Arthur Camins is director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. When Camins read Paul Thomas’s latest commentary about the lack of evidence behind reform strategies, he wrote the following:
“Over the past several years I have read countless articles and books all saying basically the same thing: The foundations of current education reform – competition, reward, sanctions and consequential testing – are not supported by evidence. In fact, they are contraindicated. Their use as policy levers promotes competition rather than collaboration, teaching to the test rather than deeper sustainable learning and increased school segregation. Many have expressed incredulity that reform supporters ignore evidence. Maybe it is not so surprising.
I think there are two explanations.
The first is the power of ideological blinders and hubris or what I called in an earlier article, The Fog of the Education War. (http://www.arthurcamins.com/?p=36)
The second explanation is different goals and values. I, and many other critics of current reform strategies place high value on education for democratic participation and responsible citizenship, educational equity for all and deeper learning. We have argued that charter schools, merit pay and over-testing undermine those goals. Maybe “reformers” know this too, but do not object. Maybe they want different things. Maybe they accept inequality as a fact of life. And, some may be just out to make a buck.
The question is which road will we choose – improvement for all or just a few. (http://www.arthurcamins.com/?p=191)”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“And, some may be just out to make a buck.”
Ya think?
A successful democracy needs an educated public. The reform movement underminds that. They do not want independent thinkers who will evaluate what the government or the controlled media says. They want to feed all the schools the same information so everyone learns the same ideas and obeys. I can’t help but think of “Farenheit 451” when I read about reformers.
“underminds”
Conscious or unconscious, that says it all.
Sure I make a mistake and you have to harp on that and not the idea . You must be a union hack. I’m out of here. You guys ae just as bad as the reformers with your rightiousness.
I think you read me wrong. I love a good pun, and this one is very apt.
Jon, as i read it, I thought you were complimenting him.
Yes, slip or sly, it’s all good …
By contrast, I can’t help but think of the public school establishment as the non-critical thinkers, ostracizing and punishing anyone who refuses to drink the socialist kool-aid. As the historians of the future will say, “It was a cult widely embraced by the bureaucracy of the American empire, especially its education personnel, and helped bring it to stagnation and downfall. Its fundamental tenet was a utopian faith in the eventual equality of all people. Even as Christianity brought about the fall of Rome, to replace it, so likewise did Socialism replace Christianity with its secularized version of that faith and bring down Russia, Western Europe and the USA.”
Recognizing that some will disagree…for some of us, part of the way we get to a much more informed, thoughtful, independent active citizenry is to provide a variety of well designed, well developed public school options. We certainly don’t “accept inequality as a fact of life.”
* Though some people vigorously objected when it was proposed, Minnesota’s Post-Secondary Options provides challenge and opportunity for some youngsters, while encourging high schools to expand the work they are doing with high school students. Some high school youngsters are ready to be on college campuses. Others are not. That’s part of why we believe in options. Here’s a column written by Kabo Yang, one of staff, and a first generation college graduate, that helps explain this.
http://www.hmongtimes.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=4940&SectionID=31&SubSectionID=&S=1
* As has been extensively discussed on this list serve and elsewhere, some school districts welcome and encourage teacher and parent suggestions and recommendations. Others are quite top down. Some of us believe strongly in empowering parents and teachers to create options that can help some young people succeed, in part because we believe that there is no single best approach that serves all youngsters. Here’s a bit more on that:
http://hometownsource.com/2013/04/03/now-he-has-hope-and-we-have-hope/
Amen.
Quality flows from the bottom up. You know what flows from the top down.
We desperately need site-based management in our schools.
And we could learn a lot about achieving quality form Japanese Lesson Study and worker-directed quality circles and PDCA (plan-do-check-act/adjust).
Agreed on the value of site management with some responsibility for improving achievement – measured in various ways, not just test scores.
As has been extensively discussed on this list serve and elsewhere, some school districts welcome and encourage teacher and parent suggestions and recommendations. Others are quite top down.
Some of us believe strongly in empowering parents and teachers to create options that can help some young people succeed, in part because we believe that there is no single best approach that serves all youngsters. The Boston (district) Pilot schools are a great example, although some use admissions tests which I’m not a fan of.
Here’s a bit more on the idea that there is no single best school for all youngsters – with insights here from a parent and a (virtual charter school) student:
http://hometownsource.com/2013/04/03/now-he-has-hope-and-we-have-hope/
I am horrified by the “we encourage your suggestions” language, Joe. It’s the teachers who should be saying that, not everyone else who should be saying it to teachers. We need highly qualified professionals in the classroom and for everyone else to get out of their way. Make suggestions, yes. Provide development opportunities, yes. Coach, mentor, yes. Provide voluntary standards and curricular guidelines, yes. Institute Lesson Study, yes. Provide the necessary time and resources to do real planning and follow-up analysis of lessons, yes. Provide superb DIAGNOSTIC testing and other tools for teacher groups to adopt as they see necessary, yes.
We are going about this all in precisely the wrong direction.
It appears I was not clear. I think wise school districts and wise states have policies in place that encourage, not frustrate, teachers and parent suggestions. Joyce Epstein of Johns Hopkins has written for more than 20 years about the value of policies to encourage family involvement, for example.
It’s very encouraging that
* Boston Federation of Teachers asked for and obtained a policy allowing groups of teachers to create new district (Pilot) public schools
* Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, with strong support from St. Paul Federation of teachers, convinced the Mn state legislature to create a “site governed school” law that encourages the kind of thing Boston has done. Unfortunately most districts have not done much in response to this law, despite good efforts from several local unions to promote it.
* Many states have developed charter laws that allow groups of parents and teachers to create new options.
. . . to get out of their way and stop presuming to micromanage what they do, even to the extent of hiring amateurs to tell them what the measured outcomes in each domain of their subjects ought to be. The PRESUMPTION!!!!
We have created a system in which teachers are being treated like idiots to be “trained”–roll over, sit up, fetch, good boy. It wasn’t always this way. If we want real improvement, this totalitarian approach is not the way to go. We need experts in the classroom, and those experts need respect, resources, and above all, the autonomy to apply their expertise, individually and in consort with their peers in the profession.That’s the way to real innovation and continuous improvement. These fascist “reforms”–the attempt to turn our teachers into scripted teaching machines–take us in precisely the wrong direction. They are the equivalent, in education, of a war crime.
And I will never get over the deep and terribly dark irony that people are killing the autonomy of free individuals and competition among variously conceived standards, curricula, assessment instruments, and so on, in the name of applying a business model to education. This would be very, very funny if it weren’t so ruinous for our country.
Joe,
You stated “Agreed on the value of site management with some responsibility for improving achievement – measured in various ways, not just test scores.”
You’re getting there but, to me, the problem is the term “measured”. Were you to replace “measured” with “assessed” I could totally agree with that statement. But to imply that the teaching and learning process (and all the accompanying infrastructure that enables that process) is amenable to “measurement” is to perpetuate a falsehood. And it is precisely that falsehood that allows/causes so many educational malpractices to survive and even thrive.
Duane, I’m fine with the word “assessed.” Some progressive district & charter schools use rubrics to help assess where students are at a certain point with for example, their writing or public speaking schools. Some also use the “Hope Survey” to determine where students are to determine where students are in feeling that they can and should set goals, work toward them, and how much confidence they have that they can accomplish those goals.
Later the schools do another assessment to determine whether students’ writing , public speaking or other such schools have improved.
I’ve seen a lot of schools use these non-standardized test assessments to help document what’s happening with students. Central Park East is an example. So far some of the Boston Pilot Schools. So is Minnesota New Country and some of the other schools that they have helped start.
Joe,
Any rubric suffers the same epistemological and ontological problems that standardized tests suffer as they are attempts (cride ones at that) to measure the inmeasurable. Hard numbers such as graduation rates, numbers of students etc. . . are one thing but numbers generated by surveys and rubrics still lack validity and suffer from bias in the formation of the questions and categories of the rubrics. I’ve advised it often to all here and that is to read and understand why that is so by reading Noel Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at:
http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Yesterday I had a chance to meet and talk with the NEA President. He was visiting two local schools. Although it may not have been “scripted” as it played out, I think the event helped demonstrate the value of listening to and learning from people who work day to day with youngsters. Doesn’t mean we’ll always agree.
But they have insights that are important to consider. Here’s the column about that event and my reactions to it:
http://hometownsource.com/2013/09/12/joe-nathan-column-union-presidents-visit-highlights-potential-progress-problems-early-childhood-funding/
Joe,
Not sure what that has to do with my comment.
However I did get a comment from AVAST that the site to which I was directed had a virus. You might want to check that out.
Duane
Duane – did you end up at hometownsource.com?
Also, it was at least in part a response to you. I deeply respect many of the rubrics that classroom teachers around the country have developed. I tried to say in the column that it is vital to listen to and learn from people who work day to day with youngsters.
Please let me know if you were directly to hometownsource.com
Thanks
Joe
Joe,
I have to wait till tomorrow to check as the AVAST is on the computer at work. But I clicked the link you supplied. I’ll do it again and let you know.
Duane
Thank you.
Joe,
Here is the info:
Infection Details
URL:
“http://www.ecm-inc.com/wp-content/uploa…
Process:
“C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explore…
Infection:
“URL:Mal”
Thanks, Duane, please try this and see what happens:
http://hometownsource.com/2013/09/12/joe-nathan-column-union-presidents-visit-highlights-potential-progress-problems-early-childhood-funding/
Joe,
It did direct me to the site but at the same time it prevented the site listed from downloading. So, I did get to read it.
Thanks,
Duane
Thanks, Duane. I will check with the newspaper to see if they have any thoughts.
I’ve used my own rubrics before and I find that although the process appears “less biased” by relying on numbers as the final indicator, the process still has many “fuzzy gray” areas. Is that which is being assessed in the category of 4 or 5 (or whatever categories one uses). It still requires the teachers subjective evaluation. But the rubric implies an objective assessment when it’s not. I’ve not seen any rubric that relies any less on subjectivity from the teacher as any other assessing device.
When did it become a teachers job to sort and separate a students knowledge into supposed discrete bits of information (rubrics and other assessing devices0 that are supposedly objective? Is that a public school teachers fundamental charge as delineated by the state constitution?
The appearance of mathematical accuracy in no way means that the assessment process is objective.
I say to the pundits with their simple-minded prescriptions: “No one made you king.”
You should have to compete to have your ideas adopted by free associations of teachers who adapt and adopt them, or other models, as those choose. You don’t get to impose. You don’t get to tell people, “This is the uniform you must wear.” They decide what they wear. It’s up to you to make that appealing to them.
Arne, David, Bill: No one died and made you king. You do not get to impose. Not in a democracy. Those are not our values.
And to the extent that you do impose–invariant, mandatory standards; invariant, mandatory tests; scripted lesson formats; prescribed curricula; national databases of student records school grading systems; mandated, top-down evaluation of anything that moves–we shall descend into mediocrity. And when we wise up and reverse all that, which we shall have to do after the terrible toll for this mistake is paid, your names will live in infamy. Those were the ones who brought all that upon us.
It must be clear by now that we’ve been dealing all along with a force that is alien to the educational community. Its goals and ideals are the very opposite of the ones that genuine educators have been trying to promote since the dawn of civilization.
Well said, Jon.
Recognizing that some will disagree…for some of us, part of the way we get to a much more informed, thoughtful, independent active citizenry is to provide a variety of well designed, well developed public school options. We certainly don’t “accept inequality as a fact of life.”
* Though some people vigorously objected when it was proposed, Minnesota’s Post-Secondary Options provides challenge and opportunity for some youngsters, while encourging high schools to expand the work they are doing with high school students. Some high school youngsters are ready to be on college campuses. Others are not. That’s part of why we believe in options. Here’s a column written by Kabo Yang, one of staff, and a first generation college graduate, that helps explain this.
http://www.hmongtimes.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=4940&SectionID=31&SubSectionID=&S=1
Joe, I would like to see those options emerge organically from the work of innovative, empowered, autonomous teacher groups. May a hundred thousand flowers bloom.
Or we can have the totalitarianisms being cooked up in Seattle and in Washington.
Great piece, Joe, BTW.
Thanks, Robert.
I’m feeling sappy this AM.. When I read the title of this post, my first response was ‘Love of course!’
All sappiness aside, I do feel that some reformers are motivated by a desire to expose and punish teachers and not by their concern for students.
Check out Joel Klein’s AMPLIFY TABLET SCAM in the NY Times magazine section.
Another educational silver bullet that will a) direct billions to corpaorations and b) have no significant impact on learning.
Near the end of THE MISMEASURE OF EDUCATION (2013, Jim Horn and Denise Wilburn), p. 209:
“As the reformer logic goes (with apologies to logicians), mandating, measuring, rewarding, and punishing are enough to bring about the improvements that are sought, without regard to resources, psychological factors, sociological realities, professional preparation, or even good will. These practices have been used to devise and implement teacher evaluation schemes that are unsupported by the best scientific evidence, and they have been used as a rationale to close schools, retain students, and to segregate students based on test scores and socioeconomic status. They have also been used as the chief reason to launch and expand charter schools and school voucher programs for which no consistent achievement advantages have been documented by research. In addition, such assessment practices and results have been used to plan and implement costly and ineffective policies, programs, teaching practices, curriculum packages, and tutoring services that have re-directed educational resources toward the private sector.”
People would do well to follow the old Marxist maxim:
“A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.”
Groucho, that is.
🙂
LOL. Here the reformers thought that the folks on the other side were a bunch of grouches and Marxists when all the while they were just a bunch of Groucho Marxists! Quite a difference, that!
Robert D. Shepherd: If you’re gonna give me a silver platter…
Perhaps if that other Marx (Karl, I mean) had read less German and more English he might have picked up some pointers about how to get his ideas across to others:
“The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.” [Mark Twain]
🙂
Turns out that what was true in the nineteenth century is still true today. Merit pay in education failed then as it has now, and now as then
“Laughter is poison to the pompous.”
Courtesy of your friendly neighborhood KrazyTA.
Glad to be of service to an educator.
🙂