Yes, Classmates Matter

Add this to your teacher files of Things You Already Knew But Now Some Researcher Provided Proof.

The paper is entitled Do Motivated Classmates Matter for Educational Success? The answer is, of course, yes. 

Every class has its own chemistry, and a major element of that chemistry is how much individual students do (or do not) care. Every single teacher can tell you the stories.

The classes you've had where everyone excels because a handful of students in the class are intense and achievement oriented. The class you've had in which students looked around the room and clearly thought, "Well, nobody else is knocking themselves out, so I guess I'm doing plenty enough."

In high school, in particular, many students are focused on one big question-- "How normal am I?" They find their answer by looking at their peers. "Peer pressure" is often portrayed as some kid making pitches like, "C'mon, smoke some donuts. Everyone is doing it. You don't want people to think you're a loser, do you?" But it's often way more subtle than that. Nobody has to explicitly make the pitch; teens are already checking to see what everyone else is doing. That's why major social currency in high school is not a col car or nice clothes or playing the right sport, but confidence-- projecting the air that you are NOT checking around you to figure out if you're okay or not. (Note: this is not the same as deliberately and even angrily rejecting what you thin k everyone else is doing.)

It's also a matter of setting an example. In high school, I learned a lot about playing trombone from John Stuck, who was not my band director, but the guy in the section a year ahead of me. He was good, and I picked up a lot just by listening and watching. By my junior year, one of my proud achievements was making "additions" to the music that got John in trouble. If John had not been in my school, or if either of us had been born a little sooner or later, I would have turned out different as a player.

I've seen versions of that play out many times. The student who was really lifted up because she happened to be in the same class as some high achievers. The top student who would have disappeared into the medium-level crowd if she had been a year older or younger. The class that always upped its game when a certain student was absent.

Sometimes a teacher can help amplify peer effects, and sometimes those effects are beyond their control. But there's no question that the peer effects matter. Now there's a piece of research to back up what teachers already know.

Is This A Case For Standardized Testing?

For some folks, love for the Big Standardized Test just never dies. If anything, fears that the pandemess would squelch the BS Test gave testophiles an extra shot to the heart. Over at the Fordham Institute, Victoria McDougald kicked off the month by taking a shot at making the 2024 case for the BS Test. McDougald is not an educator, but a policy maven, with years logged at the Gates Foundation. So how'd she do? Let's see what the current state of the argument is.

McDougald offers six reasons to stick with the Big Standardized Test.

1. Tests provide an essential source of information for students and parents about student learning, alongside grades and teacher feedback.

Well, at least we've moved forward from the days when reformsters argued that without BS Testing, parents and students would have no idea how students were doing. But this is still a silly argument. A single multiple choice test held up against the results of regular assessments and teacher observations will do one of two things-- agree with what parents have already learned, or contradict it. If it agrees, so what? If it disagrees, which will parents find more useful- a year's worth of direct observation and assessment, or that single snapshot? 

Yes, more data is more useful than less data, but with BS Testing we must always always always talk about opportunity cost. Look at the hours and days used through the year to prep, pre-test, re-test, and test--is the tidbit of data generated by the BS Test worth giving up all the other educational stuff that could have been done with all that time?

McDougald compares the test data to a doctor's appointment. 

Just as I wouldn’t skip my child’s annual physical at the doctor’s office, I wouldn’t opt out of testing that provides important data about how my child is doing and progressing academically.

Unless my child was spending the rest of the year with a team of health care professionals and the doctor's office in question was a shady one whose credentials are not actually established. 

2. Test scores help counteract grade inflation in schools.

There are some ed reform games that schools cannot win. If student grades are staying the same, that's a sign of stagnation. If they're dropping, that's a sign of failure. If grades are improving, that's just a sign of "grade inflation." 

The idea here is the BS Tests provide an objective measure, as if the hand of God is weighing student achievement on a divine scale. But tests are manufactured by human beings and, as witnessed by decades of argument about embedded bias in the SAT, subject to those humans' subjective choices. Even the beloved NAEP has questionable value as a gold standard benchmark.

3. Tests shed light on learning successes and gaps, and help teachers address students’ unique needs.

Again, testophiles have learned to temper their declarations of usefulness here, but this is still one of those selling points that reflects a lack of experience on the ground in a real classroom. Here's the nub--

Alongside other indicators of student performance, tests provide teachers with actionable data that can help inform their instruction...

No, they don't. You get your test results long after they are of any use, and those "results" come in a black box. You are not allowed to see the actual questions your students attempted to answer (because protecting the proprietary materials of test manufacturers takes priority overt usefulness for teachers), so as a teacher, you literally do not know what your students got wrong. Scores are single numbers with no particular depth or detail (student got a 5 in "reading non-fiction").  What detail you do get will come from the practice tests that your school requires in an attempt to try to figure out where test prep might help your school make better numbers. 

Even a mediocre teacher will get more utility out of a quick "check for understanding" quiz. 

McDougald also argues that the BS Test will help administrators figure out "which teachers and schools are excelling at or struggling with helping students learn." But since test results can vary wildly--particularly if they are first being soaked in value-added measure (VAM) sauce-- that's not necessarily true. And in the real worlds, that mostly just leads to more test prep ("Here--scrap that unit on a full novel and start using these reading excerpt drill books"). 

This is how Campbell's Law activates-- when you treat the measure of the thing as if it actually is the thing, you end up focusing on the measurement instead of the thing. IOW, you start pretending that "Raise student test scores" and "teach students more and better how to read and write" are synonymous. They aren't.

Four, state tests provide policymakers with consistent, comparable data about student learning statewide.

Talking about the complex systems, goals, outcomes, and effects of education is hard. Reducing everything to a number or letter grade makes it easy. Policymakers would rather do the easy thing. 

This reductive and nuance-free approach might be tolerable if it resulted in anything good. But the simplified measurements generated by the BS Test have been used mostly for destruction. "Look at those low scores! We'd better give that public school a huge boost in resources right away," said policymakers never. Instead, low scores make public schools targets for takeover, charterization, or arguments in favor of vouchers.

Low test scores usually feed the rhetoric of "Public schools are failing" and not "Policy makers are failing public schools."

And now that we've had test-centered education for a while, it's hard not to notice that certain folks only care about the data when it doesn't make their favorite policy look bad. Josh Cowen studied voucher data for a couple of decades before concluding that the data shows that vouchers result in bad student outcomes. And let's not forget the states where non-public schools don't have to generate BS Test data for policy makers to contemplate.

Fifth, they’re an important indicator of college readiness.

Yeah, not really. McDougald provides a link to a Fordham Institute article that doesn't really say anything about the tests as a measure of college readiness. Meanwhile, there's plenty of evidence that high school grades are better predictors of college success. 

Sixth, tests are also pretty good predicters of later life success.

This oft-repeated talking point is meaningless. Correlation is not causation, particularly when it's a correlation that is pretty easily explained.

Let's say that research shows that fifth graders who have a large shoe size grow up to be tall. Should a state interested in increasing average adult height mandate that all fifth graders should wear extra large shoes, or perhaps retain students in fifth grade until they fit in extra large shoes? Because that would be silly, right?

We know that students from certain socio-economic backgrounds do better on Big Standardized Tests. We know that students from that same certain socio-economic background have better life outcomes. 

What we don't know--what no research at all shows--is whether raising a student's test score will improve that student's life outcome. And unless and until someone shows that, this talking point is just an argument that everyone should wear big shoes.

So I'm going to call McDougald 0 for 6. The Big Standardized Test can generate some marginally useful data, but the big question that McDougald doesn't answer is whether or not that small slice of data is worth all the time and money and opportunity that it costs schools to generate. All these years into test-centered education and I have yet to see one reason that justifies the cost, let alone six.

ICYMI: Out Of The Office Edition (8/4)

The Institute's home office staff has been vacationing in Maine, where my grandfather the general contractor and my grandmother the state legislator built a little place decades ago which my father later rehabilitated and expanded. It's still sits slightly apart from civilization, and we spend an awful lot of time reading and flopping about in the water. We even took some time for an extra outing to Acadia National Park, something I've always meant to do, but have been dissuaded by the four-ish hour dive. It was worth finally seeing it. Somewhere near you is a nation al park of some sort, and if you haven't visited, you should.

Incidentally, while I'm working (occasionally) from mobile office platform, expect double the usual mes of typos.

Despite all that, I've still got some reading for you to do this week. Here we go. 

Democrats for Education Reform Brings Dark Money Back to Massachusetts Politics

Maurice Cunningham, dark money expert, notes that DFER is back to its usual deep pocketed shenanigans again.

While book ban attempts increase nationally, one Oregon library has kept requests low

For a change, a story about a library that is having some success navigating the culture panic book banniness waters. By Olvia Wang-- a high school journalist.

The Heritage Foundation Wants to Train Your School Board.

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider looks at Heritage Foundation (the Project 2025 folks) and their thought about how to train school boards to be crusaders for wingnut ideas.

‘Disappointed’: Black students suing Shenandoah school board for restoring Confederate names

Good for them. A report by Nathaniel Cline at Virginia Mercury.

Huntsville approves ‘Teachers’ Bill of Rights’ for student discipline

Depending on how things are going in your region you will think either "About time" or "You mean to tell me they didn't have policies that covered this already?"

Superintendent Ryan Walters faces pushback over illegal immigration directive

In Oklahoma, Ryan Walters is getting used to issuing edicts for illegal policy. At the same time, superintendents are getting used to telling him to pound sand.

NC Parents Bill of Rights produces ‘concerning’ decline in CMS student health screenings

Caught this one a little late, but it's too important to let go-- North Carolina's parental rights law is having some troubling unintended consequences.

Gov. Reynolds offers support for other states passing laws like Iowa ESA program

Having trouble getting The People to support your voucher idea? Gov. Kim Reynolds, IOWA honcho and ALEC education co-chair, will happy to give pointers on how to ram that legislation through anyway.

Elon Musk’s Experimental School In Texas Is Now Looking For Students

Sarah Emerson reports for Forbes on Musk's fancy private school. No way this could end badly.

Public School Success in Jefferson County, FL

The state handed the public schools over to a charter company. Later, the charter company bailed. Then the state turned it back into a public school district and guess what happened? Sue Kingery Woltanski has the story.

Education is a Winning Issue for Democrats

Anne Lutz Fernandez does some analysis and shows that maybe the Dems could get somewhere as defenders of public education. Will they do it? Well....

Not one but two excellent responses to that Google Gemini ad that stunk up the p[lace so bad that they pulled it:

I hate the Gemini ‘Dear Sydney’ ad more every passing moment

Alexandra Petri at the Washington Post nails the awfulness of not just the ad, but the product.

That Google Gemini Ad Is an Abomination

John Warner wants to kill it with fire, then burn the ashes.

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Why The Microschool Love?

Microschools are having a moment, again, according to Politico. 

This time it's because Florida's latest grab bag of education policies (i.e. a bag full of opportunities that lets profiteers and privatizers grab whatever they can get their hands on) includes some microschool gifts, a loosening of regulations about where and how you can set these up.

A microschool is a simple thing. All you need is a handful of students, probably a computer, and some adult. Doesn't have to be a teacher--the teacher's in the software--but just some "coach" to keep things organized and on track. It's a super-modern iteration of a on e-room schoolhouse. It's a homeschooling co-op. It's also a version of the distance learning that so many people hated during the pandemess, but you won't hear that mentioned often. The Microschools Network website defines it this way:

An intentionally small student population,
An innovative curriculum,
Place-based and experiential learning,
The use of cutting-edge technology, and
An emphasis on mastering or understanding material.

Microschools are a big business, particularly if, like industry giant Prenda, you can get an entire state to give you a contract. The Koch-topus loves micro-schools. Reformster Travis Pillow wrote a legitimately strong response to one of my microschool pieces. Betsy DeVos says nice things about them. And Prenda itself got a healthy shot of investment money from a newish Koch-Walton initiative called VELA Education Fund. Headed up by Meredith Olson (a VP at Koch's Stand Together) and Beth Seling (with background in the charter school biz), the board of VELA is rounded out by reps from Stand Together and the Walton Foundation.

In short, Florida is jumping on a bandwagon that has already drawn a crowd.

So why so much love for what is a meager holdover from the bad old days of pandemic pods?

As with every other "innovation " in education, I have no doubt that you can find some examples of people accomplishing good stuff. But I don't think that's why privatizers love microschooling.

Microschooling plugs a huge hole in the privatization marketing argument. It's the solution to the marketing problem of school choice, which is that school choice really isn't. 

Says a parent, "I gathered up my voucher and started shopping on the free and open market. But first I noticed that there aren't any actual choices in my area. So I widened my search, and then found a school that I liked but which told me they would not accept my child. Apparently they can reject my kid for religious reasons or academic reasons or whatever-they-feel-like reasons. Oh well-- what difference does it make because my voucher would barely dent the tuition anyway. You promised me and my fam ily choice, but we got none."

"Never fear," respond privatizers. "You can have a microschool! Anyone with a computer and an internet connection and an adult with some free time on their hands can have a microschool!"

Microschools let privatizers maintain the fiction that school choice works for everyone. Can't make choice work for you? Don't want to return to a public school that has had its funding gutted by choice? You can always have a microschool. 

Microschools allow choicers to push back against the argument that a free market commodified education system will not honor the promise to educate all students. Microschools buttress the argument that choice will serve everyone. 

"This stinks," bemoan parents shopping in the Big Grocery Store of Education. "I've got this voucher, but I still can't afford the meals I want or any vegetables and the people at the meat counter said they refuse to sell to me."

"No problem," reply privatizers with an expansive sweep of their well-clothed arms. "We have a whole shelf of ramen noodles for you right here. Nobody goes hungry at our store!"

Again- are there people who can fashion a delightful meal out of ramen? Probably, but that's not really the point. The point is that Microschools help complete the con, the trick of getting people to give up the whole notion of education as a public service that promises a decent meal for every student. Florida's support just underlines that con job.

OH: Religion Skip Days

You've probably heard of Senior Skip Days, the odious tradition of 12th graders taking a day off just for being seniors, just cause they felt like it (yeah, I was never a fan).

Well, Ohio will now go one better.  They have just passed HB 214, creating Religious Expression Days. (This is actually not the first time this bill has been brought up.)

Under the new law, each public school must adopt a policy that “reasonably accommodates the sincerely held religious beliefs and practices of students; to require each public school to adopt a policy regarding certain expectations related to the performance of staff member professional duties.” 

The policy must allow students to skip up to three days of school for "reasons of faith or religious or spiritual belief system or participate in organized activities conducted under the auspices of a religious denomination, church, or other religious or spiritual organization." 

And if you are imagining that this policy is ripe for abuse, the policy says that the school must approve the absences "without inquiry into the sincerity of a student’s religious or spiritual belief system." Also, students will still be eligible to participate in sports on the days they missed school for their religious thing. Teachers will provide make-up work or an alternative test if needed. The school is allowed to require a parent's signature to okay the students' religious time off. 

All right. It's marginally better than having the school rule on which religions are "legit." And I can see the value of such accommodations for all the religious holidays that aren't Christian and therefor already baked into the school calendar. But that doesn't seem to be where this is coming from. As reported at Mahoning Matters:

“Ohio’s recent political climate has raised concerns that Ohio’s K-12 public school teachers, staff and students may face negative consequences for expressing certain political perspectives or failing to conform to specific ideological viewpoints,” bill sponsor Rep. Adam Holmes, R-Nashport, told the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee during testimony. “More directly, concern is growing that employment, funding, promotion, certifications, and classroom evaluations in Ohio’s public schools are increasingly tied to demonstrated support for specific ideologies and political opinions.”

Given that Adam Holmes has previously backed Ohio's parental rights bill and a bill to exempt homeschoolers from oversight and accountability, I don't think he's worrying about how conservative christianists are imposing their world view on others.

But I also fully expect the Satanic Temple to start sponsoring Three Days Of Rational Activity time off for students. And that's even before the students themselves start getting creative. "I need a day off to go worship at my beloved First Church of Because I Feel Like It." I reckon one unexpected consequence of this law will be a huge rise in the number of Ohio students and parents who develop a habit of putting the word "religion:" in air quotes. Maybe this is supposed to increase respect for religion, but I don't think that's how it's going to play out.

The law also includes some section about not allowing schools to inquire into staff beliefs when hiring. It does not, however, extend to staff the privilege of taking three religious holidays per year. Nor does it explain how this dovetails with the rising alarm over school absenteeism.

School districts have 90 days to get that policy whipped up. Presumably they will not be able to demand an extension for religious reasons.

Godspeed, Coach Stewart

In the gallery of high school teachers who taught me about the different ways to be a teacher, there will always be a spot for Joe Stewart.

Joe Stewart's claim to fame in our small town was as a hard-driving successful football coach in a town in which football was the only real sport. I played in the marching band, and it was partway through my junior year that I ever saw the football team lose. Pennsylvania's high school sports system had not yet figured out just how much money they could grab with post-season play, but it was clear that Coach Stewart's team would be one to beat on the larger level.

There is that persistent stereotype of the high school coach who only became a teacher so he could coach and whose classroom work showed little effort, who barely shows up during the day to lead his students on a desultory journey to easy As. 

That was not Joe Stewart.

He taught chemistry, and in the classroom his students never dared to be inattentive, unprepared, or off the mark. In retrospect, I'm not sure exactly why. His temper was a thing of legend--but only on the field, where his explosions were epic. I can still remember a football game at which we were suddenly surprised by a cloud of arms and legs flying, like a Warner Brothers cartoon battle, down the sidelines. Coach Stewart was in there somewhere.

But that was not the classroom. He almost never raised his voice, was never cruel or unkind, and yet... He absolutely demanded your full attention, all the time. Wisecracking students used to turning to deliver a split-second bon mot to fellow students found that they couldn't find even that little pause in the class to do their thing (at least, that's what I heard.) In Joe Stewart's c las, you paid completely attention from bell to bell, and you had better be prepared enough to deal with any questions lobbed your way. As one friend said to me as we marveled over the class, "You just have to pay attention so hard. It's exhausting." Years later I ran into Coach Stewart and was shocked to discover that he was not a particularly tall man at all; in his classroom, he always seemed like a giant.

Coach Stewart and his family moved into my neighborhood, two houses up the street. His oldest son was one of my best friends in those years, and we accompanied each other through a variety of nerdtastic adventures. None of his three boys were the kind of hard core athletic types that some might have imagined for Coach Stewart's kids. The two younger sons were cut from a somewhat different cloth, but they were smart and decent and the home was filled with warmth and love. Joe's wife was an extraordinary woman in her own right. And at the time I liked to think that as he watched his own boys grow up, Joe gained some new insight into why his teenaged students were They Way They Were.

There were stories about underprepared and slacking students being called up to his desk, during class, and breaking into tears before he said a word. But here's what I witnessed in my own class. Debbie, who would be our valedictorian and go on to double major in biochemical engineering space economics or some other improbably challenging field, set out one lab period to boil water over a Bunsen burner. But she did it in a styrofoam cup, and as the styrofoam slowly melted around the boiling water, Debbie started making noises of alarm, as Coach Stewart slowly worked his way around the room. This, we expected, would be an epic evisceration of a student. Instead he looked, chuckled a bit, and moved on.

I never imagined that I could run a classroom with that type of intensity, nor was it a style I had any desire to emulate. But there was something in Joe Stewart's work that stuck with me, typified by an illustration he delivered one day. 

I don't remember if it was prompted by a student complaint about the expectations in the class, or just something he decided to talk about. But he stood in front of us and explained about why his expectations were so high. "I know that if I ask for this--" and here he held up his hand to indicate a line somewhere above his head "--that I will get this." And here he held the hand around shoulder level. "And that's what I want to get. But if I ask for this" (hand still at the shoulder) "then I will get this" and here his hand dropped to his waist. It was as clear an explanation of expectations as I would ever get from a teacher training course, and perhaps more realistic. 

Every once in a while that old saw crops up about whether it's better for a teacher to be feared or loved, and I reckon that some FHS grads would say that Joe Stewart was feared, but I don't think that's right. I think his expectations were high, his demands were rigorous, and he treated students as if they were grownups who had no excuses, least of all the excuse of youth, for not producing the work he demanded of them. What you feared was not Joe Stewart, but the loss of his respect. 

He was a good man with a great coaching career and a great teaching career. He passed away last week at the age of 92. His memory, I am quite sure, is a blessing to many.

ICYMI: Surprise, Surprise Edition (7/28)

Hard to believe that just a week ago, we still thought the Joe Biden was running for another term. Sometimes life just comes at you quickly. And some times the actual news will fit in a couple of sentences, but because we want to wrestle with it more, we listen to a whole lot of blather about the actual news. Enough of that. Let's get on with it. Here are some things to read.

A Florida school district banned ‘Ban This Book.’ Author says that’s ‘erasure of the highest order’ and wants it reinstated

CNN continues coverage of this very meta story, with Moms for Liberty snarling in the wings.

Florida 7-year-old compelled to testify in book ban lawsuit

Escambia school district has decided that a seven year old is too young to read a book about a penguin with two dads, but old enough to be forced to testify for 90 minutes.

Deer Creek, Yukon latest to refuse Ryan Walters' order to add Bible to curriculum

Walters decrees "Thou shalt teach the Bible." A growing list of school districts says, "No."

We can teach Black kids to read and love who they are. Here’s how.

Sharif El-Mekki writes about an initiative for the Philadelphia Inquirer. 

It’s Time to End Federal Funding for Reckless For-Profit Charter Schools

Carol Burris profiles a new bill that would straighten out some of the charter school funding shenanigans on the federal level.

COVID-19 devastated teacher morale − and it hasn’t recovered

Lesley Lavery and Steve Freiss look back at the punch in the face that was covid and our reaction to it. Nothing here you don't know, but I bet you'd put it out of your mind as much as you could.

High Schoolers in rural, western Illinois town learn the history of why their town is white.

Emily Hays for IPM news with a story about teaching hard things and why making kids uncomfortable might be a good thing. 

Critical Issues and Minutiae of Public Education

Nancy Flanagan on the tiny parts of education and when parents get obsessed with them.

How the Culture Wars Are Undermining Public Education

Jacobin runs an interview with Jennifer Berkshire, with plenty of pithy insights about the culture panic being directed at public education.

What's Ryan Walters really want, because all he's doing now is getting ignored?

A very cool thing is happening in Oklahoma. A whole lot of school districts are telling Ryan Walters to take his mandatory Bible teaching and stick it where hymns are not heard. Clay Horning writes about it for Oklahoma Columnist.

'Parental choice': Nonprofit creates Bible opt-out form for parents, Ryan Walters reacts

On top of that, there's now an opt-out form for parents who want to exercise those parental rights that Walters is so concerned about.

Florida’s School Grade Calculations: The Only Constant Is Change

Sue Kingery Woltanski reminds us that Florida's crappy school evaluation system moves the goalposts regularly.

AI is not what you think unless you think it is hot garbage

A set of presentation slides, both hilarious and insightful and also slightly rage-making.

Over at Bucks County Beacon, I point out that while folks are justifiably worked up over Project 2025, we should also pay attention to Agenda 47, in which Trump's plans for the future come out of his own mouth.

Also, for The Progressive, my concerns about Josh Shapiro as VP material.

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