Archives for category: Real Education
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Ariel Sacks: Teach Whole Books or Excerpts?

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2019 //
63

 

Teacher Ariel Sacks notes two clashing trends in teaching literature:  teach whole books or excerpts.

The recent trend toward short texts seems to have come from the Common Core State Standards and accompanying standardized tests. As Peter Greene explains in a Forbes Magazine article, Common Core Testing and the Fracturing of Literature, “Both the standards and the tests are focused on ‘skills,’ with the idea that the business of reading a play or a story or any piece of text is not for the value of that text, but for the reading skills that one acquires and practices in the reading.” This limited focus on skills overlooks so much of what literature offers young people. But my issue with excerpts goes beyond the skills versus content debate, which has been going on many decades.

I question the choice to alter a novel’s form by excerpting it. This is partly on principle—the author didn’t intend for it to be read in bits. But more importantly, I believe reading excerpts puts students at a disadvantage in developing a love of reading and their skills in literary analysis.

The Whole Story Advantage

Literature is art. When we read a novel, we are reading an author’s artistic production, which was created intentionally in a specific form. The novel as a literary form asks readers to spend time living in a world and experiencing the story subjectively as it unfolds, detail by detail. Sure, the length can be prohibitive at times on a practical level; but fundamentally, the work of art begins at the beginning and ends at the end. Without the whole story, our experience is incomplete, and we really can’t know what the author is trying to convey with major gaps in our knowledge of the text.

I like to compare this to looking at a work of visual art—a painting, for example. Yes, we can study a corner of a painting, but we would almost never do so without first viewing the painting as a whole. Without seeing the whole, we miss out on the experience of the art as it was intended. And we are at a gross disadvantage in analyzing even the details we see in one corner, because we don’t know what purpose they serve in relation to the whole.

I agree with Sacks. A writer goes to great lengths to create a novel. Teaching only an excerpt does violence to the work and destroys love of literature.  Excerpting is butchery.

Categories Art, Common Core, Education Reform, Literature, Real Education

Kathryn Berger: A Teacher in Wonderland

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2019 //
5

Kathryn Berger knows something that legislators don’t know. Students are hungry for real literature and art but we feed them standardized tests.

They crave authenticity, but our policymakers impose standardization, which is inauthentic.

See this video she made.

Categories Art, Creativity, Real Education

Peter Greene: The Silly Research about Charters That Betsy DeVos is Promoting

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2019 //
22

 

Peter Greene writes here about an exceptionally silly “study” that Betsy DeVos is using to drum up fading public support for charter schools.

The study, by choice advocates Patrick  Wolf and Corey DeAngelis, attempts to measure “success” by return on investment, converting taxpayer dollars into NAEP scores.

Sounds crazy, no?

Greene writes:

This particular paper comes out of something called the School Choice Demonstration Project, which studies the effects of school choice.

A Good Investment: The Updated Productivity of Public Charter Schools in Eight U.S. Cities pretends to measure school productivity, focusing on eight cities- Houston, San Antonio, New York City, Washington DC, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Boston, and Denver. In fact, the paper actually uses the corporate term ROI– return on investment.

We could dig down to the details here, look at details of methodology, break down the eight cities, examine the grade levels represented, consider their use of Investopedia for a definition of ROI. But that’s not really necessary, because they use two methods for computing ROI– one is rather ridiculous, and the other is exceptionally ridiculous.

The one thing you can say for this method of computing ROI is that it’s simple. Here’s the formula, plucked directly from their paper so that you won’t think I’m making up crazy shit:

Cost Effectiveness=Achievement Scores divided by Per-Pupil Revenue.

The achievement scores here are the results from the NAEP reading and math, and I suppose we could say that’s better than the PARCC or state-bought Big Standardized Test, but it really doesn’t matter because the whole idea is nuts.

It assumes that the only return we should look for on an investment in schools is an NAEP score. Is that a good assumption? When someone says, “I want my education tax dollars to be well spent,” do we understand them to mean that they want to see high standardized test scores– and nothing else?? Bot even a measure of students improving on that test. The paper literally breaks this down into NAEP points per $1,000. Is that the whole point of a school?

It gets worse, and Greene explains why.

I am reminded of a fad in the 1920s to compute the dollar value of different subjects. The curriculum experts of the day calculated that teaching Latin was a total waste of time because it was expensive and produced no return on investment.

The whole thing called “education” got left out of the calculus.

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Economics, Education Industry, Privatization, Real Education, Research

Albany Times-Union: Save the Pep Rallies for What Really Matters, Not for Testing

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2019 //
13

 

The editorial board of the Albany Times-Union editorial board is one of the wisest in the nation. It understands, as few other editorial boards do, that the annual standardized tests are a waste of instructional time that do nothing to help students. Their only error in this editorial is to assume that the tests measure school performance. They don’t. They measure school demographics, which can be obtained without the testing.

The editorial board objects to the state and districts’ efforts to bribe or threaten students to take these useless tests.

 

Which word or words best describe some schools’ approach to last week’s state English tests for grades three through eight?

(a) misguided

(b) disappointing

(c) both of the above

Take out your No. 2 pencil and bubble in (c). New York has been working hard to make testing better. But last week’s reports of how schools are incentivizing test participation show we have a long way to go.

Some schools.. have dangled a deal in front of their students: Take the statewide English and math tests and you’ll get out of taking your core subject finals in June. Other schools have promised pizza parties if enough students take the tests or have held pep rallies to encourage them. 

Still others have taken a sterner approach, pressuring parents or doing away with “refusal rooms” for students whose parents opted them out…

All of these approaches are troubling.

Let’s recall what the tests are for. They aren’t a measure of children’s progress. They’re a measure of schools’ performance. They’re not designed to help the kids who take them, at least not directly. The results don’t even arrive till the next school year…

Instead, these assessments — mandated, along with a minimum 95 percent participation rate, under federal law — have warped the curriculum, chipping away at social studies, science, art, even recess, in the push to provide more English and math instruction. Emphasizing standardized tests over regular classroom work — yes, including final exams — is a distraction from real education.

Pep rallies for an exam? Why not a pep rally to encourage, say, participation in the science fair? And bribes and cajolery are not the tools of a system that’s working correctly. They’re signs that we’ve lost sight of what’s really important. Hint: It’s not increasing a school’s test participation rates.

And perseverance and resilience? Better for children to learn to persevere through a long-term project like a science experiment or a poetry portfolio; better to learn resilience through a chance to revise a tough math worksheet or the challenge of presenting in front of the class. Perseverance certainly isn’t taught by tests plagued by the kinds of computer glitches we saw last week, which only raise kids’ frustration and parents’ ire…

Save the pep rallies for things that really count.

Categories Education Reform, New York, Opt Out, Real Education, Standardized Testing

Miracle in Maine: New Governor Picks Critic of Government MicroManagement as State Commissioner!

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2019 //
23

This is a great story. For eight years, Maine had a hot-headed Tea Party zealot as Governor. Paul LePage appointed a homeschooling parent as Commissioner of Education. He made racist remarks. He followed Jeb Bush as his idol.

In November, Democrat Janet Mills was elected. Competence, intelligence, sanity. Wow!

The educator she chose as Commissioner of education was stunned. She is amazing!

https://legacy.sunjournal.com/education-nominee-pender-makin-government-should-stay-out-of-the-classroom/

BRUNSWICK — The Saturday morning after Janet Mills won the gubernatorial election in November, Pender Makin sat in bed with her computer, sipping some coffee and preparing to compose a letter to whoever would be the next commissioner of the state Department of Education.

“I was on the one hand so filled with hope for a much better future for Maine, and also filled with exasperation due to some significant issues that I was concerned about at the department,” she recalled Dec. 28.

“‘Dear new commissioner,’” the Scarborough resident’s letter began.

Then, she said, “I basically laid out what I thought should be the most immediate strategic goals for that post.”

Makin, Brunswick’s assistant superintendent of schools since 2015, had no idea she was writing a letter to herself.

Even though she never planned to send the letter, deeming it just a way to organize her thoughts and feelings, Makin had started to establish a platform of issues and priorities that would serve her well in the weeks ahead.
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The state Senate and Education and Cultural Affairs Committee are due this month to confirm Mills’ nomination of Makin as Education Department commissioner. She would replace Robert Hasson of South Portland, who former Gov. Paul LePage tapped for the role in March 2017…

Makin said she was asked out of the blue in early December to attend an interview in Augusta with a cabinet screening committee.

“I said, ‘of course I will,’” she recalled. “How would I ever not? … I wake up with a sense of urgency; I consider it a complete mission, public education across the board.”

Makin saw the interview as a chance to share her beliefs about education with “a bunch of smart, powerful people,” but didn’t imagine herself much of a contender for the post…

Taking the reins of the department at the dawn of a new administration, “I see Maine as being in a prime position to be influencing national education policy, rather than reactively responding to every little whim that’s happening (at the federal level),” Makin said.

“We have the most unique demographics, we have innovative people in our classrooms all across the state,” she added, plus “a lot of passion and determination, hard work, and all the things that make Maine a real leader educationally. I feel that we maybe have squandered every opportunity to highlight that at the national level.”

Makin also said she sees Maine striving to achieve a world-class education for its students and pushing back against federal policies with which it doesn’t agree, instead of “absorbing blindly whatever gets handed down to us.”

She recalled implementation of the “No Child Left Behind” initiative in 2001, which launched a period of externally driven policies that created a culture of fear-driven accountability. Non-educators were telling educators how to teach, she said, and using sometimes punitive methods to try to bring about success.

But educators “don’t respond to carrots or sticks,” Makin noted, pointing out that the new teachers she meets each year come with a passion and idealistic desire to do the best for their students.
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“They arrive pre-motivated,” she said. “… They don’t need to have their professionalism stripped away and replaced with something to implement.”

“Government’s role should pull back, and focus on bills and initiatives that provide infrastructure,” Makin said. “Let’s look at innovative ways to provide … universal (pre-kindergarten). How can we raise up teacher bottom pay so that they’re recognized for the amount of education and work that they do to become teachers? How do we create equity across the state?”

“These are great, big things,” she continued. “I think government should stay out of the classroom; I think government should stay out of the transcripts,” and retreat from “micromanaging the actual operations of our schools.”

“When you take leaders, and you strip from them their leadership and you replace it with stuff to manage, you’re not fostering leadership,” Makin said. “So I think we need to just have a different lens.”

Categories Education Reform, Maine, Real Education, Resistance

The First Session of NPE: “I Bring Hope!”

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2018 //
3

Here is the video of the first session of the just-concluded annual conference of the Network for Public Education in Indianapolis.

You will hear opening remarks by our executive director Carol Burris. She introduces Phyllis Bush, who gives a witty summary of what has happened to Indiana and how she and her friends built one of the nation’s first activist organizations to oppose destructive “reforms.”

Phyllis introduces me, and I describe my new book, which is about the slow but sure collapse of corporate reform. I bring hope.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Parent Groups, Privatization, Real Education, Research, Resistance

David Gamberg: Five Steps to Building a Better School: Reformers, Please Note!

By dianeravitch
July 30, 2018 //
27

David Gamberg is an experienced educator who marches to a different drummer, not to federal mandates or the lure of Reformer money. He has a clear vision of what is best for students, teachers, staff, families, and the community. He does not worship at the shrine of test scores. He is superintendent of two small, contiguous districts on Long Island in New York. He understands the organic relation between communities and schools and knows that neither stands alone.

He wrote about his philosophy in Education Week.

Forget the title. This article is about what education should be, if only we had leaders with thoughtfulness, mindfulness, love of children, love of learning, and vision. Such people exist. Gamberg is one of them.


I am convinced that the foundation of a good education is about the concept of building—building a school, building a community, building relationships, and building a sense of self. School works for many students to provide a pathway into the future. It offers a foundation of rich experiences that inspire and form the basis of students’ life stories. Education and schools, however, can never be fully responsible for the outcomes that our students achieve. We cannot blame schools and teachers for the very complex mix of factors that result in any one person’s success in life.

I’ve been thinking recently about how we can alter the school experience for students and staff to better meet the needs of our learning communities. Some of the very structures and experiences that harken back to an earlier era in education may in fact be part of the future of teaching and learning. While it may be counterintuitive in our sophisticated high-tech world, building, manipulating, and creating inside the physical spaces of our school environment are essential in future learning….

1) Create a culture and environment that attends to the authentic learning experiences of the students.

There are many ways to engage students and teachers in authentic learning experiences. Tending a garden offers students a chance to shape their environment and participate in the natural transformation of seed to plant. Putting on a theater production shapes their experience of others, turning the audience into an integral part of learning. Students might create a gallery or museum display in a real process of honoring history and art. They might build a robot, which encompasses a wide range of design and scientific principles. The list of possibilities for school communities to come together and build something is as universal as it is unlimited.

2) Focus on building community; it matters more than raising test scores.

Our students face a growing list of pressures both real and imagined. School boards and superintendents, in particular, should take note of mental-health and substance-abuse issues and concerns. These are reaching crisis levels across the country. Students of all ages need a compelling experience that engages them in their respective learning communities. Sorting students by test scores will never answer the call for safer and healthier learning communities. Establishing deep and abiding personal relationships and building a sense of community will, and it’s urgently needed.

3) Reshape schools; don’t seek to reform them…

4) Engage stakeholders in re-envisioning the schoolhouse.

If the future is ever more unpredictable, then is keeping things basically the same still an option? Whether it is the students, teachers, policymakers, or families in any learning community, we must look at which tools we keep and which tools we should discard to help us build our schools…

Schools of the future may require a new vision for how they are structured, built, and financed. Let us not forget that no matter how schools are set up, it is the relationship between child and adult that stands at its center. From that center, we can work together to impart lessons, build understanding, and build capacity.

5) Don’t see school improvement as a technological fix.

We can have Smart Boards in every room but fail to update the pedagogy used 30 years ago. This is not a criticism of how we engaged our students in the past. In fact, I would argue that a way to engage students that is more than 2,400 years old still applies—even more so today. I am referring, of course, to the Socratic method…

Let’s make the process of learning and what takes place in school so compelling that it cannot be replaced by an algorithm. Let us ensure that our students continue to be great problem-solvers, fearless learners, courageous citizens, and creative thinkers who contribute greatly to the world around them.

If students become engaged in solving real-world problems, then wouldn’t they be better prepared to build their future? If they had permission to alter the physical space in their school, wouldn’t they alter their view of school in the process? I believe that with each passing generation, we inherit a space, with a covenant to uphold the values and principles of those who have come before us. We have an opportunity to build on their contributions while we forge our own. Is it not true that at all times we stand on the shoulders of others? Let us work together to build on the opportunity that has been given to us.

Categories Education Reform, Real Education, Students

Robo-Grading Student Essays is Garbage

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2018 //
52

NPR ran an interesting story about robo-grading student essays. It didn’t use the headline that appears here, but there is no better way to describe the insanity or stupidity of asking a machine to judge a student essay. First, it shows disrespect for the student. Second, it diminishes the importance and value of language. Third, the machine can be easily fooled, as Les Perelmann of MIT has demonstrated conclusively with his studies of how easy it is to fool the machine. Basically, the machine can’t evaluate facts. Perelman showed that a student could write an essay declaring that the War of 1812 took place in 1945, and the machine would not recognize it as an error.

To demonstrate, he calls up a practice question for the GRE exam that’s graded with the same algorithms that actual tests are. He then enters three words related to the essay prompt into his Babel Generator, which instantly spits back a 500-word wonder, replete with a plethora of obscure multisyllabic synonyms:

“History by mimic has not, and presumably never will be precipitously but blithely ensconced. Society will always encompass imaginativeness; many of scrutinizations but a few for an amanuensis. The perjured imaginativeness lies in the area of theory of knowledge but also the field of literature. Instead of enthralling the analysis, grounds constitutes both a disparaging quip and a diligent explanation.”

“It makes absolutely no sense,” he says, shaking his head. “There is no meaning. It’s not real writing.”

But Perelman promises that won’t matter to the robo-grader. And sure enough, when he submits it to the GRE automated scoring system, it gets a perfect score: 6 out of 6, which according to the GRE, means it “presents a cogent, well-articulated analysis of the issue and conveys meaning skillfully.”

“It’s so scary that it works,” Perelman sighs. “Machines are very brilliant for certain things and very stupid on other things. This is a case where the machines are very, very stupid.”

Because computers can only count, and cannot actually understand meaning, he says, facts are irrelevant to the algorithm. “So you can write that the War of 1812 began in 1945, and that wouldn’t count against you at all,” he says. “In fact it would count for you because [the computer would consider it to be] good detail.”

Perelman says his Babel Generator also proves how easy it is to game the system. While students are not going to walk into a standardized test with a Babel Generator in their back pocket, he says, they will quickly learn they can fool the algorithm by using lots of big words, complex sentences, and some key phrases—that make some English teachers cringe.

“For example, you will get a higher score just by [writing] “in conclusion,’” he says….

In places like Utah, where tests are graded by machines only, scampish students are giving the algorithm a run for its money.

“Students are geniuses, and they’re able to game the system,” notes Carter, the assessment official from Utah.

One year, she says, a student who wrote a whole page of the letter “b” ended up with a good score. Other students have figured out that they could do well writing one really good paragraph and just copying that four times to make a five-paragraph essay that scores well. Others have pulled one over on the computer by padding their essays with long quotes from the text they’re supposed to analyze, or from the question they’re supposed to answer.

But each time, Carter says, the computer code is tweaked to spot those tricks.

“We think we’re catching most things now,” Carter says, but students are “very creative” and the computer programs are continually being updated to flag different kinds of ruses.

As someone who devotes her life to writing and trying to communicate meaning, I reject the idea of robo-grading as insulting to the craft.

It demands garbage. It deserves to get what it asks for.

Anyone complicit in this betrayal of educational values should be ashamed.

Categories Education Industry, Real Education, Technology, Testing

Albert Shanker, Reflecting on Forty Years in Education

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2018 //
16

I recently was searching google for Albert Shanker’s connection to the Holweide School in Germany, which inspired some of his ideas about education reform, and I came across this fascinating personal essay about his life in education as a teacher, a labor organizer, and an advocate for authentic learning. Shanker died in 1996, having served for many years as President of the American Federation of Teachers, and before that as President of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City.

In this brief memoir, he reflects on what it means to be “a professional” and how that idea was used against teachers, to control them, and also against unions, to discourage them.

His thoughts about collective bargaining and unions are worth reviewing as unions are today in dire peril given the spread of “right to work” and the Supreme Court’s Janus decision.

His thoughts about the kind of learning that sticks with you through life is well exemplified in his memories of earning a merit badge from the Boy Scouts in birding.

His thoughts about the importance and necessity of public education in building American society are very relevant today.

This is an enjoyable read.

Categories Real Education, Teachers and Teaching, Unions

Edward F. Berger: As An Educator, I Have Held These Truths to be Self-Evident

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2018 //
32

This is the abbreviated format I will use to alert you to a good piece of writing and thinking, leaving me time to work on my book.

Ed Berger is a retired educator. He lives in Arizona and fights against privatization and what he calls “partial schools” (charter schools).

He wrote about what matters most in education. 

Do you agree?

Categories Real Education
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