Some readings from the week. Remember to share, pass on, and generally amplify what you read that you believe hits the spot.
Is Ed-Tech Research Nearing Its Big Tobacco Moment
From Gotesborg Universitet of all places, a consideration of how trustworthy ed tech is and will continue to be (or not).
What Will It Take for Pennsylvania To Really Regulate Cyber Chatrers?
Lawrence Feinberg asks the $64 question for the Keystone State-- will cybers ever be bad enough for someone in the legislature to actually put education ahead of, well, anything?
Making a Straight Cut Ditch of s Free Meandering Brook
Reading Paul Thomas always makes me feel smarter, and he had a heck of a week this week, looking particularly on the subject of credentialing and training teachers in especially uncreative and soul-crushing ways.
Measuring Proficient Teachers Codifies Bed Teaching
More Paul Thomas. Read this one, too.
Cory Booker Whiffs It
Cory Booker, rising Democrat star and devoted reformster, faces the same problem as many reformy pseudo-dems-- how to reject Trump while embracing his education policies. Booker faces his trial when it comes time to comment on the choice of DeVos as Ed Sec. Daniel katz explains how Booker blew it.
Culture Warrior Princess
Jennifer Berkshire at Edushyster connects one more DeVos dot by showing how the Michigan Marauder is not just a fan of charters, but a major player in the movement to wipe out the scourge of homosexuality.
Trying To Teach in the Age of Trump
All my faves are here this week. Here's Jose Luis Vilson as always artfully blending the personal and the global to consider how we move forward to teach in Trumplandia.
An Open Letter from Public School Teachers to Betsy DeVos
In a much-forwarded Huff Post piece, Patrick Kearney introduces himself and three million public school colleagues to DeVos.
Sunday, December 11, 2016
Saturday, December 10, 2016
Bystanding Educators
Over at EdWeek, Peter DeWitt asks the question "Have educators been bystanders too long?" I like the question because it doesn't even waste time asking if educators are bystanders, because, yes, that's what we do.
This is probably one of the reasons we don't get more respect from business-folks. In the private sector, you sometimes have to play hardball. You "negotiate" by being non-compliant, looking across the table at the people demanding you do something and saying, "Make me." But schools are a culture of compliance. Many (almost certainly too many) teachers expect their students to be compliant, and in turn, we expect to be compliant with our administrators. I cannot begin to guess how many times some local union leader has had this conversation:
Teacher: My principal told me to do this thing, and I think it's wrong.
Union: Well, did you tell her you wouldn't do it?
Teacher: Are you kidding? She'll yell at me. She might put a letter in my file.
Here's a story about the culture of compliance. Years ago, my school board was complaining about an item forced on them by the state. Every member agreed that the state was dead wrong. One member suggested, "Well, what if we just don't do it?" The superintendent, principals, and several of those same board members looked at him as if had just suggested slaughtering puppies on the schoolhouse steps.
From top to bottom, schools run on one simple principle-- you do as you're told.
This is one of my pettest of peeves-- teachers will sit through a meeting or development session, smiling, nodding, quietly agreeing with everything, and then, afterwards, walk out the door and start talking to each other about everything that was wrong with the message. Too many teachers can't conceive of a middle ground somewhere between being raging asshattery and silent compliance.
Now more than ever, this is a problem. I'm still convinced that one of the reason teacher voices weren't included in the past few waves of reformsterism, from No Child Left Behind through Common Core, is that reformsters determined that all they needed to do was dictate from the top and teachers would just fall in line. Teachers have to bear some of the responsibility for creating the impression that we would comply quietly with whatever our Noble Trusted Leaders told us. This dynamic was certainly behind the occasional attempt to distinguish between teachers and teacher unions ("Teachers love this just fine, it's that cantankerous union that causes the problems"). I can distinctly remember hen state-sponsored PD shifted from trying to win our hearts and minds with a barrage of baloney to a more direct, "This is what's happening. Do it, or else."
As DeWitt puts it:
We are under a barrage of negative stories, fake news, and compliance and accountability that will only lead to more compliance and accountability, more fake news and negative stories. What are we getting out of it? Nothing. We still feel like we have no voice and after years of experience and paying to go to expensive schools to get degrees so we can remain in our practice, we feel like we are not good enough at what we do.
Between local, state, federal, and future Trumpian issues, educators face a wide range of Stupid Things being imposed on the profession, almost universally implemented without the input of educator voices. We are complicit in this because of our own silence-- the first step in making your voice heard is to use that voice, to speak.
When, how, and for what cause is a personal decision. Only you know the specifics of your local situation, only you know how much push back you can expect (there is an important difference between "My boss will probably yell at me' and "My boss will get me fired"). But I am not exaggerating when I say that some folks' strategy is "I will be sad about this Bad Thing, and Somebody Important will notice how sad I am and decide to do something to make me less sad." This is not good enough. If your image of teaching is "I just show up to work and do my job and let everyone else decide the policies and procedures that I have to follow," then you have come to the profession fifty years too late.
Maybe join your local union, or maybe not; hell, maybe your local union is part of the problem and you need to go to meetings and be a pain in the ass. Blog. Write letters. Share articles that you think matter. Go to professional gatherings and learn new stuff. Call your elected representatives. Use your inside and your outside voices. When you're sitting in a professional development meeting and someone presents a big fat slab of baloney, make them uncomfortable.
DeWitt's jumping off point was a book by Michael Fullan and Andy Hargreaves, Bringing the Profession Back In (Learning Forward. 2016). Fullan and Hargreaves suggest that idea of self-efficacy has been stripped from teachers, especially in the US, because there has been a, 'barrage of wrong solutions thrown at the profession.'" But the good news is that we could start talking again at any time. Just, you know, open your mouth and let your voice out.
No, people will not suddenly snap to attention, look raptly at us and declare, "You--you're talking!! Thank God!! Tell us what to do!" To imagine educators as the dominant voice in education-- well, that's just crazy talk. But we need to speak up, get involved, get in the game, get uncomfortable, and just generally stop standing on the sidelines watching the game as if we weren't expert players.
Education, schools, and the students they serve need advocates, and those advocates won't be the power players who know nothing about school, and those advocates won't be the privatizers whose interest in education extends only as far as the sector's ability to generate profits, and those advocates won't be the politicians who want to turn education into an engine of personal power, and those advocates won't be the Betters who believe that a good education is not for the children of Those People, and those advocates won't be the people who believe that education is the unguarded front through which democracy is allowed to interfere with the gathering of power, and those advocates who think education is just a political power base that must be broken up to consolidate political power. None of those people will advocate for public education and the children that it serves. Even parents, who do not always have access to the information and understanding they need to advocate-- even they can't always be counted on to advocate for schools and children. If educators don't speak up and use our voices to advocate for public education and children, how will it be done. If not us, who? If not now, when?
Teacher: My principal told me to do this thing, and I think it's wrong.
Union: Well, did you tell her you wouldn't do it?
Teacher: Are you kidding? She'll yell at me. She might put a letter in my file.
Here's a story about the culture of compliance. Years ago, my school board was complaining about an item forced on them by the state. Every member agreed that the state was dead wrong. One member suggested, "Well, what if we just don't do it?" The superintendent, principals, and several of those same board members looked at him as if had just suggested slaughtering puppies on the schoolhouse steps.
From top to bottom, schools run on one simple principle-- you do as you're told.
This is one of my pettest of peeves-- teachers will sit through a meeting or development session, smiling, nodding, quietly agreeing with everything, and then, afterwards, walk out the door and start talking to each other about everything that was wrong with the message. Too many teachers can't conceive of a middle ground somewhere between being raging asshattery and silent compliance.
Now more than ever, this is a problem. I'm still convinced that one of the reason teacher voices weren't included in the past few waves of reformsterism, from No Child Left Behind through Common Core, is that reformsters determined that all they needed to do was dictate from the top and teachers would just fall in line. Teachers have to bear some of the responsibility for creating the impression that we would comply quietly with whatever our Noble Trusted Leaders told us. This dynamic was certainly behind the occasional attempt to distinguish between teachers and teacher unions ("Teachers love this just fine, it's that cantankerous union that causes the problems"). I can distinctly remember hen state-sponsored PD shifted from trying to win our hearts and minds with a barrage of baloney to a more direct, "This is what's happening. Do it, or else."
As DeWitt puts it:
We are under a barrage of negative stories, fake news, and compliance and accountability that will only lead to more compliance and accountability, more fake news and negative stories. What are we getting out of it? Nothing. We still feel like we have no voice and after years of experience and paying to go to expensive schools to get degrees so we can remain in our practice, we feel like we are not good enough at what we do.
Between local, state, federal, and future Trumpian issues, educators face a wide range of Stupid Things being imposed on the profession, almost universally implemented without the input of educator voices. We are complicit in this because of our own silence-- the first step in making your voice heard is to use that voice, to speak.
When, how, and for what cause is a personal decision. Only you know the specifics of your local situation, only you know how much push back you can expect (there is an important difference between "My boss will probably yell at me' and "My boss will get me fired"). But I am not exaggerating when I say that some folks' strategy is "I will be sad about this Bad Thing, and Somebody Important will notice how sad I am and decide to do something to make me less sad." This is not good enough. If your image of teaching is "I just show up to work and do my job and let everyone else decide the policies and procedures that I have to follow," then you have come to the profession fifty years too late.
Maybe join your local union, or maybe not; hell, maybe your local union is part of the problem and you need to go to meetings and be a pain in the ass. Blog. Write letters. Share articles that you think matter. Go to professional gatherings and learn new stuff. Call your elected representatives. Use your inside and your outside voices. When you're sitting in a professional development meeting and someone presents a big fat slab of baloney, make them uncomfortable.
DeWitt's jumping off point was a book by Michael Fullan and Andy Hargreaves, Bringing the Profession Back In (Learning Forward. 2016). Fullan and Hargreaves suggest that idea of self-efficacy has been stripped from teachers, especially in the US, because there has been a, 'barrage of wrong solutions thrown at the profession.'" But the good news is that we could start talking again at any time. Just, you know, open your mouth and let your voice out.
No, people will not suddenly snap to attention, look raptly at us and declare, "You--you're talking!! Thank God!! Tell us what to do!" To imagine educators as the dominant voice in education-- well, that's just crazy talk. But we need to speak up, get involved, get in the game, get uncomfortable, and just generally stop standing on the sidelines watching the game as if we weren't expert players.
Education, schools, and the students they serve need advocates, and those advocates won't be the power players who know nothing about school, and those advocates won't be the privatizers whose interest in education extends only as far as the sector's ability to generate profits, and those advocates won't be the politicians who want to turn education into an engine of personal power, and those advocates won't be the Betters who believe that a good education is not for the children of Those People, and those advocates won't be the people who believe that education is the unguarded front through which democracy is allowed to interfere with the gathering of power, and those advocates who think education is just a political power base that must be broken up to consolidate political power. None of those people will advocate for public education and the children that it serves. Even parents, who do not always have access to the information and understanding they need to advocate-- even they can't always be counted on to advocate for schools and children. If educators don't speak up and use our voices to advocate for public education and children, how will it be done. If not us, who? If not now, when?
Friday, December 9, 2016
Disrupting the Moral Center
Sarah Jones at the New Republic yesterday posted a blistering take on technocracy entitled "The Year Silicon Valley Went Morally Bankrupt." It doesn't address education, but it surely could.
She takes us back to 1996, and “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" by John Perry Barlo, a statement of Silicon Valley's manifest destiny to rise over and above the nation that birthed it:
Barlow’s manifesto is undeniably grandiose. “We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth,” he announced. “We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.” This was more than an expression of ego. Barlow asserted a moral hierarchy, and in this new order, Silicon Valley outranked the world it had come to transform.
Barlow's vision seems to keep the moral center of American democracy, but as examination and time have revealed, it's really the blueprint for the Betterocracy-- the mobility and openness of technology do not give all citizens an equal voice, but give all citizens an equal opportunity to rise to their appropriate level, because at the end of the day, Technocratic Bettercrats believe that some people really are better than others, and those who are Better should be in charge, and those who are Lesser should shut up.
Jones connects this to a moral aloofness, a technocratic solutionism, a belief that the only problems that really are problems are problems that have a technological solution. "Show us your problem," Silicone Valley says, "and we will disrupt the heck out of it." If it's not solvable by technology, it's not a real problem.
Jones centers on two examples. One is Peter Thiel, who bullied Gawker into silence and has been riding on the Trump train. Thiel is a vocal critic of democracy, diversity, and women, and like Trump, he has suffered the opposite of negative consequences for his stances. That Trump can connect with the Bettercrats of the tech world is not surprising-- they share a fundamental belief that might makes right, that if you can do something and you want to something and nobody can stop you from doing something, then there is no reason to rein yourself in. I'm not sure that these folks are morally aloof-- it's just that they are their own true north on the moral compass.
Jones also tosses out Mark Zuckerberg's unwillingness to come to grips with the journalistic power of facebook, and for extra fun reminds us that Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, who got caught touting a completely fictitious medical test company is still running that company, now claiming some new technomedimarvel, as if she hadn't been outed as an untrustworthy liar of epic proportions.
"Tech moguls," Jones writes, "strive to remake the world, but this year they behaved as if they owe us no explanation for their decisions."
But she of course need not have stopped with her three examples, nor did 2016 represent a sudden new emergence of this issue. Netflix mogul Reed Hastings famously complained that democratically-elected school boards should be done away with (they just get in the way of their Betters). Stephen Barr, who moguled the Green Dot Charter school chain, just backed off his run for Los Angeles mayor-- he was qualified to be mayor because he had run the charters, and he was qualified to run the charters because he wanted to-- but had originally launched the run because he intended "to disrupt the political establishment and turn our city around."
Education reform is rife with these Techno-Bettercrats. Sir Michael Barber, head mogul of the multinational edu-juggernaut Pearson, does not at the end of the day justify their attempts to remake the education system as profitable or good for kids, but as an act of Higher Moral Purpose. Sure, remaking the world when the world resists being remade presents some challenges, but those challenges never create a need to self-examine, to check the poles on one's moral compass. No, this is the reaction:
Be that as it may, the aspiration to meet these challenges is right
And of course, Jones has passed up the lowest hanging fruit of all-- Bill Gates, who believes that he has the right, even the obligation, to remake the nation's education system into the form that he believes is right. Nobody elected him, nobody asked him, and at no point did he submit himself to any kind of democratic process. Because democracy is a process by which a whole bunch of Lessers who shouldn't have a say inflict their will on their Betters. Gates has some ideas about how schools should work, so he's just going to implement them without discussion or explanation.
There's been a sudden shock that Donald Trump, in all his autocratic authoritarian glory, is going to be our President, but the truth is we've been working our way up to this for a while. Champions and vocal supporters of democracy have been few and far between. In government, both dems and GOP have looked for ways to thwart the will of the electorate, whether it is trying to skew elections by gaming the rules or trying to create policy out of the offices of unelected department appointees. All around the nation, giants walk among us, devoted not to the rules or the laws or some undergirding principles, but to their own greatness, their own vision, and their own power and ability to implement those visions. They are genius Gullivers, held down by puny Lessers and unions and the stupid government functionaries that get themselves elected by those Lessers.
And those Lessers that are hungry or homeless or struggling in minimal employment? They would be better off if they just learned to Stay in Place instead of trying to leach off their Betters. If I'm a Better and you're not-- well, maybe you deserve a little help, but it will be what I choose to give you and damn sure not what you try to take from me. I have wealth because I deserve it. It's mine. If you wanted some of this, you should have been better. In the meantime, I will certainly try to be benevolent and give you a little of the help that I think you deserve.
American exceptionalism? It's not America that's exceptional-- it's the small group of techno-disruptor-visionaries who aim to rebuild this country the way they think it should be built. They don't need a moral compass-- they are their own True North. And as they strip away the tiny people and democratic traditions holding them down, one by one, they have less and less need to pretend otherwise.
Barlow’s manifesto is undeniably grandiose. “We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth,” he announced. “We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.” This was more than an expression of ego. Barlow asserted a moral hierarchy, and in this new order, Silicon Valley outranked the world it had come to transform.
Barlow's vision seems to keep the moral center of American democracy, but as examination and time have revealed, it's really the blueprint for the Betterocracy-- the mobility and openness of technology do not give all citizens an equal voice, but give all citizens an equal opportunity to rise to their appropriate level, because at the end of the day, Technocratic Bettercrats believe that some people really are better than others, and those who are Better should be in charge, and those who are Lesser should shut up.
Jones connects this to a moral aloofness, a technocratic solutionism, a belief that the only problems that really are problems are problems that have a technological solution. "Show us your problem," Silicone Valley says, "and we will disrupt the heck out of it." If it's not solvable by technology, it's not a real problem.
Jones centers on two examples. One is Peter Thiel, who bullied Gawker into silence and has been riding on the Trump train. Thiel is a vocal critic of democracy, diversity, and women, and like Trump, he has suffered the opposite of negative consequences for his stances. That Trump can connect with the Bettercrats of the tech world is not surprising-- they share a fundamental belief that might makes right, that if you can do something and you want to something and nobody can stop you from doing something, then there is no reason to rein yourself in. I'm not sure that these folks are morally aloof-- it's just that they are their own true north on the moral compass.
Jones also tosses out Mark Zuckerberg's unwillingness to come to grips with the journalistic power of facebook, and for extra fun reminds us that Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, who got caught touting a completely fictitious medical test company is still running that company, now claiming some new technomedimarvel, as if she hadn't been outed as an untrustworthy liar of epic proportions.
"Tech moguls," Jones writes, "strive to remake the world, but this year they behaved as if they owe us no explanation for their decisions."
But she of course need not have stopped with her three examples, nor did 2016 represent a sudden new emergence of this issue. Netflix mogul Reed Hastings famously complained that democratically-elected school boards should be done away with (they just get in the way of their Betters). Stephen Barr, who moguled the Green Dot Charter school chain, just backed off his run for Los Angeles mayor-- he was qualified to be mayor because he had run the charters, and he was qualified to run the charters because he wanted to-- but had originally launched the run because he intended "to disrupt the political establishment and turn our city around."
Education reform is rife with these Techno-Bettercrats. Sir Michael Barber, head mogul of the multinational edu-juggernaut Pearson, does not at the end of the day justify their attempts to remake the education system as profitable or good for kids, but as an act of Higher Moral Purpose. Sure, remaking the world when the world resists being remade presents some challenges, but those challenges never create a need to self-examine, to check the poles on one's moral compass. No, this is the reaction:
Be that as it may, the aspiration to meet these challenges is right
And of course, Jones has passed up the lowest hanging fruit of all-- Bill Gates, who believes that he has the right, even the obligation, to remake the nation's education system into the form that he believes is right. Nobody elected him, nobody asked him, and at no point did he submit himself to any kind of democratic process. Because democracy is a process by which a whole bunch of Lessers who shouldn't have a say inflict their will on their Betters. Gates has some ideas about how schools should work, so he's just going to implement them without discussion or explanation.
There's been a sudden shock that Donald Trump, in all his autocratic authoritarian glory, is going to be our President, but the truth is we've been working our way up to this for a while. Champions and vocal supporters of democracy have been few and far between. In government, both dems and GOP have looked for ways to thwart the will of the electorate, whether it is trying to skew elections by gaming the rules or trying to create policy out of the offices of unelected department appointees. All around the nation, giants walk among us, devoted not to the rules or the laws or some undergirding principles, but to their own greatness, their own vision, and their own power and ability to implement those visions. They are genius Gullivers, held down by puny Lessers and unions and the stupid government functionaries that get themselves elected by those Lessers.
And those Lessers that are hungry or homeless or struggling in minimal employment? They would be better off if they just learned to Stay in Place instead of trying to leach off their Betters. If I'm a Better and you're not-- well, maybe you deserve a little help, but it will be what I choose to give you and damn sure not what you try to take from me. I have wealth because I deserve it. It's mine. If you wanted some of this, you should have been better. In the meantime, I will certainly try to be benevolent and give you a little of the help that I think you deserve.
American exceptionalism? It's not America that's exceptional-- it's the small group of techno-disruptor-visionaries who aim to rebuild this country the way they think it should be built. They don't need a moral compass-- they are their own True North. And as they strip away the tiny people and democratic traditions holding them down, one by one, they have less and less need to pretend otherwise.
Thursday, December 8, 2016
New Test Rules: Old Baloney
Yesterday, John King unveiled the Department of Education's final rules for testing under the Every Student Succeeds Act, aimed at spinning the continued emphasis on the Big Standardized Tests. Jennifer C. Kerr of the Associated Press signals that she bought the PR and fumbled the story with her very first sentence:
Aiming to reduce test-taking in America's classrooms, the Obama administration released final rules Wednesday to help states and school districts take a new approach to the standardized tests students must take each year.
If the Obama administration has ever done anything that was truly aimed at reducing test-taking, I have apparently forgotten all about it. The Obama administration increased the weight of standardized testing by using Race to the Top and RttT-lite waivers to double down on high stakes for testing. After a few years of realizing that the public was pushing back hard, they tried in both 2014 and 2015 to pretend that they had an "action plan" for cutting back on testing. This included some meaningless suggestions for how much time should be spent on testing, and a recommendation that schools cut back on all the other tests that weren't the Big Standardized Test.
This administration has stayed resolutely in the Cult of Testing, and they have not backed away a single inch in eight years. These new rules are no different.
King gives the AP a big fat slice of baloney right off the bat:
Our final regulations strike a balance by offering states flexibility to eliminate redundant testing and promote innovative assessments, while ensuring assessments continue to contribute to a well-rounded picture of how students and schools are doing.
"Continue" is a great word, since it assumes a fact not in evidence-- that BS Tests have been contributing to a well-rounded picture of how students and schools are doing. They haven't. They don't. And there's no actual evidence that they measure anything useful (though plenty of evidence that they don't). Then King gives us this gem:
Smarter assessments can make us all smarter.
Yes. And weighing the pig makes it heavier. And measuring your children makes them taller. And staring at a picture brings it into focus.
The softball reporting continues as Kerr writes
The idea is to focus more time on classroom learning and less on teaching-to-the test — something critics complained the administration had encouraged with grants and waivers that placed too much of an emphasis on standardized testing.
Whose idea is that, exactly, and how is it part of the rules? The suggestion in the USED PR is that an $8 million grant to Maryland and Nebraska is kicking off a new trial run for assessment innovation (Fun fact: Chester Finn, former head of the Fordham Institute and longtime conservative reformster, was just elected vice president of the Maryland Board of Education). This is part of the grant program that will allow up to seven states to try new and improved testing over five years. It looks kind of like chump change, but if corporations interested in piloting competency-based learning style assessment systems decide to get involved-- well, this is an open door that already has companies salivating.
Also, as expected, the states may replace one of the BS Tests with some other already-on-the-market test like the SAT or ACT. Sure, those tests were designed for completely different purposes and there's no reason to think they'll be an accurate measure of all student or school achievement, but hey-- neither is the PARCC, so why the hell not? If it's a standardized test, and you've heard of it, then it probably is a perfect assessment tool. Weighing the pig makes it heavier, and it's okay if you weigh it with a yardstick.
Oh, and the rules include no cap on time spent on testing because A) the cap idea was ridiculous, mostly because bureaucratic eduwonks pretend not to understand what test prep really is, B) it would interfere with competency-based personalized learning, which will feature standardized assessment every single day and C) nobody has paid caps the slightest attention, since they are the easiest rule to cheat on when you want to avoid the "punish" part of "test-and-punish." Kerr helpfully throws in the Council of Great City Schools' bogus figures on how much time is spent, failing to note that CGSC is a long-time member of the Cult of Testing.
So in short, here are your bullet points:
* The new rules on testing are just like the old rules, except for the parts that are worse.
* USED has once again successfully convinced major news outlets like the Associate Press to just run USED PR without questioning or challenging anything the department has to say.
In short, life should not improve for the pigs, whether we're feeding them, weighing them, or putting lipstick on them.
Aiming to reduce test-taking in America's classrooms, the Obama administration released final rules Wednesday to help states and school districts take a new approach to the standardized tests students must take each year.
If the Obama administration has ever done anything that was truly aimed at reducing test-taking, I have apparently forgotten all about it. The Obama administration increased the weight of standardized testing by using Race to the Top and RttT-lite waivers to double down on high stakes for testing. After a few years of realizing that the public was pushing back hard, they tried in both 2014 and 2015 to pretend that they had an "action plan" for cutting back on testing. This included some meaningless suggestions for how much time should be spent on testing, and a recommendation that schools cut back on all the other tests that weren't the Big Standardized Test.
This administration has stayed resolutely in the Cult of Testing, and they have not backed away a single inch in eight years. These new rules are no different.
King gives the AP a big fat slice of baloney right off the bat:
Our final regulations strike a balance by offering states flexibility to eliminate redundant testing and promote innovative assessments, while ensuring assessments continue to contribute to a well-rounded picture of how students and schools are doing.
"Continue" is a great word, since it assumes a fact not in evidence-- that BS Tests have been contributing to a well-rounded picture of how students and schools are doing. They haven't. They don't. And there's no actual evidence that they measure anything useful (though plenty of evidence that they don't). Then King gives us this gem:
Smarter assessments can make us all smarter.
Yes. And weighing the pig makes it heavier. And measuring your children makes them taller. And staring at a picture brings it into focus.
The softball reporting continues as Kerr writes
The idea is to focus more time on classroom learning and less on teaching-to-the test — something critics complained the administration had encouraged with grants and waivers that placed too much of an emphasis on standardized testing.
Whose idea is that, exactly, and how is it part of the rules? The suggestion in the USED PR is that an $8 million grant to Maryland and Nebraska is kicking off a new trial run for assessment innovation (Fun fact: Chester Finn, former head of the Fordham Institute and longtime conservative reformster, was just elected vice president of the Maryland Board of Education). This is part of the grant program that will allow up to seven states to try new and improved testing over five years. It looks kind of like chump change, but if corporations interested in piloting competency-based learning style assessment systems decide to get involved-- well, this is an open door that already has companies salivating.
Also, as expected, the states may replace one of the BS Tests with some other already-on-the-market test like the SAT or ACT. Sure, those tests were designed for completely different purposes and there's no reason to think they'll be an accurate measure of all student or school achievement, but hey-- neither is the PARCC, so why the hell not? If it's a standardized test, and you've heard of it, then it probably is a perfect assessment tool. Weighing the pig makes it heavier, and it's okay if you weigh it with a yardstick.
Oh, and the rules include no cap on time spent on testing because A) the cap idea was ridiculous, mostly because bureaucratic eduwonks pretend not to understand what test prep really is, B) it would interfere with competency-based personalized learning, which will feature standardized assessment every single day and C) nobody has paid caps the slightest attention, since they are the easiest rule to cheat on when you want to avoid the "punish" part of "test-and-punish." Kerr helpfully throws in the Council of Great City Schools' bogus figures on how much time is spent, failing to note that CGSC is a long-time member of the Cult of Testing.
So in short, here are your bullet points:
* The new rules on testing are just like the old rules, except for the parts that are worse.
* USED has once again successfully convinced major news outlets like the Associate Press to just run USED PR without questioning or challenging anything the department has to say.
In short, life should not improve for the pigs, whether we're feeding them, weighing them, or putting lipstick on them.
Wednesday, December 7, 2016
What Do The Tests Measure?
Christopher Tienken (Seton Hall) has solved a mystery.
Along with Anthony Colella (Seton Hall), Christian Angelillo (Boonton Township SD), Meredith Fox (Nanuet Union SD), Kevin McCahill (George W. Miller Elementary) and Adam Wolfe (Peoria Unified SD), Tienken has once again answered the question-- what do the Big Standardized Tests actually measure?
Put another way, Tienken et. al. have demonstrated that we do not need to actually give the Big Standardized Test in order to generate the "student achievement" data, because we can generate the same data by looking at demographic information all by itself.
Tienken and his team used just three pieces of demographic data--
1) percentage of families in the community with income over $200K
2) percentage of people in the community in poverty
3) percentage of people in community with bachelor's degrees
Using that data alone, Tienken was able to predict school district test results accurately in most cases. In New Jersey 300 or so middle schools, the team could predict middle school math and language arts test scores for well over two thirds of the schools.
I suppose some folks could see this as good news ("Cancel the PARCC test and don't pay them a cent! We can just fudge our test results by plugging in demographic data!") but I'd characterize it more as frightening, given that ESSA continues to demand that teachers and administrators and schools be judged based on test scores (generally under the euphemism "student achievement") and if those test scores can be fudged based on data having nothing to do with what actually goes on inside the school, then a whole bunch of careers and funding are riding on things that have nothing to do with schools.
This is also one more reason that any future teacher (there are, I hear, still one or two out there) who is paying attention should know better than to take a job in a poor neighborhood, where anything from her professional standing to her future career is liable to be trashed by the demographics of her neighborhood.
There are other conclusions to be drawn here, not the least of which is that you are in one of those A-F school rating states, the best way to change your school's grade is to change your demographics (aka turn into a charter and recruit students from outside your old neighborhood).
Make sure to read this report and pass it on. It has been peer reviewed, it is legitimate research, and it does raise huge red-flaggy questions about the validity or usefulness of the BS Tests. At the very least you can be asking your state and national policy leaders, "If we can generate the same data by just analyzing demographics, why are we wasting time and money on these tests?"
In the meantime, here's an oldie but a goodie from Tienken, in case you like your explanations more video style.
Along with Anthony Colella (Seton Hall), Christian Angelillo (Boonton Township SD), Meredith Fox (Nanuet Union SD), Kevin McCahill (George W. Miller Elementary) and Adam Wolfe (Peoria Unified SD), Tienken has once again answered the question-- what do the Big Standardized Tests actually measure?
Put another way, Tienken et. al. have demonstrated that we do not need to actually give the Big Standardized Test in order to generate the "student achievement" data, because we can generate the same data by looking at demographic information all by itself.
Tienken and his team used just three pieces of demographic data--
1) percentage of families in the community with income over $200K
2) percentage of people in the community in poverty
3) percentage of people in community with bachelor's degrees
Using that data alone, Tienken was able to predict school district test results accurately in most cases. In New Jersey 300 or so middle schools, the team could predict middle school math and language arts test scores for well over two thirds of the schools.
I suppose some folks could see this as good news ("Cancel the PARCC test and don't pay them a cent! We can just fudge our test results by plugging in demographic data!") but I'd characterize it more as frightening, given that ESSA continues to demand that teachers and administrators and schools be judged based on test scores (generally under the euphemism "student achievement") and if those test scores can be fudged based on data having nothing to do with what actually goes on inside the school, then a whole bunch of careers and funding are riding on things that have nothing to do with schools.
This is also one more reason that any future teacher (there are, I hear, still one or two out there) who is paying attention should know better than to take a job in a poor neighborhood, where anything from her professional standing to her future career is liable to be trashed by the demographics of her neighborhood.
There are other conclusions to be drawn here, not the least of which is that you are in one of those A-F school rating states, the best way to change your school's grade is to change your demographics (aka turn into a charter and recruit students from outside your old neighborhood).
Make sure to read this report and pass it on. It has been peer reviewed, it is legitimate research, and it does raise huge red-flaggy questions about the validity or usefulness of the BS Tests. At the very least you can be asking your state and national policy leaders, "If we can generate the same data by just analyzing demographics, why are we wasting time and money on these tests?"
In the meantime, here's an oldie but a goodie from Tienken, in case you like your explanations more video style.
ESSA Won't Spur "Best Practices"
Eric Kalenze, Director of Education Solutions at the Search Institute, is guest-blogging at Rick Hess's EdWeek spot this week. His interest leans towards questions of research and best practices and how any of those things ever hope to line up with actual classrooms. Today he's asking one particularly interesting question--
Will ESSA's Evidence Requirements Spur Actual Best Practices? comes with its own answer included-- no. Kalenze wants to jump ahead to the answer.
His premise itself is a bit faulty-- he concludes that best practices are not in use in classrooms because of this:
If the practices and ideals that feel right and we continually work to execute are indeed 'best', how can we continue to show weakly in international comparisons, leave scores of the same populations behind, and not see progress jump more steeply over time on internal measurements?
He's missing the more obvious answer. If everything I know tells me that my Big Stick is three feet long, and I pull out a tape measure and that tape measure tells me it's not three feet long at all, I should be looking at the tape measure. Kalenze is starting with the premise that things like PISA and Big Standardized Tests scores are an accurate and complete measure of student achievement and educational attainment. There is no reason to believe that they are such a measure, and in fact the discontinuity that Kalenze brings up is one more reason to suspect that they are NOT a good measure at all. He also moves from there to the issue of examining whether or not our best practices really are best, and that is always a worthwhile question. You can't hurt anything. If a best practice really is a beat practice, then examining it will only confirm its bestness.
But mostly Kalenze has noticed that schools don't really do much in the way of implementing Best Practices, and while he thinks it's swell that the newest version of education law (ESSA) calls for schools to implement evidence-based improvement strategies, he has no confidence that it's actually going to happen. And he sees three reasons why:
1) Limits of Cataloging Interventions. You can't implement what you can't find information about, and beyond the Institute of Education Science's What Works Clearinghouse (a wholly-owned subsidiary of the USED), there's not much to be found (and let me add that WWC is not a particularly impressive resource.
And this would be a good time to remind you that "evidence-based" is an extraordinarily loose framework that includes "somebody has expressed a convincing rationale even if they have no evidence." Yet there's still not much out there for teachers to choose from.
2) Ed Decision-Makers Are Key-- And They Need Better Research Literacy. In other words, if your principal or superintendent is neither up on the research or a very good student of same (not that I'm in any way suggesting that administrators are poor students, but, you know, "those who can't teach..."). Also, a lot of crappy research is packed in giant slabs of baloney, which means whoever reads through research in your district needs to have a nice sharp baloney slicer.
3) Flexibility With Responsibility Won't Move Needles on Leaders' Research Literacy. This may sound like jargon, but his point is dead on-- all that ESSA has really added is one more piece of paperwork for administrators to fill out, and other than jumping through that "wordsmithing hoop," they will be free to continue exactly as they have in the past.
I largely agree with Kalenze, as far as he goes. But the big problem here is that, despite the widespread wonkery on the subject, this is not a policy issue.
There is one single way that best practices are effectively spread-- from teacher to teacher. Mrs. Teachowicz says to her teacher colleague Mrs. McPedagog or her teacher friend Mrs. O'Teachlots, "Hey, here's this thing I've been using with my students to teach cheese straightening, and it really works well for me."
You can pitch research at me all day, and I will certainly scan it for possible ideas. But at the end of the day, there is only one measure for Best Practices and that is this: when I do it in my classroom, are my students engaged and learning? Because even if Mrs. Teachenheimer has great success with an approach, it may not work for me or with my students, because we are human beings in a classroom and not toasters on an assembly line.
Behind the Search for Best Practices is the ongoing belief that if we could just identify some fool-proof, awesome teaching techniques, we could just pack those in a box and and any sentient life-form that unpacked the box and used those Best Practices would be an awesome teacher. This is a profound misunderstanding of what teaching is an how it works.
Are there practices more likely to be useful than others? Sure. If we're giving general marriage advice, there are some mostly-universal truisms that can be widely applied (Don't be abusive to your spouse every day. Occasionally speak to each other.) but the more specific the advice, the more limited its use (Every morning at 6:05, say "I love you, Brenda.")
So is it useful to have someone offering Best Practices out there? Probably, as long as we understand that what's Best is one classroom may be much less Best in another. Is it useful to have the federal government trying to push these practices? No, not at all. Given the choice between looking for teaching ideas on WWC or on any of the major teacher sharing websites, I will pick the latter every time. And as Kalenze correctly observes, the ESSA requirement is a nothing-burger, a demand for more paperwork so that federal bureaucrats can pat themselves on the back and say, "Look how we made education better! The proof is right here in all these forms! Yay us!" As always, any policy based on the assumption that the federal government has a better idea of what is happening in my classroom than I do is a dopey policy.
Kalenze's concern-- that some of the policies passed around virally by administrators like, say, implementing a whole bunch of unproven tech because computers-- is a valid one. He doesn't address one of the main sources of bad practices-- corporate sales. The people in the education field who are working hardest to push particular practices are the people making money from those practices. Some of the worst abuses have happened when government decides to endorse a particular company's product as The Way To Go. In that perfect storm we get the company's desire to grab money laced with their own company-sponsored bad research and bolstered by friendly government officials picking winners by strongly suggesting particular programs. This process has gotten us everything from Accelerated Reader to the modern charter school movement.And I don't have to time here to rehearse the whole sad history of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and Common Core, each symptomatic in its own sad way of the transformation of government into a corporate marketing department.
If we really want to talk about how best practices are being blocked out of the classroom by other baloney, we should talk about corporate marketing and its role in education. The danger in ESSA is not that it fails to properly push or enforce the choice of Best Practices-- the real danger is that someone in government will try to "clarify" or "strengthen" that aspect by offering specific "recommendations" of which practices the feds judge to be best.
Will ESSA's Evidence Requirements Spur Actual Best Practices? comes with its own answer included-- no. Kalenze wants to jump ahead to the answer.
His premise itself is a bit faulty-- he concludes that best practices are not in use in classrooms because of this:
If the practices and ideals that feel right and we continually work to execute are indeed 'best', how can we continue to show weakly in international comparisons, leave scores of the same populations behind, and not see progress jump more steeply over time on internal measurements?
He's missing the more obvious answer. If everything I know tells me that my Big Stick is three feet long, and I pull out a tape measure and that tape measure tells me it's not three feet long at all, I should be looking at the tape measure. Kalenze is starting with the premise that things like PISA and Big Standardized Tests scores are an accurate and complete measure of student achievement and educational attainment. There is no reason to believe that they are such a measure, and in fact the discontinuity that Kalenze brings up is one more reason to suspect that they are NOT a good measure at all. He also moves from there to the issue of examining whether or not our best practices really are best, and that is always a worthwhile question. You can't hurt anything. If a best practice really is a beat practice, then examining it will only confirm its bestness.
But mostly Kalenze has noticed that schools don't really do much in the way of implementing Best Practices, and while he thinks it's swell that the newest version of education law (ESSA) calls for schools to implement evidence-based improvement strategies, he has no confidence that it's actually going to happen. And he sees three reasons why:
1) Limits of Cataloging Interventions. You can't implement what you can't find information about, and beyond the Institute of Education Science's What Works Clearinghouse (a wholly-owned subsidiary of the USED), there's not much to be found (and let me add that WWC is not a particularly impressive resource.
And this would be a good time to remind you that "evidence-based" is an extraordinarily loose framework that includes "somebody has expressed a convincing rationale even if they have no evidence." Yet there's still not much out there for teachers to choose from.
2) Ed Decision-Makers Are Key-- And They Need Better Research Literacy. In other words, if your principal or superintendent is neither up on the research or a very good student of same (not that I'm in any way suggesting that administrators are poor students, but, you know, "those who can't teach..."). Also, a lot of crappy research is packed in giant slabs of baloney, which means whoever reads through research in your district needs to have a nice sharp baloney slicer.
3) Flexibility With Responsibility Won't Move Needles on Leaders' Research Literacy. This may sound like jargon, but his point is dead on-- all that ESSA has really added is one more piece of paperwork for administrators to fill out, and other than jumping through that "wordsmithing hoop," they will be free to continue exactly as they have in the past.
I largely agree with Kalenze, as far as he goes. But the big problem here is that, despite the widespread wonkery on the subject, this is not a policy issue.
There is one single way that best practices are effectively spread-- from teacher to teacher. Mrs. Teachowicz says to her teacher colleague Mrs. McPedagog or her teacher friend Mrs. O'Teachlots, "Hey, here's this thing I've been using with my students to teach cheese straightening, and it really works well for me."
You can pitch research at me all day, and I will certainly scan it for possible ideas. But at the end of the day, there is only one measure for Best Practices and that is this: when I do it in my classroom, are my students engaged and learning? Because even if Mrs. Teachenheimer has great success with an approach, it may not work for me or with my students, because we are human beings in a classroom and not toasters on an assembly line.
Behind the Search for Best Practices is the ongoing belief that if we could just identify some fool-proof, awesome teaching techniques, we could just pack those in a box and and any sentient life-form that unpacked the box and used those Best Practices would be an awesome teacher. This is a profound misunderstanding of what teaching is an how it works.
Are there practices more likely to be useful than others? Sure. If we're giving general marriage advice, there are some mostly-universal truisms that can be widely applied (Don't be abusive to your spouse every day. Occasionally speak to each other.) but the more specific the advice, the more limited its use (Every morning at 6:05, say "I love you, Brenda.")
So is it useful to have someone offering Best Practices out there? Probably, as long as we understand that what's Best is one classroom may be much less Best in another. Is it useful to have the federal government trying to push these practices? No, not at all. Given the choice between looking for teaching ideas on WWC or on any of the major teacher sharing websites, I will pick the latter every time. And as Kalenze correctly observes, the ESSA requirement is a nothing-burger, a demand for more paperwork so that federal bureaucrats can pat themselves on the back and say, "Look how we made education better! The proof is right here in all these forms! Yay us!" As always, any policy based on the assumption that the federal government has a better idea of what is happening in my classroom than I do is a dopey policy.
Kalenze's concern-- that some of the policies passed around virally by administrators like, say, implementing a whole bunch of unproven tech because computers-- is a valid one. He doesn't address one of the main sources of bad practices-- corporate sales. The people in the education field who are working hardest to push particular practices are the people making money from those practices. Some of the worst abuses have happened when government decides to endorse a particular company's product as The Way To Go. In that perfect storm we get the company's desire to grab money laced with their own company-sponsored bad research and bolstered by friendly government officials picking winners by strongly suggesting particular programs. This process has gotten us everything from Accelerated Reader to the modern charter school movement.And I don't have to time here to rehearse the whole sad history of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and Common Core, each symptomatic in its own sad way of the transformation of government into a corporate marketing department.
If we really want to talk about how best practices are being blocked out of the classroom by other baloney, we should talk about corporate marketing and its role in education. The danger in ESSA is not that it fails to properly push or enforce the choice of Best Practices-- the real danger is that someone in government will try to "clarify" or "strengthen" that aspect by offering specific "recommendations" of which practices the feds judge to be best.
Tuesday, December 6, 2016
Write Your Own PISA Post
I actually considered a Reaction to PISA Scores post and then decided that I didn't have the heart for this annual exercise in futility, and wiser heads than mine were already on the case. So instead, I'll let you take this little quiz (in, of course, multiple choice form) and in the process create a Choose Your Own Madlibs Fake Journalism story for the occasion. Enjoy!
International Testing Authorities today released the highly anticipated PISA scores. PISA stands for
a) Programme for International Student Assessment
b) Program for International Student Assessment
c) Probably Isn't Scaring Anyone
d) Problems In Silly Accounting
The scores indicate that American students have improved their international standings in
a) math
b) reading
c) nothing
d) making multiple choice decisions
But in the meantime, there has been a drop in US standing when it comes to
a) math
b) reading
c) making a decent bagel
d) bureaucratic thumb twiddling over random scores
Some educational experts have declared that the new battery of scores is a sign of
a) something wrong with the damn teachers
b) shift in the tides
c) the apocalypse, due any day now since 1983
d) everything except a failure in the test-and-punish, standards-based reforms of the last decade
On the other hand, other educational experts declared that the scores as a sign of
a) the opposite of whatever those other guys said
b) the awesome success of reform programs
c) the rest of the world getting dumber
d) America is great again already
All experts agreed that the PISA results show proof
a) of whatever viewpoint I'm already invested in
b) my opponents are dum-dum doody heads
c) USA! USA! USA! USA!
d) I'm rubber and you're glue
Further examination of the results and interpretations of them show that
a) innumeracy is a problem among education writers
b) lots of folks don't understand how stack ranking works
c) writing about boring data is hard
d) measuring the educational attainment of entire nation's is mostly impossible
The PISA is an international test that serves to measure educational achievement in nations that don't even speak the same languages. Its validity and accuracy has been established by
a) the organization that created it
b) tiny invisible accountants
c) hopes and dreams
d) insisting real hard repeatedly
Somwhere, a handful of education historians are repeatedly trying to remind us
a) the US has always ranked low on these international tests
b) the US has always ranked low on these international tests
c) the US has always ranked low on these international tests
d) the US has always ranked low on these international tests
In the weeks ahead, education thought leaders and policy wonks will, in response to these scores
a) beat their PR horse to death
b) make no meaningful policy recommendations or decisions
c) move on to the next shiny object
d) all of the above
The best headline pun for this article would include
a) anything with Tower of Pisa
b) malPISAnce
c) PISA'n me off
d) The Princess and the PISA
International Testing Authorities today released the highly anticipated PISA scores. PISA stands for
a) Programme for International Student Assessment
b) Program for International Student Assessment
c) Probably Isn't Scaring Anyone
d) Problems In Silly Accounting
The scores indicate that American students have improved their international standings in
a) math
b) reading
c) nothing
d) making multiple choice decisions
But in the meantime, there has been a drop in US standing when it comes to
a) math
b) reading
c) making a decent bagel
d) bureaucratic thumb twiddling over random scores
Some educational experts have declared that the new battery of scores is a sign of
a) something wrong with the damn teachers
b) shift in the tides
c) the apocalypse, due any day now since 1983
d) everything except a failure in the test-and-punish, standards-based reforms of the last decade
On the other hand, other educational experts declared that the scores as a sign of
a) the opposite of whatever those other guys said
b) the awesome success of reform programs
c) the rest of the world getting dumber
d) America is great again already
All experts agreed that the PISA results show proof
a) of whatever viewpoint I'm already invested in
b) my opponents are dum-dum doody heads
c) USA! USA! USA! USA!
d) I'm rubber and you're glue
Further examination of the results and interpretations of them show that
a) innumeracy is a problem among education writers
b) lots of folks don't understand how stack ranking works
c) writing about boring data is hard
d) measuring the educational attainment of entire nation's is mostly impossible
The PISA is an international test that serves to measure educational achievement in nations that don't even speak the same languages. Its validity and accuracy has been established by
a) the organization that created it
b) tiny invisible accountants
c) hopes and dreams
d) insisting real hard repeatedly
Somwhere, a handful of education historians are repeatedly trying to remind us
a) the US has always ranked low on these international tests
b) the US has always ranked low on these international tests
c) the US has always ranked low on these international tests
d) the US has always ranked low on these international tests
In the weeks ahead, education thought leaders and policy wonks will, in response to these scores
a) beat their PR horse to death
b) make no meaningful policy recommendations or decisions
c) move on to the next shiny object
d) all of the above
The best headline pun for this article would include
a) anything with Tower of Pisa
b) malPISAnce
c) PISA'n me off
d) The Princess and the PISA
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