This brilliant short video was created by Esther Quintero at the Albert Shanker Institute. I have never seen or read anything that so succinctly and accurately identifies what matters most in schools. She shows that relationships matter; trust matters. Yet school reform focuses on the individual: the teacher as a solitary individual who must be trained, evaluated, given a reward or a punishment for his or her solitary activity: teaching.
The video shows that schools are complex institutions, made up of interactions among many individuals and external groups, who influence one another: administrators, teachers, students, parents, community organizations, and others.
If you see the video, you will understand how simple-minded it is to give a school a letter grade. The school is a social enterprise, in which many people work together. See the school as the complex social hub that it is, rather than as a place in which individuals are rated based on test scores.
This video echoes what the American Statistical Association said in its report on value-added-assessment last year:
VAMs should be viewed within the context of quality improvement, which distinguishes aspects of quality that can be attributed to the system from those that can be attributed to individual teachers, teacher preparation programs, or schools. Most VAM studies find that teachers account for about 1% to 14% of the variability in test scores, and that the majority of opportunities for quality improvement are found in the system-level conditions. Ranking teachers by their VAM scores can have unintended consequences that reduce quality.
Repeat: “…the majority of opportunities for quality improvement are found in the system-level conditions.”
The video also is congruent with the “systems thinking” of W. Edwards Deming, the great business guru, who thought it was pointless to blame individual employees for the rise or fall of a corporation’s fortunes; if the system is designed well, individuals in the system will perform well. Blaming the frontline worker for a malfunctioning system is akin to blaming foot-soldiers for a failed offensive, or blaming assembly-line workers in an automobile plant for the loss of market share. Those who are in charge of the system are responsible for making it work so that individuals can do their jobs.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
That’s a brilliant short! Thank you Diane.
It’s interesting that Deming said almost precisely the same thing as ASA. Interesting but not surprising. I suspect the people at ASA who wrote the paper on VAM are well aware of his research.
“A Lesser Category of Obstacles: Placing blame on workforces who are only responsible for 15% of mistakes where the system designed by management is responsible for 85% of the unintended consequences” — from wikipedia
The people behind VAM are either grossly uninformed or just plain dishonest. In the case of statisticians an other researchers (eg, economists) pushing VAM, I’d say it is the latter because it is very unlikely that they would not be aware of the work done by Deming.
How do we know when ed-deformers are lying? Their lips are moving. Of course they know they’re full of nonsen$e. Money talks, and there is a boatload to be made stealing from the kids and taxpayer.
“Fixing the ignorance around the policy”
Ignorance can be fixed
Dishonesty can not
Reformer’s may be mixed
But truth says “VAM is rot”
Terrific video. A must see for all concerned about education improvement.
Wonderful video that should be sent to politicians, but I doubt they would get the message. The district where I worked for over three decades used a relationship model to turn the district around. We went from being a district known for racial strife to one that produced many students that were “college ready” including many poor minorities and ELLs. We reached out to the community, and the district invested lots of staff development working with Bank St. and Teachers College.
What this model does not show is the economic impact of reform. The public school district invested in training and retraining of staff, and the staff, most of whom had master degrees +, were paid and treated as professional. Thus, they retained competent teachers. I personally spent many hours working in the community, at board meetings and writing grants, for which I never got a dime. In fact, my efforts resulted in more unpaid work for myself, but I did it for my district and students. With many charter schools, the teacher is little more than a temp worker, and turnover is high. It is impossible to develop relationships when people are just passing through.
In his September 23, 2005 speech at Lakeside School—his alma mater and where his two children now go to school—Bill Gates laid out the three R’s of Lakeside: “Rigor, relevance, and relationships are what made my time at Lakeside so extraordinary. Through our foundation, we’re now trying to bring these core principles to public schools across the country.”
Re the last of the three:
[start quote]
Finally, I had great relationships with my teachers here at Lakeside.
Classes were small. You got to know the teachers. They got to know you. And the relationships that come from that really make a difference. If you like and respect your teacher, you”re going to work harder.
Gary Maestretti really inspired me to learn physics. Fred Wright really inspired me to learn math, and was a great mentor in the computer room in McAllister Hall.
Ann Stephens got me to sign up for drama. I didn’t have to do drama. I didn’t have a lot of skill in that. But she had built a strong relationship with me, and she made me want to give it a try.
She gave me the lead in a romantic comedy that I still know all the lines to. The only downside is that I invited my co-star to our real-life prom, and she turned me down. She’s here tonight, and I want her to know: I recently got over it.
Rigor, relevance, and relationships are what made my time at Lakeside so extraordinary. Through our foundation, we’re now trying to bring these core principles to public schools across the country.
[end quote]
For context and a link to his speech: https://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/bill-gates-tells-us-why-his-high-school-was-a-great-learning-environment/
But without the last of the three R’s, he wouldn’t have received so much “rigor” and “relevance” because we all know how uncontrollably petulant, er, resistant to challenging himself and the status quo, er, something or other that Bill Gates is.
And relationships develop just fine—thank you very much, Mr. Bill Gates!—when you stick small children in front of computers for hours at a time with lowly paid overseers to make sure they rigorously click their way through relevant material on the computer screens, thereby enabling them to form lifelong relationships with computer products.
😱
Yes, relationships. And, Bill, how about ensuring the Lakeside experience for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN? Period. Whatever it takes. No excuses.
Excellent posting.
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It occurred to me after I wrote the above comment that it would not be unfair to say that in Bill G’s speech, his mention of the Three R’s went from strong to stronger to strongest. That is, he built up to a finishing crescendo of importance.
To borrow from the business speak of the self-styled “education reformers”: you can’t sell your customers [aka students] on a type of learning that involves rigor and relevance unless the relationships between teachers and students allow for the consumers [aka students] to willingly & even enthusiastically buy-in to the delivery of eduproducts that require lots of rigor and contain lots of relevance.
To go from rheephormish to English: genuine teaching and learning require good relationships between teachers and students.
A corollary: class size matters.
Oh, and Bill the G mentioned that too in his above remarks: “Classes were small. You got to know the teachers. They got to know you. And the relationships that come from that really make a difference. If you like and respect your teacher, you”re going to work harder.”
Does Bill G—or any “thought leader” of the “new civil rights movement of our time” for that matter—ever listen to the words coming out of their own mouths?
¿? When WHAT freezes over?!?!? Don’t hold my breath?!?!?
Oh my…
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What is that old saying about don’t do what I say but what I do? Maybe we could revise that to fit Bill Gates: “Don’t listen to what I say but do pay attention to how my money will change your life.”
“Gates Does not Compute”
Bill Gates says the word
But brain does not compute
“Relationship” we heard
But Billy heard it “loot”
It’s funny that ed reform is supposedly “market based” and all about workforce preparation, because trust and relationships play a huge role in ANY organization or system, including the private sector.
When you pull one thread, the whole fabric changes. That’s true in any system, and there’s NEVER a guarantee that the any and all changes with be positive.
There’s this weird almost legalistic compartmentalizing – a determined effort to look only at the positive results, and ignore that trade-offs are being made.
I genuinely don’t get it. I would assume “systems thinking” would be a natural for people who say they are improving a system, but it isn’t. Instead they seem to be heavily investing in denying it IS a system.
For me, the trust issue extends to the whole Movement, because they don’t call out their own. I believe public schools will be bashed and punished when the Common Core test results in my state come out. I believe this because I just watched one of them use the Common Core test results to bash public schools and advance a political agenda: Governor Cuomo.
Nothing happened to him. No one in “the movement” said a word.
Weren’t we assured ed reformers would NOT use CC test results to opportunistically bash public schools? Then why is Governor Cuomo doing exactly that?
The Testing culture will lead to a population of texters who spend most of their days staring at screens with thumbs flying isolated from real people in real life. From what I’ve seen when walking around town or out shopping, we are already headed in that direction.
The Shanker message is overshadowed by oligarchs spending billions. “Educators for Excellence” received $3,000,000 from Gates. The organization claims that no one donor can provide more than 10% of the budget, thus, the total budget provided by Walton, Broad etc., as of 2013,……$30,000,000?
270 Strategies, a PR firm, that brags about working for E4E, claims the organization is teacher led. If E4E is teacher-led, why is a high-powered message broker necessary?
And, E4E joins the ranks of Educators for High Standards, Teach+Plus, Achieve the Core, Student Achievement Partners, The Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education, Educator Leader Cadre, Democrats for Education Reform and on and on and on.
Funny part, teachers promoting Common Core through Educator Leader Cadre, do it for free. Come on, at least demand some of the oligarch’s money for services rendered.
Children don’t need bonding relationships with teachers, principal and peers. They need Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance, according to this Gates funded study:
Click to access promoting_-grit-report-2-17-13.pdf
Excuse me, Department of Education study.
Americans are among the hardest working people in the world. worker grit = oligarch profits
A new paradigm, community bonding for the welfare of the many.
Educational policy has been stripped of more than the idea that relationships matter. It has focussed relentlessly on the concept that the be-all of education is academic learning–book-based, authoritative (not to be questioned ever) and packaged in forms to DELIVER to students, sage on the stage, or via a computer program under the banner of personalized learning. A blank slate and empty vessel concept of learning, along with a a revival of the 3R’s (aka Common Core State Standards) prevails. We live in the 21st century with a 19th century concept of education.
As for the management and systems thinking, recall that Peter Drucker 1954 introduced management-by-objectives, a total disaster and largely abandoned within two decades– because it had morphed to become what economist called a system honoring “bureaupathology.” Drucker’s bad ideas about performance in organizations has been marketed since 1999 as the management tool of choice, rebranded as SLOs–Student learning objectives. SLOs are required in at least 27 states. There is not an ounce of research to show this convoluted process improves student test scores or that it is a valid and reliable way to judge teachers. SLOs are for teachers who don’t get slammed with VAM.
February 2, 2015
Dear Indiana Legislators and State Board of Education,
Since many of you do not work directly with our Hoosier students, I thought I’d share some stories of just a few past students* who frequently surface to the top:
Christopher moved into our district as school started: All his mom could tell me was, “He’s bad. I can’t control him. He’s a bad kid.” The state of Indiana now deems that I am an effective teacher only if I can get him to pass a ten-hour standardized test, not that I helped Christopher understand he’s not a bad kid.
Jonah slept in class all morning or was seriously agitated. He confided in me that his father “raged” a lot at night. One early morning in April his house was involved in a drug bust and all his adult family members were arrested. The state of Indiana now deems that I am an effective teacher only if I can get him to pass a ten-hour standardized test, not that I gave him a warm blanket and a snack most mornings.
Lilah was just one of the homeless students I came to know through the years. She had moved in about a month into school from out of state. During the seven months she lived here she stayed in four different locations, including the homeless shelter. The state of Indiana now deems that I am an effective teacher only if I can get her to pass a ten-hour standardized test, not that I visited her at each house and usually brought her mom groceries.
Ricardo was big for his age and a real prankster, too. That was his way of communicating since he did not speak much English. We would sit together and read books in Spanish and English. The state of Indiana now deems that I am an effective teacher only if I can get him to pass a ten-hour standardized test, though I cannot even imagine how difficult that test is for him in English.
I never saw William smile once. He had witnessed his mother brutally attacked and wanted to be home with her. Every time I see one of those hard metal chairs they had in that school it reminds me of the one that he threw at my head. The state of Indiana now deems that I am an effective teacher only if I can get him to pass a ten-hour standardized test, though the best I ever managed was convincing him not to rip it to shreds.
Then there was Kaylah. She was mentally impaired and only recognized a few sight words. She loved stories, especially the repetitive ones with the slightly different surprise endings. She’d burst with excitement and “read” that part with me. The state of Indiana now deems that I am an effective teacher only if I can get her to pass a ten-hour standardized test. I cannot. Neither can her resource teacher, who cries along with her in frustration during the test.
I could tell you more stories; students who grew up in crack-houses, parents abusing the foster care system, autism, severe paranoia, molestation, blindness, loss of siblings and parents.
I care about each of the children mentioned above. I care about each one I know today and each little one coming to me in the future. I do not fear your evaluation. What I fear is never breaking the cycle of poverty and abuse that is pervasive in our culture. Please trust me when I say the tools you are giving me now are implements of more hurt, more pain, more destruction of lives. Please, begin to give me the real tools and proper resources we all need to make meaningful change in this state.
Sincerely,
John Stoffel
*All names and possibly the gender of former students have been changed to protect their identity.
It’s ironic that relationships are what drives politics in America these days (often expressed through the transfer of money), and that relationship is always “What can you do for me?” Meanwhile, in the real world of teaching , the relationships are more like “What can I do to help you learn and grow and what can we all do together.” Perhaps it’s as simple as the political class not trusting any relationship system that’s not as venal and corrupt as theirs is. Could it be that those “champions” of the freedoms that are claimed to be hated by despotic regimes and terrorist groups live in constant fear of a level and open playing field?
Jon,
Incapable of trust and living in fear of an open, honest playing field pretty much describes all of the reformers and their manipulating masters. Because they live in a world of lies and bribes, it’s difficult to impossible for them to see a world beyond their tunnel vision.
We should put “Quid pro quo” on the dollar.
Wonderful video. Sadly, we are witnessing the tearing apart of our district in Jefferson county, Colorado. The reformers are trying hard to quickly replace all leadership positions, disrupt the years of trust in our schools, and ignore the pleas of students, parents and teachers alike. But we are Jeffco, after all, we’ve seen the worst of times and we always rise above it.
I wanted to share the latest activities of our Jeffco Students For Change organization. The group grew out of the assault on AP US History this past fall when the Board abruptly announced their desire for a new curriculum review committee, that reported only to the Board. There were already two curriculum review committees that report to the Superintendent in place.
As the student leaders began engaging at Board meetings, observing the behavior of our Board majority, and learning about all of the issues, they created this organization. They have tried numerous times to address the Board, and been shut down by the Board president Ken Witt, where ever possible.
Thursday night, the students played out a wonderful silent protest of the actions of the Board majority. Here is a link to the JSFC website with photos.
http://jeffcostudentsforchange.org/2015/02/06/jeffco-students-for-change-silently-protests-board-majority/
And here is a link to the student’s video footage of the event.
I could not be more proud to live in Jeffco. We have a long battle ahead of us. But we will continue to try to keep our community relationships intact. This video was a great reminder about that. What the Board majority here does not realize is that we are an amazingly diverse, committed and smart group of people. There actions have actually brought us together in the battle against these reforms.
Thank you for this forum to give us information about the happenings around the country, all in one place. It is a valuable resource.