A reader who signs in as “kindergarteninterlude” posted the following comment in the discussion about “growth mindset”:
The year I retire, I will have a tee-shirt made. On the front will be the word- big and bold- “RIGOR”, with the NO Symbol on top (a circle and diagonal line through it).
On the back will be the word data with the same NO symbol on top of it.
I’d love to work in “growth mindset “. What a bunch of garbage.
Hopefully my tee-shirt will be a conversation starter and I will be happy to talk to people about my experiences in the kindergarten classroom.
I will explain that rigor is developmentally inappropriate and the desperate attempt to shove rigor into the heart and mind of kindergartners (and every other grade level student) can only hurt them.
As for data- the obsession is destructive on so many levels. What’s worse, it’s meaningless.
Diane, why does this insanity persist? Why are true best practices and proven methods of success in education completely dismissed? I have been shaking my head (and my fist) for 20 years. Nothing changes. It’s just getting worse. What will it ever take to shift this train wreck that is education?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Truth!
Over 80 years ago Maria Montessori offered her acute observations and a model for how children in the earliest years develop. She forged a movement toward child-centered practice that neuroscience has now validated as the way that language emerges through embodied cognition-letting kids play, move, make things and explore their environment. We keep taking these essential components away from them at every turn. It’s time to let go of churning out new policy and data and get back to the essentials of what it means to grow healthy, happy, curious minds.
Good morning Diane and everyone,
I suggest reading Iain McGIlchrist’s The Matter With Things to get somewhat of an idea as to why the insanity persists. It doesn’t explain the whole problem but maybe a big part of it.
I really wish this weren’t so expensive. $140!!!! Wow.
Here, a couple essays that I think you will appreciate, Mamie.
and another
and one more
Thanks Bob for those essays. I know it’s a steep price. Kindle is an option although I enjoy having a book. Perhaps a public library or a university library would have it or could get it for you? The bibliography alone has led me to outstanding reading. It’s a book to invest in, really, because you’ll read it again and again.
You can get the Kindle version for $40.
Yes, I saw that speduktr, but I really like to read physical books. For a long, long, long list of reasons.
Me. too.
The Master and His Emissary by McGilchrist is also good although not as wide-ranging. It hits a lot of his points though.
What I have noticed over the past few years is that it’s not just education, it’s everything, everywhere. The current generation of technocrats ranging from ages 25-50 see data as some sort of Holy Grail that contains the answers to all of our questions and directions for the future. And so much of that data is meaningless. And the endless manipulations and machinations to make that data and time invested worth it means it must become the new standard. The eye test is usually good enough or better. It’s certainly quicker and less subject to being referred to a committee.
I think it’s because we’ve we have a majority of people who mistake activity for accomplishment. And the way we’re educating the generation after them will think the same way, but in hyperdrive.
Related info. presented in John Naughton’s article in the Guardian, 12-4-2022, about the neoliberal thought collective.
Data on kindergartners are particularly meaningless, unless you are talking about vision or hearing data.
Funny how in our search for a meaningful life, the roads we put our faith in (technology, data, materialism, ideology, dogma, pop psychology, and on and on) often lead to despair. Why might that be?
Beautifully observed, Ms. Allegretti!!!
Wear the shirt now. Speak out now. Do what is right now. Your students need you.
Data BS comes from the soulless wealthy, in particular, the “neoliberal thought collective”, a descriptive term originated by John Naughton. He introduces readers to “longtermist philosophy,” in an article in the Guardian, 12-4-2022 , “…the rich created a dangerous creed,”
Villainthropic taking (not giving), never loses traction. Expected profits from crypto currency were expected to be one channel of revenue for the “altruist” scheme. No surprise there.
What is happening in education is the result of both parties being beholden to corporate interests. It is stealth privatization. Big Tech and and Wall St are pulling the strings to make public schools dance to their tune which includes more technology, so-called rigor and endless data collection. ESSA is a perfect example of this problem. “Pay for Success” schemes are financial products pretending to be based on evidence. Where is the evidence that they know what they are doing? These companies literally get to experiment on our young people in the name of profit. These programs are no better than private prisons. They allow private companies to put a price on the heads of anyone included in their so-called experiments. Our representatives from both parties have invited the barbarians that were at the gate into the home, and they are allowing the vandals to run it for profit. https://kappanonline.org/federal-policy-push-privatize-education-burch/
I could go on and on about this whole nonsense of what is being done to children (and experienced, dedicated, hard-working teachers, those who care truly and are devoted and probably to the newer ones who will never understand what they are missing out on) by this mis-guided and short-sighted mess. It is heart-breaking to listen to the angst of primary teachers who see no way out depending on the type of system they work in in regard to deviating from the SCHEDULE and MUST FOLLOW program and methods. Can teachers be educated to have many strategies and great background in theories and practices, sure. BUT they have to be allowed to look at the mix of children EACH year and then decide based on information (not data) that they receive from various sources ie parents, former teacher, etc and their own observations and plot the course of the best approach and how to manage their own classroom. What happened to the Taylor Act? Teacher decision making in the classroom and teacher as reflective practitioner and teacher as lifelong learner (ie we are a profession, no? look at what doctors do in regard to continued education at conventions etc.) are essential and should be applauded and allowed if the teacher can justify/explain/demonstrate that what they are doing is going to have a better outcome. To get teachers to devote the needed time to achieve the highest level of experienced, capable expert in the classroom means more than dictating to them and forcing them to do things they KNOW and have developed as master teachers. To think a corporation ie publisher and their wares can plan for every kind of classroom culture/environment/region etc is ridiculous. And here-in is another horrible effect: teachers can easily come in, teach the lesson as dictated in the manual and move along at the same rate as everyone else in the grade level and yet, many children are not progressing. They can throw up their hands and say, I did what you said/they said and it is not me, it is the kid! Well, I know from experience and study and hard work over a lifetime that the tutoring model will show you that we have methods and ways to teach almost every child how to read (let’s use that important subject) and it will vary on multiple level for each child. Read Brian Cambourne and William Glasser and Peter Johnston. There are so many reliable guides out there and especially those masterful teachers who have written about what they could achieve in the classroom and how to do it. Teachers need time to study, they need time to be honored, they need to be allowed to explore and teach creatively, they need support with classroom realities ie enough materials and help with children they are unable to get to follow the prescribed classroom behavior expectations. Oh I could go on. But suffice to say we will lose many wonderful and capable teachers to go along with the rest we have already lost. And our children will suffer, some worse than others. Rant over, but I am very very concerned and frankly outraged over the state of education in this country writ large, but know there are places doing amazing things. We need to highlight how those function and let other places see how they might incorporate some of those philosophies and ideas. Old (ie retired or experienced or successful or dedicated) teachers are a gold mine of knowledge and should not just be put out to pasture. To me this entire mess is a tragedy for way too many precious children who are possibly (I hate painting with a broad brush) being robbed of their childhoods and chances to grow. And don’t get me started on class sizes for the youngest ones.
Because of the Deformer lock on U.S. education and micromanagement of teachers based on these insane pedagogies, I can no longer say to young people whom I care about, yes, great, pursue a teaching career.
Data are used to target the poor and dump extra work on them. A more appropriate word than rigor is oppression.
Yes, LCT
All involved in the Gates education network further his authoritarian goals. I don’t know if any good has come from Gates’ other tax avoidance philanthropic taking (not giving)
but, I suspect, if there is any marginal good greater than the loss of democracy, quantifying it would be an absurdly flawed and pointless exercise.
The parents of poor students a have little agency so these students are “low hanging fruit.” Once they have made money off the poor, they will continue to usurp more territory in public education while feckless representatives make noise, but do little. Vulture capitalism never sleeps. It is a hungry beast that is never sated.
Above all else, data are used to generate dollars.
Data Milking
It’s all about the data
(IE, about the money)
There’s really nothing greata
Than data milk’n, honey
The Milking Stall
Milking cows
And milking sows
Milking kids
The milking is
Meant for profit
That is all
Kids are NOT fit
For the stall
In logic and mathematics, of course, the term rigor refers to a proof in which each step toward the conclusion is justified by one of the rules of the system and derived from the axioms assumed to be true in that system. So, the term has taken on associations with inescapable, ineluctable deductive truth. And that’s why the Deformers adopted it. They were making the spurious claim that there was something inevitable, unarguable, about their methods. These people are absolutists who think that because they are testing, are using “scientific measurement,” they can’t be wrong. LOL. All that is utter poppycock, of course. Propositions about students, teachers, and schools are not tautological, like propositions in logic and mathematics. They are arrived at by induction, not deduction. If the method you are using for measurement of student learning is multiple-choice and extremely limited short answer testing based upon extremely broad, vague, general “standards,” then your method is invalid, and you can’t draw rational, accurate conclusions from the testing, much less RIGOROUS conclusions.
So, the use of this term is purest flim-flammery OR idiocy. Scores generated by invalid tests do not constitute data. They are, rather, noise.
These terms rigor and data still have meaning, but don’t look for any of these Deformers to use them properly. Their whole scam is based on misusing them.
There is, of course, a whole other constellation of meaning, in ordinary language, associated with the term rigor: inflexible, rigid, onerous. Think “rigor mortis.” And that constellation of meaning applies, of course, to the pedagogies advanced by Deformers.
It’s not rigorous to ignore almost everything about a child except his or her score on a clearly invalid test. It’s freaking stupid.
Hello Bob: There IS the rigor that is central to science and especially to its applications, as well as to other fields and professions. We couldn’t get to the moon without rigor, at the very least, in our mathematics and logic. And you wouldn’t want your tax people to not be rigorous.
The crucial point (as the initial note and others have said here) is about understanding and teaching to the developmental stages of children. “Rigor” applied to kindergarteners, and its correlate fear of failure, is deadly to their open curiosity as well as on deeper levels of psychic development . . . it, and related ideas, are probably the single most source of children hating school…because, through such methods, hidden or not, they have been steadily drained of their inborn motivation to learn.
It’s different for different people, but by the time they get out of high school, they should be more acquainted with the rigors of logic and study, but also always couched in broader kinds of inquiry that, as they get older, also can be associated with the kind of rigor that is joyful . . . like an artist loves doing art, or a scientist loves doing science.
This point of an absence of knowledge of children’s developmental patterns is why CEO’s and oligarchs should keep their capitalist-only fingers out of education and leave teachers and the education field off their greedy and narrow-minded radar screens, not to mention anti-secular totalitarian religious fanatics, like our dear Betsy. CBK
In mathematical logic, you can define a system in which statements are strings of symbols, and there’s a list of axioms (assumed to be true) and deductive rules (which derive a statement from other statements). In this system, a proof of a statement is a sequence of steps which starts with the axioms, uses the deductive rules, and ends with that statement.
A fully rigorous result is one with a proof in this form.
Rigor in this sense does not exist in science, which is inductive rather than deductive.
I often think that Ed Reform (and much else in our current culture; see the notes by Greg and Mamie, above) is simply the autism of a few tech moguls writ large, or imposed upon, the rest of us. These people need things to be simple and ordered. So, they want to eliminate from consideration any of the actual messiness of life.
Children are messy. And complex. They aren’t specs for the let’s run over baby stroller feature of a Tesla or a technical drawing of Clippy the Paperclip Personal Assistant.
Perfect points, Bob. Corporations don’t care about child development or the mental health of students or teachers. They only care about profit at any cost. What is sickening is that the so-called representatives and bought administrators are giving corporations unlimited access to our public schools and students.
Running over baby strollers is a Tesla feature, not a bug?
I thought Elon said there were too few humans on planet earth, not too many.
I’m serious that I think a lot of this can be traced back to a lot of powerful tech moguls being high-functioning autistics who need for the world to be a lot simpler and more ordered than it actually is and who want to enforce that order on everyone else, at whatever cost.
Sadly, a big part of the problem, in my opinion, has come from public education’s would-be-friends. Friends who mostly went to private schools. Friends like Ted Kennedy, who backed No Child Left Behind. And Pres. Obama, who backed Race to the Top, etc. I believe they were well intentioned. As was Clinton, with Goals 2000.
But these plans rested on the false charges and assumptions of “A Nation at Risk” of the Reaganites. And the new order was built for profit by hucksters, and by those who saw technology as a solution to everything–people like Bill Gates, who donated money which hurt more than helped our schools. Some of the impetus for all this came from the very real problem of school segregation and the search for a quick fix. Through it all, ran the attempt to “improve” schools on the cheap with testing and technology. By the way, do colleges of education not teach this history?
If readers of this blog don’t know the story, they could read Diane’s books, or books such as Berlinger’s “The Manufactured Crisis.” The evidence of this great heist of American public education is there, but not in the mainstream media. Only strong action by teachers’ unions and other public-spirited groups and individuals can rescue our schools from the dark cave into which they’ve been hauled.
It would help tremendously if parents would organize and complain loudly to Congress and states about the corporate incursion in public education.
We parents tried….and we got a “finger wagging” from Arne Duncan. We politely protested at school board meetings and were told we were crazy. We then opted-out/refused the tests and our children were placed in precarious situations. (We) either left public education for private schools or our children aged out of the public system. What remains are the “angry” parents whose children have ALL of this mumbo-jumbo garbage heaped upon them and there is no way out of the maze.
Criterion-based mastery instruction and testing
That is the enemy. And the @$%#U%@#@%#&@%#(&#$&@&@#%@#(@#%(*#@ teachers’ unions took money from the Gates Foundation to spread this virus in our K-12 schools. The damage done to our curricula and pedagogy is incalculable, and every public school teacher (including charter school teachers) feels this now, is under the whip of micromanagers with really bad ideas about how education works. s
Yeah, some of our friends have been among our worst enemies.
I’ve been out of teachers’ unions for quite a while now. I’d like to hear/read more about them taking money from Gates. The NEA is run by teachers or former teachers. AFT is headed by a lawyer for teachers, without a lot or any real teaching experience. In addition, the NY experience is quite a bit different than education in the Midwest. NY has had “rigorous” required testing for many decades. That was not the case in Ohio, etc., until the Bush-Clinton era.
Go to the Gates Foundation website. Type NEA or AFT into the search box. Lots and lots of these “grants” to involve the unions in the promotion of the puerile Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic] will come up. When the CC$$ were first announced, the national teachers’ unions basically took the money and sold teachers and students out. THEY WERE COLLABORATORS in the Coring of U.S. education.
Hmmm. Something smells kinda Vichy up in here. This is old news, ofc. Diane posted about these grants back when they happened, as part of the Common [sic] Core [sic] roll out.
Roll out. As in a steamroller.
Do some sleuthing on the Net, Jack. You will be able to piece together how the NEA became Vichy collaborators with Gate’s coring of American education.
Bob,
Given that that is a very serious charge against NEA officials, and that AFT & NEA are still rivals, though cooperating at times, I think the person making such claims or charges against the NEA should share publicly some of the purported evidence of NEA officials’ wrongdoing. I do know some teachers—NEA members–who support national standards and testing, so it may be just that NEA officers were not wise enough. Knowing some of the officers in both unions (though not recently) I would tend to posit foolishness vs. avarice or nefariousness a being the problem.
Jack, this was years ago, when the Common Core was first rolled out. The NEA accepted a bunch of money from the Gates Foundation to assist with that rollout. I do not remember the specifics. This was discussed quite a bit at the time on this blog. Several other commenters here have noted this over the years. It’s pretty well known. I do not have the time or energy to launch into an investigation of this. If you feel so inclined, have at it.
Thanks for that response, Bob. No, I don’t have the time or energy either. I’m 85, writing a bit, parenting a bit, XMasing a bit. So, I think I’ll fall back on my knowledge of NEA officials. They are all recently out of the classroom and maybe unprepared for the tough world of wheeling and dealing that goes on in the profit centers of our world. Of course, they do have staff–some of whom are lawyers, etc.–but I found some of NEA top officers (this was in the ’70’s & ’80’s) to be naive about how things really get done in the world. I found the AFT folks to be more familiar with that world, but oriented mostly toward NY and big cities. In places like Ohio, lots of the political power emanates from smaller communities, suburbs, etc. Then, some NEA officials have “bought the Cool Ade”–believed schools were failing–or that the change was inevitable so they might as well get with the program. I don’t believe many of them were crooks or absolute sell-outs. I do believe they were wrong to buy NCLB etc. & Gates’ self-centered largess. As a former “union thug” myself, I believe teachers will have to do what workers always have had to do–withhold services, demonstrate, etc. As JFK said, “Things don’t just happen; they are made to happen.” If doing it now would be hard, doing it later may be impossible.
Thanks, Jack. I have always been a union man. Always will be. That’s why the leadership signing on with Gates was so frustrating to me. Still, better with the union than without, as anyone sane knows.
No need to get into the details.
The rollout of Gates/Coleman CCSS was greatly influenced by the residual effects of The Great Recession. States needed money in a big way and Gates had plenty of it. Just sign on the bottom line. No…don’t bother reading through them. Just jump over this artificially created higher bar and you’ll be able to compete with China.
Off topic- on 8-5-2022, the Affordable Connectivity Program was introduced.
The FCC.gov site has info.
FIDELITY is another Deformer nails-scratching-the-chalkboard word “kindergarteninterlude” might also put on her or his t-shirt, somehow. Maybe off to one side, front and back. When it comes to diversity of thought, oh no, Deformers cannot permit that. Diversity of everything else, maybe, but certainly no diverse thinking.
I might speculate that most of the voucher advocates employed at universities and in think tanks belong to an authoritarian religion and are searching for tax dollars for their sect.
Their libertarian funders have aligned themselves with churches that try to keep white, straight, Christian conservative men dominant in the American culture.
I’m with you, Ed. Ten years out and my jaw still clenches to the phrase “teach with fidelity,” which meant follow the damned (direct) instructions.
Mr. Burgess, above, nailed it.
A lot of smart people – heck, even politicians, never said, “take play out of kindergarten” and Fulgham’s book in 1986 did not say “put more rigor in kindergarten” and “test the kids.”
The “smoking gun” is the 1989 Governors’ Conference in Charlottesville.
Of course, Diane wrote the book on what transpired, literally wrote the books, and can pin this down.
“A Nation At Risk” (which sparked the Governors) was predominantly about high schools. The data, the international comparisons, etc. were about preparing students for college – not even so much “career ready.” The word “career” shows up once and “test” shows up less than ten times and those are listed in the tests used (SAT, etc.).
In ANAR “test” is a noun, not a verb!
A Nation At Risk caught the public and media’s attention – “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre
educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”
A Nation at Risk was Sputnik.
The Governor’s said, “We’ll land on the moon by testing the heck out of kids”
Hello Senator Kennedy, President Bush, NCLB and and the shadow of 9/11
The Governors (bipartisan – ha!) were fixated on standards and birthed the common core concept before it become the Common Core Standards.
And, testing!
Standards begat tests.
Tests begat rankings.
Rankings begat testing in younger years.
Testing (not just tests) begat Data Driven Decision Making which begat Data Driven Instruction.
DDDM and DDI begat interview questions for every superintendent and principal in the country (well, actually, it begat the pre-conceived answers, not the questions)
Politicians latched on to rankings and scores to point fingers.
Quantifiable promises were made… and then…
The Shanker charter model was stolen, privatization and greed entered the picture, public schools got scared and started testing Kindergartners.
(And, add segregation and housing policy to the mix and we got what we paid for – or voted for).
A Nation at Risk was Sputternik
That’s when Congress and American education experts started to sputter like a lawnmower with water in the gas.
They have been wringing their hands over the imaginary “Education Gap” ever since.
As per usual, the “code”
has been cracked.
Except, the most important
one.
Human Malfeasance requires
Complicity…
It is the corruption of money in our political process that is attempting to turn all public assets into a commodity. They want the USPS, public education, water and utilities in rich people’s portfolios, whether it makes sense or not. When it does not make sense, they invent schemes like ESSA or this ACO Reach to gain access to Medicare dollars. Privatization generally costs the public more for a worse service.
This is what I really never saw in my 32 years of teaching: performance assessments, well, except in shop class or the arts. Here, you had to use what you learned and apply those skills to performing a dance, composing an art piece, or making the clock tick. OMG if I heard “rigor” and now it is “pivot” one more time, I was about to go “teacher” on somebody. And then all the acronyms (by the way my acronym dictionary never arrived so I really never understood) they use for “rigorous” things they want teachers to do and students to memorize. I remember watching a PBS special and my wife’s boyfriend from high school was on the show explaining how he taught geometry. He was also a legendary Santa Cruz skateboarder. So, after teaching key concepts, he had the students apply those skills to building skateboards. Math in action! I remember talking to my “smog guy” and asked where he got his training (because I was in the business of helping students “find their way” in life). He said, “My training was looking over my dad’s shoulder. I learned the key skills I needed and applied them to real-life applications. This led me to working for Toyota and then I opened my own shop. If I had to pass some written test to just prove I could work on a car, I would not be standing here.” His point was he “learned by doing” not some email stating, “According to our analytics your propensity for mechanics does not display the rigor to be a smog technician, therefore, we suggest accounting…” Or the fact if someone just has plain old wisdom. I recall a seen from Doc Hollywood starring Michael J. Fox. A family brought their child in for severe abdominal pain. Fox, being the “know-it-all urban doctor” was prepping the child for surgery. Meanwhile, the “country bumpkin doctor” rushed in, examined the child popped open a can of Coke and immediately alleviated the pain — well something like that. He made the point, “With all your smarts, you were about to cut this child open because you simply didn’t have the wisdom of seeing this condition time and time again.” I digress, but you get the point. Happy Holidays.
I love the expression in software development: I don’t care about your degrees, your anything. I care about whether you can write the code.
Performance assessment. Yes, yes, yes!
My soon to be daughter-in-law has a high school diploma, but understands all phases of plastic surgery (knows her stuff regarding project management) that she just got another raise putting her at $100K. You are spot on with what employers need. For the past two years, I spent my time in Zoom meetings with Bay Area Community College system. I was able to meet employers in the Career Technical Education. They all agreed, “…we don’t necessarily like how colleges teach methods because they are mostly theory…if you give me someone who knows their stuff (and can be trained easily) we will them now…don’t really care about degrees…and the Google Certs are huge…they tell us what you know and can apply right now!” Well, you get the gist of it all. My daughter-in-law proves it. Hey, Happy Holidays.
Happy holidays to you and yours as well, and thanks for your kind comments.
Kind and wise.
And I loved your skateboarding example. I’ve always contended that most of pre-college mathematics (and a lot more besides) could be taught from the deck and galley of a sailboat.
Thank you for your reply. There is so much to learn and apply (I learned so much about my environment by walking my dogs down by the creek). I learned bird sounds (CA Quail = CHI-CA-GO) and so much more. By observing the world, it made me want to learn more, but a test that determines my fate that I cannot respond to on my reasoning, yeah that bugs me and always has. You are one of the most incredible people to read and I appreciate all your comments. Happy Holidays to you and yours.
I long for the day when schoolchildren across the country write on their year-end standardized tests, “My mind is not standardized enough to provide the requested responses.” and nothing else.
I always told my students, “You know when they mention standardization, it reminds me of an assembly line where every nut, bolt, and whatnot on that line needs to be ‘standardized’ for a reason.” I don’t see any “nuts and bolts” in this room that needs to be exactly the same. When I was in meetings I always said, “That makes absolutely no sense. Why does every child have to be the same?” Ignored mostly or the patented answer, “The standards will answer that.” Always creeped me out to think, “Just drink the ‘kook-aid’ kids and you can be a Stepford child. I was there to teach kids to think (even outthink me) not to just look over and copy Johnny’s paper or to make all the flower red and stems green.
Create them now and sell them to people already retired.
This problem has been with us since the dawn of the industrialist age, but the digital revolution put it on steroids.
Still… the Gilbreths didn’t necessarily believe in having their dozen children button their shirts from bottom to top daily (etc)—in order to leave for school seconds earlier [“rigor”]. They were just using them as guinea pigs to figure out their “17 motions.” If they did require that of their kids, it would have been only because they could. Not because there’s any inherent sense in applying methods for efficient factory work and soldiering to raising kids.
“Diane, why does this insanity persist? Why are true best practices and proven methods of success in education completely dismissed? … What will it ever take to shift this train wreck that is education?”
My answer to these questions is simple: This insanity will persist as long as there are religious fundamentalist theofascist nationalists around that support and/or vote for candidates that sound like them.
We should also call out the, “religious….,” who promote privatization from their positions at universities and think tanks (funded by libertarians). They don’t tell the public that dollars for their religious sect are gained as well as converts to perpetuate a ruling class of White, straight, Conservative, self-professed Christian, men.
There’s a wonderful opinion column in Scientific American
“Twitter is Not Rocket Science – It’s Harder” by Joe Bak-Coleman
Pair that with Robert Fulghum’s “Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten!”
Rigor in kindergarten?!
Kindergarten is about getting along, socialization, play, curiosity, imagination, figuring stuff out.
It is also about social graces and norms – telling the truth, no-name calling, resolving conflicts, and whatever a five-year old version of ethics, the common good, and integrity is.
Musk and all like him may know rocket science but not about how to treat people.
Either they all skipped Kindergarten or went to the 2022 standards-based, data-driven, “do-now” and “exit ticket” assessments version described by “kindergarteninterlude” and missed socialization and character all together
Scores from invalid tests are not “data.” They are noise.
People who are so heedless that they don’t bother to think about what makes the standardized tests invalid should not be allowed anywhere near an education policy-making desk. Same with people so stupid or ignorant that they can’t grok why the tests are invalid.
It would be darkly ironic and funny that the promoters of this criterion-based pedagogy and testing nonsense, which is purest pseudoscience, think of themselves as being scientific IF the consequences weren’t so damaging for our students and teachers.
Please note that the automated instructional programs being forced upon students by Gates-influenced micromanagers work just like the standardized tests and have the same problems.
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“I have been shaking my head (and my fist) for 20 years. Nothing changes. It’s just getting worse. What will it ever take to shift this train wreck that is education?”
I’m sure you know…
Being rich doesn’t equate to intelligence and altruism. Often exactly the opposite. Greed and self serving arrogance is often the case.
There are some very wealthy people who are driving this relentless push to change our public education system(s). They’re not giving up. And either should we.
Frankly I would love it if we could put these “leaders” of say govt agencies, corporations, etc. Congressional personnel who advise, etc. into the classroom for a year. Yes, a year. They can take turns. How many have ever taught children to read? Or improve their reading. Both are important and different. How about loving to read? And then write with clarity, purpose, voice and of course good punctuation and grammar, etc. I am talking one to one in a tutoring situation and then in a classroom while managing the others who are waiting their turns who ought to be involved in a purposeful activity while the others get their small group time with the teacher. Let’s say there are 30 kids in your class or say 21 on the proper end. 3 groups. 60 min for reading or literacy time. So 30 min with the teacher equals 60 minutes on their own. Hmmm, have you have tried to keep 20, or 14 on the lower end, six and seven year olds busy doing learning things while you work with one group? (Older grades are maybe a bit easier but come with their own proclivities to avoid work that they deem nonsensical, boring, too hard etc.) Maybe they have questions or were absent and don’t understand. The interruptions and distractions are numerous and constant even if you do your utmost to “train” the kids to keep quiet and busy. So then you also teach all the rest of the curriculum. All day long and plan for the next week etc. Gather the materials and keep everything in the room totally tidy and organized. Make sure you write all your learning goals constantly in view of students so they won’t wonder about what they are doing. (Have any of these “leaders” spent time with children in their early years? Watched them play actively, seek, wonder, organize, continue for hours on ideas they love etc.?) First and foremost I think we need to respect children as humans and learners. They are not widgets. Glasser’s work really makes a beautiful case for empowering learning and growth. I agree with a comment from Bob above. I would have a very difficult time encouraging a young person to go into teaching, but our kids deserve the best and the brightest to do this. And to stay longterm. We are too short-sighted and ruled by the powers that be. And parents may in the end get it enough to really make their case. Local control becomes a fallacy, as well, when the state dictates because they joined the feds in whatever scheme is newly instituted. God help us all. BUT there are bright spots. However, public education is an equalizer and should be the best we can offer. So many of us retired teachers gave our lives to doing our utmost to teach in the best possible way (not perfectly) but consistently growing and adapting, helping and supporting and learning ourselves. Where is the respect? I have another term besides fidelity which is another for “fall in line”….that is insidious. Consensus. What if I still disagree? And I did. But I had to go along so we did not spend another year arguing over one word in a mission statement. Talk about waste of time. Oh and I would make sure there was a required reading list and book groups to go over the wonderful books for teaching literacy. Now onto getting prepared to excel as a math teacher along with history (let’s scrap social science or at least not make it the be all and end all), science, how about civics, critical thinking, allied literacy like spelling, let’s share how to best observe and gather our own information to understand a learner’s strengths and weak areas, then plan to help them grow. AND then let’s talk resistance. Some kids resist some teachers and some subjects. So courses in understanding the child psychology and child development issues. We would keep those leaders so busy they might begin to at least notice the error in their ways. One can dream. May I point out that parents now often invite everyone and go to a venue for a birthday party. They cringe at even inviting 10 friends to the party. And those include food and cake and last max 3 hours. We need to reset our priorities in this country on so many things, but for me it is essential to do the right things for our kids. I may be too much of a Pollyanna, but I refuse to give up hope.
Wow! Great comments! I have to add this: Democracy. How do we teach that? There’s not just one way to do it. And it really can’t be forced. It can’t be lectured into existence. Like, imagine trying to teach someone to play football by a lecture or a standardized computer test. We all know Dewey was stating the obvious when he said, “We learn by doing.” So, we can learn to throw a football–or operate a computer–by doing it. Suggestions can help. Written instructions can help. But you have to actually throw the ball–and under game conditions–to get good at passing a football. Democracy’s the same way: You can talk about it a bit; test to see if you know the terms; but mainly, you have to do democracy to learn it. That’s what’s lacking in our country today. Kids need to practice democracy to learn how to do it: Debating; listening to each other; accomplishing goals in a team or group, etc. And practicing democracy in schools was never overly common, but it’s even less so today, with all the goals set somewhere else, tests made somewhere else, evaluated somewhere else. Those of us who believe in democracy had better find ways, soon, to derail the authoritarians.