I wrote a blog critical of the race-based, ethnicity-based, income-based targets for student achievement in Alabama’s Plan 2020, which many other states have adopted.
I received the following critique from Melissa Shields, who teaches in Alabama:
As a nationally board certified teacher in Alabama of more than 20 years, I have long admired Dr. Diane Ravitch and read her blog regularly. She often says what I’m thinking and seems to “get” what’s really happening in education. However, my admiration took a jolt when I read the recent post, “Alabama Sets Un-American Goals for Students.”
She was referring to our Alabama PLAN 2020. Unfortunately she relied on one newspaper article that focused on one narrow area of this plan. Since she is one of the country’s best-known education researchers, it is regretful she didn’t try to learn more. She would have discovered that rather than being vilified as a race biased effort to set lower expectations for certain groups of students, PLAN 2020 should be applauded (and I wonder why Dr. Ravitch ignored comments in the article by a local superintendent and the dean of the College of Education at the University of Alabama defending PLAN 2020).
Plan 2020 looks at individual students and groups of students, determines baselines as to where they are functioning, acknowledging the fact that some students and groups of students are not on a positive trajectory for success and follows with an individualized and differentiated trajectory of improvement to address those gaps. The entire system is based on a goal of ALL students reaching 100% proficiency while at the same time understanding that everyone may not get there on the same day at the same time which was perceived as failure under NCLB.
Dr. Ravitch states in her piece about Alabama using subgroups to better determine how instruction should be individualized, “the state of Alabama should ditch the race-based, economic-based, disability-based goals and focus on one center American idea” equality of educational opportunity for every child.”
But I would remind her that this is not the fantasy world of Lake Wobegon where “all the children are above average.” Instead, the real world is one where at-risk and poor children often do not perform as was as their wealthier and/or gifted counterparts. I have been fortunate to have taught in a thriving Christian private school, affluent public schools, and rural lower-income public schools. I know what it takes to help children believe in themselves, often when no one else does. I also know it takes to help our “at-risk” students find academic success, even surpassing the successes of their wealthier grade-level peers. If the truth be known, those successes are my proudest moments in the classroom. Teaching children who want to learn is easy; teaching those who don’t think they do is a challenge, one we teachers embrace with vigor. It didn’t matter if these students were black, white, or purple (or what NCLB projected their success rate should be), I wanted to help each of them find growth in my classroom…..and they did.
As a side note, I’m an English teacher. I taught 150-170 students a day (6 classes). Boys do not typically perform as well in English as the girls. I often wished I could receive more data on how well my male students were doing in relation to the females. Because I did not have that data, I gathered it myself, reflecting on how I might better meet the boys’ needs and interests to improve their performance in language arts disciplines. My point is, if we don’t follow students’ progress per subgroup, how can we ensure growth? The percentages in PLAN 2020 are actually higher than we’ve had before, which of course means we’re trying to raise the bar of expectation for them—not lower it.
The fact that we have publicly owned the fact that black/EL/poverty students (as a whole) are achieving at a lesser level than many their peers is the first and most important step to change this unacceptable reality. Regretfully sharing these facts and acknowledging that a HIGHER expectation must be put in place to remove this gap is being portrayed as racist. Would Dr. Ravitch prefer that we have this knowledge and not aggressively address it? I find it hard to believe that she would. </em
This is my response to Melissa:
I am sorry for singling out Alabama since many other states, encouraged by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, are doing the very same things.
But I do not withdraw my distaste for setting goals by race, ethnicity, and income.
I wrote to Melissa that this approach represents stale NCLB thinking. Every child is a unique individual, and knowing his or her skin color or heritage or parental income should not be the basis for goal-setting.
There is a reason that Moses spent 40 years wandering in the desert before he was able to bring his people to the promised land. They had to learn to think like free men, not slaves.
We have to learn to think again like educators, not data hounds or accountants meeting arbitrary targets.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Dear Diane: Learning how to think like free people/educators and not slaves really is the central message. I am hoping you have a slew of press appearances when the September book debuts. I know that will be physically taxing so please, everybody send Diane the required energy because we desperately need you to broadcast loud and clear. This may be our collective last chance to really get the word out. The corporate culture of NCLB and the advent of Common Core are the new Jim Crow but this incarnation is attacking the growth and development of every USA child. Crippled citizens won’t take this nation forward and neither will an oligarchy nurtured in a wave of not very good, (segregated by color and class) private and charter schools. This is a democracy where we receive our possibilities from one another, a gift and a responsibility. Kathy
Love your last line: “We have to learn to think again like educators, not data hounds or accountants meeting arbitrary targets.”
This is absolute TRUE!
“There is a reason that Moses spent 40 years wandering in the desert before he was able to bring his people to the promised land. They had to learn to think like free men, not slaves.”
Interesting. I was taught that it was so that the older generation would die off. I think it’s probably true too though. I’ve worked with too many people who immigrated from Eastern Block communist countries who, at best, straddled the fence when it came to our country’s laws. I was regularly trying to get them to see that lawlessness is not the ideal and that we must learn how to be free people and behave within the constraints of laws that are there to protect us and our best interests.
I have to side with Diane regarding the expectations of students based on demographics, too. There are bound to be many students who are misclassified and inappropriate expectations set for them.
As an example, I come from a background that, at face value, would automatically categorize me as advantaged, however, nothing could be further from the truth, because my family was so atypical. When I was growing up in the 50s and 60s, very few parents got divorced and mine split up when I was 7, so I was often the only child in my class who experienced the upheaval of divorce, including having a depressed mother who had turned to abusing prescription drugs and alcohol and attempted suicide. In the course of two years, I went from a middle income family in a rented apartment to a struggling low-income one-parent household (before public aid) to an upper-middle income life-style, in a new home and neighborhood, due to my mom’s remarriage to a wealthy man who basically couldn’t stand her kids.
So, by age 9, although everything looked like a fairy tale on the outside, life was hell for my sibling and me. I often ran away and seriously considered suicide myself. That’s not what the schools saw, even though I did tell some teachers bits about what was going on at home. Expectations were inappropriately high for me and, although I was floundering academically, the schools never referred me for counseling or other assistance, claimed that I was just not meeting my potential and that was that.
In those days, academic issues were nearly always seen as the student’s fault. We have totally flip flopped now, with teachers being blamed for all achievement ills today. In neither case is the importance of family matters considered or addressed, even though research has repeatedly indicated that family has a much greater influence on achievement than all other variables.
If only politicians would comprehend that expectations for all kids should be based on personal circumstances and individual strengths and needs. If only they would study child and family development –which happens to be what I teach.
Clearly, Melissa Shields, like so many reformers, has yet to learn is just plain foolish to replace targets for measuring the wrong thing wrong with targets for measuring the wrong thing right.
Perhaps this short feature will prompt Ms. Shields to at least think about what she stands to learn, in this regard:
And as for her appeal to the “real world,” well, the real world is exactly what we, collectively, make it to be. Sadly, Ms. Shields acquiesces to a real world make of “subgroups” to the omission of messy, idiosyncratic, highly varying, individual human beings that are agents unto themselves, to wit:
“My point is, if we don’t follow students’ progress per subgroup, how can we ensure growth?”
This is unfortunate, given her obvious zest for teaching.
“Clearly, Melissa Shields, like so many reformers, has yet to learn is just plain foolish to replace targets for measuring the wrong thing wrong with targets for measuring the wrong thing right.”
To piggyback on your comment, Ed, here is a re-post form quite awhile back:
The proliferation of educational assessments, evaluations and canned programs belongs in the category of what systems theorist Russ Ackoff describes as “doing the wrong thing righter. The righter we do the wrong thing,” he explains, “the wronger we become. When we make a mistake doing the wrong thing and correct it, we become wronger. When we make a mistake doing the right thing and correct it, we become righter. Therefore, it is better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right.”
Our current neglect of instructional issues are the result of assessment policies that waste resources to do the wrong things, e.g., canned curriculum and standardized testing, right. Instructional central planning and student control doesn’t – can’t – work. But, that never stops people trying.
The result is that each effort to control the uncontrollable does further damage, provoking more efforts to get things in order. So the function of management/administration becomes control rather than creation of resources. When Peter Drucker lamented that so much of management consists in making it difficult for people to work, he meant it literally. Inherent in obsessive command and control is the assumption that human beings can’t be trusted on their own to do what’s needed. Hierarchy and tight supervision are required to tell them what to do. So, fear-driven, hierarchical organizations turn people into untrustworthy opportunists. Doing the right thing instructionally requires less centralized assessment, less emphasis on evaluation and less fussy interference, not more. The way to improve controls is to eliminate most and reduce all.
Former Green Beret Master Sergeant Donald Duncan [Viet Nam] did when he noted in Sir! No Sir! that: “I was doing it right but I wasn’t doing right.”
And from one of America’s premier writers:
“The mass of men [and women] serves the state [education powers that be] thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, [administrators and teachers], etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.”- Henry David Thoreau [1817-1862], American author and philosopher
Education functions to the extent of Government Policies.
“Wheel Barrows” that serve the State, have always been
“Hands-On”. The function is determined by the handlers.
“Knowledge” is power, is as old as the hills. Didn’t Eve ask Adam
to take a bite of the “Knowledge Apple”?
And the band played on…
Interesting… the chord that this struck with me also was the 40 years in the desert… to learn to think freely again… the rest of the post is still rattling around in my head… but that period of time… that “in between”… it can be a scary place… but ooohhh so necessary to “reset / reboot the system.” This runs deep, deep, deep. I’m about to embark on a completely different teaching experience than the one I’ve had for the last 5 years… and my body has not yet caught up with my mind… the environment I’ll be in is MUCH MORE teacher-friendly… and yet my body still revs up with anxiety as I sit here beginning my first week lesson plans… this is the desert… working on rebooting for a healthier state of being. Thank you again Diane for speaking to my soul.
Melissa Shields is a Common Core proponent that defends anything and everything to do with Common Core. It’s interesting that she says she is an English teacher. She tells listeners in Alabama that she is an instructional coach for math out of her school district’s central office in Etowah County, Alabama.
I tend to agree with your assessments and opinions. However on this one, I must agree with the teacher from Alabama. I’m a principal of a school in Georgia, and one of the biggest faults with NCLB was the fact that every subgroup had to meet the same target. The reality of poverty was ignored, and every group was expected to master the curriculum at the same level. Let’s not have a double standard about how we talk about the effects of poverty. Let’s be realistic and make plans to move everyone forward from their own starting points. That is what these goals are about.
“Let’s be realistic and make plans to move everyone forward from their own starting points.”
Every child has a starting point as an individual, not as a group. No child deserves to be lumped together with others, nor discounted as an individual who has a constellation of strengths and needs and who is dealing with varying personal circumstances.
Forget group and subgroup targets. Acting like teachers just teach groups and subjects is the factory model. Teachers teach unique individuals. With all the testing and data collection that’s been going on in our schools over the past decade, one would think that by now policy wonks would have realized the importance of determining each student’s starting points, strengths and needs, on a case by case basis, in order to help each child progress and achieve their personal best.
I was taught by stereotype when I was growing up. Girls were not supposed to be good at math and science, so the numbers of girls in higher level math and science classes dropped off in high school. I liked science, but I didn’t even think about attempting physics. We were not allowed to compete against other schools in athletics.
As a special education teacher, my focus was always on the diagnostic uses of measurement. It took me far more time than I could afford to go over work because I was looking for patterns that would tell me something about that student. I hated giving grades because of their limiting nature; my kids seemed to see them as a measure of their intelligence. They were far too likely to give up completely if they were judged simply by an arbitrary ranking (grades). Since I saw my job as trying to keep them invested in an education or getting them to reinvest, arbitrary standards that all of them were expected to reach were dangerous.
I’ve spent the better part of my 20-year career learning how to better move away from this kind of generic labeling of students and moving toward individualized, differentiated instruction. It’s a short step from “subgroups” based upon race or income to actual grouping of students based upon those same characteristics.
What about the African American gifted student? Or the talented ELL writer? The struggling Asian student with problems in mathematics? The Caucasian student who needs reading support?
You can spin this any way you’d like but it is still profiling students based upon a made-up category that silences their individual voice and entrenches existing privilege and institutional racism, classism, and sexism with separate goals for categories that are meaningless and demeaning.
It’s sad that some teachers support this wrongheaded and harmful approach to learning and school. It’s criminal that the government is behind it. It morally offensive that anyone thinks this has meaning, purpose, and the ability ‘level’ any playing field.
The very act of naming the categories is a political move from a place of privilege that has longterm, detrimental consequences that erase the personhood of children.
Ms. Shields view of education is so distorted by her like of knowledge of what FREEDOM is all about…..she is the results a public school education that has not been taught the TRUE HISTORY of our Nation, and therefore does not understand the whole concept of giving people the freedom to choose their future and that means the freedom to choose their education with the highest expectations from their Educator…..Ms Shileds stop being a puppet of Dr. Bice and start using your brain to think on your own….when you do, then you will understand what this battle is all about…..
Diane, I am also a teacher in Alabama. I am so embarrassed by Ms. Shields defense race-based standards. I hope the nation knows that all teachers in Alabama do not think the way Ms. Shields does.
Alabama’s 2020 Plan is definitely disconcerting.
It’s always hard to read negative comments about oneself (not something I’m used to), but I do thank each of you for your thoughtful responses. I respect each of your criticisms, as I can tell each of you want the best for our students too.
Dianne and others, I couldn’t agree more about the “data hounds” comment. I guess I don’t see our state’s PLAN2020 in that way – there is so much more to it than data. I vehemently oppose the obsession with data, red tape, and testing that often prevent our nation’s teachers from doing what they do best. As I said before, I follow Dianne’s blog too, and I thank her for speaking out for our students and their teachers. While we may disagree on this issue, I am still a loyal fan.
The only response I would take to task is Mrs. Sewell, who said I misrepresented myself. I don’t know how to respond to that, as I’ve never done such a thing. My professional blog, Twitter, and Facebook pages pretty much lay it out there who I am and what I do. Just for the record, I’ve never in my life said I’m an instructional coach for math. As an English and history teacher (and a terrible math student myself), that would be a sad day for our students if I were. However, I have taught for 15 years (English and/or history). I am also Nationally Board Certified (2000 and 2010). I am currently a curriculum, EL, and school improvement specialist for my school district. But… I will always be a teacher first, and my heart will never leave the classroom.