We'll be flying off to visit family later this week, and there will probably not be an edition next weekend. But here's some things to read from this week. Remember to share.
How Education Philanthropy Can Accidentally Promote Groupthink
Rick Hess takes a look at how philanthropists silence dissent (even if they don't mean to, which is a generous interpretation, but this is still worth a look).
More States Opting To Robo-grade Essays By Computer
I responded to this over at Forbes this week, but this really stupid trend just won't die.
10 Tech Tools That Will Make You a Super Teacher
Ha. Not really. You might have sailed past this one because of the title, but take a look.
ISTE, Data Tracking, and the Myth of Personalized Learning
Michael Crowley went to ISTE and came back with a few things to complain about.
A Guide to the Corporations That Are Defunding Public Education and Opposing Striking Teachers
A handy guide to some of the major players.
FSC Researcher Documents Teachers Impact Not Standardized Test Results
Someone in Florida is trying to do the right thing. Intriguing project.
Coordinated Uniqueness Comes for the Minneapolis Public Schools
Also, a consultant named Cheesebrow. Nobody captures the absurdity of Minneapolis education like Sarah Lahm.
What the Sordid Saga of a Silicon Valley Start-Up Tells Us About #EdReform
Have You Heard with Jennifer Berkshire and guest co-host John Warner takes a look at a giant tech start-up scam, and what it tells us about education disruptors.
Gates’s Blunders Destroy Teachers and Public Schools!
Many writers parsed out the Rand report showing that Bill Gates just wasted a ton of money, but Nancy Bailey's take is not to be missed.
Slow Down Before You Support Trump Ending Obama-Era School Guidance
Finally, here's Neal McClusky of the libertarian Cato Institute arguing in favor of affirmative action. Really.
Sunday, July 8, 2018
Saturday, July 7, 2018
Jack Weil Is a Dope
I don't want to be too subtle about this, because some things require a not-subtle response.
Jack H. Weil was appointed an assistant chief immigration judge in 2009, after many years in the immigration court biz. His current post calls for him to oversee the training of immigration judges. Which is why his comments in a recent deposition are jaw-dropping.
The deposition came in a case in which the American Civil Liberties Union and immigrant rights groups are seeking "to require the government to provide appointed counsel for every indigent child who cannot afford a lawyer in immigration court proceedings." In other words, as we continue to shuttle unaccompanied children into court, wouldn't it be the decentish thing to provide them with a lawyer (the decent thing would not be to drag them in there in the first place). The Justice Department says no; let them represent themselves, no matter how young they are.
The situation is portrayed in this video. You should know that A) the video is a dramatization and B) it is based on court transcripts. So is this video of the actual awfulness? No. Do we have every reason to believe that the reality is just this awful? Yes.
So back to Jack Weil. He was offered up as a witness for the DOJ in the case, and in the course of his deposition, he made the following point, not once, but twice:
“I’ve taught immigration law literally to 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds,” Weil said. “It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of patience. They get it. It’s not the most efficient, but it can be done.”
He repeated his claim twice in the deposition, also saying, “I’ve told you I have trained 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds in immigration law,” according to a transcript. “You can do a fair hearing. It’s going to take you a lot of time.”
Weil later claimed in an email that his comments "were taken out of context." Technically correct. But I'm trying to imagine in what context this doesn't sound like jaw-dropping baloney. "I'm now going to say some ridiculous stuff just to test the recording equipment"? Maybe "Here's what I'd say if I were an awful person"?
No, I can't imagine any way in which Weil's comments could be contextualized into some thing not-dopey.
So here we are, on one more Kafkaesque page of our current history, having to actually explain, out loud, to grown-up officials, that sending a three year old into a court of law to represent himself in a case in a foreign country where he doesn't speak the language and he only has the reasoning skills and understanding of a three year old child-- we actually have to explain to somebody that this idea is not only stupid, but cruel and unkind.
This makes no sense in any context other than the ongoing program to re-brand the United States as a country so hostile, so unwelcoming, so deliberately awful and just plain mean, that brown people will decide they're better off staying in their miserable homes. This is a level of hostility toward children and ignorance about what they are capable of that boggles the mind. Maybe we were better than this, maybe we were never better than this-- I don't want to host that debate now because one thing I do know is that, whatever our past, right now, in the present, we know better than this. We can do better than this. Call your congressman.
Jack H. Weil was appointed an assistant chief immigration judge in 2009, after many years in the immigration court biz. His current post calls for him to oversee the training of immigration judges. Which is why his comments in a recent deposition are jaw-dropping.
The deposition came in a case in which the American Civil Liberties Union and immigrant rights groups are seeking "to require the government to provide appointed counsel for every indigent child who cannot afford a lawyer in immigration court proceedings." In other words, as we continue to shuttle unaccompanied children into court, wouldn't it be the decentish thing to provide them with a lawyer (the decent thing would not be to drag them in there in the first place). The Justice Department says no; let them represent themselves, no matter how young they are.
The situation is portrayed in this video. You should know that A) the video is a dramatization and B) it is based on court transcripts. So is this video of the actual awfulness? No. Do we have every reason to believe that the reality is just this awful? Yes.
So back to Jack Weil. He was offered up as a witness for the DOJ in the case, and in the course of his deposition, he made the following point, not once, but twice:
“I’ve taught immigration law literally to 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds,” Weil said. “It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of patience. They get it. It’s not the most efficient, but it can be done.”
He repeated his claim twice in the deposition, also saying, “I’ve told you I have trained 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds in immigration law,” according to a transcript. “You can do a fair hearing. It’s going to take you a lot of time.”
Weil later claimed in an email that his comments "were taken out of context." Technically correct. But I'm trying to imagine in what context this doesn't sound like jaw-dropping baloney. "I'm now going to say some ridiculous stuff just to test the recording equipment"? Maybe "Here's what I'd say if I were an awful person"?
No, I can't imagine any way in which Weil's comments could be contextualized into some thing not-dopey.
So here we are, on one more Kafkaesque page of our current history, having to actually explain, out loud, to grown-up officials, that sending a three year old into a court of law to represent himself in a case in a foreign country where he doesn't speak the language and he only has the reasoning skills and understanding of a three year old child-- we actually have to explain to somebody that this idea is not only stupid, but cruel and unkind.
This makes no sense in any context other than the ongoing program to re-brand the United States as a country so hostile, so unwelcoming, so deliberately awful and just plain mean, that brown people will decide they're better off staying in their miserable homes. This is a level of hostility toward children and ignorance about what they are capable of that boggles the mind. Maybe we were better than this, maybe we were never better than this-- I don't want to host that debate now because one thing I do know is that, whatever our past, right now, in the present, we know better than this. We can do better than this. Call your congressman.
Play Is Not For Children
Here we go again.
There's a certain kind of adult in the world, a kind of adult who looks at a bunch of children running around a yard laughing and playing and thinks, "Man, somebody needs to get those kids organized."
Hell, if you don't feel qualified to supervise children playing, there's an entire recess consulting firm that you can hire (called Playworks because, I don't know, they've found the secret of turning play into work).
And now there's a research-based rubric for evaluating and optimizing your children's playground experience. Edutopia has written a breathless puff piece about it noting that it's important because "while there's little doubt that children get exercise on the playground" it's also true that "schools often underestimate the social, emotional, and academic potential of playtime and fail to design recess to optimize those benefits." Do schools underestimate it? Maybe, or maybe they've allowed themselves to be conned out of it by the army of Reformsters claiming that children need to be learning academically as soon as they emerge from the womb. But you'd have to be living in a cave top miss the mountain of pro-recess research-based pushback over the last few years (try here, here, here, here, here and here).
Edutopia boils it down to three tips.
Tip 1: Don't overlook the power of recess to boost social, emotional, and academic skills. Also, don't forget that water is wet and the sun will probably rise in the East tomorrow.
Edutopia goers on to note that the experiences of a playground are "life in miniature," which raises the question of whether or not a micro-managing adult with a checklist really fits. Edutopia suggests a battery of questions that address child engagement and empowerment, and I won't argue that those aren't important.
Tip 2: Use adults to model positive behaviors.
Edutopia means mostly that adults need to monitor to squash bullying and make sure that all are included. On the one hand, I see value in this. On the other hand, I'm not sure it's "life in miniature" to model that a Greater Authority will always step in to make sure that things are fair. If there's no space for children to work these issues out on their own, I'm not sure what we're learning.
Tip 3: Safe environments promote healthy, active play.
Well, sure. Also, people don't get hurt so much. The equipment on the playground should be well-maintained.
Much of this is unobjectionable, but moderation and balance is key. Here's Edutopia's "takeaway":
Recess isn’t a break from learning—if structured appropriately, it’s a valuable opportunity for students to grow socially, emotionally, cognitively, and physically.
Yikes. If you are worried about structuring your students' recess properly, you are too involved. The proper structure is for adults to keep a watchful eye so that students are sure to be safe. The other role for adults is to leave the children alone.
But, hey-- maybe Edutopia just projected too much of their own stuff into this and the actual report is-- yikes! The actual report's title is "Development of the great recess framework-observational tool to measure contextual and behavioral components of elementary school recess." The report is found on Biomed Central Group, an outfit that belongs to Springer Nature, a publishing conglomerate of sorts.
The Great Recess Framework-Observation Tool (GRF-OT) is a seventeen-item rubric accompanied complete with "item factor loadings" and "inter-rate reliability" scales that let you score your playground. There are five categories broken into some subcategories.
Safety and Structure (five scale items): For a top score (4/4) the play area should have no danger areas. Play spaces and game boundaries are well marked. Fixed an unfixed equipment supports multiple games. A variety of organized games are available. Equipment is used as intended and in a safe manner.
Adult engagement and Supervision (four scale items): For top score, adult to student ratio is less than 35:1. Adults model positive culture. Adults are strategically positioned. Almost all adults are engaged and playing games with students.
Student behaviors (five scale items): Games initiated by students. No physical altercations between students. All communication between students is positive. No disagreements about rules between students that were disruptive to play. Students have no conflict, or manage conflict without adult intervention.
Transitions (two scale items): Transitions between classroom and playground are smooth.
Physical activity (one scale item): Almost all students are physically active.
Look, I get that this is well-intended, mostly. And some of it is sensible and fine. But some is self-defeating (how much conflict resolution will children even get to start working on if their teacher is right there playing the game with them). If children are only expressing positive communication, what does that do to good-natured trash talk, and what message does it send about whether or not children are allowed to have bad feelings? How much time will we spend enforcing things like the properly defined boundaries for certain activities, and why? Who decides on what acceptable structure and organization must be (can children play Calvinball on this playground)? And while I can see occasions when adult game participation can be useful (like, kickball pitcher for first graders), mostly, the appropriate location for adults is off to the side.
So much structure and order and adult micro-management-- how is this recess any different from an actual phys ed class?
There's an underlying assumption here that if we can carefully manage every aspect of the child's experience, we will get that child to become exactly the person we want. That's foolish. We don't know, and we can't know, and our desire to keep our children free from every sharp edge, every bitter disappointment, every unpleasant conflict-- all of that understandable desire invariably leads us to the same place, and that's the place where we strip the children of any freedom. Oh, it's for their safety. It's for their own good. But there's nothing good about minimizing a child's freedom.
No, I'm not advocating you give your eight-year-old an apartment next to the Rusty Heap Junkyard and only check in on her once a month. But we really have to let go of this notion that if adults just organized and structured children's play, we could optimize it for social and emotional growth. We aren't God, and our children aren't house plants. What tiny humans need is the chance to roam freely in a safe space and, even for a little part of each day, make their own choices.
Put your clipboard down and let the children play.
There's a certain kind of adult in the world, a kind of adult who looks at a bunch of children running around a yard laughing and playing and thinks, "Man, somebody needs to get those kids organized."
Hell, if you don't feel qualified to supervise children playing, there's an entire recess consulting firm that you can hire (called Playworks because, I don't know, they've found the secret of turning play into work).
 |
| Somebody needs to put some lines on that field. |
Edutopia boils it down to three tips.
Tip 1: Don't overlook the power of recess to boost social, emotional, and academic skills. Also, don't forget that water is wet and the sun will probably rise in the East tomorrow.
Edutopia goers on to note that the experiences of a playground are "life in miniature," which raises the question of whether or not a micro-managing adult with a checklist really fits. Edutopia suggests a battery of questions that address child engagement and empowerment, and I won't argue that those aren't important.
Tip 2: Use adults to model positive behaviors.
Edutopia means mostly that adults need to monitor to squash bullying and make sure that all are included. On the one hand, I see value in this. On the other hand, I'm not sure it's "life in miniature" to model that a Greater Authority will always step in to make sure that things are fair. If there's no space for children to work these issues out on their own, I'm not sure what we're learning.
Tip 3: Safe environments promote healthy, active play.
Well, sure. Also, people don't get hurt so much. The equipment on the playground should be well-maintained.
Much of this is unobjectionable, but moderation and balance is key. Here's Edutopia's "takeaway":
Recess isn’t a break from learning—if structured appropriately, it’s a valuable opportunity for students to grow socially, emotionally, cognitively, and physically.
Yikes. If you are worried about structuring your students' recess properly, you are too involved. The proper structure is for adults to keep a watchful eye so that students are sure to be safe. The other role for adults is to leave the children alone.
But, hey-- maybe Edutopia just projected too much of their own stuff into this and the actual report is-- yikes! The actual report's title is "Development of the great recess framework-observational tool to measure contextual and behavioral components of elementary school recess." The report is found on Biomed Central Group, an outfit that belongs to Springer Nature, a publishing conglomerate of sorts.
The Great Recess Framework-Observation Tool (GRF-OT) is a seventeen-item rubric accompanied complete with "item factor loadings" and "inter-rate reliability" scales that let you score your playground. There are five categories broken into some subcategories.
Safety and Structure (five scale items): For a top score (4/4) the play area should have no danger areas. Play spaces and game boundaries are well marked. Fixed an unfixed equipment supports multiple games. A variety of organized games are available. Equipment is used as intended and in a safe manner.
Adult engagement and Supervision (four scale items): For top score, adult to student ratio is less than 35:1. Adults model positive culture. Adults are strategically positioned. Almost all adults are engaged and playing games with students.
Student behaviors (five scale items): Games initiated by students. No physical altercations between students. All communication between students is positive. No disagreements about rules between students that were disruptive to play. Students have no conflict, or manage conflict without adult intervention.
Transitions (two scale items): Transitions between classroom and playground are smooth.
Physical activity (one scale item): Almost all students are physically active.
Look, I get that this is well-intended, mostly. And some of it is sensible and fine. But some is self-defeating (how much conflict resolution will children even get to start working on if their teacher is right there playing the game with them). If children are only expressing positive communication, what does that do to good-natured trash talk, and what message does it send about whether or not children are allowed to have bad feelings? How much time will we spend enforcing things like the properly defined boundaries for certain activities, and why? Who decides on what acceptable structure and organization must be (can children play Calvinball on this playground)? And while I can see occasions when adult game participation can be useful (like, kickball pitcher for first graders), mostly, the appropriate location for adults is off to the side.
So much structure and order and adult micro-management-- how is this recess any different from an actual phys ed class?
There's an underlying assumption here that if we can carefully manage every aspect of the child's experience, we will get that child to become exactly the person we want. That's foolish. We don't know, and we can't know, and our desire to keep our children free from every sharp edge, every bitter disappointment, every unpleasant conflict-- all of that understandable desire invariably leads us to the same place, and that's the place where we strip the children of any freedom. Oh, it's for their safety. It's for their own good. But there's nothing good about minimizing a child's freedom.
No, I'm not advocating you give your eight-year-old an apartment next to the Rusty Heap Junkyard and only check in on her once a month. But we really have to let go of this notion that if adults just organized and structured children's play, we could optimize it for social and emotional growth. We aren't God, and our children aren't house plants. What tiny humans need is the chance to roam freely in a safe space and, even for a little part of each day, make their own choices.
Put your clipboard down and let the children play.
Friday, July 6, 2018
Gates and Opportunity Costs
I have had a hard time absorbing the news that Bill Gates blew over a half a billion dollars on his latest experiment on live humans.
Half a billion. $575 million, by most accounts. Not all of that was his own money, and honestly, I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse.
Gates' big experiment in test-based teacher evaluation was itself evaluated by the Rand folks, who took over 500 pages (so, like, a million dollars a page) to conclude that it probably failed, although maybe not. Because if there's one thing that Gates never, ever does, it's say the words "I was wrong. This didn't work." The closest he comes is some version of "This may not have worked, but if it didn't, it wasn't our fault." And Rand comes through this time as well:
Unfortunately, the evaluation cannot identify the reasons the IP initiative did not achieve its student outcome goals by 2014-2015. It is possible that the reforms are working but we failed to detect their effects because insufficient time has passed for effects to appear. It is also possible that the other schools in the same states we use for comparison purposes adopted similar reforms, limiting our ability to detect effects. However, if the findings of no effect are valid, the results might reflect a lack of successful models on which sites could draw in implementing the levers, problems in making use of teacher-evaluation measures to inform key HR decisions, the influence of state and local context, or insufficient attention to factors other than teacher quality.
So, student test scores didn't go up [insert, for the gazillionth time, my rant about how Big Standardized Test scores are terrible proxies for student achievement] but maybe our ideas were working, just not enough so we could tell yet. Or maybe they are working but everyone else was imitating them so our studied schools didn't stand out from the pack because the pack was already following us, even though there's no evidence we were actually correct. (I will refer you here to my thoughts about "levers").
But weasel-wording aside, by their own measures, by their own standards, the Gates project failed. Which is not really a shocker-- name a single Gates-backed education-game-changing initiative that was a notable success. Fail fail faily fail fail.
For over a half a billion dollars.
When I look at a mess like this, I'm most struck by the opportunity cost.
You know about opportunity cost. When you decide to do A, you give up the chance to do B. Your cost is not just what you paid for A-- it is also the cost of not having done B.
Even when we don't use the words, we know all about opportunity cost in education. We have tightly limited resources, so everything has an opportunity cost. If I decide to spend ten more minutes on dependent clauses, then I will spend ten fewer minutes on something else (goodbye, river-related symbolism in Huck Finn). And of course, every dollar spent in a tight school budget represents an opportunity cost.
There are many ways to think about computing opportunity cost. I like this one: if you're about to spend ten dollars on a super-duper deal, ask yourself what you would do if someone handed you ten dollars.
In this case, we ask-- if someone handed you half a billion dollars to spend on making US schools better, what would you spend it on. Make a list. And then check the list-- is "try to pilot an unproven system of teacher evaluation based on scores from narrow, unproven standardized tests" on your list. Is that the best thing you can think of to spend $575 million education dollars on? Because everything else on your list-- more teachers, more resources for poor schools, better buildings, more materials, broader class offerings, smaller class sizes-- is part of the cost of Bill Gates' little experiment.
And it's not just the money. Ask yourself-- if the school year were suddenly lengthened by forty days, what would you do with the extra time. I'll be you have lots of ideas, and I'll bet the top of the list is not "Give a Big Standardized Test and spend a bunch of days getting ready for it." Everything else on the list-- all the units you could have taught, all the time you could have spent working with students, all the greater depth you could have achieved-- is part of the opportunity cost of the Gates experiment.
And that's before we even get to other costs, like the cost of convincing a bunch of teachers that they're lousy teachers because their students didn't get awesome scores on the BS Tests.
So it's really not enough to say that the Gates experiment was a waste of time and money, because that assumes that we had a bunch of time and money to just throw away. We didn't. We don't. This Gates experiment, just like every other Gates experiment, carried a huge opportunity cost. So many things that we could have done, so much education that we could have accomplished, and we spent all that opportunity on one more pile of Gatesian baloney.
There's opportunity cost in the excuses and weasel-wording that inevitably comes with post-experiment Gatesian summing up. Because there's a chance for Gates to have real insight, to say, "Man, we were just wrong on this, and we were so sure we were right even when people were trying to warn us. So I'm thinking that in the future, I'd better not just barrel ahead fueled by nothing but self-confidence. Maybe before I appoint myself the tsar of education, I should listen to some professionals and be more careful about what I do." But that opportunity is also squandered time after time. Somewhere down the road, we'll find ourselves wasting opportunities yet again.
Half a billion. $575 million, by most accounts. Not all of that was his own money, and honestly, I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse.
 |
| This guy |
Unfortunately, the evaluation cannot identify the reasons the IP initiative did not achieve its student outcome goals by 2014-2015. It is possible that the reforms are working but we failed to detect their effects because insufficient time has passed for effects to appear. It is also possible that the other schools in the same states we use for comparison purposes adopted similar reforms, limiting our ability to detect effects. However, if the findings of no effect are valid, the results might reflect a lack of successful models on which sites could draw in implementing the levers, problems in making use of teacher-evaluation measures to inform key HR decisions, the influence of state and local context, or insufficient attention to factors other than teacher quality.
So, student test scores didn't go up [insert, for the gazillionth time, my rant about how Big Standardized Test scores are terrible proxies for student achievement] but maybe our ideas were working, just not enough so we could tell yet. Or maybe they are working but everyone else was imitating them so our studied schools didn't stand out from the pack because the pack was already following us, even though there's no evidence we were actually correct. (I will refer you here to my thoughts about "levers").
But weasel-wording aside, by their own measures, by their own standards, the Gates project failed. Which is not really a shocker-- name a single Gates-backed education-game-changing initiative that was a notable success. Fail fail faily fail fail.
For over a half a billion dollars.
When I look at a mess like this, I'm most struck by the opportunity cost.
You know about opportunity cost. When you decide to do A, you give up the chance to do B. Your cost is not just what you paid for A-- it is also the cost of not having done B.
Even when we don't use the words, we know all about opportunity cost in education. We have tightly limited resources, so everything has an opportunity cost. If I decide to spend ten more minutes on dependent clauses, then I will spend ten fewer minutes on something else (goodbye, river-related symbolism in Huck Finn). And of course, every dollar spent in a tight school budget represents an opportunity cost.
There are many ways to think about computing opportunity cost. I like this one: if you're about to spend ten dollars on a super-duper deal, ask yourself what you would do if someone handed you ten dollars.
In this case, we ask-- if someone handed you half a billion dollars to spend on making US schools better, what would you spend it on. Make a list. And then check the list-- is "try to pilot an unproven system of teacher evaluation based on scores from narrow, unproven standardized tests" on your list. Is that the best thing you can think of to spend $575 million education dollars on? Because everything else on your list-- more teachers, more resources for poor schools, better buildings, more materials, broader class offerings, smaller class sizes-- is part of the cost of Bill Gates' little experiment.
And it's not just the money. Ask yourself-- if the school year were suddenly lengthened by forty days, what would you do with the extra time. I'll be you have lots of ideas, and I'll bet the top of the list is not "Give a Big Standardized Test and spend a bunch of days getting ready for it." Everything else on the list-- all the units you could have taught, all the time you could have spent working with students, all the greater depth you could have achieved-- is part of the opportunity cost of the Gates experiment.
And that's before we even get to other costs, like the cost of convincing a bunch of teachers that they're lousy teachers because their students didn't get awesome scores on the BS Tests.
So it's really not enough to say that the Gates experiment was a waste of time and money, because that assumes that we had a bunch of time and money to just throw away. We didn't. We don't. This Gates experiment, just like every other Gates experiment, carried a huge opportunity cost. So many things that we could have done, so much education that we could have accomplished, and we spent all that opportunity on one more pile of Gatesian baloney.
There's opportunity cost in the excuses and weasel-wording that inevitably comes with post-experiment Gatesian summing up. Because there's a chance for Gates to have real insight, to say, "Man, we were just wrong on this, and we were so sure we were right even when people were trying to warn us. So I'm thinking that in the future, I'd better not just barrel ahead fueled by nothing but self-confidence. Maybe before I appoint myself the tsar of education, I should listen to some professionals and be more careful about what I do." But that opportunity is also squandered time after time. Somewhere down the road, we'll find ourselves wasting opportunities yet again.
Thursday, July 5, 2018
That Damned Question
There's one kid in every class, the one who asks that damned question.
How many paragraphs do we have to have in this essay? How long does it have to be? How many pages do I have to write for this? How many notes do we have to have in the split journal for that chapter? And on and on.
The specifics don't really matter-- they are all a variation on one simple question:
What the absolute least I can get away with doing for this assignment?
It's a terrible question. For one thing, it has prompted too many teachers to make too many dumb rules ("a paragraph must have three sentences" is a dumb rule, for example). It also makes a statement about the student that they probably shouldn't be making out loud.
Don't ask that question, I would tell my students. For one thing, they knew by October what my answer would be. "Long enough to do a good job," I'd say. Or maybe, "Impress me." More importantly, the question reflects poorly on the person who asks it. If the person you're dating asks, "So what's the absolute least amount of time I can spend with you and still keep this relationship alive," your first thought is not, "Oh, this one is a keeper." If you're in a job interview and the person across the desk asks, "What's the absolute least we can get away with paying you," you are not excited about landing that job.
I hear echoes of That Damned Question every time I read something like the Center for American Progress report decrying that high school requirements are not exactly aligned with exactly what students need exactly to get into college.
Part of the problem with these sorts of reports and policy arguments is that they demand exactitude where it cannot be found, as if "college ready" is a single definable state with set criteria that are exactly the same for every student at every high school considering every major at every college. This is foolishness of a high order, like saying that we have a checklist that will show if someone is ready to get married tomorrow.
Human behavior is loaded with many "fuzzy" qualities. What does it mean to be "mature" or "wise" or "funny." and does it mean exactly the same thing for every single human being?
But it's also a variation on That Damned Question, because intentional or not, the question "am I college ready" sets a minimum bar for college readiness. What's the absolute least this kid has to do, we're asking, to be certified college material?
That's a terrible goal. Shooting for the bare minimum is a terrible goal.
The correct answer is "You're going to need to do as much as you can the very best that you can, and then we'll cross our fingers that it's enough to get into the school you want." (Which, of course, also depends on who else is applying to your school and how much they've accomplished-- truly, the closer you look at the idea of telling students that they've done enough to be college ready , the dumber an idea it appears to be.)
The correct answer is "Pursue your strengths and interests just as hard and far as you can. "
Not, "Okay, well, accomplish A, B and C, and then you can knock it off for the rest of the year."
I know that many Reformsters have a fondness for efficiency, but the thing is, that doesn't apply here. No effort to gather more education is inefficient or wasted. I have never in my life met someone who said, "Yeah, boy, I wish I just hadn't gotten so much education. Learning all that extra stuff has really held me back in life."
Nobody was ever harmed by getting too much education.
There are some things in life for which knowing the bare minimum requirement is foolish. Love. Kindness. Decency. And education.
Do the most, the best, that you can. And don't ever ask That Damned Question.
How many paragraphs do we have to have in this essay? How long does it have to be? How many pages do I have to write for this? How many notes do we have to have in the split journal for that chapter? And on and on.
The specifics don't really matter-- they are all a variation on one simple question:
What the absolute least I can get away with doing for this assignment?
It's a terrible question. For one thing, it has prompted too many teachers to make too many dumb rules ("a paragraph must have three sentences" is a dumb rule, for example). It also makes a statement about the student that they probably shouldn't be making out loud.
Don't ask that question, I would tell my students. For one thing, they knew by October what my answer would be. "Long enough to do a good job," I'd say. Or maybe, "Impress me." More importantly, the question reflects poorly on the person who asks it. If the person you're dating asks, "So what's the absolute least amount of time I can spend with you and still keep this relationship alive," your first thought is not, "Oh, this one is a keeper." If you're in a job interview and the person across the desk asks, "What's the absolute least we can get away with paying you," you are not excited about landing that job.
I hear echoes of That Damned Question every time I read something like the Center for American Progress report decrying that high school requirements are not exactly aligned with exactly what students need exactly to get into college.
Part of the problem with these sorts of reports and policy arguments is that they demand exactitude where it cannot be found, as if "college ready" is a single definable state with set criteria that are exactly the same for every student at every high school considering every major at every college. This is foolishness of a high order, like saying that we have a checklist that will show if someone is ready to get married tomorrow.
Human behavior is loaded with many "fuzzy" qualities. What does it mean to be "mature" or "wise" or "funny." and does it mean exactly the same thing for every single human being?
But it's also a variation on That Damned Question, because intentional or not, the question "am I college ready" sets a minimum bar for college readiness. What's the absolute least this kid has to do, we're asking, to be certified college material?
That's a terrible goal. Shooting for the bare minimum is a terrible goal.
The correct answer is "You're going to need to do as much as you can the very best that you can, and then we'll cross our fingers that it's enough to get into the school you want." (Which, of course, also depends on who else is applying to your school and how much they've accomplished-- truly, the closer you look at the idea of telling students that they've done enough to be college ready , the dumber an idea it appears to be.)
The correct answer is "Pursue your strengths and interests just as hard and far as you can. "
Not, "Okay, well, accomplish A, B and C, and then you can knock it off for the rest of the year."
I know that many Reformsters have a fondness for efficiency, but the thing is, that doesn't apply here. No effort to gather more education is inefficient or wasted. I have never in my life met someone who said, "Yeah, boy, I wish I just hadn't gotten so much education. Learning all that extra stuff has really held me back in life."
Nobody was ever harmed by getting too much education.
There are some things in life for which knowing the bare minimum requirement is foolish. Love. Kindness. Decency. And education.
Do the most, the best, that you can. And don't ever ask That Damned Question.
Wednesday, July 4, 2018
Happy Birthday, Uncle Frank
It's my Uncle Frank's birthday today. It's ironic that his birthday falls on this national holiday, thereby making it easy to overlook-- ironic because my Uncle Frank never overlooked another human being in his life.
Every teacher has their roster of professional role models; Frank is one of mine. My Uncle Frank taught history for fifty-four years, including a stint in Germany as an Army school teacher, forty-nine of them in the same upstate Connecticut high school.
But he wasn't a model simply based on longevity. A former student (now teacher) recently shared that I handed her the idea that every person is worth knowing. I can think of several people that reinforced that idea for me, and Uncle Frank is definitely one of them.
Frank is a true people person. I remember that every outing with him takes longer than you expect it to because simply stopping to get gas can turn into a fifteen minute conversation with the guy behind the cash register. Is he some old friend that Frank ran into, and they've been catching up? Nope-- my uncle had just met the person for the first time, and now he knows this person's life story. Frank is that guy.
Visiting my aunt and uncle and cousins was always a treat for us growing up. While my household was the loving-but-firm type (my father is an engineer), Frank and Evie were what we imagined having hippies for parents must be like. Eat when you're hungry. Sleep when you're tired. Worry about people, not stuff. My cousins grew up in a much different environment from mine, but they've both turned out to be interesting, excellent men.
My first published piece of writing was a letter to the editor of a comic book (Marvel Team-Up, to be precise). It was not the sort of thing you ran around sharing with the grownups in your world, but you know who was impressed? Uncle Frank.
Frank has a PhD, earned with his work on the education system of the Shakers (the New York Times interviewed him about it once). His students call him Doc. He travels a great deal; while he was still working, he'd bring back photos he's taken and put them up in the halls, a school plastered with proof that there was a big world out there and that one of their teachers could share it with them ("I want them to see the patterns in the world," he said). There are clipping after clipping of students citing him as an important influence in their lives; on ratemyteacher they laud his brains and his commitment. He was always a reliable attender or sporting events, even during the years when my aunt was suffering from declining health.
He has one of the most small town teachery stories I know-- ten years ago he had just finished delivering a talk about local history to a room packed full of former students when he suffered a heart attack. The audience included the police chief, the fire chief and the assistant fire chief; the response to his heart attack was spectacularly rapid.
Frank is famous in the family for his epic letters; the man was born to be a blogger, but his relationship with technology is somewhat fraught. I'll predict that he's only going to see this if a friend or one of my cousins prints it out for him.
Frank is the kind of teacher that everybody wants their kids to have-- passionate, smart, supportive and open-minded. A big heart, embracing all the experience the world has to offer as well as all the people in it. My Uncle Frank was the first person to make me realize that the first step to becoming a good teacher is to become a good person. For me that has been, let's say, an aspirational goal. I knew years ago that I wouldn't live up to his example-- I knew I didn't have fifty years in me, and I'll never match that man's adventurous spirit. But he has always been one of my teaching examples.
I've left out links and identifying details; I'm reluctant to violate his privacy that way. But if you're a former student of his, you know who I mean. I'd love to hear stories.
In the meantime, Happy Birthday, Uncle Frank. May the coming year bring more great adventure.
Every teacher has their roster of professional role models; Frank is one of mine. My Uncle Frank taught history for fifty-four years, including a stint in Germany as an Army school teacher, forty-nine of them in the same upstate Connecticut high school.
But he wasn't a model simply based on longevity. A former student (now teacher) recently shared that I handed her the idea that every person is worth knowing. I can think of several people that reinforced that idea for me, and Uncle Frank is definitely one of them.
Frank is a true people person. I remember that every outing with him takes longer than you expect it to because simply stopping to get gas can turn into a fifteen minute conversation with the guy behind the cash register. Is he some old friend that Frank ran into, and they've been catching up? Nope-- my uncle had just met the person for the first time, and now he knows this person's life story. Frank is that guy.
Visiting my aunt and uncle and cousins was always a treat for us growing up. While my household was the loving-but-firm type (my father is an engineer), Frank and Evie were what we imagined having hippies for parents must be like. Eat when you're hungry. Sleep when you're tired. Worry about people, not stuff. My cousins grew up in a much different environment from mine, but they've both turned out to be interesting, excellent men.
My first published piece of writing was a letter to the editor of a comic book (Marvel Team-Up, to be precise). It was not the sort of thing you ran around sharing with the grownups in your world, but you know who was impressed? Uncle Frank.
Frank has a PhD, earned with his work on the education system of the Shakers (the New York Times interviewed him about it once). His students call him Doc. He travels a great deal; while he was still working, he'd bring back photos he's taken and put them up in the halls, a school plastered with proof that there was a big world out there and that one of their teachers could share it with them ("I want them to see the patterns in the world," he said). There are clipping after clipping of students citing him as an important influence in their lives; on ratemyteacher they laud his brains and his commitment. He was always a reliable attender or sporting events, even during the years when my aunt was suffering from declining health.
He has one of the most small town teachery stories I know-- ten years ago he had just finished delivering a talk about local history to a room packed full of former students when he suffered a heart attack. The audience included the police chief, the fire chief and the assistant fire chief; the response to his heart attack was spectacularly rapid.
Frank is famous in the family for his epic letters; the man was born to be a blogger, but his relationship with technology is somewhat fraught. I'll predict that he's only going to see this if a friend or one of my cousins prints it out for him.
Frank is the kind of teacher that everybody wants their kids to have-- passionate, smart, supportive and open-minded. A big heart, embracing all the experience the world has to offer as well as all the people in it. My Uncle Frank was the first person to make me realize that the first step to becoming a good teacher is to become a good person. For me that has been, let's say, an aspirational goal. I knew years ago that I wouldn't live up to his example-- I knew I didn't have fifty years in me, and I'll never match that man's adventurous spirit. But he has always been one of my teaching examples.
I've left out links and identifying details; I'm reluctant to violate his privacy that way. But if you're a former student of his, you know who I mean. I'd love to hear stories.
In the meantime, Happy Birthday, Uncle Frank. May the coming year bring more great adventure.
Tuesday, July 3, 2018
Ed Tech's Obituary
Mike Crowley (International School of Brussels) was part of the throng at ISTE '18, but what he saw caused him to declare the death of ed tech.
The particular feature that pushed him over the edge was Google Forms Locked Mode. This will only be available on school-managed chromebooks, but it does address one of the basic flaws of Google Forms. Google Forms was a great way to created a computer-operated quiz or test (perfect if you just don't have the time to score a bunch of bubble tests, for some reason), but there was nothing to keep your students from opening another window and browsing the internet for answers.
Now, if your school won't have access to Locked Mode, let me offer you a workaround that some teachers use.
1) Have students put away phones and close up their computers.
2) Hand out the quiz or test on a piece of paper.
As Crowley points out, one must wonder exactly what problem Locked Mode solves:
Prohibiting students from cheating on traditional assessments using expensive tech tools to perform very basic 20th century tasks is the new transformation.
Or as he puts it elsewhere, "New tools. Old thinking."
This is not a new problem in ed tech, and we always get there the same way. Ed tech companies and their fans don't start with the right question, which is "What's the best way to educate students?" Instead, they start with, "Let's assume that we must use this tech for something. What's an easy thing we could use it for? And then, because our backwards thinking has opened up a variety of canned worms, how can we use the tech to close up those cans?" This has been an ed tech problem since the development of mimeograph machines and those little mechanical bubbler test checkers.
The advent of computer driven ed tech has added one other wrinkle, and Crowley points at it here:
If education is to be the target of an industry that has grown increasingly obsessed with standardization, control, automation, and delivery efficiencies, then we must opt out.
Indeed. This is the other problem at the heart of ed tech-- an industry that says, "If we could just get schools to change the way they work, then schools could better meet the needs of our industry."
Our industry wants to make a mint from the data that could be collected via ed tech, but to do that, we need data that is standardized. And to deliver the standardization with fidelity, we need to set up a system that leaves no room for human variation-- ideally, we just automate the whole thing. By clamping down on the humans in the system, we can be more efficient, collect more data, and develop an approach to education that will really help us grow and profit as a company.
Crowley is correct-- this is not really Ed Tech, but just plain Tech with a focus on the education market. I'm with Crowley on this, including his insistence that digital tools still can matter:
I am very much an advocate for learning environments that provide learners with opportunities to do things that will enhance deep learning and provide students with the potential to do real, meaningful work, not simply mimic it. But this approach to learning needs to reside with the individual learner in mind, not with an industrial mindset that is driven by a desire to impose efficiency and control solutions on all. This is what EdTech has increasingly become now and it’s dead to me after ISTE. Let’s imagine what learning can be, not how we can run it to scale with organizational and industry needs driving the agenda.
Exactly. The ed tech tail wags the education dog. Far too much ed tech, from Common Core computerized testing to the new darling, personalized [sic] education, is driven not by what would be good for students, but by what would be good for the tech companies pushing this baloney.
The particular feature that pushed him over the edge was Google Forms Locked Mode. This will only be available on school-managed chromebooks, but it does address one of the basic flaws of Google Forms. Google Forms was a great way to created a computer-operated quiz or test (perfect if you just don't have the time to score a bunch of bubble tests, for some reason), but there was nothing to keep your students from opening another window and browsing the internet for answers.
Now, if your school won't have access to Locked Mode, let me offer you a workaround that some teachers use.
1) Have students put away phones and close up their computers.
2) Hand out the quiz or test on a piece of paper.
As Crowley points out, one must wonder exactly what problem Locked Mode solves:
Prohibiting students from cheating on traditional assessments using expensive tech tools to perform very basic 20th century tasks is the new transformation.
Or as he puts it elsewhere, "New tools. Old thinking."
This is not a new problem in ed tech, and we always get there the same way. Ed tech companies and their fans don't start with the right question, which is "What's the best way to educate students?" Instead, they start with, "Let's assume that we must use this tech for something. What's an easy thing we could use it for? And then, because our backwards thinking has opened up a variety of canned worms, how can we use the tech to close up those cans?" This has been an ed tech problem since the development of mimeograph machines and those little mechanical bubbler test checkers.
The advent of computer driven ed tech has added one other wrinkle, and Crowley points at it here:
If education is to be the target of an industry that has grown increasingly obsessed with standardization, control, automation, and delivery efficiencies, then we must opt out.
Indeed. This is the other problem at the heart of ed tech-- an industry that says, "If we could just get schools to change the way they work, then schools could better meet the needs of our industry."
Our industry wants to make a mint from the data that could be collected via ed tech, but to do that, we need data that is standardized. And to deliver the standardization with fidelity, we need to set up a system that leaves no room for human variation-- ideally, we just automate the whole thing. By clamping down on the humans in the system, we can be more efficient, collect more data, and develop an approach to education that will really help us grow and profit as a company.
Crowley is correct-- this is not really Ed Tech, but just plain Tech with a focus on the education market. I'm with Crowley on this, including his insistence that digital tools still can matter:
I am very much an advocate for learning environments that provide learners with opportunities to do things that will enhance deep learning and provide students with the potential to do real, meaningful work, not simply mimic it. But this approach to learning needs to reside with the individual learner in mind, not with an industrial mindset that is driven by a desire to impose efficiency and control solutions on all. This is what EdTech has increasingly become now and it’s dead to me after ISTE. Let’s imagine what learning can be, not how we can run it to scale with organizational and industry needs driving the agenda.
Exactly. The ed tech tail wags the education dog. Far too much ed tech, from Common Core computerized testing to the new darling, personalized [sic] education, is driven not by what would be good for students, but by what would be good for the tech companies pushing this baloney.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)