Peter Greene here takes apart the fundamental ideas behind the reformers’ devotion to accountability and shows why it is not working and will never work.
He analyzes an article in the Washington Post by Checker Finn and Mike Petrilli, former and current CEO of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, to explain the issue. Finn and Petrilli have written a somewhat triumphant analysis of the “success” of reform in the past decade. They are huge fans of Arne Duncan and Race to the Top. They think that Common Core was a great step forward. They admire the federally-funded tests for the Common Core, PARCC and SBAC. They are delighted that states have raised the passing marks on their tests so it is much harder for students to pass them. (Most states reported that a majority of students “failed” the first and even the second administration of the new tests. At this rate, most students will never get a high school diploma.)
They are delighted with the more rigorous standards and tests: We’ve been known for ages as education gadflies, and we still find plenty to fault when it comes to policy and practice in the United States. But let us be clear: Despite what you might hear from opt-outers and other critics, U.S. standards, tests and accountability systems are all dramatically stronger, fairer and more honest than they were a decade ago. You might even call it progress.
Needless to say, Peter Greene, a veteran teacher in Pennsylvania, does not see the situation in the same way. He finds one sentence by Finn and Petrilli that encapsulates the flawed premises of “reform”:
At the core of the good idea was the common-sense insight that if we want better and more equitable results from our education system, we should set clear expectations for student learning, measure whether our kids are meeting them and hold schools accountable for their outcomes, mainly gauged in terms of academic achievement.
Greene says that Common Core was the result of trying to “make expectations clear.” He writes:
“the way to make expectations clear is to make them specific, and before you know it, you have one-size-fits-all standards, and one-size-fits-all standards suck in the same way that making all US school students wear a one-size-fits-all uniform and eat one-size-fits-all food.
It is like saying that we can fix the divorce problem in this country by setting clear expectations for getting married and holding everyone to those expectations. Fordham sages tried to get around this with their “tight-loose” formulation, but they failed. Meanwhile, the standards themselves are amateur-hour constructions that take a definite side in arguments that experts don’t find at all as neatly settled as the standards assume (e.g. is reading a complex relationship between reader and text, or a set of skills and behaviors– the Core insists on the latter, but actual educators favor the former).
Can we really measure what our children are learning? Greene thinks not.
It really is as simple as that– we do not have a large-scale, standardized instrument that can measure all learning for all students in a standardized, one-size-measures-all manner. Instead of asking, “What’s the best way to measure critical thinking” test manufacturers have asked “What’s something we could do on a standardized mass-administered test that would pass for a critical thinking measure?”
Why not hold schools accountable for outcomes?
Greene writes:
“Outcomes” just means “test scores,” and that, again, is such a truncated, inadequate vision of the mission of US public schools. Ask a taxpayer, “What are you paying schools and teachers to do?” I doubt that you will hear the answer, “Why, just to have students get good test scores. That’s it. That’s what I’m paying them to do.”
And then Peter sums up and explains why “reformers” think that their approach is just “common sense”:
The notion that all of these things– the clear and specific standards being measured by a test leading to “accountability” measures taken against the schools that come up short– are common sense? Well, we have to call them “common sense” because we can’t call them “evidence based” or “scientifically proven” or even “sure seemed to work well over in Location X” because none of those things are true. They haven’t worked anywhere else, and now that we’ve been trying it for over a decade, we can see pretty clearly that they don’t work here, either.
The best we get from reformsters is a circular argument– “this tool is a valid measure and means of improvement, because when I measure the progress of this tool by using this tool, I see success.”
There are other unfounded assumptions underlying the reformster approach that depend on these other bad assumptions. For instance, the whole idea that the power of the free market can be unloosed to improve education rests on the idea that we can measure definitively which are the best schools producing the best students who are taught by the best teachers. But we can no more do that than we can list the hundred best marriages in America, or the hundred best friends.
They remain convinced that we must have one-size-fits-all standards so that we can measure all students against them so that we can compare all students and schools so that we can…. what? We still don’t have a real answer. It’s common sense. It’s something you just have to do, because not doing it clashes with reformsters beliefs about how the world is supposed to work. They literally do not understand how education works, and when they approach the world of education, they feel like OCD sufferers in a museum where all the paintings are hung crooked. They want to “fix” it, and they want to ask the people who work there, “How can you possibly function like this?” They can’t see that the paintings aren’t crooked at all.
The whole reformster approach is based on measuring a cloud with a meter stick, measuring the weather with a decibel meter, measuring love with a spoon.
Reformsters want to drive the school bus by setting a brick on the gas pedal and strapping the steering wheel into place, and every time the bus hits a tree, they say, “Oh, well, we just need a next-generation brick, and to fine-tune where we strap the steering wheel into place.” They will tweak and improve and re-tweak, and they will keep failing because their approach is fundamentally wrong.
If you want a good (but sad) laugh read the Wapo opinion piece linked by Diane. And virginiasgp thinks it’s a great piece so that should tell you just how ludicrous it is.
“Accountability” is working and will continue to work as long as Duh People keep on chasing squirrels and red herrings and fail to call out the end it is working toward.
What so-called reformers call “common sense” is in fact little more than reflexive free market fundamentalism, whereby everything can/should be reduced to a number (presumably with a dollar sign preceding it), and we are all automatons seeking to maximize our utility.
So very rational, and so insane…
Their so-called “common sense” is baseless. They are no different than the ancient Greeks believing that objects fall at a steady speed that is proportional to their mass. Never mind that they believed so strongly in their pure intellect that they didn’t dream of doubting themselves or testing their ideas.
In the case of reformers, they too believe so strongly in their pure intellect that they didn’t dream of doubting their ideas. Unfortunately for us we had to test these so-called “common sense” reforms. And just like Galileo, we have disproved every single reform idea:
NCLB: FAIL
AYP: FAIL
CCSS: FAIL
RTTT: FAIL
VAM: FAIL
PARCC: FAIL
SBAC: FAIL
TFA:FAIL
Charters: FAIL
On-Line Charters: FAIL
Vouchers: FAIL
EdTPA: FAIL
TESTand-PUNISH: FAIL
CBE: FAIL
PL: FAIL
And NO – we don’t have to offer any alternative to their PARADE of FAILURE.
“Greeks and Geeks”
Greeks and Geeks
Fates and Gates
Weeks and weeks
Of testing dates
You’ve outdone yourself. 🙂
“The American Church”
American Church is business
American god is Gates
And godly wealth means fitness
To enter Heaven’s gates
“The FAIL Pail”
The school reformer’s pail
Is full of edu-FAIL
It’s filled to top
With edu-FLOP
And trains that left the rail
Good poems.
Finn and Petrilli are living proof of how far denial of reality will get you on America.
Even after the house of cards comes crashing down, these people will still be earning a six figure salary peddling “never-used” playing cards.
The reason their standard program never works is because their assumption is wrong, people aren’t computers. Other than that, the rest of their program follows a perfect logical progression.
From Peter:
“if we want better and more equitable results from our education system, we should… measure whether our kids are meeting them
Also sounds sort of sensible, and yet we do not know how to do it. It really is as simple as that– we do not have a large-scale, standardized instrument that can measure all learning for all students in a standardized, one-size-measures-all manner. Instead of asking, “What’s the best way to measure critical thinking” test manufacturers have asked “What’s something we could do on a standardized mass-administered test that would pass for a critical thinking measure?”
Measure this measure that! Is it possible to measure mental masturbation?
Yes, with a neurosperm counter, which you can get at CVS and Walmart.
Be careful around folks like Raj Chetty, though, because they will send it off-scale and may actually break it.
The sad truth of “reform” is that despite their false assumptions and failure, they keep churning out bad ideas backed by big money. That we continue to fight the assault on teachers and public education is testimony to the influence of billionaire backed agendas that intend to crush democratic ideals. I love how Greene uses language to punctuate his points. “The whole reformster approach is based on measuring a cloud with a meter stick, measuring the weather with a decibel meter, measuring love with a spoon.” As long as the money train keeps fueling misguided “reform,” teachers and students will be in the line of fire.
The single greatest cause of subpar student achievement is poverty. In order to reduce systemic poverty you have to vigorously attack the causes of nearly all poverty: discrimination (racial, gender, etc.), major illness (including mental/emotional illness), steadily declining real income for the majority of workers, and parents compelled to work more than one job so that there is virtually no time for the kind of parenting that children need in order to achieve in school (or life). As a nation, and especially in our ruling class of super high income people and the politicians they own and operate, there is no will to solve these fundamental problems. It’s far easier to scapegoat the public school system in general and unionized teachers in particular. I see no hope for any progress in solving the fundamental problems within our current political/economic context, and I think the success of Donald Trump reflects this unverbalized realization by many common folk: It’s not really what Trump says that makes so many average citizens support him — it’s what he represents: He’s a finger in the eye of the power elite in both parties, both of which the average citizen sees as representing the elite while paying only disingenuous lip service to average citizens. The average citizen most probably can’t articulate this subconscious recognition in the way that it was articulated and quantified in the 2014 Princeton study “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” but the average citizen instinctively knows what has happened; namely, that the former American Democratic Republic has been hijacked into an oligarchy. All of the pompous pundits can pontificate as much as they want about what they claim are the reasons for Trump’s support, but they are incapable of admitting or even recognizing the actual basis for his support by the average citizen, just as the Republican and Democratic parties are incapable of weaning themselves from the money they get from the elite. Today we are living out a chapter in the eventual future book entitled “The Decline and Fall of the United States of America: How the World’s Once Leading Democratic Republic Degenerated into an Oligarchy.”
I agree. It’s the archetype of Jed Clampett.
Philip Knight donates $400 million to help fight poverty. Unlike Bill Gates, he is enlisting others (Stamford grad students) to work on the seemingly intractable problem.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/24/business/philip-knight-of-nike-to-give-400-million-to-stanford-scholars.html?_r=0
“The single greatest cause of subpar student achievement. . . ”
More edudeformer speak. Screw “student achievement”.
But do we have the luxury or time to wait until the poverty situation or the social situation sorts itself out? Isn’t it because of poverty, it’s even more imperative that students achieve so they don’t stay in poverty. I keep hearing circular arguments from non-experts such as Gates and experts (the actual teachers and educators) – poverty is the cause of subpar student achievement, but we need to standardize national standards so that every student have roughly the same kind of education from state to state (which taken alone doesn’t sound unreasonable, it’s how you achieve it). To ‘blame’ low student achievement on external factors outside of school (poverty, discrimination etc) while accurate and it takes the unnecessary pressure off of teachers, the problem still remains – how do you educate children, especially those who come from deprived backgrounds.
The best debunking of “rephorm” I have ever encountered is Alfie Kohn’s “The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and ‘Tougher Standards’ ” originally published in 1999. Still better than anything else I have read or heard. Recommended.
This is a good point: there’s absolutely no reason to get into arguments over the reformers’ way of doing things (technology, standardized tests). Just point out, as the article does, that their premises, their goals are false, and be done.
Indeed, according to the most fundamental laws of logic (already known to the Ancient Greeks), from a false premise, you can draw any conclusion you want.
For example, if I say “If you build it, they will come.” I can be held to my promise only if you build “it”, that is, if my premise is true. If you don’t build it, it’s immaterial whether they come or not, you cannot blame me for making false promises.
What the reformers are saying, can be illustrated by “If learning is measurable, then this school’s performance is low on the scale we set forth.”
Well, learning is not measurable, so it’s immaterial whether they find a school’s scores low or high.
Of course, reformers don’t say anything this way; they don’t start with an “if”, they don’t start with “If learning is measurable”. They strategically pretend “it’s common sense” that learning is measurable. They do this because they know that’s where are on the shakiest grounds. Hence this is exactly where we have to get them: “Don’t talk to us about scores and data and technology, just show us the research claiming that learning is measurable; show us what you measure.”
Forget about low level arguments about technology or test scores. Get our reformers first explain the high level, get them explain their premise about the measurability of learning.
It’s like “If I am innocent, I then deserve apology, full compensation, a house on the beach, a car with a driver, free ice cream for the rest of my life, free …” to which the response is “Hey, slow down with listing your demands and let’s examine your innocence first, shall we?”
Let’s not let the reformers jump to their messy conclusions, let’s get them at their premises.
Exactly, Mate. Fight them at the source, where they are on shaky ground. Always take the argument back to its premise. That is how truth wins.
If the premise is flawed, that’s it. The entire rest of the elaborate argument is, literally, irrelevant.
In practical terms, this means we attack the idea that learning can be, OR EVEN SHOULD BE, “measured.” (as opposed to “roughly described” or “facilitated.”)
In practical terms, we attack the very idea that “the market” will bring best quality (that people are best “motivated” by money, and that this kind of motivation is what brings best quality to everyone.)
In practical terms, we attack the very idea that students must be sorted and ranked (as opposed to being able to present their own case, as well as recommendations, for qualification.)
And so on.
Undercut the roots of disaster.