I've whittled away at this post for days, which is unusual for me and usually means I'm making things worse, not better. And my first impulse in these days has been to stay quiet and listen, because a national conversation about racism doesn't really need one more white guy's voice. But 1) silence is not an option right now and 2) this all has implications for educators. But I warn you-- if I have a gift for making the complicated clear and simple, it will not be on display here.
I'm not telling you anything new to say that these are challenging times, though we have had times like these before, times when the ranker parts of our society have split open and spilled forth, times when the pain that people usually carry as a part of their daily routine suddenly erupts in roars, times when we have to confront (or in some cases, angrily defend) the stories we tell ourselves about who we are as a people.
In the moment, there is also the roiling clash between the complexity of reality and the reflexive grab for simple stories and explanations, all further complicated because it's during the noisy, difficult times that the worst of us slip out, under cover of chaos and noise, to spread more chaos and noise. Then there's the fear, and sometimes with the fear comes the stupid. There have been too many awful moments, some beautiful moments, some moments that weren't what they seemed.
What happens in the moment matters--how can it not, with so many words, so much action. But will it matter? Will there be a change, or will this moment fade. Is this rumble the kind of noise that comes when tectonic plates, long pressured, suddenly snap past each other to a new configuration, or is the noise of a rubber band, long stretched, snapping back to its original configuration?
Demonstrations and protests matter. They're a way to convey in real and effective ways just how strong and deep the feelings about an issue run. It's important that so many Americans are willing to stand up and be publicly associated with the message that Black Lives Matter. But that can't be the end of it, or all the walking and talking ultimately doesn't matter. The violence is a terrifying distraction from the main point, putting far too many people on all sides at risk; what agitators understand really well is that sparking more conflict puts both the crowd and the police at greater risk. You don't have to be that old to recognize the loop we seem poised to navigate yet again-- an injustice occurs, people rise up, noise is made, and then everyone goes back to the old normal. I'm interested in where we are, but I'm more interested in where we'll be six months from now. I see lots and lots of "We stand with Black Lives Matter," which is better than silence, but I still wonder what it will mean in six months. I mean, right now if I log on to Amazon, I see a big banner announcing that they stand with Black Lives Matter-- but what is the richest guy in the world actually doing about it?
White folks have work to do, especially white educators. And I would rather see us focus on doing the work than trying to look like we're doing the work. Education has to get its house in order. Rann Miller correctly points out that "Amy Coopers Are Everywhere," and that includes education. Horrifying examples abound. Little Miami University (in Ohio, not Florida) is going through a flap because a retired-now-part-time professor decided to shout some racist bullshit at demonstrators. This story gives you most of the pertinent data except for one item-- the professor is from the department of Teacher Education. Meanwhile, we've still got public schools commemorating Confederate figures and huge resistance to fixing that problem.
Cameron Barnett is a Pittsburgh middle school teacher who offers some concrete advice for white allies, including "the work of justice is never-ending, so stay tuned in for the long haul." Again, none of this is simple. One of the recurring theme I find among folks I know who are certain that there is no systemic inequity and that folks of all races exist on a level playing field, is the idea that at some point in the past Something Happened and that just erased all the historic effects. Maybe it was the end of the Civil War or the end of Jim Crow laws or a certain civil rights act, but they are sure that once that happened, everything became okee dokee and so all this BLM stuff is just baloney.
But US history on race (and a few other messy issues as well) is a tangled knot and there has never been and will never be a simple solution, and systems of racism and inequity have never gone away. There has never been and never will be a point at which folks can brush off their hands and say, "Well, that's all fixed" and just walk away.
That should feel familiar to folks in the education world, because education is also susceptible to magical thinking, to the belief that once we just wave the correct magic wand, everything will be okay. And we know that is bunk.
We should also recognize one of the problems of policing in many cities, and that's the attempt to use one tool--police work--to solve many problems that it's really not suited for. Can't fix the affordable housing problem? Have the police arrest the homeless. Dealing with the issues of poverty to hard and complicated? Just task the police with keeping a lid on all the growing frustration and anger. Basically, just make police responsible for dealing with the messes created by politicians' failures. I'm not a fan of the "defund" or "abolish" police movements, because the terms are unnecessarily provocative titles for a sensible movement about making the job of police smaller, or taking away all the responsibilities that shouldn't be theirs and which are not best handled by enforcement, anyway.
I have too many police in my life and family to view the institution as hopelessly irredeemable, but the system in some cities is stressed and stretched and damaged and damaging. And I believe that "defunding" would be immensely empowering for the best of our police and police departments. But there are lessons that teachers can learn from police and police unions in the current world.
The worst of police departments suffer from a bunker mentality. They have come to see their work as "us against them," with "them" being pretty much everyone else, from people on the street to politicians in City Hall. Because they have a whole raft of jobs that they can't possibly accomplish (fix poverty and homelessness by arresting people), they increasingly stressed, combative and, yes, racist.
Almost anyone who works in a school building recognizes the issue, plus one other that comes with it.
Extreme defensiveness. In the bunker, you never admit to any criticism from Them because you know in your gut that it will be used as a wedge to crack open your defenses and leave you vulnerable to all the other attacks that are about to be unleashed. That mindset is how you get the other 57 cops in the Buffalo super-duper cop squad quitting rather than admit, "Yeah, that shoving of a 75 year old man, no matter what his history of being annoying might have been, was over the top and shouldn't have happened." (Or maybe they were just cut loose by their union. Complicated.)
Teachers have been under relentless attack for at least two decades. It would be surprising if a bunker mentality hadn't developed. But that mentality does not serve teachers well, particularly not if they want to respond to the current crisis by doing the work. It's not a new problem--go look at every conversation in which someone says that we need more Black teachers in school and some white teachers get upset and start arguing that they are great teachers for their Black students. White fragility plus bunker mentality plus actual racism equals a school that has a hugely difficult time doing the work it needs to do. It takes leadership, both of the official and the personal type. And yes-- I know very well that the perception of being under attack for teachers is absolutely based in actual attacks (are you paranoid if they're really out to get you) which just makes being vulnerable enough to deal with our own shit and especially to say to some of our fiercest critics, "Yes, we screwed up on that one," all that harder. This work is complicated and twisty and involves balancing a whole lot of stuff. But if things are going to change, if things six months from now are not going to look just like six moths ago, then there is hard work to do.
When it comes to dealing with the students, the bunker mentality gives rise to Cartman Rules-- rules and confrontations that are all about "Respect my authority!" Which leads to an attempt to support authority with raw power, and that simply never ends well for anyone. The demonstrations have provided ample evidence of this, once again.
It's further complicated by vultures and bad actors all around. Another side lesson of these demonstrations and the pandemic pause has been that there are always people excited about the chance to set the world on fire and watch it burn, and there are always people ready to make a buck. The "defunding" movement is going to be embraced because for every responsibility removed from the police, there will be privatizing profiteers angling to get the contract. Teachers should keep an eye out, because we're already good at knowing this when we see it.
White folks have work to do, and white public school teachers, working in a system that by its nature reflects everything good and ill about society, have double the work to do. And not to make it seem to daunting, but it is work they will have to keep doing for the rest of their lives. That's a lifetime of explaining to colleagues why saying "All lives matter" is really missing the point, a lifetime of looking for ways to trying to promote justice and equity in systems that are not naturally inclined to welcome them.
This will not be easy. We have a national attention span problem. Even as everyone is caught up in the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, everyone is also collectively deciding that the Covid-19 pandemic is over and just doesn't matter any more, not because of any actual evidence, but because we're mostly just tired of thinking about it and acting like it's a thing. People are looking at the current wave of demonstrations and declaring that This Time It's Different or that Everything Has Changed, but if there's one thing I know about this country, it's that there's nothing that's so traumatic and earthshaking that we can't collectively get over it in less than a year. Leaving, of course, a small section of the population to deal with it on their own while everyone else keeps asking, "Why don't you just get over it, already?" I suspect Black folks are pretty familiar with how that all goes.
I hope that a lot of folks in education are getting worked up, and I hope it's not in a "Let's find a march to go join in way" so much as a "Let's figure out how to work these issues of equity and justice into our curriculum for the coming years" or "Let's design and enact programs to better serve our students around these issues for the rest of ever" or even, "Let's start working on the state and local authorities to address inequities in funding and gerrymandering of school district boundaries." One Twitter commenter noted that white parents were bringing kids to marches even though those same parents would never let those children attend a predominantly Black, low-income neighborhood school. Educators should be addressing that. Educators should be addressing wealthy white neighborhoods that want to secede from the larger non-white non-wealthy district. Educators should be addressing racism among their colleagues. And White educators should be listening and reading (really--is there a better way to learn about anything?) and preparing to break the cycle. Just imagine how things might be different if White America had actually listened to Colin Kaepernick-- and not just listened, but done something.
From an interview with Ibram Kendi:
Education, love and exemplary black people will not deliver America from racism, Kendi says. Racist ideas grow out of discriminatory policies, he argues, not the other way around. And if his new center can help identify and dismantle those policies in the U.S. and around the world, he believes we can start to eliminate racism. At least that’s the goal.
Teachers are in a unique position to identify-- and change-- discriminatory policies. Let that be part of the work, too.
Today, tomorrow, the rest of the week, there will be more noise, more marching, more rumors, more violence. Please God, let people stay safe, and most of all, six months from now, may this nation look different in ways that actually mean something.
Monday, June 8, 2020
Sunday, June 7, 2020
ICYMI: Just One Thing After Another Edition (6/7)
So things have been a little quieter than usual on this page (and I'm late today) in part because what the current conversation about Black Lives Matter needs is not more input from middle aged white guys, and partly because things have been a bit upheaved here at the Institute (not all bad-- the twins turned 3 since last Sunday's edition). But I still have a few things for you to read:
Weathering The Storm: School Funding in the Covid-19 Era
The Kappan offers some useful economic ideas for the post-pandemic era, courtesy of Bruce Baker, Mark Weber, and Dean Acheson-- all folks who really know this stuff. Four specific proposals (including the squawk-inducing recommendation to cancel aid programs that favor affluent districts).
Dept of Ed Discloses Illegal Seizure of $2.2 Billion
Man, I would hate to have this news lost in the shuffle this week. Remember how USED was supposed grabbing money from folks during the pandemic pause-- yeah, they didn't stop. To the tune of billions of dollars. Billion, with a B.
The Broken Promise That Broke Jacksonville
Florida, that is. The Florida Times-Union has the historical perspective on how the city cemented racist structures and kept its poor poor.
Gay HS Senior Barred from Walking At Graduation Because Pants
From the "News That Sucks" file, this reminder that some public school administrators need to remove their heads from their rectums.
Betsy DeVos Is Looting Public Schools
There's no news here, except that this opinion piece is not from some cranky blogger, but from Newsweek. Specifically, we're talking about her attempt to grab CARES money for private schools.
Changing What We Teach
Nancy Flanagan takes a look at what schools need to do better.
Amy Coopers Are Everywhere
Rann Miller at The Progressive reminds us that schools have an Amy Cooper problem, too.
PA Charter Leader Blasts George Floyd Protestors, Then Backpedals Like Crazy.
Ana Meyers got a little heated about the protests and became one more person who was not well-served by how quick and easy it is to fire off a stupid and inadvertently revealing Tweet.
It's Time To Fix Standardized Testing
Akil Bello takes a look at the wonky nuts and bolts of standardized testing and how it needs to be rebuilt, and he's just the guy for the job.
Public Funds Public Schools Website Provides Compendium of Research on School Vouchers
Jan Resseger looks at a trove of useful info, particularly if you are looking at the charter onslaught in Ohio, where the recent shift in law has really gutted public school finance.
Seven Tips for White Allies from a Black Pittsburgher
From Cameron Barnett, a middle school teacher in the burgh and editor of the Pittsburgh Poetry Journal.
Weathering The Storm: School Funding in the Covid-19 Era
The Kappan offers some useful economic ideas for the post-pandemic era, courtesy of Bruce Baker, Mark Weber, and Dean Acheson-- all folks who really know this stuff. Four specific proposals (including the squawk-inducing recommendation to cancel aid programs that favor affluent districts).
Dept of Ed Discloses Illegal Seizure of $2.2 Billion
Man, I would hate to have this news lost in the shuffle this week. Remember how USED was supposed grabbing money from folks during the pandemic pause-- yeah, they didn't stop. To the tune of billions of dollars. Billion, with a B.
The Broken Promise That Broke Jacksonville
Florida, that is. The Florida Times-Union has the historical perspective on how the city cemented racist structures and kept its poor poor.
Gay HS Senior Barred from Walking At Graduation Because Pants
From the "News That Sucks" file, this reminder that some public school administrators need to remove their heads from their rectums.
Betsy DeVos Is Looting Public Schools
There's no news here, except that this opinion piece is not from some cranky blogger, but from Newsweek. Specifically, we're talking about her attempt to grab CARES money for private schools.
Changing What We Teach
Nancy Flanagan takes a look at what schools need to do better.
Amy Coopers Are Everywhere
Rann Miller at The Progressive reminds us that schools have an Amy Cooper problem, too.
PA Charter Leader Blasts George Floyd Protestors, Then Backpedals Like Crazy.
Ana Meyers got a little heated about the protests and became one more person who was not well-served by how quick and easy it is to fire off a stupid and inadvertently revealing Tweet.
It's Time To Fix Standardized Testing
Akil Bello takes a look at the wonky nuts and bolts of standardized testing and how it needs to be rebuilt, and he's just the guy for the job.
Public Funds Public Schools Website Provides Compendium of Research on School Vouchers
Jan Resseger looks at a trove of useful info, particularly if you are looking at the charter onslaught in Ohio, where the recent shift in law has really gutted public school finance.
Seven Tips for White Allies from a Black Pittsburgher
From Cameron Barnett, a middle school teacher in the burgh and editor of the Pittsburgh Poetry Journal.
Friday, June 5, 2020
Do Exit Exams Reduce Crime
Of all the claims made about high school exit exams, this has to be one of the most unlikely, but here comes Matthew Larsen in the ever reformy Education Next to argue that exit exams--tests that are required to get a diploma--reduce crime.
Larsen is an assistant professor at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. He's in the economics department, because of course he is. He set out to look at whether exit exams or increased course requirements had an effect on crime statistics. "Conventional belief holds that more and better-quality education reduces crime," he reasons. "Could exit exams improve teaching and learning in high schools such that criminal activity drops?"
The answer he came up with is that exit exams reduce the arrest rate, mostly for property crimes, but that increased course requirements do not. How did he come up with such sexy findings?
He collected FBI arrest data for 15-24 year olds from 1980 to 2010. He assumed that everyone was committing crimes in the same state in which they attended high school, and that they graduated when they were 18. There was also some estimating going on, like estimating the general age and gender distribution of the jurisdictions of the various police departments.
After that, it's pretty basic. If the state implemented exit exams in 2005, Larsen compares the arrest rates for the people who graduated before 2000 with that of the people who graduated afterwards. Larsen claims that by including cohorts in the same year (e.g. the arrest records for 2003 would include both cohorts that graduated before and after the test was implemented) he eliminates other factors, like police department staffing. Except, fo course, those overlap years would be a relatively small set within the 1980-2010 span. Nor does it correct for a variety of other factors-- graduates from, say, 1998, lived in a different world than those graduating in, say, 2002. Larsen claims to adjust, somehow, for factors like average teacher-pupil ration and average teacher salary and per-pupil expenditures, and I suppose that economists may have magical tools that can do this but that still leaves us with the problem that 1) he does not know how the arrest rates break down by high school and 2) no students attended schools with average conditions. The average height of people in my house is about 4.5 feet, but if you buy us clothes to fit that height, they won't fit anyone who lives here.
But Larsen makes his computations and somehow feels confident enough to write this:
I assume that, after making these adjustments, the only major difference between students from different graduation cohorts is that one group faced tougher graduation requirements.
Which is kind of nuts.
Once he gets a'crunchin', Larsen finds that there's no real effect for course requirements, and that the exit exam effect is greatest for poor white kids.
Larsen doesn't offer many compelling explanations for any of this. Maybe, he muses, the exit exams cause "more advantaged" students to get smarter and more knowledgeable and therefor commit fewer offenses, but make the poors drop out and turn to a life of crime (no thoughts about any of the biases or arrest patterns for advantaged vs. disadvantaged students). Maybe the pressure of exit exams makes schools do a better job. Or maybe the exams "boost the perceived value of a high-school diploma." Or students improve their attendance patterns because they want to get ready for those exams.
Curiously, though several states have dropped then exit exam requirement, Larsen apparently did not do any research to see if arrest rates went up aftewards.
My explanation for Larsen's results is that his data is filled with so much noise that any conclusions fall somewhere between "improbable" and "silly." Even if he has somehow scraped real data from the jaws of a gazillion different factors that could explain the results, we're still staring straight into the face of our old friend, spurious correlations.
Spurious correlations is a glorious website (and also a book) that helps illustrate why mistaking correlation for causation causes nothing but trouble. Some of these almost, kind of, if you squint, make sense.
But others are clearly ridiculous. And yet there's the chart, with numbers and chartiness so it must be, you know, science. Oh, Nic Cage-- when will the madness stop?
It's a weak argument, weakly supported. The only upside here is that I haven't seen the news of exit exams' crimefighting magic trumpeted from the websites of the usual suspects. Let's hope it fades quietly away, like a mediocre Nic Cage movie.
Larsen is an assistant professor at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. He's in the economics department, because of course he is. He set out to look at whether exit exams or increased course requirements had an effect on crime statistics. "Conventional belief holds that more and better-quality education reduces crime," he reasons. "Could exit exams improve teaching and learning in high schools such that criminal activity drops?"
The answer he came up with is that exit exams reduce the arrest rate, mostly for property crimes, but that increased course requirements do not. How did he come up with such sexy findings?
He collected FBI arrest data for 15-24 year olds from 1980 to 2010. He assumed that everyone was committing crimes in the same state in which they attended high school, and that they graduated when they were 18. There was also some estimating going on, like estimating the general age and gender distribution of the jurisdictions of the various police departments.
After that, it's pretty basic. If the state implemented exit exams in 2005, Larsen compares the arrest rates for the people who graduated before 2000 with that of the people who graduated afterwards. Larsen claims that by including cohorts in the same year (e.g. the arrest records for 2003 would include both cohorts that graduated before and after the test was implemented) he eliminates other factors, like police department staffing. Except, fo course, those overlap years would be a relatively small set within the 1980-2010 span. Nor does it correct for a variety of other factors-- graduates from, say, 1998, lived in a different world than those graduating in, say, 2002. Larsen claims to adjust, somehow, for factors like average teacher-pupil ration and average teacher salary and per-pupil expenditures, and I suppose that economists may have magical tools that can do this but that still leaves us with the problem that 1) he does not know how the arrest rates break down by high school and 2) no students attended schools with average conditions. The average height of people in my house is about 4.5 feet, but if you buy us clothes to fit that height, they won't fit anyone who lives here.
But Larsen makes his computations and somehow feels confident enough to write this:
I assume that, after making these adjustments, the only major difference between students from different graduation cohorts is that one group faced tougher graduation requirements.
Which is kind of nuts.
Once he gets a'crunchin', Larsen finds that there's no real effect for course requirements, and that the exit exam effect is greatest for poor white kids.
Larsen doesn't offer many compelling explanations for any of this. Maybe, he muses, the exit exams cause "more advantaged" students to get smarter and more knowledgeable and therefor commit fewer offenses, but make the poors drop out and turn to a life of crime (no thoughts about any of the biases or arrest patterns for advantaged vs. disadvantaged students). Maybe the pressure of exit exams makes schools do a better job. Or maybe the exams "boost the perceived value of a high-school diploma." Or students improve their attendance patterns because they want to get ready for those exams.
Curiously, though several states have dropped then exit exam requirement, Larsen apparently did not do any research to see if arrest rates went up aftewards.
My explanation for Larsen's results is that his data is filled with so much noise that any conclusions fall somewhere between "improbable" and "silly." Even if he has somehow scraped real data from the jaws of a gazillion different factors that could explain the results, we're still staring straight into the face of our old friend, spurious correlations.
Spurious correlations is a glorious website (and also a book) that helps illustrate why mistaking correlation for causation causes nothing but trouble. Some of these almost, kind of, if you squint, make sense.
But others are clearly ridiculous. And yet there's the chart, with numbers and chartiness so it must be, you know, science. Oh, Nic Cage-- when will the madness stop?
It's a weak argument, weakly supported. The only upside here is that I haven't seen the news of exit exams' crimefighting magic trumpeted from the websites of the usual suspects. Let's hope it fades quietly away, like a mediocre Nic Cage movie.
Thursday, June 4, 2020
Graduation in the Age of Covid-19
There are three bridges that run in and out of my small town. Currently, each bridge is flying a batch of banners that collectively list the entire 2020 graduating class at our high school. When the banners went up, a photo of some seniors looking for their names on the banners ran on the front page of the local paper.
High school graduation is a big deal in small town USA. My old high school (the one where I taught for almost forty years and from which I graduated back in the day) holds the graduation ceremony in the city park. Graduates step up onto the band stand while all their family and most of their friends and a fair-sized helping of community people who aren't even related to any graduates all gather on the cool green grass under a canopy of trees, next to a Civil War monument. For years, a colleague and I led the procession of seniors down the sidewalk that cuts diagonally through the park, splitting the huge home town crowd as folks jostled to snap the first pictures of the day. Seniors speak and perform music; administrators speak briefly.
It's a big deal, possibly equaled only by a wedding, though nobody's wedding will be this well-attended by such a broad cross-section of the community. But it serves as one of the few moments in anyone's life in which their status, their place in the world, their fundamental self-image change in just a few moments' time. Small towns like mine are the kind of place in which where you went to high school remains one of your primary identifiers, like job and spouse, for the rest of your life.
The banners are, of course, just one sign that those transformational moments are not going to happen this year. My old school is hoping to stage a "regular" graduation later this summer. If it happens, it will be weird-- not in the park, not with all the graduates there (some will have already moved on to their next chapter), and after the real moment of transition has passed, though after a senior year that fizzled out in a deflated buzz of cancellations and zoom meetings, without even a real Last Day Of School-- well, it will be weird, not at all the same.
The challenge is the same for small town schools everywhere. In my region, one school staged individual graduations, running the graduates and their families through the school auditorium, one at a time, with caps and gowns, diploma handoffs, and photo ops for all. It took four days to cover the entire senior class. Another school staged theirs at a drive-in theater, families in cars, stage walk blown up on the gigantic outdoor screen. About a month ago, staff and faculty of my school loaded up on several different buses and rode around the district, delivering signage and congratulation to each senior.
It will be interesting to see, in the long run, how many of these many improvisations stick. Heck-- we could put up graduate banners on the bridges every year, and when would having your graduation moment blasted across a forty foot tall screen ever not be cool?
But mostly, there is a kind of sadness to all of these ideas, a sense that graduates are being cheated of a really special moment and anything that adults do to make up for it is just a sad, pale imitation, important only because whatever it is, it tells the students that they are not forgotten, that the adult world still cares about them this one last time. In your senior year, you're supposed to be kind of a big deal.
In the long run, this will not be the most critical fallout of the pandemic. High school graduation is also one of those moments that gets its poignancy by carrying the echoes of all that has come before and the foreshadowing of all that will come after. It is like a wedding-- getting married may be a big emotional deal, but what you do abut getting married is not nearly as important as what you do about being married. "Commencement" after all means the beginning of something, and that something is the true big deal. I don't remember much of my high school graduation ceremony; I bet I'm not alone.
If there is a silver lining in all this, it is that adults who could, in any other year, just go through the motions, must this year come up with a deliberate and thoughtful way to express care to their graduating seniors. "Slow down and think about what you're doing" is never bad advice. Wit the loss of regular motions to go through, schools have had to deliberately develop ways to support their departing graduates; it is a pleasure to see so many rise to the occasion. It doesn't remove the crappiness of what has happened.
This coming week would have been the week (by local custom, each area school has a different traditional day and time for graduation, so that none conflict with any other). Instead, it's a week like any other. This is nowhere close to being the biggest casualty of the pandemic; some young adults are going to learn sooner rather than later that in the grown-up world, you often just kind of slide from one part of life into another in ways that are barely perceptible. But it is still a challenge that schools and teachers had to meet. I hope your =s did well.
High school graduation is a big deal in small town USA. My old high school (the one where I taught for almost forty years and from which I graduated back in the day) holds the graduation ceremony in the city park. Graduates step up onto the band stand while all their family and most of their friends and a fair-sized helping of community people who aren't even related to any graduates all gather on the cool green grass under a canopy of trees, next to a Civil War monument. For years, a colleague and I led the procession of seniors down the sidewalk that cuts diagonally through the park, splitting the huge home town crowd as folks jostled to snap the first pictures of the day. Seniors speak and perform music; administrators speak briefly.
The banners are, of course, just one sign that those transformational moments are not going to happen this year. My old school is hoping to stage a "regular" graduation later this summer. If it happens, it will be weird-- not in the park, not with all the graduates there (some will have already moved on to their next chapter), and after the real moment of transition has passed, though after a senior year that fizzled out in a deflated buzz of cancellations and zoom meetings, without even a real Last Day Of School-- well, it will be weird, not at all the same.
The challenge is the same for small town schools everywhere. In my region, one school staged individual graduations, running the graduates and their families through the school auditorium, one at a time, with caps and gowns, diploma handoffs, and photo ops for all. It took four days to cover the entire senior class. Another school staged theirs at a drive-in theater, families in cars, stage walk blown up on the gigantic outdoor screen. About a month ago, staff and faculty of my school loaded up on several different buses and rode around the district, delivering signage and congratulation to each senior.
It will be interesting to see, in the long run, how many of these many improvisations stick. Heck-- we could put up graduate banners on the bridges every year, and when would having your graduation moment blasted across a forty foot tall screen ever not be cool?
But mostly, there is a kind of sadness to all of these ideas, a sense that graduates are being cheated of a really special moment and anything that adults do to make up for it is just a sad, pale imitation, important only because whatever it is, it tells the students that they are not forgotten, that the adult world still cares about them this one last time. In your senior year, you're supposed to be kind of a big deal.
In the long run, this will not be the most critical fallout of the pandemic. High school graduation is also one of those moments that gets its poignancy by carrying the echoes of all that has come before and the foreshadowing of all that will come after. It is like a wedding-- getting married may be a big emotional deal, but what you do abut getting married is not nearly as important as what you do about being married. "Commencement" after all means the beginning of something, and that something is the true big deal. I don't remember much of my high school graduation ceremony; I bet I'm not alone.
If there is a silver lining in all this, it is that adults who could, in any other year, just go through the motions, must this year come up with a deliberate and thoughtful way to express care to their graduating seniors. "Slow down and think about what you're doing" is never bad advice. Wit the loss of regular motions to go through, schools have had to deliberately develop ways to support their departing graduates; it is a pleasure to see so many rise to the occasion. It doesn't remove the crappiness of what has happened.
This coming week would have been the week (by local custom, each area school has a different traditional day and time for graduation, so that none conflict with any other). Instead, it's a week like any other. This is nowhere close to being the biggest casualty of the pandemic; some young adults are going to learn sooner rather than later that in the grown-up world, you often just kind of slide from one part of life into another in ways that are barely perceptible. But it is still a challenge that schools and teachers had to meet. I hope your =s did well.
Tuesday, June 2, 2020
Successful School Reopening Plans Will Have One Thing In Common
Plenty of folks have thoughts about the conditions under which schools should be opened. The CDC thinks desks should be six feet apart. The American Enterprise Institute suggests that districts might want to get all staff members over fifty-five to take early retirement. Senator Bill Cassidy has called for aggressive testing and contact tracing.
Over the next few months, we’ll see many plans floated for opening schools in the fall. The successful ones will have one thing in common.
They will be written—or at least co-written—by teachers.
Reopening schools will be the ultimate exercise in devil-concealing detail work. A recommendation like “put all student desks at least six feet apart” is easy to make, but it will take the people who actually know the configurations of rooms in the building to turn it into a workable plan
The plans will hinge on nitty-gritty details, not sweeping policy ideas. In a district with few students who walk to school, how do you get them to the building without stuffing them into a means of transportation? If you are, as some suggest, checking temperatures as they enter the building, how do you do it without creating a crowd outside? Where are the bottlenecks in your building, and how might scheduling help reduce them? If one source of bottlenecks is, in fact, the doorway into each classroom, how do you manage that traffic issue?
How will students move from class to class? How does an elementary teacher move a line of fifteen kids, all six feet apart, through the halls? In a high school, how do you dismiss different classes at different times without a crowd forming somewhere? The many detail question are all very specific to location, to student bodies, to staff.
What sorts of supplemental services will be needed, and which students are most likely to need them? How likely are local families to cooperate with health and safety measures, and how do you build trust with the community (some of those angry protestors you see on the news have children)? What physical objects pose a transfer threat (lab equipment, a single set of textbooks used by multiple classes, etc). These are not questions that anybody on the state or federal level can answer.
There are issues that haven’t been fully thought through. AEI and Senator Cassidy have both, in their own way, considered the exposure of teachers to asymptomatic student carriers of the virus, and while that’s an important consideration, the transfer from student to student also seems concerning. Pat might pass the virus to the teacher, but Pat might also pass it to Chris, who will then take it home.
Teachers can also point out that once you solve the policy and physical plant issues, you still have to face the human issues. You must somehow convince carefree seven-year-olds and rebellious sixteen-year-olds to go an entire day, every day, without hugging, kissing or contact playing with their friends. You must somehow create a school culture in which Rule #1 is to never be close enough to another person to touch them. Ask a teacher how difficult that will be, no matter how few students you allow in the building at a time.
Crisis schooling at home is not working for too many families, and reopening schools will present some nearly-insurmountable obstacles. It is time for policy makers, ed tech gurus, and bureaucrats to hand the problem over to the actual education experts in this country—public school teachers and administrators.
Over the next few months, we’ll see many plans floated for opening schools in the fall. The successful ones will have one thing in common.
They will be written—or at least co-written—by teachers.
Reopening schools will be the ultimate exercise in devil-concealing detail work. A recommendation like “put all student desks at least six feet apart” is easy to make, but it will take the people who actually know the configurations of rooms in the building to turn it into a workable plan
The plans will hinge on nitty-gritty details, not sweeping policy ideas. In a district with few students who walk to school, how do you get them to the building without stuffing them into a means of transportation? If you are, as some suggest, checking temperatures as they enter the building, how do you do it without creating a crowd outside? Where are the bottlenecks in your building, and how might scheduling help reduce them? If one source of bottlenecks is, in fact, the doorway into each classroom, how do you manage that traffic issue?
How will students move from class to class? How does an elementary teacher move a line of fifteen kids, all six feet apart, through the halls? In a high school, how do you dismiss different classes at different times without a crowd forming somewhere? The many detail question are all very specific to location, to student bodies, to staff.
What sorts of supplemental services will be needed, and which students are most likely to need them? How likely are local families to cooperate with health and safety measures, and how do you build trust with the community (some of those angry protestors you see on the news have children)? What physical objects pose a transfer threat (lab equipment, a single set of textbooks used by multiple classes, etc). These are not questions that anybody on the state or federal level can answer.
There are issues that haven’t been fully thought through. AEI and Senator Cassidy have both, in their own way, considered the exposure of teachers to asymptomatic student carriers of the virus, and while that’s an important consideration, the transfer from student to student also seems concerning. Pat might pass the virus to the teacher, but Pat might also pass it to Chris, who will then take it home.
Teachers can also point out that once you solve the policy and physical plant issues, you still have to face the human issues. You must somehow convince carefree seven-year-olds and rebellious sixteen-year-olds to go an entire day, every day, without hugging, kissing or contact playing with their friends. You must somehow create a school culture in which Rule #1 is to never be close enough to another person to touch them. Ask a teacher how difficult that will be, no matter how few students you allow in the building at a time.
Crisis schooling at home is not working for too many families, and reopening schools will present some nearly-insurmountable obstacles. It is time for policy makers, ed tech gurus, and bureaucrats to hand the problem over to the actual education experts in this country—public school teachers and administrators.
Toxic Ideas
Here are two views of the word that are loose in this country:
The way the world works is (or is supposed to be) that you get what you deserve. Make bad choices? You get bad consequences. Your success or failure is completely up to you-- it's the result of the choices that you make.
And this:
It's not about high ideals or honor or empathy or care for your fellow human. It's about power, and the people who do (or don't) have the balls to take it and use it.
The first is more familiar, because the myth of the strong, rugged individual who makes it on his own and pulls himself up by his own bootstraps (which he carved out of a tree trunk with his bare hands) is an American favorite. It is every person who clutched their pearls when Obama dared to suggest that they "didn't build that" by themselves. It is every opponent of the social safety net believing that people who are poor are poor because it's their own damn fault. (Heck, I know people who believe that if someone is sick--any kind of sick--has only themselves to blame.) "Cut all welfare," they say, "and Those People will go get jobs and support themselves. They're just taking advantage."
Even the working poor are their own fault. If that job doesn't pay enough to live on, then get a different job. Never mind what the pandemic has made clear-- that there are certain jobs that we absolutely need and expect someone to do, but we expect those people to be poor.
The second is less familiar to us as a society, though plenty of our high level officials certainly get it. It has certainly been a guiding principle of Donald Trump's life. It doesn't matter what the norms say or the rules say or any supposed virtues dictate-- the only boundaries are what you want to do and what someone can make you do.
Combine the two, and you achieve maximum ugliness-- if you are powerless in this world, it's because you deserve to be, because you weren't strong enough to gather any power for yourself.
For people who believe these things, violations are the worst. You can see it someone like Betsy DeVos who is so very disturbed that Those People might use loan forgiveness rules to get "free money" aka "money they don't deserve to have." It's in the anger of those conservatives who rail against "takers," who are, again, people who wouldn't be poor if they didn't deserve to be poor, so letting them take things is a crime against God and nature. Taking power and money that you don't deserve, or giving power and money to the undeserving-- that's far more alarming than the suffering or hunger or death by disease of the poor. It's in a President who in the midst of pandemic and poverty and unemployment and murder and a pain so great that it spills into the street--that President who in that moment does not call for unity or empathy, but demands that governors call out the big guns, set loose the dogs, and use raw power to put Those People back in their place. Or, as it now turns out, to sic the US military on US citizens in an attempt to install Martial Law Lite.
It takes willful ignorance to believe these things-- well, willful ignorance and a failure of human empathy. The racist version of this worldview includes the notion that there was slavery, then the Civil War, and that basically reset America and from that point on, it was a totally level playing field. It requires ignorance of things like red-lining and other real estate ricks that blocked Black families from building wealth in the same way that white families could. Or things so simple that white folks don't even think about, like being able to take an overnight trip without wondering if you can find a place to stay. And jobs. And pay. And the accumulation of social capital that occurs over generations in white families so that each new generation has a leg up before they are even potty trained. Or the systemic racism of the education system, from excessive discipline through denial of access to accelerated courses. There is just so much you have to blind yourself to in order to support the notion that all Black folks have just as much chance to get ahead as all white folks.
Power worship should be uniquely un-American; Thomas Jefferson enshrined the principle that power comes from the consent of the governed. Which we promptly forgot as we set about extending power by brute force. Jefferson, hypocritical prick that he was, could still have predicted our current mess. Stomp on people enough, and eventually they will kick back, and once you've passed a tipping point, you won't be able to stomp them hard enough to stop them.
Teachers need to understand all of this so that they don't let these toxic worldviews into their classrooms. Hint: if you think that all your students could be top achievers and the only reason some aren't is because they're too lazy or too irresponsible or "you know how Those People are," you are a problem-- not just in your school but in your world.
White students need to be taught about all of this so that they don't grow up to be the problem, and so that students of color can grow up claiming the power and history that is rightfully theirs. The roots of racism run deep in ignorance, and if the goal of education is to help students be more fully themselves and find how to be fully human in the world, then this is an ignorance that must be broken down. The anti-racist materials, the books, the readings-- they're all out there. Students need to make sense of the mess they're living through today, and they need preparation for the inevitable messes of tomorrow.
The way the world works is (or is supposed to be) that you get what you deserve. Make bad choices? You get bad consequences. Your success or failure is completely up to you-- it's the result of the choices that you make.
And this:
It's not about high ideals or honor or empathy or care for your fellow human. It's about power, and the people who do (or don't) have the balls to take it and use it.
The first is more familiar, because the myth of the strong, rugged individual who makes it on his own and pulls himself up by his own bootstraps (which he carved out of a tree trunk with his bare hands) is an American favorite. It is every person who clutched their pearls when Obama dared to suggest that they "didn't build that" by themselves. It is every opponent of the social safety net believing that people who are poor are poor because it's their own damn fault. (Heck, I know people who believe that if someone is sick--any kind of sick--has only themselves to blame.) "Cut all welfare," they say, "and Those People will go get jobs and support themselves. They're just taking advantage."
Even the working poor are their own fault. If that job doesn't pay enough to live on, then get a different job. Never mind what the pandemic has made clear-- that there are certain jobs that we absolutely need and expect someone to do, but we expect those people to be poor.
The second is less familiar to us as a society, though plenty of our high level officials certainly get it. It has certainly been a guiding principle of Donald Trump's life. It doesn't matter what the norms say or the rules say or any supposed virtues dictate-- the only boundaries are what you want to do and what someone can make you do.
Combine the two, and you achieve maximum ugliness-- if you are powerless in this world, it's because you deserve to be, because you weren't strong enough to gather any power for yourself.
For people who believe these things, violations are the worst. You can see it someone like Betsy DeVos who is so very disturbed that Those People might use loan forgiveness rules to get "free money" aka "money they don't deserve to have." It's in the anger of those conservatives who rail against "takers," who are, again, people who wouldn't be poor if they didn't deserve to be poor, so letting them take things is a crime against God and nature. Taking power and money that you don't deserve, or giving power and money to the undeserving-- that's far more alarming than the suffering or hunger or death by disease of the poor. It's in a President who in the midst of pandemic and poverty and unemployment and murder and a pain so great that it spills into the street--that President who in that moment does not call for unity or empathy, but demands that governors call out the big guns, set loose the dogs, and use raw power to put Those People back in their place. Or, as it now turns out, to sic the US military on US citizens in an attempt to install Martial Law Lite.
It takes willful ignorance to believe these things-- well, willful ignorance and a failure of human empathy. The racist version of this worldview includes the notion that there was slavery, then the Civil War, and that basically reset America and from that point on, it was a totally level playing field. It requires ignorance of things like red-lining and other real estate ricks that blocked Black families from building wealth in the same way that white families could. Or things so simple that white folks don't even think about, like being able to take an overnight trip without wondering if you can find a place to stay. And jobs. And pay. And the accumulation of social capital that occurs over generations in white families so that each new generation has a leg up before they are even potty trained. Or the systemic racism of the education system, from excessive discipline through denial of access to accelerated courses. There is just so much you have to blind yourself to in order to support the notion that all Black folks have just as much chance to get ahead as all white folks.
Power worship should be uniquely un-American; Thomas Jefferson enshrined the principle that power comes from the consent of the governed. Which we promptly forgot as we set about extending power by brute force. Jefferson, hypocritical prick that he was, could still have predicted our current mess. Stomp on people enough, and eventually they will kick back, and once you've passed a tipping point, you won't be able to stomp them hard enough to stop them.
Teachers need to understand all of this so that they don't let these toxic worldviews into their classrooms. Hint: if you think that all your students could be top achievers and the only reason some aren't is because they're too lazy or too irresponsible or "you know how Those People are," you are a problem-- not just in your school but in your world.
White students need to be taught about all of this so that they don't grow up to be the problem, and so that students of color can grow up claiming the power and history that is rightfully theirs. The roots of racism run deep in ignorance, and if the goal of education is to help students be more fully themselves and find how to be fully human in the world, then this is an ignorance that must be broken down. The anti-racist materials, the books, the readings-- they're all out there. Students need to make sense of the mess they're living through today, and they need preparation for the inevitable messes of tomorrow.
Monday, June 1, 2020
FL: Philanthropy Backs Testing
Has there ever been a time when it was more obvious that the Big Standardized Test is waste of time and money? Do you hear anybody out on the street over the last week declaring, "What we need is some standardized testing to show systemic racism, because otherwise, how will we know?" But education amateurs still believe in testing's magic power, and nowhere is the Cult of Testing more firmly entrenched than in Florida.
So here comes Bill Hoffman in the Tampa Bay Times to explain "Why we still need standardized testing."
Who is this guy? Hoffman is the head honcho of the Florida Philanthropic Network, and, of course, has no actual background in education. He graduated from the University of South Florida in 1976 with a bachelors in Marine Biology, then got himself a Master in the same. He rose through the ranks at Associated Marine Institutes, Inc, a "$65M international non-profit education and juvenile justice organization." In 2002 he landed in the Hillsborough Education Foundation, another one of those business-and-philanthropy self-appointed school oversight groups. He was there until 2011, and if Hillsborough rings a bell, that may because it was the site of one of the Gates Foundation experiments in teacher evaluation (from which Gates ultimately pulled out, leaving his tab unpaid and the district with issues). Hillsborough entered that Gates adventure in 2009.
Hoffman moved on to the National School Foundation Association, "the industry's primary thought leader, convener, and advocate." By "industry" they apparently mean the "education foundation" industry. NSFA started a Education Foundation Leader Certification Program at National University, and Hoffman teaches a couple of courses part time for that. Also in 2011 he set up Bill Hoffman and Associates, LLC, a consulting firm, because of course he did. They offer "national level independent sector expertise" in "educational engagement strategies," among other organization things.
The Florida Philanthropic Network that Hoffman CEOs has an "education affinity group," which includes an assortment of Florida community foundations, plus, of course, the Gates foundation, Gulf Power Company, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo. Gates also funds the organization, along with the Helios Education Foundation, which is all about getting students ready for college in Arizona and Florida, and there's more to them and, as usual, we could just follow these strings all day. But let's get back to Bill Hoffman and his op-ed.
Hoffman opens by saying, yes, canceling the BS Test was the right call this year, and everybody deserves kudos for dealing with the pandemic mess this year, especially parents of young children.
But what he really wants to talk about is why we shouldn't dump testing entirely. Not all of his arguments are exactly cogent:
While in the current situation it is not appropriate to expect the same level of preparation or performance on year-end testing, that doesn’t diminish testing’s value. For those who say we did without testing in this situation so we don’t need to have tests in the future, I’d point to the fact that we are doing without a lot of societal “institutions” (such as going to restaurants, sporting events, concerts, parks, etc.). That doesn’t mean we should eliminate them in the future.
First of all, the disruption of the year absolutely reduced the test's value-- reduced it all the way to zero, which is why it was canceled. Second, a bicycle, because a vest has no sleeves. Restaurants are going to open, so we should start testing again? A standardized test is just like a concert?
The education funders of the Florida Philanthropic Network have held as one of their key tenets (and areas of support) assuring that our students going through the Florida K-12 system are prepared to be successful in their post-secondary education and careers. There are many moving parts to make this happen: rigorous and challenging standards, excellent teaching, supportive administrators, engaged parents, and grade-appropriate curricular materials to name a few of the most critical. But even with all these pieces in place there is no assurance students are growing academically. How can you tell if you don’t measure it?
The thing is-- there's no evidence that the BS Tests measure any of this. There isn't an iota of evidence that raising your test score raises your prospects in life. And while I understand the desire for some concrete measure of how students are advancing, that's just not how humaning works. Do you want to know if a person is becoming more responsible? Do you want to know if your partner loves you more today than yesterday? You can create proxies for the things you want to measure, but you cannot directly measure what is going on in a human heart and mind. Your proxies will always be imperfect, and sometimes they will be wildly imperfect. A standardized reading and math test as a proxy for intellectual and personal growth is hopelessly, wildly, completely imperfect.
Research done by TNTP, the New York-based The New Teacher Project, that was released as the report, “The Opportunity Myth” shows that students live up to the expectations set for them by their teachers.
Nope. "The Opportunity Myth" barely qualifies as research, and what it pretends to prove is a whole bunch of other things. But you're right-- teacher expectations matter, which is why it's important that teachers hold expectations that are higher and more valuable than "get a good score on this single standardized test."
But Hoffman has fully signed on for the expectation baloney train, claiming that students who are, for instance, reading below grade level are doing so because their teachers aren't expecting more. I wonder if, in Hoffman's work career, he ever fired someone. If so, why didn't he just expect harder for that person, so they would do better work? And if he would say that firing underperformers is how one maintains high expectations in a workplace, I would remind him that teachers cannot fire students.
Hoffman thinks that these low expectations are why students struggle when they get to college. This talking point, a golden oldie, always puzzles me. If students are struggling when they get to college, can't the college professors get them past it by having high expectations? Why is the assumption that college students come with limitations that professors must work with and acknowledge, but from K-12 teachers should just expect harder and thereby magically erase any struggles or limitations that those students work with.
Look. Expectations are powerful and hugely important in a classroom. One of the trickiest arts of teaching is to calibrate expectations with the strengths and weaknesses of the individual students-- otherwise you reap either boredom or frustration. The best teachers have hundreds of "expectation" tools in their kit, and you never stop learning more about how to know which one to use with which student under which circumstances.
But the Big Standardized Test is a lousy tool for raising and maintaining expectations-- senseless; designed with the test manufacturers and data gurus in mind, not students or teachers; narrow; poorly written; and with its validity still unproven.
Hoffman has one last line that is, in its way, incisive:
[W]e won’t know they’re performing unless there are clear and challenging standards coupled with a standard means to measure the students’ growth.
But that's the challenge. Knowledge is not a performance. Learning is not a performance. Understanding is not a performance. Education is not a performance. And when you demand that someone perform for you in order to "prove" that they are educated, you run the risk of teaching them to perform rather than to know, to fake it rather than to make it. You invoke Campbell's Law. You get junk.
Hoffman's desire to have students learn at their best possible level is totally on point. But like too many education amateurs, he assumes that a standardized test is a magical device that can do all the things he dreams of, instead of recognizing it as a product that is being sold with neither guarantee nor proof of quality.
So here comes Bill Hoffman in the Tampa Bay Times to explain "Why we still need standardized testing."
 |
| This guy. |
Hoffman moved on to the National School Foundation Association, "the industry's primary thought leader, convener, and advocate." By "industry" they apparently mean the "education foundation" industry. NSFA started a Education Foundation Leader Certification Program at National University, and Hoffman teaches a couple of courses part time for that. Also in 2011 he set up Bill Hoffman and Associates, LLC, a consulting firm, because of course he did. They offer "national level independent sector expertise" in "educational engagement strategies," among other organization things.
The Florida Philanthropic Network that Hoffman CEOs has an "education affinity group," which includes an assortment of Florida community foundations, plus, of course, the Gates foundation, Gulf Power Company, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo. Gates also funds the organization, along with the Helios Education Foundation, which is all about getting students ready for college in Arizona and Florida, and there's more to them and, as usual, we could just follow these strings all day. But let's get back to Bill Hoffman and his op-ed.
Hoffman opens by saying, yes, canceling the BS Test was the right call this year, and everybody deserves kudos for dealing with the pandemic mess this year, especially parents of young children.
But what he really wants to talk about is why we shouldn't dump testing entirely. Not all of his arguments are exactly cogent:
While in the current situation it is not appropriate to expect the same level of preparation or performance on year-end testing, that doesn’t diminish testing’s value. For those who say we did without testing in this situation so we don’t need to have tests in the future, I’d point to the fact that we are doing without a lot of societal “institutions” (such as going to restaurants, sporting events, concerts, parks, etc.). That doesn’t mean we should eliminate them in the future.
First of all, the disruption of the year absolutely reduced the test's value-- reduced it all the way to zero, which is why it was canceled. Second, a bicycle, because a vest has no sleeves. Restaurants are going to open, so we should start testing again? A standardized test is just like a concert?
The education funders of the Florida Philanthropic Network have held as one of their key tenets (and areas of support) assuring that our students going through the Florida K-12 system are prepared to be successful in their post-secondary education and careers. There are many moving parts to make this happen: rigorous and challenging standards, excellent teaching, supportive administrators, engaged parents, and grade-appropriate curricular materials to name a few of the most critical. But even with all these pieces in place there is no assurance students are growing academically. How can you tell if you don’t measure it?
The thing is-- there's no evidence that the BS Tests measure any of this. There isn't an iota of evidence that raising your test score raises your prospects in life. And while I understand the desire for some concrete measure of how students are advancing, that's just not how humaning works. Do you want to know if a person is becoming more responsible? Do you want to know if your partner loves you more today than yesterday? You can create proxies for the things you want to measure, but you cannot directly measure what is going on in a human heart and mind. Your proxies will always be imperfect, and sometimes they will be wildly imperfect. A standardized reading and math test as a proxy for intellectual and personal growth is hopelessly, wildly, completely imperfect.
Research done by TNTP, the New York-based The New Teacher Project, that was released as the report, “The Opportunity Myth” shows that students live up to the expectations set for them by their teachers.
Nope. "The Opportunity Myth" barely qualifies as research, and what it pretends to prove is a whole bunch of other things. But you're right-- teacher expectations matter, which is why it's important that teachers hold expectations that are higher and more valuable than "get a good score on this single standardized test."
But Hoffman has fully signed on for the expectation baloney train, claiming that students who are, for instance, reading below grade level are doing so because their teachers aren't expecting more. I wonder if, in Hoffman's work career, he ever fired someone. If so, why didn't he just expect harder for that person, so they would do better work? And if he would say that firing underperformers is how one maintains high expectations in a workplace, I would remind him that teachers cannot fire students.
Hoffman thinks that these low expectations are why students struggle when they get to college. This talking point, a golden oldie, always puzzles me. If students are struggling when they get to college, can't the college professors get them past it by having high expectations? Why is the assumption that college students come with limitations that professors must work with and acknowledge, but from K-12 teachers should just expect harder and thereby magically erase any struggles or limitations that those students work with.
Look. Expectations are powerful and hugely important in a classroom. One of the trickiest arts of teaching is to calibrate expectations with the strengths and weaknesses of the individual students-- otherwise you reap either boredom or frustration. The best teachers have hundreds of "expectation" tools in their kit, and you never stop learning more about how to know which one to use with which student under which circumstances.
But the Big Standardized Test is a lousy tool for raising and maintaining expectations-- senseless; designed with the test manufacturers and data gurus in mind, not students or teachers; narrow; poorly written; and with its validity still unproven.
Hoffman has one last line that is, in its way, incisive:
[W]e won’t know they’re performing unless there are clear and challenging standards coupled with a standard means to measure the students’ growth.
But that's the challenge. Knowledge is not a performance. Learning is not a performance. Understanding is not a performance. Education is not a performance. And when you demand that someone perform for you in order to "prove" that they are educated, you run the risk of teaching them to perform rather than to know, to fake it rather than to make it. You invoke Campbell's Law. You get junk.
Hoffman's desire to have students learn at their best possible level is totally on point. But like too many education amateurs, he assumes that a standardized test is a magical device that can do all the things he dreams of, instead of recognizing it as a product that is being sold with neither guarantee nor proof of quality.
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