As readers of the blog know, I visited members of Congress yesterday and attended a reception at the headquarters of the American Federation of Teachers at the end of the day.
Here is an account that appeared in the Washington Post of what was said by me and others in the question-and-answer period.
There is one statement that is somewhat misleading.
This is the quote:
“Asked about the latest reform trend — ideas around the importance of developing character traits like ‘grit’ and ‘determination’ in students to help them succeed academically — Ravitch said she didn’t think those traits in children could or should be measured.
“It makes me want to throw up,” said Ravitch, who is promoting a new book, “The Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools.” “The White House’s obsession with data is sick.”
The question came from someone in the audience who said he had just attended a meeting with White House officials and Department of Education officials about how to develop metrics to measure qualities like grit and determination. He asked, “what do you think of measuring those qualities”?
I said, quickly, instinctively, without hesitating to think about what was politically correct, that the desire to measure such characteristics made me want to throw up. Well, that wasn’t very polite, but it was an accurate description of my feelings about developing metrics for “grit” and “perseverance.” Next thing you know, Pearson will have a standardized test instrument for grit and determination and perseverance, and children will fail their “grit” test.
I was not discounting the importance of non-cognitive traits. They matter. But the obsession with turning everything into data is, well, sick. What matters most is usually what cannot be measured. Like love, friendship, empathy, compassion, character, ethics, the love one has for one’s family, friends, and pets. As I said yesterday, you can’t measure those things and–to me– they matter more than reading scores.
*I changed the title of this piece from “Correcting” to “Clarifying,” as the reporter did not make an error in reporting. I sought to clarify, not correct.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m sure that measuring grit and determination the Pearson way would require completing the test answering the stupidest questions as if they were serious and above all filling in the little circles correctly and completely so the computer can read them.
very 1984 “newspeak”, just changing the word “grit” to mean what’s convenient. It’s an odd quality, and in a diverse world, some will have more “grit” than others. Weird all the way around. I suppose if people were produced in factories…
Right on, Diane…and add to that the love teachers have for their students.
Ellen Lubic
well Diane is right because they are fuzzy concepts (grit) and there are no agreed upon operational definitions of the fuzzy concepts…. it is still “lab” and “theory” so don’t let any politician or bureaucrat tell you they have a measure of it…. the Fordham Institute/Gates$ funded group is trying to measure it…. I guess they are using Gates money so that means he will plan a hedge fund that will take over…. Please write and tell the Governing Board of NAEP not to buy into it; specifically David Driscoll, M. Podgursky and others who are on that board. More malarkey paid for by taxpayers with funds that should be going for better purposes in our public schools. (if you are really interested in the concept of “grit” look at Scott Barry Kaufman’s summary of the lab work in the book entitled UNGIFTED… but don’ t swallow everything you see wholesale.
Oh, these concepts can easily be made quite operation and non-fuzzy. That’s the whole point of this line of research. Grit is demonstrated ability to undergo adversity. Give the child an adverse stimulus (an unpleasant task) and measure how long he or she sticks to it. Put that into the data machine. See where the child sits on the old grit bell graph. His he or she “weak?” Then he or she will make excellent cannon fodder but is not officer material. That sort of thing.
cx: quite operational and non-fuzzy
Genius!
Are you just playing devils advocate, or is it your actual belief that this conspiracy exists? Or, do you see like a sort of collusion happenstance?
thufirh
There are many people who have a a) a stereotypical view of the children of the working classes as low-level inputs to an economic machine that b) need to be molded to spec via punishment and reward. One doesn’t need a grand conspiracy when one has people with a shared authoritarian personality type and shared economic interests.
But, there are conspiracy elements in the current Education Deforms. A lot of education decisions are being made, these days, in back rooms and funded by a few plutocrats who were high-level participants in the meetings in those back rooms. Gates basically paid for the creation of the Common Core, for example, and doing so served his purposes. He has a new company, inBloom, that aspires to be THE national database into which student responses and test scores are poured, and through that, the computer-adaptive curricula of the future is to be delivered. For that startup to work, a single set of national standards was needed. The CC$$ was cooked up by a small group of people who foisted it on the entire country with not scholarly critique, no vetting, and no mechanism for ongoing critique and revision. It centralizes educational power in proprietary hands and basically overrules every teacher, curriculum coordinator, and curriculum developer in the country and removes the power to make decisions about what outcomes will be measured from state and local control, placing those decisions, instead, in the hands of an unelected, self-appointed authority.
But hey, let’s not get all wacky and talk about conspiracies just because there was a conspiracy! LOL
This inBloom sounds like the Monsanto of education with their genetically modified seeds.
Well said. Don’t pay a second of lip service to the false and stupid idols of measurement and “data”.
quote: “Department of Education officials about how to develop metrics to measure qualities like grit and determination. He asked, “what do you think of measuring those qualities”? that is coming from Fordham Institute in a study paid for by Gates and they measured “grit” in children in Boston …. they are wasting money folks, but the David Driscoll minions will be putting that into your common core breakfast…. I made numerous comments about this Boston study when the information came out that there was a “new study” that was from MIT/Brown U. et al… and I wrote to the publisher at the time; if you seek out information on the Boston students you see some informal questionnaires that don’t have reliability or validity established and they say they are measuring personality traits….
In 1918, the British evolutionist, Benjamin Kidd, wrote about schooling’s purpose was to “impose upon the young the ideal of subordination”.
Should anyone visit a 2nd grade class, there you will see the last vestiges of the free human spirit. Age 7 is the year, developmentally, when children are capable of receiving direct instruction, though some may take longer.
Advocates explaining the issues and problems surround the new Common Core Curriculum, such as Diane Ravitch, have done a remarkable study of the recent moves by the Gates Foundation to open the field of Education to the market place of high tech vendors and publishers. There may be a need to as examine these developments in the context of the origins of public education. One of the leading authorities is John Taylor Gatto with his “Underground History of American Education”.
“We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”
said President Woodrow Wilson to businessmen just 100 years ago.
If we are to move with this paradigm for education, we need to wonder what are the plans and market place for future workers, which would eventually be educated and tested with a new technology, which would eliminate the idea of relationship, both in the classroom, as well as with parental involvement and organization. Education may soon no longer be labeled a “social science”.
When President Wilson spoke, we had a country needing manpower for the industrial giants that ruled the economy of the time, similar to the Gates Foundation of today, as well as a “civilizing” agent for the masses of immigrants entering the country.
John Taylor Gatto’s interesting theory is that these new residents would rise up to challenge the monopolies in place, as young people entered industry and advanced quickly in its ranks. This is why children would be diverted to mandatory schooling for twelve years. It was another reason why children were removed from the factories under the banner of child protection laws. At the same time, children as young as five years, had harnesses strapped to their bodies to pull lorries of coal from the mines, according to Gatto.
In 1917, there was established an “Education Trust”, not unlike the economic entities that exist today, which consisted of those associated with Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago and the National Education Association.
Gatto writes:
“At first, the primary target was the tradition of independent livelihoods in America. Unless Yankee entrepreneurialism could be extinguished, at least among the common population, the immense capital investments that mass production industry required for equipment weren’t conceivably justifiable. Students were to learn to think of themselves as employees, competing for the favor of management. Not as Franklin or Edison had once regarded themselves, as self determined, free agents.”
As we move into the 21st Century, we need to examine the justifiable reasons for introducing the latest technology and the effects that it will have on the mostly unemployed economy, most industry and mid level employment move off shore. Educational historian, Diane Ravitch writes in a recent Washington Post article, “Everything You Need To Know About Common Core”:
” As Secretary [Federal Department of Education] Duncan’s Chief of Staff wrote at the time, the Common Core was intended to create a national market for book publishers, technology companies, testing corporations and other vendors.”
As in the early 20th century, whose anniversary we celebrate now with the First World, large corporations and the teachers unions have once again come together to redesign the lives of children with uncertain consequences and with the standardized Common Core Curriculum, turning schools into “testing mills”, and the violation of children’s privacy and personal information.
Ahead of us we have two directions. We can return to the wonder of the 2nd grader and move to develop our lost generation of entrepreneurs, or sacrifice them and their personalities to alienation by the vendors, that will isolate them from caring instructors, parents and each other in an economy with no future.
There was once a saying before the rise of schooling:
“Show me the 7 year old, and I will show you the man (woman)”
Should anyone visit a 2nd grade class, there you will see the last vestiges of the free human spirit.
Arne Duncan and the other fascists at the DOE are doing everything in their power to stamp that out. See their report on this Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance.
It’s all about developing those qualities in kids that will enable them to overcome extreme alienation–alienation from the tasks assigned to them, alienation from their peers, alienation from their own wishes, wants, hopes, dreams, desires, etc. These are all to be conquered absolutely, and their affective states are to be monitored and put into the inBloom database second by second, minute by minute, so that the state can ensure that their submission is absolute.
If you think that I am exaggerating, I assure you that I am not. I dearly wish that I were making this stuff up. Read the DOE report, here:
Click to access OET-Draft-Grit-Report-2-17-13.pdf
It’s completely chilling. Herr Duncan must have held quite the Wannsee Conference with the Gates Foundation people to cook this one up.
very well said, Joseph!
Right ON Diane, and I love that you said “Throw Up!”… instead of vomit or regurgitate, you are so real and in tune to what is authentic and what matters in our classrooms for teachers and students alike. Unbelievable! Do NOT apologize for that comment, exactly my feelings!
Hey… IDEA… Lets ALL throw up, freeze it and send it to Arne Duncan… He can meet at the table with Gates; they can weigh our collective deposits of vomit, record it and enter it into the almighty “InBloom Data Bank in the “Cloud,” as quantifiable data for how utterly disgusted professional educators (with actual teaching degrees and decades of experience) are with the fake, for-profit, corporate, hedge fund market, education “reform” movement!
My sentiments exactly.
this is the group looking at “Grit”
Title: “Measuring Non-Cognitive Traits of Students and the Impact of Schooling”
Martin R. West, Harvard Graduate School of Education Matthew A. Kraft, Brown University
Chris Gabrieli, Mass2020
Angela L. Duckworth, University of Pennsylvania
November 2013
Draft – Please do not cite or circulate without permission. Abstract
————————————————-
They have the ear and the arm and megaphone with David Driscoll; this was a presentation to the governing board at NAEP… as soon as I saw the so called “Gabrieli/MIT” study I started looking up this Martin West (FORDHAM Institute/Education Next/ HARVARD PEPG/// this is a many headed hydra.
I have personally emailed David Driscoll and told him this is a conflict of interest; I think he is now a lobbyist for some firm (Gates money paid for the Martin West study and the so called Gabrielli study and you know how much we can trust that )
I attended a workshop with Angela Duckworth at Penn last year. She already developed a test for grit. It was an accurate predictor of which recruits would make it through basic training. What she does with this is the concern. The idea of teachers working with kids to foster grit or resiliency is good. Diane is right to worry about what reformers will do with something new to measure.
Stomach churning to anyone who cares about kids and education for sure.
The CCSSO have added dispositions to the Common Core. Also, the Innovation Lab Network, the pilot states for Common Core, advocate affective domain testing.
Click to access ILN%20Knowledge%20Skills%20and%20Dispositions%20CCR%20Framework%20February%202013.pdf
Stupski Foundation, CCSSO, OECD:
http://www.oecd.org/edu/ceri/46399963.ppt
Plus, Pennsylvania tested non-cognitive areas for NAEP for over 20 years in their state assessment, EQA, before I filed a federal complaint against the state and it was withdrawn. I have these documents if anyone is interested in how the government scores attitudes.
ACT has also included behavioral components into Aspire.
So, yes there is a lot of research on testing and scoring attitudes to a government minimum positive attitude.
The “whole child” is to be tested and molded. The new ESEA re-authorization, SB 1094, states that across domains will be tested.
This will be a focus.
Also see, Gordon Commission on Assessment, page 7
Click to access 20958_gordon_c_msn_assmt.pdf
This is truly scary.
They showed that “students who attend a set of high-performing “No Excuses” charter schools that have been shown to increase student test scores score significantly worse, on average, on Grit, Conscientiousness and Self-Control than students attending district schools.”
Interestingly out of the two hypotheses that could explain this paradox…
1 – “contrary to their goals, the charter schools, despite their success in raising test scores, reduce students’ non-cognitive abilities in crucial dimensions such as self-control and conscientiousness”
they decide to go with
2 – “reference bias – the tendency for individuals’ survey responses to be influenced by the context in which the survey is administered.”
well said, Emmy!
And instead of talking about grit, tenacity, and perseverance, they could call what they are measuring, there,
blind obedience, submissiveness, acceptance of alienated state, servility, conformability, resignation
fyi don’t know where to post this, but Cami Anderson just posted a very self-serving blog on Huffington. Just a few days after she walked out of a meeting where Newark parents asked her if she did not want opportunities for their children, and just a few days after she endangered children and teachers by not calling school cancellations until the VERY last minute.
She is NO position, to be given air time! She has shown NO respect for the mostly black parents of Newark schools. Hypocrite.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cami-anderson/poverty-politics-racism-school-reform_b_4730880.html
“Others insist it is a misguided labor movement pretending to stand for kids while launching relentless, highly-funded, facts-be-damned attacks to protect antiquated work rules and jobs at all costs. Thousands of dollars from within and outside of Newark being spent to fuel dissent during a time of major political transition makes this palpable.”
Same old, same old. Sainted reformers up against evil unions.
Not a word about the money that has poured into ed reform from Wall Street and the foundations.
Nah. It’s all evil union members versus sainted reformers.
How long do ed reformers plan on hiding behind unions? Every bit of opposition or dissent is met with them screaming “unions!” Is there any possibility that someone could object to this agenda on grounds OTHER than belonging to a union?
I’m not a union member or a teacher. I would heartily object if any of these folks came into my town and started imposing this privatization agenda.
Which is hilarious because the unions have almost entirely cowed, have, in fact, acted as PR departments for the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth.
“But we will keep at it.”
Now that’s she dismissed all of her critics as self-interested or corrupt, she’ll continue to completely ignore the people who live there and roll right over them, because she’s the one and only person working on behalf of children.
I love how they’re pretending these plans are site-specific. They impose the exact same agenda in every city they parachute into. Newark will look just like Chicago which looks just like Cleveland and New Orleans.
She’s also dangling the carrot that she’ll stop shuttering their public schools if they’ll simply comply. Wow. That’s generous. She’ll allow them to keep a couple of public schools? Who told her those schools belonged to her?
Thanks Title One Texas! I am a Newark teacher. I read her post earlier this evening. Your support is appreciated.
I am crossing my fingers for y’all:)
I made a comment on Huffington not sure when it will show up.
I left a reply for Cami but it does not show yet.
How ironic that you believe it is your opposition that “facts be damned.” Here are some facts for you from some real researchers:
Our analysis calls into question NPS’s methodology for classifying schools under One Newark. Without statistical justification that takes into account student characteristics, the school classifications appear to be arbitrary and capricious.
Further, our analyses herein find that the assumption that charter takeover can solve the ills of certain district schools is specious at best. The charters in question, including TEAM academy, have never served populations like those in schools slated for takeover and have not produced superior current outcome levels relative to the populations they actually serve.
A MINUTE AGO
Yeah! Throw those facts into the mix, nothing that she can refute there:) She is SO irritating; worse than Michelle Rhee almost.
Geez. congratulations, Diane, that you did not say that it was total “bs”.
Too bad we all could not take you out for a celebratory toast after the meeting.
http://withabrooklynaccent.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-badass-teachers-association.html
This is the best yet set of answers to data-mongers.. and it has gone viral. I call it the “evaluate that” tsunami.
The notion of “a meeting with White House officials and Department of Education officials about how to develop metrics to measure qualities like grit and determination” makes me want to throw up, too.
The education priorities of the White House and the Department of Education are dangerously wrong-headed. Attempts to test and measure things that are unmeasurable (the “grit” of a child or the “value-addedness” of a teacher) shows just how sick the testing mania has become.
Anyone who is not viscerally repulsed by this should not be allowed anywhere near a school or a policy-making desk.
The breathtakingly Orwellian report from the Department of Education on Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century, appears here:
Click to access OET-Draft-Grit-Report-2-17-13.pdf
This report actually bemoans the fact that FMRI machines can’t be made small and cheap enough to use in the classroom to monitor students’ affective states in real time!!! It then goes on to say that the DOE has a solution for that. It has been spending your tax dollars (along with money kicked in by the Gates Foundation) to fund research on using retinal scanners and galvanic skin response bracelets and other such technologies to keep tabs on kids’ emotional states second by second, throughout the day, as they do their worksheets on a screen.
Neither Orwell’s THOUGHT POLICE nor the East German Stasi ever dreamed up anything THIS invasive, this totalitarian. This is the TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS PROGRAM realized and delivered to YOUR classroom.
Let’s get our students used to total government surveillance from DAY 1. That’s how to train them to be obedient servants in the world of the future being conceived by the fascist mind of Arne Duncan.
If people aren’t outraged by this, then there is no hope whatsoever for the future of our democracy. They’ve lost any last vestige of concern for liberty.
Well, come on, Robert, we have to know who to send to the glue factory…
Really, cyn3wulf, if I had written an essay 10 years ago predicting something like this Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance report from the DOE, people would have thought I was some sort of Alex Jones.
Readers of this blog are probably familiar with the novel Ender’s Game. It envisions a future in which the Earth is in imminent danger of a devastating attack by buglike aliens intent on wiping us all out. In response, the nations of the world have united in what can only be described as a totalitarian police state. In the middle of all that, one of the overlords of this state is talking to another. He asks how the computer at their military training base could possibly have gotten the private school pictures of Ender’s siblings.
In other words, even when envisioning an absolutist police state, Orson Scott Card, the author, couldn’t imagine that private school data would be anything but sacrosanct.
But Arne Duncan and Bill Gates can.
Indeed, when you mentioned it in another post, I thought you were kidding. Your post here made me think about Animal Farm. In the novel, the distinctions are made for us via the different species. Alas, we are all humans, and one way to find out who is a Boxer and who is a Napoleon is via testing of this sort.
Ender’s Game is a great novel; I’ve forgotten that part about the school records; I’ll have to go back and check that out.
cyn3wulf, here is the passage from Ender’s Game. Two highly ranked intelligence officials are talking:
“The only way the computer here in the Battle School could have got that picture was by requisitioning it from a landside computer. And not even one connected with I.F. That takes requisitionary powers. We can’t just go into Guilford County North Carolina and pluck a picture out of school files. Did anyone at this school authorize getting this?” E.G., CH. 9.
Such compunction about the privacy of information will soon be a quaint memory.
Amazing. Thanks for posting the quote. Sadly, it almost seems quaint now.
I love what you said Diane…the people in DC do not understand any other words…Shak’em up..
We all feel like Throwing Up on a daily basis as we are exposed to this nonsense called Education Reform…which as Robert S has coined correctly as Education Deform!!
Neanderthal, someone else among the many real educators on this blog coined that. I picked it up. Not sure from whom.
I you had any doubt that education deform was about training the children of the proles in absolute obedience and compliance with any alienating task put before them by their absolute overlords and masters, this should open your eyes.
These people are really twisted. The totalitarian extreme is now the new normal.
cx: If you, of course.
Last night, the PBS Newshour featured a story on Playworks, which is an organization that works in schools during recess (remember recess?!) to help kids develop social skills through play. (See:http://www.playworks.org/about)
It wasn’t the usual nonsense coverage about “grit”, but about joy and playfulness. I emailed the show, complimented them on this coverage and suggested that they consider inviting guests with this kind of perspective about schooling more often. I did receive a favorable response.
If Michelle Rhee won’t debate Diane, maybe we can get Duncan and Diane in a panel discussion on the Newshour.
The address is: pbsnewshourmail@gmail.com
Hmm. I thought we were already doing this by testing students on material that is not developmentally appropriate. It’s why I see stamina testing (practice tests for statewide tests that are designed to increase the testing stamina of students) taking place in some schools.
Is this desire to measure “grit” a response to the reports that students are crying and/or physically ill before/during/after taking high stakes tests? Kids are crying because of a test? It’s not the test (of course not), so it must be their lack of grit. We should find a way to measure that…
…all they have to do to measure that is look at the students’ teachers-talk about modeling…teachers with piles of paperwork, constantly testing, constantly ‘being accountable’, constantly working hard to take care of the children who are so stressed while also trying to get them to do their best…………we want to throw up because the students are throwing up because of the ridiculous cruelty and waste of testing testing testing …
The report points out that “it is impractical to use fMRI in the classroom (i.e., it is a prohibitively expensive, room-sized machine)” and then goes on to explain other technologies being developed for real-time computer monitoring of students’ affective states: facial expression cameras and retinal monitors, posture analysis seats, the pressure mouse, and the wireless skin conductance sensor.
These people are a real and present danger to our nation’s children.
It stops JUST SHY of suggesting that monitoring devices be implanted in their brains.
In the trials of these Orwellian devices, BTW, the children broke them.
I hope that they did so intentionally. If so, then those children who did are our hope for the future.
Also, the recurrent use of the oppositional terms–cognitive and non-cognitive–is a big problem. It needs to be questioned, It keeps alive the idea that reason and feeling are at war with each other, and reason should always be the winner.
Reason can never be infused with passion, fear, love,
And feelings, dispositions, affinities can never be the subject of reasoning.
Cognitive scientists have reinforced this idea, perhaps unwittingly, by seeking scholarly an authoritative “scientific” identity apart from psychology, especially clinical psychology.
And the same legacy lurks in the CCSS standards that are so intent in segregating standards for reading informational texts and literary texts.
Well said.
William Butler Yeats long ago observed that he didn’t understand this distinction, that a whole person was passionately intellectual and intellectually passionate.
The best of these deformers want to see the triumph of a technocratic philistinism over humane ideals of scholarship, research, learning.
The worst of them simply want absolute power.
There are many great researchers in cog-sci these days who are throwing over philistine, discredited, now scientifically disreputable Positivist scientism in the name of a broader science that understands that subjective states–what matters to people–are also facts about the world. But the habits resulting from the Positivist/Behaviorist legacy linger even after the dogmas have been officially disavowed.
And the same legacy lurks in the CCSS standards that are so intent in segregating standards for reading informational texts and literary texts.
yes, yes, yes
But the Philistine amateurs who created these standards wouldn’t have a clue what you are talking about.
Arne’s ideas:
Extrinsic punishment and reward via summative tests, school grades, and VAM
A cradle-to-grave national database of extremely private information about people’s school performance, disciplinary infractions, psychological testing, medical conditions, and so on
Total information awareness in the form of devices to monitor affective states continually
Getting rid of the eunuch’s shadow of tenure that teachers in some states still have so that their masters’ authority over them is absolute
The Powerpointing of all curricula, turning it into worksheets on a screen to be keyed to the Curriculum Commissariats’ standards bullet list and to the responses in the Orwellian database
I do not think that it is at all an exaggeration to say that this is what totalitarianism looks like.
correction to that post:
What Arne wants:
Extrinsic punishment and reward via summative tests, letter grades for grades, and VAM
A cradle-to-grave national database of extremely private information about people’s school performance, disciplinary infractions, psychological testing, medical conditions, and so on
Total information awareness in the form of devices to monitor affective states continually
Getting rid of the eunuch’s shadow of tenure that teachers in some states still have so that their masters’ authority over them is absolute
The Powerpointing of all curricula, turning it into worksheets on a screen to be keyed to the Curriculum Commissariats’ standards bullet list and to the responses in the Orwellian database
I do not think that it is at all an exaggeration to say that this is what totalitarianism looks like.
yikes, I meant “letter grades for schools,” of course. I was typing too furiously, in rage at this Orwellian monitoring plan. If I were hooked up to one of Arne’s devices, they would be packing me off to MiniLuv right about now. LOL.
Way to go, Diane! And once in a while, the gut takes over, political correctness be damned.
DATA is the elephant in the room in the education reform debate. Just because we can measure it, everybody thinks we should—and that all decisions must stem from it. It reminds me of when I was in labor with my second child, and the nurse told me I had to lie flat because the monitor kept picking up my heart beat instead of the baby’s. I told her I knew how to have a baby; she needed a better monitor.
Teachers are strapped to the gurney measuring and reporting data instead of doing what they know how to do–teaching children.
My slip beyond political correctness led me to say this to someone new to the debate today (I hope it can be posted here): So my positive agenda for school reform is to provide broad curriculum, have real educators set education policy based on evidence, invest in a good school in every single neighborhood, and f___ data.
Well said! There are some times when the good old Anglo-Saxon expletive is entirely appropriate.
Good point about data. Something I haven’t seen Diane address (she might have and I missed it) is Response to Intervention. We got snookered here in FL with RtI a few years back. Because of it, the amount of data collection went through the roof. It started with a good idea and went almost immediately south from there.
“It reminds me of when I was in labor with my second child, and the nurse told me I had to lie flat because the monitor kept picking up my heart beat instead of the baby’s. I told her I knew how to have a baby; she needed a better monitor. ”
LOL
love that story! 🙂
Way to go Diane. We are with you. For me, Arne D. makes me throw up!
I’m throwing up in solidarity!
Diane, ed reformers measuring “character traits” and seeking to impose their own estimation of what constitutes “character” on tens of millions of public school kids will make the Common Core debacle look like a walk in the park.
If they think this is a good idea they are quite literally out of their minds. Public school parents will hate it.
Is there anyone in this “movement” who knows how to say “no”? Is every item on every wish list of every ed reformer rubber-stamped and fast-tracked?
I have a character trait the adults in ed reform could work on. Discipline. The ability to reject crackpot ideas and fads. Because someone from Harvard did a study doesn’t mean we have to adopt it. Adults use their own independent discretion. They prioritize. They sometimes say “no”.
One would think that shuttering hundreds of public schools, opening thousands of charter schools, putting in vouchers, measuring teachers, students and schools AND the Common Core would be enough, but no, we also are going to both define “character” and impose it. Is there an adult in this room? Who sets limits?
Bill Gates said in a recent interview, “If you don’t like the new tests, just wait until you have a boss.”
That’s what this is all about. Creating servile proles. Inuring them to whatever mindless task is put before them. Monitoring them continually to ensure that there is no deviation.
“Bill Gates said in a recent interview, “If you don’t like the new tests, just wait until you have a boss.”
Great. Now he’s lecturing other people’s children directly, instead of through his politician mouthpieces.
I have no idea why this person has been elevated to this position of all-knowing Father Of Us All but I am more than tired of it.
It’s as is Andrew Carnegie had not just funded libraries, but chosen the books on the shelves. Enough. Go help someone else. I never asked for his help in the first place.
I cannot find a source for this quote. I would be interested in the context.
They value grit…except when unions, teachers, communities, and families use theirs to rage against the machine of education privitization.
What they mean by grit is sticking to the task–whatever mind-numbing exercise on CCSS.RI.XX.XX.x is being served up as a worksheet on a screen in response to the computerized analysis of the student’s pretest scores. Servility and compliance in the face of the alienating, adverse stimulus. That shows true grit.
Telling naive parents this might be more dangerous. Let’s not encourage parents to attempt boosting grit and perseverance in children.
Look what happened with the self-esteem parenting movement—generations of children who are narcissists because too many parents created an artificial, protective environment to boost self esteem and neglect other traits.
Those traits and more may be important one way or the other but attempting to boost them through social engineering (you know, brainwashing) is wrong just like genetic engineering would be wrong to create a so-called super human.
Moderation in all things would be a better parenting method than focusing on traits like self-esteem, grit and perseverance. For instance, parents could read together as a family for an hour or more each and every day, and take family trips to bookstores and/or libraries once a week.
Throwing up is mild to my reaction. Every time some so-called expert speaks up and people listen to this sort of trash advise, I cringe.
Lloyd, that makes entirely too much sense.
I agree Lloyd.
Lloyd, I would like to ask the reformers if they would like to measure my stomach acid and vomit each time I throw up when I read about people like Eli Broad and Michelle Rhee.
Maybe the reformers would like to get a grant from the Gates foundation to develop a vomit-tometer (accent on the third syllable “tom”) . . . . .
You need to choose the grit size of sandpaper depending on the particular job you are trying to accomplish. For heavy sanding and stripping, you need coarse sandpaper measuring 40- to 60-grit; for smoothing surfaces and removing small imperfections, choose 80- to 120-grit sandpaper. For finishing surfaces smoothly, use a super fine sandpaper with 360- to 600-grit. Many jobs require you to “go through the grits.” This means you start the project using lower-grade grit and use finer pieces of sandpaper as you progress. Each time you advance to a higher grit sandpaper, you remove the scratches from the previous layer.
Dr. Ravitch your comment was spot on! Don’t apologize. We are all sick of hearing that everything has to be data driven, and then that that data has to be collected and analyzed! Anyone who really understands children & knows you, knows that you speak from the heart. You are my hero!
One need look no further than public school teachers who are getting dumped on by the White House and its favorite basketball player to determine grit and perseverance.
Is Bill Gates – the gate-keeper – a Dad?
Yes, but his children are golden children of the oligarchical elite. None of this applies to children of that class. They are Eloi. These continual monitoring devices (we also put those on criminals under house arrest) are for Morloch children.
But guess what started happening, in the end, to the Eloi?
Which is a way of saying that none of this will turn out well.
The totalitarian personality is defined by hubris. Eventually, this hubris catches up with them. Distant, centralized authorities tend to combine ignorance–outright stupidity that comes of disconnectedness–with absolute certainty, and they also become exponentially more craven and corrupt over time until no one is willing to put up with it or to defend it anymore. This sort of rapid escalation of the centralization of power, BTW, has always, historically, preceded the fall of empires.
And always, just before the empire falls, there is a massive increase in surveillance and punishment. Three percent of the U.S. civilian population is now in prison, in juvenile detention, in jail, or on parole. Three out of every 100 Americans. There is no other country in the world where the number is higher. Think of the most despotic regime. It imprisons far fewer than we do.
TE assumes that when he gives his students a basic Algebra problem (e.g., 10 = 2x – 20), and they can’t do it, he has measured whether they learned math in school. It doesn’t surprise me, at all, that when he gets them as, say, college sophomores or juniors, they can’t even very simple problems like that. The fact is that in order to pass the SAT and get into the school to begin with, they had to do simple problems like that, and in order to take the high-stakes test in Grade 10, they had to be able to do simple problems like that. So, they learned this and similar skills and then promptly forgot them.
For years, we’ve been telling kids that they need Algebra–that they will use it all the time in their later lives and that it’s important for them to learn because there is much, much that they will not understand, later on, if they don’t have this fundamental set of skills. But the truth is much more nuanced. The fact is that most adults don’t use Algebra often, if at all, and most adults report a distaste for mathematics generally–the main takeaway from their schooling in math. People in our culture, today, are exposed to a great deal of new learning, all the time, both during their school years and after these. The ones who don’t need Algebra for their work but do need to know how to edit a video in Camtasia or to recall the SKU numbers of the products they enter, all the time, into the CRM program at their company, learn these things, and what they learned of Algebra, unused, is pushed out to make room for that which is currently rehearsed.
All that said, it would probably be a better world if most adults knew enough Algebra that those who communicate with them in the popular media could assume that knowledge and use basic Algebra, where appropriate, to communicate more carefully about economics, finance, education, policy proposals, science, technologies like computer encryption, and so on.
But we should face the reality that most adults, products of a K-12 mathematics training system that has been remarkably consistent for decades and that is only moderately tweaked by the CC$$, report that they detest math, avoid math like the plague in their daily lives, and are basically innumerate beyond elementary arithmetic.
So, TE thought, when he posed that question for his students, that he was measuring a) their knowledge of basic Algebra and b) what his students had been taught in school. In reality, he was measuring the former, not the later. They had been taught basic Algebra and had learned enough of it to pass the tests required of them, and then had forgotten it, as you have likely forgotten your high-school Spanish or French or whatever other language you were introduced to and then didn’t keep up. That which is learned without any intrinsic motivation to learn it, and that which is not then used–rehearsed–is forgotten very rapidly.
Again, the CC$$ approach to K-12 math instruction basically adds a couple tweaks to an established formula. The CC$$ in math simply tweaks a remarkable consensus that already existed, for the preceding state standards were themselves only minor variants, for the most part, on the NCTM standards on which they were modeled. People can argue about the CC$$ tweaks. The authors of the CC$$ in math basically added a bit more responsibility for demonstrating conceptual understanding and a bit more responsibility for understanding connections among mathematical ideas. They pushed a few bits (the concept of a variable, the concept of a function) down a grade level or two, on average, and they cut some of the material found at the upper end in the more challenging of the state standards.
Tweaks. But basically the same thing we have been doing.
It’s COMPLETELY ABSURD to think that we can do as we have done and expect to get the dramatically different outcomes that the proponents of the CC$$ + PARCC or SBAC “reform” is calling for.
We’re not building the sort of intrinsic motivation to do mathematics–the interest in mathematics–that will create large numbers of adults who enjoy mathematics–who will, for example, on occasion do some mathematics recreationally or discuss mathematical concepts with friends.
How would our math instruction be different in order to get that sort of outcome? That’s a question that the current “reforms” does not address and so, of course, it’s one that those “reforms” do not answer, even tentatively.
cx: that the current “reforms” do not, of course
There are a number of other typos and small grammatical errors in that post, written in haste. My apologies. I do with that this blog had an edit feature!
Note that these DOE reports are all about preparing the workforce. The Department of Education’s Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance report–the one that calls for Orwellian continual monitoring of students’ affective states via devices attached to them (read it yourself; it actually does this) is intended to further that goal–to produce a particular type of worker. Note, also, that the DOE is not issuing reports about how to nurture creativity, independence of thought, or skepticism about capricious and arbitrary authority. This is about prole training, folks. They need the grit, tenacity, and perseverance to stick with the mind-numbing dull task assigned in order to get the crumb that is handed them by their master at the end of the week.
There are many, many affective traits that they could be choosing to promote–intrinsic motivation, for example. But this is about training the proles for their roles in the service economy.
As in, “Will you be taking your latte on the veranda, Mr. Duncan? And will Mr. Gates be joining you? Yes sir. No sir. At once sir, of course.”
These response are the heart of the matter and HUBRIS is just another word for everything to lose. A takeover is underway or is it nearly completed? The ignorance+arrogance cocktail is consumed in mass quantities wherever we look because how else to sedate oneself (and everyone else) to the awareness of a socially, self-inflicted destruction of all that is delicious and delightful within a democracy? Keep you Love Light shining, Robert and thank you!
I love how supporters of deformers try to pigeon hole and politicize the movement. Can’t anyone be pro whole child learning/instruction and anti-testing? It’s pretty clear cut to me. It doesn’t matter what side of the aisle you’re on, Common Core and the circus it brings with it is a detriment and sham. PT Barnum would love it!
The deformers have already proved that they can mandate what people can THINK by issuing, with little objection, a national list of cognitive skills that people are required to teach and learn (the Common Core State Standards). Now they are going to mandate what people are to FEEL.
The deform movement just keeps getting creepier and creepier.
Next our thoughts will be monitored.
Thought is now being monitored. Telling people what they can and cannot teach via a mandatory national bullet list and firing them if they don’t do so as demanded is the work of the Thought Police. But we’ve become so used to this that people don’t even recognize this.
There’s a much bigger agenda. Look over the horizon.
http://www.newswithviews.com/Hoge/anita104.htm
You guys are all obsolete.
Teaching? There’s an app for that.
Need a soul mate? There’s an app for that, too. Just go see the movie Her.
Or just ring up your favorite technocratic Philistine at the Gates Foundation, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, Achieve, or the U.S. DOE
It’s truly awful, but don’t fall for the TeaParty spin. The inaccuracies are mind-boggling.
Nothing about today’s education “reform” policies are “socialist.” Market-based “reforms” are autocratic and come from Taylorism and McGregor’s Theory X, not TQM or Deming.
The privatization of public education originated in the GOP so read Republican neo-liberal economist Milton Friedman’s, “Public Schools: Make Them Private” http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-023.html
Today, Democrats and Republicans are on the same page in education except for the matter of vouchers. However, the GOP is pressing on in support of vouchers, as TN Republican Senator Lamar Alexander recently proposed in Congress that federal funds be permitted to follow children to private schools.
Robert, you are right about the Democrats and Republicans being on the same page. Both are on the charter school bandwagon. But, the reauthorization of ESEA will continue to fund that bandwagon and ” Choice” will ultimately kill public education. I am supposing that the compromise will be Republicans will get vouchers that follow the child and the Democrtas will get the national school board and more charters. They will both exasperate local neighborhood schools.
I disagree with you about TQM. PPBS was the original budgeting system arranged for compliance. But, Deming put ” performance” as a measure with the management system. Therefore, putting a number on subjective measures, like grit, can be measured depending on what the test makers want to create for a standard like ethical judgement or adaptability. Put a number or percantage on that. Grit is going to be measured. NAEP and the CCSSO are determined to measure attitudes and values.
Click to access tab11-saturday-board-policy-discussion.pdf
Click to access ILN%20Knowledge%20Skills%20and%20Dispositions%20CCR%20Framework%20February%202013.pdf
Anita,
“Therefore, putting a number on subjective measures, like grit, can be measured depending on what the test makers want to create for a standard like ethical judgement or adaptability. Put a number or percantage on that. Grit is going to be measured.”
Just because someone assigns a number to something (numerizes it) does not mean it has been measured. None of these tests to which you refer are measuring devices. They may be an assessment (and piss poor ones at that) that assigns numbers to results but that is not the same as “measuring” something.
Ay, Ay Ay, the Quixotic Quest has so far to go but as long as the evil of “supposed measuring” is part of the discourse the quest will go on!
Duane
Ah, Duane. I got your attention. That’s where you are wrong. Of course, there are measuring devices. And they are scored. There are certain objectives that are used to score attitudes and values. Criterion scoring is used to determine whether the student met a minimum positive attitude according those objectives. It also depends on the definition of what exactly will be measured.
So lets say, the test makers are measuring citizenship and ethical judgment will be measured. Are they going to test a disposition for threshold? …at what point will a student not be honest?? And what is the definition for honest? Telling a lie to your parents or protecting your best friend who you are loyal to? Only the test maker knows for sure…you need to have their evaluations and definitions.
NAEP tested these areas in our state assessmnet for years before I filed a federal complaint against the PA DOE. They had to remove the test. I have these evaluations and the scoring, and its not pretty.
When CCSSO or NAEP says they are going to measure attitudes….they mean again.
Anita,
Again, these standardized tests aren’t “measuring” devices but inherently invalid “assessing” devices. Measurement and assessment are not the same thing, not even the differing sides of the same coin as CCSS and the accompanying standardized tests are.
It may seem a matter of semantics but those semantics have far reaching, as you’ve been pointing out (the majority of which I agree with your efforts, thanks) the various effects and/or consequences. The edudeformers and test makers would love to have everyone believe that standardized tests are measurements and “not just an assessment” because the numerizing of the results lends a pseudo-scientific veneer to their products. Why would one challenge what they’re doing when it is obviously “scientific”(sic) when in reality they are just scientized nonsense made to look “scientific by numerizing them and performing all sorts of psychometrical analysis.
To completely understand why this is the case I direct you to Wilson’s in “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at:
http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700 especially Chapters 6 and 14-16.
Duane
If you create a distant, centralized, top-down authority, even with the best of intentions, over time, in time, it will be horrifically abused. This is inevitable.
Do you really want to have a centralized authority of any kind that might emerge in the future to have the power to monitor students’ affective states moment by moment? (That’s what the DOE report on Building Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance calls for.) Do you want to teach students that this sort of continual surveillance is NORMAL? Do you want to inure them to something like that? What, exactly, is the difference between that and Orwell’s telescreens, except that it’s even more personal?
You will notice that
as with the new “standards” [one can only use the term very loosely when referring to the amateurish bullet list of CC$$ in ELA],
as with the new national tests,
as with the revision of the FERPA rules to make private student data available to corporations,
as with the coronation of David Coleman as absolute monarch of English language arts in the United States,
and as with so much else that passes for “education reform,”
there was NO NATIONAL DEBATE about this, and there are no mechanisms for on-going input, revision, etc. These decisions are being made for you by a small group of self-appointed arbiters. “The deciders,” as George Bush called them.
This is how things are now done in the Land of the Free.
Duane and Anita. The deformers love to say that “You get what you measure,” and to a large extent, this current incarnation of the education deform movement comes out of the viral spreading of that meme in the business community in the 1990s, which was the era of the Key Performance Indicator (the KPI), the Balanced Scorecard (with its few choice metrics), success through Analytics, and the Managerial Dashboard. But the deformers should look a little more closely at that “You get what you measure” mantra. As Kaplan and Norton pointed out in the Harvard Business Review article that initiated the Balanced Scorecard craze, you do indeed get what you measure, so you better be very careful about what you are measuring.
Here’s the dirty little secret: What you get via high-stakes measurement is what is measured, PERIOD. A measurement commonly creates an operational equivalent for something more nebulous–creativity, intelligence, health of the company, future prospects, etc. Kaplan and Norton were at pains to point out, for example, that financials–balance sheets, income statements, cash flow analyses, etc.–are lag measures–ones that are backward looking, but they don’t necessarily tell you everything you need to know about what is going to happen going forward.
So, there are a couple of distinct problems here. First problem: measurement is often a shell game. Measurement often substitutes something that can be measured for something broader, bigger, more nuanced, and more important, but difficult to get at. So, a list of abilities–the ability to visualize what a figure will look like when rotated, the ability to predict the next number in a series of numbers, the ability to predict the next visual pattern in a series of visual patterns, etc.–becomes a stand-in, a measurable substitute for intelligence generally. Recognition of the shell game problem is summed up in the old quip, “What do IQ tests measure? Well, they measure IQ.” Second problem: Measurement is often a garden path. It leads you in one direction, and one direction only, and you miss the rest of the wood. You fail to see that there are many paths in the garden. And there’s a third problem that I haven’t mentioned yet, that grows out of these two: opportunity cost. Looking at that eunuch’s shadow of a measurement (the poor substitution for the more robust concept) and attending only to that measurement–going down that one path–consumes time and energy that might be put to other, more productive uses.
There’s a bright fellow named TE who often tussles with Duane on this blog about this subject of measurement. Duane says, “You can’t measure those qualities,” which is a version of what I’ve called the “first problem,” above. And TE says, “If I want to know whether my student can do basic Algebra, I ask him or her to do some basic Algebra. There’s nothing difficult about that,” and while that may be true, it misses nuances like, “What components of basic Algebra are you talking about? How do you define basic Algebra? Is it basic Algebra that you should be measuring, or is there something else more important or valuable that you are not looking at?”
Emmy said on this blog, recently, that these high-stakes tests have not been subjected to enough scrutiny. I heartily endorse that view. I think that if people looked at them at all critically, they would end the practice of giving them. These are not tests of reading and mathematics. They are tests of ability to take these kinds of tests. They lead us down the wrong pedagogical and curricular paths. And their real costs, though ENORMOUS, are but a shadow of their opportunity costs.
I love this thread because not many people want to discuss this at length because they have not experienced it. I have. I know what the test makers are looking for. So, IS there something else more important or valuable that you are not looking at?” Or a better question…is there something more important that the government wants to collect on every student in a state longitudinal student data system? The answer is yes. So,if you set up hypothetical situations and condition them by reward and punishment, you can predict future behavior of a student. The conditions are controlled by the test makers. Therefore, the predisposition of the student can be determined. What is more important, what happens after that? Do students have interventions into their personalities because they have not met the government criterion or standard? What is the roll of teachers?
So the big question is, Is it legal? Even if it can be done, is it legal? This is the reason I filed my federal complaint. Collecting the data is a privacy issue. The scoring of attitudes and values is illegal, and a freedom issue. This issue is huge. It must be discussed at length. We must ask for every detail. The definitions. The scoring. The interventions. AND, parental,permission.
Why do you object to a longitudinal study of students? Most of what it would show is already known, that the the effects of poverty are immense, that they can be ameliorated, to an extent, by no child left behind, and that hose benefits “fade”. Everyone knows why they fade, but where is the **harm** in collecting that data?
The collection of personally identifiable information in a longitudinal study is an invasion of privacy. This data collection is not ” harmful” except that it does violate certain aspects of what we Americans feel is private in our lives. The harm in collecting this data is,
” How will the data be used to determine decisions on our lives?” Do we think that only the poor will have data collected about them? Realize that we are talking about every single student in the entire United States. The next step IS harmful.
A standards based system, Common Core, will eventually demand an IEP ( career or education pathway) for every student. This is a different ball game. So after the government has the “grit” attitudinal and value laden information on a student, and the government decides what the standard will be for those attitudes and values, scored data will be used for interventions. So, should we allow this data to be collected in the first place? Should we be trying to change personalities? What model are we looking at? What does the government want this person to look like? Teachers must teach to the test, right? That’s what the new evaluations are all about, monitoring the teachers to be sure they are teaching Common Core, right?
This is what TQM is all about. The efficient monitoring of all components on the scale…students, teachers, principals, superintendents, schools, districts, states. Now, the government will tell you, it’s for equitable education. It’s for the poor. But, honestly, I believe the poor were used to do the research for the government to establish these baseline attitudes. The Common Core copyright and Race to the Top grants, plus ESEA flexibility waivers pushed the system on everyone.
I lived in a very rural area when they were giving this unbelievable subjective test that had 350 questions on attitudes and values, 30 math, 30 reading analogies. The DOE publication explaining the test to the administration said, depending on the sophistication of the population is whether you would tell the parents about the test. So unless you asked specific questions, no one bothered to ask. When I asked to see the test, I was denied access. Four years later, a federal investigation, mounds of scientific papers, I had gotten the tests, the evaluations, and the addendums to all the testing materials. The DOE, along with NAEP, were testing things like, thresholds of compliance by reward and punishment: locus of control, methods of coping with freedom. Yes, I kid you not. So, scientific BF Skinner measurements profile a personality…what makes you tick. How will you respond, receive stimuli. Are you willing to do something for your best friend, even if it is wrong….if punishment is incurred will you obey. This test was scored to a minimum positive attitude according to what the government wanted…group think. Any individualistic character trait was scored as a weakness.
So, yes, data collection can hurt you and can be harmful. Especially in the hands of big brother making the decisions.
The next step…compliance.
We need a federal investigation on FERPA. The personal data collection on students MUST be stopped. The data given to third party vendors for free, must be stopped.
very brief reply: basically, we’re already there in terms of a Surveillance State. That doesn’t mean that we, or our children, will be opressed. This is not a dystopian novel (why are todays dystopian novel s boring? Huxley and Orwell were so much more interesting…), we have an imperfect, democratic, republic.
To thufirth: what makes you think we haven’t begun to go down that path already of being oppressed? I brlieve we are feeling the effects already. I’ve been reading the stories of parents and teachers on this blog explain all of the grave actions taken by the “deformers”, the corporate money makers, the foundation philanthropists funding the “deformers”, charter schools without elected representation but using our tax money, shuttering local neighborhood schools, forcing families to lose their local school and forced to move, forcing teachers to be evaluated by how their students score on tests…may I go on? The key here is, what can we do in this republic to stop these events? Maybe the republic isn’t working anymore if the people are not able to stop this madness….it just moves forward. We don’t have a voice or a vote in most of the situations that i just described. There is a bigger agenda. It is not happenstance. Do you think the takeover of charter schools is a coincidence?
Please read my latest article recently published..long but important. Let me know what you think.
http://www.newswithviews.com/Hoge/anita104.htm
“…you do indeed get what you measure, so you better be very careful about what you are measuring. ”
Your post sums it up pretty well.
Robert, you make it so clear.
The only thing the assessments test is how good you are at taking the assessments.
Well done, Anita!
thufirh, This is not a longitudinal study. It is a cradle to grave data file that will be kept on each student and stored on a cloud. No one will guarantee the privacy of that data, and, in fact, vendors can access it, because Duncan changed the regulations for the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) in order to allow that without parental permission. A lot of very personal data is to be included. Amongst the dangers of that is “Big Brother”.
Teachers do not need standardized tests to tell them whether children demonstrate task commitment and perseverance, exercise self-control, are resilient, etc. People need to give teachers a lot more credit for being aware of and developing relationships with their students.
Where is the evidence that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) ameliorated poverty and then the benefits faded? i know of none.
wordpress hangs for me, so short reply. I’m just going by “the daily show” quoting the daily news that no child left behind has positve effects and that thos effects fade. Granted, wikipedia says it’s controversial, but was what I was referencing.
Just because radle-to-grave data on studentscan be orwellian does’t mean that it will be use so. It’s as much about daa on teachers students, I thinkk that’s acknowledged up front.
Right Cosmic Tinker – it gives new meaning to ones “permanent record” card.
Telling “people” what they can and cannot teach is not Orwellian. Wasn’t there some movie about a monkey and some “person” saying his ancestors were monkeys….?
I seem to recall something like that in some boring old movie. So far as I’m aware, paid employees do not have First Amendment rights to “say” whatever they want. To exercise that right, they could stand on a street corner.
Of course, now it’s totally reversed. Does a biology teacher have a “right” to say evolution is just a theory? Or speculate that the earth is thousands, and not billions, of years old?
The employer, in this case a State, will always have a say over its paid employees say during work hours. Not exactly controversial.
BTW, Duncan actually told an interviewer recently, with a straight face, that the plutocrats don’t have a seat at the policy-making table. Have a look at the list of contributors to the DOE report on Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance. Or at anything that comes out of the Gates Foundation via its caporegime heading the Department of Education.
See this excellent piece on The Chalkface blog:
http://atthechalkface.com/2014/02/07/a-bill-gates-reader-where-are-we-going-where-have-we-been/
If there are any readers of this blog who have not read George Orwell’s 1984, it’s time you did.
The Education Deformers seem to be reading it as a policy manual.
Add Animal Farm to the list. I’ll also note that here is another fine example of fiction hitting several weight levels above informational text.
indeed!
Same with Brave New World. Life imitates art a lot. Indeed, it’s often intentional. Remember when, after 9/11, our government consulted with Hollywood?
How about A Brave New World by Huxley or even the nonfiction Future Shock by Toeffel.
Scary!
Might I even add a classic which nobody reads anymore – Lost Horizon by Hilton. Do we really want a world of Shangra La?
Dr. Ravitch, thank you for your comments in this article. Increasingly I want my students to feel that their education is meaningful–something else that can’t be measured.
I am thrilled and encouraged about the topic of this post and all the comments and discussion. I’ve been saying we need to take this back to the most basic core concern- the purpose of formal education. Let’s bring to light what is good and just about educating the next generation to be thinkers. Then they can decide for themselves what kind of world they want to create and exist in! The future does not belong to us.
I’d love to see some deformers jump in this discussion and deny how blatant their efforts are to establish control over the masses. Notice not one has entered this discussion. I often wonder if the younger deformers (TFAers, etc.) really believe what they are saying and doing is “all about the kids.” I wonder how and what they were taught in school that makes them follow this road to hell we are on.
Personally I think they have been taught to “achieve” and what they see in other people’s children as “achievement” is really what they see as a reflection of their own “achievement” because, after all, they are in the positions that are leading this circus. Whatever numbers (“data”) they can collect that show what “they” have achieved and how successful “they” are serve as proof of their greatness. The children behind the xnumbers are superfluous. The numbers they rack up on the backs of other people’s children are no different than their own fathers’ numbers ($) obtained through success in business on the backs of their laborers. This generation of the privileged don’t have to prove their worth with dollar signs. Their parents have made their and it’s therefore a given they could do the same. So maybe they have convinced themselves (with the help of TFA recruiters and such) that they have a higher calling- “helping” other people’s kids.
And what they know and have been brought up around is higher numbers = achievement = self importance = personal success. What they lack is true love for the children and empathy for them that comes from years of being around them in the classroom as teachers and protectors.
They are clueless, heartless, self absorbed narcissists.
And I love all you guys who comment on this blog. And Diane, of course.
In the course of a day my students laugh uproariously, smile, furrow their heads as they concentrate, exchange “meaningful looks” with friends and crushes, hug each other, roll their eyes at my bad jokes, console each other, stifle yawns, call out answers, call out questions, and do a thousand other things that express who they are and who they are striving to become. Yes, they show grit. Often they show grit in circumstances Bill Gates has never encountered or had to contend with. I hope no one ever asks me to tally or quantify these things. I might say something very rude, or I might say that the idea makes me want to throw up. Don’t worry Dr. Ravitch. No explanation is needed.
Middle school teacher: a real teacher talking about real students.
Thank you for your comments.
And as for the owner of this blog “correcting” what she said in DC:
“I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; — but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” [William Lloyd Garrison]
😎
Props for the quotatin from Garrison. It’s PERFECT!
Yikes
quotation
Too bad Bill Gates had the option to drop out of college and pursue his bliss. Too bad he wasn’t hooked up to affective monitoring devices to give early warning signs that he was straying, emotionally, from the tasks assigned to him. This dangerous deviance from what was expected of him could have been caught before it led him to do something strange like found and build a gazillion-dollar company.
Grit, determination, perseverance are all measured when the child, despite computers crashing, fights the feeling of “anywhere but here” which overwhelms them as they continually redirect and focus their attention on boring reading passages and questions, as well as cumbersome math word problems, on a typical CCSS assessment. Since I couldn’t force myself to complete the sample questions, these students will have a higher score than I ever desire to achieve.
I would love to see the gritty details of the Grit Rubric.
“. . . the Grit Rubric.”
First dibs on the GRRRRubric Cube!
What you have posted is so true! They really are deserving of a massive award for tolerating our systemic stupidity for even one fraction of a second. Hugs on this loving insight!
exactly, Ellen
well said!
Thank you, Ellen, for a succinct description of “authentic assessment,” C.C.C.C.R.A.P. style!
I like the parts about “belief factories…” Nicely done.
At one point in Minnesota’s standards and assessment development, there were student dispositions identified such as perseverance, staying on task, or producing quality work which were to be assessed by teachers as part of graduation “packages”. These were dropped from the work because it was legally indefensible to withhold graduation based on “soft” observational indicators. Not all that is taught, needs to be measured in spite of many believing that “what gets measured gets taught”. Minnesota teachers still taught children to display all sorts of effective dispositions without a measurement or mandate.
Check out the TED talk by Michael Sandel – “Why we shouldn’t trust markets with our civic life” http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_sandel_why_we_shouldn_t_trust_markets_with_our_civic_life.html. He argues that the market economy should not become the market society in which values such as education or justice are regulated by the “free” market.
Buying and selling values or children’s dispositions on the open market because the market can regulate their supply and demand is the antithesis of a democratic society. Apply the following market path to any value you choose to observe the distortion of human values and life that might ensue in a market society. Market pathway – define a new commodity/niche, control how commodity is measured/tested, report/advertise the lack of a commodity to generate fear about the lack of the commodity, ramp up production to meet orchestrated demand, closely monitor production pipeline, create materials to produce more of the defined commodity, hire those who can produce the commodity the most quickly, fire those who don’t produce the commodity as directed, orchestrate a hostile take-over for any competitors of the commodity. Is this how we want to generate essential human values and dispositions for our children in our society?
Dr. Ravitch thank you for drawing a line in the sand and saying No More! Thank you for bringing the question back to what it means to be educated in a democratic society and for insisting on transparency in democratic decisions that affect our children.
Very, very well said, Kathleen!
Many thanks to Dr. Ravitch for expressing her gut reaction! It makes me sick to hear about the development of standardized tests to measure children’s “grit” and perseverance as well. As if teachers don’t already recognize and evaluate students’ work/study habits, here comes another assessment to increase profits for testing companies and stress for children, while adding more information to each student’s cradle to grave data file –for which no one will guarantee privacy since Duncan revised the FERPA regulations.
What is worse is how the focus will turn to teaching these skills, in this climate of high-stakes testing, because the model for that is already out there and promoted by Obama and Duncan, which is the “no excuses” military style, boot camp charter school, where mostly Teach for America recruits with only five weeks of training in summer school serve as drill sergeant “teachers.”
God save our children from this rigid, test-obsessed administration and God bless Ravitch for trying to help in doing so!
I think a vomit reflex is good to point out because you know you are alive when that happens!!! It’s an utterly awful thing, but yet somehow it is in those times that the reality of this biological thing called life is right there, tugging at us to remind us of our physical limitations.
Perhaps, instinctively you let out an analogy that is as basic as it can be to the human experience, which is so opposite the notion of measuring abstract traits that preserve the mystery of our lives. Think of all the descriptive words that go away if concepts like love and determination are assigned a score.
This is real. Your comment just shed light on how real it is.
Now if we could just go ahead and get marijuana legal in most states, there would be new revenue freed up, new scientific points to measure, new questions of supply and demand, fewer black dudes locked up for clockin or possessing weed, and it could help that thump in your gullet too, Diane, and keep you from, well, throwing up. 🙂
Selah. This gets more real by the day.
Perhaps, instinctively you let out an analogy that is as basic as it can be to the human experience, which is so opposite the notion of measuring abstract traits that preserve the mystery of our lives.
Joanna, that is a beautiful insight.
And I’ve now decided to measure it all. Since you were able to read the Washington Post account critically and determine which of your remarks required amplification and then produce the courageous response, well you earn a Good Enough/Right On!
And for taking the train to DC in inclement weather, hiking from office to office, cramming a sandwich down during a too quick lunch with no digestive interlude, talking with people who may or may not have been listening or interested and NOT projectile vomiting the sandwich on the audience when asked about calibrating grit & determination intensity in loving little children you earn a Good Job/Big Hug/Secret Handshake/Green Digestible Smoothie. Thanks for Going and Doing What You Do!
Thank you, Diane for expressing what so many of us feel. The volume of comments on this post is encouraging. It is obviously a conversation our society needs to have but is not finding in the mainstream media.
In addition to the scary/folly-filled prospect of this drive to MEASURE “grit,” I also find it simplistic and misguided to ELEVATE the trait of grit so highly (even above wisdom? empathy?). When I think about the environmental devastation that has been largely caused by greed and willful ignorance, I wonder what role “grit” had in propelling a blind and unrelenting drive toward an exceedingly narrow (and dangerous) vision of success ($$$) at all costs.
Alfie Kohn does a wonderful job of questioning much of what underlies the current obsession with self-discipline and grit.
http://www.alfiekohn.org/f_news/fullnews.php?fn_id=8
Another point about measuring grit. .is it legal? …testing attitudes and values is a violation of privacy. Scoring attitudes and values is a violation of freedom.
of course it is
It astonishes me, Anita, that everyone isn’t viscerally repulsed by this. Dr. Ravitch’s reaction shows that she hasn’t yet become one of the sheeple.
It’s not just brilliance and deep scholarship that make Dr. Ravitch the great leader that she is. It’s also this–her instinctive decency–the part of her that wants to throw up at the prospect of continual monitoring of students’ affective states.
I, too, find that stomch-churning.
Don’t know if you’ve seen this DoE report on “grit,” I found it on a Utahans against CCSS website.
Click to access OET-Draft-Grit-Report-2-17-13.pdf
I haven’t read through it yet, but the site that had the link pointed out page 44 of the report that shows a “facial expression camera,” “posture analysis seat” and “wireless skin conductance sensor” that are proposed to be used while a student is using Wayang Outpost an online tutoring system.
Talk about wanting to throw up! That is exactly the right reaction to this.
According to the above federal Department of Education report, KIPP students receive Character Report Cards. What is wrong with Arne Duncan that he can’t bother to look up report cards even in the district where he was CEO to see what is on them? I have seen Chicago Public School report cards that have one entire page devoted to this dating as far back as the 1930s.
Now at KIPP, “students walk around school wearing shirts that read, “Don’t eat the marshmallow.” (p. 61) 30 years ago, the Reagan prescription was, “Just Say No.” Does Arne think that mandating a “Don’t” slogan on students’ shirts is going to stop the school to prison pipeline?
Arne: Take all of your backward ideas and GET THE HELL OUT OF OUR LIVES!
Reblogged this on 21st Century Theater.
Kids are not sandpaper: you can’t measure their grit!
Just an excerpt from an important essay about the movement to teach the poor ‘character’ –
The misguided effort to teach ‘character’
My worry is that we will embrace these essentially individual and technocratic fixes—mental conditioning for the poor—and abandon broader social policy aimed at poverty itself.
We have a long-standing shameful tendency in America to attribute all sorts of pathologies to the poor. Writing in the mid-nineteenth century, the authors of a report from the Boston School Committee bemoaned the “undisciplined, uninstructed…inveterate forwardness and obstinacy” of their working-class and immigrant students. There was much talk in the Boston Report and elsewhere about teaching the poor “self-control,” “discipline,” “earnestness” and “planning for the future.” This language is way too familiar.
Some poor families are devastated by violence, uprooting, and substance abuse, and children are terribly affected. But some families hold together with iron-willed determination and instill values and habits of mind that middle-class families strive for. There’s as much variability among the poor as in any group, and we have to keep that fact squarely in our sights, for we easily slip into one-dimensional generalities about them.
Given a political climate that is antagonistic toward the welfare state and has further shredded our already compromised safety net, psychosocial intervention may be the only viable political response to poverty available. But can you imagine the outcry if, let’s say, an old toxic dump were discovered near Scarsdale or Beverly Hills and the National Institutes of Health undertook a program to teach kids strategies to lessen the effects of the toxins but didn’t do anything to address the dump itself?
We seem willing to accept remedies for the poor that we are not willing to accept for anyone else. We should use our science to figure out why that is so—and then develop the character and courage to fully address poverty when it is an unpopular cause.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/02/06/the-misguided-effort-to-teach-character/
well said, Richard
You are using a broad brush when you disparage character education. I have seen it in both suburban and urban settings. There is nothing wrong with having a monthly theme such as cooperation, empathy, kindness, even integrity, followed up with various quotes or vignettes exemplifying these virtues. I have even seen posters in the hallways “advertising” the monthly theme. These are attributes we should all strive for.
Now I’m not advocating a grade or an assessment of character ed, nor do I think that it will solve societal ills. It is just one of many concepts which educators teach on a daily basis which is unmeasurable at the time, but might bear fruit at a further point in the lives of their former students, like a love of literature or an appreciation for music.
These intrinsic values are what make up our humanity, our character being only one part.
Race to the Top! Build True Grit!
Hannah Arendt was right about the banality of evil.
Kathleen – that was an excellent presentation by Michael Sandel. It’s too bad Arne did not take a philosophy class from Professor Sandel while he was at Harvard.
The intrinsic motivation of children is a valid point. We really cannot buy their grades. I’ve tried award systems throughout my years of teaching and they rarely worked. The good students did well, the poor students remained at the bottom of the class. The only time I was partially successful was when I offered an ice cream social to the classes who returned or replaced all their library books by the end of the year. This was more a motivator for their teachers. Some could not be bothered to remind the children to bring their books back. As far as the students were concerned, whereas I had some success with first or second graders, the older students could care less.
As the old Beatle’s song says: “I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love.” Or good grades or a mechanism to internalize a love of learning. Nor do we want money as an external award system. Duane would suggest that even grades are superfluous. And most of us will agree that scores on a national assessment, even if the questions are valid, are not the way to achieve success in education.
Tried to send this several times to no avail. Maybe it’s too long so will send in parts:
Part I
People can decide for themselves whether they see any resemblance between Arne Duncan’s management style and his education “reform” policies and Deming’s 14 Points & 7 Deadly Diseases
Deming’s 14 points
Deming offered fourteen key principles for management for transforming business effectiveness. In summary:
1. Create constancy of purpose for the improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive, stay in business, and provide jobs.
2. Adopt a new philosophy of cooperation (win-win) in which everybody wins and put it into practice by teaching it to employees, customers and suppliers.
3. Cease dependence on mass inspection to achieve quality. Instead, improve the process and build quality into the product in the first place.
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag alone. Instead, minimize total cost in the long run. Move toward a single supplier for any one item, based on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
5. Improve constantly, and forever, the system of production, service, planning, of any activity. This will improve quality and productivity and thus constantly decrease costs.
6. Institute training for skills.
7. Adopt and institute leadership for the management of people, recognizing their different abilities, capabilities, and aspiration. The aim of leadership should be to help people, machines, and gadgets do a better job. Leadership of management is in need of overhaul, as well as leadership of production workers.
Part 2 – Deming
8. Drive out fear and build trust so that everyone can work more effectively.
9. Break down barriers between departments. Abolish competition and build a win-win system of cooperation within the organization. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team to foresee problems of production and use that might be encountered with the product or service.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets asking for zero defects or new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
11. Eliminate numerical goals, numerical quotas and management by objectives. Substitute leadership.
12. Remove barriers that rob people of joy in their work. This will mean abolishing the annual rating or merit system that ranks people and creates competition and conflict.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job.
They all make me want to throw up; and I don’t have to worry about being politically correct. Get the federal government out of our education.