Vicki Cobb, a prolific writer of science books for children, is offended by the simplistic idea that education practices can be “scaled up,” just like manufacturing processes. Standardized testing is the quintessence of “one size fits all.”
She writes:
“Let me explain why. The very nature of “standardized” testing runs counter to the work of educators and to the notion of America as a haven for the individual worth of each human being.
“There are certain professions that are considered “high touch.” Nursing, for example, is about patient care and “care” is the operative word. Nurses deliver human kindness to people who are not at the top of their game. A patient may want a glass of water, but getting it from a robot is not the same as interacting with another human being. Teaching is another “high touch” profession. Children learn because of the relationship established between them and their teacher. They see each other every day. They come to know each other intimately. A good teacher reveals herself to her students — her passions, her standards, her caring for her students. Students at first do their lessons to please their teacher.
“A good teacher ultimately teaches students to do the hard work of learning to please themselves. This is how good students are made.
“Think about it. If you remember the teacher who had the most influence on you, I’ll wager you remember nothing of substance that you learned from him. You remember how he made you feel about yourself and about the learning process. You remember how you worked and how you achieved.
“Independent schools know this and value it. Each student is hand-crafted. There is no mass production and they don’t take the standardized tests. These schools pride themselves on turning out individuals who are “college and career ready.” They know there are no short-cuts, no efficiencies, no one-size fits all.
“In other words, you can’t “scale up” education. Learning is hard work that must be done by each individual. Fortunately, children are born to learn. Just watch what they accomplish the first two years of life. The mass-production of education to take the standardized tests puts the fear of failure into students and teachers. Make no mistake, learning doesn’t happen without failure. When you embark on learning a new skill, you’re not going to be very good at it when you start. Yet the emphasis from the culture created by the standardized test is that only correct answers are acceptable. This is insane! Schools should not foster a fear of failure; schools need to be a safe place to fail.
“Finally, I want to challenge the assumption made by the corporate reformsters that there is a bell-shaped curve of teacher effectiveness. They can’t believe how such a high-percentage of teachers can be evaluated as effective. So they need some kind of process that will produce a bell-shaped curve. Why not use student grades on the standardized tests to evaluate the teachers? How could they possibly think this will separate the wheat from the chaff? Is it because they come from a culture where an external motivator — money and all that goes with it — shapes the behavior of its participants?
“Teaching is a profession that is self-selective. Most people don’t have the patience or interest to spend every day with 25 eight-year-olds. Only a certain kind of person has the talent and drive to develop the myriad interpersonal skills needed to shape the development of these children so they become fourth graders. A great teacher is not motivated by money, assuming she is paid a living wage. Her reward is the light she sees in the eyes of her students. It is pay-back for her revealed humanity, sacrifice and hard work.
“Such workers are to be cherished and supported and yet, (can you feel how hard I’m pounding these keys as I write?) these absolutely wrong-headed politicians are doing the exact opposite by imposing strict rubrics and punishments that are demoralizing teachers, destroying a generation of students and indelibly scarring the ones (both students and teachers) who manage to hang onto their souls as they barely survive.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“These schools pride themselves on turning out individuals who are “college and career ready.””
Yes, but more importantly, life and democracy ready.
Oh, and out of basement ready. 😉
I agree with Ms. Cobb that the relationship between teacher and student is what nurtures and inspires learning. However, I disagree with her premise that private schools “know this” and perform accordingly.
My experience is that private school teachers often know their subjects well, but that they are not knowledgeable about brain development and the significance of differing learning styles, an area where public school teachers are far superior. In Anya Kementez’s book “The Test” she corrects an important misconception: public school K-12 teachers are consistently better educated and hold more advanced degrees than private school teachers.
Holding the private school model up as better is misguided.The private school’s require far less paperwork and allow teachers to spend more time on teaching. Additionally, no standardized testing as well as more time for relationship building are desirable. But the decreased number of advanced degrees and decreased professional training,as well as the significant gap between the wealth of the students vs. that of the teachers make the private school model one which has to be questioned.
I’m late but couldn’t help complimenting you on the most coherent responses I’ve heard from you. Especially the “out of the basement ready”. Can this happen without ‘proficiency’ or ‘mastery at grade level’ of reading, reading COMPREHENSION and writing?
Vikki is “spot on.” What the Reformy crowd is advocating is something like the painting shops that put up dozens of canvases and then have “painters” go from one to the next one painting a house, another paint trees, another a dog, then you end up with a room full of near identical paintings that can be sold as “creative works” to decorate people’s homes. These are original paintings, but they are not art, per se. No masterpieces will come from such a process, only mediocrity.
Excellent analysis and perceptive insight. However, if one believes in the business model, not what is supported by reality and subject to reflection, introspection, and change, to what extent will that belief system be altered by the very conflicting data they claim to be so righteous and holy?
Your last paragraph speaks loudly to the problem! Good teachers must be sensitive and strict rubrics and punishment only serve to demoralize and drive them out of the profession. It would seem obvious too many of those able to hang in there and cope in today’s dysfunctional system are no longer the best and brightest. Parents don’t realize how much their kids are being shortchanged. Special interests have hamstrung well meaning school boards. Administrators are rewarded when they avoid confrontation by moving problems around instead of solving them. Instead of name calling and cursing the dark, caring well informed insiders must find solutions!
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
Reblogged this on Kmareka.com and commented:
This is, in my humble opinion, the crux of the matter. Not everything can be turned into an automated process.
There are as many ways to learn as there are students, and as many ways to teach as there are teachers.
We must somehow figure how out how to live together as a society, however.
Schools, as Dewey said, are miniature versions of society, which at best emphasize the better aspects of society.
Human behavior is only partly predictable, and if schools are based on just the predictable responses then they will be very limited in what they can teach.
Plus, it is really important not to confuse equity with standardization. Standardizing education is not the only way to achieve equity.
If standardization is the only way we know how to pursue equity, then that’s a failure of imagination and also a loss of nerve.
I want to challenge the assumption made by the corporate reformsters that there is a bell-shaped curve of teacher effectiveness”
The Bell curve models random variation about a mean value.
So, presumably the bell curve for teachers models random variation about a mean teacher.
I had a few teachers whom I considered boring and some who were “strict” (all business, rarely smiled, etc), but I can’t remember a single one who was truly “mean”.
Though that does not mean a mean teacher does not exist, of course.
Who is this “mean teacher” anyway?
Wendy Kopp? Michelle Rhee? They look pretty mean in some of their photos, though, as the saying goes one should not judge a book by its (TIME) cover.
Vicki Cobb is on the right track. Educational institutions work best when the students are at the center of the endeavors of both teachers and administrators. Collaboration rather than competition guides stakeholders to make the best decisions for students and their families. Teaching is about making connections, both academic and social-emotional. Standardized testing offers no solutions, other than to distract from the work at hand.
Completely agreed. I think there ought to be a moment to put these clueless, wrongheaded politicians into their own strict rubrics and punishments to their embarrassment and humiliation. They will get no kudos–absolutely nothing whatsoever– from teachers, students, and parents until they show contrite to all the damage they have done to public education.
You write “Why not use student grades on the standardized tests to evaluate the teachers? “.
There is an assumption that these grades have a bell shaped distribution. Yes, maybe, after much intensive rescaling and transformation. I think that one reason for there being only four “levels of proficiency” is that there will be so many scores at zero or close that no amount of rescaling will get you a bell shaped curve. Giving exactly the same test to all, yes, ALL, kids is dumb in the extreme.
I’m sorry Howard, your feeling that “there will be many scores at zero” reflect an assumption that “many” kids boycotted the test entirely? Otherwise, a basic statistics class will say you can’t be right!
Scaling up and replication have been part of federal policy aims since the 1960s.
Some of this thinking came from work by extension agents in agriculture who, during the Great Depression, could take a tool-kit of ideas on the road and help farmers improve their productivity per acre, reduce the hazards of another Dust Bowl, and so on. Lessons on scaling up from the days of Henry Ford were applied to scaling up for rapid production of everything during WW II, from uniforms to aircraft.
Those examples of scaling up and replication have long since morphed into a view of scaling up and replication evident in retail chains, branded franchise systems, with research offering proofs of concept and procedures for implementation based on “best practices,” meaning most bang for the buck and as standardized as possible.
A recent example of this thinking is the American Diploma Project aimed at standardizing high school requirements,with Achieve, Inc starting with five states, then sponsoring “institutes” to get officials in other states to use the same standards aligned with workplace and college entrance requirements. That effort, circa 2003, was expanded to create the k-12 Common Core “state” standards through a sustained marketing campaign that continues today. The original plan was to have NAEP tests modified to serve as the measure college and career readiness. That was before PARCC and SBAC tests were created. Now, of course, charters and chains of branded private schools are common, along with TFA as a brand of teachers, and all of the more traditional product lines for schools. Scaling up is a particular fascination of research communities in education, who look longingly at achievements such as the near eradication of polio, as if there are comparable “cures” for what problems in education.
All of this standardization comes from those that see students as widgets to be processed through a system. Those of us that have taught for many years have nurtured many students that did not excel in reading or math. Consequently, they did not fit the mold for traditional high “intelligence.” Yet, these same students may excel at sports, music, painting or drawing or design. The human brain and spirit are not standardized, and we still do not understand all of their complexities.
Where do your comments lead us? Tests should be useful to determine what strengths and weaknesses each child’s genes and upbringing create as a starting point for ‘learning’. I’m surprised you feel standardized tests must, by definition, lead to a one dimensional education.
Just as one student may enjoy, and score better in, science than math, isn’t it possible to use this information to insure they achieve a “minimum standard” in math while encouraging them to do “extra reading etc.” in science so they will stay interested and avoid boredom in a typical class setting.
Standardized tests are useful for only test-makers and those who are promoting for the sake of their convenience. The best of their own business! Certainly NOT for students and teachers whatsoever.
It makes no sense because these tests are only making selective number of students ‘smart’ in getting scores. It’s like how to train young students to climb up the corporate/political ladder in order to become a ‘successful,’ sycophantic corporatist or ministry official in national/state government. That’s what’s standardized testing is for.
Creating wily, wishy-washy elite bureaucrats and lawmakers who put the challenging issues on back burners when facing the national plight, as physics Novel prize laureate Shuji Nakamura says.
The importance of eros (“love” broadly understood) in real education has been greatly remarked upon ever since the days of Plato and Socrates. For over 2000 years since Plato, Western thinkers have located the process of genuine learning in the relationship between young people and the adults whom they admire, or “love” in a broad sense. Western thinkers have noted that without this inner experience young people do not learn; they merely behave under some kind of external coercion, like oxen being moved about by aliens who have implanted rings in their noses.
Today’s education “reformers” send their own children to schools in which the quality of teacher–student interaction constitutes the soil in which children grow and learn. Without such soil, there is little growth, only some kind of external compulsion. In such schools one always finds strong, deep relations between students and teachers, because these schools know that children grow only when children love the adults who guide them. Our “deform” friends would be aghast at treating their little loved ones as anything other than important people.
What these same “reformers” want for your children, however, is a phony education, one that uses force to make children seem as if they are growing, when in fact all they are being taught to do is be led by their noses by some alien authority. Teachers and students do not experience nurturing relations; they experience “test prep.”
No one who has been genuinely “educated” takes education “reform” seriously because they know it is not genuine education, but rather some kind of coerced conditioning for someone else’s purposes.
The ultimate insult here, I suppose, is that children of color, so long denied membership in society as equal beings, are now being sold a bill of goods that equates conditioning for work in organizations over which they will exercise no control or guidance, as the same thing as individual growth and self-direction.
It is a pitiful and tragic turn in our democracy. No good will come of it. None. (But profits for others are sure to flow.)
TAGO!
Wow- excellent analysis and analogies!
I used to think that common core was necessary because I would get students in the middle of the year from other school districts that offered Pre-Algebra. Since the lowest class we offer in math at my high school is Algebra 1, these students were lost. The only remedy I see is if we start using technology so that math takes a student from where he is at, to where he is suppose to be.
I teach English Language Learners Algebra 1. Many of them come with very limited formal education from their native lands. They are NOT ready for Algebra, but that is were they are placed. They can’t add, subtract, multipy and divide. Some students in are special ed classes, (we have over 200 cases) and they don’t even know their alphabet. One “Common” does not fit all.
This is a big problem among ELLS in a one size fits all world, Many ELLs are SIFE (students with interrupted formal education), and the fact is many others barely got started. We are doing them a disservice by ignoring their gaps. The best results for them is a wise teacher that will compact the curriculum, meet them where they are, cut out the frills and give them the foundation they need to move forward. In a subject that is so sequential like math, we cannot teach algebra without a foundation. This is what works, but it is difficult in high school where the gaps are so huge, and the program does not fit their needs. I’m a retired ESL teacher with 36 years of experience. Sadly, many of the students will “age out” before they can finish high school.
Has it occurred to anyone that the person who believes a glass of water extended to a sick person by a robot is equivalent to one extended by a human being is himself a robot – at least mentally? I have dealt with many such people. They will never understand what Vicki Cobb or Steve Cohen are talking about.
Beautifully potent and absolutely true.
“Each student is hand-crafted.”
There’s a lot of good in the post, but sentences like this jump out at me. Students are human beings. They have minds of their own. They’re not chunks of wood to be turned on a lathe. They’re not born to be turned into products, handcrafted or otherwise.
I’ve always been a little bit suspicious of the idea of “molding young minds.” Influence kids, yes. Encourage them, challenge them, offer them role models, give them opportunities, invite them to follow their interests and explore new paths. Teach them useful things. But don’t try to shape them into the person you think they should be.
Before a student can “follow their interests and explore new paths” they must acquire reading skills at high enough levels to make ‘investigation’ rewarding, not frustrating! A child will gravitate back to gaming devices and other diversions unless schools insist they practice reading enough to become proficient….to master it at a level where it becomes, dare I say it, enjoyable.
Kent Harris:
I think you’ve got it backwards. On one hand, you don’t have to know how to read to follow your interests. You don’t even have to be able to see. On the other hand, interest in a subject (and interest in reading itself) can be a motivation to read. A child who likes dinosaurs and starts out looking at the pictures of a dinosaur book will have a purpose for learning to read the captions, then the text of the book. And he’s likely to check out more books on dinosaurs.
Even so, nothing I said suggests that students shouldn’t practice reading. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence that free voluntary reading–students following their own reading interests–results in improved literacy. (See the work of Stephen Krashen. Here, for example: http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/articles/singapore.pdf )
Also, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with “gaming devices and other diversions.” Diversions can and do lead to fulfilling careers. A child who’s allowed (or encouraged) to indulge in a game, or a collection, or a hobby will develop a sense of agency and confidence, even mastery, that can carry over to success in other arenas.
A kid obsessed with Legos may become an engineer. A kid who’s denied Legos probably won’t. Likewise, a classroom that doesn’t let kids explore things they’re interested in will diminish their odds of success once they’re out of school.
Reblogged this on The education of a teacher. and commented:
“Think about it. If you remember the teacher who had the most influence on you, I’ll wager you remember nothing of substance that you learned from him. You remember how he made you feel about yourself and about the learning process. You remember how you worked and how you achieved.” -Vicki Cobb
That quote resonates with me so much as a former student and current teacher. I think of my first grader teacher, Ms. Saltvich, my AP US History teacher, Dean C. Brink, Mr. Woods, my middle school basketball coach and my college advisor, Dr. Aguirre. I remember exactly how those teachers made me feel and knew exactly what their expectations of me were. I learned so much from those mentors/teachers. That’s my goal everyday I enter the classroom as a teacher now.
“Let me explain why. The very nature of “standardized” testing runs counter to the work of educators and to the notion of America as a haven for the individual worth of each human being.”
From my perspective as an English teacher in South Korea, this is not hyperbole when Ms. Cobb states that the standardization of education is un-American. Living and working in a communal Confucian society as an American teaches you the strengths and weaknesses of a different, more conformist way of life. Without passing too much judgment on my host country, I must say that from what I see of the education system here and the box they try and fit all students in, I do not want the American education system to mimic the Korean one in any way. In fact, I bock at any comments made by the President, Arne Duncan or any ed policy leader which favorable compares the Korean ed system to that of America’s. It works for Korea and fits their culture, this is not true of America, however.