Peter Greene is a veteran teacher in Pennsylvania. He has a blog called “Curmudgucation.”
In this post, he explains that the worst part of the faux reform movement is standardization. Conformity.
And what makes teachers vulnerable to it is that they are groomed to conform and to teach conformity.
He writes:
If I had to put my finger on the one most troubling aspect of the wave of reformy stuff that is currently battering us, it would be this. The standardization. The premise that education is a big machine with interchangeable cogs. The one size fits all. The sameness.
It is troubling because conformity and standardization are seductively appealing to schools and teachers.
And, he explains:
Every single aspect of current reform, from TFA to charters to most especially CCSS and the testing program to which it is irrevocably tied to the programs being hawked by Pearson et al– every single aspect is aimed at one thing. Sameness. Standardization. A system in which individual differences, whether they’re the differences of students or teachers or schools, do not and can not matter.
This is not right. This is not how we human beings are meant to be in the world. It doesn’t even work (let me be the one gazillionth person to point out the irony that most of these reformers would have fought and failed against their own system if they had to come up through it). It’s a lie. It’s terrible preparation for our students, and it seeks to deny and stamp out the humanity of every teacher and student who passes through a school….
But here’s a thought. What if we set up a system where every learner had a personal education professional who saw the student on a daily basis, face to face, and who got to know him well enough to chart a course that factored in the content area, the strengths and weaknesses of the learner, the strengths and weaknesses of the education professional, the individual learner’s personal goals, and the unique qualities and history of the place where they were working. It would have to be a very robust and resilient system to accommodate all the zillions of individual differences, but we could achieve that robust resilience by empowering the educational professionals to make any and all adjustments that were necessary to accommodate all the factors listed above.
Or we could just require everybody to cover all the same material at the same time in the same way while ignoring all of the individual factors involved with the live human beings in the room. We could standardize everything. We could make everything the same.
I’m going to vote for the first choice. It has the virtue of reflecting reality, plus it has the virtue of using a system that we already had in place. We just have to put teachers and schools back to where they ought to be.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“What if we set up a system where every learner had a personal education professional who saw the student on a daily basis, face to face, and who got to know him well enough to chart a course that factored in the content area, the strengths and weaknesses of the learner, the strengths and weaknesses of the education professional, the individual learner’s personal goals, and the unique qualities and history of the place where they were working. It would have to be a very robust and resilient system to accommodate all the zillions of individual differences, but we could achieve that robust resilience by empowering the educational professionals to make any and all adjustments that were necessary to accommodate all the factors listed above.” When I read this, I thought: “Hey, this is what I do!” I see many students on a daily basis and have known them since PreK or K and I know there are more aspects to Greene’s vision and that there are some students I only see once a week, but to me, this is a strong argument for school librarians. We are the antidote to standardization!!!
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The Montessori community could also be the antidote to standardization if they only spoke up on behalf of all of our nation’s children, schools, and teachers. Why they haven’t just baffles me. I know that Maria Montessori would have much to say against the current reforms.
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Maria Montessori originally created her program to meet the needs of students with disabilities. Talk about different needs, abilities and outcomes. Now, it is a program many children thrive in because it is fundamentally child oriented. She, along with millions of parents, child advocates & professionals cringe at one-sizes-fits-all.
Even Gates/Obama/Rahm/Duncan place their children far away from RTTT & CCSS.
Gee, if their mandates are that great…why aren’t the private schools jumping at the opportunity to duplicate such brilliant ideas? Parents would flock to them and more ‘segregation academies’ would spring up like Kudzu. Not happening!
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Part of the problem the Montessori community might have in speaking out is that they have found great success if that type of education is an option for parents. It does not fit in well with the traditional zoned public school system where street address controls school admission.
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Don’t listen to this BS from TE, and his ongoing campaign for schools outside of regulatory oversight, as he has been told repeatedly of the Montessori programs that exist in public schools, such as the five that are in Chicago Public Schools: http://alis-cheney.blogspot.com/2010/08/looking-at-chicagos-public-montessori.html
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Once again notice the use if the words traditional zoned public school. There are if course choice programs that have Montessori instruction.
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“Once again, notice” there ARE Montessori programs in “traditionally zoned schools.” They are in both neighborhood and magnet schools. Magnets in Chicago typically reserve a high percentage of spaces for neighborhood students and their siblings.
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Magnet schools are a good idea. They are not all and only traditional zoned schools.
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Magnet programs exist in traditionally zoned neighborhood schools. Stop leading people to believe there are no choices in neighborhood schools nationally, when that is an issue in YOUR DISTRICT that can and should be addressed locally. Choice in my school system was long ago addressed by my local district and in many other school districts across the nation as well. Yours is a local matter, not a national issue –unless, of course, your aim is for the federal government to usurp all local control.
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Magnets are not traditionally zoned schools, they are a separate parallel system. They are subject to many of the same criticisms folks make here.
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You are not an authority on K12 or magnets and are just talking out of your ass. There are many different kinds of magnet schools and configurations: “A magnet cluster school is a specialized neighborhood school – it has a neighborhood attendance boundary and accepts students who live within that boundary.”
http://www.cpsoae.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=72699&type=d
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Magnet schools do not enroll all the students in a geographically defined area and only those students. TJ High, for example has standardized admission exams. As your initial post said, a number of spots in those schools in Chicago are relieved for catchment families, non catchment area families can also go to the schools as well.
You first post is a little unclear about this. Do the families in the catchment area have to send their students to the Montessori school, or do they get to choose?
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Your link makes things clearer. Students and their families choose between four different schools. Not the traditional zoned school system at all. Students outside the catchment area can apply, but transportation is not provided. Lack of transportation is often a criticism of charter schools, so it is interesting to note that it is an issue with these magnet schools as well.
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What, you can’t comprehend what it means when a school district describes having 100 magnet elementary schools with “a neighborhood attendance boundary” and that accept “students who live within that boundary”? Magnet schools accept kids outside the boundary area by lottery as well. Google magnet schools, magnet clusters and magnet programs. Every city has their own names and variations due to local control.
If you want more choices within your district, take it to your school board because that is a local issue, not a national matter as you want everyone to believe.
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What it means is that families are getting to choose schools. That seems like a good thing. Again all the students in a catchment area do not go to the same school, they choose between four schools. Glade to see the support for a lottery though. That system has been severely criticized for creaming in New York. Perhaps you could speak up the next time a lottery system is condemned for creaming the students from the more involved families to these choice schools.
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TE:
I am very impressed. 😉
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With 100 elementary magnets, there’s often more than one within a community. Transportation was never provided to students in Chicago until court ordered desegregation. After 20 years of busing, when the consent decree was ended by a federal court in 2009, the funds for busing dried up (except for children with severe disabilities). However, busing was just for elementary ed; secondary students were always on their own and most take public transportation.
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There would appear to be four schools available to choose from.
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And those were just the magnet cluster schools. They didn’t mention the other magnets, like the Montessori schools, so there’s even more for families to choose from within the school system.
Districts can differ a lot. New York doesn’t even have neighborhood high schools anymore. That’s all done by lottery, since Bloomberg, I believe.
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I think that allowing families to choose schools is good for tha families and good for the schools. Do you agree?
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I have already said it many times before: I believe in choice within the school system. Period. I do not support the choice of schools that are outside of the regulatory oversight of school districts, whether charters or voucher schools, because they siphon limited funds, undermine school districts, and deregulation results in corruption like at the UNO and Options charters, as reported by Diane and others this week. See also: “The truth about charter schools: Padded cells, corruption, lousy instruction and worse results” http://www.salon.com/2014/01/10/the_truth_about_charter_schools_padded_cells_corruption_lousy_instruction_and_worse_results/
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Cosmic,
I think there are large areas where we are in agreement. Do you also agree that families and students should be able to choose private education despite the fact that those schools are not under the control of the local school district, undermine the district, and, at least in my state, siphon off state funds (state aid to school districts in my state is a function of the student head count in the public school district)?
Corruption, it seems to me, is common to many enterprises, and a call for more and better regulation seems very reasonable. We agree there as well. If you do not object to private schooling it would seem that the only difference between our positions is the method of financing the education.
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I have no problem with private schools that do not receive public funds.
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Cosmic,
Even more common ground. It seems to me that your core objection to charter schools is that there is currently insufficient oversight of some of those schools in some jurisdictions. That seems a reasonable concern, but better addressed by increasing oversight, not by eliminating these types of schools.
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I do not support charters. No way. No how.
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Surely you support some charter schools. The Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, for example. The Autism Academy of Learning in Toledo seems to be well thought of, but that is just what I have gathered from the internet and no doubt folks here know more about that school than I know.
There is a charter school in my town, but the charter is held by the elected school board, so I am not sure if you would think it a real charter school.The only real charter school I have ever stepped foot in is the Community Roots Charter in Brooklyn, New York. It seemed like a good school despite having a TFA alum as a co-director and a private board of trustees. Given the school’s location and board, it is even possible Dr. Ravitch knows some of the teachers and board members. Should that school be closed? (If you are interested, here is a link to the school website: http://www.communityroots.org/
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I read this quote in respect to what Pearson is trying to do. Instead of “personal education professional who saw the student on a daily basis”, they are trying to collect data on students to determine their areas of weakness in hopes of improving these weak areas.
From what I have read, Pearson is actually trying to “classify” students. I believe that if schools had sufficient money, they could determine deficiencies in areas of reading and computation at earlier grades in hope of improving these areas with supplemental help before the student moves to the next grade.
Schools would not need Pearson for this but they would have to have personnel, guidance, department head,and/or administration, review data frequently in order to catch students having difficultly before these problems result in major deficiencies.
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I have been preparing teachers for 25 years in individualized instruction and differentiation, These practices have been required for all teachers but still had a special education or gifted education emphasis for most of my career. We only individualized for “special needs”. But in the past 10 years I have been able to infuse these practices into general education more and more. At my last university they created dual licensure programs so every elementary and middle school teacher would be prepared to work with individuals with special needs. At my current job, I prepare primarily secondary teacher to work diverse learners of all types, abilities and backgrounds. It is assumed that all students are individuals and have their own personal education goals, abilities and challenges.
All teaching is a combination of relationships and relevance. and the best way to get reluctant learners to succeed is to make sure the learning is within their range of acquisition/mastery and is relevant to their interests, lives or needs. To be a successful teacher, it takes professional expertise, experience and a passion for making sure students are more important than any standard or curriculum.
Peter’s comments are right on the mark and rather chilling to me at the same time. I use to make the joke that if you just want to teach a subject, teaching materials and scripts were written on the 8th grade level so do not bother with college. But if you want to teach people please learn about how about educational psychology and pedagogy. We need to assess student’s aptitudes. interests, strengths so we can help to educate them. But my best contributions to education is an infinite capacity to see my students’ potential, and help them to achieve beyond what they believed they were capable of accomplishing. Supporting lifelong learners who believe they can contribute to the world is what I enjoy most about teaching.
The standardization of education is a scary and a huge step backwards.Luckily, all people still come in their own individual packages so past, present and future attempts to treat everyone the same and expect the same results are always doomed to fail. I just hope this current trend ends soon since the harm to anyone who does not fit the mold (most of the children) can be significant and very difficult to “undo”.
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Janna: “the best way to get reluctant learners to succeed is to make sure the learning is within their range of acquisition/mastery and is relevant to their interests, lives or needs.”
This is exactly right. Children become upset and tune out when the material is not at their level. They can even develop life-long blocks. This where the common core fails spectacularly, especially at the early grades. It is not that learners should not be exposed to more challenging material – that is the goal, but the material should be introduced in manageable amounts, so students don’t loose their motivation, become discouraged, and develop blocks. I saw this when my son, beginning at age 4, had to have intensive speech therapy. At least 90 percent of the exercises were things he could manage easily. Keeping just the right balance required a lot of judgment on the part of the therapist. Then my daughter was exposed to the Suzuki method, in which students advanced very rapidly. But it used the same principles. The harder parts were introduced so carefully and gradually that the children never experienced a sense of failure. They also constantly reviewed and improved on older material. (At least when it was done right). It was amazing. When I saw these methods in action, I realized you could probably teach anyone anything. And I felt a deep respect for properly trained teachers.
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Harold, Great example. Though I always challenge my students, I have been successful at not making it overly stressful or have anyone lose confidence n the process. I have always allowed students whether K-12 or university level to redo their work for me. The rationale was they come to me with different skills so if my teaching is not enough for them to learn it before the assignment was due, we will try again. I will usually give them additional instruction more tailored to them and the second try is successful. On occasion it take more than 2 tries. But students know if they are not successful, I share the responsibility and am willing to make changes to what I am doing to work with them. All they have to do is continue to try. The point is not how quickly a person learns something but that they have true understanding before they leave. And for some things it takes us different amount of time or different types of instruction. I practice what I preach and have successfully differentiated my classes for each learner for over 30 years. Ironically, we have no problems differentiating for arts, but there is resistance for differentiating core subjects. I do not lower my ending standards, I just take my students from where they are and work with them from there.I absolutely love teaching since there is nothing more rewarding than watching others learn and become successful. I keep demoting myself so I get to keep teaching.
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“Luckily, all people still come in their own individual packages so past, present and future attempts to treat everyone the same and expect the same results are always doomed to fail.”
Amen to that!
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Interesting to say the least. Just to add to that, this kind of thinking is what our school corporation did for teachers years ago. Administrators worked as a sort of mentor to help teachers build on their individual strengths. Teachers were encouraged to do things like tape their classes and then evaluate their techniues themselves. Most teachers, when viewing themselves objectively could see ways in which their techniques could be improved. Flexibility in choosing teaching materials was allowed. A professional library was set up and teachers were told to find the best materials and the best methodology they could find. Our superintendent would stand behind them. Unfortunately our school board knew better that which “good teaching” entailed than that administration and could not wait to get a new superintendent who would kiss their ring. One board member rebuked us as “writing reviews too flowery. We should tell them what they should do”. Now that mentality of utilizing the efficacy of democratic principles is usurped b y those believing in autocracy, mandates from the politicians who know better than educators, scholars and child psychologists.
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This is the central problem (tragedy) with treating education as a production/manufacturing industry instead of a coping organization (what organizational theorists call education). The goal of a production industry is to reduce variation in processes in order to manufacture a product that customers are certain will perform according to expectations/specifications. In a coping organization you are confronted with uncertain inputs, uncertain processes, and uncertain outcomes. Added to the inability to control inputs, processes, and outcomes, what parents are looking for in schools are instructional programs that increase variation in outcomes—further develop the unique abilities, talents, and interests of their children. For this reason, as Deming attempted to point out, but which our school leadership and political class still don’t understand, is that managing a production industry and managing a school require entirely different set of intellectual and organizational tools. Not understanding the fundamental differences between manufacturing and educating is the reason that all the intellectual and organizational tools—merit base, standards, standardized testing, curriculum alignment—that the Duncan’s, Rhee’s, are implementing will fail, and in fact will result in the dysfunctional outcomes Deming describes in his books—cheating, drop outs, early exiting of teachers, etc. I would add, that the set of intellectual and organizational tools that school leaders require to lead a coping organization—schools—are not taught at all in administrative certification programs. I do provide a full description of these skills in my book: Becoming A Strong Instructional Leaders: Saying No to Business as Usual (Teachers College Press; Amazon and Kindle books).
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Excellent commentary, Alan!
Another way to look at it and to add a little perhaps:
Doing the Wrong Thing Righter
The proliferation of educational assessments, evaluations and canned programs belongs in the category of what systems theorist Russ Ackoff describes as “doing the wrong thing righter. The righter we do the wrong thing,” he explains, “the wronger we become. When we make a mistake doing the wrong thing and correct it, we become wronger. When we make a mistake doing the right thing and correct it, we become righter. Therefore, it is better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right.”
Our current neglect of instructional issues are the result of assessment policies that waste resources to do the wrong things, e.g., canned curriculum and standardized testing, right. Instructional central planning and student control doesn’t – can’t – work. But, that never stops people trying.
The result is that each effort to control the uncontrollable does further damage, provoking more efforts to get things in order. So the function of management/administration becomes control rather than creation of resources. When Peter Drucker lamented that so much of management consists in making it difficult for people to work, he meant it literally. Inherent in obsessive command and control is the assumption that human beings can’t be trusted on their own to do what’s needed. Hierarchy and tight supervision are required to tell them what to do. So, fear-driven, hierarchical organizations turn people into untrustworthy opportunists. Doing the right thing instructionally requires less centralized assessment, less emphasis on evaluation and less fussy interference, not more. The way to improve controls is to eliminate most and reduce all.
Former Green Beret Master Sergeant Donald Duncan (Viet Nam) did when he noted in Sir! No Sir! that:
“I was doing it right but I wasn’t doing right.”
And from one of America’s premier writers:
“The mass of men [and women] serves the state [education powers that be] thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, [administrators and teachers], etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.”- Henry David Thoreau [1817-1862], American author and philosopher
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One of the best posts I’ve read here. Thank you.
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The antidote to all of this standardization and dehumanization is nature and music. Finland has figured out that humans need to be outdoors a good deal of time each day to grow up naturally. The Finnish system requires 15 minutes of recess after every 45 minutes of instruction and their school day is organized in this way. They do not think that Math and English are any more important than music and art. They have small class sizes and well trained highly respected teachers. Teachers are given a great amount of autonomy to be creative.The relationship is important. They respect the needs of students to have quality time with their families and do not give much homework.
Music offers the mind a discipline that can make it grow more than any other endeavor. It has been proven with studies of the brain that all brains look the same, such as the brain of a bus driver or a physicist would appear the same. Whereas the brains of musicians are measurably different. We should be teaching music and how to play an instrument to all children starting very young. Einstein studied violin from age 6. He often picked up the violin to play for hours in between his periods of work. He attributes his discoveries to his musical training.
As teachers clamor for white boards and computers in their classrooms because the material they are supposed to teach is packaged for technology, we should actually be rejecting this interference and insisting on libraries and librarians. Bill Gates wants to turn our children into borgs who live in virtual reality and consume technology for technology’s sake. Nature will only be experienced virtually. That is the crime of this reform. Kindergarten teachers in the U.S. used to play piano and sing on a daily basis as part of the day. Finnish classroom teachers are required to sing as part of the application process.
Turn your TV off. Throw out your “smart phone.” Resist the brainwash.
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Love your comment, Dawn: “Turn your TV off. Throw out your “smart phone.” Resist the brainwash.”
Imagine if everyone across this nation turned off their TV just for one day? Imagine if all parents/guardians kept their child(ren) at home on high-stakes testing days? Imagine if we had a country of citizens who understood that our public schools should not be a place of death and WHO WINS at the hands of someone else like in the the Roman Collosium.
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Turn your TV off.
Throw out your smart phone.
Resist the brainwash.
And fire the bosses…
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“Blow up your TV throw away your paper
Go to the country, build you a home
Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches
Try an find Jesus on your own”
From “Spanish Pipedream” by Johny Prine (1971):
More things change the more they stay the same, eh?!
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Prine is right….turning off your TV isn’t enough. Blow it up. It is spying on you even when you think it is off.
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I don’t think mine is new enough to do that!
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Einstein also smoked, loved to sail and preferred not to wear socks. Above everything else he was a non-conformist and an autodidact. Perhaps John Taylor Gatto has it right.
As for the role of music in his scientific research, I think it is much more complex and subtle. I found this interesting brief summary and appreciation of Einstein’s love of music and the violin:
Click to access einstein&music.pdf
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It’s interesting, Bernie, that Einstein was so passionate about Bach. Bach is all about exploration of the possibilities for pattern given particular constraints–the art of the fugue, the well-tempered clavier. OK. What happens as this variable changes?
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Robert:
I was once fortunate enough to do a study that involved in-depth interviews with renowned researchers – including 2 Nobel prize winners in physics. One takeaway was many started early with a deep puzzle – like Einstein and the compass – and kept peeling away the layers by repeatedly asking why. I am not a musician – are there similarities to great composers? Certainly Mozart seemed to return again and again to a common theme – or at least that is what my wife tells me.
One other element was that they talked things out – mostly via internal dialogues but also with trusted and capable colleagues.
I would have loved to have interviewed someone like Feynman – an apparently very self-aware and loquacious scientist.
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Bernie,
A good read of Feynman is “The Meaning of it All” if you haven’t read it.
Duane
And for all, not just Bernie.
Feynman is not a fan of standardized testing.
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Duane:
Many thanks for the reference. It is truly a marvelous essay/lecture. One of many quotes stands out for me is this one:
Once in Hawaii I was taken to see a Buddhist temple. In the temple a man said, “I am going to tell you something that you will never forget.” And then he said, “To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens the gates of hell.”
On the other hand, it is inaccurate to say that Feynman was against “standardized testing” in that the scientific method is based upon the notion of the attainability of standardized concepts and standardized observations . It is true though that Feynman was aware that when testing ignores the true nature of what is being tested for, unintended and undesirable consequences follow. I believe this is a more accurate interpretation of his experiences teaching physics to Brazilian students. If you have a more explicit statement on standardized testing by Feynman I would be interested in reading it.
Perhaps Michael Fiorillo and Krazy TA could also read Feynman’s essay. Unlike TE, I occasionally get frustrated at some of the commenters. When everybody has the same assumptions, life gets dull and progress lags.
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Odd some feel the same way reading your comments.
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Early music instruction builds fluid intelligence–neural networks that process patterns. Musical intelligence and mathematical ability are highly correlated.
I used to do the following activity in my classes to teach kids about organizing ideas in pieces of writing. I would bring a large collection of random stuff from my home. I would dramatically shove everything off my desk and then dump the box of stuff out on the desktop and have the kids gather around. Then, we would come up with ways to organize the stuff–many, many, many DIFFERING ways–into chains, into categories. This was an exercise in recognizing patterns–properties and relations. An administrator happening into my class in the middle of this might not catch on, right away, that I was teaching a writing skill.
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That’s a wonderful activity, Robert, and I imagine some of your former students still talk about it.
As for music, what more pleasurable way to embed pattern recognition could there possibly be?
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This is so awesome!!! It completely replicates the writing process for a knowledgeable writer. There are always so many strands and bits and pieces. How can you tell the difference between an idea that could be bigger if you grouped it with other ones? How do you not get overwhelmed and frustrated by all this (seemingly) random stuff lying around? How do you know when the random stuff is ordered enough that someone else will see it as ordered rather than random? How much justification is needed for someone else to stop viewing your pile of random stuff as merely a pile of random stuff?
Love it!!!
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I love this example too. This is a wonderful technique. Before I teach an abstract skills I usually try to make a real life representation. A hands-on activity like this sticks with students and will give them a framework for future organization of writing. I also like that you are rewarding divergent thinking- many right answers!!
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The deformers do not understand that kids differ and that that is a wonderful thing. They do not understand that schools should be about identifying, honoring, and building on those differences.
They do not understand that every learner should be on a unique path, for that is what happens when learning is intrinsically motivated.
They do not understand that a complex, pluralistic society needs people who differ, not ones who have been identically milled.
They do not understand that there are no two identical readings of a text.
They do not understand that there are no two identical ways in which to be a good reader or a good writer.
To the deformers, learning is a simple matter. You make up a bullet list of what people need to be able to do. Then you go down that list and teach each item until kids have learned it. And you punish and reward until people have mastered the list.
The Deformers support the Powerpointing of education (or, rather, of training for other people’s children).
War is peace.
Ignorance is strength.
Freedom is slavery.
Learning is mastery of the list.
Teaching is punishment and reward.
Differentiation is standardization.
Arbeit macht frei.
Fascists love order, sameness, conformity. And so do techie types. You are probably familiar with the CANOE and OCEAN acronyms for the five major personality traits: conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, and extraversion. Well, two of these scales along which people exist–neuroticism and openness–are directly related to toleration for difference, for uniqueness.
In his wonderful book The Design of Everyday Things, Donald Norman tells about a control panel in a nuclear power plant that had been designed to have rows of identical looking levers (because having orderly, identical-looking rows of levers is aesthetically appealing, and particularly to folks who are passionate about order). Well, the workers in the plant, thinking that it kind of made a difference whether this lever meant “raise the fuel rod” or “lower the fuel rod” had purchased beer taps and placed them over the levers.
Theodore Roethke, one of the great American poets of the last century, wrote this about his teaching experience: “I longed for the administrator who would pound the table and say, ‘What we need is some disorganization around here!'”
The multiple-choice standardized test with a couple of formulaic writing tasks thrown in (to be graded according to an invariant rubric, preferably by machine)
or
The socratic seminar, individualized research projects, etc.
Two completely different visions, from very different kinds of people.
“I believe in standardizing automobiles. I do not believe in standardizing human beings. Standardization is a great peril which threatens American culture. . . . Such men [as Henry Ford] do not always realize that the adoration which they receive is not a tribute to their personality but to their power or their pocketbook.
—— Albert Einstein, Saturday Evening Post interview, 10/26/1929″
A little context for that. Henry Ford was a fascist. He received a medal from Hitler. He started a newspaper as a vehicle for his anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. He loved his production lines. His operation for identical milling of parts and machines.
Now, if we could just accomplish that identical milling with children!!! I’ve got it. Let’s create an invariant bullet list of standards and high-stakes standardized tests, and lets punish and reward the hell out of everyone until all products of our schools are exactly the same.
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I should, of course, have said “and so do some techie types.” I know MANY techie types who are not control freaks–quite the opposite.
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Love the name of the blog and the insightful commentary!
Regarding the paragraph beginning with “what if we set up a system…” I think this highlights the particulars behind why SES is so highly correlated to test scores and other measured outcomes. Setting aside what schools provide, and that obviously varies by area incomes, higher SES families likely have a parent or two who can also serve as this kind of “developmental/educational concierge”. Sure, there is some variance and I am certainly not saying that lower income parents can’t or won’t do this for their children. Many, many do. However, I can attest from my peer group that a substantial part of our time goes toward this effort. Among people I know there are parents who have moved in order to be in a preferred school district, test-prepped their kindergarteners into magnets, investigated different kinds of private schools, homeschooled, or even figured out how to unschool their kids. This comes as a shock to our parents because for the most part they just packed us off to the local school and assumed everything would turn out ok. It is so very different today. At first I thought it was just me but then when I looked around to see what other mothers like me were doing, we were all engaged in this kind of educational concierge activity.
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I love the term “educational concierge”
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Thanks. I came up with that before my morning cup of coffee too!
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Emmy,
Were you staying at Holiday Inn Express?
(Hey I do know a little about contemporary idiot box culture.)
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Sorry Duane..I don’t get it? Did I say something that is in a commercial? As you know, I spend all of my screen time on Diane Ravitch’s Blog. No seriously, except for Netflix documentaries that is probably true. 😛
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Many years ago, I was running a development house that did textbooks for publishers, and in that capacity, I created what I believe was the first assessment program in a major writing text, that used anchor papers and rubrics for grading writing. I curse the day that I did that. Here’s why: The rubric encourages the sort of writing instruction that reduces writing to formulae–the five-paragraph theme. But to the extent that writing is formulaic, it is terrible writing. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader. No surprise in either = terrible writing. And, of course, the amateurish CC$$ in ELA, of course, with its emphasis on writing in three distinct modes (narrative writing, expository writing, and argument), further encourages that kind of terrible teaching of writing according to formulae–paint by number writing. And that’s one of the six thousand reasons why people should reject Coleman’s amateurish bullet list.
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The wonderful thing about language is that it is generative. It uses finite means to produce infinitely possibility and variation. Writing instruction should be all about teaching people how to do that. How to use those tools generatively.
But it has devolved, because of these standards lists, into teaching kids to produce paint-by-number writing. The son of a friend told me this about writing his essays for tests: “Oh, it’s easy. You don’t have to say anything. Just follow the formula. Intro, thesis statement, three paragraphs supporting it. Summary. Some evidence thrown in in the middle. No thinking required.”
“No thinking required.” This kid hit it on the head.
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And then they get to college and the professor says “what the hell is this?” gives them a C and the student falls into an existential crisis. The formula is excellent for editing and miserable for thinking.
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Wonderful response, Emmy. And that is, indeed, what is happening. College professors complain all the time about the crap formulaic writing that their students have learned to do in K-12.
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Didn’t anyone ever think to ask the college professors what was wrong with their students’ writing and how to improve it? There are several excellent university writing programs out there which basically exist to undo the damage of the 5 paragraph essay.
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My institution’s required writing classes are not officially considered remedial classes, but some think they should be considered that. We do have about a third of our first year students take a remedial mathematics class.
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At the university level I never give a final grade for someones first writing assignment for me. I use it as a formative assessment to see what good and bad writing habits they have acquired. I usually need to teach them how to write a reflective essay.
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Superb, Janna! I often tell my writing students the story of Agassiz and the fish.
http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/download/nwp_file/328/Lets_Take_Another_Look.pdf?x-r=pcfile_d
And how, after the death of Dylan Thomas, an editor wanted to include in a collection the last poem that Thomas was working on and found it in more than sixty distinct drafts.
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Thanks Robert- I like the article and story. I use metaphors a lot in teaching. Their is even a lesson model we teach teachers to use call Synectics which enhances creativity and deepens understanding. It is very like the examples in the article.
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Imagine, instead, a writing program that provides students with an enormous toolkit of technique, combined with extended learning in particular knowledge domains that kids are interested in so that they have something to say.
Imagine that, but good look trying to implement it in the confines of the CC$$ in ELA. And don’t look for anything like that from educational publishers treating the CC$$ in ELA as their map for putting together instructional programs.
Coleman’s amateurish bullet list will have dire effects on instruction in the English language arts, narrowing and distorting curricula and pedagogy and precluding real innovation, and the supporters of forcing this list upon the entire country have no clue about the extent to which that is happening, right now.
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I honestly don’t understand what educational publishers have to offer for HS writing to begin with. If I were going to teach writing, I would have my students read a wide variety of quality specimens (the WHOLE thing mind you) and then get the students to explore how the author accomplished what they set out do to and then have the students try it themselves…over and over again. What do you need an educational publisher for? That is what libraries are for.
Is this crazy? How is high school ELA taught these days anyway? It has been so long. 🙂
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Emmy, in the past, schools would typically buy a literature text like McDougal, Littell Literature or Prentice Hall Literature and a grammar and composition text like The Writer’s Craft or Elements of Writing (all of which I did a lot of work on at one time). Then, a funny thing happened (this was back before Houghton bought McDougal).
Texas had an adoption call for an integrated language arts program (one that did everything in one volume) for low-level kids. At McDougal, a team was put together (headed at first by a freelancer) to prepare a program for that adoption, but no one paid much attention to what that team was doing because most folks in the company were busy working on a new edition of their then main basal lit program. The integrated program for Texas was almost done when Texas cancelled the adoption call. So the question was, what to do with that integrated language arts material? McDougal decided to publish it as an alternative standard, basal lit program. Lo and behold, that program took the nation by storm and became the best-selling lit program in the country. So, all the other publishers copied the approach. (There’s a moral to that. The ed book publishers are all very conservative. They basically copy the market leader in text after text. But when someone actually does innovate, this pays off.)
So, today, most schools are using an integrated language arts program that combines literature, writing, speaking, listening, and other skills in one text. They also use a lot of ancillary products. Write Source, from Great Source/Houghton Mifflin, was very popular. There were some great aspects to that program, but it was far from ideal.
I feel strongly that people need dedicated writing programs. There’s a lot to learn about writing, and the piecemeal approach taken in these integrated programs isn’t acceptable. English departments in schools across the nation differ a LOT in how they writing. Unfortunately, in the past ten years, there has been an enormous amount of pressure to turn writing instruction into test prep–into teaching kids how to write the formulaic, canned pieces called for by the standardized exams. This has had a horrific effect on writing instruction, which has devolved terribly as a result. Fortunately, some great English teachers and English departments have ignored all this crap and have continued to do outstanding writing instruction with materials that teachers cobble together on their own. The CC$$ and the new tests are going to lead to a lot more of this teaching of formulaic writing of the kind that will meet the requirements of the rubrics used by graders of the standardized exams. The Common Core writing standards [It pains me to call them that] are almost identical across grade levels and are based upon a completely idiotic approach involving focus on writing in distinct modes. Nothing in them gets under the hood to deal with the vast toolkit available to competent writers. The CC$$ for writing look to me as though the authors of these “standards” ran out of time or got bored and just decided not to think at all about what writers need to know and not to learn at all from the VAST literature on teaching various specific writing tools. The big “innovation” in the CC$$ for writing is (drumroll please) that kids will write argument papers and provide evidence to support their arguments. That’s going to lead to a lot of mind-numbing standardized test writing of the “Your school is considering going to a year-round schedule. Write an essay supporting or opposing this. Provide evidence to support your argument.”) variety.
Many of the most widely used writing supplements are just moronic–dull, vague, poorly thought out, completely lacking in the sort of operational specificity that would enable a student to model a technique, and full of fundamental misunderstandings of even the most basic rhetorical terminology (e.g., the widely used, idiotic “Six Traits” program).
Two keys to producing a good writing program:
specificity–getting under the hood and training kids in a very large grab bag of specific rhetorical tools via very concrete, operationalized instruction
helping kids to learn enough about something to have something worth saying about it–something to write about–if you don’t have anything to say, then your writing is not going to be any good, period. The prompts on these stupid standardized tests have to be so vague, so general, that ANYONE can write in response to them, whatever his or her background, whatever he or she knows. So, they tend to deal with one little piece or to be very vague, very general prompts like “Sometimes dealing with change can be difficult. Write about a time when you had to deal with a change in your life.” I know. Awful. And, predictably, nothing readable is produced in response to such prompts. But the kids who have learned the formulas nonetheless get their “proficient” ratings for the unreadable drivel they produce in response to the awful prompts.
The new CC$$ tests are going to have kids writing about pieces of lit they have just read, moments before, in the exam. The rubrics are going to be all about using evidence from those pieces in the writing. I would go into why that’s a terrible idea, but this post is already quite long. Veteran teachers who actually know something about teaching literature and writing will know, however, what the problems with such an approach are.
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RDS
“I’m not an ELA teacher but I do administer the exams here in NY – and I even take the risk of reading and discussing the content with other teachers.
The new CC$$ tests are going to have kids writing about pieces of lit they have just read, moments before, in the exam. The rubrics are going to be all about using evidence from those pieces in the writing. I would go into why that’s a terrible idea, but this post is already quite long.”
I’m very interested in your take on why its such a terrible idea. Thanks.
I find your posts very informative and insightful; thanks.
Just a note to confirm what you’re saying about cookie-cutter writing.
Back in the day, 8th graders here in NY were required to take the state social studies exam, writing a DBQ was one of the major tasks.
I proctored those tests for years and had the chance to read many of the DBQ essays. Calling it cookie-cutter writing would almost be a compliment. More like xerography – honest to god Robert you could not tell them apart. A truly worthless/brainless exercise conducted by tens of thousands of students across the state. Preparation I presume for Regents DBQs.
On a final note you continually (and accurately) refer to the CC$$ standards as amateurish. For the benefit of people like Bill Duncan from NH could you possibly explain your thoughts using a standard or two as an example. Thanks for your tireless efforts here.
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Thanks for the thorough answer, Robert. I don’t remember a language arts textbook. I remember a small paperback vocabulary book and then being assigned various novels to read. Maybe there was a textbook for poetry.
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NY Teacher, the CC$$ advocates never tire of talking about how now, under the new standards, kids are going to be doing “close reading.” And the makers of the new tests are hyping their assessments as breakthrough vehicles for testing real comprehension based on close reading, but in one of these testing situations, the kid will have a few minutes to glance through the selection and a few minutes to think through an answer and a few minutes to compose that answer.
The first sample given on the Smarter Balanced site of what’s going to be in the new tests gives the student an 18-paragraph story called “Grandma Ruth” and then provides the following writing prompt: “What does Naomi learn about Grandma Ruth? Use details from the text to support your answer, with a six-line box for the student’s answer. I suspect that the authors of this dumb test item thought that the answer to that question was simply, “She learns that Grandma Ruth was named after Babe Ruth.”
But the fact is that in practically every phrase in those 18 paragraphs, the granddaughter “learns about” her grandmother, and if one were really reading the story closely, one would have had the time to think about all that–to go through all that the granddaughter learns, and an answer to that question that really reflected a “close reading” of the selection could well run to many pages and take a couple of hours to give and would result from having spent time with the story–from entering into the imaginative world of the story, putting one’s self in the shoes of the granddaughter, and imagining what this experience in which she learned about her grandmother was like and then thinking about the experience and discussing it with others. Naomi learns about her grandmother that Ruth’s father was the dentist for the Detroit Tigers, that he had a collection of signed baseballs, that the ball the granddaughter stole out of the box in the closet and played with outside was one of those balls, a ball signed by Babe Ruth, that Ty Cobb gave the dentist the baseballs and told him to name his daughter Tyrina, that the grandmother’s mother didn’t agree to that, that Ty thought that amusing, that Grandma Ruth is amused by that as well, that Grandma has a keen sense of humor, that Grandma is forgiving about what her granddaughter did because she believes, by golly, that baseballs are for kids to play with. . . . and much, much more. Naomi learns about her grandmother’s childhood, about what she treasures among her positions and among her memories, about how she treasures the memories more than the possessions, about her grandmother’s sense of humor, about her grandmother’s values. One could go on and on.
Clearly, the authors of the test have no clue what a close reading is or how and under what circumstances such a reading takes place, and this is not a test of close reading ability, and no test of literature given under these conditions and under these constraints could be.
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And, NY teacher, that little “Grandma Ruth” story from the sample test is pretty artful and pretty great for 4th graders. I think a lot of them could really relate to the horror of discovering that they had just played with and ruined the baseball, signed by Babe Ruth, that their Grandma Ruth had stored away. In class, reading this story with kids, one could stop at the moment of that realization to make sure that kids got it–to let it sink in and to let the kids imagine what THAT would feel like, and one could talk about that, and kids would become really engaged, then, in the characters and worried about what will happen and how this will turn out. But in the stressful test situation, it’s highly likely that a lot of kids will miss that completely or not have the time to let it sink in, which means that they will not have had a genuine engagement with the work, which in turn means that their answers will be superficial at best and, in many cases, for many kids, totally FUBAR in a way that they would not be if this weren’t all taking place in a high-stress testing setting.
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So, in a classroom setting, where there was a chance for a real emotional engagement with the story on the part of the student, that emotional engagement could lead to a real “close reading,” with peers, of the story and to kids actually understanding what the character “learns about” her grandmother and to their actually, therefore, getting what this story is about and what it teaches because they have had a meaningful experience in the little imaginary world that the story created, for that’s how literary works “mean.” One enters into the world of the work. One has an experience there. And it is that experience that is meaningful–that teaches. None of this can happen in the artificial setting of the test, and it’s breathtaking, to me, that these supposed experts on language arts instruction who are putting together these stupid tests don’t grok that.
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And here’s the worst of this. Of course, these people have probably put the BEST of the crap they are producing up on the site as sample questions. That’s the first sample question on the site, and it’s a complete FAIL.
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I could go on to the next one, but as someone said recently on this blog, if one started delineating the stupidities in the new “standards” and the new tests based on those, one would be here “from dawn to doomsday.”
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NY teacher, I tried to answer your first question in a way that would get at a GENERAL problem with these exams as conceived, but let’s talk specifics with regard to this one question, this first question, among the practice items. You’re the kid trying to figure out what the answer is supposed to be. Maybe by “What does Naomi learn about Grandma Ruth?” the test maker meant for the answer to be just what the line in the story that uses the word “learned” says–that she learned that her Grandmother was named after Babe Ruth. But if that’s so, why six lines on the screen for the answer? But if the answer is supposed to be longer, what could it possibly be? She learns many, many things about her grandmother in these 18 paragraphs. The answer could be a page long–much, much longer than the six lines provided. Maybe any list of things she learns that fills the six lines will do. Maybe they want the most important things that she learned. But the question doesn’t say that. Yikes. Next question, please.
On second thought, none of these questions, please. The whole idea of making important decisions based on these stupid tests is senseless. And it distorts and narrows the whole educational process. And it freaks out kids. And it belongs to the “education is mastery of a bullet list” and “teaching is punishment and reward” school of educational theory–you know, the theory that the Puritans had, the ones who wrote this in the first textbook ever published in on these shores:
Tell B for the Beast at the end of the wood.
He ate all the children when they wouldn’t be good.
Enough of punishing kids with these abusive tests. Opt out.
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Superb example. Just wait until this crap hits NY high schools and graduation is on the line. Let the litigation begin. If I were a lawyer, you’d be my chief witness.
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Genetic variability is critical to the survival or organisms. Farmers know that planting hundreds of acres of one crop (monoculture) is more risky than planting small acreages with a mix of plants. It is variability that allows for survival. Given that, it is nonsensical and tragic that the deformers are pushing hard for a monoculture of the mind. What happens to the survival of a nation when everyone thinks alike? A link from one of Diane’s blogs on January 9 provides an alternative to this pending intellectual monoculture that is being imposed. http://uncommoncalifornia.blogspot.com/ discusses how the concept of open source might be used by teachers. It’s an idea worth considering. Common goals but many pathways for attainment. Of course that would cut out the middleman (the profiteers).
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the deformers are pushing hard for a monoculture of the mind
yes, yes. tragic
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“conformity and standardization are seductively appealing to schools and teachers.”
That is contrary to my 45 years of experience in education, the past three decades of which have included working in Teacher Education. In virtually all schools of education where I’ve taught, teacher preparation programs have begun with a focus on individual differences and aim throughout to prepare people to reach and teach ALL children. This means acknowledging and valuing students as unique, idiosyncratic individuals with varying strengths and needs, recognizing that children grow and progress at different rates of development, and providing differentiated instruction.
No doubt, this is one of the reasons why corporate “reformers” despise and seek to control Teacher Ed, since that’s antithetical to their focus on finding a cost cutting, profit making, one-size-fits-all miracle approach they can “scale up,” such as Common Core for the masses, which means no individualization for commoners. No wonder the conservative Fordham Foundation’s Mike Petrilli chose to insert in his Common Core video the emphasis on, “Smaller classes we say, NO!” Talk about a “kook.”
If we learn anything from this Congress and the billionaires who are behind it, it should be that they are committed to playing an ongoing game of Whack-a-Mole, so you can be sure that they will be popping up again and again with more pro-corporate, anti-human propaganda and legislation. Be prepared!
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I realize this is intended to be humorous, but if the two takeaways are
“the status quo has got to go”
and
“smaller classes, we say no”
How the hell is that supposed to improve education? Maybe we ought to pare down everyone’s perspective to an educational slogan in order to get some clarity on who is actually saying anything of use to begin with.
TFA: One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education. [or look over there…far, far, in the future!]
should we continue?
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When a supposedly scholarly “think tank” resorts to this nonsense to promote its causes, they must be feeling very secure in their interpreted world. That would probably be because, with bipartisan support, corporate “reformers” have had over a decade of control over education in this country, longer in some locations –which ironically means THEY are the status quo. This is probably why they’ve been able to turn the thumb screws on the coffin of local control. However, commoners know how to play Whack-a-Mole, too, so they can be assured we won’t “go gentle into that good night.”
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I actually wrote a response to that video, which turned into a conversation… http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-gadfly-made-video.html
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“As an English teacher, you sometimes regret that you don’t have more opportunity to use some really great words, like “unctuous” and “supercilious.” Petrilli’s face corrects that problem.”
LOL!
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Great response, Peter! Yes, there are definitely unctuous and supercilious looks from Petrilli, born from his hubris.
I beg to differ on the “he does not suck” description of Petrilli’s dancing though. If I saw him doing that on a dance floor, frankly, I would be laughing at him, because he looks like one of those guys who thinks he has all the moves down so he is one cool dude, while he actually comes across as just plain silly. His over-confidence may reduce a sense of awkwardness, but he still sucks.
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Dawn Hoagland – I assume that in Finland English isn’t very important at all, at least for elementary school insruction.
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She obviously meant the Finnish language. Bashing people is a sick hobby. Try finding healthier ways to spend your time before you become all consumed by your hatred –or maybe it’s already too late for that…
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Is this racist Jim?
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Finnish schools emphasize early language learning; about a third of the students at this school, beginning with first grade, are in the immersion program. Initially, all classes are taught in English, except for a class in Finnish literacy.
In subsequent years, Finnish is introduced into more subjects. Additional languages — such as Swedish, Russian, German, Spanish and French — may be added as students move up in grade level.
Taken from: http://www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/index.ssf/2009/04/my_turn_finlands_successful_la.html
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Better trolls, please.
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Michael Fiorillo: amen to that!
😎
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I guess it depends on whether you view education’s role as that of maintaining a putting green on a golf course or growing wildflowers garden, and children as uniform blades of grass or as wildflowers – each of which is unique.
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great analogy
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Flowers Are Red…. http://sahilachangebringer.blogspot.com/2011/09/flowers-are-red.html
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Sahila,
Thanks for the link to your blog. The box of colored crayons and the video of Harry Chapin performing “Flowers are Red” were very poignant.
Thank you.
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Wow, Sahila. Powerful!
The entire argument against the current education deforms is in this little video.
It’s extraordinarily moving.
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I taught elementary (k-8) music for 31yrs in Philadelphia. Class size was and still is set at 30 children max from k-3 and 33 children from 4-12. It is difficult to address all the students learning needs in a 45 minute lesson. (most days I would have 4 classes in a row with no break between to prepare for the next class). Having said that, there are remedies out there,at least for music education, as that is my area of expertise. There are pedagogical systems that address appropriately , what and how to teach certain aspects of music. My favorite is the Kodaly method which uses the folk music of the country you are in to teach sight singing, rhythm, beat etc. Or there is kinder music, another age appropriate way to teach young children the basics of music. The difference between these systems and the common core standards as I see them is this. KIndermusic, Kodaly etc. were formulated by musicians with an eye toward age appropriateness, and the incorporation of methods used to impart what is necessary and useful for that particular discipline. There are so many aspects of music-listening, perfoming, writing, that one has great leeway as to what to teach.
It is not,in my opinion, that standardization is all bad. There should be high standards and goals that we as a culture may agree upon, but they should be formulated by experts in each field along with knowledge of what is appropriate to learn at each age and stage of a child’s development. There should also be room for each teacher to teach in a manner that speaks to them, as each teacher has different strengths.
In Europe, there were ways to teach piano, or singing or ballet that were very set and circumscribed, but having said that, the rest was interpretation, and that is where the art came in. Technique may be standardized, but musicality and interpretation must be nurtured and is different in each person. This is why not all cellists or singers or painters or dancers produce the same product or sound the same. That is a good thing.
If the common core was put together by experts in each field with a great pedagogical background, it might not be so awful. But that is not the case. It seems to have been cobbled together by some one or ones with no knowledge or understanding of what and how things need to be taught. That is a recipe for disaster.
I hope we do not lose an entire generation of children to this abomination. They and we all will be the worst for it.
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Right. To my mind, the standards proponents mistake the form of the subject for what it is. Certainly one has to learn scales, or the periodic table, or how to solve for x, or grammar. But apart from that students need to understand where the freedom lies also. Only when they understand that can they make the subject their own and become a chemist or a writer or a musician.
I think the Kodaly method is brilliant. But if you were to give elementary school children instructed in this way a standardized “music” test…backwards engineered by Pearson starting from what New York Philharmonic musicians know…they would fail miserably! What would they know…some weird hand movements? a few folk songs? complicated clapping patterns they can only do in a group? They wouldn’t be able to read music at all. The horror! But they would have a real insider’s understanding of that which makes up music. The standards proponents make this mistake over and over again with subject after subject.
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Very, very well said, Emmy!
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Robert – “It uses finite means to produce infinitely possibility and variation.”
“Infinitely” is an adverb not an adjective. If you insist on writing all this dreck at least keep it grammatical.
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Picking on typos/brainos/random grammatical mistakes is extremely bad form on a blog where thoughts and responses are often composes rather hastily. This is especially true when a Eugenics-loving tool like you dares to criticize the likes of Mr. Shepherd.
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Dreck is in the eye of the beholder. Let he who is without typos cast the first stone.
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Is the target named Jim?
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Jim, this was a typo, obviously. It’s a blog.
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You need a comma after dreck, Jim. Introductory subordinate clause. You see? We could waste a great deal of time at this game.
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Jim,
Were you born this way or do you have to work extra hard at it?
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Dawn Hoagland – Are your statements about the effects of music on brain structure based on any smidgen of empirical evidence or are you just babbling drivel?
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Have a problem doing your own legwork, Jim? Google Scholar has a lot of articles on research pertaining to music and the brain: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=effects+of+music+on+the+brain&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ei=nx7QUv_AOMLJrQHHzwE&sqi=2&ved=0CCgQgQMwAA
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Jim – google “effects of music on brain structure,” and you will find a wealth of studies providing lots of smidgens of empirical evidence. Dawn’s statements are worthwhile input, not “babbling drivel.”
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Jim, Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences contains some references to the relevant body of research there–not that I am recommending his book. But there is a significant body of research that links musical and mathematical ability.
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The gap between the conformity-dulling experience the leading charterites/privatizers are trying to mandate for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN [the vast majority] and what they ensure for THEIR OWN CHILDREN makes the Grand Canyon look insignificant.
For example go to the website for Sidwell Friends, DC, “School Philosophy” [President and Mrs. Obama]—
Link: http://www.sidwell.edu/about_sfs/school-philosophy/index.aspx
Or to the website of Lakeside School, Seattle WA, “Mission Focus” [Bill Gates]:
Link: http://www.lakesideschool.org/aboutus
For a bit more detail, go to Harpeth Hall, Nashville TN, “50 Reasons” [Michelle Rhee]—
[start quote]
1. Our Mission: to teach girls to think critically, to lead confidently, and to live honorably.
9. Athlete, scientist, artist: at Harpeth Hall you can be all three.
21. Girls dance, sing, paint, act, and play music in comfortable theaters, studios, and auditoriums.
29. 8:1 ratio: Our teachers know our students.
44. Inspiration. Our visiting author and artist series allows students to witness the accomplishments of those who dared to follow their dreams.
47. Harpeth Hall gives each girl the space and encouragement she needs to chart her own course.
[end quote]
Link: http://www.harpethhall.org/podium/default.aspx?t=151749
And for the children of the governor of NJ, there’s the horrendous “conformity factory” of Delbarton School, Morristown NJ [Chris Christie]—
[start quote]
The School believes that the individual is capable of developing life-long habits of intellectual renewal, of receptivity to spiritual renewal, and of willingness to contribute to the renewal of society. We also believe that individual renewal is enhanced by experiencing the sense of belonging to a community whose members are disposed at once to speak and to listen, a community which honors diversity of persons and the spirit of openness, collaboration and mutual understanding. These qualities which are honored in the School are cultivated by our recognition that essential meanings are disclosed through the patient practice of conversation—both inside and outside the classroom, both formal and informal, not only between teacher and student but also between teacher and teacher as well as student and student. Moreover, these values are cultivated by our recognition that we are participants in the continuing conversation that constitutes our inherited tradition, and so we are constantly striving to improve our precision in thinking, listening, reading, speaking, and writing, and to enliven our imagination to experience and to create.
[end quote]
Link: http://www.delbarton.org/about-us/mission/index.aspx
Pity the poor children of the “education reformers.”
So little drill-and-kill, and so much time on their hands to learn and be joyful.
😎
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Speaking of Chris Christie, am I the only one who thinks the Washington Bridge scandal only serves to confirm that there are those within the two major parties who themselves believe that we really have only one party today? Since when do people from one party retaliate against someone from the other party for not endorsing a candidate on their ticket? Bizarre. But I have no doubt that expectation came straight from the top and I do not for one minute believe that thug had no knowledge of the actions of his lackeys.
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Christie’s goose is cooked. Fortunately the average voter is cynical enough to disregard his two hour lie fest (and all forthcoming denials as well). Good riddance Chris “Failure Factory” Christie!
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Emmy, you are correct about testing for the Kodaly method. The”test” is in performing the lessons and gaining the insight which hopefully comes with that. I agree that the Kodaly method is brilliant. So does France, Japan, South Africa, England and obviosely,Hungary, and a few other countries. Nice to meet someone who knows about it and recognizes its worth.
Music is important and wonderful. The joy comes from working diligently at something difficult and, by mastering it, creating a product that is beautiful and satisfying.
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To me the worst (by far) aspect of educational “reform” is the fact that individuals and corporations are now allowed to take over a public school. This enables them to collect tax money from citizens while taking governance away from them. How did this ever become legal?
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How, indeed. We have developed a really nasty system of charter school graft in this country. It’s sickening how many of these virtual and brick-and-mortar charters are run by well-connected former federal bureaucrats or by the idiot cousins and brothers of politicians in high places.
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Did you see this article in Salon today? “The truth about charter schools: Padded cells, corruption, lousy instruction and worse results” http://www.salon.com/2014/01/10/the_truth_about_charter_schools_padded_cells_corruption_lousy_instruction_and_worse_results/
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We’re becoming a banana republic. But the commodity is students, not bananas. Or should I say, $TUDENT$? Big $$ to be made in the faux school biz.
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Who Can We Boycott?: Who Benefits from or Invests in Pearson and Teach for America?.
Common Core’s Corporate Relations with Pearson and Teach for America (TFA)
by Michelle Maher, Ph.D.
Diane Ravitch’s new book Reign of Error outlines how hedge fund managers and investment advisors have organized a corporate takeover of public education, with dismal results. This blog points to which organizations that have invested in the Common Core/Race to the Top educational reforms. In other words, it names the organizations who have a financial stake or relationship with Pearson and Teach for America, two central aspects of the high-stakes testing and the replacement of teachers.
AT&T—donor for Teach for America
Bank of America—Corporate Partner/Sponsor/Supporter/Investor with TFA
Bertelsman (and by extension Time Warner, Sony, BMG)—Pearson Board Member’s Corporate Relationship
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—Pearson Board Member’s Corporate Relationship
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona—donor for Teach for America
British Petroleum—Pearson Board Member’s Corporate Relationship
Cisco—Corporate Partner/Sponsor/Supporter/Investor with TFA
Citigroup, Citibank, CitiCorp —Pearson Board Member’s Corporate Relationship
Coca-Cola Foundation—Corporate Partner/Sponsor/Supporter/Investor with TFA
Credit Suisse Americas Foundation—Corporate Partner/Sponsor/Supporter/Investor with TFA
General Mills Foundation—donor for Teach for America
Goldman Sachs Gives—donor for Teach for America
ExxonMobil Foundation—donor for Teach for America
FedEx Corporation—donor for Teach for America
Fidelity Investments/Internation—Corporate Partner/Sponsor/Supporter/Investor with TFA
Freddie Mac Foundation—donor for Teach for America
The Hartford—donor for Teach for America
Hellman Family Foundation—donor for Teach for America
Hewlett-Packard—donor for Teach for America
Hostess Brands—Corporate Partner/Sponsor/Supporter/Investor with TFA
JPMorgan Chase—donor for Teach for America
Lowe’s—Corporate Partner/Sponsor/Supporter/Investor with TFA
Monsanto—donor for Teach for America
Morgan Stanley—donor for Teach for America
Nokia Corporation —Pearson Board Member’s Corporate Relationship
Pearson: Always Learning
Penguin Random House —Pearson Board Member’s Corporate Relationship
PGA Tour—donor for Teach for America
Power-GEn—Pearson Board Member’s Corporate Relationship
Seventh Generation—Corporate Partner/Sponsor/Supporter/Investor with TFA
SurveyMonkey—Corporate Partner/Sponsor/Supporter/Investor with TFA
Symantec Foundation—donor for Teach for America
U.S. Bank—donor for Teach for America
Wells Fargo—Corporate Partner/Sponsor/Supporter/Investor with TFA
Williams-Sonoma, Inc. —Corporate Partner/Sponsor/Supporter/Investor with TFA
Visa, Inc. —Corporate Partner/Sponsor/Supporter/Investor with TFA
Yale University—donor for Teach for America
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Isn’t the US Federal Government by far the largest sponsor of these initiatives?
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By all means, impeach Obama, fire Arne Duncan, rid the administration of anyone who ever worked for Bill Gates…..
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I agree that standardization is the number one issue. Close behind is making learning real through demonstrations rather than paper and pencil tasks. For the past 20 years my effort has been to turn that around. I started by designing my own, fully public School allowed into the Milwaukee Public Schools, union and all. I thank then superintendent and friend Dr. Howard Fuller for leading the charge.
And then after being pushed out by NCLB and internal hate politics, with my colleagus Mary Gale Budzisz we wrote two gooks on the subject matter. You can find them at http://www.wholechildreform.com.
More important is that from these experiences, a ton of talking to kids and parents and even more reflection, we came up with a PLAN to change the system. This plan is not easy, and not for the weak of heart. But it is the only way to move forward, taking every child from where they are.
here’s systemic change that allows for this to happen. Take this philosophy and make it your own because only you know your school. They don’t know your school in Washington nor do they know it at your state capital. And the board rooms have no clue as they are still in the linear thinking that kids are wivots and all learn the same.
Read this or not, buy our books or not, ignore this or not. I’ve been saying this for over 20 years and will not stop now
http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-personal-map-to-success.html
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RDS
Just a follow up on the Grandma Ruth post. Here in NY we have suspended the PARCC testing indefinitely. This means kids are stuck with the Pearson paper-test train wreck..
We saw equally bad items and in ways much worse. What really stuck with me were the horrendous reading selections; almost unreadable in both content and syntax.
By the way, you must admit that the question, “What did Naomi learn about Grandma Ruth?” – really does bring students to a whole new level of “rigor” Critical thinking at its best. Test prepping for questions like this will have students college and career ready by pre-school.
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LOL. I know. But when a question is that badly written, who has any clue what the test makers were looking for. Perhaps something deeper. Frankly, the test is so badly conceived that they might be looking for anything.
But, as I tried to make clear in my post, the real problem is not with the particular questions on these exams but with the whole approach of the high-stakes summative testing.
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Then come up with a viable alternative. all i hear is what’s wrong, never hear an alternative. Why would anyone listen to us http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-personal-map-to-success.html
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Beat the doors with an alternative http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/accountability-with-honor-and-yes-we.html
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Plenty of alternatives have been discussed here. The end of standardized testing to punish, would be a good start.
Under NCLB and now RTTT/CCSS tests are being used as weapons against schools, teachers, and administrators. No educator opposes the use of tests to improve instruction and learning. However that was never the intention under this 12 year old, failed wave of reform. The cornerstone of a sound educational system cannot be coercion, threats, and punishment.
There’s a concrete alternative Cap.
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Ending something is not a solution, but a good start. How will you assess in the future to assure an even playing field, a true assessment and fair treatment of kids?
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RDS
If that item writer was looking for something deeper they certainly had no idea how to evoke such a response through a carefully worded question. Pathetic. And yes, high-stakes, punitive testing MUST GO.
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Agree but replace it with what? Stretch your mind
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