It's in our country's dna, this conflicted view about wealth. The Puritans believed that money and wealth and stuff were unimportant, that anything that glorified the person and not God was bad. But the Puritans also believed that God would watch over His chosen individuals, and so wealth and stuff were a sign that you were one of God's elect.
We also have a history of misplaced disdain for money, like the stereotypical Boomer hippies who could turn their nose up at money because they would never really have to do without it. It is easy to make fun of people who care too much about money when you're not worrying about how you'll get money to feed your kids this week.
But there is a difference between a respect for money and the worship of it. There is even, I'd argue, a difference between greed and the worship of money.
Greed is about the desire to Buy Stuff, to Have More Stuff, to use money for its power of acquisition. But the worship of money is something more. The worship of money imbues money with power and value that it simply does not have.
The worship of money says that money is how we keep score. The worship of money says that acquiring and having money are the only way to Be Better than other humans. The worship of money says that money is the only worthy system for sorting humans into the great, the good, the terrible.
The worship of money attributes to wealth a sort of God-like intelligence, the ability to seek out those who deserve it and run to them. "I would not be a wealthy man," says the worshipper of money, "if I did not deserve to be a wealthy man." What may look like luck, says the money worshipper, is really the Better People getting what they deserve.
The worship of money says that we judge people based on their wealth. There is literally no difference between the campaign blasts of Donald Trump and the ravings of a confused squeegee guy in any major city, but because Donald Trump Has Money, he simply must be wise. He must be a Better. Trump is the ultimate exemplar of this philosophy, because there is literally no reason to listen to him at all-- except that he has a bunch of money.
It is in large part the worship of money which has assaulted our public education system.
It's a two-pronged assault. First, reformsters have built themselves a voice (in some cases, the voice) in the education discussion by simply flashing a bank balance as their credentials. "What do you mean, have I ever taught? Do you see how much money I have??" Their money proves they're Better, and their Betterness entitles them to run the show.
Second, reformsters have been redefining the purpose of education-- well, two purposes. On the top tier, the purpose is to help position young people to get money. On the bottom tier, the purpose is to help those who will never deserve to be wealthy, to make them better able to get enough money to get by while more effectively serving their Betters.
The money-centered education reformster system can be hard to parse because the dots are never connected-- the students will score well on the Big Standardized Test, which will lead to college success, which means leaving college to get into a job that provides stacks of money. How do each of these steps lead to the next? Will getting a high score on a BS Test really lead to a great job? Well-- no. But each of these steps is a signifier that the student is Deserving. And money-worshippers believe they're still democratic because they believe in a system where the deserving few can rise up above the undeserving rabble (who should get what they deserve-- which is nothing. if the rabble deserved to have money, they would have it).
Money worshippers know that traditional public education cannot be good. The self-evident proof? Nobody gets rich from it. The people who work in it aren't rich. The people who run it aren't rich. Why should we ignore teachers? How do we know they don't matter? Because they're not rich. How do we really know that charter outfits like Success Academy are successful schools? Because they are making people rich.
When the wealthy reformsters play the "Don't throw money at schools because it doesn't matter," what they mean is that it's a crime against nature to make money flow to people who don't deserve it. You are feeding a system that doesn't serve deserving people-- neither the students nor the teachers.
Look. Money is a great tool and a great way to make civilization function smoothly. Money is nice to have; during my years as a single father with two kids, and even now, as I slowly pay off those college bills, I think money is just fine and I'm not afraid to want some. Money can provide freedom, choices, opportunities, great experiences. I do not hate money.
But when we fetishize it, center on it, worship it-- that's just messed up. When people think that the worst possible thing a government can do is take their rightfully possessed money away, something is messed up. When people think it's worse to make money flow toward folks who don't deserve it than to let those folks live and die in squalor and poverty while their children stall in crumbing underfunded schools-- that's deeply unjust and morally bankrupt. Money cannot be our only measure of success, of value, of worth. Money makes a terrible yardstick for a life well lived.
I don't claim to have easy answers. You may be shocked to read that I do not support having the government take money from some citizens to "redistribute" to other citizens; that fails for so many reasons, not the least of which we're living through right now-- a "redistribution" that ends up cycling the money right back to the rich. But our economy is messed up, and it is taking many of our most important institutions with it, including schools, and at the root of that dysfunction, at the bottom of that banal blob of festering evil, is the worship of money. When we worship money more than we love God or man, we end up tearing down the world we live in and our very hope for light and life and growth and true human success. We have to do better.
Monday, September 21, 2015
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Hillary's Education Plan
So, the Clinton campaign is starting to feel a little stress. This was in an e-mail from Robby Mook, the campaign manager:
Friend --
The Republican candidates for president are all over the place, but they do agree on one thing: They know that Hillary would be the strongest Democratic candidate, so they’ll say, do, and spend whatever it takes to bring down this campaign.
Karl Rove’s super PAC just released a vicious attack ad that spreads lies about Hillary’s emails, and they’re putting it out in New Hampshire. They know the polls are tight there, and that this is their best play to try to make sure they don’t have to face Hillary in the general election.
Translation: "Bernie Sanders is the candidate of the GOP." And this evening, the twitterverse is afraid that the NEA is going to make an early endorsement for Clinton. So here's the question again (that I ask as an NEA member)-- is Clinton a candidate that those of us who support public education can live with?
There are plenty of things to discuss, but let's focus, for a second, on Hillary believes that every child, no matter his or her race, income, or ZIP code, should be guaranteed a high-quality education.
That could mean any damn thing. It could mean that she supports building charter schools on every corner and shipping every poor child out of her own neighborhood to attend them. And it doesn't help that the next sentence throws in Clinton's "decades" of work to for schools, because Clinton's decades of work aren't all that encouraging to a public school supporter. We could start with the Bush event where Clinton praised Bush as someone “who really focused on education during his time as governor in Florida, and who has continued that work with passion and dedication in the years since.”
And, as a United States Senator, she served on the Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee as a key member shaping the No Child Left Behind Act with the hopes that it would bring needed resources and real accountability to improve educational opportunities for our most disadvantaged students. But the promise of No Child Left Behind was not fulfilled.
Love the passive voice, but I'd rather here her drill down a little bit. Is she willing to say that NCLB was fundamentally flaw and that she screwed up when she voted for a bill that demanded the statistically impossible goal of making all students get above-average scores on a Big Standardized Test, or does she have some explanation for why NCLB somehow wandered off the rails? An answer to either would tell us something about what she really thinks about public education.
As President, she will "fight for" policies that pursue some goals, including
*Make high quality education a priority for every child in America. This has to be one of the vaguer batch of weasel words ever strung together, but she follows them with some specifics that indicate she either doesn't understand or doesn't want to admit to what's going on now.
Hillary believes that testing provides communities with full information about how our low-income students, students of color, and students with disabilities are doing in comparison to other groups so that we can continue to improve our educational system for all students.
Nope. BS Testing does not provide any meaningful information, and certainly no information that cannot be better collected from somewhere else. And "continue to improve" the system? Exactly what improvements does she imagine have happened in the last fifteen years? I want to hear her offer some specifics.
And then Clinton tries to ameliorate that by saying, hey parents and teachers who feel the testing thing is out of control, she totally feels your pain. And that's why she wants to get teachers and parents involved in a conversation about this stuff. So, yes. We can have a conversation about pursuing policies that push for the possibility-- good lord, but this is right up there with "I'll think about thinking about forming a committee to issue a recommendation that we will discuss considering."
* Support educators. Well, no. Here's how she follows that up:
Hillary knows that the evidence on what most improves student learning all points to good teachers. Yet, we do not do enough to ensure that teachers receive the training, mentorship and support they need to succeed and thrive in the classroom. Hillary will invest in supporting our teachers, recruiting the best and brightest into the profession, and providing more teachers training with real-world hands-on learning experiences.
That is not "support for educators." That is a politely worded version of the Bad Teacher narrative. Teachers are the most important factor in student learning, so we must have a bunch of bad teachers out there and we have to figure out how to best replace them with Hero Teachers. This is the standard issue reformster Democrat Blame the Teachers rhetoric with a pretty face
* Improve student outcomes.
I don't want to hear anything about this that doesn't start with a recognition that "student outcomes" and "student achievement" have to mean more than a set of scores on a narrow BS Test. Clinton does not offer that understanding.
Clinton finishes by noting that as Arkansas first lady, she worked for higher standards, higher teacher pay, and lower class sizes.
My Two Questions
So there is nothing in Clinton's campaign site's education tab to indicate that she is not tied to the same interests as Jeb Bush, Barrack Obama or George Bush. There is no reason to believe that the priorities championed by her staff members when they were with the Center for American Progress-- one size fits all standards, deprofessionalizing teaching, and privatization through charters-- there's no reason to believe that she is not cut from that same cloth.
As I've said repeatedly, I give no attention to the crap thrown at Clinton, from Benghazi baloney to hyperventilating over her email. But as a teacher, I see nothing in her education policy that the GOP candidates would not happily embrace. All that separates her from the clown car full of GOP candidates is that some of them would try to do away with the unions, while she would prefer to co-opt the unions.
If I'm going to take Clinton seriously as a candidate, I need to hear answers to two questions:
1) What serious mistakes have been made in US public education policy over the past 8-15 years?
2) What would you do differently from your predecessors when it comes to education?
I don't insist that the answers from Clinton (or any other candidate) perfectly match my own beliefs. But answers to those questions would tell us a lot about just how well the candidate actually understands about what's really going on in public education, and what sorts of commitment to public education they will make going forward. That's important, because Clinton's plan right now just looks like more of the same reformy baloney, and I will not, I can not, vote for that.
Friend --
The Republican candidates for president are all over the place, but they do agree on one thing: They know that Hillary would be the strongest Democratic candidate, so they’ll say, do, and spend whatever it takes to bring down this campaign.
Karl Rove’s super PAC just released a vicious attack ad that spreads lies about Hillary’s emails, and they’re putting it out in New Hampshire. They know the polls are tight there, and that this is their best play to try to make sure they don’t have to face Hillary in the general election.
Translation: "Bernie Sanders is the candidate of the GOP." And this evening, the twitterverse is afraid that the NEA is going to make an early endorsement for Clinton. So here's the question again (that I ask as an NEA member)-- is Clinton a candidate that those of us who support public education can live with?
There are plenty of things to discuss, but let's focus, for a second, on Hillary believes that every child, no matter his or her race, income, or ZIP code, should be guaranteed a high-quality education.
That could mean any damn thing. It could mean that she supports building charter schools on every corner and shipping every poor child out of her own neighborhood to attend them. And it doesn't help that the next sentence throws in Clinton's "decades" of work to for schools, because Clinton's decades of work aren't all that encouraging to a public school supporter. We could start with the Bush event where Clinton praised Bush as someone “who really focused on education during his time as governor in Florida, and who has continued that work with passion and dedication in the years since.”
And, as a United States Senator, she served on the Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee as a key member shaping the No Child Left Behind Act with the hopes that it would bring needed resources and real accountability to improve educational opportunities for our most disadvantaged students. But the promise of No Child Left Behind was not fulfilled.
Love the passive voice, but I'd rather here her drill down a little bit. Is she willing to say that NCLB was fundamentally flaw and that she screwed up when she voted for a bill that demanded the statistically impossible goal of making all students get above-average scores on a Big Standardized Test, or does she have some explanation for why NCLB somehow wandered off the rails? An answer to either would tell us something about what she really thinks about public education.
As President, she will "fight for" policies that pursue some goals, including
*Make high quality education a priority for every child in America. This has to be one of the vaguer batch of weasel words ever strung together, but she follows them with some specifics that indicate she either doesn't understand or doesn't want to admit to what's going on now.
Hillary believes that testing provides communities with full information about how our low-income students, students of color, and students with disabilities are doing in comparison to other groups so that we can continue to improve our educational system for all students.
Nope. BS Testing does not provide any meaningful information, and certainly no information that cannot be better collected from somewhere else. And "continue to improve" the system? Exactly what improvements does she imagine have happened in the last fifteen years? I want to hear her offer some specifics.
And then Clinton tries to ameliorate that by saying, hey parents and teachers who feel the testing thing is out of control, she totally feels your pain. And that's why she wants to get teachers and parents involved in a conversation about this stuff. So, yes. We can have a conversation about pursuing policies that push for the possibility-- good lord, but this is right up there with "I'll think about thinking about forming a committee to issue a recommendation that we will discuss considering."
* Support educators. Well, no. Here's how she follows that up:
Hillary knows that the evidence on what most improves student learning all points to good teachers. Yet, we do not do enough to ensure that teachers receive the training, mentorship and support they need to succeed and thrive in the classroom. Hillary will invest in supporting our teachers, recruiting the best and brightest into the profession, and providing more teachers training with real-world hands-on learning experiences.
That is not "support for educators." That is a politely worded version of the Bad Teacher narrative. Teachers are the most important factor in student learning, so we must have a bunch of bad teachers out there and we have to figure out how to best replace them with Hero Teachers. This is the standard issue reformster Democrat Blame the Teachers rhetoric with a pretty face
* Improve student outcomes.
I don't want to hear anything about this that doesn't start with a recognition that "student outcomes" and "student achievement" have to mean more than a set of scores on a narrow BS Test. Clinton does not offer that understanding.
Clinton finishes by noting that as Arkansas first lady, she worked for higher standards, higher teacher pay, and lower class sizes.
My Two Questions
So there is nothing in Clinton's campaign site's education tab to indicate that she is not tied to the same interests as Jeb Bush, Barrack Obama or George Bush. There is no reason to believe that the priorities championed by her staff members when they were with the Center for American Progress-- one size fits all standards, deprofessionalizing teaching, and privatization through charters-- there's no reason to believe that she is not cut from that same cloth.
As I've said repeatedly, I give no attention to the crap thrown at Clinton, from Benghazi baloney to hyperventilating over her email. But as a teacher, I see nothing in her education policy that the GOP candidates would not happily embrace. All that separates her from the clown car full of GOP candidates is that some of them would try to do away with the unions, while she would prefer to co-opt the unions.
If I'm going to take Clinton seriously as a candidate, I need to hear answers to two questions:
1) What serious mistakes have been made in US public education policy over the past 8-15 years?
2) What would you do differently from your predecessors when it comes to education?
I don't insist that the answers from Clinton (or any other candidate) perfectly match my own beliefs. But answers to those questions would tell us a lot about just how well the candidate actually understands about what's really going on in public education, and what sorts of commitment to public education they will make going forward. That's important, because Clinton's plan right now just looks like more of the same reformy baloney, and I will not, I can not, vote for that.
Duncan Cheers Failing Scores
Arne Duncan's Big Bus Tour was practically in my neighborhood as the Duncanator stopped at Carnegie Mellon to make some general mouth noises and to continue what is apparently a theme of the trip, which is, "Hooray for failing test scores on the Common Core Big Standardized Tests!"
Pennsylvania is a good place to make that pitch, because our test scores just drove off a cliff. If the results are to be believed, 70% of Pennsylvania's eighth graders are mathematical boneheads!
Speaking of boneheads, here are some of the things that Duncan doesn't understand.
“Obviously, students aren’t going to be less smart than they were six months ago or a year ago,” Mr. Duncan said. “In far too many states, including Pennsylvania, politicians dummied down standards to make themselves look good.”
Well, first of all, nobody dummied down standards. They messed with the cut scores for the BS Tests, but damn, Arne-- if you can't keep straight the difference between the standards and the tests, you can't get upset when other people don't pretend they're different, either.
But sure. The fiddling with test scores under No Child Left Behind wasn't about states trying desperately to avoid punitive measures made inevitable by a politically set stupid goal. "Get 100% of your students above average by 2014, or we will cut your federal financial support off at the knees," said the feds. This guaranteed that by 2014 there would be only two types of school districts in the country-- districts that were failing, and districts that were lying.
There are so many lessons to learn from this, and Duncan didn't learn any of them. Setting cut scores by political rather than educational means is a fool's game-- but under Duncan, that's still how the game is played. Holding schools to stupid goals set by clueless politicians is a bad idea-- but we keep doing that, too.
Duncan's unwillingness to address just WHY states messed with test cut scores and HOW the federal test-and-punish regime twists the whole system into a educational malpractice pretzel-- well, you can't fix what you don't acknowledge.
The secretary said children and parents “were lied to and told they were on the track to be successful” when they weren’t. He called that “one of the most insidious things that happened in education.”
This repeated pile of bovine fecal matter is insulting on several levels. First, using the word "lie" alleges motives and ill will on the part of teachers everywhere. Yessirree, Arne-- we all went into education because our fondest dream was to lie to students, to trick the little sonsabitches. We sit in teacher lounges cackling, "Hee hee hee-- today I convinced little Arvell McGoober that he's ready for college and he's really not. When I think of him failing at Wassamatta U I just about pee myself with chortles of glee." Yes, Arne, that's just what we're up to in our happy career as lying liars who lie.
Second, Arne, you have no idea who is on track or not. You have some figures about college remedial courses which may prove any number of things:
* colleges are so desperate to get enrollment up that they take students they know should be at different colleges, or none
* the college placement tests are crap
* colleges like the extra income from remedial courses
And all of that wild ass guessing rests on the term "college ready," a term that nobody knows the meaning of.
Of course, in Pittsburgh Arne weaseled through with the phrase "be successful." Which is spectacular, because apparently Arne knows exactly what success would be for all students, and how we can predict whether a student is on that track or not. Imagine how ridiculous it would be if the feds declared that we must know that each student is on track to be happy. How is "be successful" any better?
Duncan also discussed the "press pause" notion now out there, the idea that maybe we should take a year to get adjusted to the new tests. Because once we get used to the tests, we can better prepare for them. So the secret of the new tests is new test prep. Steven Singer has a great piece about that-- read it.
Except that test prep shouldn't matter! In fact, we were promised unpreppable tests. And we were promised that if we aligned to the standards then great test scores would naturally follow. And of course once the test scores naturally followed, that will signal that college freshmen would be super-successful because they were all so college ready. So why hasn't any of that happened? At all.
Could it be that the BS Tests do a lousy job of measuring a narrow slice of actual student achievement, and that the cut scores aren't set in any way that would reflect meaningful educational information, and that none of this has anything to do with being ready for college or success, and that the whole process is so infected with politics (which is in turn infected with the moneyed interests of book publishers, test manufacturers, privatizers, and profiteers) that it has nothing to do with education at all.
Duncan thinks failing scores mean something because they support a conclusion he has already reached-- that education is being ruined by terrible lying teachers, and that only his friends (who stand to make a mint from all this upheaval) can save the day. And Duncan isn't smart enough to know the difference between a mountain of education excellence and a giant pile of bullshit.
Pennsylvania is a good place to make that pitch, because our test scores just drove off a cliff. If the results are to be believed, 70% of Pennsylvania's eighth graders are mathematical boneheads!
Speaking of boneheads, here are some of the things that Duncan doesn't understand.
“Obviously, students aren’t going to be less smart than they were six months ago or a year ago,” Mr. Duncan said. “In far too many states, including Pennsylvania, politicians dummied down standards to make themselves look good.”
Well, first of all, nobody dummied down standards. They messed with the cut scores for the BS Tests, but damn, Arne-- if you can't keep straight the difference between the standards and the tests, you can't get upset when other people don't pretend they're different, either.
But sure. The fiddling with test scores under No Child Left Behind wasn't about states trying desperately to avoid punitive measures made inevitable by a politically set stupid goal. "Get 100% of your students above average by 2014, or we will cut your federal financial support off at the knees," said the feds. This guaranteed that by 2014 there would be only two types of school districts in the country-- districts that were failing, and districts that were lying.
There are so many lessons to learn from this, and Duncan didn't learn any of them. Setting cut scores by political rather than educational means is a fool's game-- but under Duncan, that's still how the game is played. Holding schools to stupid goals set by clueless politicians is a bad idea-- but we keep doing that, too.
Duncan's unwillingness to address just WHY states messed with test cut scores and HOW the federal test-and-punish regime twists the whole system into a educational malpractice pretzel-- well, you can't fix what you don't acknowledge.
The secretary said children and parents “were lied to and told they were on the track to be successful” when they weren’t. He called that “one of the most insidious things that happened in education.”
This repeated pile of bovine fecal matter is insulting on several levels. First, using the word "lie" alleges motives and ill will on the part of teachers everywhere. Yessirree, Arne-- we all went into education because our fondest dream was to lie to students, to trick the little sonsabitches. We sit in teacher lounges cackling, "Hee hee hee-- today I convinced little Arvell McGoober that he's ready for college and he's really not. When I think of him failing at Wassamatta U I just about pee myself with chortles of glee." Yes, Arne, that's just what we're up to in our happy career as lying liars who lie.
Second, Arne, you have no idea who is on track or not. You have some figures about college remedial courses which may prove any number of things:
* colleges are so desperate to get enrollment up that they take students they know should be at different colleges, or none
* the college placement tests are crap
* colleges like the extra income from remedial courses
And all of that wild ass guessing rests on the term "college ready," a term that nobody knows the meaning of.
Of course, in Pittsburgh Arne weaseled through with the phrase "be successful." Which is spectacular, because apparently Arne knows exactly what success would be for all students, and how we can predict whether a student is on that track or not. Imagine how ridiculous it would be if the feds declared that we must know that each student is on track to be happy. How is "be successful" any better?
Duncan also discussed the "press pause" notion now out there, the idea that maybe we should take a year to get adjusted to the new tests. Because once we get used to the tests, we can better prepare for them. So the secret of the new tests is new test prep. Steven Singer has a great piece about that-- read it.
Except that test prep shouldn't matter! In fact, we were promised unpreppable tests. And we were promised that if we aligned to the standards then great test scores would naturally follow. And of course once the test scores naturally followed, that will signal that college freshmen would be super-successful because they were all so college ready. So why hasn't any of that happened? At all.
Could it be that the BS Tests do a lousy job of measuring a narrow slice of actual student achievement, and that the cut scores aren't set in any way that would reflect meaningful educational information, and that none of this has anything to do with being ready for college or success, and that the whole process is so infected with politics (which is in turn infected with the moneyed interests of book publishers, test manufacturers, privatizers, and profiteers) that it has nothing to do with education at all.
Duncan thinks failing scores mean something because they support a conclusion he has already reached-- that education is being ruined by terrible lying teachers, and that only his friends (who stand to make a mint from all this upheaval) can save the day. And Duncan isn't smart enough to know the difference between a mountain of education excellence and a giant pile of bullshit.
Non-Transformative Technology
I'm not sure when you'll get to see this. My internet service provider is having one of its regular hissy fits, and my access to the internet cuts out about every five minutes or so, staying out from anywhere from a couple of minutes to as along as fifteen. So I get to access the internet in little brief windows, snatches of connectivity.
My internet provider (rhymes with "shmerizon") occasionally offers their version of help (turns out that if you bitch about them on twitter, you will usually get a response-- if, of course, you can get on twitter). Help can involve on-line chats and on-line twitter conversations, which-- surprise-- are not very helpful when the problem is low-function internet connection. We also try the occasional phone conversation, which is when they give me a call and all I have to do is be at home during the five-hour windows in which they might call (though that window seems to be a give-or-take-ten-hours thing).
I don't know how things are in your part of the world, but here in my town, my experience is not abnormal. We have a choice of basically two providers (choice #2 rhymes with "shmime-flarner") and nobody is raving happily about either of them.
I get that this is a classic First World Problem, that I live in an age of technological miracles and here I am bitching that the miracles don't happen fast enough or just the way I want them.
But here's my point-- my provider is also the provider for my school district. If I were trying to use internet resources to teach a class, I'd be SOL.
I am one of the more tech-forward teachers in my building, but I am also tech-skeptical, because tech in general and ed tech in particular consistently makes promises it can't keep. "The system will handle that many students logged on at once with no problems" belongs in the Overly Optimistic Hall of Fame right next to "The contractors promise we'll be able to move into the house in two weeks."
Every time I plan to use technology in my classroom, even for something as simple as a fifteen slide student presentation, I know I will have to waste time. It may just take ten or fifteen minutes to get properly linked up to the server, but I have a forty minute period-- ten or fifteen minutes is not an insignificant chunk of time.
My school is a one-to-one school and has been for several years. My digital natives are unimpressed, and often hugely frustrated by what their netbooks won't do or what their connections won't allow them access to. And when my digital natives have on-line materials that they are assigned to read, many of them will print that material out. On paper.
And sometimes the tech makes promises that aren't worth keeping. We still have the same old problem-- instead of tech and software that will help us do the work, we get tech and software that come with the pitch, "This will be very useful if you just change what you do to match the tech." Let us tell you and your students what you need to do to keep the edtech happy. Relax and be assimilated.
This piece over a EdSurge makes the same point, though author George Siemens seems to think he's spotting a new trend instead of an old problem. But he's correct that "personalized learning" has made it worse.
Both Udacity and Knewton require the human, the learner, to become a technology, to become a component within their well-architected software system. Sit and click. Sit and click. So much of learning involves decision making, developing meta-cognitive skills, exploring, finding passion, taking peripheral paths. Automation treats the person as an object to which things are done. There is no reason to think, no reason to go through the valuable confusion process of learning, no need to be a human. Simply consume. Simply consume. Click and be knowledgeable.
On its bad days, this has always been the message of education technology-- change your mission, your purpose and your methods to fit in with us, broaden your definition of "dependable" to include "craps out unexpectedly at any time," and we'll be glad to help. Edtech has been the guy who picks up a hitchiker who's trying to get to Cleveland and says, "Look, if you can adjust to riding on the hood of this car, I can get you to Chicago." And then fifty miles later, he runs out of gas.
I've found myself in more than a few conversations bemoaning the ways in which technology has failed to transform schools, and the discussion often lapses into deep consideration of the thinky underpinnings of education, technology, the universe, and everything. I'm pretty sure it's not that deep. Just help us fulfill our mission with tools that work well and reliably, and the tech transformation will keep moving. In the meantime, I'll watch for one of my internet access windows to post this.
My internet provider (rhymes with "shmerizon") occasionally offers their version of help (turns out that if you bitch about them on twitter, you will usually get a response-- if, of course, you can get on twitter). Help can involve on-line chats and on-line twitter conversations, which-- surprise-- are not very helpful when the problem is low-function internet connection. We also try the occasional phone conversation, which is when they give me a call and all I have to do is be at home during the five-hour windows in which they might call (though that window seems to be a give-or-take-ten-hours thing).
I don't know how things are in your part of the world, but here in my town, my experience is not abnormal. We have a choice of basically two providers (choice #2 rhymes with "shmime-flarner") and nobody is raving happily about either of them.
I get that this is a classic First World Problem, that I live in an age of technological miracles and here I am bitching that the miracles don't happen fast enough or just the way I want them.
But here's my point-- my provider is also the provider for my school district. If I were trying to use internet resources to teach a class, I'd be SOL.
I am one of the more tech-forward teachers in my building, but I am also tech-skeptical, because tech in general and ed tech in particular consistently makes promises it can't keep. "The system will handle that many students logged on at once with no problems" belongs in the Overly Optimistic Hall of Fame right next to "The contractors promise we'll be able to move into the house in two weeks."
Every time I plan to use technology in my classroom, even for something as simple as a fifteen slide student presentation, I know I will have to waste time. It may just take ten or fifteen minutes to get properly linked up to the server, but I have a forty minute period-- ten or fifteen minutes is not an insignificant chunk of time.
My school is a one-to-one school and has been for several years. My digital natives are unimpressed, and often hugely frustrated by what their netbooks won't do or what their connections won't allow them access to. And when my digital natives have on-line materials that they are assigned to read, many of them will print that material out. On paper.
And sometimes the tech makes promises that aren't worth keeping. We still have the same old problem-- instead of tech and software that will help us do the work, we get tech and software that come with the pitch, "This will be very useful if you just change what you do to match the tech." Let us tell you and your students what you need to do to keep the edtech happy. Relax and be assimilated.
This piece over a EdSurge makes the same point, though author George Siemens seems to think he's spotting a new trend instead of an old problem. But he's correct that "personalized learning" has made it worse.
Both Udacity and Knewton require the human, the learner, to become a technology, to become a component within their well-architected software system. Sit and click. Sit and click. So much of learning involves decision making, developing meta-cognitive skills, exploring, finding passion, taking peripheral paths. Automation treats the person as an object to which things are done. There is no reason to think, no reason to go through the valuable confusion process of learning, no need to be a human. Simply consume. Simply consume. Click and be knowledgeable.
On its bad days, this has always been the message of education technology-- change your mission, your purpose and your methods to fit in with us, broaden your definition of "dependable" to include "craps out unexpectedly at any time," and we'll be glad to help. Edtech has been the guy who picks up a hitchiker who's trying to get to Cleveland and says, "Look, if you can adjust to riding on the hood of this car, I can get you to Chicago." And then fifty miles later, he runs out of gas.
I've found myself in more than a few conversations bemoaning the ways in which technology has failed to transform schools, and the discussion often lapses into deep consideration of the thinky underpinnings of education, technology, the universe, and everything. I'm pretty sure it's not that deep. Just help us fulfill our mission with tools that work well and reliably, and the tech transformation will keep moving. In the meantime, I'll watch for one of my internet access windows to post this.
ICYMI: Selected Goodies for the Week
Here's some recommended reading to while away your Sunday.
What Happened to New Orleans Black Teachers?
A long-form look at this issue-- again. Prepare yourself to read some uncritical repetition of the same old bogus stats. Also prepare yourself to find a TFA official on the right side of a conversation. Part of EdWeek's look at New Orleans 10 year anniversary, which is often too considerate of reformsters' tender feelings, but still includes some thorough research and interviewing. It's all worth a look-- just keep your critical eye open.
What the Privileged Poor Can Teach Us
Poor kids who get moved into schools that primarily serve well-to-do students may show us some interesting things about the effects of poverty.
The Common Core's Scalia-esque Originalism
Blogger Sarah Blaine brings a unique perspective as a teacher, lawyer and parent. Here she looks at two major flaws in the ELA standards.
3 Huge Problems with the Charter School Movement
In response to the latest discoveries of charter shenanigans in Philly, writer Patrick Kerkstra looks at three major issues with the charter industry.
The Moral Qualities of Teaching
This is some smart writing, that manages in a relatively short space to move from considering some large philosophical ideas all the way to helping one child.
Charter Schools' Ugly Separate But Unequal Reality
Real journalist David Sirota takes a look at a new lawsuit in Delaware, where charters are being used to resegregate students.
What Happened to New Orleans Black Teachers?
A long-form look at this issue-- again. Prepare yourself to read some uncritical repetition of the same old bogus stats. Also prepare yourself to find a TFA official on the right side of a conversation. Part of EdWeek's look at New Orleans 10 year anniversary, which is often too considerate of reformsters' tender feelings, but still includes some thorough research and interviewing. It's all worth a look-- just keep your critical eye open.
What the Privileged Poor Can Teach Us
Poor kids who get moved into schools that primarily serve well-to-do students may show us some interesting things about the effects of poverty.
The Common Core's Scalia-esque Originalism
Blogger Sarah Blaine brings a unique perspective as a teacher, lawyer and parent. Here she looks at two major flaws in the ELA standards.
3 Huge Problems with the Charter School Movement
In response to the latest discoveries of charter shenanigans in Philly, writer Patrick Kerkstra looks at three major issues with the charter industry.
The Moral Qualities of Teaching
This is some smart writing, that manages in a relatively short space to move from considering some large philosophical ideas all the way to helping one child.
Charter Schools' Ugly Separate But Unequal Reality
Real journalist David Sirota takes a look at a new lawsuit in Delaware, where charters are being used to resegregate students.
Saturday, September 19, 2015
Rubin: We Need Fewer Teachers?
Jennifer Rubin tried to offer her two cents on teaching this week, but as it turns out, all she had was a plugged nickel.
Rubin's brilliant insight in the Washington Post is that we just need fewer teachers, and then schools will get better.
For the time being, we'll skip past her assumption that schools are in desperate need of fixing. That's its own argument. Instead, let's just focus on her unsupported dumb thesis.
Calling small class sizes a "fad," Rubin cites PISA honcho Andreas Schleicher who cites PISA research that found no correlation between class size and score. This is a fun factoid, but it proves nothing about the effect of class size. Look-- if I give a bunch of three foot tall people three foot tall stools to stand on and let six foot tall people stand on the ground, I will find no correlation between stool size and the ability to see over a five foot test.
If Rubin wants real research about the impact of class size, she can take her pick from this website. If she just wants to dismiss small class sizes because she doesn't want to pay for them, she should stick with the non-research she just cited.
From there, she pivots to the old Atlantic article that asks the dumb question "Is it better to have a great teacher or a small class," which is right up there with, "Would you rather marry a hideous evil person who loves you, or a beautiful person who doesn't care about you at all?" In both cases, other, better choices are readily available. The question as asked tells us nothing.
But Rubin argues that everybody wants more teachers. And by "everybody" she means "everybody who sucks." Colleges want more paying customers, and unions want to collect union dues so they can lobby.
It is not easy to reverse that pattern or convince parents that their child will do better in a class of 35 taught by a great teacher than in a class of 20 taught by an ineffective one.
Well, no. Because all parents with functional brains would rather have their child in a class of 20 taught by a great teacher.
And then she goes to the NCTQ well, citing several different iterations of the National Council on Teacher Quality research about how very, very easy teacher programs are. As we have noted here in the past, the NCTQ's research on the quality of teacher programs is based on looking at colege commencement programs. In a field crowded with lazy bogus research and coming from people who specialize in lazy bogus research (they once evaluated a local college program that does not exist), NCTQ's "research" on the easiness of teacher ed programs is the laziest bogusest research ever.
But Rubin will bring it up repeatedly, including Kate Walsh's recent statements in a WaPo roundtable. Because if you keep repeating something, it eventually becomes true, I guess?
Rubin, of course, also argues for evaluation and the ability to fire at will. And she applauds charters that are experimenting with new any-warm-body-off-the-street programs, "so as to capture professionals from other fields who may want to enter the teaching field." I would love to see what sorts of nets and snares they use to capture these free-range professionals, and wish Rubin had said more about the bait used.
Rubin declares the problem (and it's no longer clear exactly what problem she means-- teachers suck, maybe?) is "far from insoluble." She wants students in teacher ed programs to have high GPA's and take tough tests, because one of the most important skills a teacher needs is the ability to take a test. Also, she wants every teacher to know phonetics.
As for the federal government, if it remains a source of funding, taxpayers have a right to demand their dollars are not going to hire a fleet of incompetent teachers, but those who are rigorously trained. If the feds are going to get out of the business of funding schools and instead, for example, give vouchers to parents, they should make every effort to inform parents about the myth of small class size and the necessity of qualified teachers.
Yes, those fleets of incompetent teachers, cruising the nation's byways. I myself was unaware that bad teachers traveled in fleets. I'd sort of assumed they skulked around, maybe wearing capes and top hats, Snidely Whiplash style.
Oh, but Rubin bemoans the way in which the important issue of getting rid of teachers gets lost in politics and common core and federalism.
If politicians really want to do something about the state of K-12 education, they’ll commit to putting a quality teacher in every classroom and supporting state and local efforts to whittle down the legions of teachers to lean ranks of excellent teachers.
Rubin has somehow completely missed the news that in many states and regions, the efforts to whittle down the teaching force have been very effective-- so effective that many jobs go unfilled. Honestly, did we not just all spend a month talking about the teacher "shortage"? Folks are already way ahead of Rubin, having figured out that you can get people out of teaching by offering lower pay, worse working conditions, and a general drumbeat of dopey abuse. At the very least, it makes it hard to recruit and retain.
Rubin could also have picked some tips up from reading the entire article that she pulled Kate Walsh quotes from. Jose Luis Vilson in that same piece said
This idea of “teacher quality” would be better served if we opened the doors for teachers to have more voice in advancing our profession.
Yup. Let us take charge of overseeing teacher education and certification. Let us have a strong voice in how to advance and improve the profession.
Also, stop basing your entire argument on things that just aren't true. That would be a help as well.
Rubin's brilliant insight in the Washington Post is that we just need fewer teachers, and then schools will get better.
For the time being, we'll skip past her assumption that schools are in desperate need of fixing. That's its own argument. Instead, let's just focus on her unsupported dumb thesis.
Calling small class sizes a "fad," Rubin cites PISA honcho Andreas Schleicher who cites PISA research that found no correlation between class size and score. This is a fun factoid, but it proves nothing about the effect of class size. Look-- if I give a bunch of three foot tall people three foot tall stools to stand on and let six foot tall people stand on the ground, I will find no correlation between stool size and the ability to see over a five foot test.
If Rubin wants real research about the impact of class size, she can take her pick from this website. If she just wants to dismiss small class sizes because she doesn't want to pay for them, she should stick with the non-research she just cited.
From there, she pivots to the old Atlantic article that asks the dumb question "Is it better to have a great teacher or a small class," which is right up there with, "Would you rather marry a hideous evil person who loves you, or a beautiful person who doesn't care about you at all?" In both cases, other, better choices are readily available. The question as asked tells us nothing.
But Rubin argues that everybody wants more teachers. And by "everybody" she means "everybody who sucks." Colleges want more paying customers, and unions want to collect union dues so they can lobby.
It is not easy to reverse that pattern or convince parents that their child will do better in a class of 35 taught by a great teacher than in a class of 20 taught by an ineffective one.
Well, no. Because all parents with functional brains would rather have their child in a class of 20 taught by a great teacher.
And then she goes to the NCTQ well, citing several different iterations of the National Council on Teacher Quality research about how very, very easy teacher programs are. As we have noted here in the past, the NCTQ's research on the quality of teacher programs is based on looking at colege commencement programs. In a field crowded with lazy bogus research and coming from people who specialize in lazy bogus research (they once evaluated a local college program that does not exist), NCTQ's "research" on the easiness of teacher ed programs is the laziest bogusest research ever.
But Rubin will bring it up repeatedly, including Kate Walsh's recent statements in a WaPo roundtable. Because if you keep repeating something, it eventually becomes true, I guess?
Rubin, of course, also argues for evaluation and the ability to fire at will. And she applauds charters that are experimenting with new any-warm-body-off-the-street programs, "so as to capture professionals from other fields who may want to enter the teaching field." I would love to see what sorts of nets and snares they use to capture these free-range professionals, and wish Rubin had said more about the bait used.
Rubin declares the problem (and it's no longer clear exactly what problem she means-- teachers suck, maybe?) is "far from insoluble." She wants students in teacher ed programs to have high GPA's and take tough tests, because one of the most important skills a teacher needs is the ability to take a test. Also, she wants every teacher to know phonetics.
As for the federal government, if it remains a source of funding, taxpayers have a right to demand their dollars are not going to hire a fleet of incompetent teachers, but those who are rigorously trained. If the feds are going to get out of the business of funding schools and instead, for example, give vouchers to parents, they should make every effort to inform parents about the myth of small class size and the necessity of qualified teachers.
Yes, those fleets of incompetent teachers, cruising the nation's byways. I myself was unaware that bad teachers traveled in fleets. I'd sort of assumed they skulked around, maybe wearing capes and top hats, Snidely Whiplash style.
Oh, but Rubin bemoans the way in which the important issue of getting rid of teachers gets lost in politics and common core and federalism.
If politicians really want to do something about the state of K-12 education, they’ll commit to putting a quality teacher in every classroom and supporting state and local efforts to whittle down the legions of teachers to lean ranks of excellent teachers.
Rubin has somehow completely missed the news that in many states and regions, the efforts to whittle down the teaching force have been very effective-- so effective that many jobs go unfilled. Honestly, did we not just all spend a month talking about the teacher "shortage"? Folks are already way ahead of Rubin, having figured out that you can get people out of teaching by offering lower pay, worse working conditions, and a general drumbeat of dopey abuse. At the very least, it makes it hard to recruit and retain.
Rubin could also have picked some tips up from reading the entire article that she pulled Kate Walsh quotes from. Jose Luis Vilson in that same piece said
This idea of “teacher quality” would be better served if we opened the doors for teachers to have more voice in advancing our profession.
Yup. Let us take charge of overseeing teacher education and certification. Let us have a strong voice in how to advance and improve the profession.
Also, stop basing your entire argument on things that just aren't true. That would be a help as well.
Leadership Is Overrated
Boy, I hadn't thought about this in a while, but then Mark Zuckerberg personally recommended the clip to me (well, the facebook link algorithm tossed it up on my feed) .
Go ahead and watch it. It's quick and simple and powerful.
The main point here is that leaders, while celebrated and honored, are not nearly as important to a movement as first and second followers, who make the difference between a single nut and a growing movement. Seeing that point made again sparked two separate thoughts.
Teacher Leaders
The vast majority of "teacher leader" programs are not about leadership at all-- they're about conning teachers into being first and second followers. Caspar McGrubmoney provides whatever program is being promoted (the leader) and now, so that the program doesn't look like a lonely nut dancing alne in a field, the hunt is on to recruit teacher leaders who are really meant to be the first and second followers who make the lonely nut look like a burgeoning trend.
When you are asked to take point and be the teacher leader on an implementation of some program, you are not being asked to be a leader-- you are being asked to give the program your first follower stamp of approval. They don't really want you to be a leader-- they want you to be a first follower to make the actual designated leader look less like a lone nut.
The vast majority of attempts to raise up teacher leaders aren't looking for leaders at all.
Of course, much of the reformster agenda has been a search for first followers. To see why it doesn't work, imagine if Dancing Guy had started offering other people fifty bucks to be his first follower, and they took the money and proceeded to dance, not with joy and commitment, but with mechanical half-heartedness. The innumerable "How the Common Core Showed Me How To Teach" essays we've been subjected to have been failed attempts to generate first followers.
Ditto the occasional slanted poll that attempts to create the illusion that the first followers have arrived and a crowd has already gathered.
The biggest challenge in the video-- the idea that the leader must embrace the first follower as an equal.
Nobody ever took a video of the guy who gets up in a field and does some horrible bad imitation of dancing, twitching without joy, rhythm or a sense of the music, but gesturing wildly for people to come join him and give him money when they do. Then he just gives up and hires some guys to force everybody to get up and dance with him, and punch them if they don't dance "right." That guy is dancing to some Common Core reformy tune. He's probably trying to dance in a three piece suit. It's hard to get first followers when your dance sucks.
Students
We give a lot of attention to fostering leadership among students. I've never encountered anything about fostering first followers.
Yet there have to be valuable abilities there. Spotting just which leader to throw your lot in with. How to recognize whether you've made a mistake or not. How to welcome others to the movement. How to follow.
This works so much against our culture of Looking Out For Number One-- the dynamics of how to get in on and foster a movement by being an effective early follower are so powerful, but so alien to how we tend to think. It may really rankle to talk about being a good follower, but of such things are important movements made. Now I am really, really curious about how to make such a thing part of my classroom world. If you've got any helpful materials or insights, I would love to hear about them.
Go ahead and watch it. It's quick and simple and powerful.
The main point here is that leaders, while celebrated and honored, are not nearly as important to a movement as first and second followers, who make the difference between a single nut and a growing movement. Seeing that point made again sparked two separate thoughts.
Teacher Leaders
The vast majority of "teacher leader" programs are not about leadership at all-- they're about conning teachers into being first and second followers. Caspar McGrubmoney provides whatever program is being promoted (the leader) and now, so that the program doesn't look like a lonely nut dancing alne in a field, the hunt is on to recruit teacher leaders who are really meant to be the first and second followers who make the lonely nut look like a burgeoning trend.
When you are asked to take point and be the teacher leader on an implementation of some program, you are not being asked to be a leader-- you are being asked to give the program your first follower stamp of approval. They don't really want you to be a leader-- they want you to be a first follower to make the actual designated leader look less like a lone nut.
The vast majority of attempts to raise up teacher leaders aren't looking for leaders at all.
Of course, much of the reformster agenda has been a search for first followers. To see why it doesn't work, imagine if Dancing Guy had started offering other people fifty bucks to be his first follower, and they took the money and proceeded to dance, not with joy and commitment, but with mechanical half-heartedness. The innumerable "How the Common Core Showed Me How To Teach" essays we've been subjected to have been failed attempts to generate first followers.
Ditto the occasional slanted poll that attempts to create the illusion that the first followers have arrived and a crowd has already gathered.
The biggest challenge in the video-- the idea that the leader must embrace the first follower as an equal.
Nobody ever took a video of the guy who gets up in a field and does some horrible bad imitation of dancing, twitching without joy, rhythm or a sense of the music, but gesturing wildly for people to come join him and give him money when they do. Then he just gives up and hires some guys to force everybody to get up and dance with him, and punch them if they don't dance "right." That guy is dancing to some Common Core reformy tune. He's probably trying to dance in a three piece suit. It's hard to get first followers when your dance sucks.
Students
We give a lot of attention to fostering leadership among students. I've never encountered anything about fostering first followers.
Yet there have to be valuable abilities there. Spotting just which leader to throw your lot in with. How to recognize whether you've made a mistake or not. How to welcome others to the movement. How to follow.
This works so much against our culture of Looking Out For Number One-- the dynamics of how to get in on and foster a movement by being an effective early follower are so powerful, but so alien to how we tend to think. It may really rankle to talk about being a good follower, but of such things are important movements made. Now I am really, really curious about how to make such a thing part of my classroom world. If you've got any helpful materials or insights, I would love to hear about them.
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