Reader Gordon Wilder wonders why we lost sight of the
purpose of education: “My view: People have forgotten what real
education is about, the search for ultimate values: good, truth,
beauty. To value integrity, love etc. It is searching out the best
ideas of humanities greatest minds, greatest teachers. It is NOT
about passing test scores. When this first came out – the “nation
at risk” era, we laughed. Pretty soon they will be having classes
on how to pass tests. That is not funny anymore. It is reality. Has
the era of corporate leadership which took us to the brink of
worldwide financial collapse, within hours, the panacea for our
problems. Is it that we are not producing enough scientists and
mathematicians or that 50% of marriages – when they occur – are
collapsing, that 23% of our children live in poverty, that our
health care is amongst the worst in the world, ad nauseum. How do
we view our children, as objects, widgets, into which we pour
government – corporate – approved facts or as human beings to reach
their highest potential as human beings? How do we define
education? Who defines it, scholars and educators or politicians?
What yardstick do we use to measure success, test scores, or lives
lived to their fullest?”
A site to discuss education and democracy
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The Common Core is not about education. Education is for the children of the elite. The Common Core is a cynical procedure for training of the proles. That’s why these things were rushed together by amateurs with no vetting. You better believe that if what the Common Core had been about was standards and testing in the private schools that the children of the elite attend, more care would have been taken. This wouldn’t have been done in the sloppy, amateurish manner in which it was, in fact, done.
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Listen to the subtest of all the CCSS hype. It’s all about prole training for the “21st century workforce”–the workforce that will obediently bubble in those bubbles. It is training in acceptance of the alienation that comes with work that is meaningless. And for that purpose, I think, the CCSS is probably ideal.
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And what does that 21st century work look like, from the point of view of the oligarchy? It looks like service work. It looks like, “Will you be taking your lattes on the verandah Ms. Rhee, Mr. Bush, Mr. Gates, Mr. Obama, Mr. Duncan?”
And teachers are, of course, treated with the same disdain. Their knowledge, their expertise, their ideas about what they should teach, when, how, why, and to whom is treated as OF NO INTEREST. Instead, they are subjected to endless Common Core “trainings.” As in sit up. Roll over. Fetch. Good boy.”
The CCSS in ELA is a list of abstract skills abstracted from any meaningful content or context. The tests on the CCSS in ELA are the same. Excellent training if the purpose is not to produce people who can think but ones who will do whatever random task is put before them, obediently, without question.
It would be amusing to have any real thinker, a Yeats or a Blake or a Shaw or an Ida Tarbell or an Einstein or a Feynman or a Kandinsky or a Miro respond to one of these ridiculous PARCC or SmarterBalanced writing prompts.
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The sad part Robert, is that those of us who know and remember what it is like to actually TEACH, without a standardized test looming over our heads, will eventually ride off into the sunset. Once our generation retires, or are forced to retire, there won’t be anyone left to know better. At 50 years old I am considering going back to earn my PhD so I can maybe teach at a university. Will I become that old professor reminiscing to teacher candidates about those “Good ole days” when teaching was a real profession?
I hang on to the hope that I will be around long enough to see this house of cards fall. I desperately want to be a part of the rebuilding of public education to the level which created my generation. Yes, we needed to grow and improve, but we were definitely not failing as a society. The research and best practices that came about in the 80s and 90s when I first became a teacher truly improved outcomes for children in poverty. That is until public education was hijacked by NCLB and replaced by two decades of testing and narrowing of the curriculum for poor children. Meanwhile wealthy families made sure their children had access to rich and varied curriculum.
Thanks to Diane and the rest of the brave souls who stand up for our children. I am waiting for parents to finally see what the Corporate Baggers are doing to their children. We need parents to say “Enough”.
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Bridget, you write, “Yes, we needed to grow and improve, but we were definitely not failing as a society.” I argue that the prima facie evidence of failure of the public school systems of our era is that the produced a generation that 1) bought global warming, and 2) elected Obama, twice. Before I can credit your nostalgia, I would want to know where YOU stand on those two issues.
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It is sad, indeed, to talk with older teachers, all of whom have stories about the wonderful work that they can no longer do because it’s all test prep, now, all the time. Best of luck to you, Bridget, and don’t give up the fight! This madness, too, will end.
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Harlan, The world has always been full of both good and evil. I choose to see my glass as half full. Global warming scares the hell out of me, for my grandchildren, Education reform is just as scary when I think about my students and wonder what the future holds for them. They are our future. But then again, Hitler was pretty scary too. Obama is what he is, but would Palin, or Perry, or Romney have done better??? Who knows I have hope that my children’s generation will learn from our mistakes…
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Let me put your mind at rest about man made global warming. It doesn’t exist. As for socialist tyranny, I.e., man- made evil, if you are comfortable with it for yourself and your grand children, it’s your choice. Romney would have been all around better, in my opinion. Can anyone be doing more damage to public education than Obama? Diane thinks Romney was no better, at least in so far as privatization goes. I think he would have repealed NCLB as well as Obamacare. No RTTT. But, of course, we can’t know now. At least Romney would have gotten the economy going again, thus raising tax revenue in all districts as people went back to work. You’ll have another chance to see if you’ve learned from experience when Hilary runs.
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This insanity had already hit the college/university level. You won’t find any relief there.
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I am going to echo concerned parent & teacher. There are a whole lot of PhDs out there with no jobs. University jobs are scarce and more and more are filled by adjunct faculty making a pittance with no benefits.
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I’ve said more than once that my students learned more when I first started teaching than they do now. Those were the days when I could really teach!
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Pearson’s 1st grade Scott Foresman Common Core Reading Street series writing prompts are pathetic.
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Silly. Testing is cheaper than confronting POVERTY by the corporate right…It’s a RUSE to divert attention of low information voters/citizens who swallow the corporatist message whole and govern public opinion accordingly…
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that is EXACTLY my take on it. It is smoke and mirrors. We take birth control away, limit abortions yet refuse to anything really necessary to help a class of people get up and out of poverty. But…..only the poor go to war. Keep ’em coming.
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I think it is also a way of stacking the deck against public schools in hopes of vouchers and charters (but some folks I know say that is being paranoid).
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I’m not sure it is even a ruse. As soon as the ‘accountability’ movement came to mean ‘accountability to taxpayers for how your tax dollar is spent’ instead of ‘accountability to parents for the education your child receives’– in other words, the moment a school rating/failing scheme was tied to funding/closing (NCLB), the privatization agenda should have been clear. Schools pitted against one another for funding are in competition; competition is a term belonging to businesses and profits, not to ‘social good’.
Transportation and postal services were already under the gun, schools were next. The only social goods which so far have not been put to the ‘profit’ test are fire and police.
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If the CCSS in ELA were about education and not about prole training, then the overlords wouldn’t have given the job of preparing them to an amateur with no knowledge of best practices in the teaching of English or of how kids actually acquire reading, writing, speaking, and listening ability, including the grammar and lexicon of a language.
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Yes…!
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There are already classes for taking tests. Princeton Review for SAT, ACT, LSAT, etc. and they are expensive $$$. Next Princeton Review for third graders.
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We definitely have enough scientists, so that is not the problem. We don’t have any jobs to give them or funding for them though. Obviously it’s the poverty, but I couldn’t resist the urge to vent about the state of science funding and underemployment.
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Gordon, I’m currently trying to increase my fitness level, so every two weeks I ride my bike up a long hill to see whether the amount of effort changes as I become “more fit”. There was a time when taking a test in school accomplished a similar function: to see if students were experiencing changes in their knowledge and skills. I’d like to see tests of student knowledge and skill taken out of the hands of corporations and placed into the hands of teachers instead. We are fully able to determine whether students know more than they did a few weeks ago.
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Interesting that he mentions the divorce rate.
Most people want to steer clear of that one. Most of us have it in our lives somewhere and try to make the best of it. But I do think we muddy the waters for ourselves such that it is harder to see what is going on with some tricky maneuvering upstream (read: the reform and privatizing movement). We were too busy sorting out our family dramas and dynamics to see what was brewing. ?
Not preaching. Just saying. It is worth looking at so we can help newer generations make better choices.
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Not that I would ever want to discourage anyone from getting an advanced degree, but those academic positions are very hard to get these days. I think it is a little better in education fields, but in science it is near impossible. The Ph.Ds are taking longer too. Many science Ph.Ds are taking about 6 years now, and if you want to go into academia you can expect to do a postdoc for an additional 5-8 years (assuming they are productive postdocs). Again I don’t know about all fields, but from what I hear they are also getting much harder than they used to be.
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This was in response to Bridget. For some reason it keeps dropping my comments to the bottom when I try to reply from my email.
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Some people have received those online degrees …PHD’s.,….soft degrees.
The worst case was when a principal of a public school received his PHD from a Diploma Mill and was paid $138,000 as principal of a High School in his county..
He quit abruptly.. just this April …on a Friday…at the end of spring break week….announced at 6 pm(news) had to ***pay back the school system $19,000 for a fictitious moving company, he had created..when moving from another state to take this job…..
***(reported in a local newspaper)
The superintendent in place when he was hired was Terry Grier…
Yet..this fake PHD man was never charged with anything and is doing whatever….. after his Reign of Terror….
He was all about test scores…..no one was sad to see him leave but something is amiss…or is he still being investigated??
How can someone get away with this deceit and embezzlement??
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I’m pretty sceptical of on-line degrees in general. I know there are some on-line programs from legitimate accredited universities, but for every one of those there are a dozen scams. Many employers seem to be okay with this though (wich surprises me). Education degrees seem to be particularly pushed by these diploma mills. We don’t really have this problem in science. Unless you have millions of dollers of laboratory equipment in your basement, you will not go very far. I think employers should pay particular attention to the applicants publication record. If you have a PhD, you should have published something in a legitimate journal. I suspect the diploma mill PhDs have no such publications.
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Read Andre Comte-Sponville’s “A Small Treatise of the Great Virtues for a start.
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I have now attended three Common Core Robot training sessions for ELA and I think I am starting to get the hang of it. I only recognized one title on the recommended trade book list.
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The tests you write about, may or may not be lousy. I have tried to take as many sample math questions from them as I can find online. For the math tests I see them as being pretty pedestrian, though I am perfectly prepared to defer to any math teacher who can point to what is and is not grade appropriate math. The only issue for me is the computer interface tools to answer questions about functions.
It may be that some schools and teachers have defined their roles as getting their kids to pass some state mandated test. But what exactly does it boil down to in terms of time spent focused on these tests? Can someone point me to empirical studies that detail how much time students actually spend on these tests? Not opinion surveys, but actual studies of test schedules and time spent on preparation for tests.
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1st….before we give you the data.,…what do you teach?
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neanderthal100:
What has your question to do with my request for data on the inappropriateness of the content of current national or state tests and references to empirical studies of the time spent preparing for such tests? Are you saying you have such information but decline to share it without my answering your question?
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“The tests you write about, may or may not be lousy.”
Bernie, Bernie, Bernie (said in that certain teacher’s tone and voice to show flabbergastedness with the pupil),
We are talking about standardized non-teacher made tests in this post and they suffer all the errors (and then some) in the construction of, the giving of and the disseminating of the supposed results of that Wilson has shown to invalidate the whole process, to which you agreed in a prior post saying that there was no rebuttal to what he has said. And you said that the objections that Wilson conveys are supposedly known far and wide (of which they are not) and those errors (which cause untold harm to students through the process of subjectivization/internalization) are far more consequential than you are willing to admit.
But I thank you for quote above as it allows me to invite you again to hop on the Quixotic Quest Bandwagon in helping me rid the world of such nefarious practices (and we know converts can be some of the most strident evangelists-ha ha! and please take my comments toward you with the right amount of humor intended). Another read by Wilson is his takedown of validity as outlined in the testing bible-American Educational Research Association; American Psychological Association; National Council on Measurement in
Education. (2002). Standards for educational and psychological
testing . Washington, DC: American Educational Research
Association-“A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review” found at: http://www.edrev.info/essays/v10n5.pdf
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Duane:
I am asking directly on point questions. Wilder’s points carry more or less weight the more or less classroom time is spent preparing students for valid or non-valid tests.
As you know, I am well aware of the risks and limitations of standardized tests. With respect, I decline to go down the Wilson rat hole again.
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Bernie,
I’m not quite sure what you’re driving at in the first sentence. Do discussions of the purpose of public education encompass testing/non-testing? I would say yes as it’s impossible to separate out curriculum from purpose (and testing or not is part of the curriculum).
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Duane:
I thought you were saying that my request for information was off topic. On re-reading your comment I guess you were saying something different. As to my “lousy or not” caveat, while I agree with Wilson’s points in principle, the reality is that there are better and worse standardized tests. One criteria for assessing the tests is the relevance and appropriateness of the actual items. The strength of Wilder’s comment suggests that he has some basis for asserting that the test items are somehow inappropriate.
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And I would be remiss in my dedication to my beloved (whoever she may be as I haven’t found a new Dulcinea yet again) in this Quixotic Quest if I didn’t mention Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
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 logical 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 crap 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:
Do you know of any empirical studies that document and analyze the amount of time teachers spend on preparing students for the current “invalid” national and state standardized tests?
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Bernie,
Just got back from some professional development that invoves all teachers, no matter what subjec,t having to give exercises in writing, all in the same fashion. Anecdotelly, no doubt but I’m not sure what prompting and writing English have to do with my teaching of Spansh but the test scores supposedly indicate that our district is in dire need of raising its scores on the reading and writing parts of the standardized tests.
No, I don’t know of any empirical studies on the time spent on testing and test prepping. But as the above anecdote shows it is probably far more time than most realize. And now we’re going to a “tech time” which more than not will focus on writing and or the common core.
Gotta love being “professionally developed”, especially when we get “common cored”.
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‘Gotta love being “professionally developed”, especially when we get “common cored”.’
🙂
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Bernie, I believe some of our NY posters may be a good source of testing schedule data. The testing mania seems to have moved more quickly in their neck of the woods. In fact you may be able to find some of the data in the archives. I think the full extent of the lost time may be difficult to document because test prep is now embedded in instruction. A teacher’s judgement as to progress in instruction is pretty much out of the equation. Every claim must be documented with hard data in the form of a numerical rating. As a substitute I see this obsession developing as districts move to implement CCSS as mandated.
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“Can someone point me to empirical studies that detail how much time students actually spend on these tests?”
That is an excellent question, Bernie. I know of no such data. However, let’s examine the question you ask, for a bit, to be certain that we understand what is being asked. What does “how much time students actually spend on these tests” mean? That time, Bernie, includes the following:
1. the actual time spent taking the tests
2. the time spent taking practice tests, including so-called high-stakes diagnostics and benchmark tests
3. the time spent taking practice tests modeled on the highs-stakes tests as part of preparation for those tests (There are hundreds of test prep products that contain such practice tests. These include the print and online test prep products from companies like Peoples Education, Triumph Learning, Study Island, Continental, etc., and also include just about all the basals now, which have practice test “components”)
4. the class time spent in dedicated test prep instruction and practice
But that’s barely scratching the surface. The fact is, Bernie, that ALL the curriculum providers have revamped their materials to include test-prep-style exercises in the test formats throughout these. So, much of what used to be exercises built to the purpose of advancing knowledge of the topics just taught are now exercises to train for the tests. All the ed-book publishers are touting this abomination as a FEATURE of their new programs. Put yourself in the shoes of an editor or writer of a chapter in a language arts textbook. In the past, what one did was to design activities in whatever way best suited what was being taught. Now, one designs activities in a way that most closely models the testing. That’s because the testing is driving EVERYTHING. It’s ALL THAT MATTERS NOW. Almost all of teachers’ professional development time is now being spend on test-related matters. PD sessions are now commonly referred to as “data chats.”
But it gets worse. Teachers are being handed lesson formats and pedagogical strategies based on–guess what?–the test designs. It doesn’t matter, any more, what the best way to teach vocabulary is. What matters is HOW VOCABULARY IS GOING TO BE TESTED. And so lesson formats and pedagogy are being redone so that they mimic the tests.
So, if you ask, how much time is being spent on these tests, what this question means, really, is to what extent are the tests DRIVING and corrupting EVERYTHING ELSE? And that’s almost total.
A dear friend of mine was just telling me, today, about how she has thrown out reading The Red Fern Grows with her students because there isn’t time. Instead, she and every other teacher in her district is spending the week, instead, doing a completely random, canned Literacy Design Collaborative lesson based on–guess what?–the new tests. She also tells me that EVERY LESSON observed by the administrators must follow the test question formats.
Very few people on the reform side have any notion the extent to which the tests have completely taken over, like a cancer that has metastasized throughout the entire body of K-12 education.
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Robert:
Your questions make good sense. However, they raise the issue of the appropriateness of the curriculum – which is the question I started with. I recognize that you have lots of issues with the LA curriculum – but I have yet to see a systematic analysis of different curricula that highlights gaps and other deficiencies. Does one exist for LA?
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The curriculum is VERY important. So are the pedagogical approaches. But what is happening is that the new CCSS ELA standards are BECOMING the curriculum. That’s a terrible, terrible mistake.
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Let me clarify what I have said with a practical example. We know that very little of either active or passive vocabulary was explicitly taught, that the learning was implicit and occurred in batches that provided a semantic context. There’s a lot of science on this. What I am saying is simply known. So, for example, a person takes a painting class at the local YWCA. In the course of a couple weeks, she learns the meanings of filbert brush, gesso, chiaroscuro, stippling, titanium dioxide, linseed oil, saturation, tableau, and many other “new” terms. These are learned and remembered because they are connected to one another in a meaningful semantic context. And because these words are learned via implicit rather than explicit means, in the course of their actual use in conversation with other pupils and the art instructor, the derivative forms and inflections are also learned. Almost all the vocabulary of an adult speaker of a language is learned in this way. Almost none of it is learned via explicit instruction.
And, so, it makes sense to have kids learning vocabulary in the manner in which their brains are DESIGNED to learn it–in an extended semantic context in a knowledge domain in which that language is being actively used as the language of interaction in that domain.
But, alas, along comes the Common Core State Standards [sic] and the associated tests. There are a number of specific vocabulary standards [sic] involving things like learning the meanings of affixes and of Greek and Latin roots, distinguishing among the multiple meanings of words, and acquiring a general academic vocabulary. In addition, there are tests that interpret dealing with vocabulary in its proper semantic context as using context clues to decode an unfamiliar word in a reading, and those tests have questions like, “Which of the following is the meaning of field as the word is used in this paragraph?”
So, what happens, because the tests are all-important, is that people forget about how kids actually learn vocabulary–they forget about teaching vocabulary IN BATCHES, IN USE, IN A MEANINGFUL SEMANTIC CONTEXT that ties the group together in a cognitive network in the brain. Curriculum developers write isolated exercises on Greek and Latin roots and on words with multiple meanings. They fill their books with multiple-choice questions on what this word means in this particular context in this selection. They hand out lists of general academic vocabulary like that found here: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/alzsh3/acvocab/–lists of words like inherent, integral, intermediate, preliminary, and subordinate to be memorized and practiced. And all of the exercises on vocabulary follow the test formats.
The same kind of thing happens in every ELA domain. The standards and tests end up grossly distorting both pedagogy and curricula.
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Robert:
What you say makes sense to me – as it does to my wife who now teaches ESL after many years as a German and French teacher. Alas, I fear we are at the end of the Age of Reading and its concomitant – Reason.
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Bernie, I haven’t given up on reading, not yet. A couple years ago, my stepdaughter was dating a fellow who was valedictorian of his class at an expensive private school. I spent quite a bit of time with this fellow. He never read any book-length works for his own enjoyment or edification. Yet he was a very bright and very knowledgeable fellow. His learning consisted almost entirely of gleanings, taken in in soundbites. He was reading A LOT, but he wasn’t reading Anna Karenina or The Republic or Anarchy, State, and Utopia or even one of his textbooks like The Molecular Biology of the Cell from cover to cover. His was a very different kind of literacy from mine.
Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of online text development for publishers. Everything is being reduced to what will fit on the equivalent of a Powerpoint slide. But those slides are hyperlinked, and the kids using them surf more knowledge in a month than Hypatia encountered in scrolls read over a lifetime. A new kind of literacy is being born. I have yet to figure out what that means. I hate the Powerpointing of education. See Edward Tufte’s wonderful “The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint,” here:
Click to access Tufte.pdf
Reason, however, will survive. It’s what we do, we smart apes. Always, there are these cycles–descents into madness followed by recovery. There are changes occurring right now that are going to be really dramatic. We’re in a phase transition, like a pot of water about to boil. Everything is going to look very, very different 30 years from now. Reason will prevail because it works. And not only will it prevail, it will take forms most marvelous. Of that I am certain.
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Robert:
I hate hyperbole – and there I was being hyperbolic.
As for Tufte – he is a treasure. I attended his workshop – in fact I had all my survey folks attend with the goal of making our survey reports and feedback more informative and compelling/
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I am not surprised, Bernie!
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I apologize, Bernie, for the many typos in my posts. I really should write these, edit them, and then post them. But I am always in a hurry. These issues, however, are extraordinarily important. The devil is in the details of how the new standards [sic] and tests are being used and in the influences these are having on curricula and on pedagogical practice.
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Bernie, you asked for see “a systematic analysis of different curricula that highlights gaps and other deficiencies.” Despite the astonishing amount of writing that is done about education, there is little such. I highly recommend to you E.D. Hirsch, Jr.’s The Schools We Need and Diane McGuinness’s masterful Early Reading Instruction: What Science Really Tells Us about How to Teach Reading and Language Development and Learning to Read: The Scientific Study of How Language Development Affects Reading Skill. Hirsch is an enlightenment thinker–a fellow with a Ph.D. in English but a scientific orientation. His early studies of reading comprehension are essential reading. His findings were revolutionary, but it’s a revolution that has yet to occur. McGuinness’s book is the definitive comparative study of approaches to phonics instruction. Another great work comparing early reading curricula that is, alas, not much read is Matthew Davis’s Reading: The Two Keys. The great comparative critiques of writing, grammar, and literature instruction have yet to be written but have been stewing in my head for a long time now.
I have long thought that someone with a bit of a scientific bent could dramatically transform English methods research and teaching for the better. Tufte, BTW, points out that of all the groups of types of Powerpoint presentations that he reviewed, the ones with the lowest information content (which he measures by quite rigorous means) are those by education administrators. That’s one reason why PD is usually so awful. And it’s also why so many administrators get so excited by whatever reform magic is being peddled on the K-12 education midway this carnival season. Simple answers, ones that can be sloganized and put on Powerpoints are the stock-in-trade of the professional education reformer/pundit.
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Hirsch was a renowned scholar of the English Romantic poets and of hermeneutics (a fellow with provocative notions about both) when he took an interest in composition–the stuff usually taught by adjuncts and TAs to sub-par freshmen. Quite an unusual career move. But he was motivated by concern for the common good. Too many kids simply couldn’t write well. Scientific study of freshman compositions led him, in turn, to study of their problems in comprehension, and study of those led to the conclusion that one of the major problems that kids had is that they didn’t have the knowledge that writers took for granted–that they expected their readers to have. This important finding–that there was an enormous gap between what writers thought of as common knowledge and what college kids actually knew–set him on his subsequent course. Unfortunately, Hirsch’s important discovery was lost in the subsequent politicized debates over multiculturalism vs. normative “cultural literacy” and over student-centered (constructivist) vs. subject-centered pedagogy. That’s a great pity because Hirsch had a key insight. Knowledge is fundamental. The skills-based approach instantiated in the new standards [sic] and tests is doomed to failure. It’s wrong from the start.
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Robert:
Again thanks. I am not surprised by Hirsch’s insights. Over the last 30 years, we hired a number of young people, mostly from very good schools in the Boston area. There were exceptions, but I was always amazed at how many of them knew very little history and had minimal knowledge of human geography. I would swear that it was only the old folks in the office who read the newspaper beyond the sports page or entertainment section.
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Robert:
Thanks for the references. I will follow up. Diane’s book is keeping me busy tracking down bits and pieces.
As for Tufte, my recollection is that he was an equal opportunity critic of all PowerPoint presenters with a special place in Hell for NASA project managers. We used to call it “Foil and Toil.”
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One of the big problems is that valid general instruments for comparing outcomes with differing ELA curricula and pedagogical practices are difficult to come by. The high-stakes tests are NOT such instruments, for reasons too involved to go into here. Years ago, I was, alas, responsible for creating the first instantiation in a basal writing program of the now standard anchor-papers-and-rubrics approach to writing evaluation (I think it was the first–I based what I did on work done by others pursuant to study of the possibility of adding a writing task to the SAT–the idea was not original to me). Unfortunately, that attempt to ease the burden of grading student papers in order to encourage teachers to assign more writing has devolved into a procedure for according merit to student writing based on the extent to which it is formulaic (and thus lousy writing). I wish that I hadn’t created that evaluation model (which I did for a best-selling basal program), but hey, a textbook client was paying. So, I, too, have been guilty of implementing a poorly thought out ed “reform,” without much thought, in the course of earning a buck. The deformers have, however, taken that art to a whole new level.
The guy who invented the office cubicle died a couple years ago. He conceived the idea as a means for enabling business people to transform their physical spaces readily in order to accommodate flexibility in team organization for ready collaboration. He was horrified that his noble creation had been used, instead, to create the Dilbertesque cubicle farm. Similarly, years ago I worked on a physics textbook by Uri Habersheim, a nuclear power pioneer who worked with Enrico Fermi in the early days. Uri told me a lot about the early days of television and how he and others had envisioned it being used to bring the best teachers in the world before any student, anywhere. He described high-level meetings with federal officials to push that dream. There were tears in his eyes when he described what had happened, instead, to that vision for the new medium–how it had become , instead, the idiot box.
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Robert:
We are both beginning to sound like old curmudgeons.
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Would it make any sense to test all the teachers FIRST, before we go testing all the students?
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Let us go up the ladder a wee bit and test all of the above.
Principals…Superintendents..Governors….etc
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What are you going to do if they don’t pass? Fire them and have random substitutes in the room all year long?
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Harlan, that was already done under NCLB, you had to pass a test to show you were “highly qualified” or else the school had to send a note to parents informing them that you were not “highly qualified.”
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I mean on the CCSS. Have teachers been tested on the new standards? I don’t think so.
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Clearly, Harlan, almost no one has read the new standards [sic] in ELA. If they had, there would be a lot of guffawing. They are really amateurish.
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So what is the answer to the question within this title … “Gordon Wilder: Why the Obsession with Test Scores”? If you are an “ed reformer” you would answer “Why not”! It enables “ed reformers” to cut systematically cash-starved schools’ budgets when teachers are fired based on being evaluated based on test scores of students. Seasoned teachers with higher salaries and pensions are fired, TFA’s are hired at much lower costs and they leave before “they get expensive” and can also be fired for the lower test scores of students! Why test score obsession? Because it enables “ed reformers” to label public schools as failures and to enable an enormous PR machine to hit every newspaper and “ed reform” dominated media outlet in the nation to shout the message “schools are failing” from the rooftops… selling the public on the idea that PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE TRULY FAILING when in reality we are failing the middle classes and lower classes of this nation!!! In enables privatization to move into the national education agenda like “the tanks did in Tianamen Square! Test Obsession is the main strategy of “Ed Reformers”. Time to get rid of these useless painful and dangerous “high stakes” distractions that are destroying the lives of our neediest children and replace them with real learning which includes teacher professionalism and freedom of thought. Do we really want a nation of lower income cloned ‘eggs’ rolling off the assembly line as in Brave New World???? Where teachers teach the same content at the same time down to the day.. every day and across this nation under the exact same common core curriculum which DICTATES not liberates thought? This is considered GOOD in the eyes of the likes of Bill Gates? Huh? Is this the America that holds democracy dear? Is it the America our Founding Fathers envisioned? Time to Dump Duncan.Time to DUMP secretive PAC money (start by campaign finance reform)! Time to think about electing a president who actually cares about title one students and addresses poverty and who wants to preserve democracy, and the middle class? Think Robert Reich!!!! As I wrote the words “campaign finance reform” I am recalling at one point in time that this was actually John Kerry’s signature issue!!!!! You’d never know it was even a blip in the thoughts running across the “radar screen” of political thought these days. Any politician seems to be able to be “sold” on their views due to the “highest” bidder.
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“teacher professionalism and freedom of thought”
yes, yes, yes
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Gordon Wilder where are you? Where are you in this ensuing string of posts? Diane’s posts and the related responses are needed here and right now. We all know we are beginning to move a big mountain.
But somewhere out there we must begin returning to what Gordon Wilder is raising, you know…the bit about Real Education. There are those of us who can describe it in detail and that is an activity distinct from rightfully mourning and protesting its demise.
Obviously, Arne Duncan has no clue nor do any of the TFA’s, same for the NCLB-ers and the CCSS authoritarians. I’ve just typed mindless letters that stand for an unreal enterprise, disguised as schooling, imposed upon smart, lively children who want Real Education but cannot get it. They quite literally cannot get their hands, their ears, their eyes, their taste buds or their lives on this Real Education but they want to and some of us need to re-imagine the classrooms where this could happen.
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Well said. I particularly like the phrase “unreal enterprise, disguised as schooling.” “some of us” already have created those classrooms, right under all our noses in wealthy districts, but also in charter schools, and in private schools. Good teaching is happening in thousands of districts, nationwide. But it is NOT happening everywhere, in every schoolroom. Why not?
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Because the teaching and learning process involves humans, who have a tendency to be less than perfect. And close behind that is the inequity in provisions of supplying the the teaching and learning process for all students and not just those who live in the affluent areas (and no TE this is not a plug for vouchers, for choice but for adequate funding, and no there isn’t adequate funding in all schools.)
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I wish there were a LIKE button here. In my heart, this is how I’ve felt as an educator for a very long time. But you’ve put it in a way that also speaks to our intellect. Kudos.
“I love teaching, but I hate my job.”
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I have just gone over some of the comments to my comments. I have an enlarged version of what was written here, responding to an earlier blog which denigrated
Dr. Ravitch. Will post it soon when I have a bit of time to tweak it a bit.
I had no idea that there would be such a dialogue on the comments here. Dr. Ravitch’s blog has just become known to me and although I had written to her before, the blog was new and I have just begun reading it in a bit more detail.
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Welcome Gordon! I hope you see fit to jump on the Quixotic Quest Bandwagon to rid the world of the nefarious reliance on educational standards, standardized testing and the “grading” of students. See above post!
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It seems as if educators are being removed from the process at an alarming rate. Apparently they are held in low regard in the educational enterprise . This pattern has a long history, education has consistently followed the lead of business and industry in structuring how education was delivered, how classrooms and buildings were to be prepared for student occupants, from bell time systems,to how classrooms were provided with lighting etc. etc. The big difference now is the ascendance of business along with capitalism as the one best system. This has unleashed an entitled and all powerful business elite with little regard for things like teacher made tests or teacher developed plans for the provision of education. We are in a business led provision of education on as many levels as can be managed (elites are exempt) Charter schools, (especially for the less affluent.) All sorts of educational equipment and learning materials are the province of business especially when a national market is envisioned.
This has always been so, the main difference now is the degree to which business and industry elites feel completely justified in ignoring educators in this process. Mayor Bloomberg is a prime example (examine the chancellors appointed by the mayor)
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Liz Bowie mentions Reign of Error in a vanilla type article on Common Core in today’s Baltimore Sun. Baltimore, where Michelle Rhee started. While not a fan of Michelle, I was also at the first school she taught in. I can clearly understand why she is the way she is after experiencing Baltimore City Public Schools. I rarely mention the past because most people do not believe what goes on with teacher employees in urban systems. I took a different path and left, but still nag my reps to fix the schools,not by charter, etc. but by hiring “real” certified teachers and principals.
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