A comment posted on the blog:
“Thank-you. I’ve been teaching for 26 years. I currently teach kindergarten. You should see the SLO (Student Learning Objective) test that I have to give my kindergarteners next week. The state of Georgia, in its infinite wisdom, came up with the term Student Learning Objective, realizing too late that it spells SLO. How appropriate.
“Anyway, next week’s test is hilarious when you read it, knowing what I know about five year olds & seeing it from their point of view. It is also ridiculous and sad. I so wish Bill Gates would come and administer that test for me next week so he could get a taste of what he & others are causing our students to go through. Testing isn’t educating, but it’s all we seem to do anymore. Even in primary school.
“To make matters worse, our new “teacher evaluation instrument” is convoluted and makes little sense. We are observed 6 times a year and downgraded if our lesson plans aren’t done just so, no matter that they are MY lesson plans. Here’s the real kicker: we must have our “I can” statements clearly posted, taking up valuable wall space, and we must refer to them and chant “I can….. ” do whatever ridiculous, age inappropriate objective set aside for us to “teach them.” I said the “I can” statements with my students a couple of times, realized how utterly useless they are, and haven’t done it since. It’s bad enough that I have to have them posted. My principal has told me that I live in a world of “butterflies, birds, and rainbows” and that I “do my own thing.” I’m glad she’s finally figured that out.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How wonderful that you live in a world of butterflies, birds, and rainbows! We all teach those things, don’t we? I applaud you for standing up for the kids. I’m a K-teacher, 10+ years here in NJ, right there with you.
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I teach kindergarten in Nebraska. I too live in a world of butterflies, birds and rainbows. I would be failing my kids to do anything else! We have to be their advocates!!!!!!!
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And that is exactly where a K teacher should be – in a land of butterflies, birds, and rainbows. When I started teaching (in PA) a K teacher was fired if she taught any reading skills. They were the happy days of “Eensy, weensy spider” when kids separated from their parents and learned all those wonderful pre-reading and writing skills as they learned to socialize. Dr. Marie Fonzi
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Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, rheephormsters gotta hate…
As some of the students I worked with as a SpecED TA would say on occasion: “Don’t be a hater!”
Good advice. Apparently you were listening in.
😃
And an added bonus: you won’t have to break any mirrors in your house because you are ashamed of looking at the person staring back.
I would have loved to have worked with you in the world of butterflies, birds, and rainbows.
😎
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I guess the FEDs think GRIT is a good thing for Kindergarteners … nuts! Here’s the warped mindset: if we live in a harsh world, then treat our young harshly for they will need to be harsh when they grow up. This mindset is totally ridiculous and most damaging. Kids model adult behavior, and I certainly don’t want a world filled with meanness and greed. I don’t want a world where people just “piss” on each other for their own profits and selfish agendas.
And yes, I do want butterflies, birds, and rainbows for your young, and maybe they will grow to appreciate that WAR is NEVER the answer to conflicts.
Remember the song, IMAGINE, by John Lennon? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRhq-yO1KN8
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I always thought that kindergarteners got grit by eating sand on the playground. At least that grit is age and developmentally appropriate.
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Yes, some of us remember that song and its most important messages. Thanks for posting it!
“maybe they will grow to appreciate that WAR is NEVER the answer to conflicts.”
Or as Edwin Starr sang:
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I’m a retired kdgteacher of 25 years. Your commentsa hit the nail on the head. Thank you so much.
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In China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution (1965 – 1976), the Red Guard had its own slogans. The members of the Red Guard were brainwashed children and teens who were allowed to rule the streets and the country for several years as they terrorized their own parents, teachers and anyone who was unfortunate enough to own a business. At least 2 million adults killed themselves to escape the continuous slogan ruled insanity that came close to tearing that nation apart totally.
The teenage Red Guard were not members of the ruling political party in China, and the leaders of the CCP feared them because those children had the backing of one man, Mao.
My wife was a child in China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. She wrote about that era in her 1992 New York Times Notable Book of the Year memoir “Red Azalea”. She knows what a Cultural Revolution is like. She lived through one and it almost killed her, and she has often said that the United States is going through its own Cultural Revolution now, but this one is being funded and led by a group at the other end of the spectrum: wealthy, powerful and corrupt oligarchs, for instance, Bill Gates (and his cabal: the Walton family, the Koch brothers, Eli Broad, about 9 hedge fund billionaires, etc.
My wife says Americans will have to suffer as bad as the Chinese did before it ends.
How did the Chiense end Mao’s Cultural Revolution. First, Mao had to die before the People’s Liberation Army would support Deng Xiaoping. As soon as Mao died, a group known as the gang of four led by Mao’s wife, who planned to take over China and keep the insanity going, was arrested, tried, convicted and executed. Mao’s wife escaped execution by hanging herself in her prison cell.
We know who the leaders are of the U.S. Cultural Revolution, so the question is: when are we going to do what Ding Xiaoping taught us must be done to end this insanity here in America, and we already know who our Mao is, the ring leader of the oligarchs?
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Lloyd, I appreciate the lessons you offer on this blog.
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You’re welcome
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Lloyd,
In my humble opinion, this is a far fetched comparison.
Cultural revolution killed millions of people and was one of the worst times in the history of China. What we are going through is differences of opinion in different segments of the American economy and is not comparable to the Chinese cultural revolution. Cultural revolution happened in a totalitarian regime in China.
We are the longest surviving democracy in the world and it has built in corrective measures that are firmly in place to prevent horrors like the cultural revolution.
Peaceful protest is the only way, but I hope that you are not recommending an uprising (the tone of your last paragraph) in this country.
If you believe in what you stated above, I hope you can get help to resolve your issues. Good luck to you and your family.
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Implying that someone is mentally ill because you disagree with his comparison is pretty cheap.
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Raj, Deng Xiaoping came to power because of political infighting in China. Lloyd does say that his wife has commented that the US is going to have to suffer like China suffered, before we get back on the right path, but nowhere in there does he say that we who oppose educational so-called reform should start any kind of an uprising. If we reform as China did, that would be more like if one faction of the Democratic Party took over from another one, say if Hillary Clinton were to get elected, and turn drastically away from President Obama’s policies.
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“We are the longest surviving democracy in the world ….”
Only because our powers that be have been remarkably successful in maintaining the appearance of democracy in an increasingly totalitarian society. But the edges of the illusion are fraying, as we’ve seen in Ferguson and Baltimore.
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I agree with Dienne and also the lessons Lloyd teaches, and in my opinion, with the overwhelming redistribution of wealth upward to the top 1 – 1/2% of billionaires, we are as close to a complete takeover of our former democratic republic by them as we have ever been before. We are teetering on the edge of a totalitarian state run completely by the self serving oligarchs.
‘Trickle down’ is a failure for the populace, and there can only be a rude and bloody awakening, starting in the inner cities…see Ferguson and Baltimore lately…and harken to history with Watts in LA and Rochester in NY and Detroit in Michigan and Chicago in Illinois, decades ago…many of those areas destroyed in the late 1990s have still, purposefully, not been rebuilt.
I frankly am dismayed at the lack of knowledge or interest of most American voters who avoid learning history, and sit watching TV with glazed eyes, sipping beer and/or sucking their thumbs as Nero, now in the modern form of the Waltons, Broad, Murdoch, etc, does/do not bother to even fiddle at all, but himself/theirselves burns down our hard fought American values and society for the aquisition of ever more lucre. .
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Yes, Mao’s Cultural Revolution led to the death of millions but the slogans and brainwashing came first. Mao stepped down as State Chairman of the PRC in 1959 due to the failure of the Great Leap Forward and the millions of deaths from the droughts, floods and famine that took place under his leadership.
But Mao made a come back with his Little Red Book of quotations that the schools adopted as a text that all students studied. From May 1966, student members of the Communist Party were encouraged to carry copies of Mao’s Little Red Book of quotations.
The Common Core agenda in the United States was designed to achieve the same goals as Mao’s Little Red Book did—to bring about a drastic cultural change in the United States by doing away with the transparent, democratic, non profit public schools and turning the power to teach and guide our children to private sector, for profit corporations that are free to be opaque (secretive), for profit (no matter how you look at it) Charter schools that are not binding by the same laws the democratic process created over the years for the country’s public schools.
I submit, that this top to bottom Cultural Revolution being brought about by the Common Core agenda of Bill Gates Cabal and his army of puppets isn’t over yet.
The school to prison pipeline is growing stronger everyday. It is obvious that children who do not comply with the authority of these corporations will end up being dealt with by shipping them off to prisons at earlier ages to get rid of them.
“Across the United States, thousands of children have been sentenced as adults and sent to adult prisons. Nearly 3000 nationwide have been sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Children as young as 13 years old have been tried as adults and sentenced to die in prison, typically without any consideration of their age or circumstances of the offense. … Fourteen states have no minimum age for trying children as adults. Children as young as eight have been prosecuted as adults. Some states set the minimum age at 10, 12, or 13.”
http://www.eji.org/childrenprison
In addition, your allegation that U.S. is the longest surviving democracy is WRONG. First, how can anyone claim the United States was a democracy when millions of Africans were slaves? When the United States became a country about only 10% of the entire population was eligible to vote: white men who owned property. White men who were Jews were excluded from that privilege. How is that different from China when only the 80+ million members of the Chinese Communist Party vote on national issues? But you made no mention of the 600+ million Chinese who take part in democratic elections and the village level in rural China.
Click to access 3-tomm.pdf
It is arguable that the United States did not become a democracy until everyone who was born here no matter their race or sex was treated as a full citizen who was allowed to vote in local, state and national elections. Thanks to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, minorities finally won the right to vote but now states are restricting that right again. In fact, women (about half of the population) didn’t gain the right to vote until August 18, 1929 with the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted American women the right to vote. When the U.S. became a country, women were considered the property of men, couldn’t hold down jobs and couldn’t own property. That privilege took time to win state by state. Change came in piecemeal fashion. As late as 1867 a decision of the Supreme Court of Illinois in Cole v. Van Riper noted that “It is simply impossible that a married woman should be able to control and enjoy her property as if she were sole, without practically leaving her at liberty to annul the marriage.”
And it is worth mentioning the horrid Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. You might want to read “The China Mirage” to discover what happened to most Chinese who were already living in the United States—even their children who were born here. Chinese who were even born here and managed to survive being murdered by mobs were ineligible for citizenship until 1943.
http://www.history.com/topics/chinese-exclusion-act
The term democracy, which means “rule by the people,” was coined by the Greeks of ancient Athens to describe their city-state’s system of self-rule, which reached its golden age around 430 B.C. under the skilled orator and politician Pericles. It is probable that the Athenians were not the first group of people to adopt such a system (a few places in India have traditions of local democracy that claim earlier origins) but because the Greeks named it, they have a good claim at being the “first” democracy, even though large portions of Athenian society—most notably women and slaves—could not participate.
The title of oldest continuously functioning democracy is more hotly contested. Iceland, the Faroe Islands and the Isle of Man all have local parliaments founded in the ninth and 10th centuries, when Vikings pillaged, plundered and set up legislative bodies on the sea-islands of far northern Europe. Iceland’s national parliament, the Althing, dates back to A.D. 930, but it spent centuries under Norwegian and Danish rule. Man and the Faroes, meanwhile, remain dependencies of the United Kingdom and Denmark, respectively.
The United States is among the oldest modern democracies, but it is only the oldest if the criteria are refined to disqualify claimants ranging from Switzerland to San Marino. Some historians suggest that the Native American Six Nations confederacy (Iroquois), which traces its consensus-based government tradition across eight centuries, is the oldest living participatory democracy. Others point out that meaningful democracy only arrived at a national level in 1906, when Finland became the first country to abolish race and gender requirements for both voting and for serving in government.
http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/what-is-the-worlds-oldest-democracy
One more fact to consider, why does the United States have the largest prison population non the planet? You might want to look at the list and explain how the U.S. can claim to be a democracy when it locks more of its citizen up than even China or the Russian Federation do.
http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison-population-total?field_region_taxonomy_tid=All
I think it is highly arguable that most Americans live under the illusion that they live in a democracy and are not aware that this country is an oligarchy and if isn’t a total oligarchy, it’s headed that way in the fast lane.
To be clear, I do not advocate an armed uprising against the govenrment of the United States. But I would not protest if the oligarchs who are leading the Common Core Cultural Revolution ended up the victim of angry mobs—demanding our democracy back—that impale those same oligarchs on the sharp end of pitchforks followed by tar and feathers and then burned at the stake.
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You are ignorant of one of the founders of our democracy, Thomas, Jefferson, who indeed advocated periodoc uprisings to “water the tree of democracy” with the blood of patriots.
The cheap shot is typical of your condescending tone so I wasn’t surprised.
I’m with Frederick Douglass myself when he argues that power never conceded a thing without a fight and that those who argue for peaceful means only are those who want the rain without the thunder, lightning, and wind that the storm must bring.
We were born from revolution and we have used revolutionary means to achieve change many times.
Claiming that the oligarchs don’t kill people simply because they don’t employ the same tactics used in China is ludicrous. Check the statistics of life expectancy, medical care affordability and availability, infant mortality rates, preventable disease and deaths, hazards in the food supply and destruction of the environment. And then there’s the open season by the police on men of color and the outrageous numbers who are imprisoned in this country. All direct results of political disagreements and greedy sociopaths running our country.
You are guilty of assuming that because you don’t feel uncomfortable or threatened then no one else should either, right Raj? But. you are nit everyman and you don’t speak for most.
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Lloyd I have taught excerpts of that book!
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“In China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution (1965 – 1976), the Red Guard had its own slogans.”
And now we have SLOgans . . .
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The war on public school teachers continues. And by public schools, I am referring to the real public schools, not charter schools which are private schools siphoning off precious dollars, funds and resources from the real public schools.
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“You should see the SLO (Student Learning Objective) test that I have to give my kindergarteners next week.”
When ?????
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Howard…would much appreciate it if you could post a few questions from this test for 5 year olds. I am in higher ed public policy and have seen tests for older students, which neither I nor my colleagues could answer, primarily in math, but have not seen those imposed on babies.
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I too would like to see the test, especially because I have written a lot about the marketing of SLOs…which continues unabated in the absence of research to support the reliability and validity of the process… one required in 27 states for teachers of “untested subjects”–what a strange phrase, and no longer true.
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What a way to introduce kindergarten students to school. It sucks the life out of it.
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School Sucks!
Many students have been saying that for years and years.
The question is: Have we listened???
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Yes, I heard “school sucks” many times but who was saying it? I remember that most of the kids who made that allegation were usually reading way below grade level, had no love of reading and did little or no work. I don’t remember any high performing students say that—-especially from the students who I worked with during the seven out of thirty years as a teacher when I had one section of high school journalism in addition to my four sections of regular English, a class where more than 95% of the grades were A’s or B’s and no one earned a failing grade. These kids loved what they were doing and they worked hard.
Often the voice we remember is the one that complained the most—not those students who cooperated, were pleasant to work with and always earned excellent grades.
For instance, on parent conference nights each semester I seldom saw the parents of the students who were failing my classes. Most of the parents I did see were the parents of my best students and they were honesty concerned about their child’s education. I taught about 200 students and would see maybe 20 – 30 on parent conference night and most of them were earning A’s, B’s or C’s. In fact, some of my best students dragged their parents in so they could hear form the teacher how hard they were working.
There’s an old saying that we can’t please everyone.
Are we giving too much power to those who say, “School Sucks!”?
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Our KG students have had to take 3 CCSS – like tests this year. They were required to watch a video and take notes, read a book on the same topic, answer questions about the book and video topic, and then write an essay comparing the two. I am not making this up. It’s as if, because they should be able to do this in intermediate grades (which is questionable in itself), they need to practice it starting in KG.
I am an elementary school principal in FL, and I would love to hire this Georgia KG teacher!! Having taught KG for years myself, I know how incredibly inappropriate this type of instruction is. It is a very sad thing when a principal’s job has become protecting teachers and students from the state and district curriculum and assessments.
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That is one of the most horrifying things I have ever read. Most, but by no means all, of my 8th graders would find this kind of assignment challenging, but do-able. Some of my students STILL couldn’t do this, however. And to ask kids that are five and six years old to do it? Unconscionable.
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How can a 5 year old takes notes, and write an essay, when their small muscle control and unformed brain cannot maintain even holding a pencil yet to do this? This is CRIMINAL!
Annie, I have a very smart 5 year old grandson who would balk at, and probably not understand, this assignment. I hope more principals stand their ground and rebel at this INSANITY..
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Since (if) you are the principal why in the hell did you allow those educational malpractices to happen.
Sorry, Annie, but YOU are a BIG Part of the PROBLEM!
And, no, I don’t want to hear about “You don’t know me, I’d lose my job, blah, blah, blah” for you are contributing to the banality of evil that are these malpractices.
NO EXCUSE!
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Duane…wish instead of placing blame on a principal brave enough to give us this info, you would learn to listen and not always feel the need to do a put down.
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Sorry to disappoint you Ellen, but these types, and by that I mean those that Go Along To Get Along are the ones who allow these insane, and yes evil*, educational malpractices to continue to thrive off the backs of the most innocent, the children, causing much harm to many-most if not all.
NO! I CAN’T JUST SIT BACK AND WATCH AND YES I HAVE TO CALL THEM OUT FOR WHAT THEY ARE “BANAL PURVEYORS OF EVIL”.
It is not a “put down” but a SHOUT OUT so that all can learn to recognize where many of the problems lie–with those who for personal self interest (which is the antithesis of how a true teacher acts) refuse to give up their personal gravy train even though the train tracks are littered with the innocent young minds and bodies who have been rolled over by these nefarious educational malpractices.
Read Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem” to help understand how cooperating with, collaborating with evil begets even greater evil.
*No, it’s not a stretch to call it evil:
Evil Definition
dictionary.search.yahoo.com
adj. adjective
1. Morally bad or wrong; wicked. an evil tyrant.
2. Causing ruin, injury, or pain; harmful. the evil effects of a poor diet.
3. Characterized by or indicating future misfortune; ominous. evil omens.
n. noun
1. The quality of being morally bad or wrong; wickedness.
2. That which causes harm, misfortune, or destruction. a leader’s power to do both good and evil.
3. An evil force, power, or personification.
adv. adverb
1. In an evil manner.
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Ohio and Maryland team up for a standards based assessment system for PRESCHOOLERS. EC-CAS and looks a lot like Common Core.
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I have news for your clueless principal. Kindergarten Kids live in a world of birds, butterflies and rainbows too. Th e y do no need or understand the push to make them into Corporate clones.
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I found some documents about Georgia’s SLO. This stuff is nonsense. I can’t believe that people get paid to write it. It is pseudo-scientific at best.
Here is the link to one document:
Click to access 2014-2015%20SLOs%20and%20FAQs.pdf
Here is a paragraph from that document:
What is Depth of Knowledge (DOK)?
DOK is an element of the Webb Alignment Tool
developed by Dr. Norman Webb, from the
University of Wisconsin, to align standards with
assessments. DOK focuses on the complexity of
the task rather than the difficulty because it is
descriptive in nature, not taxonomy. Depth of
Knowledge is represented by four levels of
cognitive complexity: Recall, Skill/Concept,
Strategic Thinking, and Extended Thinking. In
the development of SLO assessments, the DOK
of the selected standards is determined as well as
the DOK of each item. All measurement items
must be at the same DOK level of the standard or
higher.
This is all nonsense. First, how are these terms defined? What is the distinction between thinking and strategic thinking? How are they different from extended thinking, whatever that is? I have a Ph.D. in philosophy. This stuff is complete nonsense. Also, wouldn’t the complexity of something be a factor that influences its difficulty?
The second sentence doesn’t even make sense. What does it mean? I have no idea. It is complete nonsense. I don’t understand what sort of logical relationships are supposed to exist between complexity and description and between difficulty and taxonomy. They are just making stuff up. How silly.
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As one prof to another….
Your link here to Georgia SLO Standards for pre-schoolers, who are I assume between 3 – 5 years old, is proof that the inmates have taken over the asylum.
I am sending this out to all my lists and hope there is a major uprising of educators, and parents and grandparents, at this huge child abuse imposed by Wall Street greed merchants purely for profit.
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We had mandatory DOK training this year. All of this snake oil is pedaled by professional orgs who take a small cut in advertising and pro,otional dollars. What a load of nonsense and how completely useless to a classroom teacher! Yet I was able to dazzle my evaluator by adding 3 DOK referenmces to my formal observation lesson plan, which was 8 pages in order to meet the Danielson voodoo requirements. Uprising, yes! Need it NOW!
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DOK was created by the military to score ASVAB tests. Each question was weighted based on the DOK of that question. Somehow educational administrators want teachers to include DOK in lesson plans which makes no sense because it was meant to measure outcomes, not be part of the teaching. Level 4 DOK would be if a student can create and complete a task with no teacher set guidelines. In my music class, that would mean a student could compose an aesthetically pleasing piece of music using good musical theory with absolutely no guidelines from me. I can’t say how many measures, what key, what instrument, anything. I can certainly see my six year old students doing that! I was told this by one of the writers of the fine arts DOKs. Elementary students can not reach level 4, and should focus on the first two levels to establish the foundations to get there. However, school administrators insist that teachers should be teaching at levels 3/4, which again makes no sense because DOK focuses on levels of demonstration by the student, not level of rigor by the teacher. I can’t wait until this stupid fad is obsolete.
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“It is pseudo-scientific. . . ”
You’re being way too civil. It is 100% Pure Extract of Bovine, Equine and Porcine Grade AA Excrement.
In more common terms horse manure, pig crap or plain ol bullshit.
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Neither the “SLO” designation. nor the “I can..” procedure is unique to Georgia. We have had “SLOs” for 3 years now in NYS and many of our elementary teachers are now using the “I can…” procedure to start each class. I’d love to know exactly how all these procedures get passed from state to state.
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Janice,
I have documented the spread of the SLO process in a paper called “The Marketing SLOs: 1999-2014.”
The purveyors of the SLO process are a savvy self-appointed management expert named William Slotnick and an small army of marketers of the SLO process hired by the US Department of Education as “technical assistance” providers for federal education policies that have so little merit that have to be sold to educators.
Five studies show there is NO evidence to support the SLO process for teacher evaluation.
The process was introduced in Denver in 1999 as part of a pay-for-performance scheme funded by the Broad and two regional foundations. The process is based on “management by objectives,” dubbed MBO, vintage 1954 proposed by a then popular business guru, Peter Drucker. Most businesses stopped using Drucker’s version of MBO by the mid 1970s. By 1977, it was ridiculed as an example of “bureaupathology.” Same can be said of the resurrection of the method as SLOs ” student learning objectives.”
Over 250 marketers of products, services, and for-profit schools–including dog and pony shows for “professional development” such as the FABULOUS idea of starting each lesson with “I can……..” objectives– have been organized since 1990 as The Education Industry Association (EIA).
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Laura, please send me a copy of your paper on the SLOs emergence.
Diane
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I am VERY interested in this paper!
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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I followed CCProf’s Georgia link. Can’t find any actual SLO’s, here why:
“Where can I find the SLOs that were approved by Bright from the Start [ = Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning] ? A: They are housed in the secured section of SharePoint and access is only granted to district identified personnel.”
Another FAQ:
“What should Pre-K teachers be doing with the students during the first five weeks of school and how is this information used as a pre assessment?
During the first five weeks of school, teachers are establishing routines, teaching procedures, and organizing instructional activities. This includes large group, small group, center time, outside time, and other activities. By making observations and gathering documentation for the SLOs during the first five weeks of school, teachers are able to assess student knowledge prior to instructional activities. This provides teachers with a plan for student growth.”
How great that PreK is so obviously divided into 5wks of set-up followed by the beginning of instructional activites 😉 There was that big ol’ set-up slot just begging to be filled by data collection! I recognize “large group, small group, center time, outside time” from an employee daycare I fled in 2010 (after nine years) when a new director came in, intent on finding state-subsidized ‘Abbott School kids’ to fill out enrollment. Out went the play stations, in came tables, chairs, & workbooks. This sort of lunacy has been encoded into NJ law for a while.
Best FAQ: “Are teachers allowed to make any substitutions to the examples given for collecting documentation? (May a song other than “Willoughby Wallaby Woo” be used in assessing “substituting different beginning sounds”?)”
I’m going to suggest to the hapless FAQuestioner another Raffi fave, “I Eat Apples And Bananas”… Gee I wonder if he was hired by the NYAEC to illustrate phonological awareness? Did he know his little listeners would be assessed “Not Yet/ In Process/ Proficient”?
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Dear Ms Ravitch,
The author of *Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology *describes a fundamental flaw in technocrats’ approach to “fixing education.” Read to the end of the article for the velvet hammer he brings down on Mr. Gates.
The author will be speaking at Seattle’s Town Hall whose presentations are often recorded and broadcast later on KUOW.
Thank you for your work and blog. It is a lifeline.
-Joan
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/technology-only-a-tool-in-social-change-ex-microsoftie-says/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=article_left
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Thanks for this link and your post, Joan. As you say, the end of the article asks the critical question about Gates (and other billionaires).
“The larger question is, “Are we really comfortable living in a society where no matter what your merit, it is possible for one person to make so much money that they can affect policies in large countries?”
“I think we have not really thought that through as much as we should. Gates has done a good job of learning about it and he’s a credible source in [philanthropy].”
“But there’s no a priori reason why somebody who becomes a software tycoon should be making decisions about international development.”
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“Gates has done a good job of learning about it and he’s a credible source in [philanthropy].”
Oh really?
Is that why he supported (to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars) development and nationwide imposition of Common Core with very little input from actual education experts?
Is that why he has supported VAM (junk science) for firing teachers?
The above claim reads like something a Gates suckup would say. Someone who is completely ignorant of the reality about Gates’ “philanthropy.”
And actually, there’s no a priori reason why somebody who has produced the endless stream of garbage that Microsoft has produced should even be making decisions about software.
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Dear Poet…I only quoted the linked article Joan posted…of course the statement is ludicrous.
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Ellen,
Sorry if I gave the wrong impression.
My “Oh really” was not directed at you.
It was rhetorical.
I was merely pointing out how much of a suckup the author of that fluff piece is.
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I teach art in a primary school in GA, and I recognize this story all too well. It is really horrible what has happened to kindergarten and early childhood ed. This year for the first time I had to do a SLO in art, which impressed me as a fairly ridiculous waste of my and my students’ time. Not that I don’t do pre and post-assessments, because all teachers need to find out what their students know and can do. But the fact that I cannot design my OWN SLO, and that students don’t get to see their work, pre- and post, renders the assessment merely busywork and a form of child abuse, in my opinion. The kicker for me came at the end of our last day of post-planning, when I was informed that I must present data on my students’ pre and post SLO scores in the fall during our pre-planning meetings. Like any of the classroom teachers care even a little bit about this data, which is pretty meaningless even to me,and completely useless to them. I can learn from the actual test artifact (a drawing) something about the cognitive development of a given student over the year, but that is about all. The numbers say nothing meaningful. And I would argue that that is largely true of the numbers gathered from the test data in academic classrooms as well. The numbers tell you (at least at our school) that about 20% of our students are not ready when they get into whatever grade for what is expected of them, and they continue on that path. A few are already ahead of the curve at the beginning of the year, and they stay that way. At the end of the year usually some kids move up and some kids move down, but there isn’t really a lot of movement, except in kindergarten, where kids really do move ahead (but those gains are fleeting and fall off by second or third grade). The test score numbers by themselves say so little. For the data to be meaningful, student scores would need to be paired with attendance/socio-economic level, and behavior referral records, along with ELL status. I mean, if we are going to be data-obsessed, at least we ought to try to get something approaching a real picture. And comparing grade level numbers from year to year: what is the point of that? The numbers don’t even refer to the same students! I have never understood this, but I have never gotten an answer when I’ve asked, and I have learned not to ask at school, because I need to keep my job, at least for another year or so.
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