kids." The council gets its money from just 14 contributors, including two in the Over A Million club. That includes grants from Gates-- and it's the Gates Foundation alone that is thanked for funding "in part" the How Is My Kid Doing PR drive. The HIMKD list of partners includes High Achievement New York, CCSSO (co-holders of the CCSS copyright), and the National PTA.
How Is My Kid Doing is designed to be warm and fuzzy. The staff introduces itself by first names only, accompanied by friendly childhood pictures. The font is soft and rounded. The subheading for one tab is "It starts with love."
The project is focused on story-telling. Sandra Bishop is the head of research for CSA, but her most recent contribution is a story about how in tenth grade she was moved to a higher-level English class because someone noticed her PSAT results. "Somehow, when I’d moved from junior high to high school, I’d been placed in lower level classes. I had no idea that was the case, nor did my parents, until I took a test."
As one might expect, this is the ongoing theme of the site-- parents, teachers and schools that are somehow clueless until they are enlightened by standardized test results. The other recurring theme is a constant blurring of the lines between the different kinds of tests we're talking about. Bishop cites a study that showed that opening up Washington's third grade gifted screening test to all students resulted in the identification of more gifted students. Which is a good thing, but has nothing to do with, say, taking the PARCC.
Project chief Carla tells a story about her son taking a bath, and announcing that he wants to be a scientist, and her overwhelming realization that to be a scientist they will have to take standardized tests all along the way to make sure he is on the right path.
And I realized that THIS represented why I’m so committed to this project. Because my little boy has a dream. And kids have dreams, and they start out strong and confident. And we as parents will give our last breath to protect them, to nurture them… and all we want, literally, is what’s best for them. To see them happy and safe and healthy. To see them pursue and achieve that dream. When our kids are young, to teach them that we value that dream, even if it changes every week. As they get older, to help shape that dream into reality.
And for each step,he had to know how he was doing. If he didn’t know, how was he to get there? How was I to help him and guide him?
There are so many things wrong here.
First, he said his dream was scientist, so he's need to know math, which happens to be on the Big Standardized Test. What if he had said musician? Or welder? Or museum curator? Or website designer? Would the BS Test still be helpful.
He also said that he's need to know how to cooperate, which is not measured by the BS Test at all. How will she know if he's on that correct path? How will she know if he's learning how to cooperate?
The program creators' devotion to their tiny humans is not in question, but their parental sense is. Here is one of the great quotes from the site:
The love and the anxiety we have over these little beings. It makes you put blinders on, you know? I mean, people could say to me, if you wear a green hat on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, your kid will be spared from X, Y, and Z. I'd be like, OK, put on the green hat, as silly as it makes me look, I'll do it!
Would you? Because as the father of a couple of formerly tiny humans, I would make damn sure that the people who were advocating green hats knew what the hell they were talking about and that there was some rational reason to believe that green hats actually prevented X, Y and Z. I would be particularly cautious of arguments claiming that since a motorcycle prevents head trauma in accidents, obviously a green wool hat prevents cholera and halitosis. And I would be particularly suspicious if the people telling me about the wonders of green hats all made their living in the green hat industry.
Look, following the LinkedIN tail on these folks, I didn't find Teach for America and a lifetime career of astro-turfing as we often do. But there are four huge problems with their arguments.
First, they have succumbed to a fallacy as old as the production of tiny humans-- that if we get the tiny human to do A, B, and C, the tiny human will eventually turn out exactly as we wish. This is appealing, but as every parent of fully grown tiny humans can tell you, it just doesn't work that way. Giving an eight-year-old a test and saying with authority, "Based on this test we can tell exactly what track this child is on," is absolute unvarnished baloney. Believe me-- I know that as the parent of a tiny human, you want to be certain that your child will turn out exactly okay and achieve all of their dreams. You can't know that, because
The second giant fallacy is that there is One True Path to success and happiness. There isn't. You can't put your child on that path because it doesn't exist, and if you insist on believing that it does exist, you will suffer a lifetime of unnecessary frustration about missing it as well as missing some awesome possibilities that you can't see because they aren't where you think the path is "supposed to" be.
The third problem with HIMKD is their worst one-- they show no awareness at all of the idea that there are different tests for different purposes. The folks at the site seem to believe that a test is a test is a test and the placement testing that a school does to assess a newly-adopted daughter is the same as a test at the end of the course is the same as a BS Test used to badly and inaccurately assess the caliber of the school.
The site is filled with Odes To Testing Joy, and yet somehow, none of the tests that are presented are the Big Standardized Tests. At times the site seems to be bizarrely, earnestly throwing its weight behind every test a teacher ever gives. Hooray for the weekly vocab quiz! If it's useful, all tests must be great.
But all tests are not created equal. They are not equally useful, equally valid, equally reliable, and equally well-written. This site argues that since I know a really nice girl over in my home town, you should marry that girl next door to you in another state.
Finally, the site relies on the classic reformster rhetorical trick-- the Skipping of the Proof. There's a really big problem, so you must accept my solution, but instead of offering proof that my solution solves the problem, I'll just keep hammering home the problem. Usually reformsters are more hectory ("Estonia is whipping our butts, so Common Core and testing!"). HIMKD is more warm and fuzzy. "I really love my child and want her to have a great life, so testing."
Reading through the site was a little surreal, because I could have written some of the stuff about overwhelming love for your personal tiny humans and hoping that they will have happy and fulfilling lives, and yet when I follow that thread, it does not at all lead me to conclude that the PARCC or SBA or any of the rest of their reformy spawn are a good idea. Like most parents of grown children, I am so not sitting here thinking, "Boy, if only my kids could have taken the PARCC when they were little. Their lives would be so better and different now."
HIMKD's idea of an argument is the green hat. If someone tells you something will help your child, you do it unthinkingly and blindly because that's what loving parenting is all about, and how could you possibly know how your child is doing otherwise. I'm certainly not saying do nothing-- but use a little thought about which snake oil you buy. The site is filled with perfectly fine observations like this one:
Young Americans, no matter where they live, deserve the best preparation possible for their future success in college and the workforce.
Nowhere on the site is there a lick of evidence that taking the Big Standardized Test has anything to do with getting children that preparation. There's nothing here to convincingly argue against opting out. My kid may be fine, but my testing PR push is continuing to waste a truckload of money.
This PR initiative is being led by the Council for a Strong America, a DC-based umbrella organization composed of "Law enforcement leaders, retired admirals and generals, business executives, pastors and other faith leaders, and athletes, coaches and sports administrators united in our mission to build a stronger nation by preparing all young people to be productive citizens." The umbrella covers five different organizations which correspond to the five groups listed above and which boast "unexpected messengers" who are "extraordinarily effective at reaching policy-makers to help win major victories for kids." The council gets its money from just 14 contributors, including two in the Over A Million club. That includes grants from Gates-- and it's the Gates Foundation alone that is thanked for funding "in part" the How Is My Kid Doing PR drive. The HIMKD list of partners includes High Achievement New York, CCSSO (co-holders of the CCSS copyright), and the National PTA.
How Is My Kid Doing is designed to be warm and fuzzy. The staff introduces itself by first names only, accompanied by friendly childhood pictures. The font is soft and rounded. The subheading for one tab is "It starts with love."
The project is focused on story-telling. Sandra Bishop is the head of research for CSA, but her most recent contribution is a story about how in tenth grade she was moved to a higher-level English class because someone noticed her PSAT results. "Somehow, when I’d moved from junior high to high school, I’d been placed in lower level classes. I had no idea that was the case, nor did my parents, until I took a test."
As one might expect, this is the ongoing theme of the site-- parents, teachers and schools that are somehow clueless until they are enlightened by standardized test results. The other recurring theme is a constant blurring of the lines between the different kinds of tests we're talking about. Bishop cites a study that showed that opening up Washington's third grade gifted screening test to all students resulted in the identification of more gifted students. Which is a good thing, but has nothing to do with, say, taking the PARCC.
Project chief Carla tells a story about her son taking a bath, and announcing that he wants to be a scientist, and her overwhelming realization that to be a scientist they will have to take standardized tests all along the way to make sure he is on the right path.
And I realized that THIS represented why I’m so committed to this project. Because my little boy has a dream. And kids have dreams, and they start out strong and confident. And we as parents will give our last breath to protect them, to nurture them… and all we want, literally, is what’s best for them. To see them happy and safe and healthy. To see them pursue and achieve that dream. When our kids are young, to teach them that we value that dream, even if it changes every week. As they get older, to help shape that dream into reality.
And for each step,he had to know how he was doing. If he didn’t know, how was he to get there? How was I to help him and guide him?
There are so many things wrong here.
First, he said his dream was scientist, so he's need to know math, which happens to be on the Big Standardized Test. What if he had said musician? Or welder? Or museum curator? Or website designer? Would the BS Test still be helpful.
He also said that he's need to know how to cooperate, which is not measured by the BS Test at all. How will she know if he's on that correct path? How will she know if he's learning how to cooperate?
The program creators' devotion to their tiny humans is not in question, but their parental sense is. Here is one of the great quotes from the site:
The love and the anxiety we have over these little beings. It makes you put blinders on, you know? I mean, people could say to me, if you wear a green hat on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, your kid will be spared from X, Y, and Z. I'd be like, OK, put on the green hat, as silly as it makes me look, I'll do it!
Would you? Because as the father of a couple of formerly tiny humans, I would make damn sure that the people who were advocating green hats knew what the hell they were talking about and that there was some rational reason to believe that green hats actually prevented X, Y and Z. I would be particularly cautious of arguments claiming that since a motorcycle prevents head trauma in accidents, obviously a green wool hat prevents cholera and halitosis. And I would be particularly suspicious if the people telling me about the wonders of green hats all made their living in the green hat industry.
Look, following the LinkedIN tail on these folks, I didn't find Teach for America and a lifetime career of astro-turfing as we often do. But there are four huge problems with their arguments.
First, they have succumbed to a fallacy as old as the production of tiny humans-- that if we get the tiny human to do A, B, and C, the tiny human will eventually turn out exactly as we wish. This is appealing, but as every parent of fully grown tiny humans can tell you, it just doesn't work that way. Giving an eight-year-old a test and saying with authority, "Based on this test we can tell exactly what track this child is on," is absolute unvarnished baloney. Believe me-- I know that as the parent of a tiny human, you want to be certain that your child will turn out exactly okay and achieve all of their dreams. You can't know that, because
The second giant fallacy is that there is One True Path to success and happiness. There isn't. You can't put your child on that path because it doesn't exist, and if you insist on believing that it does exist, you will suffer a lifetime of unnecessary frustration about missing it as well as missing some awesome possibilities that you can't see because they aren't where you think the path is "supposed to" be.
The third problem with HIMKD is their worst one-- they show no awareness at all of the idea that there are different tests for different purposes. The folks at the site seem to believe that a test is a test is a test and the placement testing that a school does to assess a newly-adopted daughter is the same as a test at the end of the course is the same as a BS Test used to badly and inaccurately assess the caliber of the school.
The site is filled with Odes To Testing Joy, and yet somehow, none of the tests that are presented are the Big Standardized Tests. At times the site seems to be bizarrely, earnestly throwing its weight behind every test a teacher ever gives. Hooray for the weekly vocab quiz! If it's useful, all tests must be great.
But all tests are not created equal. They are not equally useful, equally valid, equally reliable, and equally well-written. This site argues that since I know a really nice girl over in my home town, you should marry that girl next door to you in another state.
Finally, the site relies on the classic reformster rhetorical trick-- the Skipping of the Proof. There's a really big problem, so you must accept my solution, but instead of offering proof that my solution solves the problem, I'll just keep hammering home the problem. Usually reformsters are more hectory ("Estonia is whipping our butts, so Common Core and testing!"). HIMKD is more warm and fuzzy. "I really love my child and want her to have a great life, so testing."
Reading through the site was a little surreal, because I could have written some of the stuff about overwhelming love for your personal tiny humans and hoping that they will have happy and fulfilling lives, and yet when I follow that thread, it does not at all lead me to conclude that the PARCC or SBA or any of the rest of their reformy spawn are a good idea. Like most parents of grown children, I am so not sitting here thinking, "Boy, if only my kids could have taken the PARCC when they were little. Their lives would be so better and different now."
HIMKD's idea of an argument is the green hat. If someone tells you something will help your child, you do it unthinkingly and blindly because that's what loving parenting is all about, and how could you possibly know how your child is doing otherwise. I'm certainly not saying do nothing-- but use a little thought about which snake oil you buy. The site is filled with perfectly fine observations like this one:
Young Americans, no matter where they live, deserve the best preparation possible for their future success in college and the workforce.
Nowhere on the site is there a lick of evidence that taking the Big Standardized Test has anything to do with getting children that preparation. There's nothing here to convincingly argue against opting out. My kid may be fine, but my testing PR push is continuing to waste a truckload of money.
Friday, March 4, 2016
Britain Is Also Hemorrhaging Teachers
Just in case you thought only the US had decided to gut teaching as a profession, thereby driving people out of it, here's Nick Morrison in Forbes pointing out that the UK has some issues as well.
In fact, the article hinges on one striking factoid--
According to the Department for Education’s own census, more teachers left the classroom than entered it in 2014, the latest year for which figures are available, only the second time this has happened in the past 10 years.
Sir Michael Wilshaw, England's chief inspector of schools, is noted for a fairly aggressive approach to his job, having recently raised the frequency for school inspection as well as raising a fuss by threatening to inspect Sunday schools as well. Wilshaw likes the idea of golden handcuffs, requiring newly-minted teachers to serve a proscribed time in publicly funded schools until they jump ship. Because nothing enhances education like a teacher who has been forced into a particular classroom when they'd rather be elsewhere.
The ship-jumping has apparently been to well-funded high-paying international schools. Wilshaw has sounded the alarm about this before, and Morrison reported that teachers, particularly in London, cannot afford to live in the communities where they teach.
In addition to the monetary issues, Morrison notes that there are other problems
Workload, a high-stakes testing regime and the low status of teaching also help push teachers out of the classroom, as does the scrutiny of Sir Michael’s own school inspectors.
Sound familiar? Sure it does, as does the government's search for any solution other than paying teachers more, dropping useless high stakes testing, and generally improving the working conditions of teachers. Wilshaw's innovative indentured servitude idea doesn't even address the whole problem, as Morrison notes that in 2014, 40% of all teacher retirements were "premature."
Nor does it seem likely that golden handcuffs would help much with recruitment. Imagine what would happen to, say, Teach for America recruitment if part of the deal was that you absolutely couldn't leave the shcool you were placed in for three-to-five years? I don't think that would up their numbers much.
Of course, the solution in all countries is the same-- make the job more attractive and rewarding, which doesn't mean just money, but respect, autonomy, and support. Can you imagine a school system where, once a month, your boss calls you in and says, "Okay, I need to know what I can be doing to help you do your best possible work."
At any rate, that's your reminder that America is not the only place with leaders working hard to drive folks out of the teaching profession-- Pearson's corporate homeland is doing their best, too. I suppose that's another way to become more internationally competitive-- convince other nations to make the same boneheaded retrograde policy decisions that we follow here.
In fact, the article hinges on one striking factoid--
According to the Department for Education’s own census, more teachers left the classroom than entered it in 2014, the latest year for which figures are available, only the second time this has happened in the past 10 years.
Sir Michael Wilshaw, England's chief inspector of schools, is noted for a fairly aggressive approach to his job, having recently raised the frequency for school inspection as well as raising a fuss by threatening to inspect Sunday schools as well. Wilshaw likes the idea of golden handcuffs, requiring newly-minted teachers to serve a proscribed time in publicly funded schools until they jump ship. Because nothing enhances education like a teacher who has been forced into a particular classroom when they'd rather be elsewhere.
The ship-jumping has apparently been to well-funded high-paying international schools. Wilshaw has sounded the alarm about this before, and Morrison reported that teachers, particularly in London, cannot afford to live in the communities where they teach.
In addition to the monetary issues, Morrison notes that there are other problems
Workload, a high-stakes testing regime and the low status of teaching also help push teachers out of the classroom, as does the scrutiny of Sir Michael’s own school inspectors.
Sound familiar? Sure it does, as does the government's search for any solution other than paying teachers more, dropping useless high stakes testing, and generally improving the working conditions of teachers. Wilshaw's innovative indentured servitude idea doesn't even address the whole problem, as Morrison notes that in 2014, 40% of all teacher retirements were "premature."
Nor does it seem likely that golden handcuffs would help much with recruitment. Imagine what would happen to, say, Teach for America recruitment if part of the deal was that you absolutely couldn't leave the shcool you were placed in for three-to-five years? I don't think that would up their numbers much.
Of course, the solution in all countries is the same-- make the job more attractive and rewarding, which doesn't mean just money, but respect, autonomy, and support. Can you imagine a school system where, once a month, your boss calls you in and says, "Okay, I need to know what I can be doing to help you do your best possible work."
At any rate, that's your reminder that America is not the only place with leaders working hard to drive folks out of the teaching profession-- Pearson's corporate homeland is doing their best, too. I suppose that's another way to become more internationally competitive-- convince other nations to make the same boneheaded retrograde policy decisions that we follow here.
It's Not The Implementation, Stupid
How can we still be having this conversation? How??
Marc Tucker (he of the infamous Dear Hillary letter outlining the cradle to career pipeline) is over at Ed Week declaring that the Common Core are absolutely awesome and any alleged failure is actually the failure of the whole entire national education system and everyone associated with it. The Common Core Standards are genius-- it was just an implementation problem!
Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope AND nope.
First of all, Tucker builds a whole point around an invalid comparison. To see it thoroughly and accurately skewered, read this post from the indispensable Mercedes Schneider. Bottom line: his idea that putting Common Core into current schools like putting a modern fuel injector into an old car shows a lack of understanding of both education and fuel injection. It is the perfect picture of reformster hubris, the notion that, of course, I know enough about this system to overhaul it completely.
Tucker goes on to list all the many things that should be changed in order to implement the Core properly so that it can be the raging success that it truly is, from changing the way teachers are prepared to changing the way teachers teach to changing the way the publishing industry creates materials etc etc etc.
It reminds me of some freshman dorm conversations from my college days, when someone would say things like, "You know, communism would be a perfect system if only people and governments would behave completely differently." Or every professional development session in which a sales rep explained that the Shiny New Wonkometer System will be a huge help to any classroom teacher who changed all of her goals and techniques. Or everybody who ever cried out, upon being dumped, "But this relationship would totally work if you just loved me." Or everybody who tried to get a square peg into a round hole, saying, "Hand me that hammer."
If you have created a peripheral for a computer system that does not speak the same operating system as your main computer, that is not an implementation problem. If you build an electrical appliance tat uses a special four-pronged plug, that is not an implementation problem. If you have courted a person you find dreamy, plying them with flowers and songs and compliments and they still tell you to go away, that is not an implementation problem.
IF you invent an awesome new surgical procedure, and even though you're not actually a trained surgeon at all, but you get rich and powerful friends to push your procedure and make it te law, and then patient after patient keep dying when your procedure is used, you can stand there all day and complain, "Well, that's just because they're old-fashioned doctors who are doing it wrong," but you do not have an implementation problem.
You cannot do a good implementation of a bad idea. Furthermore, if your idea doesn't come with a functioning method of implementation, that's a sure sign that you have a bad idea.
Every implementation problem is really a design problem trying to masquerade as user error.
Treat standards like a silver bullet, and they will go down to defeat just like all the other silver bullet solutions. Treat them like an essential component of a high performance system and put the other components of the systems in place and get out of the way before you are run over by the improvements you will see in student performance.
Tucker holds the US up in comparison to unnamed countries where this perfect co-mingling of standards and systems, and it has long been Tucker's thing to make this sort of international comparison. However, I've never found him talking about how those systems were grafted onto a pre-existing system, nor of course is there any reason to believe that these countries have a culture remotely like our own. A well-designed system would consider both of those factors.
Common Core is not well-designed, and it will never be part of a "high performance system." The fact that it has been so difficult to implement and has yielded no significant results-- even as proponents have lowered the bar from "improve education" to "raise student scores on one narrow standardized test" -- is further proof that it's a failure. Coulda woulda shoulda does not change the reality of that failure a bit.
In the end, Tucker is a voice plaintively saying, "If things were different, things would be different."
Marc Tucker (he of the infamous Dear Hillary letter outlining the cradle to career pipeline) is over at Ed Week declaring that the Common Core are absolutely awesome and any alleged failure is actually the failure of the whole entire national education system and everyone associated with it. The Common Core Standards are genius-- it was just an implementation problem!
Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope AND nope.
First of all, Tucker builds a whole point around an invalid comparison. To see it thoroughly and accurately skewered, read this post from the indispensable Mercedes Schneider. Bottom line: his idea that putting Common Core into current schools like putting a modern fuel injector into an old car shows a lack of understanding of both education and fuel injection. It is the perfect picture of reformster hubris, the notion that, of course, I know enough about this system to overhaul it completely.
Tucker goes on to list all the many things that should be changed in order to implement the Core properly so that it can be the raging success that it truly is, from changing the way teachers are prepared to changing the way teachers teach to changing the way the publishing industry creates materials etc etc etc.
It reminds me of some freshman dorm conversations from my college days, when someone would say things like, "You know, communism would be a perfect system if only people and governments would behave completely differently." Or every professional development session in which a sales rep explained that the Shiny New Wonkometer System will be a huge help to any classroom teacher who changed all of her goals and techniques. Or everybody who ever cried out, upon being dumped, "But this relationship would totally work if you just loved me." Or everybody who tried to get a square peg into a round hole, saying, "Hand me that hammer."
If you have created a peripheral for a computer system that does not speak the same operating system as your main computer, that is not an implementation problem. If you build an electrical appliance tat uses a special four-pronged plug, that is not an implementation problem. If you have courted a person you find dreamy, plying them with flowers and songs and compliments and they still tell you to go away, that is not an implementation problem.
IF you invent an awesome new surgical procedure, and even though you're not actually a trained surgeon at all, but you get rich and powerful friends to push your procedure and make it te law, and then patient after patient keep dying when your procedure is used, you can stand there all day and complain, "Well, that's just because they're old-fashioned doctors who are doing it wrong," but you do not have an implementation problem.
You cannot do a good implementation of a bad idea. Furthermore, if your idea doesn't come with a functioning method of implementation, that's a sure sign that you have a bad idea.
Every implementation problem is really a design problem trying to masquerade as user error.
Treat standards like a silver bullet, and they will go down to defeat just like all the other silver bullet solutions. Treat them like an essential component of a high performance system and put the other components of the systems in place and get out of the way before you are run over by the improvements you will see in student performance.
Tucker holds the US up in comparison to unnamed countries where this perfect co-mingling of standards and systems, and it has long been Tucker's thing to make this sort of international comparison. However, I've never found him talking about how those systems were grafted onto a pre-existing system, nor of course is there any reason to believe that these countries have a culture remotely like our own. A well-designed system would consider both of those factors.
Common Core is not well-designed, and it will never be part of a "high performance system." The fact that it has been so difficult to implement and has yielded no significant results-- even as proponents have lowered the bar from "improve education" to "raise student scores on one narrow standardized test" -- is further proof that it's a failure. Coulda woulda shoulda does not change the reality of that failure a bit.
In the end, Tucker is a voice plaintively saying, "If things were different, things would be different."
Thursday, March 3, 2016
TOYT Shill For PARCC
PARCC is touting two new radio spots that feature a couple of Teacher of the Year winners touting the wonderfulness of the PARCC.
The National Network of Teachers of the Year produced a "research report" last year that determined that the Big Standardized Tests are super-duper and much more better than the old state tests. Was the report legit? Weelll.....
The report was reviewed by three-- well, "experts" seems like the wrong word. Three guys. Joshua Starr was a noted superintendent in Maryland, where he developed a reputation as a high stakes testing opponent. He lost that job, and moved on to become the CEO of Phi Delta Kappa. Next, Joshua Parker was a compliance specialist with Baltimore Schools, a teacher of the year, and a current member of the reform-pushing PR operation, Education Post. And the third reviewer was Mike Petrilli, head of the Fordham Institute, a group dedicated to promoting testing, charters, etc.
The study was funded by the Rockefeller Philanthropy advisors, while the NNTOY sponsors list includes by the Gates Foundation, Pearson, AIR, ETS and the College Board-- in other words, every major test manufacturer in the country that makes a hefty living on high stakes testing.
So the study's conclusion that tests like the PARCC and the SBAC are super-excellent is not exactly a shock or surprise, and neither can it be surprise that one follow-up to the study is these two radio spots.
The teachers in the spots are Steve Elza, 2015 Illinois TOYT and applied tech (automotive trades) teacher, and Josh Parker, a-- hey! Wait a minute!! Is that? Why, yes-- it appears to be one of the reviewers of the original study. Some days I start to think that some folks don't really understand what "peer review" means when it comes to research.
Anyway, the spots. What do they say? Let's listen to Elza's spot first--
A narrator (with a fairly distinct speech impediment which-- okay, fine, but it's a little distracting at first) says that Illinois students took a new PARCC test. It was the first time tests were ever aligned with what teachers taught in the classroom! Really!! The first time ever, ever! Can you believe that? No, I can't, either. And some of the best teachers in the country did a study last year to compare PARCC to state tests. And now, 2015 Teacher of the Year, Steve Elza:
Every teacher who took part in the research came to the same conclusion-- PARCC is a test worth taking. The results more accurately measure students' learning progress and tells us if kids are truly learning or if they're just repeating memorized facts. Because PARCC is aligned to our academic standards, the best preparation for it is good classroom instruction. As a teacher, I no longer have to give my students test-taking strategies-- instead I can focus on making sure students develop strong, critical, and analytical thinking skills. Our students were not as prepared for the more rigorous coursework in college or even to start working right after high school.
Sigh. First, "truly learning" and "repeating memorized facts" are not the two possible things that a test can measure, and any teacher who is not teaching test-taking strategies is not preparing her students for the test. I'm glad Elza is no longer working on test-taking strategies in auto shop, and I'm sure he's comfortable having his skills as a teacher of automotive tradecraft based in part on student math and English standardized test scores. The claim that PARCC measures readiness for the working world is just bizarre. I look forward to PARCC claims that the test measures readiness for marriage, parenthood, and running for elected office.
The narrator returns to exclaim how helpful PARCC is, loaded with "valuable feedback" that will make sure everybody is ready for "success in school and life." Yes, PARCC remains the most magical test product ever manufactured.
So how about the other spot? Let's give a listen.
Okay, same narrator, same copy with Illinois switched out for Maryland. That makes sense. And now, teacher Josh Parker:
Every teacher who took part in the research came to the same--- hey, wait a minute!! They just had these two different teachers read from the same script! Someone (could it be the PARCC marketting department?) just put words in their mouths. Parker goes one extra mile-- right after "analytical thinking skills" he throws in "PARCC also pulled back the curtain on a long-unspoken truth" before the baloney about how students were unprepared for life. Also, Parker didn't think there was a comma after "strong."
One more sad piece of marketing for the PARCC as it slowly loses piece after piece of its market. It's unfortunate that the title Teacher of the Year has been dragged into this. The award should speak more to admirable classroom qualities than simply be a way to set up teachers to be celebrity spokespersons for the very corporations that have undercut the teaching profession.
The National Network of Teachers of the Year produced a "research report" last year that determined that the Big Standardized Tests are super-duper and much more better than the old state tests. Was the report legit? Weelll.....
The report was reviewed by three-- well, "experts" seems like the wrong word. Three guys. Joshua Starr was a noted superintendent in Maryland, where he developed a reputation as a high stakes testing opponent. He lost that job, and moved on to become the CEO of Phi Delta Kappa. Next, Joshua Parker was a compliance specialist with Baltimore Schools, a teacher of the year, and a current member of the reform-pushing PR operation, Education Post. And the third reviewer was Mike Petrilli, head of the Fordham Institute, a group dedicated to promoting testing, charters, etc.
The study was funded by the Rockefeller Philanthropy advisors, while the NNTOY sponsors list includes by the Gates Foundation, Pearson, AIR, ETS and the College Board-- in other words, every major test manufacturer in the country that makes a hefty living on high stakes testing.
So the study's conclusion that tests like the PARCC and the SBAC are super-excellent is not exactly a shock or surprise, and neither can it be surprise that one follow-up to the study is these two radio spots.
The teachers in the spots are Steve Elza, 2015 Illinois TOYT and applied tech (automotive trades) teacher, and Josh Parker, a-- hey! Wait a minute!! Is that? Why, yes-- it appears to be one of the reviewers of the original study. Some days I start to think that some folks don't really understand what "peer review" means when it comes to research.
Anyway, the spots. What do they say? Let's listen to Elza's spot first--
A narrator (with a fairly distinct speech impediment which-- okay, fine, but it's a little distracting at first) says that Illinois students took a new PARCC test. It was the first time tests were ever aligned with what teachers taught in the classroom! Really!! The first time ever, ever! Can you believe that? No, I can't, either. And some of the best teachers in the country did a study last year to compare PARCC to state tests. And now, 2015 Teacher of the Year, Steve Elza:
Every teacher who took part in the research came to the same conclusion-- PARCC is a test worth taking. The results more accurately measure students' learning progress and tells us if kids are truly learning or if they're just repeating memorized facts. Because PARCC is aligned to our academic standards, the best preparation for it is good classroom instruction. As a teacher, I no longer have to give my students test-taking strategies-- instead I can focus on making sure students develop strong, critical, and analytical thinking skills. Our students were not as prepared for the more rigorous coursework in college or even to start working right after high school.
Sigh. First, "truly learning" and "repeating memorized facts" are not the two possible things that a test can measure, and any teacher who is not teaching test-taking strategies is not preparing her students for the test. I'm glad Elza is no longer working on test-taking strategies in auto shop, and I'm sure he's comfortable having his skills as a teacher of automotive tradecraft based in part on student math and English standardized test scores. The claim that PARCC measures readiness for the working world is just bizarre. I look forward to PARCC claims that the test measures readiness for marriage, parenthood, and running for elected office.
The narrator returns to exclaim how helpful PARCC is, loaded with "valuable feedback" that will make sure everybody is ready for "success in school and life." Yes, PARCC remains the most magical test product ever manufactured.
So how about the other spot? Let's give a listen.
Okay, same narrator, same copy with Illinois switched out for Maryland. That makes sense. And now, teacher Josh Parker:
Every teacher who took part in the research came to the same--- hey, wait a minute!! They just had these two different teachers read from the same script! Someone (could it be the PARCC marketting department?) just put words in their mouths. Parker goes one extra mile-- right after "analytical thinking skills" he throws in "PARCC also pulled back the curtain on a long-unspoken truth" before the baloney about how students were unprepared for life. Also, Parker didn't think there was a comma after "strong."
One more sad piece of marketing for the PARCC as it slowly loses piece after piece of its market. It's unfortunate that the title Teacher of the Year has been dragged into this. The award should speak more to admirable classroom qualities than simply be a way to set up teachers to be celebrity spokespersons for the very corporations that have undercut the teaching profession.
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Ace That Test? I Think Not.
The full court press for the Big Standardized Test is on, with all manner of spokespersons and PR initiatives trying to convince Americans to welcome the warm, loving embrace of standardized testing. Last week the Boston Globe brought us Yana Weinstein and Megan Smith, a pair of psychology assistant professors who have co-founded Learning Scientists, which appears to be mostly a blog that they've been running for about a month. And say what you like-- they do not appear to be slickly or heavily funded by the Usual Gang of Reformsters.
Their stated goals include lessening test anxiety and decreasing the negative views of testing. And the reliably reformy Boston Globe gave them a chance to get their word out. Additionally, the pair blogged about additional material that did not make it through the Globe's edit.
The Testing Effect
Weinstein and Smith are fond of "the testing effect" a somewhat inexact term used to refer to the notion that recalling information helps people retain it. It always makes me want a name for whatever it is that makes some people believe that the only situation in which information is recalled is a test. Hell, it could be called the teaching effect, since we can get the same thing going by having students teach a concept to the rest of the class. Or the writing effect, or the discussion effect. There are many ways to have students sock information in place by recalling it; testing is neither the only or the best way to go about it.
Things That Make the Learning Scientists Feel Bad
From their blog, we learn that the LS team feels "awkward" when reading anti-testing writing, and they link to an example from Diane Ravitch. Awkward is an odd way to feel, really. But then, I think their example of a strong defense of testing is a little awkward. They wanted to quote a HuffPost pro-testing piece from Charles Coleman that, they say, addresses problems with the opt out movement "eloquently."
"To put it plainly: white parents from well-funded and highly performing areas are participating in petulant, poorly conceived protests that are ultimately affecting inner-city blacks at schools that need the funding and measures of accountability to ensure any hope of progress in performance." -- Charles F. Coleman Jr.
Ah. So opt outers are white, rich, whiny racists. That is certainly eloquent and well-reasoned support of testing. And let's throw in the counter-reality notion that testing helps poor schools, though after over a decade of test-driven accountability, you'd think supporters could rattle off a list of schools that A) nobody knew were underfunded and underresourced until testing and B) received an boost through extra money and resources after testing. Could it be that no such list actually exists?
Tests Cause Anxiety
The LS duo wants to decrease test anxiety by hammering students with testing all the time, so that it's no longer a big deal. I believe that's true, but not a good idea. Also, parents and teachers should stop saying bad things about the BS Tests, but just keep piling on the happy talk so that students can stop worrying and learn to love the test. All of this, of course, pre-supposes that the BS Tests are actually worthwhile and wonderful and that all the misgivings being expressed by professional educators and the parents of the children is-- what? An evil plot? Widespread confusion? The duo seem deeply committed to not admitting that test critics have any point at all. Fools, the lot of them.
Teaching to the Test
The idea that teaching to a test isn’t really teaching implies an almost astounding assumption that standardized tests are filled with meaningless, ill-thought-out questions on irrelevant or arbitrary information. This may be based on the myth that “teachers in the trenches” are being told what to teach by some “experts” who’ve probably never set foot in a “real” classroom.
Actually, it's neither "astounding" nor an "assumption," but, at least in the case of this "defiant" teacher (LS likes to use argument by adjective), my judgment of the test is based on looking at the actual test and using my professional judgment. It's a crappy test, with poorly-constructed questions that, as is generally the case with a standardized test, mostly test the student's ability to figure out what the test manufacturer wants the student to choose for an answer (and of course the fact that students are selecting answers rather than responding to open ended prompts further limits the usefulness of the BS Test).
But LS assert that tests are actually put together by testing experts and well-seasoned real teachers (and you can see the proof in a video put up by a testing manufacturer about how awesome that test manufacturer is, so totally legit). LS note that "defiant teachers" either "fail to realize" this or "choose to ignore" it. In other words, teachers are either dumb or mindlessly opposed to the truth.
Standardized Tests Are Biased
The team notes that bias is an issue with standardized tests, but it's "highly unlikely" that classroom teachers could do any better, so there. Their question-- if we can't trust a big board of experts to come up with an unbiased test, how can we believe that an individual wouldn't do even worse, and how would we hold them accountable?
That's a fair question, but it assumes some purposes for testing that are not in evidence. My classroom tests are there to see how my students have progressed with and grasped the material. I design those materials with my students in mind. I don't, as BS Tests often do, assume that "everybody knows about" the topic of the material, because I know the everybody's in my classroom, so I can make choices accordingly. I can also select prompts and test material that hook directly into their culture and background.
In short, BS Testing bias enters largely because the test is designed to fit an imaginary Generic Student who actually represents the biases of the test manufacturers, while my assessments are designed to fit the very specific group of students in my room. BS Tests are one-size-fits-all. Mine are tailored to fit.
Reformsters may then say, "But if yours are tailored to fit, how can we use them to compare your students to students across the nation." To which I say, "So what?" You'll need to convince me that there is an actual need to closely compare all students in the nation.
Tests Don't Provide Prompt Feedback
The duo actually agree that test "have a lot of room for improvement." They even acknowledge that the feedback from the test is not only late, but generally vague and useless. But hey-- tests are going to be totes better when they are all online, an assertion that makes the astonishing assumption that there is no difference between a paper test and a computer test except how the students record their answers.
Big Finish
The wrap up is a final barrage of Wrong Things.
Standardized tests were created to track students’ progress and evaluate schools and teachers.
Were they? Really? Is it even possible to create a single test that can actually be used for all those purposes? Because just about everyone on the planet not financially invested in the industry has pointed out that using test results to evaluate teachers via VAM-like methods is baloney. And tests need to be manufactured for a particular purpose-- not three or four entirely different ones. So I call shenanigans-- the tests were not created to both measure and track all three of those things.
Griping abounds about how these tests are measuring the wrong thing and in the wrong way; but what’s conspicuously absent is any suggestion for how to better measure the effect of education — i.e., learning — on a large scale.
A popular reformster fallacy. If you walk into my hospital room and say, "Well, your blood pressure is terrible, so we are going to chop off your feet," and then I say, "No, I don't want you to chop off my feet. I don't believe it will help, and I like my feet," your appropriate response is not, "Well, then, you'd better tell me what else you want me to chop off instead.
In other words, what is "conspicuously absent" is evidence that there is a need for or value in measuring the effects of education on a large scale. Why do we need to do that? If you want to upend the education system for that purpose, the burden is on you to prove that the purpose is valid and useful.
In the absence of direct measures of learning, we resort to measures of performance.
Since we can't actually measure what we want to measure, we'll measure something else as a proxy and talk about it as if it's the same thing. That is one of the major problems with BS Testing in a nutshell.
And the great thing is: measuring this learning actually causes it to grow.
And weighing the pig makes it heavier. This is simply not true, "testing effect" notwithstanding.
PS
Via the blog, we know that they wanted to link to this post at Learning Spy which has some interesting things to say about the difference between learning and performance, including this:
And students are skilled at mimicking what they think teachers want to see and hear. This mimicry might result in learning but often doesn’t.
That's a pretty good explanation of why BS Tests are of so little use-- they are about learning to mimic the behavior required by test manufacturers. But the critical difference between that mimicry on a test and in my classroom is that in my classroom, I can watch for when students are simply mimicking and adjust my instruction and assessment accordingly. A BS Tests cannot make any such adjustments, and cannot tell the difference between mimicry and learning at all.
The duo notes that their post is "controversial," and it is in the sense that it's more pro-test baloney, but I suspect that much of their pushback is also a reaction to their barely-disguised disdain for classroom teachers who don't agree with them. They might also consider widening their tool selection ("when your only tool is a hammer, etc...") to include a broader range of approaches beyond the "test effect." It's a nice trick, and it has its uses, but it's a lousy justification for high stakes BS Testing.
Their stated goals include lessening test anxiety and decreasing the negative views of testing. And the reliably reformy Boston Globe gave them a chance to get their word out. Additionally, the pair blogged about additional material that did not make it through the Globe's edit.
The Testing Effect
Weinstein and Smith are fond of "the testing effect" a somewhat inexact term used to refer to the notion that recalling information helps people retain it. It always makes me want a name for whatever it is that makes some people believe that the only situation in which information is recalled is a test. Hell, it could be called the teaching effect, since we can get the same thing going by having students teach a concept to the rest of the class. Or the writing effect, or the discussion effect. There are many ways to have students sock information in place by recalling it; testing is neither the only or the best way to go about it.
Things That Make the Learning Scientists Feel Bad
From their blog, we learn that the LS team feels "awkward" when reading anti-testing writing, and they link to an example from Diane Ravitch. Awkward is an odd way to feel, really. But then, I think their example of a strong defense of testing is a little awkward. They wanted to quote a HuffPost pro-testing piece from Charles Coleman that, they say, addresses problems with the opt out movement "eloquently."
"To put it plainly: white parents from well-funded and highly performing areas are participating in petulant, poorly conceived protests that are ultimately affecting inner-city blacks at schools that need the funding and measures of accountability to ensure any hope of progress in performance." -- Charles F. Coleman Jr.
Ah. So opt outers are white, rich, whiny racists. That is certainly eloquent and well-reasoned support of testing. And let's throw in the counter-reality notion that testing helps poor schools, though after over a decade of test-driven accountability, you'd think supporters could rattle off a list of schools that A) nobody knew were underfunded and underresourced until testing and B) received an boost through extra money and resources after testing. Could it be that no such list actually exists?
Tests Cause Anxiety
The LS duo wants to decrease test anxiety by hammering students with testing all the time, so that it's no longer a big deal. I believe that's true, but not a good idea. Also, parents and teachers should stop saying bad things about the BS Tests, but just keep piling on the happy talk so that students can stop worrying and learn to love the test. All of this, of course, pre-supposes that the BS Tests are actually worthwhile and wonderful and that all the misgivings being expressed by professional educators and the parents of the children is-- what? An evil plot? Widespread confusion? The duo seem deeply committed to not admitting that test critics have any point at all. Fools, the lot of them.
Teaching to the Test
The idea that teaching to a test isn’t really teaching implies an almost astounding assumption that standardized tests are filled with meaningless, ill-thought-out questions on irrelevant or arbitrary information. This may be based on the myth that “teachers in the trenches” are being told what to teach by some “experts” who’ve probably never set foot in a “real” classroom.
Actually, it's neither "astounding" nor an "assumption," but, at least in the case of this "defiant" teacher (LS likes to use argument by adjective), my judgment of the test is based on looking at the actual test and using my professional judgment. It's a crappy test, with poorly-constructed questions that, as is generally the case with a standardized test, mostly test the student's ability to figure out what the test manufacturer wants the student to choose for an answer (and of course the fact that students are selecting answers rather than responding to open ended prompts further limits the usefulness of the BS Test).
But LS assert that tests are actually put together by testing experts and well-seasoned real teachers (and you can see the proof in a video put up by a testing manufacturer about how awesome that test manufacturer is, so totally legit). LS note that "defiant teachers" either "fail to realize" this or "choose to ignore" it. In other words, teachers are either dumb or mindlessly opposed to the truth.
Standardized Tests Are Biased
The team notes that bias is an issue with standardized tests, but it's "highly unlikely" that classroom teachers could do any better, so there. Their question-- if we can't trust a big board of experts to come up with an unbiased test, how can we believe that an individual wouldn't do even worse, and how would we hold them accountable?
That's a fair question, but it assumes some purposes for testing that are not in evidence. My classroom tests are there to see how my students have progressed with and grasped the material. I design those materials with my students in mind. I don't, as BS Tests often do, assume that "everybody knows about" the topic of the material, because I know the everybody's in my classroom, so I can make choices accordingly. I can also select prompts and test material that hook directly into their culture and background.
In short, BS Testing bias enters largely because the test is designed to fit an imaginary Generic Student who actually represents the biases of the test manufacturers, while my assessments are designed to fit the very specific group of students in my room. BS Tests are one-size-fits-all. Mine are tailored to fit.
Reformsters may then say, "But if yours are tailored to fit, how can we use them to compare your students to students across the nation." To which I say, "So what?" You'll need to convince me that there is an actual need to closely compare all students in the nation.
Tests Don't Provide Prompt Feedback
The duo actually agree that test "have a lot of room for improvement." They even acknowledge that the feedback from the test is not only late, but generally vague and useless. But hey-- tests are going to be totes better when they are all online, an assertion that makes the astonishing assumption that there is no difference between a paper test and a computer test except how the students record their answers.
Big Finish
The wrap up is a final barrage of Wrong Things.
Standardized tests were created to track students’ progress and evaluate schools and teachers.
Were they? Really? Is it even possible to create a single test that can actually be used for all those purposes? Because just about everyone on the planet not financially invested in the industry has pointed out that using test results to evaluate teachers via VAM-like methods is baloney. And tests need to be manufactured for a particular purpose-- not three or four entirely different ones. So I call shenanigans-- the tests were not created to both measure and track all three of those things.
Griping abounds about how these tests are measuring the wrong thing and in the wrong way; but what’s conspicuously absent is any suggestion for how to better measure the effect of education — i.e., learning — on a large scale.
A popular reformster fallacy. If you walk into my hospital room and say, "Well, your blood pressure is terrible, so we are going to chop off your feet," and then I say, "No, I don't want you to chop off my feet. I don't believe it will help, and I like my feet," your appropriate response is not, "Well, then, you'd better tell me what else you want me to chop off instead.
In other words, what is "conspicuously absent" is evidence that there is a need for or value in measuring the effects of education on a large scale. Why do we need to do that? If you want to upend the education system for that purpose, the burden is on you to prove that the purpose is valid and useful.
In the absence of direct measures of learning, we resort to measures of performance.
Since we can't actually measure what we want to measure, we'll measure something else as a proxy and talk about it as if it's the same thing. That is one of the major problems with BS Testing in a nutshell.
And the great thing is: measuring this learning actually causes it to grow.
And weighing the pig makes it heavier. This is simply not true, "testing effect" notwithstanding.
PS
Via the blog, we know that they wanted to link to this post at Learning Spy which has some interesting things to say about the difference between learning and performance, including this:
And students are skilled at mimicking what they think teachers want to see and hear. This mimicry might result in learning but often doesn’t.
That's a pretty good explanation of why BS Tests are of so little use-- they are about learning to mimic the behavior required by test manufacturers. But the critical difference between that mimicry on a test and in my classroom is that in my classroom, I can watch for when students are simply mimicking and adjust my instruction and assessment accordingly. A BS Tests cannot make any such adjustments, and cannot tell the difference between mimicry and learning at all.
The duo notes that their post is "controversial," and it is in the sense that it's more pro-test baloney, but I suspect that much of their pushback is also a reaction to their barely-disguised disdain for classroom teachers who don't agree with them. They might also consider widening their tool selection ("when your only tool is a hammer, etc...") to include a broader range of approaches beyond the "test effect." It's a nice trick, and it has its uses, but it's a lousy justification for high stakes BS Testing.
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