Falling Behind In An Actual Classroom

The chicken littling about Learning Loss is just never going to stop. Today I came across yet another article (that I won't link to) warning that the Learning Losses from the pandemic pause will haunt students for the rest of their lives.

The worst of the Learning Loss panickers are revealing too much about what they don't understand, but what they especially don't understand is what goes on in an actual classroom, because the whole concept of "falling behind" is a layperson's oversimplification of what actual education looks like.

I think I was a pretty run-of-the-mill example of the teaching profession in my thirty-nine years, so let me explain what my year generally looked like. 

At the beginning of the year, I'd launch the dual processes of Trying To Teach Stuff and Figuring Out What This Batch of Students Knows and Can Do. At no point in my career were the Big Standardized Test results a useful part of this process because A) the results were nothing but a score and we weren't even allowed to see the questions, so had no way of knowing what exactly students got right or got wrong and B) the results don't come until the school year was already well under way. 

In my career, I mostly taught grades 9 through 12, all tracks, so September always brought students with a very wide range of tools. One of things you get better at with experience is assessing what the students bring to the table, both academically and otherwise. And then you go from there.

This initial assessment does not tell you anything about pace. Not once in my career did I ever start the year thinking, "Oh, lordy, these guys are behind, so I will switch into my special secret accelerated mode so that I can teach them more, faster." For a couple of reasons. First, not once in four decades did I stumble upon a fast mode that let me teach more, faster, which I then shelved for some reason. Because one thing you know after just a couple of years is that there is never enough time, and so part of your practice is to squeeze the very most out of the time you have. 

Second, if there are students who are not quite as far along as you wish they were, acceleration is backwards. "Since you don't quite understand this yet, I'm going to spend less time on it," said no teacher ever. 

One other thing about that initial assessment-- you are looking at many, many items. It's not like measuring how far a runner has progressed down a single track. It's more like a pincushion, with a hundred pins sticking out in all directions, some far out and some barely progressed. A pretty good writer who doesn't read well. Students who don't write super-well, but who each write poorly for a different reason. 

And then we move into the meat of the year., with students progressing at different speeds in different directions. This, it should be noted, is never, ever expressed in terms such as ,"Pat, you are behind Sam in reading," because what possible good can come of that? Because I taught mostly 11th and 12th graders, a lot of our developing emphases in class have to do with what they are doing next. My future auto mechanics have different concerns than my future college freshpersons. 

Sometimes there are just particular issues that come with the chemistry of the class. I've had classes where if I managed to teach anything in that period, it was-- well, not a good day, but a better day than the days when nothing got done. 

Sometimes the class provides special opportunities. The year I had a class of around a dozen students, eight of whom were either pregnant or moms; what a great class, and there was some great learning that went on in there, but it didn't look like any other class I ever taught, because they had very specific interests, concerns, priorities. The classes that focused on themes and ideas in the literature that were really exciting and interesting. The class that wanted to talk about how to deal with bad communicators in a workplace.

Those developments in turn shape the year and the culminating, end of year assessments. My end of year assessments usually included take home essays to write that involved some synthesis and connection creation, but the year I had a class that just loved "deep" themes and ideas, one of their end of year essays was "What is the meaning of life?" If you laid out my various finals side by side, would you be able to say that one class was ahead or behind another? Is a student who passed welding certification ahead or behind one who completed a local history paper based on primary sources? Is a student who wrote a rap about Hamlet's fear of death ahead or behind a student who created a web-based presentation about dance? 

As I have said repeatedly--there is no question that this year, students did not get the same amount of educational stuff that they would have gotten in a non-pandemic year. There is no question that for most, remote education did not serve them as well as live and in person probably would have. 

But to reduce education to a single straight line, and then to rank students by how they are located on that line, is reductive to the point of being stupid. It's attractive and helpful for people who don't understand education, or people who think they understand education but don't want to think too hard about it, or people who want to reduce education to the process of engineering humans, or policy makers who want a simple formula for policy, or people who want to be able to make a simple, sexy sales pitch. 

But it's not real, or particularly useful, to actual teachers in actual classrooms. People grow and change and learn and mature in their own time and in their own way. Whatever quality you want to focus on, there is always someone who is more so. But what does that tell you, really. We are not all in a race, we are not all headed to the same destination, and we are not even going to follow the path we think we are. Double ditto for our students.

Heutagogy (Because We Need New Education Jargon)

There are, apparently, three siblings in the Gogy family-- pedagogy, andragogy, and heutagogy.

Pedagogy you already know, at least in some vague way. Andragogy is the method and practice of teaching adults. Heutagogy--well, heutagogy is a made-up word. Miriam-Webster hasn't heard of it. The word was coined in 2000 by Stewart Hase and Chris Kenyon "to describe self-learning independent of formal teaching." Those two scholars were, at the time, at Southern Cross University in Australia.

That short, simple definition suggests why the term has been gathering steam over the past several years (a Google Ngram search shows an almost uninterrupted explosion of the term's use). If someone in your immediate vicinity starts using it, should you be alarmed? Well.....

On the one hand, learner-directed learning is pretty much what most grown-ups do. If I want to learn about something (like heutagogy), I start digging and reading and asking and cogitating. It was one of the things my liberal arts education explicitly aimed to do--to set me up to be able to teach myself whatever I wanted or needed to know for the rest of my life. 

But that's as an educated adult, and some heuta-fans are clearly intending that a heutagogical future should be in the cards for learners of all ages. And some of their materials are not entirely encouraging.

For instance, there seems to be a tendency to stack the three Gogy siblings and simplify their explanations in ways that feel like: peda is the sage on the stage, andra is the guide on the side, and heuta is fly free and follow your educational bliss. Here's instructional coach Lauren Davis:

Meanwhile, the heutagogical approach encourages students to find their own problems and questions to answer. Instead of simply completing the tasks teachers assign, these students seek out areas of uncertainty and complexity in the subjects they study. Teachers help by providing context to students' learning and creating opportunities for them to explore subjects fully.

This is where my traditionalist flag flies. I think there's always a place for the sage on the stage (if she knows what the hell she's talking about) and the guide on the side is also a useful classroom role (if, again, one knows their way around the territory). But in my career, I would have been embarrassed to say that I learned as much from the kids as they did from me. Nor would I have claimed not to have any real knowledge of the material, or have suggested that I could aid education by giving neither lecture, guidance or nudging. As a teacher, if I'm not the subject matter expert in that classroom, what the heck am I doing there? That doesn't mean I'm the God of my subject matter or that I can never gain anything from actually listening to my students, but if I'm not the most knowledgeable person in the room and my roll is to sit in the corner while the students wander unguided and unaided, why are the taxpayers paying me? 

Some of the folks in the heutagogy game are not encouraging. One name that pops up is Jacki Gerstein, who writes blog posts about "user-generated education" with titles like "I do not teach for a living--I live teaching as my doing...and technology has amplified my passion for doing so." Terry Heick ("education expert interested in modern knowledge demands") has written a piece about the gogy siblings in which he posts a set of presentation slides based on Gerstein's work that includes things like a slide that asserts (with a nod toward the discredited learning styles approach) that we learn 100% from participating in activities, but, below "viewing pictures" or "teaching the activity" we find reading coming in at 10%.

Heutagogy is popping up all around the globe. Here's an article from just last week from India (and heavily lifted from this Schoology article from 2018)  touting heutagogy as "the new lifelong-learning shift" and defining it as "a student-centered instructional strategy to teach lifelong learning and aims to produce a learning ecosystem that is well-prepared for the complexities of today's workplace."  There's a heutagogy community of practice on line, though like many of these sources, it has been pretty sleepy for the past few years.

 

There are plenty of definitions offered for heutagogy, but certain ideas keep turning up.  Self-determination. Autonomy. And technology. 

Reading about heutagogy reminds me of the open school movement of the sixties. My aunt opened a school in Connecticut; the idea was that the children would be immersed in a rich environment where they would simply follow where their curiosity led them. It did not last long. Turns out that small humans don't exactly thrive in unguided adult-free situations. 

Heutagogy, like many 21st century education ideas, appears to think that computers can magically change the equation, much like presenters I heard two decades ago breathlessly announcing that students would soon all be carrying mini-computers in their pockets. Which has turned out to be true--but students consider them as remarkable and inspiring as pencils and pens and books. One of my own crusades for my last very many years in the classroom was to try to convince students that they could use those mini-computers to find answers to questions and not just to play with this week's hot app. It's the great paradox of computers and education--they change everything, except that they don't change anything. 

And some heutagogical types seem to get this. There's talk about "competencies and capabilities" and the idea that students need tools if they're going to self-direct their learning. But there's also talk like this: "the heutagogical approach encourages students to find their own problems and questions to answer. Instead of simply completing the tasks teachers assign, these students seek out areas of uncertainty and complexity in the subjects they study. Teachers help by providing context to students' learning and creating opportunities for them to explore subjects fully."

You can see why the approach is going to be popular in some quarters. The "prepared for the complexities of the workplace" part fits those who think corporations shouldn't have to pay to train their workers. And the self-directed technology use is right out of the personalized [sic] learning playbook-- give the kid a computer and let her figure out her education on her own. No need to pay for a teacher--just a "coach" or "mentor", and not even that much need for highly-developed educational software. 

Is there room, even necessity, for some self-direction in education? Sure, and even more need for a teacher who can identify and respond to the directions that would be most useful for students. But abdicating all adult responsibility to say, "You students just go ahead and educate yourselves" is a lousy idea, even if you slap a cool made-up Greek name on it. 

FL: Private School Says No Vaccine For Staff

Centner Academy (Miami's premiere private school for the leaders of tomorrow) has informed parents by letter that the staff and teachers are not to get vaccinated for Covid-19. 

The letter indicates that "we ask any employee who has not yet taken the experimental COVID-19 injection, to wait until the end of the school year." That sounds almost mild, until a few sentences later we arrive at "It is our policy, to the extent possible, not to employ anyone who has taken the experimental COVID-19 injection until further information is known."

You will have recognized the anti-covid-vax talking point that the vaccines are experimental. The school throws in some additional debunked talking points about the vaccine.

For example, tens of thousands of women all over the world have been reporting adverse reproductive issues from being in close proximity with those who have received one of COVID-19 injections e.g., irregular menses, bleeding, miscarriages, post menopausal hemorrhaging, and amenorrhea.

Well, no. That is not a thing that's been happening. But staff that are vaccinated will have to stay away from the students. Staff were required to fill out a "confidential form." 

Centner actually has a whole page on its website about vaccine policy, and it is equally fact-challenged:

There is a popular sentiment in the United States that the excessive mandatory vaccines are potentially damaging to children’s health. In the past 20 years, U.S. statistics demonstrate that children are experiencing doubled rates of Attention Deficit Disorder and learning disabilities, doubled rates of asthma, tripled rates of diabetes, and a rise in autism in every U.S. state at the rate of 600 percent.

But, they go on to say, they totally support students doing whatever they think is best. 

Scientists are not impressed. Actually, the word "aghast" turned up from one infectious disease specialist.

The New York Times reports that back in February the school hosted prominent anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The co-founders of the school are Leila Center, formerly CFO of the Highway Toll Administration, and her husband David, "a successful inventor, serial entrepreneur, tech visionary and philanthropist, with pioneering ventures in Web development, online marketplaces and electronic toll collection."

And of course this is Florida, so one must assume that tax dollars could be used to send students to this $30K/year school. The letter appears below.

UPDATE: Here's a Miami Herald piece that captures just how much crazy is loose at this school.

ID: Lt. Governor Forms Indoctrination Task Force

I am not making this up.

Idaho Lt. Governor Janice McGeachin has announced the formation of a Task Force to Examine Indoctrination in Idaho Education. 

You can go to an honest to God state website page where you can turn in an educator who is doing Naughty Indoctrination Things. 

“One of our primary goals with this task force is to give concerned citizens a voice regarding education in Idaho,” said Lt. Gov. McGeachin. “If you, your child, or someone close to you has information regarding problematic teachings on social justice, critical race theory, socialism, communism, or Marxism, please provide us with as much information as you are comfortable sharing.”

So if a teacher you know, or know of, or have heard about through the grapevine, or on a Facebook group, has been involved in "problematic teachings on social justice, critical race theory, socialism, communism, or Marxism," you can turn that teacher in to the state. And while the form calls for your name, McGeachin is quick to reassure the public that they can turn teachers in anonymously.

Again, I feel it necessary to point out once again that I am not making this up or exaggerating for effect (as I occasionally am wont to do). This is the official headline of the official press release from the official Lt. Governor's official office.

Idaho Lt. Governor Assembling Task Force to Examine Indoctrination in Idaho Education Based on Critical Race Theory, Socialism, Communism, and Marxism

Press Release: Idaho Lt. Governor Assembling Task Force to Examine Indoctrination in Idaho Education Based on Critical Race Theory, Socialism, Communism, and Marxism | Office of the Idaho Lt. Governor

In that release, the Lt. Governor notes “As I have traveled around the state and spoken with constituents and parents, it has become clear to me that this is one of the most significant threats facing our society today. We must find where these insidious theories and philosophies are lurking and excise them from our education system." The press release also recognizes that Idaho has company in this crackdown, with states like Florida, Arkansas, and North Carolina are also cracking down on that evil indoctrination stuff. 

No word yet on whether or not people who turn in indoctrinating teachers will be given cool brown t-shirts to wear as a reward. 

Note that it is still okay to teach about fascism. Hopefully teachers will be allowed to cover just enough communism so that they can talk about how this sort of widespread "cultural revolution" worked out for the Chinese. I'm also hoping that teachers will be free to discuss the relative merits of indoctrination versus an oppressive process of state-sanctioned surveillance and repression. 

None of the materials indicate exactly how the lurkers will be excised--will offending teachers be sent to re-education camps, scolded severely, subjected to mean posts on Facebook, de-certified, fired, or summarily executed? One teacher in Boise has even more questions, and she seems a little angry. Sadly, there also seems plenty of support for rooting out "leftist brainwashing."

McGeachin is so far right that she clashes with the state's conservative governor (who she may try to unseat) and hangs out with three percenters as well. She, of course, also signed on to some post-election court cases in support of the Big Lie.

The ability to do the turning in of teachers anonymously seems particularly troubling. Did Mrs. McTeachalot give us bad grades on that last paper? Let's turn her in to the state. Of course, that feature also means that people could clog the system by turning in Mickey Mouse, Indiana Jones, or Lt. Governor McGeachin. Repeatedly. At this Google form right here.

ICYMI: Car Shopping Edition (4/25)

 Only slightly more fun than a root canal. But I needed a new project. In the meantime, here are some good reads from the week.

State of Siege: What the Free State Project Means for New Hampshire’s Public Schools

Have You Heard welcomes Matthew Honglitz-Hetling, author of A Libertarian Walks Into A Bear, a book I just finished, so I was pretty pumped to have the HYH crew interview him. Oh, New Hampshire, my birth state, home of my families of origin--what the hell has happened to you.

How the federal government's charter school program went wrong

Jeff Bryant takes a look at some of the painful, gritty details behind the fraud and waste that cost taxpayers a billion dollars via the federal charter program.

Buying into the Social Contract is Different from Buying Education with a Public Tuition Voucher in a Privatized School Marketplace

In Ohio, there's a battle between two fundamental ideas about what a school is--a social contract, or a consumer good. Jan Resseger breaks it all down.

Indiana's New Budget Bill--More Privatization

Indiana is one of the states rushing headlong toward bigger, broader school vouchers and a dismantling of public education. The blog Live Long and Prosper has the details.

Dismantling the "Science of Reading" and the Harmful Reading Policies in Its Wake

Paul Thomas has been one of the persistent and well-researched opponents of the SOR wave, and here he presents more explanation of why the new edu-fad is misguided and misguiding.

Why Tax Billionaires Out Of Existence

Thomas Ultican provides a guide to just some of the damage done to public education by America's wealthiest oligarchs.

Too Much Focus on "Learning Loss" Will Be A Historic Mistake

Stephen Merrill at Edutopia explains that yes, learning loss is a thing and no, we shouldn't be making it the centerpiece of education policy.

Who is falling behind what?

John Warner in his substack takes a look why education isn't a race, and if it is, it's not a sprint, and maybe some folks should stop freaking out about the great pandemic pause.

Build Back Better: Avoid the Learning Loss Trap

Yong Zhao offers some insights into the pitfalls to avoid and the opportunities to embrace when dealing with policies addressing the dreaded learning loss

Learning Loss is a misnomer; study shows kids made progress during COVID-19

Look, I'm not generally interested in what big standardized tests have to say about how students are doing, but that's the way some folks like to play, and by the rules of their game, learning loss is not living up to its billing as a world-wrecker. Sarah Schwartz covers a new study for EdWeek.

What's "woke" and what's "whack" about how teachers are being prepared?

Shariff El-Mekki offers some thoughts about how teacher preparation could better prepare teachers for today's diverse classrooms.

A sign of why teachers are discouraged

Maureen Downey at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution looks at a flap in Fulton, where parents are demonstrating against the district's decision to give teachers release time for vaccination. 

How White Americans’ refusal to accept busing has kept schools segregated

Brown v. Board didn't change everything. At the Washington Post, Matthew D. Lassiter looks at the slow steady undoing of desegregation in the US.

The suicide wave that never was

Tom Bartlett at the Atlantic looks at the actual data and discovers that maybe the news about a wave of pandemic school shutdown induced suicides may not have been entirely accurate.

NY recycles state test questions

Just in case there weren't enough reasons to conclude that this year's Big Standardized Test was a waste of time, now it turns out that New York decided to just go ahead and re-use questions from previous tests. And students noticed. Christina Veiga at Chalkbeat has the story.

4 ways George Floyd's murder has changed how we talk about race

Stephen Sawchuck writes for EdWeek, with special appearance by Jose Vilson. 

Alternative Teaching Modalities in Hell

Well, that turned out to be a long list this week. Here's a nice palate cleanser from McSweeney's

VA: Is This The Path To Math Equity

Virginia is working on a new "math path," and conservative news outlets have gone off.

The initiative itself is loaded with the usual bureaucratic argle bargle, like

Through collaboration with other stakeholders across the Commonwealth, the VMPI state task force will make suggestions for institutional changes that will strengthen the alignment between K-12 and higher education mathematics while ensuring that students are better prepared for college and career success.

The goals include math jargonny ones like "Empower students to be active participants in a quantitative world" and ed-speak ones like "Encourage students to see themselves as knowers and doers of math" and also worthwhile ones like "Improve equity in mathematics learning opportunities." 

Fox and Breitbart and the Washington Examiner and a host of other stars in the right wing constellation are upset because, in its current form, the plan eliminates advanced math coursework in the early grades. 

The handwringing is calculated to stir the usual audience members. Out of the five goals and outcomes that the program lists, conservative commentators have focused exclusively on equity, which is guaranteed to agitate a certain sector of their audience. The coverage also soft-peddles the fact that the task force is looking at a timeline that still has to go through "response from stakeholders" and a "revise as needed" steps. So the current version is not necessarily the final word on this program; it's a little early for advanced hand wringing.

That said, the outcome of the current version of Virginia's math path is easy enough to see--wealthy families will send little Pat to Match Camp so that Pat can still get that all-important calculus class in 9th grade. 

There is one other thing here. Tom Loveless, in his new book about the Common Core, makes this observation about math and the Core (p. 152):

Another example of a CCSS dog whistle is organizing a high school math curriculum integrated math courses (typically named Math I, Math II and Math III) instead of the traditional Algebra, Geometry, Algebra II sequence. Integrated math courses have long been a dream of reformers.

Equity is never enhanced by removing programs from public schools, because the wealthy will find a way to buy those programs, and only those who can't afford to fork over the money will actually do without the program. You don't get fairness on ice cream eating by banning ice cream from the cafeteria menu, because the rich will always find a way to get ice cream on their own. You get equity my making the special programs available to everyone, and making sure that everyone is prepared to take advantage of them. 

A Powerful Call To Teach

Sharif El-Mekki is the founder of the Center for Black Educator Development, a group that's doing important work. He blogs at Philly's 7th Ward, and recent post is worth attention. 

I suspect that El-Mekki and I disagree on some education issues, but his view of the teaching profession is inspiring and powerful. Here's a bit from the post "Why We Need Black Men (And Women) To Answer The Call And Teach." El-Mekki is addressing the need for Black men in the classroom, which sits on my list of public education issues in urgent need of being addressed. But in the process, he also tells us about the power of the profession itself.

If more men realized the power of leading a classroom—how it is the most important lever in this fight for social justice and equity, and both challenges and offers uniquely amazing rewards—more highly qualified and gifted Black male educators would sign up to do this nation building. Many who could be Freedom Fighters are searching for how to make an impact, and most are encouraged not to lead in classrooms and schools. This must change.

It is up to all of us to pose the questions: If you want to have the largest, most sustained impact on society, why not teach? Do you believe in lifting as you climb? You view yourself as a follower of the Black radical tradition? Pro-Black? Revolutionary? Anti-Racist? Pro-community? Do you love Black children, community, and a content area?

What a question-- If you want to have the largest, most sustained impact on society, why not teach?

El-Mekki is not a dewy-eyed newbie; he started teaching in 1993 (here's how he got there). He's had more than enough time to settle down into the common head-bowed stance of someone who calls themselves "just a teacher." That clearly has not happened. 

I'm no fan of the myth of the hero teacher or the martyr teacher, but I never would have entered the profession if I hadn't believed in a teacher's power to change a small chunk of the world. It is good to remember that even in the midst of pandemics, bad policy, top-down foolishness, and just general disrespect, a classroom still boils down to a teacher and some students and the fire she can bring to that chunk of time.