Barbara Madeloni, who led the fight against outsourcing teacher credentialing to Pearson, was elected president of the Massachusetts Teacher Association, will take charge of a union of 110.000 educators
“Until last August, Madeloni directed the Secondary Teacher Education Program at the University of Massachusetts.
“While UMass said her employment ended as part of a move to reduce the use of adjunct professors, Madeloni stated in interviews that the school was punishing her for opposing a project in which UMass tested a teacher assessment program for the for-profit company Pearson.
“Madeloni, 57, said in an interview Sunday she plans as MTA president to “amplify the voice of educators and be a leader at the national level.”
“She noted that her victory comes amid efforts in Los Angeles, Seattle and Chicago to shift the debate back to supporting high-quality public education and the people who provide it over the interests of for-profit companies in the field.
“It should be national news,” Madeloni said of her win in Massachusetts. “It’s a message to everybody that teachers will not be silent and compliant as this assault on public education continues — and undermines public education. This is foundational to democracy and we need to defend it.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Very good news! She’s a bright, honorable, smart, experienced, and brave educator.
Barbara’s election gives us all a reason to hope–that by working in solidarity with others we can bring more justice to the planet. Celebrate, everyone, not only that Barbara won the election and will lead the union towards unknown possibilities, but that a vast majority of the voters knew what she stood for and voted for her because of it.
Diane, I hope to continue following good news about your recovery from the knee surgery. I’m sure you have an excellent team watching out for you!
I would like to take issue with what I see as a misrepresentation in this post. “Outsourcing teacher credentialing to Pearson” is an overly broad sweep that diminishes the continued role of teacher educators in the development, deployment, and evaluation of the edTPA instrument and candidate portfolios.
I don’t dispute people’s arguments about Pearson’s (undue) influence in many matters of educational policy and practice, but, at least to this point, with respect to the edTPA they have served merely as the operational partner to bring a teacher education initiative to national scale–work that none of us on our own has the capacity and wherewithal to do. The substance of the assessment is in the hands of teacher educators, primarily at Stanford, including Linda Darling-Hammond, but also nationwide as we contribute to efforts to
–refine and clarify the instrument, provide feedback to make the process effective, and
–acknowledge that this work is rendering a heretofore unheard of sense of clarity about the essential features of effective beginning teaching that emphasizes
–teaching toward a worthwhile learning objective,
–using knowledge of one’s students’ strengths, needs and assets,
–engaging students in developing content understanding,
–assessing student learning toward actionable ends (students’ use of feedback and using results for further planning), and
–teaching with the explicit intention to have a positive impact on student learning.
Thank you for reading and thank you for your valiant fight for democracy and public education. You have certainly energized me to be a vocal and fierce advocate on behalf of the education our children deserve.
Take care,
Amee
—
Amee Adkins, PhD
Associate Dean
College of Education, Illinois State University http://www.coe.ilstu.edu
309.438.5189 (v); 309.438.3813 (f)
adadkin@ilstu.edu
Another strike against Linda Darling Hammond. Shame on both of you.
Amee,
I would imagine that being an Associate Dean you would have read Noel Wilson’s take down of educational standards and standardized testing of which the edTPA is a part. If you have please comment, refute or rebut what Wilson has to say.
If not, read his work on the complete epistemological and ontological invalidity of educational standards and standardized testing to understand why the process you are pushing, yes pushing like a drug, is “vain and illusory” and unethical. It doesn’t matter whether the process is for K-12 or for post secondary.
See: “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Duane,
I admit, I have not read the piece you summarize, but I certainly will and try to interpret it as it applies to the edTPA as part of a qualifying system for entry to the profession. Your move to Foucault, however, genuinely captures my attention, as I’ve been playing with the contrast between a Foucauldian and Freirian analysis of this initiative.
In association with Foucault I think of surveillance, control, and making the exercise of power more efficient. In terms of educational practice I translate that into teaching as an exercise of power, the ultimate expressions of which are grades awarded and pop quizzes deployed. The point is not learning to the end of important understanding, but to conditioning one’s students to accept the imposition of power relations and for them to ‘learn’ to be good students of power.
Contrast that with a Freirian analysis, the cornerstone of which is his statement, “To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it.” Teaching and learning is directed to increased autonomy, not the concentration of power. One can see a precise focus on improving student learning without a deficit perspective in the edTPA rubrics with a clarity and emphasis we simply have not had previously on the national level. The attention to actionable assessment that leads to new opportunities for learning indicates a shift from “pop quiz as a chance for punishment” (entirely Foulcauldian) to “inquiry to guide us further” (Freirian). In it I see a framing of effective teaching that shifts the focus from how a beginning teacher “feels” about what s/he is doing with students to what happens with students with an intent for productive outcomes in terms of worthwhile learning. Indeed, even within the process of teacher education, it gives our candidates a clear focus on what they should be doing in their classrooms, instead of leaving them to guess about what we want to see them do, or worse, what matters.
Standards and standardization are not synonymous. The former is a clearly seen target to aim for, while the latter is a “one size fits some, we hope” approach. A lesson in archery will quickly reveal the difference between the two. Although I acknowledge the slippery slope, I have confidence in our professional capacity to manage that pull of that slope to protect students’ best interests. To suggest I am “pushing a drug” is an insult to that commitment.
Amee,
I respond to your response here so as to not totally “string bean” the thread.
It’s interesting that you would contrast Foucault with Freire. I would compare rather than contrast as I don’t see that much of a contrast. Foucault’s usage of the term power and its manifestations are something quite different than what most people conceive and or comprehend of the term “power*”.
“. . . with Foucault I think of surveillance, control, and making the exercise of power more efficient.”
It seems to me that Foucault’s take on power doesn’t so much reside in making power more efficienct but that going from a sovereign type power to the modern state in which power is responsible for “producing” individuals according to the episteme (what is acceptable vs not in thought) of the times.
Freire, coming from the Latin American “school” of liberation theology and/or education sees powers as something to be fought against by the individual in his/her educational growth, to break out of those “invisible mental chains” that the educational system (or powers that be) would have placed upon a person through allowing or not allowing certain modes of thinking and doing.
In my reading of Foucault, far more extensive than my reading of Freire, Foucault does not “take sides” as Freire does, but attempts to describe the power relations as they are from an historian’s point of view. I’ve read a number of interviews with him wherein the interviewers, especially Marxist ones, try to get Foucault to “validate” their positions and he refuses and admonishes them for putting words in his mouth or not understanding his concepts of power and how that plays out in society.
And I see that same “misconception” in your statement “The attention to actionable assessment that leads to new opportunities for learning indicates a shift from “pop quiz as a chance for punishment” (entirely Foulcauldian) to “inquiry to guide us further” (Freirian).”
Again, I just don’t see the opposition of the two “F” thinkers.
“To suggest I am “pushing a drug” is an insult to that commitment.”
The “drugs” in this case are educational standards and the flip side of the backside of the “pill”, standardized testing. The usage of these educational malpractice is akin to using drugs as they are irrational, illogical and harmful to many students. And our system at the moment is addicted to these educational malpractice “drugs”.
A lot of hard work and effort goes into the manufacture of these educational malpractices, much the same as a lot of work and effort goes into the manufacture of illegal addicting drugs. I don’t question the hard work and effort, I question the results of the usage of said work.
*From: http://www.michel-foucault.com/concepts/index.html
power
Foucault argues a number of points in relation to power and offers definitions that are directly opposed to more traditional liberal and Marxist theories of power.
definitions
1.power is not a thing but a relation
2.power is not simply repressive but it is productive
3.power is not simply a property of the State.Power is not something that is exclusively localized in government and the State (which is not a universal essence). Rather, power is exercised throughout the social body.
4.power operates at the most micro levels of social relations. Power is omnipresent at every level of the social body.
5.the exercise of power is strategic and war-like
types of power
sovereign power
Sovereign power involves obedience to the law of the king or central authority figure. Foucault argues that ‘disciplinary power’ gradually took over from ‘sovereign power’ in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even now, however, remnants of sovereign power still remain in tension with disciplinary power.
disciplinary power
pastoral power
The modern State, Foucault argues, consists of the convergence of a very particular set of techniques, rationalities and practices designed to govern or guide people’s conduct as individual members of a population and also to organize them as a political and civil collective in the same way as a shepherd who cares for his flock from birth to death. This idea of politically organizing the day to day conduct of the population is borrowed from the metaphor of the care of a shepherd for his flock and originated in Egyptian, Assyrian, Mesopotamian and Hebrew cultures.
power-knowledge
One of the most important features of Foucault’s view is that mechanisms of power produce different types of knowledge which collate information on people’s activities and existence. The knowledge gathered in this way further reinforces exercises of power. Foucault refutes the idea that he makes the claim ‘knowledge is power’ and says that he is interested in studying the complex relations between power and knowledge without saying they are the same thing.
Duane, could we continue the dialogue via email? I appreciate your careful probing of my nascent efforts to root my analysis of what the edTPA might or might not offer the education community in some theoretical context. If so, adadkin@ilstu.edu. Summer is an easier time for me to concentrate on more complex ideas.
With appreciation,
Amee
Although I acknowledge the slippery slope, I have confidence in our professional capacity to manage that pull of that slope to protect students’ best interests.
wow
That is a very, very scary statement.
Here’s a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7gBgHR-xDQ
Dear, dear moderator. I hope you’re doing better.
This brave individual sounds like a “Karen Lewis”.. my wish is that districts around this country will also be lead by individuals like this. So happy for MA as this state had a marvelous public education system before “ed reformers” began their nonsense.
Wonderful news! Voices for our children that will not be silenced.
Best wishes to Barbara Madeloni. Teachers need more people in their corner.
They say the sequel is never as good as the original but they’ve probably never witnessed NCLB II: http://deconstructingmyths.com/2014/05/10/the-sequel-and-the-damage-done/
Hello Diane:
Here’s an article that needs to be shared on your website:
http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/05/new_orleans_schools_plagued_by_racial_tension.html?wpisrc=newstories
What wonderful news! A capable, ethical, courageous leader! If she is not already on your Honor Roll, she should be!
Superb news!!! This is outstanding!