John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, asked the obvious question about “education experts”: what is their own experience in teaching? He was prompted to ask the question by a recent article in The New York Times:
The New York Times asked 37 experts to evaluate 30 ideas for their “impact on academic achievement, which is generally measured by standardized test scores.”
That goal seems to be the reason why the panel concluded that the “Science of Reading,” and the Mississippi Miracle,” and accountability-driven reforms were low-cost approaches that produce the most benefits.
But, what are the costs to students? After all, they have endured a couple of decades of test-driven, competition-driven mandates that started with the No Child Left Behind Act, that was launched in 2002, and the teach-to-the-test culture that many advocates for the Mississippi Miracle want to bring back.
At least, the Times reporters “asked researchers to rate effectiveness ‘when done properly.’ In the real world, a lot can fall apart because of the details.”
And, they noted::
Several experts also said that schools should think beyond test scores and focus on making learning less boring and more engaging — less passive listening and memorizing for tests, for example, and more open-ended research and project-based learning.
But, I experienced the disaster that began around 2004 in Oklahoma City’s schools when the NCLB was fully implemented, and worsened after corporate reforms, like Race-to-the-Top, were fully implemented.
So, a big question jumped out to me.
How many of the panelists had experience in what happened in the “the real world” of the highest-challenged schools?
And, I was stunned to read the list of the best known experts that were surveyed.
Around a third of them were smart data-driven people, ranging from economists like Eric Hanushek and Tom Kane to Marguerite Roza, the Director of the Edunomics Lab, whose “intentially deceitful” spin is documented in Bruce Baker’s “Seventeen Years of Roza-Tinted Glasses.”
Being a former academic, I had communicated with several of them who correctly understood how difficult it would be to scale up systemic reforms. That’s why reformers usually said that is why they pushed the more affordable, simplistic, quick fix of test-driven accountability; “Our kids can’t wait.”
I understood why so many of them sought quicker, transformative changes, as opposed to the incremental improvements that followed the failed “Nation at Risk” of the Reagan years, his Supply Side economics that wiped out so many blue collar jobs, and the crack and gangs era.
But, many of the best-known advocates I communicated with, including those who served on the Times survey, seemed like they didn’t know what they didn’t know about public schools.
Often I was told, maybe you are right, and if you are, we’ll run more controls.
Yes, many of them now reject the hypothesis that market-driven policies, alone, could replace the complex reforms that traditional educators and their unions, worked for. But, based on my conversations with reformers, then and recently, they still blame us Baby Boomers for supposedly having “low expectations, and accepting “excuses.”
If those experts had had experience in public schools they might have known that “giving schools a rating, like an A-F letter grade, and requiring underperforming schools to make changes” would create the nightmare that the less-expensive, test-driven, competition-driven reforms produced.
Again, to be fair to the Times, they reported that “several experts also said that schools should “think beyond test scores and focus on making learning less boring and more engaging — less passive listening and memorizing for tests, for example, and more open-ended research and project-based learning.”
And they quoted Chris Torres, an associate professor at the University of Michigan, who asked, “How do we get an education system that promotes high academic achievement, but is also a place where kids really want to be?”
And, their reporting prompted numerous readers’ comments advocating for the policies of Scandinavian countries, like Finland, which “has better schools than the United States because its system focuses on equity, high-level teacher training, and student well-being instead of high-stakes testing,” and where “teachers have total autonomy over their lesson plans and methods.
Another commentator also shared her thoughts about how “none of the experts consulted for this project mentioned an evidence-based school improvement approach called community schools.”
I can’t complain when data-driven advocates provide interpretations that educators like me oppose. But, the surveyed group should have included an equal number data-informed, not data-driven researchers, who have done qualitative research, as well as those who listened to the poorest children of color, like my students, who repeatedly complained they had been “robbed of an education,” by standardized testing.
And that is why I’m focusing on the dangers of the “Mississippi Miracle” where ideology-driven advocates “in recent years, … have used a model of accountability that focuses more on student progress,” hoping that will give “underperforming schools support to improve.” Like so many reforms, Mississippi has produced short-lived 4th grade increases, but not increases in 8th grade reading scores, which likely is due to their failure to improve reading comprehension.
I also googled around twenty members of the survey group who I didn’t know. Several were completely committed to the Science of Reading and/or the Mississippi Miracle. For instance, one claimed that this approach is “affordable, effective, and should be done everywhere.” And another expert that I hadn’t studied before said, “Mississippi’s success offers a proven solution to the reading literacy crisis facing many states – a clear road map for closing early literacy gaps and improving reading outcomes nationwide.”
Through my googling, however, I concluded that there were more panel members, who I didn’t know about, who opposed the “Miracle.” Also, I couldn’t find what a number of the other experts believed about it.
Yes, supporters of the “Miracle” often say their 8th grade NAEP reading scores haven’t dropped as much as other states. But, I didn’t see any supporters of the Science of Reading in the Times article who mentioned the way Mississippi is using NAEP materials for test prep, and the effect of small group tutoring becoming too expensive now that the Covid money is gone.
And I didn’t see pro-Science of Reading experts explaining why the Mississippi Miracle is teaching so many kids to reject reading.
Understandably, the debates have focused on the harms vs. the benefits on student retentions.
But, what I fear will matter the most is the degradation of learning cultures. Increased test prep and placing stats over children could bring back a revival of the destructive school cultures that were, I believe, the most important factor that got us here.
Finally, the Times’ other cost /benefits analyses raised questions about their excessively quantitative approach. When they minimized the attempts to control cell phones, A.I., and other technologies, did they try to estimate the harms to students that will result from turning the clock back to unregulated use of digital products? When they minimize the test score gains due to better funding for teachers and class sizes, how would they estimate the human costs of continuing to abandon teacher autonomy, and retaining teachers? And, if they minimize the benefits of non-academic supports for students, mental health supports, and pre-k because they are too costly, how will they measure the costs of treating kids as more than a test score?
