I have heard this expression hundreds of times.
Sometimes at staff development, they show cartoon figures building a plane in mid-air.
Note that the engineers are wearing parachutes.
Note that the passengers–students and teachers–have no parachutes.
Bear in mind that the idea of building a plane as it is in mid-air is insane.
The next time you hear this expression, do one of these things:
Get up and walk out.
Hiss loudly (no one ever knows who is hissing)
Boo loudly (riskier than hissing)
Do not quietly sit by while your leader spouts idiotic platitudes.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What do such advocates think they’re accomplishing by declaring “we’re building a plane in mid-air”? Perhaps sympathy for their hard work. But you are right, such a picture is insane, something you’d say to discredit the whole operation not to credit it.
Right on!
exactly… it discredits the whole effort. Why build it when we have decades of research at our fingertips? Its because they don’t. They aren’t backed by research, they are backed by massive monopoly-thinking corporations. They must really not know–on some level–what they are doing to public education, just that they have the financial framework installed to do it…
Insofar as what they’re doing is destined to fail – except to the extent that they are willfully destroying the public schools, in which case they are far too successful – the analogy holds.
Other than that, better to say they’re building sweatshops/work camps, and using the heads of students and teachers as hammers.
Love the metaphor!
At our school district, this is referred to as “aiming for a moving target with a bag over our heads”.
Could not agree more..
Perfect Post!!
Yup. This was one of the pearls of wisdom to pass through the lips of Baltimore County School Superintendent Dallas Dance. http://fightcommoncore.com/baltimore-county-schools-superintendent-apologizes-for-common-core-implementation/
Thanks for the laugh, Deborah! And the name Dallas Dance?
Another one for The Onion–you just can’t make this stuff up!
I apologize–in advance of the comments I know will be posted here–for poking fun at someone’s name. (Especially as someone who had been teased about my name.
Having said that, impossible to keep “passengers safe” whilke building plane in mid-air. Wouldn’t board a plane having that knowledge.
I’m confused. Isn’t that the way we build planes? You mean I’ve been mistaken about that all these years? I’m so grateful that SED has enlightened me about this so I can finally overcome my fear of flying!
This just too PERFECT!
Wait…people say this like it’s a good thing? I thought this is what you say when you mock an incompetently developed project.
That’s what I thought.
You’re both correct. This cliche is invoked so frequently these days that, as is the case with most cliches, overuse strips something that was once clever of meaning.
In the aerospace industry we used to call them “Educated Idiots.” Magna Cum Laude PHD Cal Tech, Mit, Berkeley doesn’t matter as they could not even read the blueprints they drew. I had to tell them what their own prints meant and still they were stupid. Even help up 3 shifts a day from drilling a part through 13 pieces of metal. Many engineers at the top were trying to convince me to have them drill. No, it won’t work and once we drill it is too late look at what we can destroy. Nope, finally, I said go for it. When the went to put up the part it didn’t fit just how I told them so. No one ever messed there with me again. Do not listen to the “Educated Idiots.” Just because someone has a degree does not mean they know a thing. Degrees without thinking is nothing. Just as a high school degree without arts and critical thinking is nothing also.
This is quite true, George. I’ve worked with quite a few people with PhDs who were astonishingly ignorant of their own fields, and I have known quite a few people with no such advanced degrees who were breathtakingly erudite. There is a cliche in the software industry that “It doesn’t matter where you went to school. It matters whether you can write the code.”
Oddly, we are both a country where there is a lot of anti-intellectualism AND one in which many retain quite snobbish ideas about manual labor and think of it as performed by idiots. But the truth is, of course, that it takes an enormous amount of learning–enormous competency in a vast range of areas–to be, a competent industrial maintenance technician (to give one example of many that are possible, of course). When I discuss vocational education with people with PhDs, they are often extraordinarily dismissive of it because as a knee-jerk reaction, they think of it as a LESSER track–as the place where the less competent, as opposed to the differently talented–are shunted. I would dearly love to see this attitude reversed. From before the dawn of civilization, people respected the crafts person, the artisan, the person with the know how who could make a good house, a good pot, a good bow–the one who knew the properties of plants in the woods, etc. Modern consumer culture has distanced people from the object they use, and they no longer have a proper respect or appreciation for labor. This is quite sad. That’s not true in traditional cultures that have managed to hold onto some remnants of their ways despite the Western juggernaut that has rolled over them. In those, people still appreciate someone who has the VAST amount of knowledge that it takes to, say. plant, tend, and harvest crops properly.
Frost said, “It takes a lot of in- and out-door schooling to get used to my kind of fooling,” and Emerson said, “Give me a man who can write a good Horatian ode AND build a good barn.” I’m quoting from memory, so I might not have these verbatim.
Yup. And if we manage to blow ourselves up someday, the ones who will survive will be craftsmen. We won’t have much need for hedge fund managers.
There is no correlation between academic ability and common sense. Evidence? Education policy in the UK.
2o2t,
Those who survive will know that “there’s more than one way to skin a dead cat” (as my dad, the one who didn’t finish grade school and could fix/repair/build most anything, used to say).
I wonder if there is some way we can use that aphorism…while the deformers are building planes in midair we can be pushing more than one way to skin a dead cat (it is important to realize who represents the dead cat. 🙂 )
You mean like a “fat cat”?
Bingo!
Robert
Where can I buy your book or has it been written yet?
You need to write a book….I read your posts everyday and you have a gift of explaining to even the simpletons!!
I would like see all of your words in one place!
I did not mean just your words….but your thoughts!!
I so love Robert Frost..
*Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening…
“Whose woods these are?
I think I know…..
His house is in the village …though
He will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with Snow..
Me too neanderthal. Here is Frost’s reply to Kennedy’s invitation to speak at his inauguration.
IF YOU CAN BEAR AT YOUR AGE THE HONOR OF BEING MADE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, I OUGHT TO BE ABLE AT MY AGE TO BEAR THE HONOR OF TAKING SOME PART IN YOUR INAUGURATION. I MAY NOT BE EQUAL TO IT BUT I CAN ACCEPT IT FOR MY CAUSE—THE ARTS, POETRY, NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME TAKEN INTO THE AFFAIRS OF STATESMEN.
Every con game begins with a pre-test — a line that serves as a preliminary IQ test. If the marks are dumb enough to buy that, then they’ll likely buy the whole con — hook, line, and sinker.
Like you, I’ve heard this cliche a bazillion times (usually from our superintendent). Another one is “the elephant in the room” – little does the leader realize that he or she is the pachyderm.
The mantra we were handed was that we have a “new normal.”
Yeh, we go the “new normal” spiel, too. And, we were also told to be quiet and do our jobs if we had any questions as to the sanity of all of this. Marvelous attitude from administration.
The new normal: budget cuts, layoffs, no teacher aides, no classroom supplies, more testing, more mandates, larger classes. Just say no.
I am “cutting and pasting” one person’s comment from another one of your articles as I feel it points to the power of a retired force of experienced teachers (which sadly is ever-increasing and not due to reaching retirement age).
Here is the comment: “Teachers, if you are now retired now is the time for you to come to the defense of students and our society. Now, with your retirement you are untouchable. Now you can do what you could not do before when employed as they could terminate or falsely charge you with a crime, not now…”
For working career teachers, just “saying no” to all these reforms mandated to us is very challenging and is likely to wind up with wrongful firings and spiteful “observations” to falsely “prove” incompetency. I think most teachers have been forced into the buffoonery of whatever cliche is the latest.. remember building sandcastles in the air???? It is degrading, often humiliating to be pressured into “teaching” using such nonsense methodologies. Ughhh! And just to “perfect” the ridiculous phrase, “building the plane in midair”.. “ed reform” is really about dismantling “the plane” at take off!
Well, when you are teaching and told that you are NOT allowed to discuss any policies, etc. of the school with your neighbors since they are in the same district, you are stifled, you are kept under control. It is kind of like the Wicked Witch of the West saying “I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog, too.” If the district has bought into or been bought off by the “necessity of these tests” and that they are indicative of something valuable, at least in my experience, it is necessary to keep your mouth shut if you want to remain employed.
the buffoonery of whatever cliche is the latest
that is very well said
More than saying “no” is required. Saying “no” still leaves corporate schools open since they do not face the same accountability strategies. Saying “no” leaves corporate schools with lots of unemployed and hungry teachers to choose from. This movement needs more strategies to expose the corporate takeover, spotlight those corporations, and for stockholders of those corporations to resist.
NCAE is offering a one day course in Raleigh whereby you bring your school improvement plan and talk about it and it sounds very interesting, but with three kids I can’t take a Saturday to do that. I wish I could.
Right now the points NCAE is fighting, as I understand it, are: taking away career status in NC (where 1-4 year contracts is all that will be offered and the carrot bonus is only available if there are funds to pay it). And the other law suit pending is the vouchers.
Meanwhile I don’t hear a lot of talk on fighting the parameters of RttT. None, actually. That’s the conversation I am more interested in, from the parent perspective. But I hear very few people discussing that as ominous of the larger picture.
Love yor point RttT must be ditched.
NCAE??? is why I’m not a normal teacher, Joanna!
Duane–
North Carolina Association of Educators (our non-union arm of NEA)
They are building an airplane while its in a tailspin.
HA! Well said!
Robert, does your photo change on a rotating schedule?
This seems to happen completely at random. No idea why it does.
They used to call this, “flying by the seat of your pants.” It meant flying with no navigation aids. Now it means, research-free reform. Relying on Mr. Gates’ instinct. To understand how that works, remember the Gates Foundation holds 400 million shares of BP Oil.
I saw an Exxon add last night for Common Core. I believe the CC was in larger font than Exxon or at least very prominent in the middle of the screen.
When I look at the fact that Gates, with his known lack of an empathetic recognition of how other people feel things, I wonder if the goal is to try to force a new normal upon society, a normal that is way to the extreme on the spectrum. Data rather than development. Numbers rather than people.
Yes, I know that Gates spends money on philanthropic ventures. However, I don’t see that he recognizes what people NEED, but he recognizes what he WANTS them to need. JMO
big difference, Deb!
Mike Klonsky: thank you for your blog and your comments here.
🙂
Deb & Robert D.Shepherd: to expand a bit on your remarks and those of some others on this thread.
Why is there such opposition to genuine teaching by the self-styled “education reformers”? Think of it this way: if you are an “Impatient Optimist,” i.e., someone who thinks that being hasty, superficial, non-reflective, content to repeat mistakes and missteps, impractical and cliché-ridden = Cagebusting Twenty First Century EduExcellence, then—
It necessarily follows, that anyone who even attempts to lead the vast majority of students to learn how to think deeply, seek out complexity, reflect on past practice and thinking in order to improve that practice and thinking, and most importantly of all, learn how to learn for the rest of their lives and experience joy doing so—
Then, according to the shallow banalities of the ‘new civil rights movement’ of our time—“Educational excellence anywhere is a threat to $tudent $ucce$$ everywhere.”
Welcome to the growing movement that threatens EduMediocrity.
🙂
I saw a news piece recently where bill gates said that control+alt+delete was a mistake. Nobody is infallible.
The link in the post takes you to a 2 minute YouTube video of the actual speech.
Just take care not to let your children on that airplane that someone is building in mid-air. It is not safe.
NY State Commissioner John King says it. I have heard it dozens of times around the country, and people say it as if they just thought it up.
In fact, it is a stale cliche. And a shameful metaphor.
“Shameful” indeed!
Of course, language is absolutely shot through with cliches in the form of the dead metaphors that we use. They cannot be avoided. A publisher of materials for challenged students recently sent me a note saying that the materials they produce for their audience should avoid any use of metaphor. The publisher believed that challenged kids would not be able to understand materials containing metaphor. Included with the client’s note was a sample lesson that was supposed to be metaphor free. I sent back a list of 14 dead metaphors that were used in the first paragraph.
BTW, in the paragraph that I just wrote, we have
language that has been shot through
metaphors that have died
cliches and metaphors that are avoided (physically kept away from)
students that are standing under ideas
lessons that are free
So, I count six dead metaphors (which are, of course, cliches) in the first paragraph of this post.
It’s impossible to write in any language without using such expressions. Emerson, in his essay called “Language” argued that all abstract terms had concrete origins–that being right was staying on a path, for example.
I am not sure how “building an airplane in the air” carries anything admirable about it. Are they trying to be cute? Are they saying that their lack of being prepared is OK, but woe be to any teacher who is not? That’s what I don’t get. At the same time as they are shouting about teachers being less than stellar, they are nervously chuckling about their own lack of preparation or standard. It’s like people who use the word “literally” all the time. If they stopped and thought about what they were saying, they might hear how ridiculous they sound.
Today I got the PARCC email (I get all the updates for RttT and Achieve and so forth) and they are excited to roll out the new conversation and communication exams!! Because kids need to know how to converse and communicate in order to be career and college ready!!!! It has been hard to evaluate this in the past, but with the new PARCC it will be much easier. etc. etc.
Sorry. I don’t want my son learning his communication skills from PARCC.
Where are the adults?
It’s more akin to building the Titantic as it hits an enormous iceberg! And these people are the best and the brightest?!?
Looks simple:
Thanks for the (bittersweet) laugh, John! (For some reason, I’m not getting sound on this–as I also did not on the funny “a woman’s place” video Diane posted yesterday–anyone else? “Education Nation” was fine.)
Retired, YouTube has changed some things. Click on the volume icon, hold it down and slide it to the right for your desired volume.
Thanks for the advice below, DC.!
“By the end of the Vocabulary section these children had been through 57 of the 106 questions. They were more than half way done. But the double period was almost over. They were about to go home, having entered the classroom feeling strong and ready to learn, about to leave feeling, in their words, “stupid.” They had lost two full periods of real teaching/learning. What had they gained? Really, what?…”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/10/06/a-teachers-troubling-account-of-giving-a-106-question-standardized-test-to-11-year-olds/
This is a great piece.
Talking to parents, I’m finding out too many of them don’t know how much testing their kids are doing. The assumption is it’s slightly more than they were given in school: “we took the Iowa tests, and we were fine.”
I know teachers are basically forbidden to question the ludicrous amount of testing while at work or with the students, which makes these first-hand accounts in major media even more important.
People are simply unaware of the specifics of reform. These broad buzzwords are sold: “accountability”, “high expectations”, etc. How many parents know that “accountability” means testing like this teacher describes?
I have many student anecdotes. One that your post brought to mind is of a boy, Jakob, who was really quite smart but who had never had anyone actually pay attention to his individual personality quirks, but rather just dismissed him as a cute, quirky, average kid. When taking a Terra Nova test in the fall, there were two math sections. One was 15 minutes, the other I think 40 minutes. He was looking at the answer sheet with its myriad number of bubbles and went into a panic. I wasn’t allowed to speak to him, test protocol, don’t you know. He was in tears when I had to call the 15 minute time period. He had finished only 12 of 20 questions, partially due to his preoccupation with the number of bubbles that he wasn’t near to finishing. He began hittin his head with his hand, very hard. Over, and over, and over. This is a 4th grader, mind you. I had only known him about 6 weeks since this was the beginning of the year and had no reason to expect him to act this way.
We had a short break and when I told them to begin the second part of the test at question 21, he was relieved, but still shaken. His parents were quite taken aback when I let them know how he’d reacted. They noticed some of his behaviors at home (stress related) and had never realized how he’d react to such a test. It was heart-breaking to watch his meltdown. I dealt with him as the year progressed and he became more able to cope. But, this kind of thing just illustrates how debilitating tests can be for children. I am sure there are those who would think that “more practice is better and younger and younger ages” so they will be “ready”. I still think it shows how inaccurate the bubble tests are and how inaccurate the computerized tests will be, particularly in the early years of implementation.
There are millions of stories like this. It’s all very, very sad.
This is where those retired teachers come in..
Especially the ones who left early because of the Stress of the Tests!
They are organizing…
Edu-reformers are borrowing a business cost saving model of developing products for market;
Fire – Ready – Aim
Fire = The “reform” is thrown upon teachers and students.
Ready = As expected, problems arise.
Aim = “Fix-ups” are suggested and sometimes implement.
Then the whole process starts again.
In the production of goods, this is considered “cost-effective”.
In the public school classroom, this approach is called “disastrous”,
“implementED” … ugh!
Thanks to John Young for posting that EDS ad.
I was consulting when it came out, including some air lines clients (after having worked at American Airlines). The flight mechanics loved it for the absurdity, or hated it complete. Of course, an airplane without proper airfoils in place cannot fly; and the fuel to fly the plane is stored in tanks in the wings, which are shown as incomplete to start . . .
But the big gripe was safety. Sometimes airplane mechanics have to scramble, but they are licensed to put only safe airplanes in the air, not to cut corners, and to ground an airplane if they think it won’t fly. Partly that’s why I favor union airline mechanics, but in any case, they are licensed by and beholden to the FAA.
It’s the mechanics who tell the airline pilots, the station managers, the vice presidents of flight, and presidents of the airlines that the craft won’t go.
The mechanics complained that too often companies try to abrogate that duty they have, and they complained that the EDS ad aggravated things, by suggesting that truly adventurous mechanics would take more chances.
Can you imagine a school where the teachers have the authority to say, “This class won’t go?” Where they have the authority to say, “This test is a bad one, and my students won’t take it?” Where they have the authority to say, “This book is inadequate; go get better books?” Where they have the authority to say, “The restrooms for students in my class are inadequate; no school until they’re fixed?”
And the principal and superintendent’s job would then be to fix the problem rather than yell at the teacher?
One mechanic I had in training mentioned a time when a station manager asked him to keep working on some relatively minor, non-safety essential repair in the air, to get the airplane off almost on time. He said it might technically have been possible, but would have set a bad precedent — and the union, and ultimately the company backed him on it.
Wouldn’t it be great if teachers had that kind of authority, AND support?
Teaching children is too much flying an unfinished airplane as it is. Don’t encourage unsafe, and absurd, activities.
At a YouTube site where the ad is archived, some guy commented in response to another guy who said, “THIS IS MADNESS”:
Did you see the EDS ad about herding cats? More madness.
“Wouldn’t it be great if teachers had that kind of authority, AND support? ”
Damn straight on that, Ed!!
“. . . it shows how inaccurate the bubble tests are and how inaccurate the computerized tests will be, particularly in the early years of implementation.
Deb, It doesn’t make any difference whether it is paper and pencil or computerized, bubble tests, i.e., standardized tests cannot be accurate if by accurate you mean something that supposedly shows/assesses the teaching and learning process. Computerized tests by definition have very human inputs into the test program and although they lend a veneer of unbiasedness and scientificity to the process, in reality do nothing to counteract the basic invalidities involved in the process of making educational standards, standardized tests and the dissemination of the results which end up assigning a label/grade to the student, teacher and now schools.
Until all realize the sheer and utter insanities of “doing the wrong thing righter”, which is what computerized testing amounts to, we will continue to fight a losing battle. Jump on the Quixotic Quest Bandwagon to rid this nation of such malpractices first by reading, understanding and spreading the FACTS of Noel Wilson’s ““Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700 . This gentle and kind knight errant will personally assist you to do so if needed.
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.
Thank you. 🙂
btw, what is TAGO (Think Again. . .??) I haven’t been able to crack that one. But I almost have the Wilson list memorized.
That’s a good one!
I made it up just for havin sum fuuunnn!!!!
I will say, also, that there is a sort of speech that those who have bought into Gates’ philosophies (read taken his money) offer up and that is something about how education is no longer a situation of receiving, it is one of creating etc etc and that is how they justify everything being computerized. I have heard it before (attorney’s wives get to go to lots of cocktail parties and country club events and of course I ask more questions at these events than I do talk (southern girls are raised to do so), and I have heard this among edupeneur types). They really, truly believe they are onto the next thing and those who are not are luddites. “It’s the world we live in” is one I hear periodically. Now, I don’t know what kind of education they are hoping for for their children, but I’m not sure they have noticed the double standard themselves. And I also think the “building the airplane in the air” is buying an out in case their ideas implode, and a way of trying to illustrate how complex their “work” is (who knows what they think the rest of us have been working on for our entire careers). “Well, we never really had it off the ground. . . and the complexities we ran into blah blah blah” They are buying time (they think). In time, I will hope to change their minds. But demure is more my style than in your face (in those situations). Like I’m more inclined to mail them a copy of Diane’s book to their office with a box of Godiva or something.
We have to be smart about educating those who do not wish to be educated.
Joanna, I have to bow to the wisdom of a southern girl. I had not seen one in action until I was in my twenties. I watched a dinner companion make a gentleman in his sixties think he was the most important person there. I had trouble keeping my jaw from dropping; the show was totally fascinating to this east coast and midwest bred gal. Mind you, we had just come out of the bra burning years, so this display was awe-inspiring. Now that I am in my sixties, I see the wisdom in good old fashion (active) listening. I’m not always very good at it; my own ego cans in the way, and I want to be the one talking.
“…cans in the way,…”!? can get, gets, stands in the way. Your guess is as good as mine.
southernisms have some perks. If you use em right. 🙂
I believe in my week of Common Core training last summer at a county office in CA (Ventura) that was a video we were shown. It was an animation that was about how one goofy character did this airplane idea in a competition for a soap box car, while another was following a more traditional path in building a go cart or some such car to win a race. Is this what you reference?
Goofy creative- and now good engineering but boring character “collaborated” to build the airplane-ish winner. All done mid-air to triumphant joy as arts meets design engineer to sail us into the future. This reinforcing the great good in working out of our strengths. One interesting note was the 25 minutes it took and great number of folks to get the animation to play-until we were told it wasn’t going to play today-having seen the entire power point on display from the back end and then, miraculously, it ran after we had lurched into another segment.
Thank you so much technology gods.
Back on schedule.
That served to remind me of what it is like in real classrooms where the reality hits the road.
I’ll actually tell you from my notes what I thought:
“Today we were encouraged by a cute video aimed at 6 year olds, to think creatively and with innovation as the “answer” that Common Core brings as manna to us all. We did this while being told that all 50 states (or those smart enough to adopt -soon to be 50) were now going to be “on the same page nationally” and that Common Core would mean the all of us would teach to the same standards. We watched while all of us were required to watch, and under an edict not allowing the any of us to raise a hand, ask a question, or in anyway interrupt a planned 5 day training. We watched in a room with 300 or more teachers, AC set at 65, and after the failure of the technology to get the animation to screen. No one noted that we were on average 40 years too old for it. But not in a “Little Prince” kind of way. Interestingly two neighbors at my table were on their cell phones texting-the principals that rarely paid much attention, two were playing on ipads, two appeared to be in a highly animated personal conversation, and one was eating a sandwich I envied. The talkers were asked i think to be silent.
The presenter of the video offered that she had absolutely no creative capacity-though was hired by the county office and took on the role of overseeing the arts “part” of Common Core. She offered she could not draw a straight line and off we went to watch a animation about a girl that didn’t fit in who COULD solve the dilemma of an innovative approach with arts IF she was coupled with an actual engineer-so I looked around at the trainers finding neither engineers nor arts based experts -and coming to the conclusion we were now unlikely to build soap-box airplanes or anything else that week- but we sure could ask everyone to be on the same page and do Common Core in the same way-whatever way they seemed to figure out. This animation- as was the entire presentation over the 5 days-was produced at the state level and the presenters simply mimed what was up on a site and what they’d done at their trainings as far as I could see.”
Common Core at least on first view-always the most telling-did indeed appear to be as of last summer the leap of the lemming. But I will openly state this is being called a collaborative learning process involving teachers in coming on board the Common Core. I did get up and leave several times when what my training in the arts told me were times we had lost a connection to an understanding of creativity.
How long will it be before the plane finally crashes and we can move on to something else? I’m ready to parachute out NOW and just teach what I know that my first graders need without having to weave it in with all the Common Core gobbledygook. Common Core is NOT developmentally appropriate for the early childhood grades!
When you build a plane in mid air, it crashes in the Andes and the survivors eat each other.
Chuckle.
Building a half trillion dollar common core airplane in the air, when there is a perfectly good fleet of state standard airplanes that work? Waste uv money.
Last year at my son’s IEP meeting, the district special ed. person made the “airplane flying” comment when I complained about my son and his classmates being dropped into the middle of the Common Core and being expected to miraculously catch on. I was appalled that she said that. If it happens again, I WILL be getting up and leaving!
??? She would be getting up or asking you to get up.
My IEP meetings always lasted up to 4 hours.
The special ed person would not let me go to the bathroom and said if it was an emergency…they could call 911.
She said….
It was against federal regulations for one to go to the bathroom during an IEP meeting….
I left anyway…
What a piece of work..I could not believe this lady with her threats…
I did not care as I could have walked out that day if I had wanted to…
Did not need the job…
This is a true story!!!
Hey, Guys, I see that a number of the regulars here have posted reviews of Diane’s book on Amazon. I’ve been too busy trying to fend off the supporters of M. Night Shyamalan’s skewed book, “I Got Schooled”, to get around to doing that myself.
I could really use your help there, too! I think that KIPP, TFA etc. are behind Shyamalan’s book. He lists both of them on his foundation website, refers to them a lot in his book and even lists charters like KIPP as exemplary schools –while dancing around their military style approach and describing such schools as something middle-class parents want, too. I have to wonder about the timing of its release being so close to the release of Diane;s book as well.
Could people please critique this book at Amazon and refer folks to Diane’s book?
If you haven’t read it, you can read excerpts of Shyamalan’s book at Google Books and Amazon. It’s somewhat tempered, such as regarding teacher’s unions –reformers seem to be starting to realize they can’t blame the achievement gap on unions when so many high performing states have unionized teachers and low performing states don’t. Otherwise, he makes basically the same claims we’ve been hearing for years, and as typical of corporate “reformers,” a lot of which is based on think tank research and economist Hanushek’s assertions.
Few are contesting the lies there but me. A little help, please! TIA http://www.amazon.com/Got-Schooled-Unlikely-Moonlighting-Education/dp/1476716455/
Since when is “winging it” and doing it “on the fly” a professional approach to ANYthing?
Don’t forget the justifications that go along with spit and polish education policies, too, including the sense of “urgency” before we lose an entire generation, which TFA and Duncan repeatedly claim and ripped off from Martin Luther King’s, “fierce urgency of now.” And then there is the Duncan/Obama hijacking of Voltaire’s, “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
So, on a wing and a prayer is now federal policy and good enough for our nation’s children.
I think the questions that could stop the project of the airplane in the air deal with the area of bias. If a child has exposure to curriculum that is allowed to be shaped by a team of classroom teachers, at the building level, there might be certain biases within that given year, but the fact that the student changes teachers and teams every year would cancel that out. Whereas, if everyone is held to one set of standards, there will be mandated exposure to bias. So, while the intent if CCSS (so they say) is to elminate bias, what is actually happening is that bias is guaranteed. Because one group wrote CCSS and it will not be rewritten every year.
I believe equity as in place to a higher degree by NOT having CCSS and also by keeping teachers on a level playing field in terms of pay scale and career status opportunity.
In order to keep things “fair,” things have been made entirely unfair.
Biased Data.
Alright, the last thing I learned in my course about Executive Decisions is how to avoid biased data.
I would offer up that school data, which drives decisions right now, is biased because we use one company and one sets of standards to determine it. Therefore, from a business perspective, the approach is flawed.
Consider these steps:
There are several ways that you can eliminate date that may be biased, incomplete or misleading. Some of these ways are:
“Use more than one source for each set of data that you seek.
Be aware if a source has any affiliations – either financial, political or other – and consider how these affiliations might have influenced the data that they provided.
Seek to find both data that support and data that refute particular courses of action. One way to do this would be to consider information from sources that may be at opposite ends of particular philosophical spectrums. eg. left-leaning from right-leaning publications, herbivores from carnivores, extrovert from introvert etc.,
Begin your search by being introspective in order to determine any biases that you may have personally. Consider how these biases might influence the type of data that you are seeking and from where you are seeking the data.
Consider asking more than one person in your team to look for the same data. See how the data each person comes up with differs. You may obtain a wider selection of data in this way.”
OK, so if we are to be data driven, we would need that data to come from a variety of sources, right? Not one. Otherwise, the data is biased.
Joanna..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misuse_of_statistics
Data can be misconstrued and transformed so that it says whatever you want it so say.
Misuse of Data is rampant…
I am saying that basing it off one set of curricula makes it biased from the start.
The very notion of CCSS means all data will be biased.
Right?
I am buying Diane’s book and Robert Shepherd’s book if he has one to buy
I sent this to my colleagues and was told it crosses the line and don’t send anything like it again.
Jim, what part of the blog “crosses the line”? The endless repetition of the cliche about “building a plane in mid-air” or the idea that anyone subject to this odious metaphor should hiss and boo?
Good questions.
My Principal issued the order.
So I said, “boo”, “hiss”, and sent her reply to the staff.
Diane,
What more can I do to stop this lemming march to the sea?
I’ve been teach 13 years after 27 years of Military Service and I can’t quit.
How did the airplane get in the air in the first place?
Whoa! Now here’s an “outside of the box” thinker! What a wonderful question for the next deformer who is busily building that plane in flight.