Murkland Elementary School in Lowell, Massachusetts, has seen a remarkable improvement in its test scores. The local newspaper reported the story. Nothing was said about firing the principal, firing the teachers, firing the entire staff. Nothing was said about turning the school over to the state or giving it to private entrepreneurs.
Something else happened. Teamwork, collaboration. What a fresh idea!
A hardworking staff and focus on collaboration lifted the Murkland Elementary School to the highest achievement category measuring Massachusetts schools, from one where it was labeled as underperforming, school officials said Wednesday.
The state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education announced that the Murkland was one of 14 schools statewide to have improved beyond Level 4 status, a designation given to schools that are are “low performing” on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System during a four-year period, without showing signs of substantial improvement.
The Murkland School jumped up to Level 1 based on its students’ 2013 assessment scores.
“The Murkland School has been working on improvement over the last three years or longer,” Superintendent of Schools Jean Franco said. “They built their community to really come together and collaborate, and really make the right instructional moves, looking at what’s been best for children and families.”
The principal of the school revealed the secret of the improvement:
“There are many things that go into the turnaround process,” Murkland Principal Jason DiCarlo said. “But I think ultimately it was really the hard work and the dedication of the staff, who really committed to the process of school improvement and working to implement some of the ideas and strategies that were really going to benefit our students.”
DiCarlo said part of the school’s plan included giving teachers opportunities for high-quality professional development and time to collaborate and work together.
“There were other intricate little things that we’ve done around what’s effective instruction, and effective practices and effective curriculum development,” he said. “But all of that happens when you have the time and you have the culture that’s really committed to working with each other and doing the very challenging and difficult work that’s required.”
Both DiCarlo and Franco said the school’s progress was a team effort among the teachers, district staff, school administrators, the teachers’ union, parents and community members.
Hmmm. Seems very innovative!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This can’t be achieved when you have the churn that TeachForAwhile brings. There is a level of trust and dedication that has to be a part of all of this. How can you trust and rely on someone who 1)isn’t trained well and 2) only plans to be there to fulfill their 2 year “duty”.
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I know I am a broken record here, but here I go again. Are standardized test fundamentally flawed or not? If the former is true, why should we care if a school improves on standardized tests? Are standardized test full of errors and meaningless trivia or not?
In a previous post, Diane listed test results from an international standardized test. Austria and Luxembourg were near the bottom of the list. So what does that data tell us? Are Austria in Luxembourg in a education crisis? Or does this standardized test tell us nothing other than how a group of humans scored on a test on a particular day?
I guess my concern is both sides of this debate use test scores when it suits them and it leaves me rather confused. I am starting to lean toward allowing my child to take his 3rd grade tests because I feel he will pass and that will help his neighborhood school. I do believe the stakes attached to these tests are too high, but I guess opting out isn’t a helpful solution to ending that practice.
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concernedmom: I will take your question as a sincere one.
Since the inception of this blog on April 24, 2012, there have been thousands of postings and tens of thousands of comments. And you would not find your question fully answered. So, for example, whatever you decide about opting out is going to have some uncertainty about it. It will be a very personal decision that you—and you alone—can make. Please consider it carefully. Your decision will have ramifications not just for you, but for many many others.
But let me give one small but essential answer to your query. High-stakes standardized tests measure [by psychometric standards themselves] very little, are inherently imprecise, and tell us only a sliver of what we need to know about learning and teaching. Their primary functions are to: label, sort, and rank (for what purpose[s] is hotly debated).
Notwithstanding their severe limitations, the scores generated by high-stakes standardized tests have been thrust into the forefront of the ed debates. IMHO, they have been used to cruelly distort the education debates and unfairly punish teachers and students and parents. The claims of self-styled “education reformers” rest, more than anything else, on the weak foundation of the allegedly ‘hard data’ generated by high-stakes standardized tests. It is necessary to respond to their claims regardless of whether or not standardized tests are, indeed, useful or helpful.
I know that this may seem simply one more ‘push’ by someone trying to get you to ‘take a side.’ So I leave you with this: don’t trust me. Don’t trust anyone else. Trust yourself to find out about the strengths and weaknesses, good and bad points about standardized tests, and make up your own mind.
My suggestions for reading: Todd Farley, MAKING THE GRADES: MY MISADVENTURES IN THE STANDARDIZED TESTING INDUSTRY (2009); Phillip Harris, Bruce M. Smith and Joan Harris, THE MYTHS OF STANDARDIZED TESTS: WHY THEY DON’T TELL YOU WHAT YOU THINK THEY DO (2007); and Daniel Koretz, MEASURING UP: WHAT EDUCATIONAL REALLY TELLS US (2009).
Good luck. You are making an important decision. Make it an informed one.
“A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.” [Mark Twain]
🙂
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Krazy TA,
My question is sincere and thank you for taking it as such. I read Making the Grades and that book, really opened my eyes to the huge shortcomings in standardized testing. It made me sad that so many people who could really contribute to improvements in education are working for the testing machine. Imagine the good they could do if there were other employment opportunities for them.
You also recommended some books that I bought – including The Tyranny of Testing, the Mismeasure of Education and the Mismeasure of Man.
However, I disagree that these test results should be used against the reformers. Using bad science to win an argument makes no sense to me. I see two responses to the reformers’ claims of the value of testing in Diane’s posts – the majority being tests are flawed. However, then there are posts such as this one and the international one I mentioned that use test data when it seems to work against the reform argument. To me, that gives credence to tests that are meaningless.
My child is in a Title 1 school, that has less than stellar test results, what am I supposed to do? I want to support my child’s wonderful school and teachers. Does opting help them or not? I know there is a sort term and long term goal, but it leaves me in a bad spot because I feel that if I opt out, I will be causing trouble for my child’s school. So for the same reason Diane and others use test results to prove a point, I feel I need to allow my child to take the tests. But then again, I think it will take a movement by parents to stop the nonsense.
Now I guess I should get off this blog and start reading…..(I did cut and paste your reading list from the mIsmeasure of education post).
Thanks for your help.
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CM,
“. . . I feel that if I opt out, I will be causing trouble for my child’s school.”
Let’s turn that around! Do you believe that the school’s focus (and probably way too much focus) on these tests and the pressures that are brought to bear on your child is causing “trouble” for your child and you?
Shunning, an ancient concept to keep people “in line”, to supposedly promote social cohesion. The school is telling you that to opt out will be the cause for them to “shun”, in the sense of shaming you into compliance, you and your child. It is an offshoot of bullying and using intimidation to coerce compliance from you and your child. “Oh, our school will be harmed if you opt out, we will look bad, we won’t be accredited.” Be accredited to what? Continue a regime of fear through standardized testing to enforce compliance with a policy that is not only invalid but unethical. What a way to run a school. Pretty disgusting to me.
I beg of you to opt them out not only on the days of the test but also on days that are associated with all the testing and test prep that accompanies it. Demand alternative work. Constitutionally , they can’t not provide your child with an education and as a parent demand that they do. I know that it’s a good possibility that they will do their best to make life hell for your child and yourself but please don’t back down. The fight must be fought by individuals who can and do band together, get a parent group together. It seems it’s going to take a thousand cuts to cause the death of these standardized test regimes.
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Duane,
Thank you for your insight.
I haven’t brought the issue up with my child’s school so I don’t know what their response would be. When I say ‘trouble’ that is an assumption on my part. I learned that here in NC, they are going to grade schools from A-F starting next year. I don’t have the details, but I know 80% is based on school achievement and 20% is based on student growth. I live in a city where the traditional public schools get a bad rap and charters are plentiful and growing.
I also learned that if a schools starts doing worse on standardized testing, they lose some of their already limited autonomy. This is why I debate if I should opt out.
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The point here is that using the reformers own desired measurement method and an improvement strategy that they reject, this school got far better results than any reformy schools have. This is in the same category of refutations of reform as the recent VAM study of 7 states that found 98% of teachers to be proficient, the same number that got that rating with the “drive by” evaluations of the past. Both examples have hoisted reformers by their own petard. You are dead on that tests as a measurement of teacher and school quality are BO-OO-OO-GUS (hat tip to click and clack since were talking about Mass. here) but what is not clear from the article is if they were the sole or predominant measure used and more important, what the tests were that produced this finding. Though I seem to recall that they do testing better in Mass. and they do have better schools, I need someone who is better informed to chime in on that point, a very valid one.
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Concernedmom,
Not as much of a broken record as I am when it comes to denouncing using the results of standardized tests to conclude anything other than a brief description (a very lacking one indeed) of the INTERACTION of a student with a test, whether computer or pencil/paper test at a given time. It says nothing of the student, the teacher nor the school. To assert that it does is a logical fallacy of falsely attaching the assessing of an interaction to the participants not to mention a completely UNETHICAL usage of the results of that interaction.
You are quite correct in your concerns and are spot on!!
Unless and until we quit using such ILLOGICAL and UNETHICAL means of assessing not only the students but teachers, schools, districts etc. . . we will continue to delude ourselves about the real nature of improving the teaching and learning process.
Even worse is that some students get rewarded and others sanctioned due to the results. Should the state be in the business of DISCRIMINATING against a certain class of students due to inherent physical/psychological characteristics that are no more in the control of the individual than skin color, gender, age? You know, certain categories of historical discrimination that are protected. Standardized testing enables and is STATE SANCTIONED DISCRIMINATION that too many accept, much like many used to accept that “blacks were mentally inferior” or that “women weren’t smart enough to vote” etc. . .
Standardized testing is wrong, dead wrong causing untold harm to many innocents.
REFUSE TO PARTICIPATE!
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concernedmom: thank you for your comments.
Please don’t consider this splitting hairs, but I don’t look at bringing in metrics as using them when it suits me but dismissing them when they work against me.
One, I am highly suspicious when people claim to be principled but abandon their principles when they work against them. If the leading charterites/privatizers and their accountabully apologists think their educational metrics are so gosh darned fine, then they are required by their own professed standards to be consistent. Pointing out that they are consciously duplicitous and hypocritical when using test scores and graduation rates and drop-out rates and international comparisons and such is not ‘using’ bad science—it simply means, IMHO, that when the edufrauds are held to their own standards—THEIR OWN STANDARDS—they are found wanting. Using their own publicly proclaimed standards as a way to measure their few successes and many failures is an excellent way to both debunk their hype and to underline the need for better measures of success and failure.
**And to be frank: are the terms “success” and “failure” always appropriate or necessary to use? Do the use of these terms themselves limit us? As Albert Einstein wrote, “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” I think we could do with more of a parent-student-community meeting called ‘Imagination Nation’ than the parody ‘[Mis]Education Nation.’**
Two, I am not against educational metrics per se. I just think that they should be generated and used in transparent, ethical and informed ways. Note that even Duane Swacker has said that he is not against assessments, just that they need to be useful, helpful and meaningful.
Good luck with your reading. Self-education is a slow process. I have been following the ed debates for five years now and I still have a LOT to learn.
Good luck on your decision. It is a tough one to make.
🙂
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KTA,
If I may clarify some points about assessments. In a certain sense everyone all the time is “assessing” the world in which we live. And making decisions that each individual thinks will best benefit him/herself from those observations and assessments. Formal assessment in the teaching and learning process is a valid activity but many questions follow:
When is an assessment a valid assessment? Who claims the authority to assess someone other than themself? On what are those claims of authority based? Is the usage of metrics/quantification the only valid basis for assessing? What qualifies as a valid assessment? And many many more.
For me, in order to be just and equitable, in the teaching and learning process any and all assessments should include the person being assessed (with the caveat that children should have a parent/guardian as an equal partner/advocate) and it should include open, frank discussions of any successes and/or products/objects to show that some learning/production has occurred. Is the learner ready to move on to the next level/thing/grade, etc. . . ? And any and all questions and concerns brought up by both the teacher and learner need to be addressed.
And even then not all learning takes place so the teacher and/or learn can be able to ascertain what a student “knows” or can “do” as in the learning process much comes and goes, some things “stick around” for a short while, others longer, still others until death. And almost none of learning is amenable to quantification/metrics as those are used in current practices.
I have seen these types of assessments work wonderfully at the elementary level where that teachers had a maximum of 20 students per class with an aide and also Sped teachers as needed. It takes time which means it also takes personnel which means money. It seems to me our society chooses not to invest wisely in the teaching and learning process but just attempts to crank our students using inequitable and unjust assessment measures/means.
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Duane Swacker: I read all your posts.
I have to or I’d miss out on something important.
“Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.” [Aristotle]
🙂
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Great story, proving it can be done.. Kudos to staff, student and admin…
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Off-list: Diane would it be possible to email you directly? I have an article I’d like to share with you but didn’t want to put the information in a public comments section.
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Richard, you can mail me at my NYU address but snail mail is very slow and I wont see it for some weeks because I work at home.
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Richard,
Go to dianeravitch.com and hit the contact button to send Diane an email.
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OMG, how can this be a success story if no public funds were siphoned off into corporate coffers? What possible good can come of a model that is so easily scalable and reproducible? What idiot thinks that treating teachers as professionals and letting them work together as a team in collaboration with each other and other directly interested parties such as parents and horror of horrors UNIONS!!!! is OK? The 1999 Merrill Lynch white paper “Investing in Education” specifically warned that this was a major hurdle to be overcome if we are to profit from education by selling schools the products we are far more qualified than they to know that they need, and this will definitely interfere with that.Sorry but I have to go sell my stock in Pearson and all the other companies I bought into before it all tanks. Thanks for nothing, Massachusetts. Can I get that job at The Onion now?
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two gut feelings….improvements were achieved honestly. and simple factors having little to do with real learning had a lot to do with improvements. Focus of students on importance to take testing seriously is an important life lesson, and mechanical tips about actually reading the questions as best they can, etc. probably helped achieve higher scores. but this still plays into the agenda of the testing industry….to believe how much they measure actual learning.
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Yep, learning test taking skills is one of life’s vital activities!
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To be clear, this school was a recipient of federal SIG funds (as the article states and Massachusetts application for federal funds indicates), which means that it had to implement one of the four federal turnaround models. That means it had to make staffing changes, in addition to a number of other school-specific interventions, to receive funding. Just because this brief article doesn’t highlight all the components of the school or district’s plans does not mean they didn’t happen. Diane, you should read the school’s full application/plan before asserting that staff changes and outside providers played no role in this transformation.
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A “transformation” that is deemed good because of raising test scores is a Potemkin House of Cards built on an ever shifting ground of sand and off the backs of the students who have lost opportunities for learning other than test taking skills.
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Imagine that! Given time and resources hardworking and dedicated teachers can turn things around. Edushyster had a good post on this yesterday noting that the biggest regional newspaper, The Boston Globe, has overlooked this story and continues to tout charters as the “miracle cure” for reform. Maybe you should solicit success stories like this one from your readers. I’m willing to bet you that this is not the only under-reported success that came from the hard work of teachers.
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Success built around “raising test scores” is no success but a travesty of the teaching and learning process.
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In other words it’s “doing the wrong thing righter”
Doing the Wrong Thing Righter
The proliferation of educational assessments, evaluations and canned programs belongs in the category of what systems theorist Russ Ackoff describes as “doing the wrong thing righter. The righter we do the wrong thing,” he explains, “the wronger we become. When we make a mistake doing the wrong thing and correct it, we become wronger. When we make a mistake doing the right thing and correct it, we become righter. Therefore, it is better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right.”
Our current neglect of instructional issues are the result of assessment policies that waste resources to do the wrong things, e.g., canned curriculum and standardized testing, right. Instructional central planning and student control doesn’t – can’t – work. But, that never stops people trying.
The result is that each effort to control the uncontrollable does further damage, provoking more efforts to get things in order. So the function of management/administration becomes control rather than creation of resources. When Peter Drucker lamented that so much of management consists in making it difficult for people to work, he meant it literally. Inherent in obsessive command and control is the assumption that human beings can’t be trusted on their own to do what’s needed. Hierarchy and tight supervision are required to tell them what to do. So, fear-driven, hierarchical organizations turn people into untrustworthy opportunists. Doing the right thing instructionally requires less centralized assessment, less emphasis on evaluation and less fussy interference, not more. The way to improve controls is to eliminate most and reduce all.
Former Green Beret Master Sergeant Donald Duncan (Viet Nam) did when he noted in Sir! No Sir! that:
“I was doing it right but I wasn’t doing right.”
And from one of America’s premier writers:
“The mass of men [and women] serves the state [education powers that be] thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, [administrators and teachers], etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.”- Henry David Thoreau [1817-1862], American author and philosopher
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While I appreciate a story that does not rely on typical corporate reforms, I am still wary of the “turnaround” language. This story seems to imply that these teachers were doing something wrong before, then got together and now are doing something better. The idea that “it was really the hard work and the dedication of the staff” that changed the school likely is not the full story and feeds into the bad teacher/”failing schools” narrative. Were the teachers not working hard before?? Improvements like having more planning time and collaboration time are certainly a step in the right direction, but those changes in and of themselves are not miraculous or special. In fact, many teachers are forced into “collaboration” time with top-down documents and directives to complete during that time in addition to their already overwhelming workloads. And to hear that test scores improved does not tell me enough to know if this was a positive model. We all know how test scores can be manipulated–through test prep, exclusion of struggling test-takers, or natural demographic changes sometimes accompanied by gentrification.
The kind of story I would really like to hear is one that identifies true barriers to learning and aims to help such as relieving overburdened teachers’ workloads in order to have the time and energy to do collaboration well and to improve morale, investing new resources/staff to address the significant learning and behavioral needs of struggling students, shrinking class sizes again to create the space and time for innovation, ensuring fully-resourced schools so teachers and staff aren’t constantly sent running for supplies/grants/public library books (this takes an ENORMOUS amount of time), inviting parent/student/community/teacher voice to shape school policies, and allowing real, authentic teacher autonomy in the school.
I’m sorry, staff getting together and deciding to collaborate and everyone “working harder” is not enough. I have seen these ideas be viciously enforced from on high requiring “teacher buy-in” which is code for “follow our way or else.” There is authentic change, led from grassroots efforts, and there is the artificial improvements led by intimidation and fear. I hope this is an example of the former, but there is no way to know when the only measure is test scores.
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You put your finger on a number of concerns I had reading this. Thanks and well said.
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Well said, Katie!
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Katie, you are ALWAYS spot on and an inspiration, thanks.
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It is great to see a success story. However, the Murkland is an oddity in Massachusetts in that it has a majority SE Asian student body. Moreover the data suggests that there also may be a base-line effect.
http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/mcas/mcascharts2.aspx?linkid=33&orgcode=01600080&fycode=2013&orgtypecode=6&
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I really hate to be a buzzkill and I truly want to celebrate student success, but not if it means jumping for joy over improved test scores. I am very suspicious when a principal says, “But I think ultimately it was really the hard work and the dedication of the staff, who really committed to the process of school improvement and working to implement some of the ideas and strategies that were really going to benefit our students.” It all seems too vague and reeks of test-prep. I would like to hear a principal speak of portfolio assessments, experiential learning, literature-based reading instruction, outdoor education and project-based learning.
This message is for any parent who is totally fed up with the degradation caused by excessive high-stakes/standardized testing: Don’t worry that opting out will hurt your school. Going along with this destructive charade will NEVER benefit teachers or students. Your obedience will only perpetuate this insane system of testing that is obliterating true teaching and learning.
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Murkland is k-4.
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God, then if the “success” indicator is raising test scores then it’s thousands of times worse than I can imagine.
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Actually Murkland is PK-4 with MCAS assessments in 3 and 4 grade.
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Okay, only 400 hundred times worse!
No, I’m kicking back up over 1,000 because obviously they’ve been test prepping them earlier than 3rd and 4th grades.
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WOW, that’s just, WOW. K-4?? Testing???? Methinks Ms. Katie was more right than she knew and we’ve all been had. Definitely need more detail on this situation.
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One of the very first comments I ever sent to Diane, which she then posted as a question for readers (about a year ago) begged the question of can we not just put our nose to the grindstone and do the best we can despite any mandate or silly (threatening) legislation? The question drew more than 60 comments, most with the tone of hell no, some even mocking me or suggesting “willful naïveté” or “hate.” I was stunned. But I took it with a grain of salt, kept reading and learning and trying to understand why there was such passionate emotion by those who opposed the problems I was perceiving, but with less conviction (perhaps because I live in a right to work state). So I think, perhaps, the purpose of this post is to show how to turn around a school in contrast to what reformers propose, and not necessarily in elevation or upstaging of what many of our schools are already doing.
I think this is another example of when Dr Ravitch upholds a hero for public Ed, it is in contrast to those who are knowingly trying to destroy it and not in contrast to those who are, daily, working as heroes for public Ed in their own right or doing the best they can in a situation that works against us.
Our profession is one of unsung heroes–who do the best they can for children even when the mandates around them dictate otherwise.
What I have learned is to keep my nose to the grindstone, yes, but to also be aware.
Just trying to offer perspective here for those who might feel uncelebrated. Remember, the smiles and hugs those children give us, the little affirmations we get by watching their growth and their eureka moments (in action, not just on assessments) is our affirmation.
(Maybe I am just talking to myself here, which I suspect I am many of my comments, but I am just trying to help us keep fueled for positive energy for our students).
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Joanna,
More likely than not I was one who berated you on that post-eh!
Unfortunately I have to “berate” (kindlier I hope) you again.
“So I think, perhaps, the purpose of this post is to show how to turn around a school. . . I think this is another example of when Dr Ravitch upholds a hero for public Ed”.
Well since the lead sentence of the article is “Murkland Elementary School in Lowell, Massachusetts, has seen a remarkable improvement in its test scores.” Since the success indicator is “raising test scores” I cannot even remotely consider this to be a “success” story nor be touted to be heroic but another in the long line of illogical, unethical machinations the schools are doing to appear “successful”. And considering that it is evidently a K-4 school that particular indicator is even that much more horrific, shocking, insane, completely useless and any other of hundreds of words that signify “worse than I can imagine”.
“(Maybe I am just talking to myself here, which I suspect I am many of my comments, but I am just trying to help us keep fueled for positive energy for our students)”
Well no, at least one set of eyes and ears are paying attention, hopefully to help you in your learning processes. (but I’m not into keeping “fueled for positive energy” when I read supposed success stories like these, actually quite the opposite. If I had a beer in the house I’d go drink it now for some “positive energy”. But I don’t so I’ll just have to hang with the dog and cat for that energy)
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Duane, as always I appreciate your candor.
So this is my situation. I am on my school’s School improvement team. We are gearing up to amend our Prof Dev Plan. And I am told it is to be driven by test scores. All cues for improvement rest on test scores.
So, OK yeah. Truth is I did not know what to do with this post earlier when I read it. Then later I read some of the comments and being (trying to be) ever the peace maker I put in my two cents. But fact is I don’t know what to think about being on a team who will write a school improvement plan based on test scores. I trust I will know what to say or not to say at the right time in my meetings, but really I don’t have anything to compare it to. What did School Improvement plans used to be based on?
Just as I was the first time I wrote Diane, I am at a loss for conviction here; NCLB has dominated all but two years of my career. If test scores are what we are told to use as our guidepost, what else are we to do?
So I was trying to find something positive in the post.
Positive energy sustains me. So I assume the same is true for others.
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Duane did you not ever see Life Is Beautiful. I love that movie. I want my children and children who look up to me to find the world to be a wonderful place. Because it is. I want them to think and not be fools, but to find beauty and enthusiasm for most days. (Beer or no beer).
That is who I am and just as you are not wowed by scores, I am not dismayed by them. I appreciate the attention you give my comments, and I hope some positive energy does rub off, just as your informed perspective enlightens. But I will not stop looking for the sunny side of life. Ever.
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Also there is some wisdom, I think, to:
1. Baby steps
2. If you can’t get what you want, do the next best thing.
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Joanna,
I reply in a new post to eliminate the string bean effect (even though that’s the vegetable for dinner tonight).
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Here tis!
The movie, no I haven’t seen it. The last movie I went to see in a theatre was Chicken Run when my youngest son was five-he’s 21 now. Not much of a TV/Movie person although I do appreciate the hard work and effort that goes into those things.
“We are gearing up to amend our Prof Dev Plan. And I am told it is to be driven by test scores.”
I was the chairperson on my prior school’s “improvement team” in the late 90s. At first it really did try to accomplish what Robert S. rightly touts for school improvement, that is site based type management. New admin comes in and that turned into a rubber stamping process with a veneer of site based management. It was at that time, early 00s that a lot of the administrator literature started talking about “strong leaders” supposedly supported by research, with strong leaders meaning those able to manipulate people into doing the administrator’s bidding all the while thinking they were making choices. And that is how I have found that to be the vast majority of the way these things operate these days.
So you’re up against that right off the bat. You can do what I did and keep logically challenging the schemes and end up on the wrong end of the stick having administration come guns a full blazing at you OR. . . . It’ll be up to you to decide. Perhaps you can be more conciliating than me and work within what they want, all the while keeping in mind that you will be perpetuating illogical and unethical educational practices and collaborating with those who seek to destroy public education (and I’m not talking about those school level administrator or even district)
“If test scores are what we are told to use as our guidepost, what else are we to do?”
Well, considering all the inherent harms caused by the whole process of standardized tests to the most innocent of society, the children I’d suggest opting out of the school improvement process and lay low in your class doing what you know is right for your students. But, again, that is for you to decide. And I wish you luck in whatever you choose, because we all need as much luck as possible to survive this madness, just as, unfortunately, relying on positive energy cannot always carry us through.
And I’ve always enjoyed “Keeping on the Sunny Side”:
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Love the Carter family!
Duane, I hear ya. It’s tough. It’s what I worry about. It’s why I read this blog.
Yesterday all classroom teachers were trained on the new Homebase (Pearson) “gradebook.” I have used online grade books before (in MIssouri, back in 2005. . .NC a little late in the game on that one). But it is part of RttT. Anyway, the halls were lined with stuff for the teachers (white board spray, giant tablets, cute staplers, etc) and each teacher got a $50 gift card to WalMart (not me; I don’t do grades so I was just invited for the first part of the meeting with a giant cake). Anyway, aren’t Walmart gift cards at public school like Dominoes pizza would be at an abortion clinic? (or is that too extreme a reality). And you know if you want to avoid WalMart in our neck of the woods, the other option is Roses, which is owed by Art Pope who funds a lot of interests that trend towards vouchers and charters. The point is that the proponents of privatizing are so infiltrated into what already exists of public school, I have no earthly idea how to get around that. It’s like we already have HIV, so now we just need to try not and get full-blown AIDS or something (again, pardon these extreme analogies, but I am just trying to compartmentalize, as I tend to do).
So I don’t know any answers. Except to model positive energy and a bigger picture for children.
Duane, break your non-movie trend and watch Life is Beatiful. You will be glad you did.
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