A reader notes that all schools–whether charter or public–are driven in the wrong direction by the current obsession with test scores. High stakes testing distorts education and contorts it for data purposes. He/she comments:
I teach at a KIPP high school and have been thoroughly disillusioned and am looking to get out as soon as possible. We are absolutely driven by test scores (though I wouldn\’t say that\’s unique to KIPP; I think most schools are feeling the state breathing down their necks these days) and my lesson plans have to account for every minute, and students must produce an \”exit ticket\” every day evaluating what they\’ve learned. Obviously, in high school English, this doesn\’t allow for the fact that you often realize what you\’ve learned a bit further down the road, and it leaves no room for the sort of open-ended, robust debate and discussion of literature that characterized my (middle-class, public school) education. We\’re so busy breaking things down into component parts so we can say that a student can show he\’s mastered indirect characterization or metaphor on a five-minute quiz at the end of class that we never get to the beauty of Tolstoy\’s language or the aching desperation of Hemingway’s ”Hills Like White Elephants.”
My greatest regret is that I moved mountains to get my godson into a KIPP school and turned down an opportunity for him to go to boarding school because I thought it was too elitist. It may have been, but it would have given him a comprehensive education as well.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Seems that “ed reforms” have modeled their practices on those used at cheap, Chinese-style cram schools. They don’t care about killing all the joy of learning. It’s just the price poor and middle class parents will have to pay for a public education.
In the meantime, millions of Chinese students are coming to the US for a university and even high school education, to avoid those same pedagogical practices.
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Ahhh… a comprehensive education… creating well-rounded thinkers and people. Wasn’t that the goal of public education???
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I’m pretty sure the goal is now produce workers trained enough to do the job but not educated enough to wonder if the world is as it ought to be. Thinkers = trouble makers.
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The tests, and the joylessness, aridity, compulsion and tedium that surround them, are the curriculum.
KIPP seems to make this it’s reason for being – aside from privatizing education – but it’s infecting schools everywhere. It’s a clear sign of the stinginess and contempt for students at the heart of corporate education reform.
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Someone should show this post to the leadership of the University of Pennsylvania:
Penn becomes first Ivy to partner with KIPP schools
http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/current/2012-09-13/features/penn-becomes-first-ivy-partner-kipp-schools
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Exit tickets can be useful on the occasions they dovetail with a particular lesson. I sometimes have students write a paragraph response to what we read or discussed. But as some daily routine as KIPP uses–or as some non-charters have embraced–they’re contrived and waste three-five minutes of otherwise useful class time.
Our state’s (TN) teacher observation rubrics assume lessons are compartmentalized neatly into one-class units during which students can show “mastery” of particular SPI’s (State Performance Indicators). The idea that anyone can master anything complex in a class period is absurd.
The state test–and the regular common formative assessments we administer–is comprised of questions touching on a selection of the SPI’s. The idea that one or two questions pertaining to, say, identifying tone, can reasonably gauge a student’s mastery of the skill is also flawed. Not to mention, a number of these compartmentalized skills, including identifying tone, are actually inextricably linked to vocabulary level and understanding of context. In other words, a question is not necessarily gauging whether a student understands tone but whether he reads at a sufficient level to able to identify tone in one particular passage.
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Hi Diane,
Can you comment on the following Harvard study on VAM, Chetty et al (2011)?
Click to access value_added.pdf
Kristoff referred to it in his recent editorial. It seems that this study is also what people have in mind when they say that having 3 good teachers in a row will fix the achievement gap. Has this study been debunked? They make a very strong case for VAM in this study. As a public school teacher, I was really scared when this study came out.
Thanks!
Dave O’Shell
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http://jaxkidsmatter.blogspot.com/2012/01/michelle-rhee-debunked-by-numbers.html. another summary.
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Just today I listened to the NPR Ted Radio Hour and heard this presentation on the role of morality and wisdom in decision making (common sense) and the damage done by micromanaging, especially in classrooms. Starts out talking about janitors, but worth sticking with it all the way through. http://tinyurl.com/d7fsql8
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“Obviously, in high school English, this doesn’t allow for the fact that you often realize what you’ve learned a bit further down the road, and it leaves no room for the sort of open-ended, robust debate and discussion of literature that characterized my (middle-class, public school) education. We’re so busy breaking things down into component parts so we can say that a student can show he\’s mastered indirect characterization or metaphor on a five-minute quiz at the end of class that we never get to the beauty of Tolstoy\’s language or the aching desperation of Hemingway’s ‘Hills Like White Elephants.'”
Yes–this is well put. Indeed, much of what you learn or start to learn in high school comes to you later.
This is why I don’t think of VAM-proponents as “intellectuals.” Intellectual activity involves a lot of searching and uncertainty. When you have to attain a measurable objective in every lesson, such searching gets short shrift.
Most subjects have a combination of the measurable and unmeasurable. The measurable aspects of learning are not evil; they even help us appreciate the rest. But when we’re expected to focus only on the measurable, or attain something measurable at all costs, we lose the patience, the playfulness, the brooding that will help us toward substantial understandings.
Simone Weil writes: “If we concentrate our attention on trying to solve a problem of geometry, and if at the end of an hour we are no nearer to doing so than at the beginning, we have nevertheless been making progress each minute of that hour in another more mysterious dimension. Without our knowing or feeling it, this apparently barren effort has brought more light into the soul.”
I feel sick at heart to mention my book again, but it’s all about this stuff.
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This is what my old dept. chair at my former school said. When the principal told him that data driven instruction was the way of the future, he replied, “But if we spend all this time preparing them for a test, when will they ever have the chance to just appreciate something beautiful?” It’s true. We have no time for that at all anymore. It’s rather sad actually. I actually wrote a post about something similar the other day (if you’re interested):
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I used a Relay video with my teachers to give them practice on the observation rubric. They are horrified by the wiggle fingers and drilling of the student. Today, one of the teachers told me about her sister-in-law who works in a charter and wants to get out. She is horrified by the obsession with test scores to the point where teachers are encouraged to nudge students during the test with statements like “look at that again”. They should be audited during their testing sessions. The story of what is encouraging in charters must be told.
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In my public school that is called coaching and cheating.
We would be called to the office for causing a breach and then the teacher would be under investigation with the possible loss of her teaching certificate.
I guess in a charter school it is merely “encourgement”.
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Should have chosen the boarding school. Perhaps you should re-consider.
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The so-called “Harvard study” is from the Kennedy School of Government, a graduate school at Harvard funded by right-wing sources. The authors of the study are specialists in business and economics with neither knowledge nor expertise in education.
The main thing about the paper, however, is that its results are inconclusive. The authors state that there “may be a need to develop more robust measurements” but speculate that that parents “may” want to put their children in with “value added” teachers because everyone knows that good teachers are valuable.
In other words there are no results — Value Added measurements measure nothing.
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Surely all the schools at Harvard is funded from right wing sources, so any research done by any faculty members, no matter the school, can be dismissed on that grounds alone. I suspect that the same can be said of any private university, and increasingly public universities that are having to depend on private donations.
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No, I don’t believe that.
There are many independent scholars and researchers whose views are not determined by their funders.
But it is always wise to know who is funding the research. Just a caution.
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I agree on both counts. Research should be addressed on the merits.
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Somewhere along the line, someone decided that we could break down everything worth learning into its component parts, as if we could even come close to such a disassembly. Then, if we systematically taught these component parts, a student would come out the other end knowing and appreciating the whole–a true assembly line model. Hogwash!
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I am not a statistician, but I can read enough English to see that the results are equivocal at best — and there has been no evidence despite the millions that have been spent trying to prove the contrary that the so-called reforms produce any different results than the system we now have in place. If there were, we would surely be hearing about it. There is also plenty of patent evidence that the cruel “reforms” cause great distress.
N.B. On how some of the “reformers” lie with statistics see also Gary Robinson’s latest post “Grasping at Straws in New Orleans”. http://garyrubinstein.teachforus.org/2012/09/20/grasping-at-straws-in-new-orleans/
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But I think the “reforms” are producing “results”. Didn’t I read recently that, after decades of narrowing, the black-white achievement gap is widening again? Granted, those are the kinds of results you only brag about in certain circles, but I can’t help feeling it’s intentional.
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“Look at that again” – Now would you remind them that they haven’t answered certain questions or not written clearly enough to be understood ? Now on a regents I would do the latter but not the former, but during the term if a student handed in a test early I might do the former. If we criticize testing then maybe the tests should give a student to really demonstrate what they know, and a kinder slower method of assessment might make more sense
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