Responding to a post of the same name by Larry Lee of Alabama, SomeDam Poet writes:
“The stories that data never tell”
The stories that data never tell
Are known to the teachers very well
The pride in art
The joy of song
A brand new start
In something long
The growth that’s gauged
By smiles and laughs
And not encaged
By tests and graphs
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yes! This reminds me of a poem I wrote some time ago about an especially dear English professor at the University of MD:
“Teaching/Learning”
The poignancy of life, the dearness, and the beauty,
This is what is missed
In mindless learning.
Transmission of the caring is the key,
No matter what the subject.
So,
What precious memories of student-time endure in me?
I see the man—
His face
creased from years of deeply feeling—
He smiles slightly,
Stands
Like in a trance—his eyes closed lightly,
And rocking on his heels,
Recites beloved lines from
Homer, Hopkins,
Yeats, from Eliot
And Williams.
This was my evaluation—
A valuing and validation.
Diane Here is a relevant reflection on art: “The very obscurity of art is, in a sense, its most generic meaning.”
That doesn’t bode well for testing where “accountability” means: if it can’t be counted, it doesn’t count. (An old saying that still applies.)
(Quote from: (Bernard Lonergan/Insight: A Study of Human Understanding/1958/2000/p. 208)
Yes. Thanks Diane, and SomeDamPoet, Sheila Resseger, and Catherine Blanche King.
I regret to say that arts educators have been drawn into the trap of forwarding “core” grade-by-grade standards in the arts–music, dance, theater, visual arts, and media arts. They are also straining to offer one example of an “embedded” assessment for grade levels 2, 5, 8, and three levels of performance in high school: proficient, accomplished, and advanced.
Literature, poetry, and related literary arts were separated from the arts standards a long time ago. The jargon in the arts standards is thick.
http://www.nationalartsstandards.org
The national data-fi-cation of arts education via tests began in the 1970s with the first NAEP tests. The most recent NAEP report card (about one every decade) is for grade 8 only and only in music and the visual arts. Enrollments in 8th grade are usually for electives. https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/arts_2016/
DC has spent the last 5 months promoting private schools while public schools literally cannot afford to stay open:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/with-state-budget-in-crisis-many-oklahoma-schools-hold-classes-four-days-a-week/2017/05/27/24f73288-3cb8-11e7-8854-21f359183e8c_story.html?utm_term=.dd249753ee07
None of them noticed the public schools in Oklahoma were only open 4 days a week?
God almighty, imagine if these people showed the same passion and commitment for public schools that they shower on charter and private schools. One of them might even have noticed the schools were closed!
Who represents Oklahoma public school children? No one? Why in the heck are public school parents paying these people? They do nothing.
Wonderful!
Someone will eventually receive grants to develop websites where customers can rate blog poets and then use the data to find the ones favored by the private interests that will own the websites as well as the highest rated, privately controlled blog poets. Enjoy your autonomy while you can, DAM.
Editing error. Sorry, that should have been: people will eventually receive grants.
LeftCoastTeacher
Back in 2010, the Council of Chief State School Officers set up a website called EdSteps intended to provide something close to your vision of a rating system for writing, for “global competence, for creativity, for problem solving and for “analyzing information.” These topics were judged to be hard to assess by standardized tests.
The initial methodology was an easy-to game-popularity contest with voluntary submissions by anyone. Ratings were to be based on simple judgments of randomly selected pairs of these submissions. The “contract” for submitting work was just one of many dubious features of this effort. Another was the idea that a continuum of achievement could be mapped from childhood to adult professionals one that would not be constrained by differences in genres, style, and so on. Comparing apples and magnolias could work.
I wrote about that dubious EDSteps undertaking a long time ago. In 2017, I see that the CCSSO has handed off EDSteps to the Bill and Melina Gates Foundation. I could not find anything at the Bill and Melina Gates Foundation indicating further work on the project. The CCSSO is sponsoring some events that mention EdSteps, especially “global awareness.” Apart from this impulse to get data about everything, there are some longstanding contests in the arts, including poetry, and those remarkable poetry slams for multiple ages. Should I mention some amazing rapping?
The kids used to hold rap sessions on the lockers outside my classrooms during passing periods. I loved them! I couldn’t help moving to the beat as I stood by my door. One of my former students noticed my enjoyment and came to my room one afternoon to work on his rhyming lyrics. Unfortunately the free concert ended, I suspect, when class schedules changed.
Much wrong with the whole data movement. From imprecision and inappropriateness of the sources to the idiotic and nonsensical replacement, rather than supplement for, intuition and insight and expertise to the whole fallacy of meritocracy, which, as is, is just another form of corruption.
Love the poetry. And, the poet.
Agree. Laura, Chiara, Lloyd, Joel, Michael and others at the Ravitch blog demonstrate there is goodness in the world.
Off-topic. In a recently published, thinly-veiled account of Bernie Madoff and his wife, the view of the predatory rich is described. They conflate a child’s resilience with his lack of empathy.
Though for us mathy types, sometimes the graphs ARE the art! 😉
Lovely!
JFK: “Power and Poetry.” (R. Frost)
“The Gift Outright” (with sincere apologies to Robert Frost)
The land was theirs before it graced our hands
She was their land thousands of years
Before we reached her shores. She was theirs:
The Mohawk’s The Oglala’s
But we were English, still colonialists
Possessing what we stole, which they were dispossessed of
Possessed by what we now still did not possess
Everything they were witholding made us envious
Until we found out we could take it for ourselves
They were witholding from us our rightful land of living
And forthwith found salvation in surrender (on reservations)
That which they possessed we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of massacre)
The land, as yet sparsely settled by Englishmen westward,
But still storied, artful, enhanced
Theirs she was, ours she has become
Probably should be entitled “The Theft Outright”
John F. Kennedy went to Amherst College on October 26, 1963 for the dedication of the Robert Frost Library and to receive an honorary degree.
He said, “’When power leads men toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.’”
and
“’I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.’”
(I had incorporated this into a post I wrote about the fatal flaws of the CC$$, but unfortunately I don’t have the reference now.)
The DEAD POETS’ SOCIETY takes on deeper and deeper meaning.
JFK’s Poetry and Power speech was inspired by a line in a poem Frost wrote for his inauguration, “Dedication” calling for a “A golden age of poetry and power”.
In Kennedy’s speech, he said that “art is not a form of propaganda. It is a form of truth”
Frost had actually not read the Dedication poem at Kennedy’s inauguration because the sun was too bright. Instead he had recited “The Gift Outright”, which is actually propaganda serving power, which makes the whole Frost/Kennedy interchange very ironic.
The claim that art is not a form of propaganda but a form of truth is not necessarily true.
In addition to “the Gift Outright”, “The White Man’s Burden” is another example of propaganda couched in poetic form.
Poetry is simply a way of saying things.
No more. No less.
“What JFK called for was what Walt Whitman had called for one hundred years before: an embrace of contradiction and a willingness to contain multitudes. Through art, we participate in a ritual transaction that is national in scope. We go beyond fact into texture. This texture then reveals who we are: that as a nation we must also be creatures of our creative spirit. JFK understood that a sentence spun from the mind, or a note plucked from the air, or the touch of horsehair on the canvas, has the power to shape a society and restore — or re-story — the national narrative.” Colum McCann
“JFK understood that a sentence spun from the mind…has the power to restore — or re-story — the national narrative”
Doubtless true, but the choice of words is interesting: “spun”, power, “re-story”, national narrative.
Those are all things that are also often associated with propaganda and JFK certainly understood that. The ideas put forth in “The Gift Outright” are a perfect example of the effort to “re-story the national narrative” — ie, to rewrite history to suit powerful interests.
I don’t doubt that JFK had good intentions in bringing poets and other artists into the national conversation.
But it is nonetheless important to note the ironies in the exchange between Frost and JFK because art CAN be used to hide truth just as easily as illuminate it.
The main problem as I see it comes when the artist becomes too close to — and too enamored with — the politician to point out uncomfortable truths.
I don’t think Frost even realized what he was doing when he recited “The Gift Outright” at JFK’s inauguration. I think he was blinded by the light in more ways than one on that day.
But don’t get me wrong.
I love Robert Frost.
Reblogged this on Mister Journalism: "Reading, Sharing, Discussing, Learning".
Re: “Poetry is simply a way of saying things.
No more. No less. ”
Perhaps poetry is poetry.
It speaks for itself.