Mate Wierdl is a professor of mathematical sciences at the University of Memphis.
He writes:
“There’s absolutely no reason to get into arguments over the reformers’ way of doing things (technology, standardized tests). Just point out 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.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“There’s absolutely no reason to get into arguments over the reformers’ way of doing things (technology, standardized tests). Just point out 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. . . . Let’s not let the reformers jump to their messy conclusions, let’s get them at their premises.”
Exactly. For those who think that my postings (the many hundreds, thank you-ha ha) of Noel Wilson’s work have been repetitious, perhaps a little inane, even perhaps indicating a bit of senility on my part, let them take heed of what Máté has stated. Or as I prefer to say “Crap in, crap out”. Or as Ackhoff states:
“. . . doing the wrong thing righter. The righter we do the wrong thing,” he explains, “the wronger we become. When we make a mistake doing the wrong thing and correct it, we become wronger. When we make a mistake doing the right thing and correct it, we become righter. Therefore, it is better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right.”
Quoting St. Louis’s frozen custard guru Ted Drew “It really is that simple, folks!”
So to “get them at their premises” one must start with Wilson’s never refuted nor rebutted 1997 treatise, the most important educational work in the last 50 years “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.
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Señor Swacker: let me top off your generous helping of Noel Wilson with a bit of a Banesh Hoffman [THE TYRANNY OF TESTING, 2003 edition of the 1964 republication of the 1962 original, p. 143] riposte to the rheephorm love affair with twisted statistics and fraudulent use of numbers:
[start]
A person who uses statistics does not thereby automatically become a scientist, any more than a person who uses a stethoscope automatically becomes a doctor. Nor is an activity necessarily scientific just because statistics are used in it.
The most important thing to understand about reliance on statistics in a field such as testing is that such reliance warps perspective. The person who holds that subjective judgment and opinion are suspect and decides that only statistics can provide the objectivity and relative certainty that he seeks, begins by unconsciously ignoring, and ends by consciously deriding, whatever can not be given a numerical measure or label. His sense of values becomes distorted. He comes to believe that whatever is non-numerical is inconsequential. He can not serve two masters. If he worships statistics he will simplify, fractionalize, distort, and cheapen in order to force things into a numerical mold.
[end]
IMHO, to the dismay of rheephormsters everywhere, Wilson and Hoffman never go out of style.
😎
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Great quote, KTA!
And along with that “numerical measure” comes the monetization of public education by the edudeformers.
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“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.”
Unless we know the subject of the measurement better than the dude with the power. We may then have this dreamy convo with a happy end of sort:
“Hey dude of power, what does your math test measure?”
“Duh, it’s in the name: it measures math.”
“What’s math, dude of power?”
“Duh, it’s, you know, when you calculate stuff.”
“Isn’t that called calculation, dude of power? Isn’t that in the name?”
“No, I am pretty sure, you call that math.”
“Wouldn’t the name of the test be more descriptive in English if you called it The Dude of Power’s Test of Rigorous and Accurate Calculations ?”
“Now that name sounds very cool and scientific, yet indicates applicability in the real world. I’ll take it. How much do you want for it?”
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For those with less time to read, I think the message is this simple: We must reframe the discussion, rather than participating in the false narrative.
“Education Reformers” are brilliant at using language to proscribe and control the conversation.
We need to be equally as brilliant.
I’m not sure what George Lakoff is doing these days, but if he’s willing and able, we could use his help. (Read his brilliant little book “Don’t Think of an Elephant” to get insight into the power of deftly using words to frame discussions.)
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I wholeheartedly agree with your assertion that if want change, we must reframe the discussion rather than participating in the false narrative. Should those of us on the anti-school-reform side of the argument truly wish to effect change, we must NEVER use and/or propagate the use of school/teacher descriptors such as “bad,” “broken” and the never-endingly assigned test-score term “failing.” (In a footnote to one section of my book, I even asked this question: How have we gotten to that place where we allow our government to tell us that the label of “failure” and “failing” will motivate a positive change?) ciedieaech.worpress.com WISHFUL THINKING
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I thought that Duane Swacker would be the first on board with this. This post from Mate Wierdl is wonderful, and from a mathematician…wow.
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Got back from eight great days on the river just in time, eh, Laura!! (Current River in Southern MO.)
If the weather cooperates I plan on camping in a NC state park rather than stay in a hotel for the NPE Conference. (Partly or even mainly because I’m a cheap SOB and I like the country over the city.)
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“If the weather cooperates I plan on camping in a NC state park rather than stay in a hotel for the NPE Conference. ”
Excellent idea. Unless you want to be a lonely hunter, other cheap SOBs may join you there.
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Holding Deformers accountable for their wholesale use of logical fallacies is long over due, and they are completely vulnerable to such attacks. I for one have long favored that the developmentally appropriate study of logical fallacies should be a part of every schools curriculum as a way of building strong critical thinkers who them become resilient citizens, resilient in that even if they do not know what the truth of a particular situation is, they will nevertheless quickly realize that they are being lied to and will not be fooled or distracted should they then want to seek they actual truth.
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Thoroughly concur, Jon, on the study of logical fallacies or just logic in general.
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Um….so for our “measurable goals” (where we are told “list a goal that’s measurable, and explain how you are going to measure it”) as teachers, we write “Learning isn’t measurable, so I’m going to instead measure the students’ standardized test scores by looking at their standardized test scores….”
Got it! Great post!
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My brain hurts. Is weight measurable because if it isn’t I’m going to stop wasting my money on weight watchers (those folks with scales who watch my weight).
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Weight is a fixed quantity that can be measured objectively ad nauseum. Learning is not. You are attempting a comparison between apples and cinder blocks here. Glad I’m not in your class.
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You’re right – mean but right – about my flaky comparison. If I were still teaching I’d be rated ineffective for sure.
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YES. And in too many Colorado schools, teachers are rated “ineffective” simply for choosing to work inside low-scoring schools: those schools where the school-score ratings are simply extrapolated as pertaining to all teachers inside any such school.
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So my best friend is a NBC Kdg teacher in a school with 100% free lunch kids. She was in the teachers lounge the other day making blank books for her kids’ poetry. Another teacher admired what she was planning for her kids and she told this teacher, “Don’t get carried away, I’m only a 2.”
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What a sad truth. I had to learn early in NCLB years that the ‘reformers’ hired to come in and ‘fix’ our low-scoring schools had no interest in seeing us as individuals. We were simply ALL BAD. One administrator kept telling us at faculty meetings, “I’ve heard about you!” and she meant that she’d heard bad things in general, so we must ALL be lazy, we must ALL be incompetent. We kept turning and looking at each other, wondering who she was talking about. ciedieaech.wordpress.com/2015/10/13/flogging-will-continue-until-morale-improves
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Weight is measurable while health is not.
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Colorado Teacher–I love science. In science, if it can’t be measured with a thermometer, a scale, a balance, a spring scale, a ruler, etc, it’s not measurable.
You can count wrong answers and right answers, but that’s not objective measurement because you’re not counting something objective.
Counting isn’t always measuring. Counting isn’t necessarily scientific/objective/valid.
Science is an art, not a science.
Deformers don’t realize this.
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Among other things, the ability to be measured requires a standard unit of measurement. What would one standard unit of “learning” look like?
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In the higher subject of Accurate Calculations, I’d propose the international unit of 1 Gates (G) to be 1 problem that is described by at least 10 words, formulas excluded.
So if your kid proudly said, at the dinner table, “I learnt 10 Gates today” that would mean, she correctly calculated 10 problems of said type in class. You could then say “Very good, Melinda, now go and do your 20 Gates of remaining learning so that you can finish by midnight.”
You see, introducing this new unit allows for very efficient communications between parents and children, allowing more time for learning.
New parental phrases could be used which would generate warm feelings in children about learning. For example, the gently scolding question “Have you done your Gates today?” could become part of every household for generations to come.
The requirements for standardized tests would be described in terms of the all important speed, so Gates/hour = G/h.
For pre-K through K-3, I propose 10 G/h tests, which means 1 problem to be solved in every 6 minutes. For K-3 though K-8, the speed doubles to 20 G/h, so 1 problem for every 3 minutes, and in high school, teenagers need to reach the speed of 60 G/h, or 1 problem per minute, in order to be college and career ready.
This new unit allows for easy goal setting for education experts, such as politicians and billionaires. For example, they could say,
“Each year, American kids need to accomplish 10 thousand Gates by the year 2020 in order stay competitive in the ever hardening global economy.”
and we could have this kind of efficient and transparent discussion in Congress,
“Mr Chairman, our expert research shows that we need to make sure our Federal standardized tests in Accurate Calculations reach the speed of 360 Gates per hour to produce our first trillionaire by 2030.”
“Are you aware, Senator Pearson, that this means 1 correctly calculated problems, described in at least 10 words, every 10 seconds?”
“Of course, Mr Chairman. The bill includes a proposal to extend the school day to 12 hours, and a detailed plan for how to increase reading and comprehension speed using the latest computer technology developed specifically for rote learning. ”
“I am assuming, Senator Pearson, appropriately increased disciplinary measures are also part of the proposal to make sure, children do what’s best for them.”
“Absolutely, Mr Chairman. Everything we do is rigorous, thorough, research based and data driven. Our dedication to increase our children’s Gates is unwavering.”
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though I like the idea of the Gates as a unit of mismeasurement, i don’t think we should abbreviate it G, since then it could be confused with newton’s gravitational constant.
And I like to think that Gates is still restricted to earth (not yet universal). All i can say is God help the aliens if that ever changes.
Then again, for student to say they withstood 10 G’s and lived to talk about it does make some sense
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“i don’t think we should abbreviate it G, since then it could be confused with newton’s gravitational constant.”
Nah, those are two different roles. For example, the letter m is used both to denote the unit meter and the constant called mass (which is a different kind of constant from the gravitational constant.)
Science has no problem with overloading letters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_physics_notations
But you are free to modify any part of the standard, and you could even codify the final version as a poem.
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IMPORTANT PLEASE READ: http://www.northjersey.com/opinion/opinion-guest-writers/the-finnish-formula-let-kids-be-kids-1.1531693?page=all&app=10
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From the article “Finland doesn’t waste time or money on low-quality mass standardized testing. Instead, children are assessed every day, through direct observation, check-ins and quizzes by the highest-quality “personalized learning device” ever created — flesh-and-blood teachers.”
Flesh-and-blood personalized learning device. 🙂
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Arthur Costa, emeritus professor at California State University, summed up the thrust of current test-based “reform” madness:
“What was educationally significant and hard to measure has been replaced by what is educationally insignificant and easy to measure. So now we measure how well we taught what isn’t worth learning.”
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A premise is the ground that one’s argument rests upon. Successfully remove your opponent’s ground, and they can no longer fight. Sometimes, you can win the battle before you even engage.
Of course it’s not so simple in rhetoric as it is in physical warfare. Our enemies can still sound convincing to large audiences by employing clever fallacies, even if their arguments are invalid.
Still, usually the best way to attack.
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Ah. The Art of War. “Calculating”, isn’t it?
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Well, Mimi, at least it isn’t “calibrating”.
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Mimi, we are in a war and the opposition is absolutely making use of the thinking of Sun Tsu and other military strategists and tacticians. It’s long past time we understood their actions in that context and acted accordingly. The business world in Asia has been doing this for a very long time, just as many in the west do. This is as old as human history itself. Lest we forget and repeat it, oh wait, we are…..
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At Philanthropy Roundtable, tab K-12, article written by employees of AEI and, a Gates-funded organization, “…reformers…declare ‘We’ve got to blow up the (university) ed schools.” ” The language demonstrates intent to destroy.
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Huh, I think you posted this before, Linda, but I know see what you are referring to
http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/topic/k_12_education/dont_surrender_the_academy
The article says, blowing up ed departments at universities is not feasible. Instead, it calls for infiltration.
“Also, universities can provide stable financial support. It costs up to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in salary, benefits, and research, travel, and office expenses to support a top-flight scholar at a think tank. Salaries and overhead support, teaching assistants, access to the college fundraising apparatus, and other university amenities massively subsidize faculty at education schools. Why should reformers cede that turf?
Further, the presence of pedigreed, reform-minded scholars can make it more comfortable for graduate students, young faculty, and aspiring educators to question ed-school dogma. ”
It then reminds the reader that this infiltration was successful in law schools.
“Launched by law students at Yale, Harvard, and the University of Chicago in 1982, the Federalist Society built networks and created forums to air conservative arguments, emphasizing discussion and debate rather than decreeing set positions. Growing quickly, it became a magnet for noted law faculty, conveying to students that conservative thought was worthy of consideration and creating a safe space to question law-school orthodoxies. Today, the Federalist Society has 40,000 members, including a raft of influential law school faculty, attorneys, advocates, and judges. This has ensured that the elite schools, gatekeepers to the legal profession, have produced a steady stream of capable, credentialed conservative thinkers.”
I wonder if the Gates Foundation’s $34 million grant to various ed departments has relation to this infiltration program.
https://www.coe.uh.edu/features/gates/index.php
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Thanks for the University of Houston link.
The proliferation of Koch spending is shown in a graphic at UnKochMyCampus. The plutocrats ate taking over the universities one department at a time. In the coming revolution, the intellectual elites will be the first to feel the brunt of the people’s anger. Professors live among the people, not behind the fortress walls of the men they serve.
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The ed department at Harvard* has already been infiltrated (overrun?) and acts to
“bolster” much of the reformster nonsense that is passed off as science (eg, VAM )
*Also Econ department and Business school.
I’m surprised that the real scholars in all the legitimate departments at Harvard do not complain about the endless stream of junk that comes out of these 3 departments because it reflects poorly on Harvard on the whole.
of course, Chetty has since moved on to Stanford, so he is no longer an embarrassment to Harvard.
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Joshua Rauh, famous for pension alarm hype, moved out of Northwestern and, now, hangs his hat at Stanford. The oligarchs of Silicon Valley are synonymous with Stanford.
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The first step down the road of testing was the attempt to describe what students should be able to do in the form of behavioral objectives. If you can accurately describe behavior of the student who has learned, then you can test to see if he displays such behavior. Rember Dead Poets Society. That was the part the teacher had the boys tear out of their books. You cannot describe learning. You cannot describe poetry. Art. A sunset. The waves as they caress a beach on a cool spring day. Nice post. I before e except in Wierdl. Hear! Hear!
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“Surprise! (Not!)”
When learning is defined
By score on standard test
The standard test, you’ll find
Is claimed to measure best
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Dr. Wierdl is a champion! His webpage on the University’s site includes this section:
“SAVE PUBLIC EDUCATION
“Please help save public education. Resist corporate influence on our and your campus: taxpayers (your) money goes into private hands with no public oversight, with no input from profs. Public education was hard fought for by your great-great grandparents. Don’t let corporations turn back the wheels of time claiming this is the 21st century way. Completely false. The American college system became the envy of the World when it was taken out of corporate control 150 years ago.
“If you are a student and you are willing to help, please contact me by email.”
I had looked him up because his use of English in Diane’s blog made me wonder if he was raised in a non-English speaking country (his undergraduate degree was earned in Hungary). Bravo to Mate Wierdl for standing up for this issue so publicly in an unexpected place!
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I agree wholeheartedly.
Very few college professors are willing to make a public stand on this because it does not yet impact them.
When it does finally affect them (and it will), it may be too late.
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A couple of days ago, the Center for Media and Democracy posted, “How a Democrat-Led, Education-Focused PAC Channels Out-of-State Dark Money”. The article is about DFER.
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As a former math teacher, I appreciate the notion that we need to be explicit about our premises/postulates/goals/assumptions. As a math professor of mine replied when asked about parallel lines, “what is your space?”
There’s a more fundamental set of assumptions that come before questions of the measurability of educational outcomes: the very nature of the desired educational outcomes themselves. I’d argue that the desired outcomes should include things like:
– Student enthusiasm for learning, now and in the future
– Development of students’ self confidence in their abilities
– Ability to work collaboratively, even synergistically, in groups
– Student ability to draw connections between things in arbitrarily divided subject areas
– Willingness to be wrong — no experiment is a failure, because it teaches
– Encouragement of creativity
– Student ability to communicate clearly with others
And I personally think that these kinds of outcomes (and I do not mean to imply that my list is exhaustive) are more important than, for example, whether a student can factor a binomial. Education reformers have taken the easier path of focusing on the more easily measurable/testable (setting aside for the moment questions of reliability and validity) skills. That focus doesn’t just ignore the other, more important outcomes, it actually impairs educators’ ability to spend sufficient time on them. I’d wager that student enthusiasm for learning has declined with the focus on skills testing (though I’m not sure how one would measure that except anecdotally). In short, the testing focus makes the overall outcomes in our schools *worse*, even where test scores are rising.
We need to have more conversation about what outcomes we want from education. We need to challenge reformers on focusing on the wrong things.
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Jake,
“. . . the very nature of the desired educational outcomes themselves.”
What are the guiding principles of public education and where can that information be found?
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“We need to challenge reformers on focusing on the wrong things.”
I think from their viewpoint, they are focusing on the correct thing, which is central assessment based on data so that the assessment process can be automated. The data is obtained via measurements. In order to make measurements, they ignore the essential stuff and pick those things which are easy to measure.
I have the impression that some of the reformers are convinced that they are doing some kind of scientific method. But in science nobody is thinking about automating assessments. Indeed, scientific assessments are done by theoretical scientists like Einstein and in their work ranking and scoring make no sense.
No, what the reformers are doing is a sport. The purpose of assessments is ranking—ranking students, teachers, schools. Where does ranking, scoring make sense? In sports.
If you listen carefully, they and the media reporting on them sound like they are at a sporting event:
“The US team is doing poorly in the new Olympic team sport called Race to the Top. This is all the more discouraging since we were the ones pushing this sport to be accepted at the Games this year in Rio. We asked team manager Obama and assistant manager Duncan about the possible reasons.
‘We are as puzzled as everybody else.’ they told us. ‘We hired the most expensive head coach in the world, coach Gates, to close the achievement gap between us and all other countries, but the players whose performance pulls down our scores, namely those in the so called urban position, have been responding negatively to coach Gates’ rapid turnaround methods, and they are even sustaining some injuries.
But our 21st century methods, the pillar of which is to hire the most expensive head coach available, are the product of extensive research, and we can assure you, we’ll get the gold in Rio. We spare no tax revenue to produce the best results, and to prove to you that we are men of action and not useless thinking and listening, we are happy to report that we hired the next 10 most expensive head coaches, coach Broad and the Walton coaching family. They’ll start working with the urban players on April 1st. ‘ ”
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Jake,
About five of the desired outcomes that you speak of are being promoted by enthusiasts for SEL–social emotional learning. However, proponents want to measure these attributes, behaviors, character traits, so-called soft skills. The approach, however, seems to treat the student as if a patient in need of a cure, via interventions, explicit programs, standards, curricula, on-line delivery of competency modules (including games with avatars) and tests–the whole managerial architecture of recent education– complete with trainings, learnings, and other absurdities.
SEL is not just being marketed as “deeper learning.” It is on the way to becoming a major “indicator of school quality and year-to-year improvement” in some of the largest districts in California, pushed (in my opinion) by a very slow recognition that test scores alone are not predicates for “career and college readiness” or “success” in life.
My excessive use of quotes is only to indicate some of policy and practice words/phrases that are commonplace in this era, rarely defined, offer a very limited view of what may life offer and may require of each generation.
See for example the marketing of SEL as “deeper learning” at https://gardnercenter.stanford.edu/publications/core-districts-and-deeper-learning
Ruiz de Velasco, J. (2015). The CORE Districts and Deeper Learning. Stanford, CA: John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities.
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