A few weeks ago, I heard from Alex Suarez, a medical student at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He has a B.S. in Bioengineering from Rice University. Alex read my book “Reign of Error” and asked if he could propose an new approach to accountability. He put his ideas on paper, and I am glad to share them with you. What do you think of Alex’s ideas?
Alex writes:
Anyone who has watched “Waiting for Superman” or listened to the endless educational debates will be quick to hear how our public school system is failing. Who’s the culprit in their opinion? The teachers. Contrast that with my own experience of seeing countless dreamers poised with incredible capabilities to inspire and teach, get put into incredibly challenging situations.
Teachers can start in a classroom of 22 students; they don’t fare too well. With the current system based on standardized testing, poor performance strips resources. There goes the budget.
What does that mean? That same teacher struggling with 22 students is now being asked to teach classes of 30. It doesn’t make sense. Diane Ravitch’s Reign of Error sums it up best: Let’s say the national goal is to be 100% crime free. Depending on the severity of the failure, you lose resources. Imagine the inner city of Chicago versus the upper middle class suburbs. After one year, the inner city of Chicago fails miserably at the goal compared to suburbia so the government heavily restricts the resources allocated to their local police. How do you think the crime rate is going to be next year?
We operate on the assumption that any teacher can help any students reach the best score despite anything. No excuses, right?
Let’s take a quick look at the metric of how standardized testing affects motivation of teachers and students. Teachers come in with the idealistic dream of inspiring the next generation to love learning the way they have. Once they enter the school, there’s one goal: high standardized test scores. They get pushed to try to meet test standards that ruin the beauty of learning. You suck out their motivation to teach. It isn’t much better from the students’ perspective. Students enter a classroom and are told, “It’s important to learn.” They then quickly lay witness to why they “need” to learn: to get a high test score. Educators try to plead with their students that learning is more than this.
Educators are right, there should be more. Why is our current education system’s assessment so focused on these standardized tests?
I would like the opportunity set a few items straight. Many Americans have heard the statistic that public school is broken, that internationally we are fourteenth in reading, seventeenth in science, and twenty-fifth in mathematics. It’s time to sound the alarms and kick our butts into gear.
What if, however, I were to tell you that further analysis of these international test scores sheds a different light on the conclusions that can be drawn? If you took the scores of American kids who were in schools with less than 10% poverty, they would be identical to Shanghai, the number one scorer on the exam.
Further, Martin Carnoy and Richard Rothstein believed there to be a sampling error in the test where a higher proportion of American schools in poverty were evaluated. Adjusting for this, the United States public education system ranked fourth in reading and tenth in math.
Let’s take one-step back, why are these international tests all that important? Reformers say if our students are scoring poorly on international assessments, these future business leaders and our economy will not be able to compete. It makes sense. Right? The data does not seem to corroborate this. Keith Baker, an analyst at the Department of Education, looked at the relationship between how well countries did on international testing and its future GDP. He found that “ the higher a nation’s test score 40 years ago, the worse its economic performance on this measure of national wealth.” We have put all our belief behind a relationship that does not exist.
Now, the one thing that American students have that no country can compete with is our level of creativity and innovation. As we push more and more resources to attaining higher scores on standardized testing, we are sacrificing what makes America great. Look at the many schools that are dropping critical components of a liberal arts curriculum to pour more time and energy towards standardized tested math and reading classes.
Legislators attempting to change education have this contrived notion that teachers are machines. Representatives argue that better teachers=better results. They treat teachers much like production lines of old. They argue that streamlining the production line for the purpose of increasing test scores is the way.
They say it’s the corporate way, the American way. They are right, kind of. That was the corporate America… of the mid to later twentieth century. They don’t acknowledge the industrial/organizational psychologists research that is driving the best global companies. Workers are not machines. Workers are human. Motivation is critical. Take these two for example: Google and Apple. Look at their campus. Look at their work schedules. Look at what their culture promotes. It promotes health, inspires creativity, and most importantly sparks motivation.
They understand that workers are humans and are driven by psychological needs.
Now what are these specific “psychological needs”?
In his TED Talk, Tony Robbins best highlighted what he feels to be the six universal needs.
The first four are of the body: certainty, uncertainty, significance, and love/connection. The final two are of the spirit: growth and living for something greater than yourself. I believe that if we are able to create an environment that better facilitates public K-12 educators meeting these six needs, we will revolutionize education. How do we go about this?
Change the metric, change the country.
In The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg recalls Paul O’Neill’s reign as CEO of the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa). During his first meet and greet with share holders, where CEOs typically declare their vision for boosting profits by lowering costs, he shocked the audience. He set out his vision: making Alcoa the safest company in America. Safety will be an indicator that we’re making progress in changing the habits across the entire institution. All the stockholders were caught aback. They thought the company was going to crumble. Within a year, Alcoa’s profits would hit a record high. Thirteen years later, the net income was five times its original size; its market capitalization had risen by $27 billion. What shareholders didn’t fully understand was that in order to have the safest environment, the company had to establish several procedures. These safety procedures demanded a streamlined corporate structure and a production line that avoided injuries that would slow production. The important thing here to realize is that people operate within a system defined by its metric.
Turning to education, we have seen administrators’ decisions to cut classes of the liberal arts education to solely focus on areas that would be tested by the standardized test. Our metrics are out of whack.
I move for a change in the strived-for metric from high stakes standardized testing to teacher satisfaction.
Teacher satisfaction will be obtained by asking each teacher the following questions. Each of these will be rated on a 1-10 score, with 10 being the highest.
How much pressure do you feel that you could lose your job?
How comfortable do you feel asking for help?
How much autonomy do you feel in the classroom?
Do you feel like you are making a significant impact on your students?
How supported do you feel by your fellow teachers?
How supported do you feel by your administrators?
Do you feel like you have the resources you need to do your best work?
How collaborative of an environment do you have?
Do you feel that you’re becoming a better teacher?
Do you feel that you’re becoming a better role model?
These scores will be tallied and will be the primary determinant of how schools will be evaluated. The school’s score will be made public. Schools that perform poorly will have leading educators come to the school and help the school get back on track.
We will no longer strip resources from the schools that are most in need. If the teacher’s answers to these questions are yes, they will feel fulfilled by their career and intrinsically motivated, the most powerful driving force. Teachers dream about intellectually stimulating the future generation. They want to develop meaningful relationships with children. They want their kids to escape poverty’s grasp. We must create an environment that helps,not hinders, teachers.
Evaluation of teachers will consist of a student questionnaire and student testing. The student questionnaire will read as follows (Note: language will be geared to that grade level; it will be completely anonymous, with the option of the student to right their name if he or she wishes)
Do you feel safe?
Do you feel comfortable with your teacher?
Can you be honest with your teacher?
Do you feel cared for by your teacher?
Do you feel understood by your teacher?
Do you look up to your teacher?
Do you enjoy school?
Do you feel like you’re learning?
How much do you think about things learned in school at your home?
Do you feel that your hard work is noticed and rewarded?
Do you feel like your hard work is paying off?
Do you feel if you have an error it is caught?
When it is corrected, do you understand why?
Do you understand how to fix it/ prevent it from happening again?
The questionnaire results will be shared with the school’s principal and the student’s teacher.
The second component will be student’s scores on the exams that are a part of the school’s curriculum. The student’s scores on these will be compared to their standardized testing at the end of the year (in a diagnostic fashion) to ensure the teacher’s curriculum is up to par with national standards. This check is intended to prevent a situation where curriculum exams become super easy and everyone gets As, but at the end of the year all the kids fail to be proficient. In that case, the local school curriculum and tests will need to be made more rigorous.
Low scores on any of these metrics will not be immediate grounds for firing. The teacher will collaborate with other teachers and the principal on ways to improve his or her score much in a similar way as the Peer Assistance and Review program in Montgomery County, Maryland. New teachers with no experience and teachers who receive low ratings on these are assigned a “consulting teacher” to help them improve. The consulting teachers help teachers plan their lessons and review student work; they model lessons and identify research-based instructional strategies. The obvious follow up question is what if this teacher doesn’t or can’t improve?
That question brings up the idea of tenure and how to remove a teacher. Now, I believe K-12 “tenure” plays an important role in meeting the teacher’s psychological need of certainty. Much in the same way that you wouldn’t be able to focus on reading this article if the ceiling above you could cave in at anytime, the teacher struggles to take innovative risks with the thought that he or she could get fired at the end of the year based on high-stakes standardized tests. However valuable I believe tenure to be, I do believe that some districts make it a near impossibility to remove a poor performing teacher. In those districts, it should change.
I support the PAR model for removing poorly performing teachers. A panel of teachers and administrators at that school reviews the performance of the new and experienced teachers who have received one year of PAR support. The panel decides whether to offer another year of PAR, to confirm their success, or to terminate their employment. This method of teacher evaluation has the support of teachers and principals in schools that have adopted this model. In Montgomery with PAR, they have fired over 200 teachers with this new model; in the prior decade to PAR’s implementation, only five teachers had been removed.
A few additional principles will get us back on track and help us achieve this new metric of teacher satisfaction.
• I call for classroom sizes to be 12 students. Low socioeconomic students need attention. In Daniel Coyle’s Talent Code, he explores why some environments keep producing unbelievably successful talents. He breaks it down to three key characteristics that are needed: deep practice, ignition, and coaching. Deep practice is the process with which people focus intently on trying to achieve something and every time they fail, they acknowledge why they failed, how to correct it, and go about it another time. Classrooms need to be small to allow for the teacher to execute this oversight. The coaching relationship is key, and I think it’s pretty evident in the questions that are on the kid’s questionnaire above. Having a mentor who you trust and can provide a meaningful relationship is also something that I believe can only be fostered on this scale. I want to take a quick moment to expand on how important a role model can be.
According to Paul Vitz’s discussion on “The Importance of Fatherhood” in Eric Metaxas’s “Socrates in the City,” there are plenty of poor environments where the fathers are present and there is no criminality: “We think of criminal behavior as somehow related to ghettos or the inner city or something like that. When the social scientists take out whether the father is present and whole issue of the stability of the family, there are no ethnic, racial, linguistic, or cultural factors related to criminal behavior. There have been examples of people who have been step-in fathers that have achieved the goals a father should for their kid.”
I think the heart of education for lower socioeconomic children is providing meaningful and trusting relationships with teachers so that they can guide them out of their troubles. Additionally, the classroom of size of twelve students can be broken into pairs or groups of 3, 4, or 6 to compete in challenges and activities.
• As for Coyle’s ignition, students need to be surrounded by triggers that further their drive to learn. They need to be exposed to what can happen if they work hard in the classroom. As one example, I recommend after school programs where students have the ability to paint murals in their hallways of prominent historical figures. Even hanging up pictures of people nominated for Time’s People of the Year with a short descriptor below could do the trick. One of the telltale signs of a great school is its relationship with its community. I also wish to support bringing in prominent community members who can serve as role models for these kids and further ignition.
• Getting a higher percentage of teachers trained for a year or two before starting in the classroom.
• All schools should be staffed with a child psychologist, health care worker, social worker, and school counselors as recommended by the teaching staffs.
• Education should include physical education, health, literature, history, music, etc. (all the strong pillars of a liberal arts education).
• Teachers should be well paid. Payment should follow a curve similar to an enzymatic curve of saturation. Payment should be a function of three things: overall years of experience, how many years you have been at that one school, and performance. Let’s say a teacher has been at a school for 10 years, and wants to change schools. There should be some deterrent for having the teacher leave schools. Potentially, her pay will be lowered (to 8 years of experience [subtract 2]) with the aim to keep teachers at a particular school over the course of career. Low turnover is an important factor for students.
Now, there may be many contentions to what I have offered. One of the main ones against smaller classroom sizes is the cost. Administrators know teachers are the highest cost to education, yet they are the most valuable. People say we can’t spend this amount of money on education. This argument hits at one of the human rules of thumbs that tend to make us err as stated in the book Nudge. “According to economic theory, money is “fungible” meaning that it doesn’t come with labels. Twenty dollars in the rent jar can buy just as much food as the same amount in the food jar. But households adopt mental accounting schemes that violate fungibility for the same reasons that organizations do: to control spending.”
Now, as I respect any public official’s attempt to have a balanced budget, it’s important we realize the impact on our budget if we don’t do anything. We will continue to spend over $30,000 per inmate per year, yet $10,000 per student per year. Why do we continue to invest our money and efforts to far downstream of someone’s life?
To meet the class size, we will need more teachers. Economically speaking, we know one thing: a strong middle class yields a strong economy. Increasing the strong middle class jobs (number of teachers) with reliable income will only be good for the economy. They will purchase goods and spend their money, thereby keeping the money in the economy.
In general, it is my belief we need to spend more money on human capital that will be present in kid’s lives at the school. People and relationships make the differences in kids’ lives.
Overall, the recommendations presented will create a profession that will be respected and desired. This will promote high caliber individuals entering the field. Right now, 40% of teachers leave the profession sometime in the first five years. I am confident that changing our metric would decrease high teacher turnover and burnout, which are highly problematic for struggling schools and more importantly struggling students. It will drive highly motivated individuals towards teaching. The metric will finally allow instructors to inspire curiosity and the love of learning in all their students. Instead of castigating teachers, let’s help them. Crazy idea?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ah, at last the crucial WORD; accountability.
Does anyone realize that the removal of teachers was calculated on the premise that they could be treated as ’employees at will,’ which means that they could be fired without any accountability. You see, tenure is NOT a job for life, but it confers to the employee the right to due process… you know… where the one making the accusations is sworn under penalty of perjury….something that a principal does not do. That is why they are unaccountable in a court of law. You cannot sue them for their lies.
I hope you guys are following this… if not go to this link and see how this concept was undermined in LAUSD in 2006, when collective bargaining went down.
http://citywatchla.com/8box-left/6666-lausd-and-utla-complicity-kills-collective-bargaining-and-civil-rights-for-la-s-teachers
I am sure that Lorna Stremcha, who sued the Montana schools and won, would like to see the principal who set her up to be sexually assaulted, be held accountable under the law.
You should read her book, about to be published as a novel…but based on the real experience in a workplace where accountability at th stop is nonexistent!
The “right to work” is a euphemism for right to be fired at will.
Yes, by all means, let’s decide whether education is successful based on whether students “feel like [they’re] learning”. Then we can replace drivers tests with one that asks whether you think you’re a good driver. How about a bar exam or medical boards that ask whether you think you’d make a good lawyer or doctor?
I agree that focusing on tests to the exclusion of other learning is wrong, but it’s a false dichotomy to say you can either teach a kid to like to learn *or* teach them how to pass a test. If you teach them to read, you can accomplish much of both. If you don’t, the failure isn’t a failure of “soft” measurements.
John,
The deformers are like nailing jelly to a wall. They claim charter schools are successful because parents like them. But, the fact that an overwhelming number of Americans, like their public schools and the schools perform well, is ignored.
Are hedge funds consummate, liars by omission?
Why don’t they to contribute to America, send their kids to the military, pay tax on carried interest, stop taking tax breaks for contributions to villainthropies, stop dragging down GDP, encourage multinational corporations to return the billions from offshore accounts, discourage the revolving door at federal agencies…
John,
Teaching young children to read and write isn’t the same thing as taking a driving test or studying for the bar or medical exam. Motivation there is already firmly in place. When young children start school their brain is still developing. To get them on a good path for learning, they must be nurtured and encouraged, not pressured and bullied as happens when they are forced to take these tests.
You make a good point about deciding “whether education is successful”. That decision can’t be made unless we first decide what a “successful education” actually is. What should a person know and be able to do when he/she graduates from high school? If that answer is to be able to successfully take a test (which really encourages cheating by students and teachers) then maybe the Standardized tests make some sense. But if the answer is for graduates to become good citizens and be equipped to contribute to our civilization, then we have already gone a long way toward destroying the opportunity to provide our children with a “good education”
When they leave school the real proof of a good education will be how well they function in life, not whether or not they passed a test.
Al,
My experience is that kids from low-SES families don’t pass tests because they don’t know the material. I agree that things besides tests matter, but discounting tests completely is an excuse. In my city, we have high school student who can’t read. I’m afraid good citizenship isn’t going to be helpful to those students.
Also, I have to wonder whether testing ruined education for all of us. As I recall, I took the Iowa test every year, not to mention others. I don’t recall any big deal being made out of it. I think the big deal is what is being made out of the tests, not the tests themselves.
I agree that teaching a students to read, write and reason are important goals in education. However, the accountability train has left the station and is running off the rails. We now have a test designed with an arbitrary, rigged cut score to fail two thirds of the students, an invalid formula designed assign a teacher’s value, VAM, that permits teachers to be rated on students they don’t teach. Our high stakes testing mania has left common sense and reality behind. There should be something between “soft” and Orwellian in accountability.
Retired teacher,
I agree that we need something in between. I disagree about cut scores, as I think they are set based on college readiness without remediation, which I think is a good goal. I also agree with VAM as a concept, but the reality of the implementations aren’t fair.
John,
“College readiness” is another soft, arbitrary notion. There are many factors, some that are not testable in the concept of “college ready.” Some people excel in college, but don’t do too well in other aspects of their lives. Other students are not outstanding students, but they achieve in the real world. If you are looking at hard data, you should examine the research on the Common Core. You should discover that the reading passages are about two years above grade level expectations, and there are many problems with the mathematics as well. There are too many flaws in the tests as well as the arbitrary cut scores for these tests to be considered valid.
I took the Iowa’s too. I don’t remember any fuss or even a mention of the test. We worked through our curriculum. The test DAY came; we took the test. The next day back to our school work.
Today the months leading to the test are test prep. Schools are cutting subjects like art and music to provide more time for academics that will be tested. The children take several days of reading/language arts testing and a couple of day of math testing.
The current PARCC test is created by the same company that sells textbooks and programs that will help prepare for the test. A conflict of interest if I ever heard one. Pearson’s reading passages are a grade level above the grade taking the test – 4th graders, for example, are reading passages written at a 5th grade level. The plan, as I see it, is to have the children fail and then the districts will buy Pearson’s reading and math programs to better prepare for the test.
Worse than even this is the collusion on the part of the state governments to go along with this. All businesses require and benefit from accountability. Education is no exception but having accountability based on a single test, created by a company like Pearson who is a for profit company, is dispicable.
I took the Iowa’s as a child too. We gave the California Achievement Test where I taught. I am not a fan of standardized testing, but this is a more valid test than PARCC. The reading selections were on grade level, and a math test was clear and fair, I thought.
100% on target!
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
What if, however, I were to tell you that further analysis of these international test scores sheds a different light on the conclusions that can be drawn? If you took the scores of American kids who were in schools with less than 10% poverty, they would be identical to Shanghai, the number one scorer on the exam.
Let’s also not forget that the high scorers from Asia do not test everyone. The test comparison is almost like taking their gifted kids and comparing them to our average…..False equivalencies abound. It is hard to draw any meaningful conclusions from these tests as they are presented.
Lloyd Lofthouse: another example of what Gerald Bracey pointed out in his 2006 READING EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH: HOW TO AVOID GETTING STATISTICALLY SNOOKERED:
When comparing groups, make sure the groups are comparable.
Thank you for your comment.
😎
Any discussion that humanizes students, must first overcome the specter of Gates’ billions. The future of Cincinnati Public Schools is, as, an “underdeveloped human capital pipeline”. (Gates-funded Bellwether, in an advertisement for a founding CEO, acting as a liaison with CPS.)
Melinda Gates, interviewed in the AARP Bulletin this month, says her goal is …”to build a data system to make sure data exists… what do the statistics show us?”
To enlighten her, Gates’ bias created garbage in, garbage out.,
Alex is on the right track. This insane drive for accountability through testing is destroying schools everywhere. When I taught staff development classes to elementary teachers I would emphasize that their first and most important job was to get their students excited about learning.
What “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top” actually do is to bully teachers, school administrators, communities, and through them the students.
What a 2-faced approach to education: make teachers watch videos and sign pledges to stop bullying in their schools while the monstrous bullying of their government is generating fear, tearing at their motivation to teach, and forcing them to bully there own students.
Standardized testing measures the wrong things for the wrong reasons. Students don’t LEARN anything from the tests, except fear and distaste for education. If elementary teachers are given the freedom, opportunity, and- like Alex points out- small enough classes to work with each individual student, they will be able to motivate children to learn. That will open up the child’s world and prepare them for more difficult subject matter.
Bullying by the government is not getting the job done.
What a well written, thoughtful and inciteful piece. It should be required reading. As a teacher in NJ, in a middle class suburb, I whole heartedly support every part of this article. My district was an innovative district when I came there over 10 years ago. Now, with the focus on testing we have cut music and art. We have music, art and instrumental music teachers coming into our classrooms to help teach writing, a subject they do not have expertise in. Our district has eliminated library and silent reading time to make room for more academics as a preparation for the state tests.
What I most agree with is your analysis of the international comparisons. I have long said the model being used to compare the U.S. with other countries is flawed.
Thanks for the great article.
As a teacher who has experience what it is like to have smaller class sizes as low as 12 or fewer students and as high as 36 to 42, I see the extreme value in smaller class sizes. Can our public school system afford it? I say yes! Student will get one on one feedback and attention at levels that will spur learning and mastery. Schools will not need as much administrative and support staff; security, vice principals, nor will there be a need for as many district personnel to oversee and manage all the programs that are put in place for remediation. Programs don’t help students achieve as much as relationships do per the quote from what Alex says, “In general, it is my belief we need to spend more money on human capital that will be present in kid’s lives at the school. People and relationships make the differences in kids’ lives.” This is the statement I agree with the most from all that Alex offers as a way to fix education. Many of the other issues about teacher job satisfaction and effectiveness found in the interview questions he proposes for teachers will be addressed by a teacher’s ability to effectively teach with smaller class sizes.
I judge Alex’s ideas to be those of a person who has not had much experience in teaching and who is offering proposals that are not well researched, but well-intended.
It is good to see that Diane’s book “Reign of Error” has helped Alex think about education. He draws on his own experience, not clearly in education, to propose a batch of ideas, unaware that what he offers is not altogether new or news, including—the absurd reification of scores on standardized tests, the studied indifference of policy makers to misrepresentations in international test score comparisons, the well-known cherry-picking of such data to portray American public education as a failed endeavor, and so on.
Having implied that the competitive and economic reasoning for education is valid but misdirected, Alex has the idea that the ”one thing that American students have that no country can compete with is our level of creativity and innovation.”—“ what makes America great.”
That observation is linked to his dismay that “many schools that are dropping critical components of a liberal arts curriculum to pour more time and energy towards standardized tested math and reading classes.” Is Alex, like many others, valuing creative work if and only if it produces a clear economic benefit? A competitive edge? It is hard to tell. Here are several points.
First, a 2012 MetLife survey documented cuts in arts education and more severe cuts in schools with a high proportion of low-income students. This has happened with the blessing of the US Department of Education, along with legislators in many states, much of the business community, and a propensity among arts advocates to marginalize studies in the arts. How? By implying, for example, the arts can and shouldenter schools ONLY IF they reduce truancy, or are palliative for schools gone wrong in their affective and aesthetic ambiance, or can make learning more attractive and boost test scores in tested subjects, or retain their identity as enrichments–luxuries, a privilege, a reward granted as a matter of noblesse oblige (if you do your work and finish on time).
Second, the link between studies in the arts/liberal arts and creativity is not self evident, especially if schools are hell-bent on: (a) making studies of the arts a matter of MASTERING grade-by-grade standards on time, and (b) valuing those aspects of the arts that are strictly academic, meaning rule-bound and with outcomes that can be specified in detail, in advance, and checked for perfected alignments with a curriculum, with that curriculum aligned to fit national standards. Add the idea that teachers should use a ready-made toolkit of “best practices” and “interventions” conjured by bean counters. In other words any creative impulses in teaching and learning are being bootlegged into the education of this generation and by stealth more than plan.Or those impulses are met outside of school with or without adult guidance and mentoring.
Third, some of the current investments in STEM–science, technology, engineering, mathematics and (STEAM just add the arts)–are based on a limited concept of innovation, to say nothing of job prospects in these fields.
Relatively few people in education seem to be aware of The Global Innovation Index (GII) a ranking of nations on “pillars” that enable innovation, including for example, stable financial institutions, investments in education (all levels) and research (basic applied), supportive legal structures, wealth, and financial sophistication. The GII also looks at documented innovation in knowledge production (patents, publications, media productions, technology and the like). Although the U.S. economy seems to be recovering from misplaced “creativity” in the financial sector, there is big trouble ahead if more states follow the lead of Arizona and cut spending for higher education, including graduate programs keyed to basic research, to say nothing of continuing cuts in K-12 education https://www.globalinnovationindex.org/userfiles/file/reportpdf/GII-2014-v5.pdf
Fourth, there was evidence in 2010 of a decline in scores on one of the few standardized tests of creativity given to children and adults. Since the 1960s, the custodians of the Torrance tests of creativity (visual and verbal) have kept longitudinal data for cohorts of children who have been test-takers, and they have conducted follow-up studies of their “creative output” as adults. Newsweek magazine caused a stir with a report on The Creativity Crisis—mapped by a decline in these test scores. http://www.newsweek.com/creativity-crisis-74665
The promoters of standardized education were not pleased at the timing of that article. The timing coincided with the roll-out of the Common Core State Standards. That roll-out was also complicated by a PR campaign from tech lobbyist Key Kay whose messaging about 21st Century Skills, included the words “creativity” and “innovation,” and a mishmash of other phrases intended to please his main clients.
So, any brief concern about creativity was tanked by supporters of the CCSS and literally buried in a dysfunctional website called EdSteps intended to buil a better measure of creativity (In my opinion a total farce and dud). http://www.epsilen.com/CCSSO/UploadedList/UploadWorkFileViewer.aspx?uploadID=U2480
Alex also implies that it is a good idea to look at corporate management gurus for advice. He thinks policy-makers are just looking at old-fashioned ideas, not tuned to the insights available from the “industrial/organizational psychologists research that is driving the best global companies.”
Sorry Alex, please read more widely. Schools should not function like corporate environments, even those considered exemplary places to work such as Google and Apple. Educators have much better sources of wisdom and experience than is tossed out by millionaire self-promoter, Tony Robbins; or the former CEO of the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa). You focus on one lesson from Alcoa CEO: “The important thing here to realize is that people operate within a system defined by its metric.”
Alex, I think that is the problem, seeing metrics as if these are authoritative–more authoritative than judgments made by professionals in education. I think your comments are well-intentioned and will strike a cord with anyone who understands the folly of current policies. But these policies are too attached to metrics that have been used to demean teachers, students, schools, and public education. Shifting to “feelings” is not a remedy, nor is “collaboration, which is often no more than following mandates, but with some discussion of these.
AS an example of false collaboration, I hope you will look again at the Peer Assistance and Review program in Montgomery County, Maryland. It mandates that teachers write SLOs–student learning objectives–and that they be evaluated by this management technique from a corporate-style guru named Peter Drucker, 1954. The process is known to be invalid and unreliable for teacher evaluation.
I hope your medical studies and career be relatively free of the issues that you have recognized as hostile to work that really matters–in teaching and in most professions. I recently saw a version of SLOs, much more complicated than for teachers, required for RNs working in skilled nursing facilities–each entry coded, with checklists running five or six pages long and totally overwhelming the human touch and care at the heart of nursing–and your post.
Well thought out reply Laura. Alex, I love that you’re invested enough to put together a questionnaire and reason through what you see as focus on the wrong metrics. As a teacher in both elementary and pre-school, I’ve often wished we could apply the same rigor for socio-emotional development in the upper grades, which is what it seems like you’re getting at.
I think there’s a lot of truth in what you say; we focus more on the things we measure, and if we’ve not trying to measure student or teacher satisfaction, those will take a back seat to quantifiable testing scores.
Here’s the thing though…if it was as easy as a questionnaire, one of the hundreds of thousands of excellent teachers and administrators in this country would have done it. (Notice I didn’t say millions. There are millions of teachers and administrators in this country. Most of them are not excellent) There’s no silver bullet here, even if we correctly interpret measures development outside the academics. What about parent engagement? What about wrap-around social services like the Harlem Children’s Zone?
If you’re still passionate about these ideas, wonderful; we need more people like you interested in education. We also need more people like you reading widely on the educational literature, to know what’s been tried and where the complications arise. Feel free to reach out on Facebook or otherwise.
While I don’t agree with all of Alex’s viewpoints, I do think he has quite a few words of wisdom.
My main takeaway – we need a new CEO, with a different vision.
Ellen T Klock
Bite your tongue! We need a new President. I’m tired of having my very existence defined by an economic meme.