John Ewing wrote a brilliant article called “Mathematical Intimidation.” If you haven’t read it, please do. It demolishes VAM. He calls on mathematicians to speak out. And at Brown, we read here, he spoke out:
“John Ewing, Executive Director of the American Mathematical Society and President of Math for America, was the speaker at a Brown commencement forum today. He spoke to a packed audience on the question, “Is There an Education Crisis?” Since it’s unlikely that the media was there for this one, here’s a synopsis for those following the public education debate:
“Ewing briefly described the various reports going back to 1958 that proclaimed the so-called crisis, and listed the forces that benefit from keeping it “in the forefront of the news”: politicians; the education/industrial complex; and that aspect of the American character that likes a crisis because a crisis “demands action and demands it now.”
“He focused on three areas in which the crisis has been manufactured. First, the falling scores on the Program for International Assessment (PISA) scores really haven’t fallen; scores have been roughly the same over the years in both reading and math. Second, the reporting of the National Assessment of Educational Proficiency (NAEP) has been misleading; scores have been reported as showing “only” one-third of students as proficient or above proficient, but actually one-third of students received a grade in the A range, which is really pretty good. As for the “dropout crisis,” Ewing pointed out that while the graduation rate looks low at 76%, it’s hard to get right and also a poor measure compared with the completion rate (percent of 18-24 year-olds getting a degree) at 90%, or the dropout rate, which at 8% is about half of what it was in 1970.
“Ewing acknowledged that some things in public education are very wrong – namely endemic poverty, awful textbooks published by an industry that’s only interested in profits, and lax teacher education programs – but condemned the crisis mongering. It leads to public alarm, an obsession with testing and accountability, a failure to focus on the real problems, and, worst of all, the destruction of the public education infrastructure, its teachers. He warned that good, experienced teachers are leaving, and young people no longer see teaching as a worthy career choice. We need to recognize that successful reform is a slow process, to turn down the volume on the alarm, and to make our teacher education programs both appealing to our best college graduates and difficult to gain admission to.”
And those awful textbooks are about to get a LOT worse. The whole point of the Common Coring of the United States was that some educational materials monopolists, who paid to have these “standards” created, wanted, NOW, a single national bullet list to tag their assessments and software to because that creates economies of scale that enable them to maintain and expand their monopoly positions, leading to lack of competition and to the death of innovation.
You do not get innovation via centralization, regimentation, standardization, command, and control.
You get mediocrity and after that, you get thought control.
And once they publish these new and retrograde textbooks there will be no need to ever change them as the Common Core standards are permanent. A feature if you are a publisher. A bug if your an educator. There is no mechanism in place for review or revision of these standards. They will not ever be revised, fixed, or improved. Ever. No feedback mechanism exists.
CC = Carved in Concrete
And just what is needed in order to drive the Carved in Concrete Commoners’ Core Curriculum Commissariat College and Career Ready Assessment Program,
or CCCCCCCCRAP, C8RAP
CC = Cast in Concrete
MY mechanism for revision and improvement works way better than David Coleman’s.
When I look at individuals who excel in their fields,
the best of the best. There is one common thread.
They never stop trying to improve. Never. I’m no fan of Tiger Woods but he didnt change his golf swing four times for the fun of it. Those that excel realize that their is always room for improvement.
If we truly want our education system to excel, to be the best of the best, why would we settle on natioanl standards that CANNOT be improved, revised, changed, or eliminted? Why?
Yes Bob…thought control is rampant in Los Angeles at LAUSD.
Please give our public schools a boost so students can learn math, and not be charterized.
Pass this petition to keep Magruder on the Bond Oversight Committee to all your lists and all your blog sites. Sign it right now, so LAUSD can see the world is watching and they can no longer operate in secrecy.
https://www.credomobilize.com/petitions/reappoint-lausd-bond-oversight-committee-citizen-member-stewart-magruder-as-a-watchdog
It is only with vast national attention that we in LA have any chance of overcoming this inept and seemingly complicit BoE, and the ruling hand of Eli Broad and his puppet, Supt. Deasy.
signed, Ellen
Based on Ewing’s assessment, from which a strong indictment against Arne Duncan, can be inferred, what more does it take for the President to ask for his resignation?
Obama has long had enough to ask for Duncan’s resignation. The fact that he hasn’t tells us all we need to know about Obama.
Duncan is a wind-up toy. He does precisely what he is told to do. He is carrying out Mr. Obama’s education agenda.
Wise people can change course.
Who is wise in the whole scenario, Linda? Lots are shrewd and devious, all are greed ridden, but long term wisdom is not apparent.
I think, Ellen, that these people see the Deforms as a win-win. They think that those deforms are educationally sound AND they think they will make lot of money from them. On the former, they are mistaken, but there is nothing like a big financial interest to distort people’s judgment.
This too shall pass. The Rube Goldberg creation of VAM will eventually collapse. Those causing so much damage to students, teachers, and parents will avoid accountability and comfortably retire or move on to lucrative careers at Pearson. As always, it will be up to teachers to pick up the pieces and repair the schools.
The VAM models are so flawed and the measuring assessments laughably irrelevant, we’ll look back and wonder how education could have considered such nonsense. The credibility of real math and science will suffer from collateral damage caused by corrupted, profit-driven “researchers”.
This too may pass but it will leave a wake of devastation in its path that will take a couple of generations to repair.
The brain drain of experienced senior teachers that are retiring early, being fired through VAM hocus pocus, being abused in cities like NY, LA, and Chicago, and the pointlessness in achieving advanced education degrees (since they will be largely worthless in the current climate) will not be a quick fix or an easy fix.
I am a praying person, so I pray. A lot. I also shed tears of sadness. A lot.
I agree. Too much senseless destruction caused by Reformers.
MathVale, what you have described, here, has occurred again and again and again in US education. There was a time in this country, for example, when the pseudoscience of Behaviorism hand a stranglehold on educational policy and was being almost universally touted by Educonsultants, Edupundits, professors in education schools, policymakers, and think tanks. All these people were VERY, VERY sure of themselves. THEY were on the side of scientific approaches to education, and anyone who opposed them was a fool. There were many, during that era of the Behavioral Objective, back in the 1970s, who lost jobs, didn’t get promotions or tenure, and basically had their careers ruined if they DARED to challenge the prevailing cult dogma, masquerading as science, that was Behaviorism. Worst of all, people didn’t attend to the sound arguments against Behaviorism put forward by many, many educators.
At the time, in the mid 1970s, it seemed impossible to believe that Behaviorism in education would SIMPLY GO AWAY. It was THOROUGHLY ENTRENCHED. Just about every state department and district in the country, for example, was requiring that every lesson plan that every teacher made have behavioral objectives associated with it.
But when was the last time an evaluator asked you what the behavioral objectives were for your lesson?
Now, we are in the grips of another pseduoscientific education “reform,” this one based on data-driven decision making (evaluation, mostly) based on summative standardized tests of invariant, poorly conceived “standards.”
The whole Accountability reform is as preposterous and pseudoscientific as was the Behaviorism reform in its day, it’s grip is as strong, and it, too, will pass in time as people come to understand more clearly why it doesn’t work and how much damage it is doing.
Some of these folks are VERY SLOW LEARNERS.
The current “reform,” Accountability, shares another characteristic with the previous one, “Behaviorism”: not only is it based in pseudoscience–in error–but it is being implemented via terror. People are really, really afraid to speak out against it, for fear of negative sanctions.
What a shame it is that we have to relive this history, that we have not learned from it.
“And at Brown, we read here, he spoke out”
Can we get the link to that piece? The VAM article is great, but I’d love to see Ewing’s comments at Brown too.
Diane published all of it. I know because it’s my report, intended to fill people in on the gist of his remarks. Ewing and I also had a bit of a correspondence; I wrote him after the talk at Brown: “Such events with speakers like you, who are recognized as experts, are immensely important if we are ever to turn the tide; people need to be convinced and it’s not easy to convince them when all the authority is arrayed on the other side. Please speak out in other arenas (i.e. legislative hearings) as well as other media (i.e. newspaper opinion pieces). It’s so important!” His response was “YOUR voice is the one that needs to be heard.”My response was “I’m afraid it’s the contrary; teachers have been so discredited that their voices are easily ignored.”
Reblogged this on Dolphin.
from the Rheeformish Lexicon:
data-driven decision making. Rheeformish numerology
Bob Shepherd: in a point-counterpoint to the Rheeformish Lexicon, I provide the last paragraph in John Ewing’s article:
[start quote]
Whether naïfs or experts, mathematicians need to confront people who misuse their subject to intimidate others into accepting conclusions simply because they are based on some mathematics. Unlike many policymakers, mathematicians are not bamboozled by the theory behind VAM, and they need to speak out forcefully. Mathematical models have limitations. They do not by themselves convey authority for their conclusions. They are tools, not magic. And using the mathematics to intimidate—to preempt debate about the goals of education and measures of success—is harmful not only to education but to mathematics itself.
[end quote]
Although apparently an old dead Greek guy anticipated this by over two thousand years:
“A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.” [Plato]
Go figure! [for the shills and trolls on this blog—a numbers/stat joke]
😎
Read this, quoted it in a paper along with another in the same vein.
New York teachers: JUNE 3 – The day that CC tests really hit the fan!
The first day that CCSS aligned tests become (quasi) high stakes.
CC algebra and CC english tests will be administerd to most HS students in NY,
These are two (of five) tests required for graduation. NSSED is however, allowing students to take the “old” Regents tests as well. Then they get to use the highest score.
HS math and ELA teachers must view these tests and report the truth. Specific details regarding test items are not necessary, but please look at the tests. Let us know what you see. They are not the Medusa of NY education. Secretive tests are gotcha tests, nothing less. Do not cowtow to the threats of King, Cuomo, Tisch, Gates, Duncan, Coleman, or others. This (6/3) will be the first dat of test reckoning.
“Lax” teacher education? Many teachers cannot raise a family on a teacher’s salary alone. So long as we educate all students, the prestige of other professions is not present. Thus, the salaries reflect our “having” to accept everybody. This lack of prestige, reflected in salary, is also reflected in the overall calibre of teacher training programs. All are connected.
I am also a little leery of the broad brush approach when describing teacher preparation programs. I’m not sure that we need to go for the “best and the brightest” either. We really get hung up on “excellence,” and I’m not sure we know what that means. In any case, our system of funding public education would not support a high flying teaching staff. Is it possible that we could have a competent teaching staff (as Pasi Sahlberg apparently thinks we already have) without getting into another quest for excellence? We have had an abundance of good teachers who we have spent the last two decades destroying. Now we are going to create the programs to lure those superior creatures who have managed to elude their destiny as educators into teaching? I am not claiming that everything has been golden, but we must avoid the same mindset that says we need to “turnaround” our failing schools of education.
Can’t say that I agree, 2old…I have spent much work time in various grad schools of education around the country for many decades…and the quality of too many students seeking teaching credentials has definitely diminshed over the years. If you talk with dissertation and thesis supervisors, many are very discouraged. Sad to say, the profession seems to be attracting too many students who see it as an easy vocation. Many old time professors are struggling with this attitude. It has been without doubt part of the dumbing down of American public schools. It is not the shining light of new teachers that can save our schools, but rather the highly trained old timers (such as those who trained with Madelyn Hunter) who are being fired to cut costs, that brings down the quality. The public has a fantasy that the older teachers have lost their game skills, but at least in the classes where I have observed, particularly in the inner city schools, some older teachers still know the how to foster core learning better than some newcomers.
Trying not to paint all with the same discouraging brush.
You obviously know what you are talking about. I am just speculating, but I stand by my aversion to just looking for the “best and the brightest.” As a sub, I have found the older, more experienced teachers are better all round teachers. The younger teachers may be “fresher” but they definitely need seasoning. The older teachers know how their lessons are going to go and they can predict how a class or a student will react with an ease that almost appears innate. I do not know about content knowledge since I am not in the classes with teachers often enough. However, the more a teacher relies on scripted materials, the weaker they are. I have had to “teach” a math lesson using a scripted teacher text that did not even include what the student book looked like. I was literally just reading words! I could not believe that anyone would find this program effective. They were using it in an elementary special ed classroom. When I taught elementary math to special ed students, I scoured the resources in and out of school to fit the needs of the students. Every day was a diagnostic session where I learned more about how the students thought and how I might make the material more accessible. Anyone who has been “trained” as a teacher to deliver these canned programs is not a teacher as far as I am concerned. If that is the kind of mentality you see in the education programs, then there is something seriously wrong not only with the students but with the faculty that promotes this garbage. I really had a hard time “teaching” this material. It was very unsettling.
My late night comments, in the light of day, got garbled. In plain terms, I see many of the well trained older teachers, those who are not yet burned out, doing a great job in inner city, over crowded, schools. These are the teachers being fired to cut costs of higher salaries, and now we get young newly trained teachers, and/or TFA kids trying to do the job…and too often failing.
“Ewing acknowledged that some things in public education are very wrong – namely endemic poverty, awful textbooks published by an industry that’s only interested in profits, and lax teacher education programs – but condemned the crisis mongering.”
Are teacher education programs really lax? I’m somewhat surprised that John Ewing would say that. Lax in what area(s)?
How was your teacher education program? Mine was at the University of Maryland. They had a special program called the Maryland Masters Certification Program for career changers. It was a one-year program, full-time, and included two semesters of a student internship at a local high school. I was part of a cohort of about 25 professionals that were in this program. We couldn’t work outside of the program, as there wasn’t any extra time. 42 graduate credit hours in one year. My specialty was math, so I had a number of math teaching classes geared towards secondary math teaching. We also had special ed classes, lots of reading and writing classes, and an action research project/paper we had to conduct at the high school in which we were teaching.
Was I totally prepared for my first year of teaching? Mostly yes, and somewhat no. I knew the math I was teaching, I was very organized, I knew some of the best ways to teach math, and I cared deeply about my students. I wasn’t prepared for the classroom management part of teaching though. That was the most stressful part of my first year. My mentor that first year was fired midway through the second semester for something he did, and I took over one of his classes. It was an advanced math class and only had two students. I did my best to teach those two students in the same period as one of my existing classes that was a lower-level math class.
I believe my teacher education program was very good. It taught me everything that I believe could have been taught me. To me, classroom management is best learned by doing it, and I did learn how to do it those first few years.
I wanted to say something about those “awful textooks.”
We’ve had a MASSIVE CONSOLIDATION of the textbook industry. Most of the companies are owned by one of three parent companies. These days, textbook production is the ultimate example of what happens when you get design by committee and bureaucratic policy driven by nothing but the bottom line.
And all this is going to get MUCH, MUCH WORSE under CCSS because CCSS creates A SINGLE NATIONAL market with ENORMOUS ECONOMIES OF SCALE for the ENORMOUS EXISTING MONOPOLISTS.
It’s time to tell our politicians to wake the $&#@&$*&*$#&* up and do something to introduce real competition, from small providers, to this market again. WE need some intense investigation of the barriers that have been erected that prevent educational publishing from enabling anything like a free market within which MANY players compete.
And when hearings are held on THAT, I want to testify at them.
Teachers count only if their students count. To count in this society, kids have to come from affluent families; the teachers of those affluent kids are paid more and generally treated better. The vast majority of students in k-12 pub schls don’t count b/c they are poor, working-class, or lower middle-class, many not white, many first-generation immigrants. They need small classes and veteran teachers and lots of good food and warm clothes in winter and eye exams; we know what they get instead. The kids that count go to private schls and to pub schls in affluent suburbs. The teachers there are paid more b/c the families of the kids are richer. For the most part, these teachers are also treated with more regard. The private k-12 schls do NOT require their teachers to come out of teacher ed programs or to meet state certification requirements; they can pick and choose among many applicants. Some teacher ed programs are truly excellent despite this class-based hierarchy, despite being under-funded and over-regulated. Other teacher ed programs function as mediocre pipelines to mediocre school systems. The situation is fragmented b/c there are really 6-8 school systems in America–private independents, private religious, private special ed, public affluent, public working class, public poor, privatized charters, etc. Then, there is internal tracking in all schools which further separate elite segments from the general student group. It’s useful to clarify which sector of “American education” we are talking back b/c class and race differences affect schools so much.(Ted Sizer said 30 years ago, “Tell me the income of your students’ parents and I will describe to you your school.”) As long as poverty and inequality rule, schools for the bottom 80% will treat their kids and teachers largely with disregard and disinvestment.
They need small classes and veteran teachers and lots of good food and warm clothes in winter and eye exams.
Or we could just give them more standardized tests.
Agree with all you say here, Ira. Your observations give further substance to mine.
I can’t link to the article.
It wasn’t an article. It was a post to people I thought might be interested in my home state of Rhode Island. I posted on Rhode Island BATs and Coalition to Defend Public Education.