One Right Answer

Humans come out of the womb predisposed to believe in One Right Answer, and some of us spend our whole lives searching for it.

I watch my students (mostly high school juniors) struggle with it. There's supposed to be One Right Answer for which college to pick, which career to pursue, which partner to marry. One beloved fantasy has persisted for all the decades I have taught (and my years as a student before that). "I wish," says a student, "that somebody would just appear and tell me what I'm supposed to do. I wish somebody would tell me what the right answer is."

Growing up, I believed in One Right Answer even as I didn't. Like many fifteen-year-old, I believed that many of the right answers proposed by The People In Charge were wrong-- and that I knew what the One Right Answer really was. I went to college and learned there were two kinds of English professors-- those who believed that there was one way to read each work, and their job was to teach us what it was, and those who believed that there were many right answers, and their job was to teach us how to find an answer that could be argued successfully with evidence and sense. I decided I wanted to be the second kind.

I still thought there was One Right Answer to most of life's questions, and that was a belief that I rode right through marriage and into divorce, plus any number of other major and minor screw-ups. I believed that the way to navigate life was to lock the steering wheel in place and set a brick on the gas pedal, and if you hit a tree or drove off a cliff, that just meant you needed to recalibrate the steering wheel and get a different-sized brick.

Eventually, sitting in the rubble at the bottom of a cliff, I saw a light bulb (I never claimed to be a quick learner). The One Right Answer is that there is no One Right Answer. The best you can hope for is guidance by principle, relationship, context, and timing. You drive the car based on where the road goes, where you want to go, maintaining a speed that keeps you connected to the road, and turning the wheel at the right moment.

I believe that the most fundamental thing that we teach students is a view of How the World Works, and I also believe with all my heart that we do them a huge disservice if we teach them that the world is a place built out of One Right Answers.

When colleagues periodically suggest that we adopt one set of documenting standards for research papers to be used throughout the whole school, I always argue against it. "But why," goes the argument," should they have to use one set of standards in one class and a different one for that teacher and different ones when they write a paper in that other department." My answer is "because that's how the world works." When they get to college, different professors and departments will have different requirements. If they end up writing professionally, they will have to adhere to the local style guide. I still teach documenting and endnotes and bibliography and the rest, but the first rule I always teach is this-- the correct style is the one preferred by the person who is giving you your grade or signing your check.

Over the years, I have read calls from administrators for completely consistent grading systems within schools. I understand how undesirable it would be to have a school environment where grading systems varied wildly from teacher to teacher and day to day. I have personally experienced the frustration of being the teacher at a grade level who does NOT give the easy grades, watching students bail out for a transfer to lazier pastures. But what is the value in teaching students that they will answer to exactly the same standards no matter where they go or what they do? Will they get a standardized job for a standardized boss? Will they marry a standardized spouse and raise standardized children?

When dealing with actual human beings, you have to deal with the actual specific individual non-standardized human beings. Why would we not structure schools to teach that same lesson?

This is one of the reasons that charter schools often present the opposite of choice. Because they are set up around one very specific vision that is pushed down through every staff member, modern charters often can serve just one type of student. Meanwhile, larger, messier public schools offer a wide variety of educational styles under one roof. Students should be able to go to a school where they can find teachers and classes that match their personal style and interests; students are not served by a school in which all teachers and classes are identical interchangeable widgets. They should be able to go to such a pluralist school not just because it's better for their education, but because it's better preparation for real life.

Belief in One Right Answer is particularly problematic in difficult times. It is precisely the belief that gets you an ugly monstrosity like the candidacy of a Trump or a Cruz-- we are in trouble and we need the One Right Answer so let's turn to the guy who confidently asserts that he has it.

The belief in One Right Answer is the paving stone of the Road to Totalitarianism. Every Fascist and Beloved Leader made the same deal-- I will take all the power and give you the One Right Answer.

Yes, I realize that I'm arguing that allowing English teachers to require different endnote punctuation within the department is a step to fighting Fascism. I know it sounds like a large journey for such small steps, but I believe all large journeys are made of small steps.

And no-- I'm not arguing that we tell students that 2 + 2 = whatever they want to say it equals. For every question there are many answers, and some of those answers are easier to justify than others. Some vary over time and circumstances more than others-- 2+2 works out pretty much the same almost all the time, while "what shirt should I wear today" varies a great deal over time, space, individuals, and shirts. Somewhere in between we find questions like "What does Hamlet mean by 'to be or not to be'?" and "What caused the Great European War?" and "What do I want for a job?"

If we are not careful, we model for our students a world in which they are blind and helpless, trapped in a darkened room where there is one object-- chosen by someone else-- that they must fumble around for in hopes they'll know it when they touch it. Or we can model a world where they are free, clear-eyed, and know how to turn on the lights so that they can look around the room and find what they themselves have chosen to look for.

Belief in One Right Answer disempowers, limits and dehumanizes. And it's a bad model for how the world works. We don't have One Right Answer for whom we should marry (or not), where we should work, what car we should drive (or not), or how we should raise our children. We need our guiding principles, our sense of who we are, our understanding of the situation, our relationships with the other humans involved, and the particular moment in time that intersects with all the rest.

One Right Answer is not how the world works, and if it's not how the world works, then what sense does it make for schools to work that way? If we raise our children in a little world that works nothing like the world they will enter as adults, how will they ever succeed in that world?

ICYMI: For the First Day of Spring

It's nominally the first day of spring, so there's that. Here's some great reading from around the interwebs over the last week.

Cultural Competence: A Journey to Excellence

A short essay from Renee Moore about the importance of cultural competence in teaching

In Activist Era, High Schoolers Take to the Street

The Christian Science Monitor spots a trend-- the growing number of  high school activist movements, where they are coming from, and what they are accomplishing.

Gentrification and Public Schools-- it's Complicated

The title certainly covers the topic. A pretty thoughtful and detailed look at a complicated topic-- how does gentrification both affect and feed off public school changes?

Turmoil Behind the Scenes at a Nationally Lauded High School

Remember P-Tech academy, the high tech school that got so much attention that it was replicated widely and even mentioned in a State of the Union Address-- all before it was even close to graduating its first class? Turns out that they are running into some problems. Whoops.  

Disparate Measures

I kind of assume that if you read here, you definitely read Edushyster. But on the off chance you missed this one, well, don't-- Jennifer Berkshire interviews Dan Losen, the author of a new charter school story that finds that some aspects of the current charter industry are even more troubling than we thought-- and ESSA may make things even worse. How the an industry sold on civil rights is actually hugely damaging to them.

Fact Checking the Candidates

Well, the Democratic ones, anyway. Not the last word on the subject, but a fine compilation of some critical moments for Sanders, Clinton and public education.

Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools

I love articles from back in the days when reformsters didn't think they had to be sneaky or clever about their intentions and methods. Set the wayback machine for 2011. This article from Dissent chronicles how the Big Three are using their money to take control of public schools. Still powerful and informative five years later.

Nancie Atwell Busts Some Pencils

If you are not familiar with BustEd Pencils and their "fully leaded education talk," you should be. The program/website is run by Tim Slekar and Jed Hopkins of Edgewood College's education department in Madison, WI. They have a sass-heavy style that readers of this blog can appreciate, and their podcasts include interviews with a variety of education champions and commentary on the issues of the day. Plus, regular segments with Matt Damon's mom. (And yes, the bumpers sound as if they were recorded by Pawnee's The Douche ).

The most recent episode features an interview with Nancie Atwell (in the interests of full transparency, I'll note that it also includes an interview with me, and that's about as close as I'm ever going to get to being in Atwell's league) coming a year after her crowning as Best Teacher on the Planet. Atwell is a personal hero of mine, both for her work as a teacher of reading and writing and for her connection to Maine, a state with a special place in my heart because my gandfather built a cabin on a lake that has been a gathering spot for family my whole life. Anyway-- the interview.

Atwell shares some stories from the ceremony in Dubai; the secrecy surrounding the winner was such that all ten nominees had to prepare acceptance speeches and rehearse holding the twenty pound trophy. And she talks about what the year has brought since then, including a great number of obligations and opportunities. I was particularly struck by her tale of being Grand Marshall of Bath's 4th of July parade and how people really cheered--for a teacher. Atwell said, "People do, despite all the PR, love teachers and appreciate them."

Slekar asks Atwell to reflect on her infamous poat-award suggestion that young people should not go into public school teaching right now. "I wish I'd been more thoughtful about how that answer was going to play," Atwell says. But her intent was to diss the current climate, not teachers. There are schools where teachers still have autonomy, but other places where what teachers are being asked to do with children is not what they entered the profession to do.

Atwell is blunt about reform. Common Core is a disaster-- unrealistic, developmentally inappropriate, created behind closed doors by people with no knowledge of the field who had no basis in research for their work. She calls it a "reckless intrusion into public schools" and notes that "public education has been taken hostage" by a variety of corporate interests.

It is a dynamite interview, and I've left out some of the best stuff. Who gave Atwell the most blowback on her "don't go into teaching" quote? What would it take for her to advise students to become teachers? That and more are in there.

But mostly you want to hear this interview because it's encouraging to hear someone with such stature, someone who has won awards for something other than regurgitating a corporate talking point, explain in clear, simple language just how wrong the path we're on is. Listen to this interview, and then browse the BustEd Pencils library for some interviews with some other great voices of the pro-public ed movement. 
 

StudentsFirst Demands Access To Prey

StudentsFirstNY is one wing of the StudentsFirst empire, a well-heeled advocacy group dedicated to breaking down job protections for teachers (e.g. The Vergara lawsuit in CA) and expanding the market share for charter schools.

Expanding that charter market means actively rooting for the failure of public schools, because every public school that is labeled failing is a marketing opportunity for a charter school.

That's the context of Friday's story that StudentsFirstNY is demanding that 70 New York schools be kept on the "failing" list, regardless of what improvements they may or may not have achieved. The headline says "questioned," but "threatened court action" would be more to the point, as StudentsFirstNY sent a letter to New York High Poohbah of Education MaryEllen Elia saying that if she didn't put the 70 schools back on the up-next-for-demolition list, they would "explore all available remedies to ensure compliance with the law."

It's an extraordinary statement-- is StudentsFirstNY a law enforcement agency? Do they have some direct legal interest in the status of the public schools? The answers would be "no" and "no, other than the same interest that a vulture has in a dying antelope."

The department announced in February that based on test and graduation figures from last year, the 70 schools no longer qualified as dying antelope, though a department spokesperson said that "they still need a lot of work." StudentsFirstNY has nothing to say about the vital signs of the schools in question-- they just want to argue the fine print in the law, recalling the old lawyers' adage (when the facts are against you, argue the law; when the law is against you, argue the facts; when both are against you, call your opponent names). 

But StudentsFirstNY is not arguing first for students-- they are arguing that those schools ought to be a few steps closer to death, because how else are more charters going to grab another pile of those taxpayer public education dollars. It's moments like these in which some reformsters reveal just how bald and blinding their avarice, and how much education is simply another kind of business deal for them.

NM: 5 Unsurprising PARCC Supporters

D'Val Westphal at the Albuquerque Journal wants us to know that the PARCC tests are super-duper and swelleroonies. She offers what is meant to be proof of PARCC's okee-dokeetude; instead, she ends up proving that she's not a very hard working journalist.

The red flag goes up immediately. Westphal recaps the "Sturm und Drang" of last year's testing adventures, noting that there were "critics urging parents" to opt out of the tests because in their minds (Westphal loses a point for unclear pronoun reference, so don't know whose mind is being considered) the tests were so awful that "the consequences of lower school grades and lost federal funding be damned."

Couple of problems here. One is the usual assumption that any opt out parents are the unwitting dupes of test critics, and not intelligent and caring parents who made an informed decision. And then-- what are those consequences, exactly? Lower school grades would be bad why, exactly? And a pretty quick consult with Dr. Google will tell you that no state or school district has ever lost a cent of federal funding over the Big Standardized Test.

Westphal asks the question-- are the PARCC tests any good? And she has her answer lined up. Before you listen to "what teachers unions say in sound bites," Westphal wants you to consider five groups of wise experts, and what they have to say about the PARCC. Prepare to be amazed by this diverse group.

American Institutes for Research

Westphal calls them "one of the largest social science research organizations in the world," because she either didn't know or chose not to mention that AIR is also the manufacturer of the SBA-- the other Common Core test that, with PARCC, was supposed to cover the country. If you ask Coke whether or not Pepsi is any good, what do you suppose they'll say? They surely won't say, "Carbonated and heavily sweetened beverages are bad for you, and caffeine can have lots of side effects you need to watch out for."

In other words, getting an endorsement of PARCC from SBA is like getting an endorsement of automobiles form Ford Motor Company. And they have taken a ton of money from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the leading promoter of the Common Core and the testing programs that come with the Core (AIR has been on the Gates gravy train for quite a while).

Human Resources Research Organization

HumRRO's study is fresh off the press. If we check the acknowledgements we find that the study's lead funding came form the Gates Foundation and the study was completed with the cooperation and assistance of the companies whose products were being assessed.

More to the point, just a quick scan of the report methodology shows that the study used the CCSSO evaluation criteria-- which would be the same criteria from the overseers of Common Core and the criteria used by PARCC to design their test in the first place. So as an independent measure, not so impressive. You get a ruler out of your pocket and measure a stick, declaring, "Yeah, that's a foot long." Are you sure, I ask. "Certainly," you reply. "But check it for yourself. Here. Use my ruler."

Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Fordham has also been swimming in the sea of Gates money, including the buckets of green they collected for evaluating the Common Core State (ha!) Standards. Hypothetical situation-- Bill Gates offers you a few million dollars and says, "I want you to tell me if these standards are as good as I think they are." What do you suppose you do? That's not counting the cool million that the Gates gave Fordham just to stay in business. Fordham has been one of the most reliable salesman of ed reform, including the standards and the testing (they also make cute videos from time to time).

Center for American Progress

CAP was set up by John Podesta, who used to work in the Clinton White House and is now heading up the effort to put the Clintons back in the White House. It has never strayed from its support of Common Core and BS Testing advocacy.

And CAP has gotten plenty of that Gates money as well, some of it specifically "to support Common Core implementation."

National Network of State Teachers of the Year

Yes, them too. Here's the Gates just last year funneling a million dollars through the New Ventures Fund so that NNSTOY can advocate for the right policies. NNSTOY members have been a big hit at Gates gatherings.

And who runs, owns and operates the Teacher of the Year program on the state and national level? That would be the CCSSO, the same group that facilitated development of and holds the copyright for the Common Core. What are the chances that anybody gets to be selected TOTY with a critical attitude about Common Core and Common Core tests?

Diversity? Not So Much.

Westphal wants to sell these groups as so diverse that their agreement on the PARCC test must be a sign of something. But these groups are not even remotely diverse when it comes to education policy. Certainly the Bill Gates Foundation thinks they are all on the same page (the Gates loves Common Core page).

In fact, Westphal tries her hand at a little artful illustration of just how far apart these groups are by saying they "would likely never nominate the same person for U.S. education secretary." Let's check with Dr. Google once again, shall we?

 CAP "applauds" the decision to confirm John King as Secretary of Education. Mike Petrilli was out in front last fall saying that King should be put up for actual USED secretary rather than an "acting." CCSSO thought King was an excellent choice as secretary. NNSTOY was happy to welcome him to their annual conference last summer, and to join in with him on the Teach to Lead initiative. John King worked with AIR to develop an evaluation system back when he was Ed Commissioner of New York. Only HumRRO appears to have no particular opinion about John King as Secretary of Education, and their faith in CCSSO suggests they wouldn't have a beef with the group's choice.

So in fact this diverse group would have very little trouble coming up with a secretary of education on which they could agree, just as they agree that Common Core is swell and the PARCC test is thing of beauty and a great source of revenue joy forever.

Westphal finishes with one more swipe, suggesting that Albuquerque Public Schools leaders should be "enlightened" enough for "encouraging excellence rather than softly pandering to the loud voices of the opt-out movement." Oh, and one last dig-- the standard suggestion that opt outers and wimpy school leaders are afraid the PARCC will reveal that New Mexico students aren't ready for the big leagues. Well, either Westphal is too lazy to do her homework, or too committed to selling a particular point of view to want to do real journalism. Either way, she appears to be a little bush league herself.

High Infidelity

Over at EdSurge, Jeff Kiderman, co-founder of 2 Sigma Education, wants to unspool some ad copy lay down some truth about fidelity. In "The Elusive F Word in Personalized Learning," Kiderman wants to speak about "fidelity" as the secret ingredient in a great personalized learning system.

Kiderman notes that most schools providing personalized instruction will say that the shape of their personalization "depends." Which leads Kiderman to wonder, depends on what?

“Well,” they begin, “our teachers are talented professionals and we empower them to make their own decisions. We give them support and tools and perform observations several times a year. But ultimately we give them the flexibility they need to be successful and different teachers do things differently."

Oh, that damn flexibility. No, Kiderman wants to see more fidelity and faithfulness.

In the context of personalized learning, “fidelity” refers to the faithfulness of individual teachers and classes to the school's driving instructional philosophy and approach. Do teachers actually stick to the school’s chosen personalized learning plan? Do they use the software and review/utilize data as often as they should? Do they take advantage of the power of the model, tools, and data to differentiate instruction on a daily basis?

It occurs to me that Kiderman has confused "fidelity" with "compliance." Vendors like 2 Sigma Education are providing an excellent program in a box, with nifty materials and handy protocols. Teachers who insist on acting as if they are trained professionals who know something about education and their students just mess everything up. Follow the instructions, dammit. We laid out a perfect program-- now do as you're told, like a good little content provider.

Kiderman offers more evidence of the problem by way of conversations he has had with content providers and sales reps, and they say that shockingly few of the teachers follow the program that these good hearted vendors have provided. It is almost, one might conclude, as if teachers think they work for someone other than the content providers.

Kiderman says this "problem" is "swept under the rug." I disagree. In many schools with which I am familiar, teachers are pretty open-- as soon as the company sales rep/trainer (you know-- the fresh-faced one that taught for one year and bailed because teaching is hard but sales repping pays well) has left the room, the teachers roll their eyes at the bad advice and silly instructions provided by the rep and get to talking abot which parts of the program are actually useful, and which will need to be jettisoned.

Now you probably think that Kiderman sounds like the same sort of corporate systems and standardization guy who would compare teaching to working in a McDonalds. Nope. He's the kind of corporate tool who would compare teaching to working in a Starbucks.

If you want to experience the power of fidelity, fly halfway around the world to a country you’ve never visited and purchase a latte at Starbucks. 

I find his support for this viewpoint striking. He does not say that Starbucks or Amazon Prime or a Westin hotel are better because they are internationally standardized, but because the experience of having that service experience untouched by any specifics of locality. "there’s a certain sense of reliability and comfort that comes with being able to expect and trust that your needs will be met predictably and successfully no matter where you happen to be."

Reliable, comfortable, predictable-- yes, those are the qualities we strive for in education. A product that has a bland sameness no matter who the customer or the provider are.

I'm pretty sure that anybody who thinks Starbucks and my classroom are comparable enterprises has nothing useful to say about education. This is not fidelity. It is standardization, cold and stripped of any human qualities and filled with complete disregard for the people it purports to serve-- the students. That would be different from the people it actually serves-- the corporations that find one-size-fits-all maximizes ROI and allows scaling up operations for greater profit and less fuss. 

There's a comment section, so you can go share your thoughts. Kiderman tells us to stay tuned for Part II, in which he will explain how beautiful standardized compliance can be inflicted on the education system. Don't know if I'll make it back for that.

Micro-Credentials for Fun and Profit (In which Relay certifies your hand)

Part of the new wave of competency based education for teachers is the vogue of micro-credentials. Micro-credentials, sometimes linked to little badges, are an attempt to break down teaching into verrrrrry small competencies, and not coincidentally, monetize the certification of them. How micro can we get? Oh, you have no idea.

Meet Relay Graduate School of Education's micro-credential for Checking for Understanding Using Gestures. Relay is a charter-created fake school for teaching teachers, and this is some of their more spectacular work, presented by way of the good folks at Digital Promise.

You may look at the name of this micro-credential and think, "Can that be what it looks like? Surely there's some deeper, more clever technique that they're selling." Well, here's the full description.

Gestures are a CFU method in which the teacher asks a question and students signal their answers using some sort of visual sign (for instance, holding up a number of fingers, sign language, colored index cards). Unlike many other CFU methods in which teachers make inferences about student learning from a sample of students, with Gestures, the teacher visually records answers from the entire class. Generally, Gestures are most effective when the question is posed in a selected-response format (e.g., multiple choice, agree or disagree, or yes/no). 

So, yes. The people at Relay really are that ridiculous. But not as scary ridiculous as whatever proto-teacher needs actual instruction on how to ask students a question and have them raise their hands. We should also note that this technique dovetails nicely with the charter philosophy that emphasizes keeping students voices as silent as possible.

Now, granted, there are layers of dumb here. The suggestion that this method is different because teachers don't have to make inferences-- are we to assume that in this method, the teacher does not need to be able to tell this difference between a confident student, an uncertain student and a just-plain-guessing student. And what do you mean, "visually record answers"-- am I going to whip out my phone and take a picture? But thanks for the tip about selected-response format; I was going to go ahead and have my students answer "So what are some of the major contributing factors to the start of the Great European War?" with hand gestures.

But Relay is not done providing dumb instructions about this technique.

You should only use it "to check for understanding of important content." And you should use "visually distinct" gestures. For example-- and I swear that I am not making this up-- you should not use thumbs up and thumbs down because they are hard to tell apart. The teacher should also give "crisp, in-cue signals" about when to make the gesture, for example saying "Show me your answer when I say three-- one, two..." Also, ask follow-up questions, and make appropriate adjustments in instruction depending on what happens when you do your check for understanding.

To earn this micro-credential, you need to submit two videos and a write up, and the handy guide and rubric is here, and one cannot help wonder in what hollow village of the damned is any of this necessary? If you actually have to be taught how to do this, is there the remotest possibility that you will be fit to work in a classroom with live small humans? But this micro-credential carries a December 2014 copyright, so no doubt your school is loaded with people who are officially credentialed to ask student questions like "Who thinks the answer is A?" and then have students raise their hands.

Here are some of the other excellent micro-credentials being made available for teachers:

Calling Students By Name

Research indicates that students are more responsive when the teacher uses their name. This micro-credential will certify that you can learn a student's name and insert it in a spoken sentence. (Note: Making eye contact is a separate micro-credential).

Acronyming

Why talk about "check for understanding," a phrase that anyone can understand, when you can say CFU instead and sound really special. This micro-credential (MC) will train the teacher to create acronyms for any occasion (AFAO) so that you can credential obvious versions of educational reality (COVER) when you align school standards (ASS). Once you have mastered educational habits everyone already does (HEAD) , you can increase your bazillion useless teacher trainings (BUTT) as well as wield a zillion obnoxious obsfucatory trainings (WAZOOT) and have a million minor educational revelations (HAMMER). So as you COVER your ASS and with HEAD, up your BUTT, you can MC HAMMER your way to excellence out the WAZOOT.

Walking and Talking

Teachers are sometimes called upon to both walk and talk at the same time in a classroom. This micro-credential certifies that the teacher is able to both speak words and move feet nearly simultaneously. A companion credential to our popular Walk and Chew Gum micro-credential.

Passing Out Papers

Teachers will focus on how to spot the student name on the paper and then identify the student who has that name in the classroom. Teacher will then grasp the paper with her own hand and extend that hand toward the identified student. This micro-credential can become more powerful when combined with the Calling Students By Name micro-credential.

Eating Lunch

Teacher will be certified in the use of all three major utensils and demonstrate the ability to divide food into smaller pieces that can reasonably be expected to fit in the teacher's mouth, inserting those pieces, chewing, and swallowing. Note: Solids only. Eating Soup for Lunch is a separate micro-credential.

Breathing

Research suggests that teachers who breathe are generally more effective in increasing student achievement. We considered creating Inhaling and Exhaling as separate micro-credentials, but eventually you reach a point where it foolish to keep breaking down ordinary actions regularly performed by sentient beings into tiny micro-credentials.

Note

There have been requests for credentials centered around interacting with young carbon-based life forms as if both they and the teachers are thinking, feeling human beings who can enter into a teacher-student relationship that allows for communication and understanding that is enhanced by the teacher's professional knowledge, training and experience. We repeat our position that such an approach is far too broad and messy to ever be offered as a micro-credential. We'll just stick with classics like How To Have Your Students Raise Their Hands When You Ask a Question.