This post appears on a Florida blog called Accountabaloney. The blog was started by two parents in southern Florida, a retired pediatrician and a graphic designer. They are Sue Woltanski and Suzette Lopez.
This is the planned statement I presented to the Monroe County School Board, my local district board, on Tuesday, January 26, 2015. In it, I called the alarm regarding Competency Based Education (CBE), data mining and the planned destruction of public school as we know it. Please read it, study the attached links and additional reading, and share the information. We hope it will inspire parents and educators to speak out against efforts to destroy public schools while profiting off our children.
We believe Florida’s accountabaloney system is deeply entangled in this move to CBE. Schools and teachers must be labeled as failing, otherwise there is no political will to completely overhaul them. Years of underfunding public schools has hastened their demise. Voucher programs highlight the concocted need for students to flee failing schools while nothing is done towards funding needed public school improvements. State mandated remediation programs have brought CBE and data mining into our classrooms.
It must be stopped.
Mr. Chairman, Board Members, Mr. Superintendent,
Almost 2 years ago, I first spoke to this board about concerns regarding standardized testing. At that time I quoted State Representative Keith Perry who, during a House Education committee meeting had described the current state of education as a period of “Creative Destruction” in which only by destroying our schools will we emerge in the future with something better. He called this “the American Way.” At last fall’s Excellence in Education Summit, Miami Representative Erik Fresen publicly repeated the need to completely destroy public schools (at 54:45).
“Policy is what matters… The most courageous policy of all, which is: take the entire system that exists right now and disrupt it completely. That will require policy changes.”
Today, I am here to, once again, sound the alarm and to inform you that the complete destruction of our public schools is closer than you think. It goes by the name of Competency Based Education and it has already infiltrated Monroe County Public Schools. Multiple bills are currently being pushed through the Florida legislature this session allowing the unbridled expansion of the policies Mr. Fresen needs to “take down the entire system.”
I will try to outline what is happening:
In this modern computer era, digital personal data is gold, currently being traded like currency. You know when you search for something on Amazon and Google and then you start seeing ads related to that search in your feed? That is the result of data mining.
In a video I have linked, the CEO of Knewton explains how Education is today’s most data mined industry. He explains “the name of the game is data per user.” From Amazon or Netflix they get 1 data point per user per day. Google and Facebook 10 data points per user per day. In education, Knewton gets 5-10 million actionable data points per student per day! Apparently, every sentence of every passage in digital content has a data tag and they can tell how interested a child is in a certain topic, how difficult it was, etc., etc. Ten million data points a day! This data grab is a gold mine to companies that want to market and design products. For venture capitalists, Education is the new hot commodity.
This is probably why last year’s FSA had a reading passage straight out of American Girl… Not only is this, clearly, product placement advertising on our state mandated test, which should be questioned, but, by using a data tagged American Girl passage, data can be collected to see just what parts of the story is most interesting to boys and girls and marketing strategies can be developed.
This is also why, though paper and pencil tests would dramatically reduce testing time, there is an insistence on computer based testing. On a computer based test, more data than just marked answers can and is being collected and shared.
This also explains why state approved remedial reading and math programs have essentially all been computer based. State tests can be created, and cut scores manipulated, in order to fail large numbers of students and state law can mandate each failing student participate in a digital remediation program, ensuring a steady stream of data points to third party participants.
Keep in mind that student test scores are digitally linked to personal identification data, including student address, IEP, free lunch status, health records, and discipline records and god knows what else. What if your “permanent record” went viral? Last November, a U.S. Congressional committee criticized the USDOE, exposing how vulnerable its information systems are to security threats. I encourage you to watch the proceeding. Currently, federal student data is NOT secure.
Monroe County already participates in the sharing of student data through associations with Certi-port, Achieve 3000, iReady, iStation, and more. These are vendors that are known to collect and distribute student data. Can they guarantee our student’s privacy is protected? Who are they sharing the data with? Do we know? We do not.
Last week, the Senate Education Committee voted favorably on SB1714. This bill allows for Competency Based Education pilot programs, funded by massive grants from the Gates Foundation, in Lake and Pinellas County and at P.K. Yonge. An amendment was added allowing Commissioner Stewart to expand the program to other counties. They are expanding the program before they have any data on its effectiveness. By 2022 every single school in Lake County will be converted to CBE.
In Florida, to my knowledge, There has never been a legislative workshop devoted to even discussing what CBE involves. CBE is a data driven education system that follows a set of prescribed standards and requires demonstration of “competency” before advancement. It has embedded testing within the curriculum that collects hidden streams of data via unknown algorithms. Stealth, continuous data–collected by vendors, can be shared with third parties–parental consent not needed.
The goal is to digitalize education so data can be collected and, remember, data is gold.
According to Edweek, researchers are busy developing computerized tutoring systems that gather information on students’ facial expressions, heart rate, posture, pupil dilation, and more. Those data are then analyzed for signs of student engagement, boredom, or confusion, leading a computer avatar to respond with encouragement, empathy, or maybe a helpful hint.” Creepy…
The measurement of social and emotional competencies, like grit, perseverance and tenacity, is a stated goal of the USDOE . Measurement of these non-cognitive competencies is already embedded into education programs.
Monroe has spent millions of dollars increasing our technology capabilities under mandates from the state. Initially we were concerned that all these computers were used for little more than testing and test prep. The mandates may, actually, have been in preparation for CBE.
The good news is that, with CBE, end of course exams and the FSA will become obsolete. When data on student progress can be collected every minute of every day, the “BIG” test is no longer necessary.
The bad news… teachers won’t be necessary, either. Current pilot programs include teachers as facilitators but soon taxpayers will wonder why we need to pay a professional to monitor students engaged in primarily an online education and a move will be made to hire a less expensive substitute. By then high quality teachers, stripped of all professional decision making, will have already left the profession in droves.
Why even have brick and mortar buildings for an education that mostly takes place on line?
Why even call it education anymore when it is really the harvesting of student data?
Consider this the alarm.
In hindsight, it becomes clear that this was the goal all along. We have been allowing our children to participate in this huge data gathering scheme which has the ultimate goal of destroying public school as we know it. Students need face to face interactions with humans. No computer algorithm can allow and encourage the creative mind. America has prospered because of creativity and ingenuity. We must fight to keep that in our schools. We need to stop participating in the system designed to destroy our schools. This is not about accountability and it is certainly not about what is best “for the kids.” What is best for the kids is that everyone stands up and says “our children are not data points for you to profit from.”
Competency Based Education is NOT the answer for the type of quality public education I want my children to have. It IS the complete destruction of public schools that Representatives Fresen and Perry have envisioned. Do not expect prestigious private schools to institute it. CBE is designed for “other people’s children” and it has already infiltrated our schools. And it will make a few people ultra rich.
SB 1714 allows for CBE expansion without any evidence it even works.
It is the start of a Brave New World and we need to keep it out of Monroe County until and unless long term data from these pilot studies demonstrates its effectiveness.
In the meantime, I ask that you protect our children from the data grab. Achieve 3000, iReady, iStation, and other CBE data mining programs are already being used throughout Monroe. There should be significant discussions regarding whether their risks outweigh their benefits.
The alarm has been sounded. Please heed this warning.
Thank you.
ADDENDUM:
While asking for input in writing these remarks, these two remarks were particularly worthy of repeating in full:
From an Electrical Engineer by training, Information Security Professional by career choice and Software Engineer, having developed many commercial applications. He has first hand experienced developing applications for education – and has witnessed the “lure of data data data”:
Your definition of CBE is far too generous and idealistic. Let me just say that CBE and CBT crap has been around for a very, very long time.. The essence of it really comes down to nothing more than one long series of IF THEN ELSE statements preprogrammed to provide the illusion that you are advancing or retracting.
In other words this is just a three letter word that represents a profession (teaching) being codified into a linear progression of computer steps.
There is far too much faith that this will somehow magically create a more learned student than what a dedicated human being can. CBE and CBT are all about removing the need for professional teachers — fast forward 20 years…
If we let them use our kids to perfect this technology: teachers will look and act more like electronic librarians or proctors. All the courses and supporting standards will have been written I eve, debugged (at the cost of your children’s education) and shrink wrapped into a tidy downloadable virtual machine. Going to school will look a whole lot more like Startreck the search for Spock when Spock was brought back as a boy and forced to relearn a lifetime of knowledge downloaded into computer based CBT and CBE.
This stuff will make a lot if people very very rich, but until it’s fully functional we will loose generations of children to poor education through this grand technological dissection of the educational process. Computer Programmers are quite prone to being godlike – in commanding and getting their own way – after all they are creating their own alternate reality through their profession. That is CBE and CBT – a codified alternate reality that we won’t know if it’s good or bad until we put a classroom if kids through it !
From Peggy Robertson (www.pegwithpen.com)
People truly are not getting what is happening because mainstream media is keeping this very very quiet. Look at Colorado. One of the advanced states. Consequentially, CBE “advanced” states will also be the fastest to move towards alt. certified/fake teachers who stick around for a couple years. Because…… when you have 150 kids on computers and the computer creates the curriculum and the computer assesses students daily and plans for the next day’s instruction, well, golly, it seems there’s no need for a teacher in that picture. All that is needed is facilitators and a teacher here and there when it’s necessary to round up the kids for a computer lesson that the COMPUTER decides a human might actually need to teach. Don’t believe me? Check out Teach to One Math. Check out Carpe Diem. Check out Hickenlooper’s executive order for badges and Relay’s current foothold in Colorado. Check out my blogs that discuss this at http://www.pegwithpen.com. Check out the ESSA which GIVES FUNDING TO MAKE ALL THIS HAPPEN. And they will sell it as inquiry project/performance based that allows children to move and advance at their own pace – and let me tell you what it will really be…..mundane, skill,drill instruction that is tied to standards that will have many many data tags that will be used to track and manage children and make changes within the curriculum based on the shifts and demands within the market – NOT based on needs of children. If they want to, they can tell the public that suddenly we need a flood of pharmacists (for example), they can direct students into this profession via online classes, flood the market, therefore knock down salaries and benefit the corporate regime. Don’t think for a second that this was ever about the common good.
Peggy
ADDITIONAL READING:
The first four are “must reads” but really you should read it all, and more. They are talking about profiting off the total destruction of public school.:
CBE Online is Neither Personalized Nor Higher-Order Thinking!
http://missourieducationwatchdog.com/the-business-of-badging-and-predicting-childrens-futures/
http://nepc.colorado.edu/newsletter/2016/01/personalized-learning
http://emilytalmage.com She documents CBE which is being instituted in Maine Schools
In top performing nations, teachers – not students- use technology. http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/09/22/study-students-who-use-computers-often-in-school-have-lower-test-scores
https://epic.org/2016/01/epic-warns-education-departmen.html
http://kcur.org/post/missouri-auditor-finds-student-social-security-information-risk#stream/0
http://missourieducationwatchdog.com/data-breaches-and-ostriches/
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/internet-companies-confusing-consumers-profit
Are Monroe County’s Chromebooks protected?
“Google’s Chromebooks as used in schools also come with “Chrome Sync” enabled by default, a feature that sends the student users’ entire browsing trail to Google, linking the data collected to the students’ accounts which often include their names and dates of birth. Google notes that the tracking behavior can be turned off by the student or even at a district level. But as shipped, students’ Chromebooks are configured to send every student’s entire browsing history back to Google, in near real time. That’s true even despite Google’s signature on the “Student Privacy Pledge” which includes a commitment to “not collect student personal information beyond that needed for authorized educational/school purposes, or as authorized by the parent/student.”
This is important: Google becomes school official if Chrome books used in classroom, meaning that FERPA rules do not apply. http://www.local15tv.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/Google-Becomes-a-39-School-Official-39-if-Chromebooks-Used-in-Classrooms-248827.shtml#.VqLG8sdYfSc
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Incompetency Based Government”
It used to be
Incompetency
Could win a gummint post
But now, we see
Catastrophe
Is what is needed most
There is a sad irony in Apple’s introduction of the MacIntosh in 1984 and its Super Bowl television advertisement that year.
“On January 24th,
Apple Computer will introduce MacIntosh.
And you’ll see why 1984
won’t be like “1984”.
The visual images are disturbing in light of Sue Woltanski’s and Suzette Lopez’s concerns.
Tangentially related, but an excellent article
“The Water Next Time: Professor Who Helped Expose Crisis in Flint Says Public Science Is Broken” By Steve Kolowich
I think the what Marc Edwards has to say about academics remaining silent to preserve funding and because they simply do not wish to get involved in controversy is as applicable to the education as it is to public safety (water in Flint).
Apart from a relatively small number of education researchers and statisticians, most academics (eg, colleagues of Friedman and Chetty in the statistics departments at Harvard and Stanford ) have been completely silent on all the unscientific garbage (eg, VAM) that is being pawned off on the public schools as part of “reform”.
SomeDAM Poet: the article you link to…
IMHO, it is a must read for all those interested in a “better education for all.”
Remember it the next time you hear a rheephormster use the phrase “studies show.”
Thank you very much.
😎
Excellent point, not just individuals but entire departments that are bought and paid for by foundations to produce and publicize “research.”
And then there are for-hire propagandists who produce white papers, and push surveys, and so on with contracts to advance specific federal programs. For example, an army of hired hands, some with paper thin credentials as researchers, marketed Obama’s RTT initiative and tried to sell everyone the idea that SLO’s were perfectly acceptable and “research based.” The hired hands were given grants for “technical assistance.” Baloney. They were hired to market terrrible policies.
Here is an example. I did a deep dive and found that even USDE’s own studies of SLOs said these scheme for teacher evaluation is not valid, not reliable, and not suitable, etc.
But the propaganda machinery worked, so many states use this managerial scheme to evaluate teachers, and in Maryland, a federal R&D lab called WestEd is part of a large scale misrepresentation of the efficacy of this process in rating teachers…actually lying about the results of a USDE funded study in Charlotte Mecklenburg where the creator of the methodology was also the prime contractor for the research…conflict of interest ignored.
Same with VAM of course.
The gods of the tech industry envision a world where all services for the 99% are delivered via video or smart phone. Low-wage avatars will personalize your lives with twitter-like ease and speed.
E-diagnosis is already happening in medicine via the health insurance industry. They’ll bypass your primary care physician. Online “doctors”will be paid instead of a real, live medical evaluation from your primary care physician. I received a mailing from my health insurance company, Blue Cross of TN, about my eligibility for physicianNOW- a new! easy! affordable! doctor! How to use “Telehealth” (their words) : Register online, make an appointment & submit my full medical history; choose video, smartphoneapp or telephone. Request a consultation. That’s all folks.
Who would want an impersonal, third party, with little knowledge or memory of your health history, with no way to physically examine you, to come between you & your physician? This scheme reminds me of the time Sen. & Dr. Bill Frist was ridiculed for his video misdiagnosis of Terri Schaivo’s vegetative state.
On the subject of e-doctors, an insurance company in my area is offering “convenient” doctors that you see via Skype. Nice personal touch, eh?
I received the same thing from my insurance company in the mail last week . Meanwhile my visit to the dr for a well,check found me with a doctor who was somewhat more animated than a computer avatar.
This is the way it goes. In teaching, when the teacher is asked to teach to a script (standards) and squeezed between unwilling children and tests that may or may not be appropriate, the teachers who can will quit , leaving only the ones who cannot give up a job they thought they were preparing for. They plod along, more and more indistinguishable from the automatons on a screen. Soon the student can tell no difference. We all become Charlie Brown’s teacher.
Recently one of my colleges who is a coach was honored for 30+ years of love and devotion to her students. It happened at the half of the girls basketball game. All her former players came. Great reunion. There was one lady there who was in my class 29 years ago. She now teaches math in a middle school. She told me that she had not been very successful before I showed up. She said that I took care to be patient with her and help her all I could. She claimed I was the reason she was teaching. Her 4 kids are honors students bound for bigger things.
I never thought I was as good a teacher as I wanted to be. But I am better than an avatar. No computer is ever going to inspire someone to live life a certain way. We mig like a book or a video making a point about our faith, but it is our personal relationship with a person of faith that brigs us to church. So it is with learning. My daughter works on a Chromebook, which has helped her learn basics. But her teacher is the one who feeds her voracious appetite for reading. So do her mother and I. No computer can do that.
I grew up on a dairy. All my friends had mechanical ways to feed the cows. We had a silage fork, broad and flat. On a good day you could throw down enough silage in fifteen minutes. I always wondered why my father did not buy one of those machines. Perhaps there was a good reason.
Only one tiny problem JC, none of us will be able to afford it when no one is working anymore. A black market economy will emerge for most of us and their sparkling facilities and sites will turn to rust. Eventually the country will collapse.
The worst part to me is they’re selling it as “equity”. “Your child, too, can have a computer program instead of a language teacher!”
I feel like I know how this ends. Lower and middle classes get screens, upper classes get live, engaged human beings. And, incredibly, we will have swallowed that bait and switch rip-off on the grounds of “equity”.
Chiara: one of your best comments ever—and that’s saying a lot.
If you can ever steel yourself to endure a stellar example of scorching hypocrisy, go to the Lakeside School website (below) and see what Bill Gates and his children were/are “subjected to.”
For example, “School Life Overview”:
Link: http://www.lakesideschool.org/podium/default.aspx?t=120815
[start]
IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT ACADEMICS
Lakeside believes there is more to life than academic success. We actively uphold a balanced approach to education; one that develops students who excel both inside and outside the classroom.
We offer a diverse array of activities, from leading-edge experiential learning programs to numerous athletics endeavors, arts experiences, and student activities and clubs. Everyone can find whatever it is that interests them to deepen their involvement in our vital community.
Lakeside also recognizes that it can be hard for some students to achieve that balance. That’s why our student support team is ready to help. Thoughtful and motivated counselors, teachers, and administrators work with students and their families to ensure that all have the opportunity to reach their full potential at Lakeside.
[end]
The rheephormistas with clout, that set the pace and tone, that call the shots and determine which tune is to be played: they send THEIR OWN CHILDREN to schools like Lakeside.
For OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN: anything but.
To put it another way: why would folks that believe in, and practice, cut throat competition ever agree to allow THEIR OWN CHILDREN to be at an educational disadvantage relative to—or even on a par with— OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN?
Remember: from their POV, winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.
And by hook or by crook their own will be the Kings and Queens of the Education Hill.
For everyone else: well, someone has to learn how to do the menial chores…
Thank you again for your comments.
😎
They have a program that replaces school guidance counselors now. It isn’t sold as “replacing school guidance counselors”. It’s sold as “you probably can’t afford a human being in your middle and lower class school, so here’s this crap replacement that will make it ‘equitable’ with better funded schools who get human beings!”
It’s this weird race to the bottom sold as “equity”- “we know you don’t have what you need and we have no intention of funding that, so plug in this garbage because something is better than nothing!”
I have not seen the computer programs but the “guidance counselor” function is starting in pre-K and there are standards for so-called social emotional learning (SEL). There are at least three main academic centers promoting SEL, all of them increasingly tied to media campaigns, including TED talks, as well as marketing ready-to-use instructional aids including computers. Here are three examples.
1. Dr. Carol Dweck, Mindset theorist and psychologist at Stanford University, has TED talks, several best selling books for business, and a “Brainology®” website replete with teaching materials and a full-spectrum “professional development” package (cost about $6000) designed to help all students acquire a mindset oriented toward learning, especially through repeated practice and what my generation knew as “the power of positive thinking.” In a nutshell, “Practice makes perfect.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X0mgOOSpLU
2. The (Angela) Duckworth Lab at the University of Pennsylvania is also working on concepts about dispositions or personal attributes that favor academic learning, with a sharp focus on two traits that seem to predict achievement: grit and self-control. Grit is the tendency to sustain interest in and effort toward very long-term goals. Self-control is the voluntary regulation of impulses in the presence of momentarily gratifying temptations or diversions. Both concepts are related in programs of character education. See http://www.characterlab.org or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H14bBuluwB8
3. A third center of activity is the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) in Chicago http://www.casel.org/. CASEL’s work is rooted in sociology, especially Bandura’s demonstrations of learned aggression in young children. In addition to advocacy, CASEL serves as a clearing house and evaluator of assessments for social-emotional learning (SEL). With help from CASEL staff, Illinois developed SEL standards for pre-school, then 100 more standards for K-12. Standards are organized around ten themes, all intended to put students in charge of their own counseling under the banner of “self-management.”
The Illinois standards are intended to help students to “establish and monitor their progress toward achieving academic and personal goals.” I found an astonishing expectation that students in K-4 should be able to “recognize and accurately label emotions and how they are linked to behavior.” (That sounds to me like a challenging assignment even for a person with a Ph.D in psychiatry or linguistics).
In any case SEL is represented as way to reduce bullying, prevent substance abuse and risky behavior, induce empathy for others, and teach civic virtues (character education, well disguised), and prepare students to lead a thoroughly planned life–plans for college and career a theme starting in middle school.
Preschool has become Kindergarten, and Kindergarten is the new first grade, and self-help, self control, self-management, is in. Stiff upper lip grit, do-it-yourself counseling nicely treated as if reason alone can and will prevail in every situation, double check on who you can trust for advice, and so on. Making matters worse, from my point of view is the interlacing of these “self-management” standards with the mantra of college and career readiness without no regard for the actualities and uncertainties of labor markets or what life offers and requires beyond this getting a job and/or going to college.
There are lots of shared irresponsibility for this “trial and error” approach to change. It highlights in influence billionaires and corporations have today. Without a shred of evidence to support this, cyber education is supplanting traditional programs in two Florida counties. The reason this is happening is that Gates and company have made deals with local officials. Citizens would benefit from having a scorecard on legislators on those support public schools, and those that have been bought by corporations. It could be useful in election season.
In this morning’s local paper, there was an article stating that both the Florida House and Senate are working on legislation to “chip away at school boards’ control on whether to allow charter schools by transferring power to state or city government.” The goal is to rig the system to take away local control.
The irony of this whole situation (e.g.,CC, privatization and govt. over-reach) is that the party of small government is one of the biggest panderers of this movement and the party of the people – those in charge – just double down and go along buying the bs civil rights/urgency mantra. So sad that critical thinking is lacking and not evident here.
THe Republicans are the party of “small government” only when it suits their needs and doesn’t interfere with their despotic ideas.
There are plenty of evils and evil doers in finance, politics, and education today to write about and I agree with much of what this piece said. However, I disagree with lumping all Competency designed and based education into that category. There are plenty of situations where tested and demonstrated competency is very important. For example, I do not want a surgeon operating on my heart who has not passed a competency exam. The same is true for the carpenter building my house or the technician repairing my car. If you define competency ONLY as meeting some arbitrary number on an invalid standardized academic test I would agree with your analysis
You may be confused with what “competency” used to mean. Pearson, Gates and everyone who matters (ahem) use it an entirely different way. “Competency” now means the ability to continuously pass computer-generated assessments following computer-generated modules. It’s just another name for online learning.
It’s also intentional theft of progressive education language. Progressive educators have long been arguing that standardized tests don’t “measure” (or assess) anything worthwhile, that what we really need are assessments that assess for mastery or competence – what can students actually do? Also known as authentic assessment. When progressive educators use terms like that they’re talking about having students independently design science experiments to prove or disprove a thesis, for instance, or perhaps write an original play to demonstrate knowledge of Greek mythology or build a working robot or any number of other potential hands-on projects. Leave it to the rephormers to capture and co-opt all that and boil it down to computerized “learning”.
William,
“I disagree with lumping all Competency designed and based education into that category.”
The term competency as used by standardized education promoters has been shown to be COMPLETELY INVALID by Noel Wilson in his 1997 never refuted nor rebutted treatise on educational standards and standardized testing. To understand all the epistemological and ontological errors and falsehoods and psychometric “fudging” in the process of making, using and disseminating the results of those two educational malpractices I invite you to read Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine.
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other words all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Authentic assessment is generally student driven such as portfolios or a project or thesis that demonstrates deep understandings of the subject being studied. It NEVER sells data to a third commercial party or violates a student’s privacy. These “reformers” keep hijacking progressive rhetoric for their robber baron goals.
Thanks for this very clear explanation of how CBE works, & the bigger picture it fits into. I gather this is the same beast known as ‘performance-based education’ in Maine, which Emily Talmage posted about last spring (http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2015/04/proficiency-based-learning-invades-maine.html)
Or OBE-Outcomes Based Education of the 80-90s which is an offshoot of Programmed Learning first conceived of/written about in the early 20th century has been around for a long time. It’s drawbacks and limitations are well known and are enough to invalidate it as a legitimate teaching and learning process. Wilson (see above reference) has shown how CBE is fundamentally invalid and filled with epistemological and ontological error. See his Chapter 19-“Competencies the Great Pretender” for a discussion of the many inherent problems.
Thank you, Ms. Woltanski and Ms. Lopez….
Diane,
Next time you come to speak in NH, let’s line up a visit to one of our many competency based schools. If this post is the image you have, you’ll be very pleasantly surprised.
Bill Duncan
Another thing to OPT OUT of! Or better yet, pull the plug (literally). I can’t imagine it getting too far in the long run, but probably long enough to displace a few more hundred-millions from public schools into big-corp profits & damage a few hundred-thousands of kids’ K-12 educations.
We’ve set the stage for CBE by deriding teacher-centered classrooms. All those up-to-date educators who have denigrated lecture and direct instruction will soon get what they asked for: marginalized, or even disappeared, teachers. Now even if a teacher wants to lecture, he will not be able to. Only the computer will have the privilege of actually teaching. I know CBE is probably not what the anti-lecture crowd dreamed of, but in a way they are reaping what they have sowed. CBE is being sold as the ultimate anti-lecture methodology. Who’s going to stand up and defend lecture when it’s been denigrated a century, starting with Dewey and Kilpatrick, to the point where most teachers would call it the epitome of bad practice?
The fact is that a live human explaining things is the best vehicle for education. Live human can tailor his delivery to what he knows about the audience, can do many things a computer cannot do, model what it looks like to be an intelligent and whole human, can react with genuine emotion and wit… Live human is the best thing going. But because of some sort of mass psychosis, we are blind to Live Human’s virtues. We are mesmerized by the flashing lights of Computer, and will sit on our hands as Live Human is swept away and the computer carts are rolled in. Years of denigrating the Sage of the Stage ensure that this transition will be smooth and quiet.
Nothing but pricey, silicon snake-oil.
The “Guide on the Side” movement was disliked by most students. Their innate sense what makes for good teaching never bought into a movement that essentially required them to discover or construct their own knowledge. Slow, inefficient, and ineffective, “Guides on the Side” were often met with a chorus of, “Aren’t YOU supposed to teach US?”
I have got to agree with this conclusion. The movement away from content knowledge toward empty skill sets is doing a world of damage via the null curriculum.