Paul Thomas Offers Writing Lessons to Rick Hess

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1. jean sanders says:

   September 10, 2013 at 11:40 pm

   this is what Petrilli does; he says educators “will even screw up common core”; and C. Finn says we are “Acolytes and marriage wreckers.” I guess he means I am an acolyte of Diane???? I always knew when I won an argument with my brother because he would say “shut up , jean.” This is what I hear from Fordham and Petrilli in particular.

   Reply
2. Michael Paul Goldenberg says:

   September 10, 2013 at 11:48 pm

   I have a writing tip for Mr. Hess: cease and desist. Quit while you’re behind.

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   • KrazyTA says:

     September 11, 2013 at 2:30 am

     Michael Paul Goldenberg: good advice.

     But don’t hold your breath waiting for him to follow it.

     “Wise men don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it.” [Benjamin Franklin]

     At least you tried.

     🙂

     Reply
3. Robert D. Shepherd says:

   September 10, 2013 at 11:52 pm

   Mr. Hess seems to have mastered writing as it is characterized by the new CCSS in ELA and by the writing tests and rubrics being foisted on U.S. educators:

   He has mastered to creation of the formulaic, content-less five-paragraph theme.

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   • Robert D. Shepherd says:

     September 11, 2013 at 12:04 am

     cx: He has mastered the creation of the formulaic, content-less five-paragraph theme.

     A decade of this post-NCLB formulaic theme writing in the three “modes” could well have destroyed writing instruction in the United States,

     but fortunately, a lot of English teachers continue to teach writing well

     in spite of and, in fact, in pushback against the gawdawful writing formulas taken for granted by the amateurish state and now national writing “standards,” and in spite of and in pushback against

     the lousy writing curricula and the egregious pedagogical practices/model lessons being shoved at them by districts, state departments, and publishers because of those “standards.”

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4. teachingeconomist says:

   September 11, 2013 at 12:05 am

   There is a tendency to judge the value of research findings based on how closely the are rellated to one’s prior beliefs. For example, the results in Caldor working paper 100 written by Dr. Umut Özek have been held up as authoritative on this blog in this entry: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/07/19/the-negative-effects-of-holding-kids-back-in-third-grade/

   Are the results of the same researcher in the same working paper series, Caldor working paper 53, equally praiseworthy? The link to both papers is here:

   Click to access WP-100.pdf

   Click to access 1001499-working-paper-53.pdf

   Reply
5. democracy says:

   September 11, 2013 at 5:05 am

   This is the kind of nonsense that Rick Hess has written about school vouchers and competition:

   “The absence of competition means that public schools, like other government agencies, typically are not subjected to this kind of discipline. No matter how inefficient, employees have little to fear. Subjecting school systems to real competition would indeed produce more effective schools –and other benefits as well. It would provide quality control beyond that afforded by standardized testing, empower entrepreneurial educators to offer alternatives to reigning orthodoxies, and permit good schools to multiply without waiting for permission from resistant district leaders.”

   In other words, fear in the workplace is a “good” thing. It leads to “effectiveness.” It causes “quality control.” It fosters the proliferation of “good schools.”

   Perhaps Hess never heard of W. Edwards Deming, who is credited with developing the idea of quality control (total quality management). According to Deming, the key to quality is to “drive out fear.” This is management goal number one. If fear is eliminated, then an atmosphere of trust and collaboration and improvement can more easily be established and sustained.

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   • bernie1815 says:

     September 11, 2013 at 8:00 am

     I am a Deming fan. What Deming argued is definitively not at odds with what Rick Hess said in the paragraph you quoted. Japanese companies seized on quality because they understood that competition was fierce and that improved products and high quality translated into lower warranty costs, lower cost of total ownership for consumers and a lower cost of sales due to customer loyalty – I am on my 5th Honda and I hit 200K on three of them. All US manufacturers now make better cars than they did before because of competition from the Japanese automakers. What Deming argued for was 100% involvement of employees in consciously improving work processes in order to improve existing processes. It argued against a “we versus they” mind set. It was predicated on the recognition of both management and the union that all would be better off if they worked together. Japanese Unions endorsed these activities.

     As for writing styles, we all need to look in the mirror – including Mr. Thomas.

     As for Diane’s book, I am looking forward to her suggestions for reform. As I have said before, you cannot beat something with nothing.

     Reply
     • Robert D. Shepherd says:

       September 11, 2013 at 8:05 am

       100% involvement of employees in consciously improving work processes in order to improve existing processes. yes yes yes

     • Robert D. Shepherd says:

       September 11, 2013 at 8:13 am

       So, how do we get to that? Here’s a suggestion: we get there not by mandating standards but by creating systems whereby those emerge and develop, in astonishing, creative variety, from the continuous improvement efforts of teachers in schools with site-based decision making

     • teachingeconomist says:

       September 11, 2013 at 8:29 am

       Robert,

       In another tread I have been arguing that if site based decision making leads to substantial differences between educational philosophies and curriculum between buildings the traditional system of geographically determined school attendance areas will break down as parents seek the best building for their student. Do you think that is correct?

     • bernie1815 says:

       September 11, 2013 at 8:30 am

       Robert:
       A constant stream of well-documented case examples would be very helpful.
       Some agreed upon and valid metrics, however, are needed. They do not have to be grand standardized tests, but they do have to have sufficient granularity and reliability to allow tracking of incremental improvements in whatever aspect is being targeted.

     • Robert D. Shepherd says:

       September 11, 2013 at 8:55 am

       I very much agree, Bernie. But here’s the rub: the significant work that would have to be done, real, scientific work, to figure out what those have to look like in ELA, given what we know about how kids acquire language skills, wasn’t done. It wasn’t done AT ALL.

     • Robert D. Shepherd says:

       September 11, 2013 at 9:04 am

       I think there’s some truth to that, TE. The answer to your question depends a great deal, doesn’t it, on how autonomous, how empowered those sites are. We had site-based decision-making for a long time in U.S. schools without seeing a mass exodus from the public schools to private alternatives. There was an interesting phenomenon that occurred in the South–fairly well-to-do Protestants in the suburbs pulling their kids out of public schools and putting them in Catholic schools. Astonishing how much of that happened.

     • teachingeconomist says:

       September 11, 2013 at 10:34 am

       I think it coes depend on how autonomous the schools are in the district. The more autonomous, the higher the pressures against the traditional zone admission system. I don’t see any way around it.

     • Duane Swacker says:

       September 11, 2013 at 2:34 pm

       This idea of “continuous improvement” with “Some agreed upon and valid metrics” bothers me to no end. First the teaching and learning process falls within the realm of aesthetics and is not amenable to “metrics”. Within the realm of aesthetics what constitutes “improvement”?

       Now that does not mean that one doesn’t attempt to change practices in how one handles the teaching and learning process but whether they are “improvements” can only be determined afterward through thoughtful reflection of the actions and results. This thoughtful reflection most likely than not will have “metrics” as a small bit of the total information that one is examining. To believe that one can “measure” this type of phenomena is a chimera, duende, hallucination, ghost, illusion.

     • bernie1815 says:

       September 11, 2013 at 3:53 pm

       Duane:

       You are looking for perfection or completeness before acting. There is no need to.

       Like Zeno you are defining the issue so that it cannot be addressed in the terms used to define it.

       If your original proposition is correct then we would never be able to tell good teachers from not so good teachers and learning from non-learning. Since we can to some degree in many if not all cases, then your argument falls. These things can be defined and measured even if only in binary terms.

       In the real world, Achilles always catches the tortoise.

       Your second paragraph admits as much. You said that:
       Now that does not mean that one doesn’t attempt to change practices in how one handles the teaching and learning process but whether they are “improvements” can only be determined afterward through thoughtful reflection of the actions and results. This thoughtful reflection most likely than not will have “metrics” as a small bit of the total information that one is examining.

       Once we agree on what constitutes (a) thoughtful reflection; (b) actions; (c) results; (d) afterward; and (e) a small bit, we will have little trouble constructing a usable if undoubtedly flawed measurement system.

     • Duane Swacker says:

       September 11, 2013 at 6:25 pm

       Bernie1815,

       No, I’m not letting perfection/completeness get in the way of action. Perfection as a concept can only exist in the mind and does not exist in the physical world (although one might consider the mind as physical due to the electro-chemical nature of the braing). What I am against is using a system (educational standards/standardized testing) that is so fraught with error as to render it invalid for use. It’s not a matter of an OK system that can be tweaked, it can’t, it’s way beyond tweaking and needs to be sent to the junk yard.

       Neither did I say that we can’t tell “good” teachers from “bad” ones nor that one might not be able to distinguish between learning and non-learning. Those are your conclusions not mine. I’m saying that the current high stakes methods used completely invalid as proven by Wilson. By the way have you read Wilson? If so what are your thoughts? How would you rebut/refute his logic and conclusions?

       And the tough part about all this is the fact that there is very little agreement as to what constitutes a, b, c, d, and e. For me the only valid means of assessing a student and/or teacher is to have a dialogue/discussion/exchange between teacher/student and/or parent or teacher/supervisor during which both members are considered to have equal say in the process (and I’m still working this thought out in my head, it’s certainly not complete). Granted it’s a “messy” process that doesn’t serve those outside the immediate group but who says that these results should be anyone else’s business but those involved?

     • Robert D. Shepherd says:

       September 12, 2013 at 12:07 am

       All this talk about metrics has me wanting to share an example of what might be a family of useful metrics in one part of one domain, English Grammar:. Other metrics in this domain, and metrics in other domains, would look VERY different.

       I would really like to know, given a good, solid, scientific taxonomy of English syntactic forms (and not one based on the sort of prescientific folk grammar referenced in the CCSS in ELA);

       and based on separate speaking, listening, reading, and writing diagnostics;

       what syntactic forms

       a) kids have mastered to the extent that the these present no barriers to their comprehension of speech and writing in which those forms appear;
       b) are actually used in the kids’ productive speech and writing;
       c) could be used in those kids’ productive speech and writing but aren’t being.

       And it would be useful for the reporting on those diagnostics to deliver up normed metrics of that syntactic development, though there is always great potential for abuse of that kind of info, and we will doubtless find that what we’re looking at is not Simply hierarchical patterns in the actual syntactic development of kids.

       And that’s what one relevant and useful set of metrics in one area of one ELA domain might like.

       That information would then be used in various ways, including immersion of students in active language activity at their proximal zones of proximal syntactic development–activities in which syntactic forms that the student has not internalized are systematically delivered up so that the machines in their heads built to construct syntactic models would have the input that they must have in order to do the jobs that nature has designed them to do so well.

       And no, I am DEFINITELY talking neither about explicit grammar instruction nor about isolated skill practice activity here. May the gods forbid such! The introduced forms would have to be in engaging, extended, content-rich, meaningful contexts, of course. Of course.

       Of course.

       But that’s what a useful set of metrics in just one area of one ELA domain might look like.

       Or, we could use a bunch of crude readability measures to ensure that kids are INTENTIONALLY exposed to syntactical impoverished language and have no freaking chance of making up the ground that they had already lost before coming into our classrooms, and we can can, ironically, put those front and center in our new “standards” that are supposed to be about helping kids to be able to comprehend complex texts. And for grammar instruction, we can do explicit instruction to meet CCSS-ELA-L1-6a-c or whatever. And then, we can wonder, a few years later, why the latest edumagic reforms didn’t work.

       Not that any of this technical kind of stuff that I have given a small sample of here is THE CURE. It isn’t. In fact, it can easily become the problem if partially understood and partially worked out.

     • Robert D. Shepherd says:

       September 12, 2013 at 1:15 am

       In the area of teaching kids, over time, to gain understanding of literary form, I think it would have made a great deal of sense if the new “standards” had taken an ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny approach in which kids were systematically introduced to archetypal ancient forms and genres (the hero’s journey, the parallel of the cycle of the seasons to the life cycle) and then to the themes and variations on these. And again, explicit instruction in the names and definitions and categories of forms has to come AFTER, not in the course of or before, active experience of these–as witness and as participant. As the Vietnam vets used to say, “You wouldn’t know because you weren’t there, man!” For kids to know, they have to go there. Then they can talk about the experience. The same is true of all the instruction on literary and rhetorical techniques. But careful, systematic thinking about this kind of thing appears to have been conspicuously absent in the preparation of the CCSS in ELA. The Aristotelian “natural types” approach taken to introduction of literary forms, discourse structures, etc., in the CCSS in ELA generally is entirely bankrupt and not supported by what we know from cognitive psychology, which teaches us that such categorical learning proceeds not from explcit instruction in natural types but via systematic variation upon initial natural prototypes. See Eleonor Rosch and George Lakoff for a LOT more on this. Those who understand the distinction will understand why my talk of an “ontogeny recapitualating phylogeny approach” to instruction, over time, in literary form is not at crazy as it might initially sound but is, in fact, rooted in profound scientific understanding of how categorical understanding actually develops in kids.

       But again, the CCSS in ELA were not vetted. There was no discussion or debate, and their creation was not approached in a scientific spirit with the high seriousness required for such an endeavor. And though humans re story-telling creatures, though this is one of the PRIMARY ways in which we make sense, though our brains are built to make sense in this way, we are assured by the creation of the CCSS in ELA that narrative just isn’t that important.

6. Joe Nathan says:

   September 11, 2013 at 5:49 am

   Here’s how Hess concludes his commentary:

   ” Fourth, let’s not kid ourselves. The school-reform community has asked for a lot of this backlash. As Kirp rightly notes, John Chubb and Terry Moe unfortunately recommended 23 years ago, in their seminal book Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools, that reformers think of choice as a “panacea.” Contemporary reform has unfolded as a grand crusade to “close achievement gaps” in reading and math, with remarkably little attention to the day-to-day concerns of most parents or educators. Conservatives have joined liberals in designing overwrought accountability and teacher-evaluation systems while failing to address the regulatory, contractual, and licensure barriers that make it tough for dynamic educational leaders to drive real change.

   Indeed, if the emerging anti-reform canon forces reformers to sharpen their arguments, clarify their principles, and take a hard look at their mistakes, it could make this an enormously constructive fall for reformers.”

   Sounds like an acknowledgement of mistakes, and a compliment to Diane and others.

   Reply
   • bernie1815 says:

     September 11, 2013 at 10:42 am

     I agree. Thomas should have seized on that point rather than ramble on about Duncan and Raising Arizona.

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7. Joe Nathan says:

   September 11, 2013 at 6:18 am

   Here’s an eloquent statement from a public school classroom teacher about how he is trying to help more youngsters learn: It’s based on his experiences in NYC with 9/11, and seems very relevant today:

   http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/223213181.html

   Reply
   • Robert D. Shepherd says:

     September 11, 2013 at 8:08 am

     Eloquent, indeed, Joe! Thanks for sharing that.

     Reply
8. NoBrick says:

   September 11, 2013 at 6:34 am

   The kids apply their lessons on “Writing Well” by texting.

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9. Michael Fiorillo says:

   September 11, 2013 at 8:43 am

   While Rick Hess certainly is a policy hack, there will always be a soft spot in my heart for him, ever since he indiscreetly gave away the underlying motivations of the Common Corporate Standards as an exercise in Shock and Awe upon the remaining public school districts -especially those in the suburbs – that are not controlled by the education privateers.

   blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_straight_up/2012/11/the_common_core_kool_aid

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   • Robert D. Shepherd says:

     September 11, 2013 at 9:09 am

     That piece is well worth reading. He’s right about the consequences for the reform agenda of this roll out to the suburbs, don’t you think?

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10. bernie1815 says:

    September 11, 2013 at 10:38 am

    Paul Thomas may be an excellent writer. He may indeed have a wide-ranging intellect. Unfortunately, neither is on display in this particular piece.

    I printed out both Thomas’s piece from The Chalk Face and Hess’s piece from the National Review in order to take a closer look. I also printed out David Kirp’s piece from Slate. The latter is very important and I urge you to read it before anything else. All three pieces amount to 7 pages in total so it is not a difficult exercise to compare the three pieces.

    So, where should I begin? Thomas’s piece is a total puzzle. First, he completely mischaracterizes Hess’s article. He writes: ”So why would Hess’s review of books by Diane Ravitch, David Cohen, and Chris Lubienski and Sarah Lubienski be any different?” Alas, for Thomas, Hess is responding to the Kirp piece, plain and simple. He is definitely not reviewing Ravitch’s book. He does have more substantive things to say about the Lubienskis’ The Public School Advantage but it is clearly in response to what Kirp wrote. Hess’s comment on David Cohen et al’s book, Improvement by Design, in total is the following: ”Kirp also mentions a new volume by University of Michigan professor David Cohen and coauthors, who in Improvement by Design argue that some really lousy schools have found ways to get better over time.”. That is it! There is no other mention of the book or its content.

    Second, Thomas, in some cases justifiably, criticizes Hess for using “snarks and misinformation.” When it comes to “snarks and misinformation,” however, Thomas is far more prolific. I dare anyone to explain, after reading the Hess piece, how Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and FoxNews are relevant to anything that Hess wrote. Thomas’ biggest “snark” is claiming that the Hess piece is an example of Truly Bad Writing. You may or may not agree with Hess’s point of view on Education Reform but the piece is actually very well and carefully written. As someone else noted, Hess acknowledges that reformers have made many mistakes and have “asked for a lot of this backlash.” Hess’s summary critique of the School Reform movement seems to me to be pretty much on target:
    Contemporary reform has unfolded as a grand crusade to “close achievement gaps” in reading and math, with remarkably little attention to the day-to-day concerns of most parents or educators. Conservatives have joined liberals in designing overwrought accountability and teacher-evaluation systems while failing to address the regulatory, contractual, and licensure barriers that make it tough for dynamic educational leaders to drive real change.
    Indeed, if the emerging anti-reform canon forces reformers to sharpen their arguments, clarify their principles, and take a hard look at their mistakes, it could make this an enormously constructive fall for reformers.

    Again, Rick Hess’s piece may not be totally balanced and may stress the long term value of school choice, but I find it hard to label such measured terms as “ideology-rant disguised as a review of new books.”

    Finally, the Thomas’s piece is full of one-sentence paragraphs, confusing sentences and, what must be, typographical errors. It is actually poorly written, poorly constructed, poorly argued and poorly edited. Paul Thomas needs to look in the mirror, as should we all.

    The good news is that after reading the well-written and informative Kirp piece, I am definitely looking forward to reading David Cohen’s new book.

    Reply
    • Robert D. Shepherd says:

      September 11, 2013 at 12:14 pm

      The paragraph you quote is, indeed, substantive. I was wrong, quite wrong, to refer to this piece as “content-less.”

      That’ hard look, BTW, should begin with expert vetting of the CCSS in ELA. These are just awful. And yet every textbook publisher and every test maker in the country will start every new project by making a spreadsheet with those standards in one column and space for the lessons or items that will cover them in the other.

      Reply
      • bernie1815 says:

        September 11, 2013 at 12:49 pm

        Robert:
        It is a shame that Thomas does not build on this admission and make a more substantive point rather than blithering on about Raising Arizona.

        I very much agree that content producers and test designers treat curriculum standards as dead letter.

      • Robert D. Shepherd says:

        September 11, 2013 at 5:42 pm

        These unvetted “standards,” Bernie, encourage that. They are extraordinarily poorly written and seem to take for granted a lot of prescientific notions about how kids learn to read, write, speak, listen, and think. A great opportunity was lost when these were developed, and I am certain they are going to do a lot of damage, that they are going to result in a nasty, polluted river of counterproductive pedagogy. It astonishes me that the creation of these “standards” was not approached more seriously. There needed to be a national discussion of these, and that discussion should have involved a few people who had a clue what they were doing.

        That said, there’s are some really good ideas in the material ancillary to the “standards” themselves, but some of that dropped out in subsequent revisions of the Publishers’ Criteria.

    • plthomasedd says:

      September 12, 2013 at 8:01 am

      Thanks for missing most of the intent of my piece, bernie1815. Easy to be so critical behind a pseudonym, but I have not mischaracterized Hess, and I did not discount using “snark” because as you seem to (almost) grasp, much of my piece is intentionally in the style Hess himself employs. It is a bit of overstated satire, bernie1815, including the intentionally over-the-top and snarky Raising Arizona quote.

      But the point that I have made is that Hess BOTH discredits other people for their tone and then himself employs the same ugly tone he seems so offended by. Thus his hypocrisy.

      And all the points you note about Hess just show that you have fallen into his fake trap of pretending to be “fair and balanced.”

      Peace.

      Reply
      • bernie1815 says:

        September 12, 2013 at 9:18 am

        Paul:
        Thanks for responding. I will contact you directly to reduce the issue of anonymity and trust you to respect my desire to remain anonymous.

        Hess still did not write a book review. You failed even to mention the Kirp piece, which is the focus of Hess’s article. Your poor sentences remain poor sentences.

        As for your attempt at satire, it failed largely because I think you see snarks where others might simply see criticisms. Your own snarks and put-downs, however, are clearly far more deliberate and mean-spirited.

        As I noted earlier, I agree with you that Hess’s opening paragraph is snarky: “prophet”, “crowd”, “moment of celebration” are not necessary. Hess also adds “name-checks”, “…seriously”, “educational health”, “neat parlor trick” and “anti-reform canon”.

        So, let’s look at your piece and your snarks and put-downs: “Truly bad writing”, “ideology rant disguised as a review”, “puzzling history of chastising others”, “pretending to be Mr. Fair and Balanced”, “mantras”, “nonsensical”, the entire Hint paragraph, “pesky”, “let the magic happen”, “uglier”, “garbled logic”, “magic-bean universe”, “magic of the market”, “(gasp)”, and, “So sayeth Hess: we must all bow to Entrepreneur Land”.

        You, of course, are entitled to disagree and disagree vehemently with Rick Hess’s beliefs. However, using your authority as a teacher of writing to attempt to legitimate, in my opinion, an unwarranted attack on somebody’s else writing style goes too far.

        To some extent assessment of writing styles is a matter of opinion. But there are ways to make such assessments more discussable if not truly objective. So, here is a suggestion for your writing class. If you have not already used the material, ask your students to compare and contrast the Kirp, Hess and your own piece with respect to style, content and power of argument. All, obviously, should be anonymous as to author and placement. After they have written their own assessments, you can give them whatever rubric you use to look at a piece of writing. I will be interested in hearing their reactions.