Andy Hargreaves of Boston College asks an important question: What is the purpose of benchmarking? We collect data, we measure, we test, we set goals, but why? Will it improve performance if we know that someone else does it better? Do they have the same challenges, the same resources? Is there more to education than raising tests ores and do higher test scores necessarily mean better education?
Andy begins with two stories about benchmarking, one positive, one negative. One improved public health, one made it easier to conduct war.
Right now, under pressure from No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, everything is measured. Why? To fire teachers and principals? To close schools? To hand public property to entrepreneurs? Who benefits? What do we do with the losers? Throw them away? Plenty of children were left behind, and many will not make it to “the top.”
Andy writes:
“Is the purpose of our educational benchmarking to further the public good, to raise the standards of education for all, to elevate the poorest and most disadvantaged students to the greatest heights of accomplishment? And once we have done our calculations and made our maps, what pathways will be opened up, and what people and resources will be pulled along them in this worthy quest for equity and excellence? The White House announced earlier this summer that it would address educational inequities by collecting data to help pinpoint where they existed, but there seemed to be no plan to bring up the people and resources to correct them.
“Is there a second purpose of educational benchmarking then? Is it to delineate the weak from the strong, inciting nation to compete against nation, Americans against Asians, and school against school. After we have pinpointed schools that are failing, does this just make it easier for invading opportunists to set up charter schools in their place, or to market online alternatives, tutoring services and the like?
“As in surveying, benchmarking in education should be about discovering where we stand and learning about who we are and what we do by observing those around us. It should be about improving public education, just as the sewer maps for my hometown contributed to public sanitation. Benchmarking should not be about fomenting panics about performance in relation to overseas competitors. And it should not be about dividing schools, families and communities from each other to create easy pickings for the educational market.
“Whenever we are engaged in the data-driven detail of educational benchmarking, these are the greater questions we should be asking. Of what map or whose map are we the servants?”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ridiculous! Benchmarks are really stupid. We are NOT alike. Duh…make our young all the same so they cannot think and are stuck in never, never land. .
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If our founding fathers were into “benchmarking,” American would be a monarchy– or worse.
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I have another answer.
Benchmarking is a tool used by the fake education reformers and their corporate masters who manufactured this crises to fool ignorant people and justify their actions and the profits they are sucking from the taxpayers as these pirates rob the transparent, democratic, public schools hurting children, teachers and parents—-and for a finale, getting rid of U.S. democracy and replacing it with an oligarchy.
The reason: that blasted democracy gets in the way of profits because sometimes Congress, the White House and the courts get in the way.
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I agree – they control, profit and deceive.
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“Only a fool would let his enemy teach his children.” – Malcolm X
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To Communist Teacher:
If you agree with certain quote, please generously give some reasons with both pros and cons aspects.
It is a reminder from Aesop’s Fables, like “we prefer to deal with clever enemies more than live with stupid friends” from a story of a stupid friend who uses a big rock to drop on his friend’s face in order to get rid of a fly on friend’s nose during his friend’s nap.
In your quote, are you a fool to live and cultivate in capitalism of this North American Land, but you believe in Communism? Sigh. Back2basic
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Andy Hargreaves of Boston College has lived and experienced with the charter schools. As a result, his questions are very informative for all parents and naive/ inexperienced teachers to examine and evaluate in order to strongly choose OPT OUT the edu-reformed system, or CCSS.
Thank you Andy, I would like to emphasize your question by a question from my acquaintance during our debate of the boundary between logics and mathematics, as follows:
”What is a teacher? It is not who teaches something, but someone who inspires the students to give their best to discover knowledge that is already within their souls”.
In States of Vermont, its board of education has come up with the answer for Andy’s benchmark questions, and for my acquaintance’s question. Here are answers that are worth to repeat:
1) Educators’ efforts to focus on the broad range of learning experiences that
promote the innovation,
creativity,
problem solving,
collaboration,
communication,
critical thinking
and deep subject-matter knowledge
that will allow students to thrive in a democracy and an increasingly global society and economy.
Standardized tests or BENCHMARK (needs or must INCLUDE this condition)
– along with teacher-developed assessments and student work samples —
can give educators and citizens insight into the skills, knowledge and capabilities our students have developed. Back2basic
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I think his message should be sent directly to education leaders from any country preaching for silly educational competition to see their name in the top list of international periodic table(PISA).
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Benchmarking serves a limited purpose, but has plenty of risks to accompany the benefits.
The first risk is that there are plenty of important things you can’t benchmark with comparable data, so if you focus heavily on benchmarking you may neglect other areas that matter.
The second risk is that you might have the wrong comparables that are not appropriate to your school or district.
The third risk is what Mercedes alludes to above, the herd mentality.
The fourth risk is that it could breed a competition mindset, instead of a focus of learning and growth within your own school or district.
I’m sure there are other pitfalls I’m missing.
However, benchmarking can sometimes help lead you to better practices, or at least productive discussions with other schools and districts. We keep a list of comparables based on size of enrollment, fiscal capacity, and community economic characteristics. We don’t use it much and we are careful about how we present it, but we do check against it to see if there are districts that have consistently better outcomes with economically disadvantaged students, students with disabilities, or English language learners.
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Benchmarking can, is used by politicians to set THEIR goals. It is reminiscent of what happened during WWI when generals had no idea of what might really work but sent the soldiers over the top into machine gun nests, barbed wire, poison gas and when they were slaughtered by the thousands the generals just told them they did not try hard enough and when soldiers finally refused to go over the top they were shot for cowardice and/or disobeying orders.
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Another related question: Who determines “proficiency?” What does that even mean?
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Proficiency means whatever state officials want. High pass rates? Low pass rates? Choose.
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That’s what I thought. So, how to convince parents, students, and policymakers that “proficient” is not a real thing, and that hand wringing over less than half of students deemed “proficient” means absolutely nothing?
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In NC, a ‘3’ is proficient. Scores used to be 1-4. Then, they changed the range to 1-5. Now a 3, (which was a high 2 back in the 1-4 days) is ‘proficient’, but you need a ‘4’ to be college ready.
I am waiting for them to go to 11.
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” So, how to convince parents, students, and policymakers that “proficient” is not a real thing. . .”
Getting into ontological and epistemological questions, eh, ToW!!??
What is “real” and what constitutes knowledge of that reality????? How do we know that real really is real???
Or is it just all a linguistic nightmare with no meaning ultimately satisfactory as a description of our perceptions of what is outside out body/mind?????
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Space Cadet Glow via Carlos Castaneda
” The world of objects and solidity is a way of making our passage on earth convenient. It is only a description that was created to help us. We, or rather our reason , forget that the description is only a description and thus we entrap the totality of ourselves in a vicious circle from which we rarely emerge in our lifetime.
We are perceivers. The world that we perceive, though, was created by a description that was told to us since the moment we were born.
We, the luminous beings, are born with two rings of power, but we use only one to create the world. That ring, which is hooked very soon after we are born, is reason , and its companion is talking.
(Orators of stunning institutional talent)
Between the two they concoct and maintain the world. So, in essence, the world that your reason wants to sustain is the world created by a description and its dogmatic and inviolable rules, which the reason learns to accept and defend.
The secret of the luminous beings is that they have another ring of power which is never used, the will . The trick of the sorcerer is the same trick of the average man. Both have a description; one, the average man, upholds it with his reason ; the other, the sorcerer, upholds it with his will . Both descriptions have their rules and the rules are perceivable, but the advantage of the sorcerer is that will is more engulfing than reason . You must learn to let yourself perceive whether the description is upheld by your reason or by your will . That is the only way for you to use your daily world as a challenge and a vehicle to accumulate enough personal power in order to get to the totality of yourself.”
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Benchmarking started with surveying land to get a reference point for calculating distances, creating boundaries, map-making, way-finding. There are also historical connections to measuring the length of fabric by placing a mark on a bench, and for equalizing the distribution of portions in barter and trade of other kinds. The connotations of benchmarks as a tool for map-making, planning itineraries, way-finding through intellectual terrain, thinking about potential landscapes for learning, “domains for inquiry,” “disciplinary boundaries” and so on lurk in the corners of the minds of many people in education.
In K-12 eduction, benchmarks are now functioning more like rulers, interval scales, one inch is one inch whether it is at the beginning of the yardstick or the end. The connotations of benchmarks as a tool for map-making way-finding through intellectual terrain, thinking about potential landscapes for learning, have been usurped by the construct of “grade levels,” ladder-like progressions, and schedules for being on time, as in no child left behind. And now we have the verticality of racing to the top of ??? who knows where?
There can be no doubt that the proliferation of monitoring systems for commerce and industry has produced a “benchmarking industry.” The work of Drucker and Demming on personnel management is often cited, but a lot of the methods of quality control being foisted on schools, with just-in-time delivery of annual results in the form of test scores the most prominent example, and strategies for micro-managing the work of teachers as if they are unskilled or minimally skilled, as in scripted “trainings” foisted on teachers under the banner of professional development. Many of these managerial techniques were honed during WW2 not to mention the proliferation of testing techniques for everything from physical fitness to what we now might call “grit.”
My point is that understanding of these historical and rhetorical constructs matters. We are witnessing a general collapse of thinking about education as anything other than, and more than, a matter of economics, careers, measurements.
In economics, productivity is defined as the amount of economic value created for a given unit of input, such as an hour of labor. This amount of “value added” to the economy is regarded as an indicator of “growth”, the creation of wealth, and thus of “progress.”
These are the concepts by which teachers are being judged more or less productive and “effective;” why value-added teaching and student “growth” are measurements, and why all that jazz can be regarded as progress–progressive. I am not as good at this deconstructive game as George Lakoff and the professional spin doctors but it wonderful to be tossed an invitation to think about a taken-for granted idea like benchmarking.
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From Alan Jones:
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 pay, benchmark testing, standardized testing, VAM, 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.
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For decades individual student performance has been based on benchmarks. Teacher-made tests served as the de facto benchmark for determining whether a student passed or failed. The aggregated set of grades a student earned (i.e. their transcript) served as a benchmark for determining whether a student gained entry to particular colleges or not. Students were disciplined based on standards set forth in student handbooks and or standards set by a classroom teacher.
In most cases these standards were normative and not formative: a student was not compared to a set standard but rather compared to his or her cohorts. One of the reasons for setting benchmarks was to devise standardized tests like the SAT that provided a means for colleges to determine if a student with all A’s at East Podunk HS was as prepared as a student from an elite private school. Another reason to move away from this normative comparison of cohort groups was to avoid using it as a basis for homogeneous grouping that identified some students as “high perfuming” and others as “slow”. An important reason was to establish a means of implementing a mastery learning model whereby students progressed individually instead of as a cohort.
Before decrying benchmarking I think it is important to realize it’s been in place— and not necessarily to good effect.
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The reason why benchmarking in (public) education leads nowhere is exactly the same as in all public finance: there are never any truly actionable goals that flow from it. Do a rating for government securities and when it comes out unfavorably the central bank will step in and artificially lower interest rates. Set a maximum target for (new) state debt, like 3% of GDP per year and it will be lifted for strange reasons the moment it is breached. Benchmarking in education is even more arcane and outright stupid: Take a look at e.g. driving schools. There is exactly one target they have to hit: their students need to pass the driving test. This you can benchmark if you like. There are essentially two parameters: a) how many make the grade or fail and b) “how well” do they do in each school, i.e. which of the candidates pass with 100% correct answers and how many just barely pass the test. Then you could analyze the reasons behind this (better or less well educated clientele to begin with or better or worse teachers/instructors). And then you would likely have actionable detail, like: put more effort into areas with less educated students to bridge the gap etc. Now, this does not really matter because, in all probability, those lesser educated driving students will eventually clock more mileage and therefore become better drivers than those who eventually rise to positions where they can afford a chauffeur … So what you’d need first and foremost is a benchmark that is actionable. But that we cannot find in public schooling and educational benchmarking: they are testing against their OWN phantasy, cloud-cuckoo land invented standards, not against the real world. And they have far too complicated measures that are not comparable year over year or between regions. And no one knows where to then “go from there”. Ask any decent football coach on how to improve tackling and you get the idea .. He will train tackling with those players who need a) to tackle. Not all players do. In school they are all trained the same way. No coach would ever subscribe to such hare-brained a scheme. Then he will b) try to make up exactly the deficiencies he sees in these players. For that to do he once was a successful player himself. Show me ONE teacher in public school who ever had to carve a career in private enterprise out of what he had when he left school with! Show me ONE football coach who hasn’t been a -successful- player! Then show me ONE “benchmarker” -there it gets far worse!!!- who comes from the “pits” where the skills he benchmarks matter – in private enterprise. Now you still wonder why publicly financed education gets nowhere? Like public manpower offices where people tell others, battle hardened after, say thirty years in various jobs, how to apply for a new job when the “instructor” himself never had to???
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“Proficiency means whatever state officials want. High pass rates? Low pass rates? Choose.”
Expand “state officials” to “power officials”…
“Matters of subjectivity, culture, and identity cannot be separated from material relations of power, however, complex that relationship often is. On the contrary, for such institutions and relations to be challenged collectively, they must be viewed as inextricably related; and they have to be made visible, connected to the dynamics of everyday life, in order to become part of a transformative consciousness and struggle in which pedagogy becomes central to politics.” Henry A. Giroux
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