John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, shares his thoughts about what matters most. What matters most for the future is not test scores, yet we have spent an entire generation–now almost two generations of young people who have passed through our schools since 2000–focusing only on test scores. Will we pay a price? Will they?
As I left the computer to walk the dog, a thought provoking title jumped off the screen, “2019 NAEP Results Show There’s Something Wrong Going On.” Our neighborhood is gentrifying too much, but the park still offers a wonderful place for cross-generational, cross-cultural conversations about what is going right and wrong. Only our spoiled dogs complain when daily discussions last a long time when recounting the latest Trump assaults on our constitutional democracy.
In contrast to corporate school reformers, who claimed that schools could be the answer to inequities, when a dog walker shared a link about another path to progress, we knew there is no single, silver bullet. We loved the New York Times’ “Dogs Will Fix Our Broken Democracy,” but we knew that the doggies, on their own, can’t teach us “to step outside of our narrowest selves.”
https://www.the74million.org/article/petrilli-2019-naep-results-show-theres-something-wrong-going-on-3-theories-about-what-might-be-happening-in-our-schools-and-beyond/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/31/opinion/dogs-democracy.html
The NAEP title also provoked contemplation on the school reform blinders which blocked out conversations about issues outside the school building. For two decades, as test-driven, competition-driven reform treated schools as a sped-up Model T assembly line, school segregation was increased and the curriculum was narrowed. The Billionaires Boys Club undermined instruction about issues outside of the classroom, such as deindustrialization, globalization, the increase of economic inequality, mass migration, climate change, and the decline in a sense of community.
Most inexplicably, schools ignored the moral dilemmas prompted by the digital revolution and we mostly failed to help our kids face its challenges, ranging from the gig economy to social media.
During the entire 21st century, both sides of the school wars have fought off their opponents with their metaphorical right hands, barely able to use our left hands for tackling the problems of poverty and segregation. Sure, the privatizers started this unnecessary battle, but why can’t they accept a truce? Why can’t we focus on the big picture issues that could explain the NAEP decline?
Shouldn’t we also wrestle with the biggest tragedies that are going on, threatening our democracy and our planet, and that contribute to NAEP scores declines?
Imagine my initial rejoicing when I returned from the dog walk to the NAEP story. The author of this appropriately-titled essay focused on what was going on outside the classroom, (as well as the minds of reformers, I would add.) He hypothesized that the Great Recession hurt student performance in two ways, “first, via its devastating impact on fragile families and their young children; and second, through its negative impact on school spending, as many state coffers ran dry.”
The author also noted that “the roaring ’90s led to a huge decrease in ‘supplemental’ child poverty rate … And that could explain much of the NAEP gains we saw in the 2000s, gains that were most dramatic for low-performing children and kids of color.” He then followed the cohorts of students who endured the years from 2009 to 2012 when the unemployment rate was 8 percent. He noted the correlation between the rise and fall of 4th grade scores and the stagnation and decline of 8th grade scores for low-income kids to the unemployment rate and education spending cuts. More affluent students, who didn’t have to face those challenges, continued to show steady gains.
A similar pattern was described in terms of screen time, and the anxiety and isolation it can cause. He notes, “Children from lower-income families spend an average of three and a half hours each day on screen media, … That amount is 40 percent longer than middle-income children (two hours and 25 minutes) and almost double the screen time spent by affluent children (one hour and 50 minutes).” As “screen time for low-income kids has absolutely skyrocketed in recent years,” their reading scores declined.
So, it seems logical that we should help teach children to use, but not be used by the cell phones. Given the massive and rapid economic transformations, that are unnerving adults, we should be preparing children not for worksheets and drill and kill, but for a healthy, productive, meaningful life in the 21st century. Contrary to corporate school reformers’ theory, which fought the legacies of segregation with segregation by choice, and the stress of poverty with the stress of high stakes testing, the logical conclusion would be that poor children need holistic and culturally relevant instruction.
But then the author, called for a “recalibration” including “much more demanding academic standards that were aligned to readiness for college and career.” He would do this by …?
For some reason that I still can’t understand, this author – who often acknowledges the failures of school reform – dug in his heals and called for a return to “the form of the Common Core; much higher-quality and more rigorous assessments, in the form of Smarter Balanced and PARCC and their successors.”
Readers, you probably guessed that the author who twisted himself into a pretzel when so contradicting himself, was the Fordham Institutes’ Mike Petrilli. And he then called for “tougher tests and accountability systems.”
In other words, corporate reformers like Petrilli do provide at least one valuable feature. They are a great case study in how to present “alt facts.” Fordham et. al start with something we can agree on, something unifying, for instance like our shared, heart-warming desire to cuddle a kitty. But they always end on a note of survival of the fittest, demanding the defeat of the educational institution that kitty-hating educators defend. Their spin could be featured in a great lesson of how political propaganda is spread on the web!
Seriously, “2019 NAEP Results Show There’s Something Wrong Going On” illustrates the huge opportunity costs of having to fight off reformers when we should have been concentrating on the existential dangers that that our youth face. And a New York Times Magazine special edition that was published the same week offers a horrifying glance at the battle we should have been engaging in.
The Magazine’s “The Internet Didn’t Turn Out the Way We Hoped” is so direct in its warning that its cover features the meanest-looking, ugliest kitty they could photograph. Kevin Roose’s “A Cleaner Internet” is illustrated with a cat embodying the beauty we hoped for, along with three stained kittens. He cites Marc Andreesen who said, “in the future there will be two types of people: ‘people who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do.’”
Below are just a few of the special issue’s examples of today’s and tomorrow’s virtual realities that we haven’t educated our kids about. Jamie Lauren Keiles describes the “cursed dynamics on online fandom,” and explains, “Today’s fandom is more like a stateless nation, formed around a shared viewing heritage, but perpetuated through the imaginations and interrelations of those who enjoy and defend it” (It sounds to me that “fandom” also describes corporate reform.)
Yiren Lieu describes the “much more powerful apps” that are “flowering in China,” and concludes, “Whatever it is that takes place when Chinese –style super-app-dom meets the American teenager, it sounds like the future of the internet.”
The article that made me feel sickest was Elizabeth Weil’s “All My Selves Are My Favorite.” It begins with 15-year-old’s “Ninth Grade Makeup Transformation” YouTube video. She used “dozens” of brushes and powders, “bouncing between one shell of identity and the next.” And, “45 minutes later, tender, glittering and shellacked with cosmetics, she was ready for school.”
The teen’s commentary was full of expressions like, “I need to not be annoying, and I’m not doing a good job of that. … I also look ugly, and I’m really depressed!”
Fortunately, at the end, she at least listened to, even if she didn’t hear, a 23-year old’s wisdom, “I’m like, Oh, this is what happens when someone is raised on the internet.”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/14/magazine/internet-future-dream.html
Yes, behind the NAEP decline, there is “something wrong.” As John Merrow recently noted, “we have managed to teach our children how NOT to think, and today not even 14% of American 15-year-olds are able to distinguish facts and opinion.”
So, it’s a terrible shame that we educators have been distracted from one of our biggest tasks – helping kids learn how to control their own destinies. A generation of students has attended schools where they have been treated as test scores. Worse, venture philanthropists’ market-driven reforms are just one part of venture capitalists who see humans – inside and outside of schools – as data points.
https://themerrowreport.com/2019/12/05/the-national-assessment-of-educational-paralysis-naep/
The “higher” Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic]. Ha ha ha, hee hee, ho, ha, heeeee, HAAAAAAA, oh Lord, make it stop, HAAAAAAAAA hee hee HAAA. Oh, it hurts.
Puerile standards and invalid tests on them. Yeah, Mike. A lot more of that. And clean coal is the answer to global warming.
Remember when the backward, mediocre, nearly content-free, Gates/Coleman bullet list of vaguely described skills and the invalid tests on those were going to close achievement gaps and race us to the top. Well, by the Deformers’ own measures, test scores, they have been an UTTER FAILURE.
What hasn’t failed, however, are the checks in the mail from Bill and Melinda Gates, the Waltons, et al. (“All your base are belong to us”) to the sock puppets at Fordham. So what do you do when your policies have UTTERLY FAILED? Double down on them.
Another great idea for you, Mike: birds are disappearing in the US, so perhaps we should breed a lot more feral cats.
cx: What haven’t failed, ofc
This is a thought provoking post about our collective failure to meet the needs of our young people. So-called reform has been a wrench in the gears to a content rich curricula. Ever since NCLB, our young people have been treated like rats in a maze with stressful punishments for those that fail to perform or refuse to comply. In addition to punishment, so-called reform monetized many of our poorest students and subjected them to convergent test taking strategies instead of a legitimate rich education. When we add increased amounts of cyber instruction, we have reduced the amount of human engagement students need to feel accepted an secure. The many school closures have contributed to this feeling of dislocation and lack of connection.
What Thompson is describing is an increase in “anomie” in our youth today. For anyone unfamiliar with the term, it is ‘”the condition in which society provides little moral guidance to individuals”. Anomie may evolve from conflict of belief systems and causes breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community.’ In addition to segregation, corporate disruption results in a disturbing increase in anomie. When we dissolve the social bonds that hold us together, many of our young people become rudderless ships at sea. This is a recipe for dystopia.
Loved your response…. posted it at the oped link to the Thompson piece… and credited to YOU!
You nailed it.
Thank you, Susan.
I actually don’t see anomie” in the young people of today.
From Greta Thunberg to my nieces and nephews, I see them as VERY socially minded.
I t is the so-called “adults” who are rudderless, concerned only with making money.
They (we) are the ones who are responsible for everything from endless testing in our schools to Donald Trump.
And the adults are far too quick to blame the younger generations for the problems that THEY (we) created and will not live up to.
Our young people understand far more than the adults in our society give them credit for
The dehumanization of education and lack of social mobility have not hit most of the middle class yet. These are the students that still receive a rich and varied curricula. These students shrug off the tests as they are well prepared for the challenge. It is the poor and vulnerable that suffer the most under our misguided policy of test, punish, close schools and misuse of technology. As long as there is money to be made, our young people will continue to face deform fatigue.
Though I agree that the poor and minority students have born the brunt of deform, in at least some cases, the disruption of the deformers has resulted in heightened social conscience among such students, just the opposite of anomie.
Here’s just one example
I also see it in the marches for the climate, which are populated with large numbers of young people.
Though Greta Thunberg is not an American, I see her thinking in many of the young people I know. And Greta has far better critical thinking skills and far more social conscience than most of the adults that I know.
I think some adult’s seriously misunderestimate* the youth of today, both their critical thinking skills (see John Merrow’s claim) and their social conscience (anomie theory notwithstanding)
*GWBs greatest — and probably only — positive contribution to humanity.
Great link, SDP, gives one hope indeed. There is a generally built-in rebellion among healthy-minded kids (regardless of SES) against the hypocrisy of societal expectations which bear no relation to current reality, have no backing in social funding/ support, run counter to govt policies in place– in short, injustice of any stripe. And they’re all absolutely smart enough to see through policies that represent short-term profits for elders at the expense of their children/ grandchildren [e.g. environment/ climate change]. The greatest thing we teachers and parents can do for them is to encourage them to think for themselves and join with like-minded peers to pressure govt w/ their concerns, be activists, & vote.
I worry about the anomie thing for the youngest & poorest/ least supported/ abused by family/ society: that leads to early drugs/ alcohol, and gangs. And I believe there’s a huge swath of 20-35y.o.’s caught up in pull-yrself-up-by-yr-own-bootstraps vs paucity of opportunity/ social support: viz the opioid epidemic [& meth].
Agree with Susan, retired teacher, you nailed it here. I found this snippet in wiki’s article on anomie which seems particularly fitting, from the discussion of Durkheim’s book on suicide: “He believed that anomie is common when the surrounding society has undergone significant changes in its economic fortunes, whether for better or for worse and, more generally, when there is a significant discrepancy between the ideological theories and values commonly professed and what was actually achievable in everyday life . The part I put in italics seems inevitable when there have been radical changes affecting societal makeup, such as we’ve seen over the last 40 yrs: the older folks running society & telling “how it is” are operating on paradigms that no longer obtain for the rest of society.
It’s up at Oped. https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/The-Danger-of-Ignoring-the-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Diane-Ravitch-191216-801.html#comment751970
Self declared education expert John Merrow says “we have managed to teach our children how NOT to think, and today not even 14% of American 15-year-olds are able to distinguish facts and opinion.”
Says the man who was once Michelle Rhee’s biggest cheerleader and said it was “great fun” following Rhee (even after she fired a principal on air).
Great fun!
I’ll take the thinking of today’s 15 year olds any day of the week over Merrows brand of critical thinking.
Merrow also claimed balanced literacy does not work well. I know for a fact if implemented correctly, it can get super results and teach students to enjoy reading. My understanding of balanced literacy includes the “science” of language as well as real reading and writing. The science aspect in reading is simply phonics. My master’s degree is full of courses in applied linguistics so I understand the “science” of language better than most. My whole school used balanced literacy, and we were awarded a “Blue Ribbon” ten years ago by the DOE because we did such a good job with our diverse students. Districts need to invest in training when they change curriculum.
“SELF-declared expert…” Boy do we have a huge problem with that where educational policy is concerned.
I am entirely in agreement with Thompson when he brings up the suggestion that economic hard times impact educational hard times. This is something that should be obvious to any but the blindest of the bind. I am not so sure about his comfort with the idea that the NAEP scores can be explained with economic downturns and general fortunes.
I do not share the view that testing is a window into anything in particular, least of all to the effect of economic hardship on a population. Testing seems to me to be a window into the desire for Americans to compete at everything but dish washing and street sweeping.
I sense a decline in the general willingness of students to attack problems in ideas or their expression, but I hesitate to ascribe this phenomenon to the stack of measurable events in a probability set.
““we have managed to teach our children how NOT to think, and today not even 14% of American 15-year-olds are able to distinguish facts and opinion.”
Where I can I read about that 14% statistics?