I have been wondering lately why we are so obsessed with giving every student, every teacher, and every school a ranking, rating, and/or grade.
It seems to me that we are thinking about children, teachers, and schools the same way we think about sports teams. In every league, there are winners and losers.
But if we think about education as a culture that is very different from that of a competitive sports league, then the picture and the questions change.
What if we thought of schools as if they were akin to families?
Then we would work to develop school cultures that are collaborative and supportive. We would make sure that those with the greatest needs got the resources they need. We would stop thinking of winners and losers (and “racing to the top”) and think instead about the full development of each human’s potential.
It is a paradigm shift, to be sure. But the present paradigm and ranking, rating, and grading ends up demoralizing children, teachers, and schools.
We must think and act differently. If we do, we will not only have better schools, but a better society, where people help one another instead of finding a way to beat out their competitors.
Save the competition for the sports field; save it for the arenas where it is appropriate.
Think of each child as a precious human being, one of a kind. Think of teachers as professionals, who should be well prepared, supported, and given the autonomy to decide what works best in their classrooms. And treasure each community’s school as an invaluable and irreplaceable institution, one that is central to the community and essential to our democracy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
YES YES YES YES!!!!! Thank you!!!!
“Think of each child as a precious human being, one of a kind.” Amen, Diane!
Rankings make it difficult for us to see the brilliance of each individual. I’m working on a post right now, sharing the ways that my Finnish colleagues make sense out of teacher rankings. They keep telling me that each child needs to be viewed individually. It’s unfair to measure them all the same way with the same standards. Thanks you for your words, Diane!
I couldn’t agree more!! I’d be willing to bet that if the “goal” was that every kid needs to be a proficient basketball player by 3rd grade “they” would be rating and ranking players, coaches, and schools and there would be a failed national dribble to the top!
Very good one. All of this ranking and grading is madness. It harms students, teachers and parents.
Sent from my iPhone
>
Never understood ranking schools. Why not reach out to schools that need extra support and help them improve?
I was very fortunate to work during a time, and in an elementary school, which had this family approach. Visiting the school, since retirement, makes me feel like a stranger on a distant planet. A new principal, combined with all sorts of new rules and scripted teaching, has made the school feel more like a dysfunctional family. An institution type environment is so sad for staff and kids.
WordsMatter: I think you hit the nail on the head. “Dysfunctional family” is the right term.
As I see it, the combination of worst business practices, failed policies endlessly repeated and zealous free-market fundamentalism literally makes rheephorm-led public schools and public school districts—whatever their previous successes and failures, whatever their strengths and weaknesses—headed for a level of dysfunctional operating that may well prove fatal. All this under the banner of “full speed ahead!”
A recent glaring example highlighting this toxic mix is the iPad fiasco in Los Angeles Unified School District. “Creative disruption” hardly begins to describe the frightening incompetence and lack of moral compass revealed in this ongoing horror story.
It is well to remember that the leading charterites/privatizers do not send THEIR OWN CHILDREN to the kinds of schools they are mandating for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN. Google Harpeth Hall, Sidwell Friends, Lakeside School, U of Chicago Lab Schools, Cranbrook, for just a few examples. The contrast between what they provide THEIR OWN CHILDREN and what they are forcing down the throats of OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN is stark and horrifying.
In agreement with Diane’s posting and your comments, how about we take a diametrically different approach—
What would a functional family look like and do?
One thing is for sure: they wouldn’t subject each and every family member to the labeling, sorting and ranking—with numerous punishments and few rewards to be meted out—that is the hallmark of the high-stakes standardized testing of the leading charterites/privatizers. Keeping mind, of course, that the leading charterites/privatizers would never allow the hazing rituals of testolatry to hold THEIR OWN CHILDREN back.
No. That’s just for, as Leona Helmsley would say, “the little people.”
Thanks, but no thanks. 😎
It is well to remember that the leading charterites/privatizers do not send THEIR OWN CHILDREN to the kinds of schools they are mandating for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN. Google Harpeth Hall, Sidwell Friends, Lakeside School, U of Chicago Lab Schools, Cranbrook, for just a few examples. The contrast between what they provide THEIR OWN CHILDREN and what they are forcing down the throats of OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN is stark and horrifying.
Absolutely correct.
Keep saying this, my friend.
Also, ever notice how no one wants to insist the children at these schools abandon the arts, music, philosophy, etc. in order to become cogs in the corporate wheel…..oh, I mean have good careers?
Appreciate you, KTA,
I believe that many wealthy families send their children to Montessori schools. Here is a list of the public Montessori schools by state:http://www.public-montessori.org/schools-map/by-state.
There are many charter schools listed, and as far as i can tell, the non-charter schools are magnet schools. Choice schools are the only way that the relatively poor will get access to these kinds of specialized educations.
It’s all about Location, Location. Location—nothing but a real estate ploy….and you don’t really know if those rankings are based on test prep or actual creativity in the classroom.
Of course schools with higher tax bases and lower class sizes will rank high. And they can afford to bring in the Arts. But imagine if every urban school had those resources instead of budget cuts? It truly is a tale of unfair advantages and it’s time we think of the community we serve before we think about Pearson and Common Core. Let’s make education and schools relevant and a place where kids can come to explore and build up their skills at their own pace rather than trying to knock the answers into them.
Wonderful post on schools as a community.
I adore school buildings, especially those from the turn of the century, in long standing communities. I love the smell of schools when I walk in the door. I love working with siblings of students I have had in the past. I love meeting the parents of my students at conferences. I love watching volleyball practice in the gym after school. I love witnessing groups of students studying together during lunch or after school in the hallways during a break from their club or sport. I love the community pride exhibited in photos and plaques in the hallways. I love that our “cafeteria ladies” joke and have fun with our students. I am proud that our school has an alumni association. I am proud that my great uncles were janitors in our schools, that my aunt taught at one of our schools, and that my mother was a community education coordinator for our district. I am proud that my siblings and I attended the school where I currently work. I am proud of our persistant and hard working staff. And I love that our school is a diverse community from all parts of the city.
I love public schools.
Amen!
WOW!
I was thinking the exact same thing earlier today — that we rate & rank schools, students & teachers just like sports teams. We do this with religions & political parties as well — thanks to Ronald Reagan, the anti-intellectual movement was given a launch pad and we’ve landed in a ace where we confuse an arrogant quip ala “you betcha,” with political discourse & debate — it’s not that we’re dumb or bad people, it just takes too much effort to develop a complex thought. And politicians love our lazy brains!
The irony is that there was a time not too long ago (but long enough)when schools, teachers and students were not rated and ranked. The “corporate ed reformers” needed to “fix what wasn’t broken” because what “wasn’t broken” was not profitable to them. So they created quite a campaign to benefit their cause (profit) and along the way there were rich folk who got involved in the “corporate cause” either seeking a new profit frontier or joining the corporate bandwagon and believing they were doing good – the campaign was slick and very PR controlled. While this nation has always had a one percent in terms of top earners, never has the 1 percent represented such an enormous monetary percentage of the sum total of all earnings. Rating and ranking gives TOTAL CONTROL of the one doing the rating and ranking. This is basically a “corporate ed reform” strategy that has enabled them to close schools, open charters, fire experience, high earning teachers nearing retirement years and such. Let us hope that anti “ed reform voices” are growing, will be heard loud and clear and will put and end to this entire disastrous episode in public education. In fact, if we want to use “their corporate ed strategy against them”… LET US HOLD THE SUPERINTENDENTS, THE MAYORS WITH TOTAL CONTROL OVER SCHOOL BOARDS, THE CONSULTANTS etc ACCOUNTABLE and give them a grade of F because students are doing so poorly (on all high stakes test prior to common core and now on the common core) and FIRE THEM. This will be a worthy evaluation that will enable our nation to move forward and heal! Fire them based on their OWN DATA.
Great Ideas!!!!
Great Post!
Kids differ. They differ a lot. And schools should respect and build upon those differences.
There will always be people in the world who wish to set themselves up as the sole models for what it means to be accomplished and who will, as a result, envision schools as a mechanism for sorting everyone else into two categories: “like me” and “failures.”
That approach to preparing young people for their futures has the advantage of creating lots of beaten down, docile folks ready to take their places, obediently, at the bottom of the economic, political, and social hierarchy. Such people look at children and see not extraordinarily varying potentials but genetically determined a) potential or b) lack thereof–one or the other.
People who have a Social Darwinist view of the world, who believe that life is a pitiless, remorseless struggle for existence between the inevitable winners and losers never tire of arguing that having schools operate in this way is not a matter of their own immoral choices and justification of their own current status but a matter of natural and economic law, a matter of necessity. And there is a huge pseudoscientific industry that goes by the name of evolutionary psychology the purpose of which is to relieve them of any qualms resulting from the nagging suspicion that things are as they are because people choose to make them that way.
It’s no accident that the oligarchs are busy recreating schools as a new and improved version of the great SORTING MACHINE–one far, far more invariant, more inflexible than any that we have seen since the days when schooling was simply denied to the masses. The members of the oligarchy, those who aspire to be members, and their upper-level sycophants and toadies, look in the mirror and they see, reflected back at them, pure products of a meritocracy that cannot be changed because it is in the natural order of things.
Mirror, mirror on the wall. . . .
It doesn’t have to be that way.
And, of course, there are others who see in Darwin’s great accomplishment other lessons: the diversity of niches, the incredible adaptiveness of life to those niches, the richness of the ways that life will develop in order to flourish in those niches, continuity with VARIATION, for variation is the golden key to it all.
Kids differ. The national “standards” and tests and evaluation systems do not. There are many folks who LIKE the idea of having schools be more efficient sorting machines. And those people are now in charge–they are the one envisioning the future of U.S. education–training for the proles, education for the children of the oligarchy. We are headed back to our future, back to a medieval Great Food Chain of Being with a few, a very few, at the top.
Jean-Paul Sartre says in Being and Time that the purpose of schooling is to make students “ashamed of what they are.” That is, in fact, the function served by schools envisioned as sorting machines. Sadly, such schools are all about telling vast numbers of kids, “Sorry. You weren’t what we wanted. Not at all.”
Kids differ. They differ a lot. Schools don’t have to be places for telling half our children, “Sorry. You’re not what we wanted. Not at all.” But that’s the sort of system that we are creating, thanks to the deformers.
My first thought when I began reading this post is that the grading of schools does not originate with any sports analogy, but from the two hundred (or more) year history of schools grading students. When I read the last paragraph I assumed there would be a call to stop grading kids in K-12 education, but I did not find it.
I also thought that there might be a call to allow even the poorest students to attend a Waldorf school if their unique individual, one of a kind that might benefit from a Waldorf school even as her neighbor would benefit from a Montessori school and her older brother a progressive school. But there was no call to treat these students as individuals, just the continued subordination of their individual needs to the interest of the community.
I think you’ve greatly misunderstanding Waldorf and Montessori if you think they are all about the individual and not about the community. Developing the individual within the community is basically the heart of all progressive education.
FWIW, I would call for an end to all grading (including and especially students) and I would love to see all students have access to Waldorf/Montessori/progressive schools. In fact, when I rule the universe, all public schools will be like that. If you want a military/no excuses/drill-and-kill school, you’ll have to go to a private school.
I did not say that Montessori, Waldorf, progressive and other schools do not value or create community.
My point is that a student who would gain the most from a Montessori education might live next door to a student who would gain the most from a Waldorf education. Forcing those students to attend the neighborhood school which is neither Waldorf nor Montessori is NOT treating the student as a unique individual. The only way for students to have access to Waldorf/Montessori/progressive schools is to eliminate geographically based school admission and allow students that live next to each other to attend different schools.
How would you set graduation requirements without grades. Even a mastery standard is a simplified form of grading, of the pass fail variety.
I think we should abolish grades and class ranks for students, and use narrative assessments to describe what they have mastered, what they are still working on, what have achieved, and what their next goals look like.
So I can understand why parents would like to have the freedom to choose a school that rejects the more conventional view of assessments, as a Waldorf or Montessori or progressive school might do.
Yet I can’t imagine any district that could offer a limitless menu of options to all parents. What if the district is small and only has one or two elementary or middle schools? Or what if it has lots of schools and lots of choices, but the Waldorf school I want for my daughter is full, and she can only get into the no-excuses school, or the blended-learning school that puts her in a room with 100 computers and 1 teacher? What are my options then? What if the progressive school I like best is on the other side of the city — shouldn’t I have the option of organizing parents in my neighborhood, if they agree with me, to lobby for more progressive practices to be instituted in our own nearby school, so we don’t have to travel? What if, due to family circumstances, I really can’t travel — do I get stuck with a model of schooling that is bad for my child, or could I expect instead a responsive neighborhood school where her teachers have some flexibility to adjust instruction to her individual needs (and class sizes are small enough to allow for that)?
narrative assessments and portfolios, overseen by a committee that works with the student and his or her parents or guardians, continually, to monitor progress and to adjust an IEP for EVERY KID
And, certificates of mastery of very particular knowledge–world knowledge (knowledge of what) and procedural knowledge (knowledge of how), many hundreds of such certificates–demonstrated, of course, in extremely varied ways, particular to what has been learned, and awarded by teachers, not by the state.
Well said, TE! We need to re-envision evaluation and create many, many more choices for kids because, of course, kids differ.
Creating more choice for students is the position of a tiny minority of posters here. It puzzles me no end that Dr. Ravitch position is the best way to treat each student as an individual is by assigning students to schools based on street address.
Waldorf schools have grades beginning in high school, or possibly a little earlier.
So only Montessori and Waldorf schools and perhaps a smattering of other “progressive” schools are concerned about the unique individual needs of the students?
When is it okay for the needs of the community to come before the needs of the unique individual?
When do the needs of the community come before the needs of the individual is a very interesting question. The answer can turn out to be very dangerous. As a classical liberal, I argue that the community has no rights, only individuals have rights. Traditional cultures around the world, for example, must be destroyed if individual women are to be recognized as equal citizens.
In a country in which families move frequently, it is probably impossible to avoid ranking schools. Still, it is important to realize what we are measuring. By and large we are recording wealth in another form.
“In a country in which families move frequently, it is probably impossible to avoid ranking schools.”
Your conclusion certainly doesn’t logically follow your assertion.
Nothing is being “measured” in ranking schools. They may be ranked but that doesn’t mean they have been “measured”. Hint, they can’t be do to the complexity of schools, the teaching and learning processes that go on, the variety and variance of all the humans involved, etc. . . .
Break out of the edudeformer talk and illogic.
I think this will happen. It will happen in the opposite manner from where we are right now. The ranking stuff is coming from the outside in. What you describe will come from the inside out.
The consistent message I hear is that parents have the power to change this through School Improvement teams. Considering the language in school mission statements has never been more important. Words like “valued” “community” “support” need to replace “stakeholders” and other empty claims that do not foster care.
I think it will happen. I already see it happening in as much as it can right now.
The idea that everything must be measured and ranked comes from the arrogant misunderstanding that business and engineering principles can and should be applied to social problems. Children are not widgets! Schools are not businesses, they are indeed families!
Here’s Larry Brilliant, former head of Google.org (Google’s charity arm), talking about applying business principles to philanthropy. This is how the titans of industry think.
Are you calling for an end to all grading in public high schools? As you say, kids are not widgets.
I am! (since I’m not sure to whom you are referring with the “you” in the question.
Yes, absolutely. The grades need to go. They are antithetical to the prime directive of the school–to produce intrinsically motivated learners.
For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth. –Plutarch, “On Listening”
I know that you advocate micro level certification, but that will require at least a pass fail grade. I suspect that the number of and depth of certifications will end up as a substitute for GPA.
Here’s what I like about the “micro certification” idea, TE. (Good name for it, BTW!) It forces people to think concretely about the take-aways from the learning. What do I know and what am I able to do that I didn’t know and couldn’t do before? And–this is an important one–it encourages people to vary their measurements to suit the particular learnings, to make them appropriate to those. If I have learned to ride a bicycle, then getting on a bicycle and riding it shows that that has occurred. If I have learned to use style sheets to lay out an HTML page, then writing an HTML page that uses style sheets shows that I have done that. The proof is in the doing. Some learnings are like that. Others are not. If I claim to understand what Heidigger meant by the Lichtung, other methods of proving that to myself and others are appropriate.
Now, the question is, WHO should be concerned about finding ways of measuring the take-aways and proving that something was accomplished? Well, the kid should. And otherwise, the measurement should disappear into the instruction as formative checkpoints.
TE,
No, micro assessments do not necessarily have to have a pass/fail aspect at all. Break out of the thinking (that you have identified as going on for quite some time starting at West Point under Thayer who had studied in France and brought the idea over from there) that sorts and separates students with various namings. Descriptive assessments really are the logical course of action when it comes to assessing the students (of course in conjunction with the student and parent).
Descriptive assessment still categorize students, thought they make the edges of the categories less obvious. If you give a descriptive assessment that student A is a fluent speaker of Spanish and student B is not yet a fluent speaker of Spanish, have you not categorized students?
The difference with what I am attempting to get a across is that the “assessment” process necessarily would include the learner as the main participant of the assessment process with the teacher throwing in their two cents worth in discussions with the learner. No there doesn’t have to be a “categorization” of students, actually that is to be shunned. Using your example of fluency: What is fluency?, In what manner? To me fluency is a very fluid concept and therefore cannot be pinned down with semantical categorizations. There doesn’t have to be this ranking, categorization but it is so hard for people to break out of the cultural habitus, the educational cultural paradigm, the assumed “need” of ranking and stanking, whoops mean stacking of the early 21st century here in the US.
Just as almost all couldn’t conceive how to break away from the Ptolomiac view of the earth’s place in the universe or to break away from Newtonian physics, hell it worked quite well for a while, so educators and the population at large can’t seem to break out of the “measuring and labeling” paradigm.
See Kuhn for those paradigmatic shifts. We need one now in education! May the Quixotic Quest be part of that process.
Let’s start with the difference between a native speaker and a Spanish 1 student. Could you distinguish between those two individuals quickly?
Do you think anyone could? If so then maybe we don’t need Spanish 1 teachers, eh!!!
Sorry, TE, it just comes out! Where are you going with that?
I am signing off as I’m going to my disabled retired neighbor’s (around here that’s about two miles away down the gravel road) house were we have a community garden in the summer, since he has satelite and I don’t. Mizzou vs Ol Mis @ 6:45 and the Blues vs Stars @ 7:00. Break out the adult beverage time. Have to respond to the various responses in the morning. You all have a good evening!!
I don’t think anyone could, I think you could. And in terms of fluency, produce a ranking.
I love it Yes, that’s what standardized testing was designed for Are you all we’ll or soon? Sent from my iPhone
>
So there’s a basis to cut funding and fire teachers.
Who decided schools should be ranked? Was it school boards, administrators, teachers, parents? Oh yes– it came from the person who said” I find it fascinating that some of the opposition to the Common Core State Standards has come from white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”(Arne Duncan) Well, I find it fascinating that we are ranking schools on students’ standardized test scores. Again the scores fall along socioeconomic lines, now that’s a surprise.
Does anyone really understand the educational purpose to ranking schools? Oh yes, that same person also explains,”Data is an essential ingredient in the school reform agenda. We need to follow the progress of children from preschool to high school and from high school to college and college to career to see whether they are on-track for success and whether they are learning at least a year’s worth of material in a year’s instruction. I look forward to the day when we can look a child in the eye at the age of eight or nine or 10 and say, “You are on track to succeed in colleges and careers. If you keep working hard, you will absolutely get there.” Without good data, we won’t be able to make that promise.”(Arne Duncan)http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/unleashing-power-data-school-reform-secretary-arne-duncans-remarks-stats-dc-2010-data-
This guy is such a complete idiot that he actually believes that educating oneself is a matter of checking off items on a list. What an embarrassment he is!
When all this is over–when the damage is all done–Arne Duncan may emerge with the distinction of having been the single worst U.S. cabinet pick in history. If Barack Obama had chosen Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church to be his science adviser, that might have been an even worse appointment, but otherwise, it’s difficult to imagine topping Arne.
Arne does not seem to be CAPABLE of understanding the arguments against what he is doing.
Obama’s former science advisor believes in global warming, and he even has a Nobel Prize. Fred Phelps is as disgusting a person as there exists, but is he any worse than those perpetrating the global warming hoax?
Is he incapable of understanding or just indifferent?
I’m beginning to think that they guy is just dense. He doesn’t seem to understand the most elementary stuff. However, he has the low cunning of the courtier, the sycophant, the toadie. He makes a good wind-up toy for the oligarchy. He does as he is told.
When the market is the measure of all things and the only worth that matters is monetary potential, then schools (and most everything else) become a series of micromanaged Darwinian victories over others.
Thank you so much for saying this. This has bothered me since I was in high school and now it just makes my head hurt. The question is, how can we change things?
Jamie, in the words of JFK “We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light a candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.” If we are unhappy with the past decade of education reform then we must let our voices be heard. Write your local, state and federal officials informing them how you feel about 10 years of education reform. Let them know you want schools to be child-centered again instead of focusing on high-stakes standardized testing. Tell them you are not interested in using data to drive reform. Recommend they read, Reign of Error and engage in a national discussion about positive initiatives to change our public schools. Oh yes, and this time please tell them to invite everyone to the table including educators.
Ranking is indeed that: it is rank in the worst sense of the term
By what yardstick does one rank people anyway? One system will rank them one way, another by still another. And as has been said, people, children are not widgets and they should be developed as “human” beings, not as mere animals to work for the people with money. Among the people generally recognized as the great teachers of all time are those who have stressed the spiritual aspects of love, beauty, goodness, the search for truth. Why not rank people by the quality of their character, or schools which turn out students who love Learning, the search for what it means to be human et al. Those things which our generally considered great human intellects have told us are important in life. Some of the “poorest” people I have met are those who may even have a doctorate but have never really sought out truth, who would sell their souls for a few extra bucks. Is that what we really wish for our children. The never ending emphasis on money as the source of “wealth” is not what our great teachers and philosophers have told us. What does it mean to be “human”, who are we as human beings, where are we going is what those we generally honor as our “best and brightest” human minds. We forget this at our peril. People much more intelligent and better versed can say it better but for me, this is what has been forgotten in the rush for “better schools”. Better than what?
“Think of each child as a precious human being, one of a kind.” Beautiful, Diane, thanks for saying it. The best teachers start from that premise. Reminds me of the writing of my teaching hero for the last 20 years, Louis Schmier: http://therandomthoughts.edublogs.org/
I can see why he is your teaching hero. I am inspired too.
We don’t grade in Montessori schools because grades create a dead end. Even an “A” grade limits the possibility that there might be something that is better. We assess work habits and attitudes towards learning, self, and community and set goals with the students. The one thing that I’ve learned from following this blog is how the Montessori community has not done a very job of explaining this method and philosophy.
One thing I have found interesting here is that Montessori and Waldorf and progressive educations are called private school educations.
There are public Montessori schools however there seems to always be a division between the private schools and public ones. Common Core and all of the requirements of the public school districts tends to overtake the Montessori method. There is often talk of “authentic” Montessori programs which means that a school has adhered to the original model that Maria Montessori created. There is not as much unity in the Montessori community as one would hope. I think that most of the leaders in the Montessori organizations are from the private schools so that is probably why it is seen as strictly a private education.
The public Montessori schools are some variety of choice school, a magnet or a charter.
You will appreciate this, Marianne:
“I’ve never seen a child who didn’t want to build something out of blocks, or learn something new, or try the next task. And the only reason why adults aren’t like that is, I suppose, that they have been sent to a school and other oppressive institutions which have driven that out of them.” –Noam Chomsky, The Chomsky-Foucault Debate on Human Nature.
Chomsky was emphatically NOT, of course, talking about the Montessori approach to education.
Robert,
Thanks for the heads up on that debate! Transcript can be found at: http://www.chomsky.info/debates/1971xxxx.htm
To watch: http://www.chomsky.info/debates/1971xxxx.htm
I actually don’t recommend the debate. Not the best stuff from either fellow. Foucault, in particular, comes off very badly–talks a lot of nonsense. I did enjoy hearing Chomsky differentiate himself from state socialists, though he is very shaky about what he means, precisely, by anarcho-syndicalism.
There does need to be some sort of assessment to make sure the child is progressing. Not the ridiculous exams we now have, but perhaps a final exam. In NYS we have the Regents Exams. Right now, all students need to pass five exams to graduate. This is too stringent. Some kids need to take local exams on classes which are not as intense. The assessment needs to match the students’ ability. NYS used to have a “backup” exam for students who couldn’t pass a particular Regents, that way they could still get credit for the class and graduate. For some reason, the Commissioner threw out what worked and replaced it with more difficult exams. Now there is a higher percentage of drop outs. Seems to me his idea of enforced rigor didn’t work. A precursor of the CCSS?
As far as rankings – the top schools stay at the top and the bottom schools stay at the bottom. There might be some minor movement, especially in the middle levels, but the rankings pretty much remain close to the same year after year. How is this helping improve education?
The meaning of the degree comes from what is required to be awarded the degree. If you make the requirements less stringent, the meaning of the degree will change.
Our whole approach assumes from Day 1 that learning is something so awful that we have an extrinsic threat and reward system to make people do it. Wrong from the start.
The children entering school today will experience more change than has occurred in all of human history up to this time. They are going to have to be intrinsically motivated, self-guided learners.
A couple years ago, I had the opportunity to review the bestselling K-8 mathematics program in Japan. It was fascinating to do so. The Japanese books had (I am not exaggerating here) about a sixth the number of pages as ours do. If you look at one of our textbooks, what you will see is that the main thread of a lesson is interrupted EVERY FEW LINES with some gratuitous graphic, some gratuitous graphic design element, some special feature, so that every spread in every text looks like a magazine for tweens DESIGNED BY GERBILS ON METHAMPHETAMINE. What’s the difference? Well, the editors and authors of the American textbooks take for granted that what is being taught is BORING and that it has to be enlivened by all those special features and graphics–that learning is NASTY MEDICINE that has to be buried in sweet syrup if kids are to get it down.
No wonder we have an epidemic of attention deficit disorder in our schools!!!!
The Japanese texts assumed, instead, that geometry, say, was interesting in and of itself and a worthwhile pursuit. And the authors and editors of them included what was necessary to teach a concept, no more, no less.
Grades and texts that interrupt what is being studied to “add interest” have the ironic consequence of teaching kids that learning is not intrinsically rewarding. That’s the lesson we drill into them, ironically, every day of their school lives.
It doesn’t have to be that way. We need to communicate to our students, from Day 1, that learning is intrinsically interesting, that learning is something that YOU DO, not something THAT IS DONE TO YOU, something that you UNDERGO.
If we don’t teach them that, then we have failed. We have failed UTTERLY, whatever their scores on whatever tests, for we have not produced learners.
“The Japanese texts assumed, instead, that geometry, say, was interesting in and of itself and a worthwhile pursuit. And the authors and editors of them included what was necessary to teach a concept, no more, no less.”
I haven’t seen a text like that in Spanish since I was in high school (and I still have some from then). So much extra stuff that takes away from, that distracts the students from the point at hand. (and the teacher versions are all worse assuming that a teacher wouldn’t know how to handle the text without all their suggestions).
“Grades and texts that interrupt what is being studied to “add interest” have the ironic consequence of teaching kids that learning is not intrinsically rewarding. That’s the lesson we drill into them, ironically, every day of their school lives.”
Yes, the unspoken curriculum. One can learn well from the unspoken curriculum, usually how to fight against it!!!
” How one person’s abilities compare in quantity with those of another is none of the teacher’s business. It is irrelevant to his work. What is required is that every individual shall have opportunities to employ his own powers in activities that have meaning.”
John Dewey, Democracy and Education, 1916
http://madisonamps.org/2012/11/09/john-dewey-on-comparing-students-blast-from-the-pastquote-of-the-day/
YES YES YES!!!
Kids come into our schools with enormous curiosity. And then we kill it. And one of the ways in which we do that is by teaching them, through continual microconditioning, that the subjects they are to study and the tasks they are to undertake are so worthless and dull that students have to be coerced into doing them and the subjects themselves have to be buried in material that is off some interest.
And all those special features added to texts to “add interest” end up having exactly the opposite effect. Kids see them for what they are–as being analogous to the fifty-five year old wearing tween fashions and talking in the slang of 14 year olds–as just creepy and off-putting.
Another Montessori quote: “If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man’s future.”
Isn’t it funny how Dr. Montessori said this over 100 years ago in response to how kids were being educated and now, in 2013, reform has become the mere transmission of knowledge?
Yes, I am biased but in Montessori classrooms, our task as teachers is to strike the imagination of the kids. We want to make sure that we don’t kill off their natural curiosity and love of learning. Sometimes, what you don’t do is more important than what you do.
There is a difference, Marianne, between knowledge as
a bullet list of items to be learned and
knowledge as content rich enough to be intrinsically rewarding and that a child pursues because he or she is interested in it.
The CCSS in ELA–FAR from being a list of knowledge–is a list of ABSTRACT SKILLS DIVORCED FROM ANY CONTENT. And we’ve been doing far, far too much incoherent teaching in which we flit from one topic to another because we are concentrating not on some body of intrinsically interesting content but on skills irrespective of content. Our textbooks are full of such “and now for something completely different teaching” in which we jump from one topic to another because the content is being learned is subordinated to abstract skills–finding the main idea, recognizing cause and effect, etc. If I had a dime for every dreadful piece of nearly content-free writing I’ve seen in textbooks that was there just to exemplify and provide occasion for exercise of some abstract skill, I could buy out the Bill Gates empire.
Even skills instruction, if done properly, must be conceived of as acquisition of world and procedural knowledge–knowledge of what and how. Let me give an example to make this clear. Smoothing a piece of wood (a tabletop, say) is a skill. In order to be able to master that skill, one has to acquire a lot of knowledge–what planes and scrapers are, how one holds them, how one positions and moves one’s body when using them, what grain is in a piece of wood, the necessity of working with the grain of the wood and not against it, the varieties and grades of sandpapers, etc.
Many, many skills that we wish to develop in students are ones that are learned INCIDENTALLY, in the course of engagement with content–and it is that content and the knowledge we are attaining that makes it engaging. There are some kinds of learning that we are wired to do and that is implicit, for the most part (e.g., acquisition of the grammar of a spoken language). There is some that is not and that has to be explicitly taught (e.g., sound-grapheme correspondences). It’s important for us to distinguish between these different kinds of learning. For example, we know that the mind is hardwired to learn vocabulary and that it does so, for the most part, in situ, in the course of engagement in some real-world activity. We take an art class at the Y, and in the course of a week, we learn what stippling and chiaroscuro and filbert brush and gesso mean. So, we know that vocabulary is acquired in semantic groupings in the course of extended exposure to particular knowledge domains. That’s how we are build to learn vocabulary, and that’s what we should mimic in the learning opportunities that we design for kids.
I agree with your comments. Do you know that we also don’t use text books for the same reasons as you stated? A lot of the work we do in the classroom requires in depth research from various sources. I am starting to wonder if I am the only Montessori teacher posting on this blog?
Outstanding, Marianne! There are other Montessori teachers who post here. A number of them commented when John King made the ridiculous comment that Common Core was a lot like the Montessori approach.
I think you are the only Montessori teacher who posts because Montessori education must be chosen by the family, Allowing families to choose schools, at least for families that are unable or unwilling to pay for a private school, is a very unpopular position here.
That was because the link was posted on a Montessori facebook page. Otherwise, I don’t think that there are many Montessori teachers following these discussions. That is why it is so important to stay informed and talk to everyone you know about the effects of this reform mess. It affects Montessori, private, parochial schools as well because the limitations it has put on curriculum choices and the pressure to conform.
TeachingEconomist: I think there are many people here who believe there should be choice in education, but within the public, democratically controlled schools, which charter schools or publicly funded for-profit schools are not. I would love to have a regular public school (not a charter school) that was based on Waldorf.
Beg to differ — not with your opposition to ranking students, teachers, and schools but to your reason for opposing such ranking.
If we could reliably rank students, teachers, and schools, there would be benefits from doing so — particularly regarding teachers and schools. If we could reliably rank teachers and schools, we could reward the best and improve or eliminate the worst. (Regarding students, we could better focus our resources on the lower-ranking students.)
However, there is no way to reliably rank teachers and schools. The measured “quality” of a teacher or of a school is inherently driven by factors largely beyond the control of the teacher or the school. Pretty much the only objective measurements we have for teacher or school “quality” — standardized test scores, drop out rates, college attendance rates — are pretty much driven by the characteristics of the students, particularly the students’ socio-economic status. High-SES students produce high-scoring teachers/schools while low-SES students produce low-scoring teachers/schools. For this reason, our efforts to rank teachers/schools and to then use those rankings to reward/punish the high/low ranking teachers/schools result in irrational consequences for the teachers/schools — many good teachers/schools are punished and many bad teachers/schools are rewarded. And, of course, when we use unreliable measurements to generate irrational consequences we have all the adverse effects of ranking with none of the positive effects of ranking.
In professional sports, by contrast, we have reliable objective measurements to determine the quality of an individual’s or a team’s performance. A hitter’s batting average or home run total reliably measures how good a hitter he is; a team’s won/lost record reliably measures how good the team is relative to the other teams in the league.
Unfortunately, pretty much everyone desperately wants to measure teacher/school quality, notwithstanding the unreliability of the available measurements and our collective experience with sports implicitly leads us to believe that since we can reliably measure player/team quality in sports we should be able to measure teacher/school quality with the same degree of reliability.
There are no reliable measures related to sports either. It may be objective but it is neither reliable nor valid. For example, say team A would beat team B 60% of the time, you would still need about 80 games against each other to prove that Team A was better (>40 wins) than Team B to be statistically significant (p < .05). Needless to say, this does not happen in any sport.
And, if Team A would beat Team B 55% of the time, it would take 300 games to prove that statistically (at p < .05).
I'll let you calculate the number of games if Team A would have to play B was if it was 51%. (Hint, It's greater than 2000)
Well said, Lawrence!
What number of batting opportunities would you need to differentiate the batting prowess of a shortstop from a right fielder?
TE,
Depends on who they are! Ripkin (ss) vs Kaline (rf) or The Wizard vs Ruth???
I am thinking about something like the 20th best shortstop and 20th best right fielder as ranked in the Historical Baseball Abstract. Even better would be between a right fielder and a pitcher of course, but we have less data on that in the modern game.
Americans have an obsession with lists and ranking. Their lists of wines are a laughingstock in the rest of the world. Ranking children is much the same.
And the list of first and second growth vineyards in France are universally admired?
“If we could reliably rank students, teachers, and schools, . . . ”
Well, that IF is infinitely large, meaning the rankings will never be reliable.
“A hitter’s batting average or home run total reliably measures how good a hitter he is;. . . ”
NO, neither tell us “how good a hitter he is”. One can hit 62 homeruns with a .200 batting average or one can hit .400 while hitting no homeruns. Who is the better hitter???? Didn’t figure I’d find the hotstove at this blog!!
Duane:
Who would you chose and what would you pay for the 400 hitter with 60 plus home runs or the 200 hitter with no home runs. Again there can be no unambiguous single linear measure for a multidimensional attribute BUT some are pretty good proxies. A guy who wins the triple crown is the best hitter. 2 out of 3 ain’t bad. 1 out of 3 is not definitive but might be pretty close depending on the ranking on the other 2 measures.
Well considering that there has never been a hitter of those capabilities (400/60) but 200/0 are a dime a dozen, If I’m the owner I’d still pay him as little as I could because to pay him more than I had to would cut into my take of revenue.
If I’m the manager the better hitter at any given time is the one who comes through at that point in time, whether getting on base, driving in a run or knocking in the game winning run with a sac fly which many below Mendoza line hitters have done.
If you really want to win games on the cheap, hire some knuckleball pitchers.
Duane’s Cardinal power pitchers certainly did not get the job done against the mighty bearded ones!! ;D
But as soon as they become 13-20 game winners they get to be expensive. Think I’d prefer a lefty with a little more than just a heartbeat, you know like a 95 mph fastball and a noon to six curve at about 82, and a hard slider to go with it.
I concede that I am not a statistician, but sports statistics are much more reliable measures of player or team “quality” than student test scores are of teacher or school quality. Reasonable people can disagree regarding whether a .320/10 home runs hitter is a better hitter than a .250/45 home runs hitter; but, there is no/little disagreement that a .320 hitter is a better hitter than a .250 hitter — that is, there are no variables that significantly impact batting average and are beyond the control of the hitter. Similarly, if all the teams in a league play each other the same number of times, the team that won 55% of its games was almost certainly a better team than the team that won 45% of its games — again, there are no variables that significantly impact the team’s won/lost record and are beyond the control of the team. (Yes — Team A’s star player X might have been injured for 2 months and that would have impacted Team A’s won/lost record, but 1) it’s relatively easy to note this variable, and 2) when we say that Team A was better than Team B, we’re really saying that over the season Team A was on average better than Team B, so the games that X missed due to injury would be included in that averaging.)
A school community is NOT a “family” however. In a family you can have what your daddy can buy for you and that’s all. When the state becomes your daddy, you become a thief.
Harlan, you have a strange idea of family, and a strange idea of citizenship. You argue in favor of a Libertarian view of school funding, but school funding is not the topic of this discussion, school culture is.
The family idea is being used here as an analogy for respect, support, and unconditional caring. Family members don’t give up on each other. A family wouldn’t make children take a test and then kick out the low scorers to stop them from dragging down the family’s average.
I have read the very first paragraph of this article several times. Why IS rank so important in education? Who decided that the children that we teach are merely numbers to be placed on a graph? Why are teachers being told that the everything they give each day in the classroom just isn’t enough anymore? We are told to document, pre-test, assess, post-test, collaborate, fill in testing spreadsheets for each of those assessments, chart behaviors, differentiate, AND teach. When do we have the time to get to know the children in our classrooms? How do we find the time to figure out how each individual child learns best? We don’t, plain and simple. This is the first year for Common Core in our grade level as well as extremely intense teacher observations and evaluations. OUR individual “rating” is based on student test scores and our own evaluations during the school year. Sadly, this is the first year that I actually dread walking through the front doors of our school. This has nothing to do with the children or my colleagues and EVERYTHING to do with our government. My third graders are stressed. I see the self confidence they may have had when they first walked through the classroom door, dwindle each day. I have watched my own 10 year old son’s spirit break each and every night he sits down to do his Common Core math homework. He thinks he’s stupid and this breaks my heart. This can’t continue. We can’t expect children to think as adults do. It’s just not fair. I know for a fact that I’m not alone, but as teachers, we feel trapped. Many just “go along with it” because they believe that nothing can be done to stop the abscess we call Common Core from growing. Teachers everywhere need help. For years we have been there for children. We teach, love, nurture, and do our very best to inspire them to reach their goals. Now, more than ever, we need the public to stand up for us and voice their concerns and complaints to those who can make a change. Our children deserve better.
Teachers everywhere dread going to work because they can see ….as plain as the Nose on their Face ….that the students are treated like Products from an Assembly Line..
The Tests are the Quality Control Check…
All Products must be of the Same Quality
All Products must be Equal..
The Children are Products….no longer Human….no longer Individuals…no longer able to discover and learn and enjoy ALL of the lessons that should be learned in school…
Since you asked, I’d like to take this opportunity to give both Arne Duncan and John Deasy a big fat F! That goes for President Obama, as well. I hope that more Americans will continue to wake up and refuse to vote for any Republican or Democrat who has been bought by billionaires.
I confess to not having been very politically aware in past years. I am doing everything I can to educate myself now. I’m concerned that I won’t be able to see through the fluff and discern a candidate’s true motivations. In other words, how does one know, BEFORE an official is elected, whether he or she has been bought by billionaires? I welcome advice from anyone!
I don’t agree with President Obama’s education policies, but no politician I’ve ever seen has views that line up 100% with mine. He has not been bought by billionaires and in so many other areas I love what he is doing. He works hard to make our lives better everyday. I will not be a one-issue voter.
My thinking is that ‘competition’ and ‘education’ do no belong in the same sentence (except here to make a point).
I wrote a post on competition.
“The success in competition comes from the competitors’ awareness that the benefits were not in the result of the contest, but in the preparation for the contest. Competition is a game; it is not a determination of self-worth. The value of the competition should emphasize the ideal of putting 100% of self into the activity. The true value should not be placed on the end result, the score. However this is usually not the case in our society where sporting events are no longer simple tests of athletic skill. Our society now demands that everything be entertaining. They are also entertainment.” For more, read http://wp.me/p38YHI-B.
Which leads to devaluing human life.
“We must think and act differently.” Easier said than done.
I’ve said it before that in order to change we have to change our beliefs and values. Finland has a Phenomenal ed. system, because of what they believe and value about their country and people. Yes, their conditions are different from ours, but it shouldn’t be an excuse for us not to have an ed. system that is Extraordinary. We have to deal with what we have and turn it around. We ALL need to share a common belief about family, neighbors, and country.
I hear every school room in Finland has a piano..
They believe in the arts…
How many people live in Finland??
Comparing Finland to the USA is like comparing Apples to Pork Rinds..
Hmmm! Grind up pork rinds to make a crust to fill with apple filling. Serve warm topped with a good cheddar.
neanderthal: Just my point. You can’t have apathy if you want to change things.
These discussions always raise more questions for me. As I think about my inherent dislike of grading my students, I know it grew out of my realization of what a profound effect it had on their feelings about themselves. My primary job was to help special ed students realize their strengths and utilize them to help them learn. They were very aware, at least globally, of their in some cases profound weaknesses, and my pointing those weaknesses out through a reliance on grading was not going to help them. Evaluation and assessment was to help me figure out where to go next… until the data gremlins took over.
And yet we cannot avoid admitting that rating and ranking are part of our daily lives. How do we create a healthy attitude toward a very human activity? There are many more talented writers on this blog than I, and I am okay with that. In school, though, that realization might either spur me on or depress me. Our language is rich in comparative and superlative terms. Perhaps we should be discussing how we teach children and ourselves to handle criticism (which is what grades are) and what messages they should receive from those critiques.
Well-stated, you are NOT 2old2tch!
You just explained how Real Teaching should be!
“until the data gremlins took over.”
It has been a sad transition for so many teachers and students.
Ranking and rating is a marketing scheme and it involves playing for the other team. It’s one of the major vehicles for promoting the neoliberal agenda to privatize public education, so it’s like a commercial that says, “Don’t even think about using our product because it sucks.” It’s done to put as much pressure on neighborhood public schools and teachers as possible, in order to get students and parents to abandon them and go to charters. Hence the additional disincentives of developmentally inappropriate Common Core, increased testing, etc. When kids go to charters (or when neighborhoods become gentrified), mayors then shut down local schools in the name of “right-sizing.”
Few people ever tell parents though that most charters are no better and many are worse, including when it comes to pushing out teachers and high needs students. The least talk of all is about how parents lose democratic representation on an elected school board and even involvement in a PTO when they “choose” charters, so I think a brighter light needs to shine on all of these practices.
Agreement on the marketing scheme. The ratings even help determine where one purchases housing. Never mind that the calculations are based on a fiction… manipulated data points of every description. Never mind that the school district environment is exploding with the blocked and supremely frustrated energy and vision of creative teachers and students. Never mind that the complete absence of intelligent, collaborative, supportive education is deliberately obscured by the ranking, rating or grade. The necessary paradigm shift will rock the world when critical-thinking citizens recognize that the rank ratings are rubbish and rotten-to-the-core in their intent.
The merits of a measurement system depend on what you want to do. Sometimes we measure simply because we can. For baseball fans and those interested in statistics, the movie and the book Moneyball provide an interesting illustration of the merits and defects of measurement systems.
Where there is no purpose for a measurement system, imposing one is essentially idle curiosity. When there is a purpose then we are frequently confounded by the limitations of our measurement technology.
Why measure, rate and rank students? I think there are multiple reasons but one obvious answer is to better allocate and use the available resources. My wife teaches ESL at a local university. At the beginning of the year, new students come from all around the world to improve their English. They all have some level of mastery, but there is a huge variance in their levels of mastery. According to my wife – and it strikes me as commonsense – trying to teach to a wide variance in levels is very difficult and teachers and students benefit if the students are grouped with others of roughly the same level of mastery. They are therefore assessed. The level of precision in this sorting process is initially rough but it works in most of the cases. Then comes the tricky part. In order to balance teaching loads folks are moved up or down. This is more arbitrary, but can be readily justified since it suggests a sense of equal access to class air time and teacher attention. Finally because errors are made in the assessment process, students can be shifted up or down based on how they do in the first two or three classes. At the end of the semester, students are again assessed as to their readiness to move up to the next level. At the margin, it may be as the result of the students own choice based on how well they have done on various assignments.
As for measuring, rating and ranking teachers, again I think there are multiple reasons. The chief one is to ensure and improve the quality and effectiveness of the teachers. Again using the example of my wife’s ESL program, the reputation of an ESL program is very important for ensuring an ongoing flow of new students. A damaged reputation leads to fewer and poorer quality students and, therefore, lost income, lost job satisfaction and lost jobs. It is to the benefit of most teachers that those responsible for the program monitor the performance of teachers, provide feedback and make personnel decisions as needed. Because the number of students varies from semester to semester, teaching hours go up and down and those in charge need to allocate hours. Again such decisions are facilitated by knowing who are the strongest instructors and being able to justify such decisions.
Many of the above dynamics are not as manifest in public schools, yet, I would argue, that the need for ongoing concern for quality and improved effectiveness exists and that therefore there remains a need for measuring teacher performance.
“As for measuring, rating and ranking teachers, again I think there are multiple reasons. The chief one is to ensure and improve the quality and effectiveness of the teachers.”
Do we rank, pilots, plumbers, firefighters, accountants, doctors, lawyers, roofers, laborers, nurses, bus drivers, ad infinitum through nefarious and invalid metrics as are used on, yes used on, teachers??
No, if you want to understand my capabilities as a teacher then sit down with me in a collegial and equal fashion and let’s discuss why, when, how, where, what, etc. . . I do in the teaching and learning process. Take the time it really takes to understand whether or not a teacher can “teach”. Metrics just don’t cut it.
Break out of your ideologies of ranking, sorting and separating, Bernie1815. You might find a world worth of humans who refuse to succumb to metrics ideologies as they understand it is a tool of repression, nothing more and unfortunately nothing less.
Duane:
Why do you say that I am somehow locked into an ideology of rating and ranking? How do you know that it is not you with the ideological blinders?
I am not sure you understood the first sentence of my comment. I am certainly not averse, a priori, to any way of collecting valid and usable data relevant to the issue that needs to be addressed. Whether or not some ordinal, interval or ratio metric is needed depends on the issue that is being addressed. While it is true that metrics can be used to coerce and control, that is certainly not necessarily the case.
First question: From your writings here defending standardized testing, that one can come up with systems for measuring human output, etc. . . . Unless I have totally misread what you have written, if so please correct me.
Second question: Good question! Help me see my supposed “ideological” blinders. If by that you mean attempting to use logic and critical thinking, i.e., Critical Enquiry, into educational malpractices then perhaps I have “blinders” on. Fortunately for me those blinders have a screen on the inside that allows all information to be shown so as to be a guide to being a “logical free thinking being” who resists those who seek to control through metrics and labeling.
“. . . that is certainly not necessarily the case.”
And I contend it is the case although one may not believe that it is, metrics are a means of attempting to control the environment in which we live, for both good and “bad” purposes. Otherwise what is the purpose of developing and using them?
Duane:
We have gone through this before and I am sure others must find the argument tedious – I do. But one more time. No measurement system of a complex multidimensional phenomena will capture the phenomena. However, some measures or proxies will be useful depending upon the need or purpose.
Examples are always useful for moving a discussion forward so here goes: Today my wife is administering the TOEFL (a standardized test) to both students in her program and those walking in off the street. Is the TOEFL a perfect test? My wife says definitely not and there is a new on-line version of the test that she sees as better than the one her institution is equipped to administer. On the other hand, my wife and, importantly the students, see the current test as having sufficient relevance and validity that they take the test seriously and try their best. Those passing the test with a score of 550 or above can take graduate level courses at the University. Those passing the test with a score of 500 can take undergraduate level courses. Those are the rules of the University and they are designed for the students’ benefit and for the instructors and other students taking the same classes.
Now the TOEFL is not by any means perfect. The cut off scores may or may not be set correctly. I doubt that 5 points plus or minus is really definitive. It is largely multiple choice which in my opinion is a severe limitation. But the test does appear to increase the probability that those who pass and take courses will not be overwhelmed by their limited capabilities in English. At the same time, I believe that my wife can probably make as good or even better assessment of her students’ readiness to take college courses than the TOEFL. However, she would also acknowledge that she would not “trust” the judgments of some of the other language instructors and because the University administration does not know her they have no basis for trusting my wife’s assessment any more than that of her colleagues. Moreover many of the walk-ins have no instructor input.
In short, this imperfect standardized test is useful.
My understanding is that your position is that until the TOEFL is a perfect test – which it cannot by definition be – it has no value. I say you (and Wilson) are simply wrong as to the issue of utility.
Whether we “rank” pilots, plumbers, etc., we do evaluate them — at least those who are employed by large organizations. Certainly, we evaluate lawyers who work in govt, in large law firms, or for large corporations. The better the evaluation, the higher the $ reward with those evaluated as below satisfactory encouraged or required to leave.
The critical difference between teaching and all these other jobs is that teachers do not have first-line supervisors while the other jobs do have first-line supervisors. First-line supervisors have the substantive expertise and hands-on knowledge regarding the employee’s quality/quantity of work to generate an informed evaluation. Because teachers do not have such a first-line supervisor (the principal is a second-line manager who often lacks substantive expertise and usually lacks hands-on knowledge regarding the quality/quantity of the teacher’s work), school systems use unreliable substitutes for a first-line supervisor — either the traditional principal-observes-and-evaluates (too little substantive expertise/too little hands-on contact with the teacher’s work) or student test scores (too many variables impacting the test scores and beyond the teacher’s control).
Teachers should be ranked (or at least evaluated) with consequences for at least the poorly-performing teachers. The problem is not the idea of ranking/evaluating but rather the fact that we are using unreliable measurements to do the ranking/evaluating that yield unreliable results — too many false positives and too many false negatives. And, the evaluate-by-test-scores has the additional huge disadvantage of imposing significant adverse effects — teaching to the test, narrowing the curriculum, cheating, discouraging teacher-teacher cooperation, and discouraging teachers/principals from working with “problem” or low-SES students.
LL,
“Teachers should be ranked (or at least evaluated). . .” There is a huge difference between an evaluation/assessment and a ranking. It is the ranking that I find so objectionable. I have been involved in evaluating and assessing workers whom I supervised. Never ranked them. Had to document everything to let go a union employee who was an alcoholic. We spoke with him about counseling, and every other thing we could do but the individual wasn’t ready to give up the alcohol. Those things are never pleasant but we couldn’t have an alcoholic working as a clerk in a hospital pharmacy. We needed accurate work done.
“The problem is not the idea of ranking/evaluating but rather the fact that we are using unreliable measurements to do the ranking/evaluating that yield unreliable results — too many false positives and too many false negatives.”
Yes the problem is the ranking, especially since, as you say the systems for doing so are so unreliable. And the fact is (at least in my mind until someone disproves/rebuts/refutes Wilson’s logic in his “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error”.) is that those systems have so many inherent errors that they are completely invalid and if invalid by definition are unreliable.
I know of no other endeavor where the chosen method of evaluation/assessment is so invalid and unreliable and is still used. To me it is an utter absurdity beyond comprehension other than the fact that the ideologies of testing and measurement (remember the testing and measurement course you took as an undergrad in learning to be a teacher?) hold so much sway, that the cultural habitus is so, so strong that to go against it is to be heretical. Well, I’ve been a heretic (religious that is) a lot longer than I’ve been a testing and measurement heretic.
It is just completely mind-boggling to me that people can’t see or refuse to see the inherent problems.
I see the three monkeys in all of this! Most are the monkeys! (great now I’ve pissed off even more people with that one)
Great comment Duane!
Metrics just don’t cut it, for sure.
“Do we rank, pilots, plumbers, firefighters, accountants, doctors, lawyers, roofers, laborers, nurses, bus drivers, ad infinitum through nefarious and invalid metrics as are used on, yes used on, teachers??”
We actually do, though this may not seem obvious nor intuitive. As a consumer, you often directly choose you accountant, lawyer, roofer, laborer, or nurse. More indirectly, you can also choose your pilot or bus driver by choosing a different flight, time, or even carrier. The free market implicitly allows you to rank and allocate resources based on those rankings.
To further the analogy to education, if we allowed parents to freely choose where to send their children to schools, we would not need to rank teachers or schools. It is because we compel parents to send their children to a particular school, and that we compel taxpayers to pay for it, that such rankings are necessary.
“It is because we compel parents to send their children to a particular school, and that we compel taxpayers to pay for it, that such rankings are necessary.”
The first part of that statement isn’t necessarily true. We compel mandatory school attendance but do not compel the parents to send them to the local community public school (which by the way is mandated/compelled by each state constitution) as they can choose to home school, send their children to other schools. The parents have a choice of were to live to be able to send their children to the school of choice. It’s just that most choose to send their children to public schools.
Since your first point is basically moot the resulting conclusion becomes moot (not to mention it doesn’t logically follow from the first statement.
Good to see that you agree the ability of a family to choose a school reduces the required level of regulation.
What did you think of the public school districts efforts to track down students who live outside the district attending the district schools. My favorite is the town that offers a $300 bounty to anyone who turns these lawbreakers in to the authorities.
Bernie, let the markets do the sorting. The last thing we need to do in our K-8 schools is to tell most kids, clearly, early on, that they are hopeless failures. And our grade-based approach there teaches, very clearly, that learning is not one of those things that makes life worth living but, rather, is something so onerous that people have to be coerced into doing it.
Robert:
I don’t understand the point you are making.
Kids come into schools built to learn, eager to do so, little inference machines fueled by curiosity. And then we kill that in them. We teach them, subtlety but insistently, that learning is not something that they DO for the joy of it but something that is DONE TO THEM, something that they UNDERGO under THREAT OF PUNISHMENT. Wrong from the start. EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of the message that we should be communicating via the system we use.
Again, the children entering school today will see more change in their lifetimes than has occurred in all of human history to this point, and so we had better be creating intrinsically motivated learners. We’re not going to do that with a system predicated on extrinsic punishment and reward.
Robert:
I still do not get the connection. I am reading John Taylor Gatto’s Underground History. It makes the same points you do – but it seems to me that it justifies the need for reform since the situation as you describe has been the norm since compulsory schooling started.
To be clear, I am not in favor of any testing where there is no net benefit to the student and the educational process in general. Testing that is a weak substitute for lazy and incompetent management only serves to aggravate the situation. Testing should not amount to cost shifting onto the backs of students that which can be done in some other way. At the same time I believe that just as there is variance in the performance of educational administrators there is variance in the performance of classroom teachers. They are issues that need to be addressed and addressing them may need some form of measurement.
Portfolio approaches have the merit of inculcating pride in creation–the child being able to say, this is what I created. I am a creator. That’s the sort of spirit we need to be developing in children who will live through more change, in their lives, that has occurred in all of previous human history.
cx: THAN has occurred, of course
Robert:
Again, I am not sure of the point you are trying to make.
My point is that summative testing has lots of negative consequences but that there are other kinds of measurement that are extremely useful. Portfolio approaches involve the creation of tangible products that inculcate in kids pride in accomplishment, and nothing breeds success like success. And they can be extremely varied, and so encourage initiative and creativity. If kids can do it until they get it right, instead of simply being assessed and told, you are not what we were looking for. You are a failure. Diagnostic and formative testing are also extremely valuable (though we have to be careful with these, recognizing that diagnostic testing, in particular, is inherently coercive).
Robert:
Of course, a test can be used coercively and of course a test taker may react adversely to their test result. The distinction between formative and summative is useful, but it serves to highlight the issue I keep raising: You look for metrics when you have an issue to address – which is Drucker’s point.
I think we need to narrow the discussion. Can we focus the discussion on the TOEFL example I related and the problem of managing the participation of non-native English speakers in graduate and undergraduate classes?
Bernie1815, i know you are not an educator and I promise I mean this sincerely and respectfully. It is nearly impossible for you to really understand what Robert and so many others are conveying. I wish you could come spend about a month (though it would probably take less time) in my classroom and school. See the real effects of the ranking of teachers-and by that I mean the effects on the students. You seem to believe in public education and you strive to understand the picture. I believe you would be shocked by what you’d find if you were in the thick of it daily.
If we are thinking about salary, teachers are generally automatically ranked by longevity in the district. In higher education, it does not work that way. Peer evaluation is used, and used fairly effectively, though the abolition of mandatory retirement is forcing Colleges and Universities to rethink post tenure evaluation. I think it can also work in the K-12 system as well.
Bookworm23:
I appreciate the invitation. However, I think folks misunderstand or do not know my perspective. I was a management consultant specializing in HR systems and processes. I spent 30 plus years evaluating, designing and implementing performance assessment processes for big private and public organizations. I know firsthand the pluses and minuses of most of such processes. I have designed and implemented processes when companies merged and duplicate functions had to be rationalized and good people fired.
My biggest criticism of the way many of these educational reforms are being implemented even when the reforms make logical sense and are justified is that the educational leadership is not prepared for the really hard work needed to make it work and frequently is not capable of actually doing it.
Let me give you an example. When we were involved in a merger situation, we advised both sets of management to first of all identify from the top down the marginally effective managers in terms of performance and in terms of people management including themselves and their peers. In other words, they needed to clear the decks of the dead wood before the really tough work of choosing which otherwise competent person needed to be let go. It is amazing how much deadwood well run organizations accumulate over the years. This one step typically sent a message through the organization and there was a flurry of less effective performers who left. – making my teams job easier.
With respect to schools, in my opinion, a principal who has been in a school with 30 or so teachers for a year and cannot generally and accurately identify the strengths and weaknesses of his or her staff is the one who needs immediate feedback and performance improvement and, if necessary, removal before implementing any new performance review process. It is unbelievably stupid and amounts to malpractice to allow poorly equipped and prepared principals to implement such systems – regardless of their merits.
But I fear, I am drifting away from Diane’s original post.
Bernie1815, it is apparent you think the corporate paradigm can be imposed on public schools because you are a convert of the reductionist way of thinking. Reductionism asserts that schools can be improved when we can do everything faster: educate students, determine their weaknesses, assess teachers, shift everyone around, etc., etc. The problem is that we are not in HR hiring people to oversee widget production, we are dealing with human beings whose needs may require different amounts of resources, personnel, and TIME to develop and grow into maturity. Teaching is an art, and art is not a reductionist endeavor. The current metrics are a farce designed to legitimate low teacher pay (what– you didn’t know that a Very Small Number of teachers will actually be paid for performance?) and make teaching look like some kind of robot job that can be performed by any monkey with 6 months of TFA training. The reductionist mentality is quickly destroying schools because teachers, parents, and students are now only focused on the facets of education that are measured by the metric, out of fear of high-stakes consequences. Collaboration, collegiality, social character, sponsorship of activities, the arts, contribution to the school culture– none of these are of any significant import on teacher evaluations or student standardized tests. The things that cannot be measured are what make schools great, which is why you don’t see this corporate reform garbage being snatched up by prep schools.
FLteacher:
I have no idea what you are talking about. In what way am I advocating a “corporate paradigm”, whatever that specifically is? What have I said that suggests that I do not see organizations as complex entities that are very difficult to change or improve? In what way is saying that a school can be improved reductionist per se? In what way is assessing someone’s fluency in a language in order to determine their readiness for other courses reductionist?
It helps to be concrete and specific. Can teachers assess a student’s fluency in a language they are teaching? Can teachers make errors in assessing the fluency of a student in that language? Can a teacher improve their effectiveness as a teacher? My answer to each of these questions is “yes”. What are yours?
Again, what does “The things that cannot be measured are what make schools great” mean? What are these “things”? How do you know which schools are “great”?
My wife is a teacher. She was a HS foreign language teacher and now teaches ESL to graduate and undergraduate level students. She is an exceptional teacher. I certainly don’t believe that anyone can be a teacher. That said, what does “teaching is an art, and art is not a reductionist endeavor” mean?
Finally, but most importantly, I am the father of 3 children, now adults. Don’t you realize how condescending, pretentious and downright silly statements like “we are dealing with human beings whose needs may require different amounts of resources, personnel and TIME to develop and grow into maturity” sounds to most parents? A K-5 teacher with 20 children per class spends on average 15 minutes per day per child. A Grade 6-12 special subject teacher spends markedly less time per day per child. As a parent I spent more time each evening at dinner talking to them as individuals than did their teachers collectively. Your rant is totally out of line.
I thinking about the extreme effect of the difference between the oldest child and the youngest in any classroom. How different are two kids eleven months apart in age? VERY!! The concept of ranking them by achievement is absurd.
I have thought about this very point in connection to the criticism of the CCSS as being age innapopriate. The CCSS are defined for each grade, not an age, and students in a grade can be more than a year apart in age.
Yes, in some cases much more than a year apart.
At my school we have had some immigrant children much older than other kids ( often due to English proficiency and or lack of formal education in home country.)
My question than is why are we discussing the age appropriateness of the CCSS when the CCSS are not given in terms of age but in terms of grade, and students in a grade may be a years different in age?
A second, unrelated question concerns the definition of age appropriate. As Dr. Ravitch so passionately stated, each student is an individual. What is appropriate for one student may be inappropriate for another. For a task to be age appropriate for eight year old, what percentage of eight year olds should be able to perform the task and find it appropriately challenging?
Why do we rank and rate?
I think it’s a matter of consciousness, where reactions are based on understanding or
misunderstanding.
John Dewey touched on behavior (reactions) : “The “Self” is not something ready-made
(Automatic), but something in continuous formation through choice of actions.”
Behavior (choice of actions) is the sum of values.
Rank and rate, or how is it we believe that some humans are better than others, and
by what measures do we assess this difference, and WHY?
Assessing this difference determines social hierachy (Structure/Status) based on social
legitimacy (Consent).
Social structure as mythic or symbolic is easy to imagine. As Hamlet says in a moment of lucid madness: “The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body.” The king is a social or symbolic function, not a physical thing. A particular king – say, James II – is no different biologically from his fellow men, yet he puts on a crown, sits on a throne and assumes a symbolic position of authority. It is from this place, backed by a mythic structure (divine right, for example), that the social structure itself borrows its substance.”
The Structuralist school of anthropology argued that myth is the means by which we organise our world. Some anthropologists stressed the social aspects of this; others emphasize the fact that mythic or symbolic structures were important in shaping our perceptions.
The “Need” to shape our perceptions (the root of values) is a component of
Concocted Authority.
Concocted Authority compels compliance (Cooperate-Enter into an agreement that
did NOT provide self interest).
Convential “Wisdom” at any time, reflects the interests of Power and the maintenance
of Power.
As the “Eagles” sang: “We are all just prisoners here, of our own device”.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein
Has the level of consciousness raised by Public Pedagogy continued the “Order”
or change it?
Interesting additions to the conversation, NoBrick. You have added to my understanding of how we got where we are and widened the opportunities for productive discussion. Sometimes we seem to be just going around in circles.
Fascinating comment.
Thank you.
NoBrick,
Did you pick the nom de plume in regards to not being “just another brick in the wall”?
There are even aspects of the sports analogy that are fitting. Sports fans (for the most part) are loyal to and root for their home team (their local neighborhood school let’s say) no matter how poorly their team plays, despite the rumblings and grumblings, they cheer on that team and at the end of the season will frequently be heard saying…”maybe next year”. If MLB were run like current education reform, Boston would have lost its beloved Red Sox long before it had a chance to reverse the curse and Chicago Cubs fans would not be holding out hope that theo Epstein will accomplish the same for them, because they too, like so many Chicago Public Schools would have been closed. I only wish that community members would rally around their local neighborhood schools with the same fervor as the die hard loyal sports fan.
http://www.taughtbyfinland.com/1/post/2013/11/-what-do-finnish-teachers-think-of-standardized-testing-and-rankings.html#.UpDK3LK9KK1
A quote here regarding the amount of time some U.S. School districts spend preparing for standardized tests has it at 20%. I know from several districts in my area that it’s much higher. Does anyone care to share what they’re seeing in their own districts? My own experience and that of friends in other districts: 2 or 3 years ago teachers began pacing themselves to have all spi’s taught by the end of the 3rd 9weeks. This year, teachers are striving to have spi’s taught shortly after Christmas. This seems beyond absurd to me. I’d love to here what’s happening elsewhere.
As Peter Drucker said, “That which can be measured, can be managed.”
It’s all about power and control: those who create and define the value of the metrics used are the one’s establishing the parameters of discussion.
Allow them to set the terms of debate, and you’ve given yourself over to the assumptions driving their behavior, something very hard to escape from, as we’re finding out.
Yep!!
I think it was Duane who posted a comment on a differnet page today that asked why we are not rating parents on their parenting skills, or lack thereof.
This is one of the best suggestions I have read on the topic of rankings and ratings. Without parents who act as their children’s first teachers, children not only come from way behind, but this is a failure that follows most of these deprived students throughout their school careers.
No teacher can completely replace a dedicated parent.
No, wasn’t me, Ellen.
I think most here know my concerns about “rankings”, that they are nothing more than opinions no matter how hard those who do the rankings attempt to mathematize/scientize said rankings.
Tis no one’s business how a particular parent raises their children (obviously except in cases of abuse/neglect). Just because one raises their children in a fashion that isn’t in current mainstream thinking doesn’t mean that the parent should be ostracized through some sort of “parental ranking”.
No different in my mind than the LA Times publishing teacher VAM (sic) scores.
This measuring madness has gotten completely out of hand. I saw a cartoon recently in which a seal, a cat, a goldfish in a bowl, and a worm were all lined up and a fellow was saying, “OK. This is a test. And to make it fair, the test will be the same for everyone. Now. Go climb that tree.”
Michael:
You say:
As Peter Drucker said, “That which can be measured, can be managed.”
It’s all about power and control: those who create and define the value of the metrics used are the one’s establishing the parameters of discussion.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with trying to measure an issue in order to manage it, so long as those proposing the metric are open to alternative and better ways to measure and address the issue that needs to be managed or resolved.
Just give a guy a KPI. That’s the latest magic potion. The latest in a long line of magic potions. All of them snake oil.
KPI???
Of course measurement CAN BE very valuable. It can be, for example, if used formatively. It can be when it is self measurement, purposefully undertaken to demonstrate one’s abilities and knowledge to others. It can also QUITE EASILY be simply an instrument of power and violence or invalid or unreliable or irrelevant. Measurement should be undertaken with GREAT trepidation. Social measurement schemes should come with labels that read, “EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. USE WITH UTMOST CAUTION AND ONLY FOR THE PURPOSES INDICATED.”
And there is MUCH TO BE LEARNED from the whole Balanced Scorecard movement in business. We could call the system that we are creating for U.S. education “The INVARIANT, UNBALANCED SCORECARD.”
In my last corporate job, one of the other managers created a K-8 program but ran a bit over budget and missed his delivery schedule by a couple months. So, the company canned him. In the years that followed, the program created by that manager accounted for an enormous percentage of the company’s revenues and was the product line that kept the company from having to declare bankruptcy. One has to be very careful what one is measuring. This company used the wrong metrics and killed its golden goose.
Robert:
Now that point I understand. ;D
I love that example of them canning their golden goose. Gladwell’s book Blink also comes to mind. Taken from Wikipedia (sorry)
Gladwell also mentions that sometimes having too much information can interfere with the accuracy of a judgment, or a doctor’s diagnosis. This is commonly called “Analysis paralysis.” The challenge is to sift through and focus on only the most critical information to make a decision. The other information may be irrelevant and confusing to the decision maker. Collecting more and more information, in most cases, just reinforces our judgment but does not help to make it more accurate. The collection of information is commonly interpreted as confirming a person’s initial belief or bias. Gladwell explains that better judgments can be executed from simplicity and frugality of information, rather than the more common belief that greater information about a patient is proportional to an improved diagnosis. If the big picture is clear enough to decide, then decide from the big picture without using a magnifying glass.
Liking Michael’s comment!
As Peter Drucker said, “That which can be measured, can be managed.”
I do not see this as a bad thing when spending other people’s resources (i.e., revenues collected from taxpayers). If we are a family, as the blogger suggests we adopt as a metaphor, then teachers should teach out of the kindness of their hearts and nothing else. There would be no exchange of money.
Arne Duncan’s significant preparation is in basketball. Basketball is about statistics, ranking and rating. It’s the only paradigm Arne knows, therefore he has applied it to schools.
Yeah, the dummies always resort to the sports metaphors. Race to the Top. I have news for Arne, a lot of life is NOT a race. Who’s was the better composer, Mahler or Tchaikovsky? Who was the better poet, Stevens or Yeats? Vain comparisons. Neither undertaking is a race.
Idiots always want to apply some simple solution to everything.
One of the best book titles EVER was Robert Graves’s title for a collection of his essays: Difficult Questions, Easy Answers. That title could be the motto of the deform movement in U.S. education.
Love this comment Robert. Not only the insightful Graves presents this thought, but old time educator Gesell also offered much the same information.
Many researchers on giftedness comment on the multitude of ‘gifts’ that cannot be measured by comparative grading on tests. Social skills compared to science and math skills, art skills v. business skills, and others.
Doubt though that Duncan reads Graves or listens to Mahler…but he probably does know all the NBA rankings.
Reblogged this on A Daily Journal of my Comp/Rhet Dissertation and commented:
As a teacher and a parent, I just had to reblog this. I think everyone needs to think about our educational system and what we really want from it.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it, now. Teaching does not fit into the paradigms of what defines success in Western culture.
Western culture has two arbiters of success: the Greek notion of Glory, as defined by martial or competitive prowess. (think Achilles, Muhammed Ali, the NFL), and the Anglo-capital model of material, measurable success (Adam Smith, Goldman Sachs, John J. Rockefeller, the Forbes 400). Both metrics are masculine, quantifiable, (wins, dollars), and hierarchical. Both depend on losers to define “winning.”
Teaching is feminine, holistic, and egalitarian. If it goes well, there are no losers.
It can not and will not EVER be appreciated by western culture. The attempt to rank everything is actually an attempt to “appreciate” teaching by dragging the practice into the quantifiable world. ,
Neal:
I don’t understand your point. Are you saying that teaching cannot be viewed as more or less effective? What do you see as the difference between coaching and teaching, if any?
Teaching can be more or less effective– you have to try different techniques and see which ones work for your particular students. An experienced teacher has an array of techniques, but they won’t work for every student, so you have to try new ones to try to reach everyone. You can’t always reach everyone, and if you work with students in poverty, you might have to face many who have issues that are outside of your scope (like not showing up for 40 days of school). Then there’s always the lag time created when administrators or entire districts change the curriculum, standards, published programs, expected teaching frameworks, and other established practices, because often your old techniques need to change to accommodate new requirements. Effective teaching has very much to do with the connection between the teacher an the student, despite all the variables, and is very difficult to quantify. When I reach a student, I know that it could have been my “excellent instructional delivery,” but there’s also the distinct possibility that I made them feel loved enough that they wanted to learn the content for themselves, no matter how unclear it was at first… Do you think you can measure that?
FLteacher:
If the student recognizes it then yes, it can be “measured” if there is a call for it to be measured.
“I don’t understand your point.”
Interesting that I do.
Perhaps not ever having been in the class room as a teacher for many years is why. And that is not meant as a dig at you. What is meant is those whose life work experiences have been in the business sector as you have described yours and not in the very different world of the education realm which has completely different goals, objectives, method, means of assessing the work produced from the business sector.
I’m not saying that one is “better” than the other, just different realms with differing paradigms, discourses, and results. And for the most part they really do not jibe. That is spoken from someone who didn’t start teaching until he was 38 and worked in many different positions/jobs in many differing sectors of the business world.
I have found that the vast majority of my friends, many I’ve known since grade school, who own their own businesses and/or work for large corporations, and even small businesses do not understand that the two realms, business and education are fundamentally different and that what is a “success” in education probably would not be considered a “success” when viewed through the business lens.
Again, this is not meant as a diatribe against you, Bernie (although I will hold the HR thing against you-ha ha! I’m old enough to remember dealing with Personnel Departments before the whole concept of “Human Resources” which conceptually I find quite appalling), I just think that until you step in front of a classroom for ten years or so, it’s almost impossible to understand just what it takes to be an effective teacher and no metrics can ever begin to come close to effectively assessing what a “good” teacher does/is.
Duane:
I don’t take discussions personal, unless they become personal. You have not made personal comments. You also have not answered the question I posed to Neal: Are you saying that teaching cannot be viewed as more or less effective?
Come on Berns, you posed it to Neal, so I didn’t know I was required to respond. One thing one learns quickly in teaching is that one has to be very specific in what one says or else all the young lawyers in training, i.e., students will eat you alive.
But to answer. Yes, it can be viewed that way. The pertinent question then is: how valid is the “view”. And standardized tests, rubrics, and any other metric/measurement system as the “view” lens have all the epistemological and ontological errors and confusions that Wilson so cogently identifies and therefore should be rightly and ethically rejected.
Duane:
Neal writes:
“Teaching is feminine, holistic, and egalitarian. If it goes well, there are no losers.
It can not and will not EVER be appreciated by western culture.
What does that mean? If it means anything, I see it as a claim that one cannot analyze it or assess it. Yet, Neal suggests that “If it goes well, there are no losers.” Which surely suggests that if it does not go well, there are losers? However, if it can go well or not also suggests that it can be assessed and, if assessed, subject to analysis. Neal’s next sentence is simply weird. At a minimum, it begs the question as to what culture actually appreciates teaching? In general, it is simply an absurd claim that negates the purpose, validity and usefulness of all institutions and processes that claim to prepare teachers for teaching.
These issues have to be addressed before moving on to Neal’s second claim and, I suspect, your primary claim that “The attempt to rank everything is actually an attempt to “appreciate” teaching by dragging the practice into the quantifiable world.” This last statement is the trigger for my question as to whether teaching can be viewed as more or less effective. Note that we are not talking about standardized tests, simply whether or not an activity such as teaching can be assessed along some types of continua. Neal has already implicitly acknowledged that a binary state can exist both in terms of the process and outcomes.
This semantic exercise is standard fair for determining whether or not and how it might be possible to assess, measure and quantify some attribute or activity. I read Wilson’s claim as being that we cannot measure what we seek to measure with enough precision and reliability to do the things that we want to do. This is a far more coherent sentiment than Neal’s but it is a different issue for me and one subject to the same logical and empirical rules that apply to the measurement of physical attributes and characteristics such as height, color and the speed of light.
Good analysis! I better understand your objections to what was written. I didn’t focus as much on the first paragraph but the second and your thoughts on that are quite cogent. Your writing helps sharpen my thinking skills (whatever those may be-ha ha!) Thanks!
Observer Effect: In science, the term observer effect refers to changes that the act of observation will make on a phenomenon being observed. This is often the result of instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some manner. A commonplace example is checking the pressure in an automobile tire; this is difficult to do without letting out some of the air, thus changing the pressure. (Wikipedia)
I would make the claim that if we over measure students we harm them- just by the act of measurement. Testing was never a good way to teach, to learn or to spend one’s time. but my children spend hours each week in state assessment tests. I am opting them out next week.
By the way- I love data and measurement since I want information to make informed decisions. I am a researcher. But there are many errors in all measurement both quantitative and qualitative. So in order to make decisions I like there to be multiple data points from different sources to try and ameliorate the error inherent in all measurement. I am old school so I like triangulation – a minimum of 3 data points before making decisions. I am also mixed methods- I like quantitative and qualitative. But the first decision is which data I should pay attention to or disregard. Example: I love standardized testing data when identifying a student for special education. But I also know one testing session with an unfamiliar school psychologist may end up with inaccurate results. So I look at the history and the context and how the student is doing in school and at home. I pay more attention to the parent and teacher who have a lot more experience with the child than the school psychologist. Sometimes the standardized tests are really helpful. Sometimes all they measured was the child was sick the day of testing.
When I had to evaluate teachers I used similar methods. I looked at their history, student test scores, populations they worked with, how long they had taught certain classes, their training, professional development, collegiality, efforts to differentiate for children, content knowledge, ability to collaborate with other professionals and families, leadership roles and other variables. I also observed them teach on more than one occasion in a variety of situations. The main purpose of the evaluation was to help them with areas they wanted to improve since often the teacher was their own harshest critic. Certainly one set of scores with a lot of error reduced to a undecipherable rating of “proficient” or “not proficient” is not useful at all!
Did you ever sit down with the teacher you were evaluating and in a true equitable and collegial way listen to what the teacher thought about his/her abilities, skills, actions, planning, pedagogy, etc. . . ? And I don’t mean as part of the “evaluation process” but in order for you to get a better understanding of the teacher as a person, colleague and equal!! Or, perhaps, you didn’t even think about assessing a teacher in that fashion.
Reblogged this on Roy F. McCampbell's Blog and commented:
Now this is something to ponder
In 2001, I went to an advanced National Writer’s Project seminar. Imagine my discomfort and dismay when the two week course was an indoctrination in implementing corporate models in the classroom. I wish I could remember the name of the program. Perhaps I should have walked out shouting: “THIS has nothing to do with WRITING!” However, our school district set this up as a model we would be implementing in our schools. I decided to see what this program was all about. Oh, well, my. We argued whether students were stakeholders or customers, who exactly was the stakeholder: the future employer? the community? What place did running our classrooms with corporate efficiency models have in our schools? After all was said and done and the two weeks were over, my colleagues were bubbling with plans to use this corporate language and structure in their classrooms, and being the only “naysayer”, I became outcast and huddled in my classroom hoping no one would notice that I was not about to take on a corporate structure in my classroom. Over the next decade, little things came about with State Standards, testing that became high stakes for teachers and students. Personal student growth and individuality has been thrown out the window along with recess and creativity by corporate America.
You provided a GREAT way to help policymakers understand the lunacy of ranking students, schools, and teachers. Let’s score and rank children within our households on their school work, post the results of how their parents graded them, and surely that will make the lower scoring children work harder even though it may permanently damage their relationships with their parents and siblings. But don’t we want these kids to become globally competitive from an early age?
Ranking schools is really ranking children.