Peter Greene imparts some profundity in this post.
Are you afraid that your child is “falling behind”? Behind what? Who drew the line? Who made the rules?
This article contains wisdom. What’s teal and what’s a social construct? Which social constructs matter? Why?
It reminds me of the incredulous looks I get when I explain that standardized testing is a social construct, that it has errors in the questions, errors in the answers, even errors in the scoring. Some people think that children’s loves and fortunes should be determined by this social construct. Why?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
When explaining that intelligence is a social construct to future teachers, it is difficult for them to grasp what a construct is. The idea that combining measures of attributes associated with intelligence (usually verbal and math) will yield a measure of intelligence has never occurred to them. When one creates a construct then, the entire process is fraught with error. A construct like intelligence has been misused over and over again to pigeonhole ethnic groups and races into categories, reducing opportunity for the disadvantaged. I have opposed the used of standardized testing because this form of measurement restricts opportunity and shapes expectations with harmful outcomes. Constructs were meant to be tested for their accuracy, not for assessment.
It helps to know that standardized tests were invented by eugenicists and used to prove their theories about white supremacy. Read chapter four of my book LEFT BACK about the ugly history of IQ testing, which was the foundation of today’s standardized tests.
Yes, I am aware of that book and I am appreciative of the link that you forged between eugenics and white supremacy. Although this link is well known, no one seems to care. I am hopeful that BLM will continue to challenge white supremacy and make a substantive change in the use of testing.
“I have opposed the used of standardized testing because this form of measurement restricts opportunity and shapes expectations with harmful outcomes.”
As a matter of fact I know that those TESTS DON’T MEASURE ANYTHING. The test scores correlate rather closely with parental income (more specifically the educational level of the mother which is closely tied with SES status). CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL MEASURE by any stretch of the meaning of those terms.
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”)
Now since there is no agreement on a standard unit of learning, there is not 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!
It may be “pure, logical insanity,” but it is a huge industry and an even bigger tool of control and subjugation. I can’t disagree with almost anything written here but the fact remains that opposition to standardized testing is not likely to disappear any time soon. It’s always good to know the truth in the age of Trump but the harm that standardized testing has done will not be mitigated.
“We do things like decide a “week” will have seven days, and then ponder the deep significance of having seven days in a week.“
Well actually, physical science kind of dictates this one, but I’ll give him a pass for the example considering he brings up a significant point.
We need to modify the goalposts now to accommodate the crisis. Will this put some at a disadvantage considering the point at which our “normal” was interrupted? Depends on how you look at it. My newly turned five year old might have to wait a bit before she begins the processes that help her learn to read. And I’m ok with that. However an emerging reader might struggle if the developmental window is closing. I don’t teach reading, but I’d love to hear from reading specialists on this.
Since reading doesn’t happen like learning to walk or talk, I am a little uncomfortable talking about developmental windows closing. Most kids will be at least beginning to read by the time they are 7, but some will struggle. And what about those who never had the opportunity to learn to read? Struggling readers may need extra help, and, Ideally, the sooner the better. I have a suspicion that the “sooner” part is more because of social and emotional costs for those who don’t learn to read with relative ease. Since it is an expectation in our society, children who struggle tend to carry extra social and emotional baggage that may make it even less attractive to continue to embarrass themselves with their inability to read. Changing the goalposts won’t make it any easier; I got the impression that Peter was more interested in eliminating “goalposts” or at least the way they are used.
John Dewey believed that children should learn to read by 8.
sp: Thank you for you insights. As someone who does not teach reading or early literacy as a professional, I have very little background with which to speak. I do not have any concern for my child considering her age, but I do worry for those who, like you outlined, may struggle to read when “expected.” The stigma is there for certain. This is all the more reason for us to have these conversations.
I still think we need certain goalposts in order to progress through life with some sense of direction, but reimagining what it means to be “in a certain place” is definitely a prescription to combat the fear that students will be behind some sort of arbitrary goal.
It is the second reason I have been hearing for re-opening schools behind “parents have to work.” Isn’t DeBlasio proposing that the city provide childcare for NYC’s children this fall? That could fans care of the other reason.
LG,
The developmental window is not closing on your five-year-old. A century ago, educators believed that children should not learn to read until they were seven or eight.
Yes, thank you, Diane. I’m not particularly concerned for her. So many parents are worried that their children would somehow be behind. Even a teaching assistant with whom I work mentions that she is worried for her special needs students that they will fall behind in their progress. This post is absolutely timely to counteract this fear.
In Scandinavia children do not learn to read until they are seven or eight, and few children there have reading difficulties. If we push children to read before they are developmental ready, it can turn children off to reading by frustrating them. Schools also start over identifying so-called problem readers too early, and this can undermine children’s confidence.
& we have clear evidence of what stress & pressure does to children.
Nothing good, that’s for sure.
There is no such thing as a “developmental window closing” unless there is a health/ medical condition that affects the child. Most children will read when they are able and ready and the best way that they become “emergent” readers is to actually read what interests them…..even if it’s comic books. The “developmental window” is made up. Someone with some knowledge gave it an age of 7-8 as a guideline but not a mandate.
I have taught adults to read through Literacy Volunteers of America. Some of these adults were shocked to see that they could actually do it after believing they were “failures” for years.
Actually, in music, we do have certain windows of development that have been studied.
I know it isn’t actual research, but I have an interesting anecdote from personal experience:
When I was 15, I learned to play Mozart’s Flute Concerto in G Major for a contest. Flash forward 7 years and I severed a nerve in my left-hand ring finger rendering a small side section of my fingertip numb. During that time in my life, I was a practicing amateur pianist (along with being a pro flutist), so that I could accompany my private students. Before the nerve damaging incident, I could easily play technical exercises involving movement of consecutive fingers in passages at a brisk tempo on the piano. After the finger went partially-numb on one side, I could only play ascending consecutive finger passages at brisk tempi. When performing descending passages, my brain would skip the damaged finger because, well I’m guessing, it didn’t detect that it was there. However, I could still pick up the flute and whiz through the Mozart without missing a note. Granted, there are far more finger combinations on the flute than on the piano, but in passages with consecutive note movement, the concept is the same. I missed nothing. So my first guess for why these two scenarios were different was when I learned to play the Mozart at 15, my brain had learned to move that finger through a different pathway than when I was playing the piano at age 22. Now obviously, there are other variables such as degree of technical prowess on both instruments: For one, I am a degreed professional and for the other, an amateur with far less training, but I did struggle with new learning on the flute after the injury, as well. This fact solidifies my belief that the brain does deposit its learning into different locations throughout life. Brain research says the same thing. So while I don’t worry about my five year old never learning how to read, I do believe that given enough time away from practices, the brain changes and we need to approach the processes differently.
LG: “I do believe that given enough time away from practices, the brain changes and we need to approach the processes differently.”
This is a profound statement. Only missing: during the “time away from practices,” the brain is learning other things, & new experiences will be brought to bear upon resumption of practices, opening other pathways.
I have been thinking much on this due to a rare covid experience, thanks to extra time & acquiring zoom-remote experience, to learn Italian. It always “should” have been easy, w/ background in French & Spanish regularly used thro reading & teaching [plus long-ago hisch Latin]. Yet a few assays using DuoLingo app & the like, which mimic how I began learning those langs [& teach them to children] didn’t take. This time it was 3 bookclub friends working from orig Ital & Eng translation of a novel selected by group. One friend was Ital native/ bilingual (w/ some Span & Fr background), another was strong in Span & Fr but had modest Greek & Ital speaking ability due to childhood in Greece– plus me, w/ adv reading ability & fair fluency in Span & Fr.
Our simple method: the bilingual gal would just read it to us, para by para, w/us peppering her w/Q’s & noting other-lang connections. W/in 2 sessions I was grasping the syntax, which helped separate freq locutions to be memorized from cognates & look-uppable stuff. W/in 2 more, I was starting to grasp pronunciation– next, we were reading it to her for her corrections. Now I can read it aloud to myself, as I understand not just the accent but the meaning. It will be awhile before I can engage in conversation. But what floors me: the methods we used were upside-down & sideways from how I would start a youngster on L2. For me & my other learning-Ital friend, they drew on a lifetime of experiences speaking & esp reading other langs.
“Well actually, physical science kind of dictates this one,”
No, it is a good example by Greene. There have been and are many ways to view the passing of time. Physical science doesn’t dictate anything, it is the humans that dictate how we view those things.
I Henry David Thoreauly agree: “The universe is bigger than our view of it.”
I don’t remember, but think Thoreau probably wrote ‘greater’ instead of ‘bigger’ in that quote from Walden, come to think of it. Now I feel like I’m quote-unquote quoting Emerson or Hawthorne as writing “I’m going to cut taxes bigly.” Oy.
Dividing the roughly 28-day lunar cycle into four parts. However, other cultures had different “weeks.” People love to think that the ways in which they live are the normal, natural ones. They are generally surprised to learn that most human societies that we know about were not monogamous, that most people throughout the ages haven’t lived in separate nuclear family unit dwellings, that there are cultures in which fatherhood is unknown, and so on. Social constructs. Humans are extraordinarily adaptable.
Reminds me of discussions I had with some of my students about being a baby daddy, which they thought made them men. I pointed out that being a father involved a lot more than being a sperm donor. There were no comebacks.
LG, kids are on varying schedules, just as every rose on the bush doesn’t blossom at the same time. Don’t sweat this.
Obviously, the concept of a 7 day week is a human made construct the Western Europeans designed to make sense of the passing of time, along with its counterparts: seconds, minutes, hours, days, etc.
The passing of time has been mired in interpretation of observable nature events such as movement of the earth (observed as movement of the sun and moon in earlier times), changes in season in climates (the life and growth cycles of plant life, alone, can dictate this) where these can be observed, and of course, in human function: ex., Any woman who has experienced sexual maturity cycles through the bodily processes that can aid in achieving conception, albeit not everyone cycles at precisely the same interval.
The practice of counting months as 28 days with four weeks consisting of 7 days each has been adopted—yes it is a construct with the known asterisks for 29, 30 or 31 days and the 1/4 of a day each year—out of the convenience of these observations where applicable.
This isn’t a perfect system, but it is the closest one to explain the intervallic returns of celestial, environmental and natural events we see in our lives. And yes, these too are in constant flux which can make them completely different over the course of a millennium, but observable changes over one’s lifetime tend to be perceived as meager which is one of the reasons we have a battle over the existence and severity of climate change.
So framing the concept of time passage as a week interval of seven days is not an exact science, but a scientific and mathematical process certainly has been employed to explain it. You cannot deny that science has played a significant role in explaining these observable intervallic returns. Still, this system does not negate the possibility of explaining these returns in other intervals, but they do not align with most observable natural cycles.
In terms of social and religious calendars, it would appear there are differing connections to the environmental and celestial observations, but again, the argument is stronger for a seven day week with no variation in second, minute, and day. Does that mean that these calendars should not be observed? Of course not. The argument is that science can provide a good argument for the seven-day week. Again, it isn’t perfect and it isn’t applicable to all climes, but we have scientifically documented the movements and the rotations of the earth quite well. We know what an earth year is. The rest is detail.
Supporting language development. . .talking with your child… socializing during play…… hearing you read and looking at and engaging with books will support your 5 year old. Rhyming, playing with words, listening to songs, singing……. all will build a foundation that will support your child when they are ready to read.
The pressure for all kids to learn to read earlier and earlier is too much – all the name of “early intervention” before the “window closes.” Early intervention for most children is language development ( which can be supported with what I listed above) and healthy environments Some children will learn to read at 5. Some not until 8. 10-15% will benefit from specialized instruction. It’s all ok as long as children are growing and thriving in a healthy, safe, nurturing social environment.
I’m a music teacher, and I’ve made up songs and rhymes with daughter since she was a newborn. The kid has an amazing vocabulary and invents songs herself. I’m not really worried about her, but today she said, “Will I be able to play in Kindergarten?” My heart sank, but it old her that I sure hope so.
Good morning Diane and everyone,
I agree with Peter Greene in his post. Yes, it IS all made up. We are in a time of great change and most people fear change. It doesn’t help that we are being led by The Trickster archetype in our president. Usually when you have a Trickster, there is great change. So, mythology and history can’t be separated. But that’s another issue. People are more comfortable staying with old ways of being. That’s why I’m hearing that some teachers will be teaching their daily schedules online as if they were in school. This isn’t healthy for anyone, yet some may feel we have to do it that way because that’s the way we’ve always done it. There are so many things that have to be balanced now in this time of change. I think about the whole question of using tents for classes. We must also be cognizant of the fact that we have people out there who will walk into a school and shoot children and teachers. We have to balance student learning with what can actually be done in the environment. The same thing applies to learning on computers. There are so many moving parts and it can be disconcerting and confusing. I think the other thing is that once people reach a certain way of living, they almost have to maintain that way of living to feel as though they have “achieved.” Ways of being that are new and different may seem like we are sliding backwards because they are not the ways we have come to know. So, we will have to let go of many things in this time but that doesn’t mean that what evolves from that will be unimportant or unfulfilling.
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/03/17/one-way-to-make-high-school-suck-less/
Yup, Bob, I agree with your post. My husband teaches 75 minute blocks. Imagine doing that online. The kids will just put up a screen and take a nap.
I found this interesting.
How Do You Know If You’re Living Through the Death of An Empire:
https://www.motherjones.com/media/2020/03/how-do-you-know-if-youre-living-through-the-death-of-an-empire/
I hope we survive.
Yvonne, I checked out this link and was writing a comment….then the power went out…for, like, three hours. What a fitting coincidence.
It seems like power outages are more frequent these days. (Then, people go out an buy generators. Public services is shortchanged pushing people into buying from private industry.)
More evidence of the failing public infrastructure in America.
Interesting article.
Whatever comment I was making three hours ago got lost in the power outage.
Take care.
corrections: public services “are” etc… I’m still getting my bearings after the outage, ha, ha.
My power went out as I was reading this! Need to save my battery now. Third time this year, last time was during beginning of pandemic and lasted five days. We’re a third world country in so many ways.
Great article, Yvonne! Thanks! Here, the opening of an essay I wrote a decade ago:
If you happened to live in Rome in the year 170, you could be forgiven for thinking that the empire was eternal. For almost two hundred years, across a vast region that stretched from the Scottish borderlands to the sands of Arabia, people had enjoyed the Pax Romana. The brutish banditry and lawlessness of previous times had become almost unknown. Trade and the arts flourished, and bellies were full. One couldn’t imagine that such a system, the like of which the world had never before seen, would fall apart practically overnight. Then, in 180, Marcus Aurelius died and was succeeded by his son, the weak, cruel, debauched, and possibly insane Commodus. It was the beginning of the end.
If I were writing a history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, I would begin with the story of a distressed Roman family farmer, in the second century AD, with no choice but to sell the land that had been in his family for centuries to one of the handful of wealthy landowners at the top of the latifundia system that developed in the first two centuries of the first millennium. (This system was the forerunner of the medieval system of large feudal estates worked by serfs and ruled by a baron.) Rome had been built by the strength of its legions of sturdy boys from small family farms who fought for the earth that their fathers (and mothers!) plowed. By the second century, that system of small family farms was gone. From one end of the empire to the other, the land was owned by a wealthy few, and the formerly free peasantry had been reduced to serfdom. Who could blame anyone for not wanting to take up arms to defend the system that oppressed them? By the time the latifundia system developed, Rome was already dead. It just didn’t know it yet.
Well, Yvonne. Here we are with our mad would-be emperor, our Attorney General who thinks that a President should be an emperor, our venal, our corrupt politicians crafting sweetheart deals for a handful of oligarchs, our vast inequalities of wealth and income. Our inability to provide basic human services like healthcare. A failing state. History repeating itself.
There’s a lot of wisdom in there, Peter. Thanks.
And, I’m certainly seeking wisdom these days.
One comment: technology since 1990, notably the internet, seems to have multiplied the number of “boxes” as you put it in a staggering way. It’s great and it’s daunting. The number of rules, even the incredible pace of life…
Perhaps the first step is to slow down. Many people had to do that when life as we knew it ground to a near halt back in March. But will enough citizens appreciate what might have been valuable about that “pause”? And, even if they appreciate it, will they be able to do much to act upon that realization?
You are absolutely right when you said, “This is the opportunity we’re missing, but to grab it would require us to look at things that some of us would rather not look at.”
A real leader would chisel this idea in giant letters on the marble side of a government building in D.C.
I do have hope that many younger people will lead us all in this direction.
We’ve been conditioned to believe that education is a race. Standardized testing has given credence to this idea. “Race to the top” also implies everyone vying for the top spot . Our obsession with rating and ranking feeds the competitive narrative. I certainly felt as though I was in a race against time with my ELLS. I felt the need to get these students functioning in English as quickly and efficiently as possible.
When I reflect on my years in teaching, I don’t remember the academics nearly as much as the students themselves. Some of the best moments involved kindness, creativity, collaboration and humor from both students and fellow teachers.
Education is not a race. It is a process. The goalposts are artificial.
artificial: yes. What people do not see is that they are being bamboozled.
Education as a “race”: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/04/09/who-said-life-aint-no-crystal-stair/
Sorry, I do not buy it at all. There is a big cost to this.
How so? We have structured a society based on these arbitrary places in our life achievement. The only time restraints we have on anything in life are governed by our physical health. For instance, people shouldn’t wait until they are physically unable to bear children if they wish to bear children. (And there are many ways to be a parent without “bearing” children.) But there is no natural order through time to achieving any measure of success in any field. I agree that the plasticity of the mind changes over time which may make some aspects of learning more difficult, however unless the mind is in a place of decay, the mind can still learn.
If there’s no cost to closing schools, if the benchmarks of progress in reading and of knowledge of history and science and math are not only arbitrary but also meaningless, then shut public schools down for good and let parents find their own ways of educating their children.
FLERP, you are kicked into NCLB thinking. The benchmarks are artificial. We had a powerful and successful school system for decades until NCLB persuaded the public that our schools were failing, our teachers are bad, and schools must be closed or privatized.
I’m not necessarily talking about particular benchmarks. I’m mainly referring to the process of learning from teachers face-to-face. It cannot be good—intellectually or socially—for children to lose that for a half year, a full year, or even longer. Apart from that, a lot of learning is sequential. One thing requires knowledge of another thing. I’m not talking about five year olds. I’m talking about 10-year-olds, 13-year-olds, 16-year-olds. It’s a really big deal to lose a year of school. It would have been a big deal before NCLB and it’s a big deal now. It will hurt the most vulnerable kids the most. I don’t think this is a made-up concern about arbitrary benchmarks.
FLERP!,
Aren’t benchmarks always arbitrary? If they weren’t arbitrary, they wouldn’t change all the time! And they change all the time!!!
My siblings and I went to a high school that didn’t even offer calculus or pre-calculus and my 8th grader’s Algebra Regents taught Trigonometry concepts that were what only the highest performing math students in my high school learned in 12th grade.
That didn’t make a difference in whether graduates from my high school pursued careers in science or math and excelled. Furthermore, the overprivileged students whose supposedly top performing private high schools had them taking their own versions of calculus and advanced science were not turning out high numbers of PhDs in scientist and mathematics.
Let’s be real. Private schools have never churned out huge numbers of Nobel prize-winning scientists or mathematic PhDs. They have certainly churned out high numbers of mediocre Trumps and Kushners who supposedly met the completely arbitrary benchmarks their own private school told colleges certified that they were brilliant. And their privilege meant that despite not excelling over the much less privileged students at their universities, other people had to pretend they were brilliant since they were the bosses of the companies their parents wealth meant that they ran.
That’s not the same as saying there is no need for an education. But it is saying that you should recognize that benchmarks are arbitrary and most recently have been used only to judge public school students while private school students like the Trumps will always be judged “ready for a top college” and be admitted because they have no need to prove they have met any benchmarks, their private schools says they are well-educated and the society run by their parents agrees.
Arbitrary does not mean meaningless or unimportant.
I am simply saying they missing a year of school matters, a lot. I don’t think it should be a controversial position, but if it is, I guess that’s a hill I’d die on.
^^Sorry, I wrote this while flerp! was posted his reply above.
FLERP, no one is saying that there would be no learning going on and “students would lose a year of school”. Of course high school students would be taught subject material, albeit perhaps at a slower pace.
I do agree with you that the remote learning plan needs to be thought out much better and I do think that under the circumstances the teachers union is not giving parents much reason to think they will be offering up a good remote learning plan. As a parent, I find it very tiresome for the union to keep saying that they aren’t being asked for their input – just offer up some plans without being asked! Tell parents what you will require teachers’ teaching remotely who are in the union to be required to do. Not say “well some teachers might have kids at home or blah blah blah so you need to just let every teacher decide how they will teach the class.”
Students can have real time face to face interactions – via zoom or other ways – with both the teacher and with other students. Maybe this is only a total of 2 hours every day, but even that would make a big difference.
I think FLERP is correct. The type of learning that goes on without face-to-face teachers resembles 19thC [& before] ed. Sometimes there were small rural schools available for learning the basics, sometimes not. Only the wealthy had governesses and tutors and ed beyond primary school. Only the most intelligent and industrious natural scholars were capable of translating primary rural ed into years of further learning after a long workday, on their own, eventually “reading for the law” et al. Educating all the nation’s children to the levels reqd today for better-than-unskilled labor requires regular, intensive, face-to-face schooling for most.
If everyone lost a year (or more) of face-to-face ed, we’d hardly notice it. But it won’t work that way here any more than it did 150 yrs ago.
bethree,
Your and flerp!’s premise depends on assuming that remote learning will involve kids doing nothing and losing a whole year of learning, while private school students are moving ahead.
Why would that be the case, unless the teachers don’t do any remote teaching?
I agree that remote would not be the same as in person, but that should not mean that it is only half as good or a waste of an entire year.
Give ’em some books to read, set certain numbers of hour a day they can choose, discuss the books with them, have them write, figure it out.
The so-called achievement gap is a racist construct. Of course it’s made up. We live in a racist society. There are the overt racists supported by the overt racist in the White House, but there are also the more subtle forms of racism supported by tech bros and Wall Street CEOs. It’s not just that we are over-policed; high stakes testing, charter schools and vouchers are subtler forms of racism.
The phrase “achievement gap” carries two main problems. First, the word “achievement” places all the blame for inequality on the victims of racist laws and policies. There is a wealth gap, not an achievement gap. Standardized tests, rooted in the toxic mud of eugenics, seek to place the blame for wealth inequality on the victim. The tests do not measure achievement. They reflect income.
The second main problem is the widely publicized “gap”. When the news media report that racial groups of students are falling behind, that they are losing days of instruction and that there is a gap between white and Asian students who get “luxury” online learning and Black and Latinx students who don’t log on as much, they are painting Black and Latinx young people as inferior. They’re learning less is the racist idea. It gives tech bros and other CEOs initiative to discriminate in hiring and wages. It gives many people initiative to discriminate in a myriad of ways.
We live in a hell of an age if it’s racist to be concerned that poor students are disproportionately missing days of instruction or are disproportionately harmed by those lost instructional days.
About 20 years ago, I saw myself as a liberal with progressive social views. My basic views haven’t changed that much and I still see myself as a liberal person. But increasingly I feel like the Overton Window has shifted so much and so quickly that I’m now Archie Bunker.
“We live in a hell of an age if it’s racist to be concerned that poor students are disproportionately missing days of instruction or are disproportionately harmed by those lost instructional days.”
Flerp!, that is not even close to being what LeftCoastTeacher is talking about. Progressives ARE concerned with what happens to poor students. The “Archie Bunker” types you likely have very little in common with are not.
The people in power professing a concern for standards right now have no concern for what is happening to poor kids. On the contrary, they are using a faux concern for made up standards in order to screw them over and underfund their schools. They have charter schools for the small number of them who are least expensive to teach, while claiming that the reason the majority of them are doing poorly is simply because of their own terrible work ethic and their own terrible parents or when they are forced back to public schools it is because of their own terrible union teachers.
Frankly, as much as Carranza and de Blasio are bashed on here, they seem to be driven by consideration of how to address the education needs of the most vulnerable school children. They aren’t forcing any student back whose parents don’t want them back, but do want to keep schools open so that the poorest students who would have the most issues learning at home would be the least harmed. No one has come up with a good solution and I don’t think de Blasio/Carranza’s ideas are good, but at least they are coming from the right place and trying to offer up a plan.
I wish I could hear more of the stakeholders offer up alternative plans.
I have changed many of my views in light of recent events. Heck, the whole world has changed with recent events. Certainly keeps you on your toes, doesn’t it all. What I mean to say is shouldn’t we, instead of being concerned about quantifying missing days of instruction and lost learning as the media do, be concerned about the poor living conditions that cause the problems. The media report what’s wrong with the education level of poor students instead of reporting that nothing is being done about the fact that there are poor students. Maybe ‘racist’ is too strong a description, but I wouldn’t call it anti-racist to talk about achievement gaps in the high stakes testing age. Black people achieve more than white people every single day of life in this country.
I am not an “anti-racist” as defined in the recent literature, including by Kendi. This is one of my old-school views: that it is possible, and in fact good, to be “against racism.”
Most poor students will be returning to schools when they open. Parents are often essential workers that must show up to work in person. These parents are counting on schools to teach their children. These families rarely have they type of technology needed for on-line instruction. Some of the parents are not too well educated, and others speak a language other than English.
Trump is “against racism”. Betsy DeVos is “against racism”. I bet that you can’t find a right wing Republican in Congress who isn’t “against racism.” Is there a politician willing to say they are “for racism”?
That is the point of the “anti-racist” movement. Everyone and their brother except perhaps a small number of people in organizations like the Ku Klux Klan are “against racism”. For all I know people in the Ku Klux Klan claims to be “against racism”, too. (No doubt they are against the “racism” that victimizes white people.)
That’s the point of the “anti-racist” movement. Everyone has – for years – said they weren’t racist, and they were against racism in policing, and yet no one did anything about it. It was silently condoned and allowed to continue.
In fact, when de Blasio ended stop and frisk, the people “against racism” like Bloomberg were rapidly opposed to ending it, and people like Eva Moskowitz continued to claim that so many violent 5 year olds were winning her charter school lotteries that she had no choice but to have extraordinarily high suspension rates for Kindergarten and first graders to teach those violent children how to be less violent. But Eva Moskowitz professed to be strongly opposed to racism. Because suspending 18% or 20% of the 5 and 6 year old students in a school that happened to have virtually no white students was not racist! It was simply because those kids were all acting out violently! And a white charter CEO could claim she wasn’t “racist” because she recognized the need to address the violent actions that she claimed were all about the child’s own nature and had nothing to do with how her schools were being run. Nope, not racist at all, right?
I disagree with the premise. I am against racism.
It is one thing to be against racism. Lots of people are against it. However to acknowledge the existence of (and the advantages you’ve had because of) systemic racism is a whole other level of enlightenment.
You, personally, aren’t being accused of being a racist because you most likely abhor that type of discrimination. However you can perpetuate its systemic agency by not thinking you can do anything to end it. “I’m not a racist, so I don’t have a role here,” is problematic in and of itself. You have benefited from the system indirectly, and by acknowledging the disadvantage of those who have been kept down for generations under the structure of our current systems and laws, you are taking the first step toward helping to eradicate it.
It’s simply not enough to say you aren’t a racist yourself. I believe that many of us do get that far, especially when we are talking about education, but we need to do better. We need to insist on reparations for these communities that have been kept down for centuries.
I’ve read the literature. I don’t believe that systemic racism infects every aspect of life and that it is not possible to not be racist. I just disagree with that premise.
Flerp, you don’t have to be racist to benefit from the system. If you can let your son go out the door and not worry that he will be harassed (or shot) by the police, you are benefiting by being white. If women don’t unconsciously clutch their purses when they are in close proximity to you, then you are benefiting from the color of your skin. If you have never been stopped and questioned about why you are walking in your own neighborhood, then your skin color is protecting you. I’ve forgotten where I heard the story of the black man who was told to put a stuffed animal in his rear car window because the cops would be less likely to stop him. How about being paid less than a white co-worker, or paying more for a car? I don’t say these things as a judgement of you, or myself for that matter, but now is a time when the injustices are so blatant that we need to pay attention and demand change.
FLERP!,
I am curious about all the aspects of life you are certain are not affected by racism at all.
For example, to me, it is racist to believe that a charter CEO was telling the truth when she blamed high suspension rates of 5 and 6 year old students (when virtually none of those children were white or Asian) entirely on the very young students’ supposed reprehensibly violent actions, while someone who was NOT a racist would be wondering what was going on in the school.
Maybe you are one of the people who weren’t at all skeptical at that outrageously racist innuendo to justify extraordinarily high suspension rates of kindergarten and first graders. Maybe you are one of the people who think is is absolutely believable that a group of mostly African American kindergarten students who all have parents so dedicated to their child’s education that they jump through hoops to enroll them in a “good” school would include a disproportionately high number of kindergarten children who act out violently.
People who truly aren’t racist would question what is going on in the school that caused so many 5 year old children to supposedly act out violently. People who are racist would believe that it is the violent nature of those kindergarten students that accounts for the high suspension rate of 5 and 6 year old children.
Same with stop and frisk and those who insisted it was the ONLY thing standing between violent anarchy and safe streets.
Te entiendo.
Boy the way Glen Miller played,
Songs that made the hit parade,
Guys like us we had it made,
Those were the days,
And you know where you were then,
Girls were girls and men were men,
Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again,
Don’t need no welfare state
Everybody pulled his weight,
Gee, our old Lasalle ran great,
Those were the days
Overton Window! Thanks for that info. Our Overton Window seems to have split in two. As one moves farther right, the other moves in tandem farther left. Just like wealth these days. But I’m not sure LCT’s use of “racism” is a move to the left, it’s more like just too narrow a term here, & doesn’t lead to constructive discussion.
LCT you could disappear all the ed-policy claptrap about achievement gaps & throw out stdzd testing, it would affect racism & classism not one whit. The opposite banks of the wealth gap are white at the wealthiest edge, & black/ brown at the poorest, period. But poverty/ wealth are more accurate terms, as there are also hordes of poor whites on the wrong bank w/ low social mobility due to restricted oppty (including underfunded ed).
I found it an elevating discussion, actually. I’m going to say it again, Black people have to achieve more than white people every day. It’s time to admit that Black lives matter, and that while all lives in fact matter, it’s no longer enough to take that particular middle of the road. There is too much violence. The time has come for change.
It’s time to eliminate racism from our laws. We need to teach people, voting people that testing and privatization are closely related to eugenics and segregation from the mid-twentieth century, and harbor inequality today. The time is now to stop calling them knowledge and skill gaps, and start acknowledging that all students have equal and unique abilities when given the chance to show it. Black students matter.
What should we call it when things like test scores and graduation rates are lower for black students than for other groups?
Should we stop breaking out NAEP results by race/ethnicity?
I am not as anti-test as some since I used diagnostic testing on a regular basis in special education. The problems arise with rating and ranking with the assumption that these tests are saying something inherent about general intelligence. I seriously doubt that the amount of melanin in someone’s skin is a good way to judge potential. We know so many factors that influence achievement that we seem unwilling to address on a large scale basis, but we have hints of successful interventions revealed in experiments like community schools. I think it is much more important to think the purpose of the testing and if it can really tell you how you can use it to aid students.
cx: think about the purpose…
It’s simple: Stop blaming students and teachers for gaps. Stop calling test scores “achievements”. The test scores reflect income, not amount of leaning achieved, so instead of blaming education blame the rigged economy, and tax billionaires. Make it easier to form and join unions. People are overworked and underpaid, and no amount of “rigorous standards-based instruction” is going to right that.
Gaps between groups on standardized tests could accurately be called test score gaps. That’s all they are.
I just read a survey page in The Chicago Sun-Times (they have been having these weekly in their Sunday edition) about whether people thought it was safe to reopen schools. 22 adults were interviewed, & 16/22 (73%) said no, not safe; 2 were unsure & 2 said yes, they want to send their children back to school.
Anyway, someone brought up the good idea of daily classroom Zooms–5 days a week– if schools went to remote learning. This way, teachers & kids could at least be face-to-face and interact with each other. Would this be prohibitively expensive? Wouldn’t it be better for school districts/states to spend money on this, rather than to spend it on “standardized” testing? Rather than spend it on endless sanitizing, worries about social distancing, mask wearing (money would have to be spent on PPE), children having to use the same restroom spaces?
I’ve only participated in Zooms–don’t have an account–so not aware of the costs.
Hey, wouldn’t it be nice for the tech billionaires (Bill Gates, Zuckerberg) to donate similar systems of delivery to ALL public schools in the U.S.?
First you would have to get teachers to commit to spending at least 4 hours each day doing live zoom. Even when zoom (and other ways to have live interaction) was available, many teachers did not spend much of their day that way. Honestly, I can’t really figure out the reason that so few teachers seemed to use the technology they had in the spring, but the problem is about much more than just having the money to pay for zoom.
Hello NYC public school parent,
I can actually see the complaints coming from the other direction. Namely that kids will be spending more than 4 hours a day on their computers. I know schools that are considering doing the entire school schedule online. God, I WISH people understood what teachers have to go through to actually teach a class. I have 5 preps. That means 5 different classes that I have to prepare for. So, after teaching online for 6-7 hours a day, I’m going to be preparing for the next day’s classes. Then there’s correcting work, putting grades into the grading program, having administrative meetings, answering parent emails and everything else. More hours on the computer. It just can’t happen. I can’t spend 8 or more hours a day sitting at the computer and neither can kids. We are ALL going to go crazy!
It’s not great for kids, but I probably spend 14 hours a day sitting at a computer. I’ve done 8-hour depositions at a computer. Not fun but not Herculean.
Your spending so much time on a computer smacks of the old story of walking 5 miles uphill to school both ways rain or shine, blizzard or heatwave. 🙂
There is no really good way to deliver educational services to all kids no matter where or how they live. In that sense your computer “bootstraps” example makes some sense in that there is going to be a fair amount of grin and bear it involved in this process probably with less grin than bear.
In the “before time,” I probably spent 6-10 hours a day on a computer for work, not including the other screen time (i.e. phone) I logged. Now I work at home almost constantly, so it’s pretty much all computer, all the time. I have been more or less stuck inside a 1,500 square foot box since March with a family of four. Believe it or not, that’s actually a lot of space for NYC.
I mention walking to school and “bootstraps” as memes that we used to joke about the stories told by our parents. I’m sure I m mangling the tale, but as best as I remember it, my father-in-law worked as a forest ranger(?) in the Black Hills in his youth. He used to cook flapjacks and eggs for breakfast. His lunch was fried eggs between two flapjacks that he stuck in his back pocket before riding off to work. I haven’t a clue what he did. When my husband and siblings would recount this story, the focus was on the “meals.” Anyway, the “bootstraps” stories were their way of reminding us how good we had it when the “life’s not fair” groaning got to loud. I hope our children and grandchildren will all survive this pandemic and get to remind their children how good they have it.
“fried eggs between two flapjacks”
He should have sued McDonald’s over the McGriddle
1500 square feet is a lot of space for a lot of places.
I felt like a king when I moved in here (along with feeling intense panic about a future mortgage default and complete ruin, which turned out to be an apt panic).
I think I know exactly what you mean. Hang in there.
Flerp!
Just because you do it doesn’t mean it’s healthy.
There’s nothing healthy about what’s happening now unfortunately. If schools are going to be closed until we have a vaccine, we need to find a way to teach children remotely in the meantime, for as many months or years as it takes.
Oh I agree, Flerp. But there wasn’t much that was healthy about the way we did school before the pandemic. Individuals have to do what is healthy for them and we are going to have to find our way through this.
Mamie Krupczak Allegretti,
I don’t understand your reply. I was not suggesting a full schedule of class, I mentioned 4 hours a day live zoom (or even 3). I suspect most parents would be satisfied with that because compared with the (at most) 1 or 2 hours a day (sometimes only 1 or 2 hours/week) real time instruction, 3 or 4 hours a day seems like a huge amount.
But your argument makes no sense. Normally, you would be taking the time to commute to your school building and back, which probably in the best of circumstances is an extra 1/2 hour/day and probably closer to one hour for many teachers in NYC (who would be lucky to be able to leave their home 1/2 hour before their first class).
If you are required to “live teach” via zoom only 1/2 the time you would be teaching if there was no pandemic, plus you have the extra time because you don’t commute, how is this a problem? The grading, prep time, etc. was always a part of teaching and there would be more time during the regular school day hours to get that done since each class would only be half time.
I am just saying that I doubt the majority of parents are expecting – nor even want – their child to be sitting in front of a computer non-stop for the hours between 8am and 3pm every single day.
But I bet the majority of the parents expect the teachers to be offering up a real remote learning plan that involves their child sitting in front of the computer because there is live, remote learning going on for more than 30 minutes every day.
Just think what would happen if the teachers’ union said “we as teachers commit to you parents right now that no matter what, your child will be in live remote learning situations for at least 3 hours every day.” Or even 2 hours every day. That would be a huge difference from the spring.
Hello NYC public school parent,
I’m a thinker and a planner. Perhaps I will have to let a lot of that go now and just see what my school decides and try to do my best to keep up with it all. I’m as much in the dark as you are concerning preparations that are being made and what we will have to do. Like I said, online preparation takes a lot of work. Teaching takes a lot of work. I will have 5 different subjects to plan for. NO matter what we do, it won’t be easy. Thanks for your understanding.
I’m the same way, Mamie. I overplan and then I plan again just in case. You’d think after 21 years, I’d know what I’m doing. 😛
Remote learning this spring was far more tedious work than I think I ever did in person. You have to deal with so many levels communication and feedback while preparing differing types of lesson delivery. I found the zoom teaching to be exhausting as it was often one-sided. It wasn’t as if I did not want my students to provide constant feedback like they do in person—it was just impossible on any given day due to latency issues as I am a performing arts teacher. I had to step back and rely on my tried and true classroom music teaching experiences to give students a variety of engagement opportunities, but in the end, they weren’t getting what they needed in total. However, if it means we are all safe from viral spread, I will find a million ways to engage them online.
I imagine it’s a little like going back to those first years of teaching where everything gets planned, replanned and second guessed. I do not envy you at all.
LG and Mamie: totally get where you are coming from. The planning burden in teaching is always daunting for folks who are actually doing their jobs. Of course, there are those for whom planning is just “Students, read the next chapter and take this multiple-choice online quiz from the textbook publisher.” But fortunately, I’ve known very few teachers like that.
Bob Shepherd,
I have the utmost respect for teachers and I do appreciate that their planning burden is very difficult.
But I don’t understand what you think students who get at most one hour a day of live remote learning (and sometimes less) are doing the rest of the day if they aren’t getting assignments (with some variation) like what you just described as not being that good? Maybe students don’t take a multiple choice quiz – maybe they answer other questions offered by the teacher? Is that what you mean? Or is there something else that is going on?
Of course there is other stuff going on. The planning isn’t just for whatever face time teachers have with students but also for all those activities that students can explore on their own with whatever level of internet support that can be provided. Then there is all the admin type stuff. I imagine that some districts are still dealing with limited to nonexistent computer/internet access, so their planning is going to look entirely different. There are so many unanswered questions, but I do know that any teacher worth his or her salt is going to be working as hard if not harder than before the pandemic.
14 hours a day looking at a screen?! Now I know what tech billionaires mean by the word ‘grit’.
Hello NYC public school parent,
I don’t think it would be unreasonable to have teachers teach live for a certain amount of time a day. I’m just saying that everything now will be done on a computer – planning, meetings, professional development, emails, student homework and possibly reading books if students don’t have had copies, my own planning, etc. I wish people would understand that it’s not just a matter of hopping on the computer and teaching live. Students have to have activities that help them learn. I have to plan those activities. They just don’t pop up there magically. I have 30 years of material I could use but how do I translate those materials to an online format? It takes a lot of work. If I can’t teach with my materials, I have to make new ones and find new ways. I was thinking that having an online textbook might be helpful but I am afraid to ask my school to purchase one. I teach French and there have been a lot of cuts to French. I’m afraid to ask for anything that costs money. Yet, I think this could make a great addition to my teaching. Of course, it’s more time on the computer for everyone. So, taken all together, there will be a lot of time sitting at a computer for all of us. We have to be cognizant of that. It also took me a lot more time to work in a computer environment. I found it tedious and often confusing. Information was everywhere. It was just exasperating. I’m hoping things will improve. But after 30 years of teaching, I can rarely think of times when teaching got less stressful not more. Thank you.
“It reminds me of the incredulous looks I get when I explain that standardized testing is a social construct, that it has errors in the questions, errors in the answers, even errors in the scoring.”
You think you get incredulous looks? You ought to see the looks that I get when I explain that the whole standards and testing malpractice regime is onto-epistemologically bankrupt, completely invalid as an educational concept that harms all students that have to suffer under it’s false pretenses.
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I like your detailed explanation for the long term effects of testing and grading. I’ve argued the same details with prospective teachers for over 30 years. I wanted them to be aware of the pitfalls of testing and grading but nonetheless, they must do both. The school districts dictate many forms of assessment and evaluation and some more flexible qualitative assessments are not satisfactory.
Jim,
You may want to read my book “Infidelity to Truth: Education Malpractice in American Public Education” In it I discuss the purpose of American public education and of government in general, issues of truth in discourse, justice and ethics in teaching practices, the abuse and misuse of the terms standards and measurement which serve to provide an unwarranted pseudo-scientific validity/sheen to the standards and testing malpractice regime and how the inherent discrimination in that regime should be adjudicated to be unconstitutional state discrimination no different than discrimination via race, gender, disability, etc. . . .
Feel free to email me at dswacker@centurytel.net , put “book” in the subject line. And I’ll send you an electronic version. If you are a K-12 teacher or retired from teaching K-12, it’s gratis. If not all I ask is that you donate $15 to your favorite teacher to use for supplies in his/her classroom.
“Stuck in ol Modi again” (apologies to CCR)
It is not safe to reopen schools. That’s obvious enough.
I always laugh and shake my head when someone gives an in-service “training” (roll over, sit up, shake, good boy) on “the seven multiple intelligences” or some such topic. There aren’t “seven” intelligences (Gardner) or one (Spearman’s G). There are hundreds and hundreds of them. I had a friend who had an astonishing episodic memory. He could recount, minute by minute, almost any event that had occurred in his life (There was a knock at the door. Gina was there. Robert answered it and gave her a peck on the cheek and said, “You need a dirty martini; I can tell.” She was wearing that big turquoise necklace her father got her in Nevada. She said, “Mind reader.” And so on. And this would be an event that occurred ten years prior. That’s an intelligence. It isn’t measured on standard intelligence tests. My son can remember the directions, street by street, for any place he’s ever been to. I can tell you how high up on the page of a particular edition of a book I like a particular passage that struck my fancy can be found. Those are intelligences. Tetrachromats have one extra type of cone that allows them to see a fourth dimensionality of colors and so can distinguish colors that most people can’t even see. That’s an intelligence. I have a friend who used to show off with a game called Boggle. You throw some cubes that have letters on them and write down as many words as you can make from those letters in a set time. He would ALWAYS have ten or more times as many words as anyone else. That’s an intelligence. One of my sons can listen to anyone’s voice and reproduce it almost perfectly, even though he has never had any official vocal training. An intelligence. From a very early age, my daughter could read people emotionally, uncannily well. Once, when she was THREE YEARS OLD, my then wife and I were arguing about something. She took my wife’s hand, led her to the sofa and sat her down and said, “You two are supposed to be the adults here.” In contrast, I have a friend, a number theorist who writes about mathematical games, who carries around a little notebook he has compiled about what various facial expressions mean (a rounded mouth means surprise) because he can’t read these and can’t remember them. Differing intelligences. Intelligence tests are extraordinarily crude instruments. The state standardized tests in ELA are worse than crude; they simply aren’t valid; they don’t test what they purport to test, and this is demonstrable. See this: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2020/03/19/why-we-need-to-end-high-stakes-standardized-testing-now/
A brilliant post from Peter! Really enjoyed this!!!!
My take on the same topic: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/03/18/from-notes-to-krystalina/
I particularly loved in Peter’s post the reference to our Enlightenment-era founders’ belief in “natural law” governing political and moral action. Parsing the truth from fiction in that notion is a significant undertaking. LOL.
Here’s my stab at doing just that: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2020/03/05/science-and-ethics/
In other words, I think that there are scientifically discoverable moral principles, and that little piece explains why I hold such an unfashionable (these days) notion.
Engr [/jazz-playing] hubby & I enjoyed discussing this essay, Bob
Gosh, thanks, Ginny!
What instrument? (I play jazz and classical guitar.)
This is neither jazz nor classical, but it’s something I came across a couple days ago and was impressed by. First song is sort of what I’d call an “Arab surf” sound. I’ve tried isolated riffs in this vein since being impressed by Arab techno music on a trip through Morocco a long time ago, but this guy really nails it.
Arabic scale, with a flattened second and sixth.
The various saxes, and clarinet.
Ooooo, Ginny. Nice! OK. We just need a bass player, keyboard, and drums, and we can form the Red for Ed Quintet. LOL.
Recently, I learned how to make Phyllo dough. I went onto Youtube, found the Greek grandmother I never had, and learned from her how to do this. My first batch wasn’t great, I admit. But the second? Well, I can now make a spanakopita or baklava that will have you saying, “telia,” which means something like, “Oh yes, so nice,” in Greek.
Distance learning stinks. Of course it does—especially when it involves programmed learning software that makes use of pretests and mastery modules. That stuff sounds great in theory, but it flies in the face of basic facts about human nature and, in particular, human motivation. People hate it, and it’s never had a good track record. Human interactions matter. And they especially matter to kids.
But it’s better than nothing, and clearly, one can learn some things at a distance.
The alternative—reopening schools—looks quite insane. We have a president who has basically absented himself from any leadership in this crisis. We haven’t produced enough N95 masks and test kits and antiviral drugs and field hospitals, trained enough paraprofessional medical personnel and contact tracers, created portals for that contact tracing, mandated masks and social distancing, or anything else necessary for containing the pandemic. We now know that kids over 10 contract the virus at the same rate that adults do, that asymptomatic carriers can be superspreaders, that even overtly asymptomatic people can have severe long-term neurological and other consequences as a result of SARS-CoV-2 infection, that air-conditioning units spread the disease, that its airborne, that tiny droplets containing the virus can linger in the air in enclosed places for many hours, that surgical masks and cloth masks are only partially effective, that small children can develop a couple of life-threatening illnesses as a result of Covid-19, that our aged teacher population (31 percent are 50 and older) will be particularly at risk, and we know that cleaning surfaces is time-consuming and expensive but doesn’t have a lot of effect because this is not a major mode of transmission. Some highly qualified epidemiologists are saying that we can expect a major surge as the weather turns cooler. Infection rates among tested children in Florida were 30 percent. Infections are surging in many of our states. We are going to lack money and time to fit schools with protective barriers and air conditioning filters. We aren’t going to have actually effective masks for everyone in schools.
Obviously, if we reopen schools now, a lot more people are going to die, and a lot are going to contract the disease and suffer long-term complications.
So, we can say, hey, that’s fine. Who cares if hundreds of thousands of teachers and students and administrators and staff and parents and grandparents die?
Or, we can do distance learning until we’ve got a vaccine or, short of that, N95 masks for everyone (which would require a national defense production act mandate).
I don’t think we have a choice. Distance learning is bad. Dead teachers and students is worse.
Right now, this stupid debate about whether we are going to hold in-person classes and simply suck up the vast amount of resulting disease and death is stealing precious time that could be spent teaching teachers how to do online chalk talks and one-on-one writing conferences; organizing to ensure that poor kids working from home have internet connections, computers, software, and meals; creating solutions for parents who have to work but have kids at home—financial support for one parent who must stay at home? And we have 184 days until we can get the Idiot out of the now Offal Office, fumigate the place, and start having leadership to guide us through the pandemic.
So, we’re looking at an unprecedented (“unpresidented,” our toddler-man president would say) looming catastrophe.
Here in Flor-uh-duh, our Trump Mini-Me Governor opened the state back up early (the beaches in Clearwater, yesterday, were wall-to-wall people), and so we rapidly shot to number one in the country in new infections per day. 49 hospitals in Flor-uh-duh now have NO empty ICU beds. And in response, that governor has insisted that all schools here will reopen in full.
Insane.
I hope every reader of this blog will take the time to read Peter’s thought-provoking post. Wonderful writing, Peter!
Ed reform still lock-step pushing online learning:
“If the pandemic opens up any path to reform, it is online learning. In the late spring, districts were forced to adopt virtual teaching, and the experience was overwhelmingly negative for teachers, parents and students alike. But that was partly because they were so unfamiliar and unskilled with the new technology. It was chaos. In the fall, things will improve. With many districts unable to go back to fully in-person classrooms, online learning will inevitably be an integral part of schooling — and everyone will increasingly gain familiarity with how to use it to best advantage. Some will continue to hate it, but growing numbers will see its advantages. Districts will also see that — if used wisely and selectively — it can enhance student learning, cut labor costs and play key roles on campus even when all students are able to return full time.”
Pay attention to that “cut labor costs” part. That’s what drives most of this cheerleading.
Incidentally, the call to cut real human beings from schools to save money comes from a professor at Stanford. The tuition at Stanford is more than $50,000 a year. Their tuition for a single year is $15,000 more than the median annual income in the county where I live.
They want to educate your kids on the cheap while their kids get the deluxe model.
https://www.the74million.org/article/reality-check-what-will-it-take-to-reopen-schools-amid-the-pandemic-5-experts-weigh-in-on-politics-and-education-reform/