Rod Ellcessor of the Indiana Education Association raises a question: what kind of “new Democrat” wants to eliminate unions and public schools? He writes:
“Diane, unfortunately, we are besieged by the Mind Trust in Indianapolis. Bill Gates’ money is one of the primary sources for the Mind Trust which allows TFA to be placed in the Schools in Indy. As the Director of the Indianapolis Education Association, we are fighting the war with the right wing agenda and the super majorities in our Legislature. As well, our Tea Party Governor is no better. The goal of the Mind Trust is to collapse our Indianapolis Public Schools. The Director of the Mind Trust is David Harris who headed the Charter Schools for the former Indy Mayor Bart Peterson, a “New Democrat.” We have had horrible results with the TFA teachers. In fact, IPS administration came to us not knowing what to do due to their dismal results and discipline. The TFA’s barely last two years and DO NOT join the Union. Indiana has to be ground zero with all of the Charter schools and unrestricted vouchers. As well, we have had our collective bargaining rights diminished to a point that we just meet and confer. Clearly, if we do not follow the advice of Robert Reich and get involved there will be nothing left of Public Education. Thank you for your national leadership and the latest book, “Reign of Error.” I am recommending it to everyone I know and make contact with.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As a former public school teacher (and former Republican) from Indianapolis I am thoroughly disgusted with what the Republicans are doing to wreck public education. Hoosiers who care about our schools need to throw these bums out of the state house.
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You have to fight back because you have to; it’s you; it is who you are. You must realize that once you become un-ignorant, and understand the lies, you have to make a response. Truth works. You may be overwhelmed in Indiana, but truth works. The reason it works, is because the base of power, really lies with the people of Indiana. They don’t care about ideology; they vote. Don’t take my word, ask Tony Bennett.
Even if you are the only person in the room who knows the truth, borrow some of our faith, where we are making a difference, and counter their platitudes with truth. Your goal is not to win right then and there, but to become a beacon for those parents who too have questions and are wondering if they are nuts themselves because they too are in such a minority, They are not nuts, They are on the right path. They need somewhere to look too.
That is you.
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“. . . once you become un-ignorant, and understand the lies, you have to make a response.”
Quite correct kavips!
So, if I may ask you: “Are you ‘un-ignorant’ and understand the lies” that are educational standards, standardized testing and the “grading” of students?
If not, then it is high time to become “un-ignorant” by reading and understanding what Noel Wilson has shown to be the many errors in the processes that are educational standards, standardized testing and the “grading” of students that render said malpractices completely and irrevocably invalid. This humble “Hidalgo de la Mancha” requests your presence on the Quixotic Quest Bandwagon in helping him rid the world of these nefarious educational malpractices. The ride is free and begins here: “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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“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.”
So that is where that quote came from!… I’ve seen it many times. Thank you for all the details you provided. I hope all read through it as did I… 🙂
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Perhaps it gives me a little hope in that if you’ve seen that quote then maybe more and more people are reading and understanding what Wilson has written. Either that or you’ve just seen me post it so many times that it is becoming second nature for you to recognize-ha ha. And contrary to Bernie1815 declares, reading Wilson is not “going down the rat hole”.
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Wow, great post, Duane!
If I picked up on the main point, then a test measures only what the student knows at the moment he takes it; and the test measures “stuff”, but not what you think it does. And it’s used to evaluate/measure things it was never meant to measure.
May I borrow your comments (with proper citation) to a letter to the editor?
I’m a Hoosier teacher with 29 years of experience, and I’m sickened by the (almost gleeful) dismantling of our public schools in Indiana. Bennett is bad enough, but he’s got a whole gang behind him in the statehouse.
I hope we can continue to chisel away at their influence by getting the truth out there.
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Feel free to use it. Make sure you reference Wilson.
I contend that a test doesn’t “measure” anything. It may be used as an assessment to say how a particular student interacted with the particular testing device at a particular place and time and that is all. One cannot extrapolate from that interaction what a student “knows”. We can never “know” what a student knows, we can only give an approximate indication/assessment of the persons knowledge, skills, aptitudes etc. . . .
I contend that the current usages of educational standards, standardized testing and the “grading” of students through any mechanism is illogical, and UNETHICAL.
For more on Wilson’s thoughts on invalidity read his “A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review” found at: http://www.edrev.info/essays/v10n5.pdf . In it he destroys reliability and validity using statements 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.
Another interesting thought about this testing insanity is the concept of “Doing the Wrong Thing Righter”, see my thoughts below:
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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And thanks for the kind words.
Until all educators realize just how much harm is caused by sorting and separating and labeling students we will continue to spin our wheels in fighting this Quixotic Quest. And that at the heart of the deformers program are the educational malpractices that are educational standards, standardized testing and the “grading” (labeling) of students. We need to attack the beast at its heart, and eviscerate the whole body.
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Rod Ellcessor is exactly right. The Mind Trust is an organization that intends to privatize all public schools. Sadly they are operating with the help of Indiana DFER and a guy by the name of Larry Grau. These people have a very unholy alliance with the GOP and there seems to be no way to stop them.
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I have found that the “New Democrats” are nothing more than charlatans and opportunists. They all have seen a great financial opportunity and are on the take. The saddest part is that they are ripping off the public and have no conscience. I still can’t believe Obama helped this garbage spread in America. The schools are doing less for African American children. Politicians on both sides should be ashamed. I’ve definitely lost my faith in people after what I’ve seen.
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http://billmoyers.com/2013/09/30/outsourcing-america-exposed/
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Thought you might like this, from The Onion:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/my-year-volunteering-as-a-teacher-helped-educate-a,28803/
It’s a point-counterpoint:
“My Year Volunteering As A Teacher Helped Educate A New Generation Of Underprivileged Kids”
vs.
“Can We Please, Just Once, Have A Real Teacher?”
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