Michael Weston, a teacher in Hillsborough County, Florida, explains here why giving letter grades to schools is a phony and a fraud that does nothing to improve education. It may be former Governor Jeb Bush’s proudest accomplishment and the linchpin of the “Florida miracle,” but it is still utterly worthless.
Weston, who is running for school board (and who was recently fired for being outspoken) writes:
“School grading does not improve schools. More important; school grading does not improve students. School grading does not promote “accountability.” What is accountability anyway? It is pressure. It is punishment. It is retribution. Taking a pound of flesh from Sligh Middle School will not improve the learning experience of its student body. School grading is an expensive, degrading, discriminatory practice that does not advance the cause of education. Our students, schools, and teachers have become footballs in a game of political righteousness.
“Students fail. This is the elephant in the room and it is not going away. We need to attack the root causes. We must change the conversation, no matter how uncomfortable it might be.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“We need to attack the root causes. We must change the conversation, no matter how uncomfortable it might be.”
No doubt. And what is the root cause? The concepts of educational standards, standardized testing and the “grading” of students. Noel Wilson has shown the plethora of errors involved in those educational malpractices that render them completely invalid. I invite all to read and comprehend his “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700 . He attacks and kills the problem of grading schools at the root.
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms shit in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
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Duane, thanks for this excellent assessment of the testing situation. The multiple issues of students now ‘gaming’ the tests, the margin of error of any testing, the vast issues of variables, and the mistakes made by the psychometry specialists, plus now the free market profit motives, all factor into why this push for testing and grading, not only of students, but also teachers and schools…and your conclusions, are the same as the great number of our colleagues. It is bait and switch mentality that is set in place to fool the fools.
Hope all of the blog masters here will put your post up on their blogs.
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Great post – Thanks!!!
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Ellen,
Thanks for the kind words!
We can only begin to kill the beast by attacking it at the root/heart. And the root and heart are rotten to the core (CCSS being just one component).
I ask that all challenge the status quo of “grading” as an assessment tool, shout out the educational malpractice that it is.
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I was required to givebgrade point averages to students in my remedial reading classes. It was ridiculous but I was given no choice. I would always struggle because this was an intervention class consisting of students that were already failing in other classes because of their poor reading skills. I believe in portfolio assessment as it really shows what students can do.
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It is the politicians and corporate influences that should be graded. They do nothing to help the living conditions and then siphone money out of poor districts, then blame the district. They should be given a grade and fired if their plans don’t measure up.
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Schools are a microcosm of the society in which they exist. The violence seen on the streets and often in the home, the lack of parental support and or supervision, and the stress that is within a home enters a classroom each day with a student. Adults believe they, the children, should just shrug it off and pay attention in order to become successful and be able to remove themselves from this environment. Easier said than done.
Then when politicians open their mouths and degrade the hard and excellent work teachers are able to do, it truly shows how little in touch with American’s common people whom they are said to represent.
Schooling is a three legged stool: Teachers with their skills, expertise and passion, Parents with their longing for a better life for their children and themselves, and Students who must also enthusiastically participate in their education. When one or more of these legs fail, they all fail. They must work together for the process of learning to take place.
Politicians throwing blame around fail to see the harm they do to the parties involved. Or they do see the harm, but are so short sighted, as to not be able to see the long-term negative effects of their actions upon our nation.
Let the teachers teach!
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Let’s be honest with ourselves. The only way to change this situation is through ourselves, the teachers. Most people leave education policy to the politicians and the education administrations. They have neither the time or initiative to truly explore what is going on in the schools across the country. Our actions alone will bring change.
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And how do you propose we do that? We’re already blamed for the ills of the nation, and when we protest, we are told that it’s because we “don’t care about the students.” Only ourselves. THEY DON’T LISTEN.
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Louisiana–a few names for you: Monica Ratliff, Glenda Ritz, Steve Zimmer…and–it can happen–Michael Weston. There will be more. William is right–we have to be the change we want.
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Yep.
Babies cry.
There is no way to stop that, not should there be.
Children struggle in learning. As with babies’ cries, the struggles let us know where they need something as individuals.
NCLB was a way to keep babies from crying. A silly pie in the sky notion.
Why do we have schools? Not to end poverty–schools can’t do that on their own.
The loud ones have been asking the wrong questions to lead the entire nation down a garden path.
Shame on them. All of them. All of us.
Let’s fix this. First: babies cry,children will always have areas for growth.
Next question.
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We need nothing less than a revolution in education. There are too many administrators hauling in big-ass salaries while teachers muddle along at an average pay of 50K in this country. Streamline the admins. They don’t do anything except attend meetings to gather information to stuff down our throats, telling us what an awful job we are doing and how we can fix it. Screw that. We KNOW what’s wrong. We KNOW how to fix it. Just stand the hell back and get out of our way. Take admins down to 30% of their current numbers. Divide up the remaining pay and distribute it to teachers. If we didn’t have to cower in the corners fearing for our jobs and our livelihoods, we would be more able to truly assess what is going on with our kids and then figure out a way…by collaborating with our colleagues…to fix it. The answer is SO damned simple.
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Although I do not agree that the answer is simple, it is amazingly clear that there are too many mid level managers in LA. This has been a truism for decades. I participated in studies since 1982 on levels of hiring and effectiveness of administrators and they consistently find there are too many unnecessary middle managers. The funding for their jobs could and should be going to hire back a large group of the over 30,000 TEACHERS who lost their jobs in the past recession years. Classroom teachers are the meat and potatoes of the education process.
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Why don’t we count the kids pushed into the street when figuring graduation rates? Schools aren’t failure, system is. Also grading kids is a fraud
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Cap, you are so correct about kids pushed into the street. I have worked on learning disability issues at various Cailfornia school districts since 1987, looking into how and when students are tested and thereafter what happens to them. Most often I have learned that they are only tested, generally around 8th grade when they can no longer cover up their learning deficiencies, after they act out in class. That is the trigger for them to be tested. Too often they are suspended for this acting out and as soon as they are left to fend for themselves on the streets, they get in trouble and are sent to Juvenile Justice courts. Only a few judges understand the problem, but too many send them on to the for-profit prisons, and thus, these kids who need special ed and support, instead are headed to a life of incarceration.
It is a massive injustice for children who could be helped if the money and accountability were directed in their favor instead of to bloated middle management which offers little to the system of public ed.
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It’s RIGGED. People who believe the DEFORMERS are well (fill in the blanks). Money trumps just everything ala the DEFORMERS and all the bags of scum from the !% and the political DEFORMERS….so cozy…it’s more than SIC.
Ths is how ridiculusous this country is. My cousin was a “lifer” in the military. WEll the folks of Norfolk, Virginia actually asked him how he went to work at Pearl Harbor. His response, “I go by canoe.” Hey I was even asked, “Where did you learn how to speak English so well?” WHO are these people anyay?
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Was it an outrigger? Sometimes our own ignorance is astounding. I am a suburbanite from way back with a penchant for rural retreat. One of my sons actually lives a rural life style complete with an outhouse ( which is not the standard). He recently rigged his own solar-powered, electrical system since there are no power lines to his neck of the woods. I have little knowledge and few of the skills to live as he does. Every day I learn how much I have yet to learn.
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Yvonne–see my comment above. Ratliff, Zimmer & Ritz beat the money machine. It can be done, and we must NEVER give up or give in.
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Here’s something to think about…
From a corporate-based perspective on education — it appears that although high-stakes testing represents a tiny piece of the learning pie, the results drive both decision-making and funding for the whole pizza. The test score numbers are similar to the earnings statements released each quarter. If they beat expectations, there’s a buying surge of shares (cf. increased school funding); if they miss expectations, there’s a sell-off (cf. school closing & defunding).
This approach toward education is based on a faulty premise with many incorrect propositions: 1) family-factors, 2) school attendance), 3) student behavior, 4) socio-economic level, 5) actual teaching-learning time, 6) individual differences in learning, and much more. However, even if all of these variables were controlled, the root purpose of high-stakes testing (to measure achievement) ultimately fails to address the concept and conceptualization of education — students learn knowledge, and then use that knowledge to think in divergent ways which can’t be measured.
The very concept of “achievement” in itself is finite as defined by others, i.e., common core, and doesn’t yield knowledge or thinking that isn’t known. A focus on achievement as a determinant for success in education is like an audience member watching a play whose actors are performing silently behind the curtain.
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I live and teach in Florida. here are a couple of my thoughts and observations on Jeb’s grading system. First of all, an A school rating could at one point add up to $100,000 on the value of a house.
Second, this is how I saw the whole thing. If my school gets an A, the principal is proud and I get a little money. The superintendent loves him and he is a hero. If a majority of schools in a district get A’s then the superintendent is a hero. If lots of school districts get A’s in a state than the governor is a hero, and can”humbly” call himself the “Education Governor”just like our JEB,
One question. Several months ago JEB did an interview with Piers Morgan on CNN. He went on and on about how terrible veteran teachers are and how evil the unions are. His classic line to Piers question about why he is so concerned about education. His reply, “I guess I started caring about education when I was a young child and my Momma sat me up on her knee and read to me….” Can anyone find the transcript to the whole interview?
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John Ellis Bush!, the “Fortunate Son”, paternal scion of both the Walker and Bush families that dominated Wall Street going back to the early 1900’s, and a descendant of President Franklin Pierce on his maternal side, living in a world of private jets, gated waterfront estates, and yachts the size of three football fields is telling us this nonsense about “Bar’s” (sniff) reading to him on her knee as some sort of seminal event setting him off with the selfless lifelong dedication to ensuring that the poor children get the education they deserve.
Now, was that before or after Jeb knew that his cousin was running an “education testing company” that has exploded in profits since George Jr. pushed through NCLB?
Or maybe it was a few days after Hurricane Katrina, when a giggling “Bar” explained that those former New Orleans residents, now sleeping in the Astrodome, had pretty awful lives anyway, so she was “happy to see that things were going so well for them.”
Excuse me while I regurgitate…
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Can you imagine the state of education today if school boards everywhere were each comprised of many Michael Westons? Please keep speaking the truth, Michael. And keep staring that elephant down! Thank you for posting this, Diane. Hopefully, he will inspire others across this country, both teachers and parents alike, to find the courage to do the same.
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Sometimes students fail. Sometimes schools fail. Failing schools include both district & charter. To the extent that there is a denial that sometimes schools are doing a bad job with students, there will be a continued exodus.
Many parents know that there are some teachers and students doing a wonderful job encouraging, inspiring and assisting their students.
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Joe, the term “failing school” was seldom heard or used until the mid-1990s. Since the beginning of NCLB, the term has become commonplace. The fact is that schools don’t fail. They are buildings. A principal may be inept. The job of the superintendent is to remove incompetent principals. If they don’t, they are failures. When schools have large numbers of children who have high needs, the schools have lower test scores than schools in affluent communities. The schools need support, not closure.
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Kenneth Clark, African American psychologist whose research was cited in the US Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education wrote the following in the Harvard Education Review, Winter, 1968:
American public education suffers from “pervasive and persistent inefficiency”…particularly in the schools provided for ” and other underprivileged children.”
Among other things, he recommended that “Alternatives – realistic, aggressive, and viable competitors to the present public school systems must be found. The development of such competitive systems will be attacked by the defenders of the present system as attempts to weaken the present system and thereby weaken if not destroy public education. This type of expected self-serving argument can be briefly and accurately disposed of by asserting and demonstrating that truly effective competition strengthens rather than weakens that which deserves to survive. I would argue further than public education need not be identified with the present system of organization of public schools. Public education can be more broadly and pragmatically defined in term of that form of organization of an education system which is in the public interest….alternative forms of public education must be developed if the children of our cities are to be educated and made constructive members of our society.”
He suggested creation of
“Regional State schools, college and university schools, industrial demonstration schools, labor union sponsored schools, army schools.”
With strong, efficient and demonstrably excellent parallel systems of public schools, organized and operated on a quasi private level and with quality control and professional accountability maintained and determined by Federal and State education standards and supervision it would be possible to bring back into public education a vitality and dynamism which are now clearly missing.”
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Oh, come on Joe; that’s load of malarkey and you know it.
You know how you can always tell if a Privatizer is in the vicinity? It’s easy. They’ll use well rehearsed talking points that after a while sound like the dialogue from a character in an old movie: but I can’t decide if it’s the charlatan played by Burt Lancaster in “Elmer Gantry” or one of the former resisters and activists turned into a zombie in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers. (DFER?)
WHAT AN (ALWAYS PAID) EDUCATION REFORMER SAYS:
“Well both charter schools and district schools have their challenges and while I’ll be the first to acknowledge that charter schools aren’t a Silver Bullet that will solve all of education’s problems, they provide a welcome addition to the array of choices that should be available to every child single child, not just those who are fortunate enough to be living in a certain zip code, and who in our great nation would ever object to more choices…blah blah blah blah blah…”
WHAT AN (ALWAYS PAID) EDUCATION REFORMER REALLY MEANS
“So now that I’ve equated public schools and charters as BOTH being sometimes good and sometimes bad and implicitly portrayed the sap debating me as a union propagandist defending the “status quo” and the current “failing schools”, I can now proceed with laying the rhetorical groundwork for our long term plans to go from charters being 15 percent of the district to gradually becoming the ONLY “choice” for these dumbos who will soon be paying a private charter management company an increasingly bigger sum every month as the value of their “Government CHOICE Voucher” gets lower every year.
But my benefactors, who live in the gated communities that hopefully, in time, I’ll be able to live in too, are going to absolutely LOVE the vouchers they’ll be getting that will provide them with a sweet little supplement for that elite private academy that they’ve always sent their kids to anyway. It’ll be a bit more “fun money” for them to play with or give to their kids for some frivolous trinkets the next time they’re in Aspen or the Cote d’Azur.
Hey, maybe it’s time to also outsource the voucher payment system itself? Let’s face it; companies need to grow, in any way they can. He he…)
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Actually, I strongly oppose vouchers.
Sorry you don’t feel you can provide your name.
I’ve been a big fan of public school choices for more than 40 years – and helped Washington state create some (including district options and “Running Start”, which allows high schools students to take courses on college campuses.
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Reply to Joe Nathan’s comment of July 27, 2013, wirh my responses in ALL CAPS. Mr. Nathan wrote:
“Actually, I strongly oppose vouchers.”
I’M PLEASED TO HEAR THIS, JOE. BUT HOW STRONG IS YOUR OPPOSITION? IS IT QUALIFIED? OR IS IT ABSOLUTE?
“Sorry you don’t feel you can provide your name.”
AND I’M SORRY FOR THAT TOO. BUT LIKE MANY OF US, I HAVE TO PAY A MORTGAGE AND FEED MY FAMILY. AND GIVEN THAT WE NOW LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE ANYONE—INCLUDING THE POLITICALLY CONSERVATIVE EXECUTIVES AT MY COMPANY—CAN SEE MY POLITICAL OPINIONS IN A NANOSECOND, I HAVE TO KEEP MY REAL NAME TO MYSELF. SORRY, BUT THAT’S THE GRIM REALITY.
IF I EVER BECOME INDEPENDENTLY WEALTHY, I’LL BE HAPPY TO SAY WHO I AM. (MAYBE YOU CAN HELP MY FLEDGLING ORGANIZATION OBTAIN A BROAD, GATES OR WALMART GRANT, DESPITE OUR STEADFAST OPPOSITION TO ALMOST EVERYTHING THEY STAND FOR? 😉
“I’ve been a big fan of public school choices for more than 40 years – and helped Washington state create some (including district options and “Running Start”, which allows high schools students to take courses on college campuses.”
JOE, I’M VERY STRONGLY IN FAVOR OF GENUINE CHOICE AND ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES AT EVERY LEVEL OF EDUCATION FROM PRE-K TO PH.D—BUT NOT SOME ERSATZ VERSION INEXTRICABLY LINKED TO A PLETHORA OF STANDARDIZED TEST SCORES, PRIVATE MANAGEMENT COMPANIES, ANTI-UNION IDEOLOGY, AND A ZERO SUM MENTALITY WHICH ASSUMES THAT “COMPETITION” BETWEEN NOT ONLY STUDENTS BUT ALSO BETWEEN TEACHERS, PRINCIPALS, SCHOOLS AND EVEN DISTRICTS THEMSELVES IS A PANACEA FOR EVERY CHALLENGE IN EDUCATION.
JOE, 90% OF PRIVATE BUSINESSES FAIL. GOOGLE, MICROSOFT AND APPLE ARE EXTREME EXCEPTIONS; (MOST BASKETBALL PLAYERS WILL NOT BECOME LE BRON JAMES OR MICHAEL JORDAN EITHER.)
YOU’RE NOT IN AGREEMENT WITH THOSE WHO SAY OUR SALVATION LIES IN FOR-PROFIT MANAGEMENT AND EMULATING THE COMPETITION IN THE BUSINESS SECTOR, ARE YOU?
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Glad to hear we agree on the value of different kinds of learning environments. No single school succeeds with all students.
We also agree that vouchers are not a good idea.
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@ Joe. So because Kenneth Clark wrote his opinion regarding public education in the Harvard Education Review in 1968 we should agree with you because you agree with him? Seems to me one of the problems in education today is that some people believe that “high achievers” from ivy league schools know best how to fix education. Current evidence points to the fact that they don’t. Do I need to give you the list of names?
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Betsy, I don’t think you should agree just because of what Kenneth Clark said. I was responding to the assertion that the term “failing schools was seldom heard or used until the mid 1990’s.”
Having worked in urban schools and learned from urban families in the 1970’s and 1980’s, I heard this term – and similar terms – constantly.
I completely agree that poverty has a very negative impact. I also think we can and should learn from schools that are helping these youngsters make significant progress.
Schools can’t and won’t overcome all problems of poverty. But I think we have many examples and experience of urban educators working with families, various community groups and others to make a huge positive difference.
Here’s an example about the Cincinnati (District) public schools. It offers credit to teachers, their union, families, students and community groups for an elimination of the hs graduation gap between white and African Americn students.
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/11150746.html
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