The standards and testing cabal wants to preserve the status quo ante and double down on accountability and NCLB-style measures after the pandemic. The choice crowd wants to push their agendas subsidizing anything and everything while slashing public schools.
William Doyle and Pasi Sahlberg have a different vision. They want learning to be creative and joyful. They describe their ideas on Valerie Strauss’s “Answer Sheet” blog:
William Doyle and Pasi Sahlberg, public school fathers in New York City and Sydney, respectively, are co-authors of “Let the Children Play: How More Play Will Save our Schools and Help Children Thrive.”
The coronavirus crisis has shattered one of the most dysfunctional pillars of childhood education. On March 20, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos suspended the federal requirement for the mass standardized testing of children, announcing “Neither students nor teachers need to be focused on high-stakes tests during this difficult time.” Other countries, including England and Australia, are doing the same. These decisions should be made permanent, and the job of assessing learning should be returned to classroom teachers, not politicians and for-profit testing companies.
More than 1.5 billion young people around the world have been affected by school closures due to the covid-19 pandemic. Our own young children are among them. Like countless other parents, we now have to home-school, remotely work, and keep our families safe in an atmosphere of uncertainty about the future.
Some day, hopefully in the not-too distant future, our schools will open their doors again. When they do, we should give our children a much better education system. To do this, we should build our schools upon a foundation of what the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) calls “the ideal educational and developmental milieu for children”: play, in all of its forms.
The evidence is clear. A wide range of research indicates that intellectual and physical play confers a host of cognitive, social, emotional and health benefits. Play is the learning language of children, and pediatricians know it has the power to supercharge more conventional, and equally necessary, forms of academic instruction.
Over the last 20 years, politicians in the United States and elsewhere and have tried to improve public schools with policies based on the high-pressure standardized testing of children. Instead of improving learning, these policies have demoralized teachers and students, pushed out the arts, recess and learning through play, and wasted billions of dollars for marginal gains, by doing little to relieve the inequities, segregation and student disengagement that plague many of our schools.
In the United States, for example, recess in public schools is widely restricted, and even denied as a punishment for wiggling in class or late homework — despite the scientific evidence that physical activity improves behavior and academic performance. Before the school shutdowns, millions of American children were already spending their days in cruel, unnatural conditions of forced physical restraint in our public schools. According to one report, 30 percent of American kindergartners have no recess anymore, due to academic pressure on 4-, 5- and 6 -year-olds.
Now, well over a billion children will be almost totally cooped up indoors at home, perhaps for months to come.
“We have to assume that the incidence of PTSD and anxiety disorders as a function of what we are as a society going through, for both parents and children, is going to be huge,” pediatrician Michael Yogman told us. “ … We need to think about how are we going to help children recover from the trauma of this experience.”
According to Yogman, principal author of the American Academy of Pediatrics 2018 landmark report “The Power of Play,” a worst-case scenario would be for schools to say, “We missed four months of academic subjects and tests, so we’re going to compress it all into a month and catch up.” He considers this kind of thinking a terrible idea, since “it would just accentuate the stress children are already experiencing and undermine their capacity for productive learning.”
Representing the nation’s 67,000 children’s doctors, the American Academy of Pediatrics has declared that “the importance of playful learning for children cannot be overemphasized.” In fact, the doctors assert, “It could be argued that active play is so central to child development that it should be included in the very definition of childhood. Play offers more than cherished memories of growing up, it allows children to develop creativity and imagination while developing physical, cognitive and emotional strengths.”
In direct opposition to the prevailing wisdom of some American self-styled “education reformers” who have slashed recess and play in inner-city schools, the AAP has noted that for children in poverty, “play should be an integral component of school engagement.” According to the pediatricians, “the lifelong success of children is based on their ability to be creative and to apply the lessons learned from playing.”
Play is urgently relevant to the new education world that will emerge from the coronavirus pandemic. “Play can mitigate stress,” Dr. Yogman tells us. “The executive function skills that kids develop through play can promote resilience, and play can restore safe and nurturing relationships with parents, teachers and other children, which also promotes resilience. That’s got to be our goal when kids get back to school. At every level, in our schools, homes, and communities, our social structures have to acknowledge the magnitude of stress all families, especially those with young children will experience, and design programs that mitigate that, including lots of physical activity and play.”
In these times of uncertainty, pain and fear, play can be a big part of the cure. During this crisis, parents should resist the temptation to overstress their children with excessive, often screen-based “remote at-home learning” in an attempt to “not fall behind.” In this bizarre, tragic chapter in world history, children need parental attention and love, comfort, safety, nondigital play, healthy routines, songs, books, blocks, basic art supplies, and, whenever possible, physical activity, much more than they need academic pressure, graded assignments and excessive screen time. We recently asked our own children, age 8 and 12, what they think their own weekday study schedule at home should look like during the crisis. They sketched out time for learning, practice and rest, and also blocked out slots of time through the day for recess, play and physical activity breaks — just as pediatricians recommend. We should listen carefully to both children and their doctors, who together represent qualified experts on childhood.
In this health emergency, government leaders around the world are urgently seeking the advice of medical and scientific experts. They should do the same when it comes to education. When the covid-19 pandemic passes and the world opens up again, we should redesign our schools using the best expert evidence, just as we are doing in response to the global health pandemic. We should give our children schools that follow doctor’s orders, by giving them lots of physical activity and play to energize learning and boost health and happiness.
The mission of childhood education can no longer be the generation of standardized test data, but learning powered by the physical, mental and emotional health and well being of every child and every teacher.
Schools should be the favorite place of every child. It’s time we made them so.
Great piece! We also need to prioritize our playgrounds and schoolyards for look, safety, and interest. There are also some schools that don’t even have gyms.
Agreed. “Great” is the word.
The article said 30% of kindergarteners get no recess. That’s so foul.
It’s not foul LCT, it’s unethical, unjust and downright harmful to those students. Whoever the hell authorized that policy should be let go of immediately and never be allowed near a school or district again.
Many charter schools don’t have a gym, a theatre, a media room available for anything except testing, a library, a nurse, art supplies, science lab supplies, librarians, sports fields, classroom novels, classroom supplies. Why? Well, they get a set amount of money per pupil from the state, and the CMO (charter management organization) gets to decide how that is spent. Any money spent on the kids is money that can’t go into the pockets of the CMO directors and their ne’er-do-well cousins, mistresses, golfing buddies, etc.
Here’s what I call the “charter school equation”:
Sum of per pupil allocations from the state – whatever is spent on kids = total graft
I agree since teaching in NYC it came down to teaching for the test! Teachers had to follow common standards without the joy of learning and exploring different subjects! We lost art and music in most schools including more socializing!
that endless, endless insanity: studies argue that kids who have access to art and music will do BETTER on standardized tests — so the “experts” in charge of reform eliminate those options
Ciedie, I’m guessing such conclusions are tangential; many studies have chosen to use standardized test scores, at least in part, to measure ed outcomes. The thrust of most of them is improvement in factors not easily measured by stdzd test scores, e.g., critical thinking, motivation, creativity, visual analysis skills, literary analysis, social skills. Nevertheless the fact that ed-reform policy runs in the opposite direction shows true colors [$$].
Test Protest
Eliminate the standard test
For kindergarten kids?
I’ll tell you what we should protest
About a plan like this:
The kids will not read close!
Or even read at all!!
Instead they’ll prolly post
Their drawings on the wall!!!
They’ll play and play and play!
And then, they’ll play some more!!
In school, throughout the day!!!
And even out the door!!!!
When education returns to normalcy, we should not return to the test and punish status quo. We should provide education that relates to the whole student. Students should be at the center of educational decisions, not outside commercial influences. Schools should not be considered open markets designed to sell a variety of tech and testing products. Public schools must place the needs of students first. The goal should always be to provide comprehensive educational experiences for all that are equitably distributed. Here’s another post on the same topic.https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/09/opinion/coronavirus-gives-us-an-opportunity-rethink-k-12-education/?fbclid=IwAR3lApghsiFG8MCF0Iwy9IALpWgln0iOwN23UWPg2TY1sOElsdqa-y3vs84
intellectual and physical play
If it’s not that, it’s not worth doing.
If it’s not one or the other or both
Beautifully, beautiful said, Mr. Doyle, Mr. Sahlberg!
However, if one’s aim is to turn Prole children into mindless drone bots who will apply themselves gritfully to whatever alienating task is put before them by their “superiors,” then the standardized test-driven school using depersonalized education software (worksheets on a screen with graphics) to assign external rewards (sit up, roll over, good boy) is just what you need.
What Doyle and Sahlberg describe is what schooling might look like in an actual democracy. That’s not what the Deformers and Disrupters are aiming for.
There is always a hidden curriculum. The true Deform/Disruption curriculum is control. Command, coercion, control.
a few responses…
Select one of the options below (there is no “all of the above”). If we want more play, puzzles, problem solving, projects (that alliteration was not intentional0, consider… asking Why? What? and Who? we need to test.
“What do the kids need to work on?” – Assess to guide learning
Assume that the purpose of the testing is about IMPROVING LEARNING. Then test at the BEGINNING OF THE YEAR and NO spring post-test. One test. If a school wants to do some benchmark testing during the year for internal purposes, not ranking and state monitoring, go for it. (or ‘the doctor doesn’t prescribe something and six month later you come back for your check up and diagnosis”)
“How is the school doing?” – Assess to measure the whole school; not kids or individual teacher and to guide resources
Then test randomly. Don’t test every kid and not a week’s battery. A representative sampling of students
OR
Test transition grades – only test 5th, 8th, and 10th (or year before middle grades, year before high school, and year before rigors of college and future learning kicks in. Not to measure kids – but who is the school doing.
“Are kids learning what we are teaching – here – now?”
District homegrown assessments – project based, test what was actually taught (aka a well written low stakes Regents-like test)
“Aren’t grades supposed to report learning?” Make grades (6-12) mean something
Grades are supposed to be a simple single digit representation of everything learned in 180 days (huh?). Then make them meaningful – and preferably A, B, C, and Not Yet
“Why a score that means nothing about everything?” Narratives instead of high stakes single digit scores or grade
The only reason (probably ?) that we use grades in the first place is because a hundred years ago teachers couldn’t write out a summary of what a child had learned and needs to work on (well, my elementary school report card does have handwritten comments by the teachers which meant more than the grade). Technology abounds so let the teacher write a few sentences about what has been learned (not selecting predetermined codes for comments)
However – to all of the above – the current feds should want to get rid of testing altogether. If the is no testing, how could a charter school be promoted as “better than the public schools? If they are required to test and the charter scores and rankings are lower than the public school, they don’t have a case to be “chosen.”
““How is the school doing?” – Assess to measure the whole school;”
Absurd!
There is no measuring going on in any fashion. It’s a false usage of the term to measure. The most misleading concept/term in education is “measuring student achievement” or “measuring student learning”. The concept has been misleading educators into deluding themselves that the teaching and learning process can be analyzed/assessed using “scientific” methods which are actually pseudo-scientific at best and at worst a complete bastardization of rationo-logical thinking and language usage.
There never has been and never will be any “measuring” of the teaching and learning process and what each individual student learns in their schooling. There is and always has been assessing, evaluating, judging of what students learn but never a true “measuring” of it.
But, but, but, you’re trying to tell me that the supposedly august and venerable APA, AERA and/or the NCME have been wrong for more than the last 50 years, disseminating falsehoods and chimeras??
Who are you to question the authorities in testing???
Yes, they have been wrong and I (and many others, Wilson, Hoffman etc. . . ) question those authorities and challenge them (or any of you other advocates of the malpractices that are standards and testing) to answer to the following onto-epistemological analysis:
The TESTS MEASURE NOTHING, quite literally when you realize what is actually happening with them. Richard Phelps, a staunch standardized test proponent (he has written at least two books defending the standardized testing malpractices) in the introduction to “Correcting Fallacies About Educational and Psychological Testing” unwittingly lets the cat out of the bag with this statement:
“Physical tests, such as those conducted by engineers, can be standardized, of course [why of course of course], but in this volume , we focus on the measurement of latent (i.e., nonobservable) mental, and not physical, traits.” [my addition]
Notice how he is trying to assert by proximity that educational standardized testing and the testing done by engineers are basically the same, in other words a “truly scientific endeavor”. The same by proximity is not a good rhetorical/debating technique.
Since there is no agreement on a standard unit of learning, there is no exemplar of that standard unit and there is no measuring device calibrated against said non-existent standard unit, how is it possible to “measure the nonobservable”?
THE TESTS MEASURE NOTHING for how is it possible to “measure” the nonobservable with a non-existing measuring device that is not calibrated against a non-existing standard unit of learning?????
PURE LOGICAL INSANITY!
The basic fallacy of this is the confusing and conflating metrological (metrology is the scientific study of measurement) measuring and measuring that connotes assessing, evaluating and judging. The two meanings are not the same and confusing and conflating them is a very easy way to make it appear that standards and standardized testing are “scientific endeavors”-objective and not subjective like assessing, evaluating and judging.
That supposedly objective results are used to justify discrimination against many students for their life circumstances and inherent intellectual traits.
STEP # 1 must be a repeal of ESSA and the odious state plans which are, in the main still full of obscene requirements for tests and “performance”measures, as if teachers and students must be treated likie trained seals.
STEP #2 must be a desmantling all of the programs that NCLB and RTT and ESSA have spawned including a charter industry funded by USDE, States, and billionaires.
STEP#3 must be restoration of academic freedom and collective bargaining.
hear, hear!
Coming off our high horse in education is top priority. We need, as a nation and as an educational community, to become more humble and have a desire to learn what is new and what is true kindness! I was so encouraged to listen to the education commissioner Lamont Repollet of New Jersey recently as I saw some of this in his messages. It was uplifting to hear him and his team speak – I do hope they will take this article to heart and education will properly move forward in NJ – as well as economic equity and justice!
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The disrupters are like termites just bigger and more ruthless.
What do we do to terminates when they are eating the supports that hold our house together?
You wonder if ed-reformers recognize that humans are animals. Any Nature show– or just having kittens or puppies– shows that mammals learn everything through play.
Excellent point.
Play is how children and other animals learn about the world “out there”.
And it never stops, as long as the curiosity about the world doesn’t stop.
I suspect that at least some people don’t want children playing simply because they themselves were not allowed to play as children. It’s probably not conscious in most cases, but comes simply from a belief that they had hammered into them as a child by their parents and other adults that “life is serious –not for playing around”
This is an important article. Kids are kids. They learn from play. Physical play has been removed from school curricula as has music and most other arts. The pandemic and time away from classroom teaching might just be enough for parents to hear the tiny voices that have been calling for change. Education is now a business. Learning is unsuited to business modelling and data mining. The message is, let kids grow without inflicting PTSD.
In the United States, for example, recess in public schools is widely restricted, and even denied as a punishment for wiggling in class or late homework — despite the scientific evidence that physical activity improves behavior and academic performance. Before the school shutdowns, millions of American children were already spending their days in cruel, unnatural conditions of forced physical restraint in our public schools.
Easy, Mister! Does “restricted recess” mean that kids need to hold for an hour before they can pee, and even this may be impossible because of incredibly short four-minute breaks? Does “unnatural conditions” mean that there are few regulations about the duration of classes, the height of the ceilings, the amount of light, so classrooms are basically turned into caves? Does “forced physical restraint” mean that American schools feel like prisons? You should mind your own business, mister. Criticize your own Finnish schools, or where you are now? In Australia? Well, then criticize the Australian schools. How dare you to say that American schools punish children. They foster democracy. They instill free independent thinking. They bring up future citizens.
While children take advantage of “recess” to pee, recess is not an exclusive “pee break”.
“In education, recess is the American term (known as break or playtime in the UK), where students have a mid-morning snack and play before having lunch after a few more lessons. Typically ten to thirty minutes, in elementary school[1] where students are allowed to leave the school’s interior to enter its adjacent outside park where they play on equipment such as slides and swings, play basketball, tetherball, study or talk. Many middle schools also offer a recess to provide students with a sufficient opportunity to consume quick snacks, communicate with their peers, visit the restroom, study, and various other activities.”
ColorFermat, you argument misses the point, totally.
American schools have a long way to go and we would be remiss not listening at and looking at what educators are doing in other countries. We do not do that nearly enough. There is a baked in arrogance in many so called educators – they are educators but they run scared and angry if there is something large and different to learn even if it is something domestic! It – arrogance – to some extent exists in all of us – and we must be against this way of mind in order to move forward.