Bill Gates wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal last week about how to solve all the world’s biggest problems.
The answer he said was: Measurement.
This writer, Cathy O’Neill, disagrees. It is not that measurement is unimportant but that measurement is not neutral.
What matters most is who decides what to measure.
Most researchers in education recognize that value-added measurement has serious flaws and unintended consequences.
The teachers whose students produce the highest gains may be teachers who spend every class period doing drills for the test.
The teachers whose students see the smallest gains may have students who don’t speak English or who are gifted and at the top.
If you understand the limitations of the measure–the standardized tests–then you will be reluctant to let them determine which children are considered smart, which teachers get a bonus, which teachers are fired, and which schools will close.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The first thing we should ask when standardized test scores go up is “What had to be sacrificed in order to raise the test scores?”
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…or who cheated. What I have seen in my career is scary.
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….integrity being one of those things often sacrificed.
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How true, how ever increasingly true! I feel we all need to pull back and look at the macro picture of what has also been trashed by the corporate, callous criminals who charade under the guise of having exemplary intentions! Who or what is behind the various losses we Americans have suffered in the past thirty years? Elections where the rhetoric make snake oil salesmen look wise, loss of the middle class because the public is so greedy that we won’t compete with a $2.00 worker in an Asian sweatshops,
a health care system that has sky rocketed the cost because of the HMO “remedy” and pharmaceutical gangster corporates who make outrageous profits, the loss of the family farm to, once again corporate “farmers,” and most damnable, the loss of the honor of our country to jackals who equate torture with necessity and presidents who posit lies for truth and have our young men cannon fodder for their own oil riches! The loss of a wonderful public educational system is yet another victim to the same, out of control,
corporate masters! To only address the educational aspect is to allow the encroachment of everything we hold dear, vulnerable to being sacrificed to the greed
that has destroyed so much!
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One more thing…here is a great 4 minute video that Gates ought to watch.
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We need to throw Albert Einstein’s quote back in Gates’ face: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
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or – is what matters most – figuring out what matters most – and doing/being it. perhaps what matters most doesn’t even involve measurement. spaces of permission with nothing to prove. redefining for equity today. http://redefineschool.com/
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For those who missed it, Gates was interviewed by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. It aired this past Sunday morning.
I tuned in to witness Zakaria ask Gates if he thought charter schools, vouchers, etc, would solve the current ‘crisis’ in education.
Gates completely ignored the question, answering no part of it.
This is a clear victory.
He could not bring himself to admit that these practices have failed, so he ignored the question altogether as to not impugn himself on CNN’s grand stage.
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I do a lot of research on transportation, education and the criminal justice system and devolupe spreadsheets to understand through time what is going on. One thing for sure is that people like Gates use numbers not to see the truth but to back their ideological agenda of the moment. Remember that Gates was behind small schools for 10 years and a billion dollars. Then they suddenly saw that this was a failed system and instantly went to destroying teachers without one iotas information just their personal agenda for their business model to enrich themselves and their friends. Now this is beginning to blow up in their face. The problem is that it is too easy to buy politicians and advertising to promote their failed objectives for personal power and enrichment.
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Are data still important or is it all money, power and ideology?
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BINGO!
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Data is important. It is how you use it that makes it meaningful for the situation. You were correct on the last three as to what drives them.
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All tests and homework will be saved and weighed on a scale at the end of the year.
All pencil sharpener shavings will be weighed as well. Bonuses will be based on a complex paper weight-shaving weight rubric.
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I love it…don’t forget about erasers. They must factor in some way or another.
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Great idea TC. Don’t forget to weigh the books students have read. Yes, I mean great life changing books, CCSS experts.
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It appears that I’m in a commenting mood this afternoon. Is Gates familiar with the Vietnam War? The kill ratios of us to them were extremely disproportionate in our favor. We had more money, better weapons, you name it..all sorts of things that could be measured that were in our favor. We were unsuccessful because of things that could not be measured, which eventually determined the outcome of the war. Maybe he should study the data from the war and see if he could have solved that problem in the world.
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You mean actually learn from history? I don’t think that’s being taught any longer–just math and reading because those are the only two subjects that count. Another sad story on this long arduous “reform” road.
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If you read Campbell’s take, and synthesis of “Campbell’s Law”, one of his evidences was reported kill ratios and how the system was gamed in our favor by changing definitions. I think he looked at the Vietnam war.
Observe from Campbell:
“To return to the U.S. experience in a final example. During
the first period of U.S. involvement in Viet Nam, the estimates
of enemy casualties put out by both the South Vietnamese and our
own military were both unverifiable and unbelievably large. In
the spirit of McNamara and PPBS, an effort was then instituted to
substitute a more conservative and verifiable form of reporting,
even if it underestimated total enemy casualties. Thus the “body
count” was introduced, an enumeration of only those bodies left
by the enemy on the battlefield. This became used not only for
overall reflection of the tides of war, but also for evaluating
the effectiveness of specific battalions and other military
units. There was thus created a new military goal, that of
having bodies to count, a goal that came to function instead of
or in addition to more traditional goals, such as gaining control
over territory. Pressure to score well in this regard was passed
down from higher officers to field commanders. The realities of
guerrilla warfare participation by persons of a wide variety of
sexes and ages added a permissive ambiguity to the situation.
Thus poor Lt. Calley was merely engaged in getting bodies to
count for the weekly effectiveness report when he participated in
the tragedy at My Lai. His goals had been corrupted by the
worship of a quantitative indicator, leading both to a reduction
in the validity of that indicator for its original military
purposes, and a corruption of the social processes it was
designed to reflect.
From: Assessing the Impact of
Planned Social Change
By
Donald T. Campbell
December 1976
This observation, among many more, helped Campbell formulate this statement:
“From this enlarged
perspective, which is supported by qualitative sociological
studies of how public statistics get created, I come to the
following pessimistic laws (at least for the U.S. scene): The
more any quantitative social indicator is used for social
decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption
pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the
social processes it is intended to monitor.”
Any quantitative form of measurement, used to measure phenomena within a social, qualitative structure, “distorts and corrupts” the process itself.
Teaching is of course highly social and qualitative judgments are made on the second. By measuring what occurs within education quantitatively, and holding teachers, principals, students, and schools responsible, we are corrupting our schools.
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Beautiful! Thank you for sharing. Can’t wait to read more about it. Maybe Diane will post it?
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We also have tons of data on students’ attendance and lateness, family income, involvement of social service agencies, home language, parents’ level of education, health and nutrition, complications during pregnancy and childbirth, and myriad other measurements that help create a picture of a child. But no matter how much we differentiate the instruction to tailor it to each child’s needs and learning styles, they still all take the same test.
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Yep–you got it-T
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As old saying goes, “Figures don’t lie, but liars use figures.” Such is the case with these charlatan, crocodile teary, lovers of children…the queen of which is Rhee! When I was a kid, there was an old joke: The Russians announced today that in a world competition, they came in second…of course, there were only 2 contestant which never was part of the news release!
This whole sham of educational reforms is the worst example I’ve seen of fudged figures, or just flat out lies. WHY is there such a full court press to shove down the nation’s throats these failed policies that have trashed teachers, and refuse to be accountable for their destruction of education!
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Perhaps the “reformers” weighed two options:
1. Take responsibility for the mess they have caused.
2. Continue to reduce all concerns to meaningless but glitzy data charts that the unsuspecting public will ooh and ahh over and blame those darn academic freedom loving teachers for just about everything.
They chose #2 because it’s just so much easier
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I largely agree with Ms. Ravitch and Mr. Einstein. But hasn’t this discussion become too one sided and one dimensional? Where are the diverse voices?
The topic is far more complex. For example, what about the entire method of public school funding that depends on measurement of attendance and enrollment and 100s of different variables in complex formulae? I work on the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation supported project to collect these measurements in giant data warehouse for the state of Texas, to revamp the tracking and funding of the K-12 system. Is it wrong? How else could we do it? Should we abandon testing and measurement entirely?
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WENN ICH DATA HÖRE … ENTSICHERE ICH MEINEN BROWNING!
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Und wenn ich Data höre, bin ich froh, daß meine Kinder nicht jung sind und daß ich in zehn Jahren Pensioner sein kann!
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Gates’ approach to everything is the way an engineer tests a product, reviews data, and then tweaks the process to improve the product. This works for machines but not teachers and students. Testing mania must end.
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Any good person in business knows that people do not work like machines or manufacturing processes. I used to work for Kelly Johnson of the Skunk Works. They knew that you had to treat people well or a good product that worked under extreme conditions would not stay together or be built correctly. It works. Gates plan does not work for humans. I am sure he does not treat his people who make him his real money that way.
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http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-february-4-2013/exclusive—michelle-rhee-extended-interview-pt–3
Did any one else see the Rhee interview on Jon Stewart this weekend? Part 3 of the extended interview is the best part.
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A test is a test. Anything else is metaphorical.
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Let’s not forget FERPA. This used to protect a child’s educational record. However, recent changes now allow your children’s personally identifiable information (PII) to be shared with third parties for research and “personalized” products (i.e. development)
So now, for the price of a dollar – which the government took from us in the first place – every state will create a database so that they can evaluate the effectiveness of the programs that they are forcing us to put in place. Due to the Herculean effort and diversion of resources that these programs entail, surely schools will fail, and schools will be taken over. Then they have the data and our children!
This is fraught with loads of issues, not the least of which is identity fraud. Our own Homeland Security director tells us that cyber attacks are imminent. Do you think they can keep our children’s (and possibly teacher’s) PII data safe? I have my doubts.
Ask your district now! Put it in writing – who will be accountable if this data is breached? Ask these questions: What data is included in a student record? What teacher data is included? Who does the district share the data with? School’s must address this if you ask! Please explain this to parents in your district. They will be concerned. Tell your PTA!
If they can’t answer the questions to your satisfaction, don’t give them the data!
Opt-out of Directory information.
Parents – opt your children out of testing.
Opt-out of any and all electronic data collection – any program where your students enter data electronically or get tested!
They can NOT evaluate what they do NOT have!
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I had some fun with the data craze and upcoming Valentine’s Day.
http://oneteachersperspective.blogspot.com/2013/02/along-with-learning-lets-measure-love.html
My district is getting swept up in the data obsession. The governor has furthered the move to more data usage.
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