Please take five minutes and watch this wonderful student in Tennessee give an impassioned speech about how current “reform” policies are ruining education.
He blasts the Common Core because of its emphasis on standardization.
He expresses his respect for teachers. He says “Standards-based education Is ruining the way we teach and learn.”
He says bluntly “Why don’t we just manufacture robots instead of students?”
He says, “The task of teaching is never quantifiable.”
He says twice, for emphasis: “If everything I have learned in high school is a measurable objective, I haven’t learned anything.”
I am once again convinced that this younger generation, raised under the harsh. soulless NCLB regime, rejects standardization. They refuse to be mechanized. They are rebels against the federal effort to stamp out their individuality. They will save us from the adults who hope to shape and silence them. They may well be our greatest generation.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
HOW ON GOD”S GREEN EARTH DID THIS PRODUCT OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS EVER DEVELOP SUCH AMAZINING CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS WITH A PRE-DUNCAN EDUCATION? THIS MUST BE A CIG PIECE OF TOM_FOOLERY. NO HIGH SCHOOLS TUDENT COULD POSSIBLY BE THIS ARTICULATE WITHOUT BEING THE BENEFICIARY OF COLEMAN’S GARND DESIGN.
Mi apologees for th tipoes.
“He says, “The task of teaching is never quantifiable.”
That line stood out for me when I watched it.
I don’t remember ever having that student in my class-ha ha!
Good on his teachers. And kudos to him for expressing so well his thoughts.
I believe his name is Ethan Young.
So Ethan, if you read this blog, allow me to invite you to join the Quixotic Quest to rid the world of the nefarious practices that are educational standards, standardized testing and the “grading” of students. Ethan, after reading and understanding and shouting out to one and all what Noel Wilson has to say in “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” I will personally knight you as “Don Ethan del Estado de Volunteers”!! See below for a summary:
“Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at:
http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
The young man is utterly brilliant. He was well dressed, well spoken (an understatement), articulate, fearless and had the vocabulary of a grad student at Yale. I have a feeling that we will hear much more from this young man in the future. He gets an A+ for speaking skills, poise, grammar, syntax, vocabulary and communication of his ideas.
I am pleased that Ethan Young is speaking out for teachers and students. Every day is too late for some of our students. I just found out a Sudanese teen I had in 4th grade has dropped out of high school. He is now 16th. I teach his siblings in Sunday School, and they are very worried about him. They told me he went through a period of anger but is not angry now. Another volunteer at church and I will reach out to him to see what we can do. I don’t want to see anymore children lost, but I know we will see more lost to this system. Yesterday during my lesson, we ended up talking about history. Some of the 6th graders told me they didn’t learn about WWII or Hitler. One boy told me his teacher tries to fit history in when she can. I asked them if they knew why they weren’t learning it. No one knew. I told them it was because of all the testing they have to do. This is so sad. Schools are creating a generation of children who will have huge gaps in their learning.
Ethan,
If you read this p, you should be very proud and so should your parents.
Well done, young man.
I fear that our elected leaders will only listen to the critiques of the standards-based reforms when white people from so-called “good schools” (I noticed that this student attend Farragut High School…the suburban school that is labeled as a “good school” that produces good “quantifiable” data) speak out against it.
Diane, thanks for posting this! From the other side of the pond it is refreshing and challenging, and really quotable!
Dear Parents and teachers of Ethan Young,
Thank you, thank you. You did a fantastic job of guiding and teaching him. He epitomizes how public education prepares students to be critical thinkers and to use logic and reasoning to defend your argument. The teachers in the nation are truly grateful for his deep appreciate for his teachers and the education they provided.
Now let’s send him to Arne Duncan so Ethan can knock some common sense into him.
The day after Ethan and the Knox County BATS confronted the Broadie super and school board, Arne was in Memphis tout TN’s NAEP scores and prop up Haslam & Huffman’s religious embrace of Race to the Top.
How ironic that Race to the Top has triggered a national movement over standards, data and testing.
Does anyone know how we could get this video in front of Duncan, Haslam, and Huffman?
They wouldn’t understand, it’s way over their heads.
Bookworm, the video of the TN student has gone viral. It is all over Twitter. Half a dozen people sent it to me.
Let’s send Ethan, Noa, the Providence Student Union, kids from Lane Tech H.S., Chicago, and students from all over the country to converge on the D.o.Ed. during a vacation time or during testing week (IL usually takes state tests in March). Let’s organize this–suburb by suburb, city by city, state by state, then agree on the what, when, where nationally. The Million Minor March.
We CAN do this–who will start it–BATS, NPE? I volunteer to be an organizer in my state.
What an amazing young man! If this is America’s future, I am extremely hopeful, and definitely proud. Thank you for standing up for education, your teachers, and learning.
In Ohio…a school district school board overtaken by Tea Party radicals. http://www.plunderbund.com/2013/11/11/tea-party-takes-control-of-west-clermont-school-district/
If our schools are so “bad” then from whence did this young man get his eloquence?
Well said, Ethan!
How did the United States become the greatest nation on earth for so many years using the “old, outdated” educational system? Answer: more personal responsibility, parental involvement and dedicated teachers who developed their own unique styles.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
WANT TO IMPROVE THE DROPOUT rate, and motivate students to innovate and think? Listen to this young man. He is telling the world of EDUCATION SOMETHING PROFOUND. From a former teacher who loved seeing kids love school and love learning. NOT FOR ROBOT EDUCATION.
Reblogged this on Crazy Crawfish's Blog and commented:
This speach is simply awesome. If you havent heard it yet, you need to. I have my doubts our CCSS/high stakes testing generation will produce leaders like this student will no doubt be.