The blogging news of the week is actual twitter news-- the indispensable Mercedes Schneider is on twitter at last. Catch her at @deutsch29blog. Now for your reading...
The Weird Hypocrisy at the Heart of the Case Against Unions
At The Week, Jeff Spross looks at the peculiar attempt to redefine what qualifies as "political activity" in the Friedrichs case.
Campbell Brown: The New Leader of the Propaganda Arm of School Privatization
Kali Holloway takes a long, detailed look at just how thoroughly the forces of school privatization have lined up the media behind them. This is very complete and kind of discouraging, but if you only read one thing I recommend to you, read this.
Chicago Is Everytown USA
Daniel Katz takes a look at the Chicago strike and asks why it isn't happening in more cities-- and looks at just how bad things have gotten in some cities.
Proposed Pennsylvania School Code Is Massive Giveaway to Charter Schools
I was going to write about this, but tireless blogger Steven Singer already is on the case. Pennsylvania is just barely emerging from the mess that was our nine-month budget fiasco, and now here comes a revised school code that looks like a big fat Christmas party for PA charters (including our chronically sucky cyber charters).
Does Harlem Need Diddy or Educational Equity
Jose Luis Vilson reacts to the news that Diddy and Steve Perry are going to team up to fix education in Harlem.
10 Reading Instruction Non-Negotiables
Russ Walsh is an experienced reading instruction expert who has a gift for making education policies and programs comprehensible for regular civilians. This is a great example of Russ in action-- plain words about what a reading program has to have in place.
It's 2016 and PARCC Still Sucks
Sarah Blaine with some plain language about opting out in 2016. Good luck, testing folks, in the week ahead.
Sunday, April 3, 2016
Classics and Trash
My apologies to anyone who clicked on this for an informative or splenetic rant about some education issue. But my niece has a writing question, and I hate posting long notes on Facebook, so I'm just going to put it here. This is far more than she asked for and certainly not what anyone not-my-niece signed up for. TL;DR.
So Paige-- here's the question you asked.
Very serious question- what distinguishes a classic/timeless romance novel from a nicholas sparks, or a harlequin romance?...what are examples of books that I should read to maybe find that more obvious difference? Or is it just the right marketing and publisher?
This is my niece. Doesn't she look like someone you should hire as a super-vp of marketing or some other equally zillion dollar job?
Categories of Written Stuff
I learned this from Mike Eichholtz, and with some modifications, I've used it ever since. I have no idea if he borrowed it from somewhere else.
There arethree four categories of writing. Good trash, bad trash, and classics. I add great works to that list.
Trash is written to make a buck and pay the bills, and it is meant to be commercial. But there is good trash and bad trash, and the difference between good and bad trash is the level of craft, skill, and quality (I will get back to that). Twilight is a good example of bad trash-- actually, terrible awful no-good very bad trash. It's poorly written on every level, from the badly constructed sentences to the artless images and plot to the flat and unbelievable characters all the way up to the romantization of behavior that checks off every item on the "Are you hooked up with an abuser" checklist. So, bad, but clearly highly lucrative.
Harry Potter, on the other hand, is good trash. Well constructed, well-written, well-drawn characters, compelling stories. Stephen King- good trash. John Green- arguably good trash. Hunger Games- arguably bad trash.
Classics, of course, are works that stand the test of time. They have a universal quality, something recognizable and relateable over time. Nobody knows whether something is a classic or not until a few decades have passed.
The dirty secret of classics is that they mostly started out as good trash. Take Shakespeare-- he was not trying to create genius work for the ages, but was just trying to make a buck and do his job. He just happened to do it very, very well, with genius command of the language and a full understanding of how human beings work, so that centuries later we can recognize his characters as real people and the themes and concerns of his work as still with us.
Good vs. Bad
Characters that are recognizable as human beings. Concerns that connect to deepest human motivators. Themes that offer ideas and insights that are both specific and broad. Good command of the language. Good control of organization, structure and materials of the work. Does the writer say what she has to say effectively.
Great Works
Works that have large or important qualities but for one reason or another, can't quite transcend their time and place, and may, in fact, have value because they are a window on their time rather than having a universal, timeless quality. Moby Dick. Maybe the Great Gatsby. Their characters are recognizable and real in the sense that you can think, "Yeah, if I was shoehorned into the societal boxes of those specific circumstances in that particular time and place, I might turn out like that."
I suspect that Austen is at least partly a Great Work writer-- her characters are recognizable and human, but they live in a world that is so strictly defined by its rules that it's hard to relate to some features of it. On the other hand, great fantasy and SF creates entire worlds that nobody lives in and still manages to create legit classics.
So, Romance
Your aunt wondered if romance and classic are mutually exclusive, and that might be a good question-- "romance" is so culturally defined, along with the gender roles that feed into it, that it might be a super challenge to come up with something that's universal. Romance itself is arguably pretty specific-- that your dream relationship is specific to you, and then how that plays out in the actual world is very specific to your own situation. But I have to believe there are universal elements in there that somebody ought to be able to capture in literature.
Romance novels seem similar because (at least this used to be true) the publishers literally handed writers a chapter-by-chapter outline of how the romance would play out. Nicholas Sparks is the king of recycling certain story elements in different ways ("Where will I insert the tragically dead character this time?") but these kinds of writing, whether they're good or bad trash, are aiming to evoke emotions rather than explain or explore anything. In other words, instead of saying, "Let me show you something about how the world works," the writers are saying, "I want to show you something that will make you cry." Maybe there's an argument for calculated emotional manipulation as a worthy literary goal, but I'm doubtful.
The really challenge about romance writing is that while the story may seem to be about a couple, it is almost always one person's story. Titanic the movie is Rose's story; Jack is just a prop for her growth. Your beloved OC was Ryan's story and Seth's story. Romance can be a critical element of how the character changes and grows, but ultimately it's all about how the character changes and grows, not about the romance. Writers of continuing fiction like soap operas, tv series, and comic books have all struggled with showing how a character can grow within a relationship-- generally speaking, when the couple finally get together, the writers can't figure out how to not be boring and show characters that continue to change and grow, and do so as part of a couple.
The need to have a narrative center (a point of view character) is also problematic for writing about romance because it makes the romance appear one way-- we look at what the relationship means just to the main character, which feeds some people's desire to see their prospective partner in terms of "What that person means to me and what I get out of this" instead of a more complicated two-person thing. Now you've got me wondering about how well any literature portrays relationships at all.
So as with a travel novel or a fantasy adventure novel or a war novel, the "genre" is not so much the thing as it is the bucket that the thing is carried in.
So can you be a trashy romance novelist without hurting your brand? I'm no expert in branding, but I do think you can probably write trashy romance novels that are also great pieces of writing. I would imagine you do it by honoring both the tropes and traditions of the romance novel while filling it up with real characters, well-observed behavior, and a world that is real and recognizable. And it doesn't hurt to have sold something-- book publishers seem to ask "Is this a great work of literature" far less often than they ask "Can we get a bunch of people to give us money for copies of this?"
Your great grandmother did indeed say on more than one occasion that she liked Harlequin romances because she could fall asleep reading them and they were so light that they wouldn't wake her up when they fell on her. As readers, we might want something more, but maybe not a a great romance novel so much as a great novel about a character who finds a way to be in the world and as part of that finds a way to be with another person. If I were trying to write a romance novel, I would try to write that.
So Paige-- here's the question you asked.
Very serious question- what distinguishes a classic/timeless romance novel from a nicholas sparks, or a harlequin romance?...what are examples of books that I should read to maybe find that more obvious difference? Or is it just the right marketing and publisher?
Categories of Written Stuff
I learned this from Mike Eichholtz, and with some modifications, I've used it ever since. I have no idea if he borrowed it from somewhere else.
There are
Trash is written to make a buck and pay the bills, and it is meant to be commercial. But there is good trash and bad trash, and the difference between good and bad trash is the level of craft, skill, and quality (I will get back to that). Twilight is a good example of bad trash-- actually, terrible awful no-good very bad trash. It's poorly written on every level, from the badly constructed sentences to the artless images and plot to the flat and unbelievable characters all the way up to the romantization of behavior that checks off every item on the "Are you hooked up with an abuser" checklist. So, bad, but clearly highly lucrative.
Harry Potter, on the other hand, is good trash. Well constructed, well-written, well-drawn characters, compelling stories. Stephen King- good trash. John Green- arguably good trash. Hunger Games- arguably bad trash.
Classics, of course, are works that stand the test of time. They have a universal quality, something recognizable and relateable over time. Nobody knows whether something is a classic or not until a few decades have passed.
The dirty secret of classics is that they mostly started out as good trash. Take Shakespeare-- he was not trying to create genius work for the ages, but was just trying to make a buck and do his job. He just happened to do it very, very well, with genius command of the language and a full understanding of how human beings work, so that centuries later we can recognize his characters as real people and the themes and concerns of his work as still with us.
Good vs. Bad
Characters that are recognizable as human beings. Concerns that connect to deepest human motivators. Themes that offer ideas and insights that are both specific and broad. Good command of the language. Good control of organization, structure and materials of the work. Does the writer say what she has to say effectively.
Great Works
Works that have large or important qualities but for one reason or another, can't quite transcend their time and place, and may, in fact, have value because they are a window on their time rather than having a universal, timeless quality. Moby Dick. Maybe the Great Gatsby. Their characters are recognizable and real in the sense that you can think, "Yeah, if I was shoehorned into the societal boxes of those specific circumstances in that particular time and place, I might turn out like that."
I suspect that Austen is at least partly a Great Work writer-- her characters are recognizable and human, but they live in a world that is so strictly defined by its rules that it's hard to relate to some features of it. On the other hand, great fantasy and SF creates entire worlds that nobody lives in and still manages to create legit classics.
So, Romance
Your aunt wondered if romance and classic are mutually exclusive, and that might be a good question-- "romance" is so culturally defined, along with the gender roles that feed into it, that it might be a super challenge to come up with something that's universal. Romance itself is arguably pretty specific-- that your dream relationship is specific to you, and then how that plays out in the actual world is very specific to your own situation. But I have to believe there are universal elements in there that somebody ought to be able to capture in literature.
Romance novels seem similar because (at least this used to be true) the publishers literally handed writers a chapter-by-chapter outline of how the romance would play out. Nicholas Sparks is the king of recycling certain story elements in different ways ("Where will I insert the tragically dead character this time?") but these kinds of writing, whether they're good or bad trash, are aiming to evoke emotions rather than explain or explore anything. In other words, instead of saying, "Let me show you something about how the world works," the writers are saying, "I want to show you something that will make you cry." Maybe there's an argument for calculated emotional manipulation as a worthy literary goal, but I'm doubtful.
The really challenge about romance writing is that while the story may seem to be about a couple, it is almost always one person's story. Titanic the movie is Rose's story; Jack is just a prop for her growth. Your beloved OC was Ryan's story and Seth's story. Romance can be a critical element of how the character changes and grows, but ultimately it's all about how the character changes and grows, not about the romance. Writers of continuing fiction like soap operas, tv series, and comic books have all struggled with showing how a character can grow within a relationship-- generally speaking, when the couple finally get together, the writers can't figure out how to not be boring and show characters that continue to change and grow, and do so as part of a couple.
The need to have a narrative center (a point of view character) is also problematic for writing about romance because it makes the romance appear one way-- we look at what the relationship means just to the main character, which feeds some people's desire to see their prospective partner in terms of "What that person means to me and what I get out of this" instead of a more complicated two-person thing. Now you've got me wondering about how well any literature portrays relationships at all.
So as with a travel novel or a fantasy adventure novel or a war novel, the "genre" is not so much the thing as it is the bucket that the thing is carried in.
So can you be a trashy romance novelist without hurting your brand? I'm no expert in branding, but I do think you can probably write trashy romance novels that are also great pieces of writing. I would imagine you do it by honoring both the tropes and traditions of the romance novel while filling it up with real characters, well-observed behavior, and a world that is real and recognizable. And it doesn't hurt to have sold something-- book publishers seem to ask "Is this a great work of literature" far less often than they ask "Can we get a bunch of people to give us money for copies of this?"
Your great grandmother did indeed say on more than one occasion that she liked Harlequin romances because she could fall asleep reading them and they were so light that they wouldn't wake her up when they fell on her. As readers, we might want something more, but maybe not a a great romance novel so much as a great novel about a character who finds a way to be in the world and as part of that finds a way to be with another person. If I were trying to write a romance novel, I would try to write that.
Chicago Schools Raise Baloney Bar
The managers of the Chicago Public School system (it may be too much of a stretch to call them leaders) have managed to set a new standard in high-grade baloney with their reaction to the one-day teacher strike on April 1.
CPS has filed a complaint with the Illinois Labor Relations Board against the Chicago Teachers Union for its one-day strike on April 1. CPS CEO Forrest Claypool has characterized the strike as "illegal" but mostly he wants Chicago teachers to understand who is the real boss here.
“We think it’s important that it be clearly established that whether children are in school and being educated is not subject to the whims of the Chicago Teachers Union leadership,” Claypool said during a news conference Friday afternoon. “It is subject to clear, unambiguous state law.”
There's no particular reason to think that Claypool is correct in calling the strike illegal, but that's not the ballsy part of his action. That's the part where Claypool also announced that he wants CTU to reimburse the district for the costs of the strike. This is not just bizarrely audacious in its refusal to take any responsibility for the issues in Chicago schools. It is not just strikingly wrongheaded because CPS should have been out on the street with the teachers, demanding that the state provide Chicago schools with the resources they're supposed to have. It's not just a plate of unvarnished baloney because CTU could head off its labor issues by dealing with its teachers fairly and decently.
No, what raises the baloney bar here is that April 1st is not the first "unscheduled" day off in the past several weeks, because CPS has instituted a series of three "furlough" days-- days on which it will shut down schools, dock teachers pay, and leave students and families to their own devices. In other words, a furlough day is exactly like a strike day-- only called by the district instead of the union.
The first of these furlough days was Good Friday-- exactly one week before the one-day strike.
Why call a furlough day? To save money-- about $30 million in all.
So the cut day on March 25 saved the district a bunch of money, so teachers should suck it up and take the pay cut. But the cut day on April 1st cost the district very much money, so teachers should pay them back.
CPS managers could not do a better job of displaying exactly what kind of baloney-slinging, control-freaky, honesty-impaired goons the teachers of Chicago have to deal with. No wonder they have to strike for a day just to get a point across. Yes, in labor disputes there are maneuvers and spin and ways to leverage the powers involved. But it's hard to deal with someone whose go-to move is "making ridiculous shit up." Good luck to the Chicago union leaders who have to deal with these guys.
CPS has filed a complaint with the Illinois Labor Relations Board against the Chicago Teachers Union for its one-day strike on April 1. CPS CEO Forrest Claypool has characterized the strike as "illegal" but mostly he wants Chicago teachers to understand who is the real boss here.
“We think it’s important that it be clearly established that whether children are in school and being educated is not subject to the whims of the Chicago Teachers Union leadership,” Claypool said during a news conference Friday afternoon. “It is subject to clear, unambiguous state law.”
There's no particular reason to think that Claypool is correct in calling the strike illegal, but that's not the ballsy part of his action. That's the part where Claypool also announced that he wants CTU to reimburse the district for the costs of the strike. This is not just bizarrely audacious in its refusal to take any responsibility for the issues in Chicago schools. It is not just strikingly wrongheaded because CPS should have been out on the street with the teachers, demanding that the state provide Chicago schools with the resources they're supposed to have. It's not just a plate of unvarnished baloney because CTU could head off its labor issues by dealing with its teachers fairly and decently.
No, what raises the baloney bar here is that April 1st is not the first "unscheduled" day off in the past several weeks, because CPS has instituted a series of three "furlough" days-- days on which it will shut down schools, dock teachers pay, and leave students and families to their own devices. In other words, a furlough day is exactly like a strike day-- only called by the district instead of the union.
The first of these furlough days was Good Friday-- exactly one week before the one-day strike.
Why call a furlough day? To save money-- about $30 million in all.
So the cut day on March 25 saved the district a bunch of money, so teachers should suck it up and take the pay cut. But the cut day on April 1st cost the district very much money, so teachers should pay them back.
CPS managers could not do a better job of displaying exactly what kind of baloney-slinging, control-freaky, honesty-impaired goons the teachers of Chicago have to deal with. No wonder they have to strike for a day just to get a point across. Yes, in labor disputes there are maneuvers and spin and ways to leverage the powers involved. But it's hard to deal with someone whose go-to move is "making ridiculous shit up." Good luck to the Chicago union leaders who have to deal with these guys.
Saturday, April 2, 2016
Moskowitz Hearts the BS Test
“I really believe in the tests – I seem to be the only one left
standing,” Moskowitz said Friday afternoon, immediately after addressing
roughly 2,300 Success Academy students who gathered for a “slam the
exam” pep rally at the City College of New York in Harlem.
Alex Zimmerman at ChalkbeatNY talked to Eva Moskowitz about her love of testing and the horrible horridness of opting out, and what ensued was a quick medley of testocrat talking points. Let's see how many she can check off the list.
Achievement gap. The rich kids have to take the test so that we can tell if the poor kids are doing as well on the test. This assumes that the test is measuring anything worth measuring, and that getting poor students to score as high as rich students will somehow erase the effects of their poverty. This seems unlikely.
Preparation. Moskowitz wants you to remember that if your child will not be able to opt out of the SAT or the Common Application. Of course, the Common Application is not a test. And you can already opt out of the SAT by applying to one of 850+ colleges and universities that don't require SAT or ACT scores. Beyond that, does anyone seriously think that taking the Big Standardized Test in elementary school is preparation for the SAT?
Zimmerman notes that Moskowitz's Success Academies have been noted for a text-centered culture as well as "draconian" discipline and pushing out of students. Moskowitz said that SA is absolutely not a test-centered culture, but making that point in the middle of a massive pep rally for testing is a long reach. SA is famed for its high BS Test scores; less widely noted (and Zimmerman doesn't note it, either) is that SA grads don't do well enough on placement tests to get into NYC top high schools.
Moskowitz needs test scores because they remain the top marketing pitch of Success Academy. She certainly can't sell the school as a school that your child may or may not be allowed to finish, or as a place run by the highest paid school administrator in NYC-- including the head of the entire NYC school system.
Alex Zimmerman at ChalkbeatNY talked to Eva Moskowitz about her love of testing and the horrible horridness of opting out, and what ensued was a quick medley of testocrat talking points. Let's see how many she can check off the list.
Achievement gap. The rich kids have to take the test so that we can tell if the poor kids are doing as well on the test. This assumes that the test is measuring anything worth measuring, and that getting poor students to score as high as rich students will somehow erase the effects of their poverty. This seems unlikely.
Preparation. Moskowitz wants you to remember that if your child will not be able to opt out of the SAT or the Common Application. Of course, the Common Application is not a test. And you can already opt out of the SAT by applying to one of 850+ colleges and universities that don't require SAT or ACT scores. Beyond that, does anyone seriously think that taking the Big Standardized Test in elementary school is preparation for the SAT?
Zimmerman notes that Moskowitz's Success Academies have been noted for a text-centered culture as well as "draconian" discipline and pushing out of students. Moskowitz said that SA is absolutely not a test-centered culture, but making that point in the middle of a massive pep rally for testing is a long reach. SA is famed for its high BS Test scores; less widely noted (and Zimmerman doesn't note it, either) is that SA grads don't do well enough on placement tests to get into NYC top high schools.
Moskowitz needs test scores because they remain the top marketing pitch of Success Academy. She certainly can't sell the school as a school that your child may or may not be allowed to finish, or as a place run by the highest paid school administrator in NYC-- including the head of the entire NYC school system.
How Eli Broad Operates
This would be an easy story to miss, a niche piece of coverage of interest to people who have been wondering what really happened to Kansas City schools almost five years ago.
There's a lot to sort out in Joe Robertson's story for the Kansas City Star. School board politics, a reformy superintendent, an unexpected departure. John Covington had begun overhauling the district, and then, without warning, he was out. His allies and opponents were both caught flatfooted. Accusations were made, relationships were broken, and the district was left, as Robertson puts it, "on the brink." Covington moved on immediately to Michigan to head up the EAA, the Michigan version of an achievement district, a state run (or at least state-handed-to-charter-operator) collection of "failed" schools (which is now itself doomed).
But I don't want to get into the details of Kansas City, messy as they were, because we now know why Covington left. Covington was "trained" by the Broad Academy, billionaire Eli Broad's personal pretend superintendent training program, and if you wondered how that network of graduate operates, here's the critical moment from Robertson's story.
Then came a call from one of Covington’s contacts at The Broad Foundation. Covington was a graduate of the foundation’s Superintendents Academy. Be ready, his contact told him, to receive a call from the foundation’s founder — Eli Broad.
The call came from Spain, Covington said. “He (Broad) said, ‘John, I need you to go to Detroit.’ ”
That, Covington says, is the reason he left.
Eli Broad made a phone call, and that was it. Eli Broad can pick up the phone, give the word, and one of his people packs up, breaks professional and personal relationships without a word of explanation, and leaves town.
This is the reformster approach at its most naked and ugly. Our Betters, the men with money and power, want to be free to operate our education system like their own personal fiefdom, managed by people who answer to one authority and one authority only. This is a school system run by a shadow government, and a shadow government that is run by a godfather, an emperor, an autocrat. This is the opposite of democracy, the opposite of transparency, the opposite of a system that worries for one nano-second about the concerns of the little people, the Lessers.
This is the guy who wants to take over LA schools. This is the guy who is funding dozens of charter policy initiatives. And this is how he operates. Pick up a phone. Make a call, and his will is done.
There's a lot to sort out in Joe Robertson's story for the Kansas City Star. School board politics, a reformy superintendent, an unexpected departure. John Covington had begun overhauling the district, and then, without warning, he was out. His allies and opponents were both caught flatfooted. Accusations were made, relationships were broken, and the district was left, as Robertson puts it, "on the brink." Covington moved on immediately to Michigan to head up the EAA, the Michigan version of an achievement district, a state run (or at least state-handed-to-charter-operator) collection of "failed" schools (which is now itself doomed).
But I don't want to get into the details of Kansas City, messy as they were, because we now know why Covington left. Covington was "trained" by the Broad Academy, billionaire Eli Broad's personal pretend superintendent training program, and if you wondered how that network of graduate operates, here's the critical moment from Robertson's story.
Then came a call from one of Covington’s contacts at The Broad Foundation. Covington was a graduate of the foundation’s Superintendents Academy. Be ready, his contact told him, to receive a call from the foundation’s founder — Eli Broad.
The call came from Spain, Covington said. “He (Broad) said, ‘John, I need you to go to Detroit.’ ”
That, Covington says, is the reason he left.
Eli Broad made a phone call, and that was it. Eli Broad can pick up the phone, give the word, and one of his people packs up, breaks professional and personal relationships without a word of explanation, and leaves town.
This is the reformster approach at its most naked and ugly. Our Betters, the men with money and power, want to be free to operate our education system like their own personal fiefdom, managed by people who answer to one authority and one authority only. This is a school system run by a shadow government, and a shadow government that is run by a godfather, an emperor, an autocrat. This is the opposite of democracy, the opposite of transparency, the opposite of a system that worries for one nano-second about the concerns of the little people, the Lessers.
This is the guy who wants to take over LA schools. This is the guy who is funding dozens of charter policy initiatives. And this is how he operates. Pick up a phone. Make a call, and his will is done.
Testing Has a Mascot
The first hurdle that the Big Standardized Test must clear is getting students to actually care about the Big Standardized Test. Some schools attack this hurdle with pep rallies to get the students all psyched up for the BS Test. Some of these involve badly rewritten pop songs, while on at least one Really Bad Day, it involved watching a man accidentally set himself on fire.
But if your school is looking for a way to get the students all pumped up for the PARCC or PSSA or SOL (best/worst test name ever), you have one other option.
Meet YoJo. The name (according to its creator) means absolutely nothing (though I do now know that Yojo is a band, a piece of Asian holistic culture, and a place you do yoga. You're welcome.) You can scan the YoJo's website for lots of info, but I'll warn you right now-- the whole thing is done in Comic Sans.
YoJo (originally named Fuzzball, so a nonsense name is a step up) premiered in March of 2000. He's the brainchild of Bromley Lowe, whose previous work included a stint as the Baltimore Oriole Bird (Lowe's best friend is, apparently, the Philly Phanatic guy, and YoJo takes an annual trip to the Mascot Hall of Fame gathering which, yes, is a thing. You're welcome.). YoJo is also an indirect result of the 1994-95 Major League Baseball strike; you can read Lowe's whole story here (in comic sans).
Lowe's wife was an Assistant Principal, and Lowe set out to bring the mascot art to school assemblies. And Lowe is not afraid to set his personal bar high. The website lists a mission of being the "#1 professional entertainer for elementary school age children" and names seven larger goals including making a living at this work and getting on tv. Did I mention that Lowe has been at this for sixteen years?
YoJo has four programs, including shows about reading, treating your body right, bullying and his absolutely most popular bit, a program entitled "Ace Your Test." Here's the promo for the PARCC (there are also versions for Virginia's SOL and Pennsylvania's PSSA).
Yes. To all the testocrats who insist that the new improved BS Tests are impervious to test prep, here is a video of a man doing test prep while dressed in a large furry mascot costume. You're welcome.
YoJo has loads of accolades, including statements like this one from a Maryland principal: "When other principals ask how we got some of the highest test scores in the city, I tell them that YoJo is our secret." And if you check out YoJo's Facebook page, you'll see that the big blue testing mascot has been busy.
I stumbled across YoJo because someone was on line complaining about having a big blue muppet coming to their school to sell the PARCC. But after reading up on the guy, I came away with two conclusions.
One is that this is a guy who is just responding to a market that somebody else has created. I am not excited about living in a world where you can make a living going from school to school trying to help small children cope with the stupidities of BS Testing.
But I was also struck by Lowe's professionalism. This is a guy who has spent his adult life in big furry suits, networking with other suit wearers, and learning how to work a crowd and how best to do his thing. You can see him on a local MD tv show in 2010, talking about his work-- while he clearly enjoys his work, he is not just some case of arrested development goofing around (and in sixteen years he has never set himself on fire).
In short, this is a guy who actually approaches his work with children more seriously and professionally than the edu-amateurs who are busy trying to use BS Testing to break down and sell off the pieces of public education. Given the choice, I would rather have YoJo in my school than David Coleman. Though the idea of watching YoJo wrestle with Coleman and take him to the mat in a big mascot pratfall-- well, let's end with that image. You're welcome.
But if your school is looking for a way to get the students all pumped up for the PARCC or PSSA or SOL (best/worst test name ever), you have one other option.
Meet YoJo. The name (according to its creator) means absolutely nothing (though I do now know that Yojo is a band, a piece of Asian holistic culture, and a place you do yoga. You're welcome.) You can scan the YoJo's website for lots of info, but I'll warn you right now-- the whole thing is done in Comic Sans.
YoJo (originally named Fuzzball, so a nonsense name is a step up) premiered in March of 2000. He's the brainchild of Bromley Lowe, whose previous work included a stint as the Baltimore Oriole Bird (Lowe's best friend is, apparently, the Philly Phanatic guy, and YoJo takes an annual trip to the Mascot Hall of Fame gathering which, yes, is a thing. You're welcome.). YoJo is also an indirect result of the 1994-95 Major League Baseball strike; you can read Lowe's whole story here (in comic sans).
Lowe's wife was an Assistant Principal, and Lowe set out to bring the mascot art to school assemblies. And Lowe is not afraid to set his personal bar high. The website lists a mission of being the "#1 professional entertainer for elementary school age children" and names seven larger goals including making a living at this work and getting on tv. Did I mention that Lowe has been at this for sixteen years?
YoJo has four programs, including shows about reading, treating your body right, bullying and his absolutely most popular bit, a program entitled "Ace Your Test." Here's the promo for the PARCC (there are also versions for Virginia's SOL and Pennsylvania's PSSA).
YoJo doesn't just get the excitement up and the nerves under control. YoJo also teaches test-specific test prep test-taking strategies.
Yes. To all the testocrats who insist that the new improved BS Tests are impervious to test prep, here is a video of a man doing test prep while dressed in a large furry mascot costume. You're welcome.
YoJo has loads of accolades, including statements like this one from a Maryland principal: "When other principals ask how we got some of the highest test scores in the city, I tell them that YoJo is our secret." And if you check out YoJo's Facebook page, you'll see that the big blue testing mascot has been busy.
I stumbled across YoJo because someone was on line complaining about having a big blue muppet coming to their school to sell the PARCC. But after reading up on the guy, I came away with two conclusions.
One is that this is a guy who is just responding to a market that somebody else has created. I am not excited about living in a world where you can make a living going from school to school trying to help small children cope with the stupidities of BS Testing.
But I was also struck by Lowe's professionalism. This is a guy who has spent his adult life in big furry suits, networking with other suit wearers, and learning how to work a crowd and how best to do his thing. You can see him on a local MD tv show in 2010, talking about his work-- while he clearly enjoys his work, he is not just some case of arrested development goofing around (and in sixteen years he has never set himself on fire).
In short, this is a guy who actually approaches his work with children more seriously and professionally than the edu-amateurs who are busy trying to use BS Testing to break down and sell off the pieces of public education. Given the choice, I would rather have YoJo in my school than David Coleman. Though the idea of watching YoJo wrestle with Coleman and take him to the mat in a big mascot pratfall-- well, let's end with that image. You're welcome.
Friday, April 1, 2016
Defining Competency Based Education
Hiding amongst the many pages of the Competency Works website is a wiki where some folks are nibbling away at a definition of competency based education. This website has been a clearing house for all things CBE for a while, so I'm going to go ahead and consider them both fans of and conversant in the CBE biz, which makes their five-point picture of the increasingly controversial educational-- what do we call it? Policy? Approach? Gee-gaw? Doo-dad?
At any rate, let's see what the CBE folks think they're onto. And not onto. Because one of the problems I'm seeing with this whatsahoozy is that it's actually several gizmos soldered together (with some of the soldering work on a par with what I did in my seventh grade shop class).
So these folks start out with their definition, which is
...a systems model in which (1) teaching and learning are designed to ensure students are becoming proficient by advancing on demonstrated mastery and (2) schools are organized to provide timely and differentiated support to ensure equity.
Yeah, I'm not sure "systems model" is really any clearer that "dinglefutzer," but the rest of the definition is useful, particularly in what it doesn't include. And the writers get even clearer about that non-inclusion in their exclusionary paragraph:
The term competency-based and mastery-based have also recently been used by vendors to describe adaptive software. We take the position that competency-based education empowers teachers to draw upon their professional knowledge in teaching and reaching every student. Digital tools to personalize instruction should be used appropriately based on the overall pedagogical philosophy of the school and the needs of the students. A classroom cannot be deemed competency-based or personalized simply because students are learning with digital content, are using adaptive software, or have flexible pacing. (Emphasis mine)
In other words, we've got some people out there selling something they're calling "competency based education" that isn't actually competency based education, according to some experts. This is perhaps not a shock, as it has happened with every single educational idea ever promoted in the history of ever.
But the wiki goes on to list five "design principles" that may further clarify the issues for us. Let's check them out.
Design Principle 1: Students Advance upon Demonstrated Mastery
Students work at a level that is an appropriate amount of challenge. When they master a skill or area of knowledge, they move on. Their movement through the curriculum is based on when they master the material, not on spending a certain amount of time in the class. That means that students will move through school at different speeds. It also means that teachers have to "gather evidence" of proficiency.
As I've said before, this is one of the Huge Problems of CBE. Defining "mastery" is way harder than it first seems, particularly if we define it as an absolute level separate from the student in question. If we have one set level of mastery, we either end up with students finishing high school in a month or students who never get out of ninth grade. And just how proficient must one be to be a master, anyway? And can all skills be demonstrated in one clear mastery activity?
Saying, "Hey, we left her sitting in a crochet class for nine months, so she should be able to build a sweater now," is problematic, but a strictly mastery-based approach is too far on the other end of the pendulum.
Design Principle 2: Explicit and Measurable Learning Objectives Empower Students
I disagree. One of the biggest challenges I face, particularly with my high function students, is that they would like to be told exactly what hoop to jump through in exactly what way so that they can quickly and easily go through the motions without having to actually engage.
Likewise, the mark of an educated person is that they have their own internal compass, their own ability to mark and measure success, linked to an intrinsic reward system. "Explicit, measurable" objectives almost always boil down to extrinsic rewards based on externally designed and deployed goals. Sometimes real learning means figuring out how to find your way through the fog, not simply learning to follow directions and meet someone else's expectations. Is this same issue a problem in traditional non-CBE classrooms? Absolutely. But it's a problem that CBE isn't very good at helping to solve.
Now, it's not impossible. You could involve the student in setting the explicit, measurable goals. But this design principle does not lean that way. It leans instead toward asking not "what do we want to know" but instead "what can we most easily measure." The principle only argues for "sharing" the goals and measures with the students-- not letting them in on the design. It also argues for transparency, which I agree with.
Design Principle 3: Assessment Is Meaningful and a Positive Learning Experience for Students
Hey, look! We agree on something. Authentic assessment is meaningful, an activity that culminates everything that has come before, an activity that lets the student experience that pleasurable "snap" of feeling all that has come before fall into place.
That said, this design puts a lot of emphasis on "formative assessment" which, unless we're using the very loosest of definitions for "assessment," is a path to drudgery and, once again, teaching students that the purpose of learning is to complete a bunch of tasks designed by someone else in order to satisfy someone else. So, boo on that part.
Design Principle 4: Students Receive Rapid, Differentiated Support
We talk about this like it's novel and mysterious. It isn't. Good teachers have been doing it forever. Or rather, they've been trying to do it for forever. Because it's pretty much impossible if you have forty students in your classroom with no aids and a desire to have some kind of life outside school (I'm not saying a whole second career, but maybe occasionally eating a meal with one's family not interrupted by a stack of papers). And before you guys selling the whole computer-based learning platform start into your song and dance about how you can help with this-- no, you can't. At least, not yet. To actually save time with your super-duper learning management system, I have to use all your canned, pre-packaged material, which completely sacrifices my autonomy and judgment. But to "customize" your system to my students, from data entry to teacher designed materials, takes just as much time (maybe more) as doing it all myself.
You know what really helps with this? Classrooms with just a dozen students. Teaching assitants. A bunch of things that cost money, which always seems to be a problem when it comes to schools.
Design Principle 5: Learning Outcomes Emphasize Include Application and Creation of Knowledge
I'm going to assume that somebody is going to fix/edit this header at some point. The explanation helps.
Competencies emphasize the application of learning. A high quality competency-based approach will require students to apply skills and knowledge to new situations to demonstrate mastery and to create knowledge. Competencies will include academic standards as well as lifelong learning skills and dispositions.
Well, it helps a little. I'm a little curious about what a "lifelong learning disposition" would be exactly, and how we would turn that into an explicit and measurable outcome. Likewise, the business of having explicit and measurable expectations that can be applied to new situations and new knowledge strikes me as a bit of a challenge. Okay, it strikes me as a huge challenge. "Okay, Pat. Neither you nor I know how this is going to turn out, but here is exactly how I'm going to judge it." But not an insurmountable one-- it's basically what I do with every single writing assignment. It is up to the teacher to make sure that the quest for an explicit measure doesn't squelch the whole "new" part.
I also like this design principle because it means that in a CBE whatzahoozis with fidelity to this vision, there would be no place for a Big Standardized Test, ever.
So what have we learned?
Well, for one thing, what the CBE purists keep talking about and what the CBE salespeople keep trying to hawk are not exactly the same thing. The discontinuity makes me nervous, because national standards have been repeatedly sold over the years with a pitch of "We'll just give you some standards to kind of guide you and local districts and teachers will set their own curriculum and instruction" which sounded tolerable, but what we actually got was bad amateur hour standards and instructional straight jackets like EngageNY and Common Core high stakes testing.
There are things about this purist model that I like. But at this point in my career, I view all new bangwhoodles like house shopping. I don't want to see the Model Home-- I want to see the actual house I would be living in. I don't care what the Big Mac looks like in the advertisement-- I want to see the one I'm actually going to put in my mouth. CBE is being used as the lettuce in a big reformster salad, and lettuce can be swell and salad can be swell but if you cover my lettuce with chopped liver and fried ferret butt and the road kill that even road kill is disgusted by, I do not want the salad, no matter how nice the lettuce is.
And I can't help noticing that even the Model Home version of CBE has the same fatal flaw-- the mastery thing. Until CBE fans can deal with that piece, even the model home is going to have a cracked and unstable foundation. So I have, perhaps, a better understanding of the CBE thingy-ma-whatsis, but I am still not a fan.
At any rate, let's see what the CBE folks think they're onto. And not onto. Because one of the problems I'm seeing with this whatsahoozy is that it's actually several gizmos soldered together (with some of the soldering work on a par with what I did in my seventh grade shop class).
So these folks start out with their definition, which is
...a systems model in which (1) teaching and learning are designed to ensure students are becoming proficient by advancing on demonstrated mastery and (2) schools are organized to provide timely and differentiated support to ensure equity.
Yeah, I'm not sure "systems model" is really any clearer that "dinglefutzer," but the rest of the definition is useful, particularly in what it doesn't include. And the writers get even clearer about that non-inclusion in their exclusionary paragraph:
The term competency-based and mastery-based have also recently been used by vendors to describe adaptive software. We take the position that competency-based education empowers teachers to draw upon their professional knowledge in teaching and reaching every student. Digital tools to personalize instruction should be used appropriately based on the overall pedagogical philosophy of the school and the needs of the students. A classroom cannot be deemed competency-based or personalized simply because students are learning with digital content, are using adaptive software, or have flexible pacing. (Emphasis mine)
In other words, we've got some people out there selling something they're calling "competency based education" that isn't actually competency based education, according to some experts. This is perhaps not a shock, as it has happened with every single educational idea ever promoted in the history of ever.
But the wiki goes on to list five "design principles" that may further clarify the issues for us. Let's check them out.
Design Principle 1: Students Advance upon Demonstrated Mastery
Students work at a level that is an appropriate amount of challenge. When they master a skill or area of knowledge, they move on. Their movement through the curriculum is based on when they master the material, not on spending a certain amount of time in the class. That means that students will move through school at different speeds. It also means that teachers have to "gather evidence" of proficiency.
As I've said before, this is one of the Huge Problems of CBE. Defining "mastery" is way harder than it first seems, particularly if we define it as an absolute level separate from the student in question. If we have one set level of mastery, we either end up with students finishing high school in a month or students who never get out of ninth grade. And just how proficient must one be to be a master, anyway? And can all skills be demonstrated in one clear mastery activity?
Saying, "Hey, we left her sitting in a crochet class for nine months, so she should be able to build a sweater now," is problematic, but a strictly mastery-based approach is too far on the other end of the pendulum.
Design Principle 2: Explicit and Measurable Learning Objectives Empower Students
I disagree. One of the biggest challenges I face, particularly with my high function students, is that they would like to be told exactly what hoop to jump through in exactly what way so that they can quickly and easily go through the motions without having to actually engage.
Likewise, the mark of an educated person is that they have their own internal compass, their own ability to mark and measure success, linked to an intrinsic reward system. "Explicit, measurable" objectives almost always boil down to extrinsic rewards based on externally designed and deployed goals. Sometimes real learning means figuring out how to find your way through the fog, not simply learning to follow directions and meet someone else's expectations. Is this same issue a problem in traditional non-CBE classrooms? Absolutely. But it's a problem that CBE isn't very good at helping to solve.
Now, it's not impossible. You could involve the student in setting the explicit, measurable goals. But this design principle does not lean that way. It leans instead toward asking not "what do we want to know" but instead "what can we most easily measure." The principle only argues for "sharing" the goals and measures with the students-- not letting them in on the design. It also argues for transparency, which I agree with.
Design Principle 3: Assessment Is Meaningful and a Positive Learning Experience for Students
Hey, look! We agree on something. Authentic assessment is meaningful, an activity that culminates everything that has come before, an activity that lets the student experience that pleasurable "snap" of feeling all that has come before fall into place.
That said, this design puts a lot of emphasis on "formative assessment" which, unless we're using the very loosest of definitions for "assessment," is a path to drudgery and, once again, teaching students that the purpose of learning is to complete a bunch of tasks designed by someone else in order to satisfy someone else. So, boo on that part.
Design Principle 4: Students Receive Rapid, Differentiated Support
We talk about this like it's novel and mysterious. It isn't. Good teachers have been doing it forever. Or rather, they've been trying to do it for forever. Because it's pretty much impossible if you have forty students in your classroom with no aids and a desire to have some kind of life outside school (I'm not saying a whole second career, but maybe occasionally eating a meal with one's family not interrupted by a stack of papers). And before you guys selling the whole computer-based learning platform start into your song and dance about how you can help with this-- no, you can't. At least, not yet. To actually save time with your super-duper learning management system, I have to use all your canned, pre-packaged material, which completely sacrifices my autonomy and judgment. But to "customize" your system to my students, from data entry to teacher designed materials, takes just as much time (maybe more) as doing it all myself.
You know what really helps with this? Classrooms with just a dozen students. Teaching assitants. A bunch of things that cost money, which always seems to be a problem when it comes to schools.
Design Principle 5: Learning Outcomes Emphasize Include Application and Creation of Knowledge
I'm going to assume that somebody is going to fix/edit this header at some point. The explanation helps.
Competencies emphasize the application of learning. A high quality competency-based approach will require students to apply skills and knowledge to new situations to demonstrate mastery and to create knowledge. Competencies will include academic standards as well as lifelong learning skills and dispositions.
Well, it helps a little. I'm a little curious about what a "lifelong learning disposition" would be exactly, and how we would turn that into an explicit and measurable outcome. Likewise, the business of having explicit and measurable expectations that can be applied to new situations and new knowledge strikes me as a bit of a challenge. Okay, it strikes me as a huge challenge. "Okay, Pat. Neither you nor I know how this is going to turn out, but here is exactly how I'm going to judge it." But not an insurmountable one-- it's basically what I do with every single writing assignment. It is up to the teacher to make sure that the quest for an explicit measure doesn't squelch the whole "new" part.
I also like this design principle because it means that in a CBE whatzahoozis with fidelity to this vision, there would be no place for a Big Standardized Test, ever.
So what have we learned?
Well, for one thing, what the CBE purists keep talking about and what the CBE salespeople keep trying to hawk are not exactly the same thing. The discontinuity makes me nervous, because national standards have been repeatedly sold over the years with a pitch of "We'll just give you some standards to kind of guide you and local districts and teachers will set their own curriculum and instruction" which sounded tolerable, but what we actually got was bad amateur hour standards and instructional straight jackets like EngageNY and Common Core high stakes testing.
There are things about this purist model that I like. But at this point in my career, I view all new bangwhoodles like house shopping. I don't want to see the Model Home-- I want to see the actual house I would be living in. I don't care what the Big Mac looks like in the advertisement-- I want to see the one I'm actually going to put in my mouth. CBE is being used as the lettuce in a big reformster salad, and lettuce can be swell and salad can be swell but if you cover my lettuce with chopped liver and fried ferret butt and the road kill that even road kill is disgusted by, I do not want the salad, no matter how nice the lettuce is.
And I can't help noticing that even the Model Home version of CBE has the same fatal flaw-- the mastery thing. Until CBE fans can deal with that piece, even the model home is going to have a cracked and unstable foundation. So I have, perhaps, a better understanding of the CBE thingy-ma-whatsis, but I am still not a fan.
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