Better Writing Assessment: Do Something Right

If you aren't ready to take the no-grade plunge (or your particular corner of the pool will never support that choice), there are still ways to shift your thinking about assessing student writing. 

One of the biggest is to move away from focusing on deficits and mistakes.

Avoiding mistakes is not a useful focus for writing. For one thing, not making mistakes is an easy path to mediocrity. You can play the game without making any mistakes and still lose. You can perform the piece of music without a single wrong note or missed entrance and still be boring and bland. You can step out on stage, remember every line, hit every mark, and still be forgotten five seconds after the final curtain falls.

It is not enough to not do something wrong. You have to do something right. We've reached the point where software can write mediocre essays, and we've been stuck for years at the point where software can tell if a student has produced, at best, a mediocre piece of writing (though it also may fail to notice if the essay is far worse than mediocre). That's because all software can do is sample a gazillion chunks of what has been written before and kind of mush together and spit out a homogenized version of it. 

Human writers should do better than that. They should bring something new to the table, some piece of their own personality, some synthesis or growth that's new to them. They should strive to be more than safely bland.

For the classroom teacher, fostering the braver, better attitude means a particular mindset. It is easy, especially if you are not super-confident about your writing instruction and assessment skills, to stick with the deficits and mistakes model, to spot the student 100% to start with, and the subtract every time you find a problem. It's easy for everyone, and students recognize the model from every test they've ever taken where the teacher's role is to "correct" the test by marking everything that's "wrong." 

But the lesson here is to take no chances, attempt nothing you're not certain is okay, The lesson here is to be the person at the party who says nothing that might bother anyone, so that at the end of the evening you have offended nobody--and nobody remembers who you were. The lesson is to be a timid, mediocre writer who gets by. 

Work with a positive focus. Spot your students 50% for getting words on the paper, and then start awarding points for what they do right. Give them back papers that include circles and underlines and exclamation points next to the best parts. This gets them to stop looking for red-lined "mistakes" to avoid next time and moves them to focus on what they could strengthen, what strengths they have to build on. 

Doing so not only makes for better writers, but it more clearly turns writing assessment into writing instruction. Focusing on deficits and mistakes turns assessment into whack-a-mole, only your students are the moles and what they learn is to never stick their heads out of the hole. Focusing on strengths and growths is about feeding the plants in the garden and helping them grow.

There are other ways to implement this sort of change. I love the teacher who has her students aspire to get a "publishable" at the end of rewrites. Or "3" if it's a rough draft, "4" for the edited version, and "5" for a final copy. 

I'd also argue that this mindset is useful in classes outside of the English department, and that using this approach is what elevates written assessments above simple objective tests, no matter what the content is. 

As with all advice about writing instruction, there is nothing new here, nothing that lots of other writing teachers don't already know. Still doesn't hurt to repeat it. Also, hat tip to John Warner whose piece took my mind back to this aspect of writing instruction. 

Update: Chester Upland's Mysterious Missing Money

The Chester Upland School District frequently gets the adjective "embattled" in front of its name, and it has earned that name by suffering every hardship ever inflicted on a school district. Most recently, it has been the target of a plan to chop the district up and sell the parts off to various charter school operators.

But suddenly, this week, new issues. The story was first picked up by the Delco Times, and in that version, the FBI has descended upon the southwestern PA district. Yesterday the Philadelphia Inquirer's Maddie Hanna and Vinny Valla covered the story as well, and the narrative is morphing. In their version, the FBI makes no apearance and this is just an inquiry by the county DA.

But central to all versions of the story are "millions" of missing dollars.

Juan Baughn is the state's current receiver (the district has had several at this point) who moved directly to that job from the superintendent's position in the district. His explanation is, well...

Juan Baughn, the receiver overseeing the school district, said it contacted law enforcement after it didn’t receive “millions” of dollars in a subsidy payment due last week from the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

“Our system, between us and Harrisburg, somehow was hacked,” Baughn said Thursday. “It’s a cyber issue.”

This is an extraordinary story, and it raises many questions. Can one really "intercept" a cyber-transfer of money, like catching a migrating sparrow in a net? And if someone has that capability, would one use it to steal from the state and a local school district? And, okay, maybe there's a unique vulnerability between the PDE and schools, but if you were going to steal from a school district, why steal from one of the poorer districts in the state? Why not steal from the very wealthy districts right next door?

And then there's this weirdly non-specific explanation from Baughn:

Baughn didn’t specify how much money the district believed had gone missing — “I’ve heard so many numbers that I don’t want to give a number” — but said it was “in the millions.”

But there has to be a number. You know how much the PDE thought they were sending. You either got all of it, some of it, or none of it. How can this be a mystery? The Inquirer says that the district solicitor reported the crime to the DA--what did thy report? "We seem to have been ripped off for some amount of money"? And then a few paragraphs later, Baughn offers that the idea that the paymebnt was hacked is his "suspicion." Based on what, exactly?

The PDE also, mysteriously, had nothing to add except they can't comment and "this matter does not any compromise of PDE systems of data." So whatever hacking may have occurred, it did not occur on their end. 

I asked a person close to the district how this was playing on the ground. Does anybody believe this. They said nobody buys this story. 

According to the Inquirer, the district has asked for an advance of funding from the state so that it can pay the bills, which will have a familiar ring to CUSD teachers who have foregone pay twice before in the last decade. 

So, to sum up, some amount of money is missing, spirited away somehow. The FBI may or may not be involved, and the district may or may not have been hacked. Stay tuned, because it appears that we still have some facts to sort out.

Arizona Mounts Further Assault On Public School Teachers

Arizona has lost its damn mind, this week passing some of the stupidest, most aggressively anti-public ed laws anywhere, including an absolutely insane law requiring teachers to file lesson plans a year in advance.

Arizona has always been a strong contender for most anti-public education state in the county. They've had trouble convincing teachers to work there for years (at one point they were recruiting in the Phillipines), using the one two punch of low salaries along with rock-bottom spending on classrooms (this is the state where the house GOP leader contended that teachers were just working second jobs so they could buy boats). In the meantime, they have done their best to foster charter profiteering and set up vouchers at the expense of public ed. Did I mention that Arizona is the Koch home base?

There was no reason to be surprised when Arizona's teachers rose up in revolt. Governor Ducey made noises about recognizing the problem, but he's been trying to slap teaches around ever since. Arizona legislators have come after teachers and public schools before, but this week is really something special.

This week Ducey issued an executive order requiring all schools to return o in-person learning by March 15, with exceptions only for the counties (there are three) with high transmission--there, the middle and high schools can stay remote. No other exceptions, no consideration for local concerns, issues, situations, etc. 

But now for the legal highlights of the week.

SB1058 is the one I mentioned above. In this bill, every school (charters get hit with this foolishness, too) must, by July 1 of each year, post, where parents can see it, all lesson plans, materials, activities, textbooks, videos, online stuff. Parents in Arizona already have the right to review all materials, so nthis is just a next step. "It should be reasonably easy to access the information." This bill passed the Senate on Tuesday.

This is more than just an unnecessary burden on teachers. It's more than just a way to legislate bad teaching (if you already know what you're doing in class on a particular Tuesday five months from now, you are not doing a great job teaching). It also makes each teacher's lesson planning--their professional intellectual property--open to the public. Starting a charter school but you don't know a damn thing about teaching? Just log on and lift your curriculum, scope, sequence, plans, etc from any actual teacher.

SB1400 allows students to get a school credit for outside course, working at a job, playing in a non-school sports league, performing in a non-school music group. Which of course opens the door to schools simply eliminating arts and phys ed teachers; maybe ditch the STEM, too. Of course, this will be far more useful to rich kids who have access to all sorts of out-of-school resources.

SB1783 has been pitched as a tax break for small businesses, but the Arizona Center for Economic Progress is among the many critics who say otherwise:

The only people who would want to use the “alternative tax filing” method provided by this bill are rich or very high-income individuals who want to exclude the profits from their businesses, trusts and estates so they don’t have to pay their fair share in taxes to support Arizona’s public schools.

Previously, Arizona voters passed Proposition 208, which levied a surcharge against business super-profits to help fund education. Prop208 was unsuccessfully challenged in court, but this bill would let wealthy folks do an end run around it. The bill would gut school funding by something like $600m every year.

SB1108 is a pro-business bill that reduces the tax payments for businesses, meaning that either homeowners pick up the difference or schools just suffer another cut.

All of these have passed the Senate and are headed for the House. Meanwhile, in the house, we've got HB2840, which makes it legal to have a firearm on school grounds as long as it's not visible and in your car. That's only for 18 years and older, so "Bring Your Deadly Loaded Firearm To School Day" will be for seniors. Freshmen will have to wait their turn.

Honestly, the loopy lesson plan law would be enough to convince me to get out of an Arizona classroom, but all of this is part of a pattern of attempted gutting of public education. Arizona is also one of several states where the GOP is working on how to manage minority rule, to still stay in power and keep democracy from getting in the way. 

All of this comes on the heels of a massive voucher expansion in Arizona, worth noting because it was one more example of the state's GOP working in direct defiance of Arizona voters, who decisively rejected voucher expansion just two years ago. 

It's an ugly frustrating mess. What exactly is your next move if you're in a state where the reaction to "If you keep this up, you'll destroy public schools" is "Good."Jeb Bush is a big fan of Arizona's work, mostly because it so closely follows his own playbook in Florida. It all points to an ugly future in which the wealthy can buy the education they want and not have to pay taxes to educate Those People's Children. 

 

Breaking: FBI Investigating Chester Upland District Finances

Chester Upland School District has been through the wringer, suffering through just about every problem a school district could face in the last century. Most recently they have been facing a state receivership and an administration that seems anxious to convert them to charter schools, the first district in Pennsylvania to be official dismantled, gutted and sold for parts.

Today, more trouble--at least for some folks:

The FBI and Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer are investigating are investigating millions of dollars worth of missing funds in the Chester Upland School District, sources close to the investigation confirmed late Wednesday.

The DA's office became aware of the situation Monday. 

If this sounds fairly sedate, the rumors circulating are considerably less. Talk of a money-laundering scheme run through the district, with the FBI raiding the administration offices and collecting all computers, servers--the works.

Financial issues have been at the heart of district issues for years, with the state at one point declaring that the record keeping was such a mess that an audit couldn't even be completed. Missing money has been a repeated issue in the district, resulting in years when staff has been asked to defer payment. Those financial issues have been exacerbated by aggressive charter expansion in the city; at one point, CUSD had the distinction of sending more money to charter schools than it received in support from the state.

District receiver Juan Baughn (who recently retired from the district superintendent post) tried to tamp down rumors of district in-house shenanigans, saying that itv was hacking thing. "It was a hacking issue related to our funds that we get from the PDE." That would be a first in the state. Baughn says they turned the hacking info over to the DA immediately; he offered no explanation of how the FBI became involved. It sounds uncomfortably like "I didn't write that terrible tweet--somebody must have hacked my account."

Very little official information is available right now. I'm keeping my eyes peeled and will post more when I know more.

Free Charters Are Not Free

The Heritage Charter Academy of Cape Coral, Florida plugs itself as a "free public charter school," but that turns out to be not entirely true.

As reported earlier this week, the charter schools of Cape Coral are in deep financial trouble. The charters run by Oasis Charter Schools can't afford their lease. So they are facing some serious deficit spending issues, as described by a city official:

“If everything stays the way it is today right now … their fund balance would actually be depleted by 2024,” Assistant City Manager Connie Barron said.

Cape Coral is a city in southwest Florida of around 200,000 people, which is impressive given it was launched as a real estate development in 1957. The city actual incorporated in 1970. Now it's the eighth largest city in Florida, built not so much on swampland as around a network of canals.

The charters come under the City of Cape Coral Charter School Authority and fall within the Lee County School District, which earned its spot in history back after Brown v. Board of Education ruled that segregation was illegal, Lee County handled that new reality by simply ignoring it. This led to some civic strife and a set of court orders, some of which are still in place. Charter School providers include infamous charter chain Charter Schools USA (which is pretty busy in Lee County). 

Bottom line: Cape Coral can't afford its current charter school set-up, and in fact is already making some iffy choices to keep the charters afloat:

“We only receive $1.5 million,” [Oasis Superintendent Jacqueline] Collins explained. “Our lease is $3.2 million every year, so to pay that that, we had to take from our [Florida Education Finance Program] funding, which really is designated for students and instruction.”

So they're already short-changing students in order to meet lease costs. That FEFP pulls money out of two piles--sales tax money and a state-mandated cut of local real estate taxes-- and gives it to charter schools because the money that "follows the student" isn't enough. 

The report initially says that the city has only two choices--let the charters fail, or bail them out-- but then a few paragraphs later, there's this:

Cape Coral City Council is on record wanting to help the city’s four charter schools by allocating $2 million a year starting in fiscal year 2022 and reducing the lease to $1.5 million a year. But nothing has been approved yet.

Which Collins characterizes as "them helping us with this lease payment." So there's plenty about this remarkably under-reported story that is not entirely clear (what do they lease, and from whom). What is abundantly clear is that the taxpayers of Cape Coral and Lee County are paying more to have duplicate school systems.

That's totally fine. I've always argued that I would have far fewer objections to charter schools if we were just honest about the cost, but oddly enough, as yet no politician has stood up to say, "We want a select few students to have the benefit of a private school, and we think that's so important that we are going to raise your taxes to do it." The city government of Cape Coral might be getting close to doing just that, and if so, God bless them. In the meanwhile, let's just stop pretending that we can add multiple extra schools to a system at no extra cost.

I've Got A New Blogging Job

For many years, Diane Ravitch has taken on the task of maintaining a sort of town square for folks who care about the health and future of public education. Most of us who are part of this blogosphere owe her a heap of thanks for helping us find our audiences and for amplifying our voices. 

But right now, Diane is scaling back (so, only 50 posts a week instead of 600) by concentrating on her own original content. The new blog will be a sort of spin-off, a place to keep making available a cross-section of the many, many, many voices lifted in concern about and support for public education. It's fitting that the Network for Public Education do the hosting and managing of the keep-the-lights-on portion of the work; I will be taking on the task of curating the content. 

The goal is to provide a steady, daily sampling of the best of what's out there in the blogging world (which I loosely define to include substacks and op-eds). The pieces will appear here either in their entirety or with a brief excerpt and a link to the full piece. Which format will be up to the original creator. For me, it's a chance to extend the work I've done with the weekly ICYMI collection. 

I have some things to learn about the tech side of wordpress sites, and advice is always welcome. When I first started this blog years ago, I thought it would be cool to use white lettering on a black background--thank God some readers disabused me of that notion. 

If you have content you want to submit for use here, the email address to use is

npeblog@outlook.com

I can't promise that I'll get to each and every thing sent to me, but I expect to be deeply indebted to people who try to keep me supplied with material. 

The link to share is 

https://networkforpubliceducation.org/best-posts/

This morning Diane called me "estimable and tireless." I'll do my best to live up to that. 

In the meantime, life will continue as usual here at the Mother Ship, though my productivity here may take a dip or two while I'm working out a new rhythm for my own work. As I used to tell my students, "It'll be an adventure."

Donors Choose Monday: Out of the Ordinary

One of the harder things about retirement has been sitting on the bench while friends, old colleagues, and family are in there doing the work. I deal with that partly by making contributions where and how I can, and that includes poking through Donors Choose for classrooms to help.

Yes, so much of what is there is stuff that the school districts ought to be taking care of themselves, but I'm going to help a little bit anyway, because I can. And every so often on Monday, I've been sharing with you what I'm contributing to so that you can A) also chip in, B) search Donors Choose for something that speaks to you or C) reach out locally to see what help you can offer there.

This week we're a little out of the box.

Mrs. Brandt at Lawnton Elementary in Harrisburg is looking to get a new audiometer. Many of their students have no regular health care provider, and depend on the school for basic screenings (because there is anything that does not eventually become the school's problem). LES has many low-income students, and an audiometer that is over thirty years old and "at the end of its functional life." So that's something we can help with (and it requires a whole lot of help).

Curwensville PA is high poverty and rural, and those are the schools where the arts are a helpful lifeline, even as they don't necessarily get a big slice of the budget pie. Mrs. Lemmo has art students who are already working with Cricut Maker (you crafty types know what I mean) and are trying to branch out into t-shirt making, which is yet another one of those cool DIY take-it-for-granted things that some students only ever encounter if their school has the tools. So we can help Mrs. Lemmo get the tool she needs.

Kick off the new month by lending some teacher, somewhere, a hand.