The Providence Student Union is a creative, energetic group. They are also very smart, and they figured out that it was wrong to use a standardized test as a graduation requirement.
PSU has created a series of fabulous demonstrations, and this guinea pig protest at the Rhode Island statehouse was one of their best.
These kids have convinced me that this younger generation is far smarter and wiser than previous generations. We should stop pushing them around and encourage their creativity.
I have posted about an accidental exchange between teacher John Ogozolek and Professor Laurence Steinberg, and it continued here.
And here is more of the exchange, posted as comments on the blog:
Laurence Steinberg writes:
“I’m the author of the Slate column Diane has critiqued. I think my argument is being mischaracterized both by her and some others.
“The object of my criticism is our schools, not our kids. Nowhere did I say that American teenagers are lazy. What I said is that they aren’t being challenged. That’s very different. As to the claim that the NAEP data aren’t to be believed, I’m willing to buy that, in part. But the data on the high proportion of high school grads who require remedial education in order to handle college, as well as the high proportion who drop out (often, for non-financial reasons, studies say) aren’t made up. And they drain our education budget. Plus, in addition to the NAEP, there are other sources of information that paint a similar picture, including PISA and TIMMS, as well as surveys conducted by Public Agenda and studies by Tom Loveless, John Bishop, and me (all of whom Diane used to commend). (Contrary to what many people think, other PISA participating countries are required to test the full range of students, not just their college-bound ones).
“And as to the anecdotes, that’s exactly what they are. It’s like denying that there’s an obesity epidemic because one knows a couple of thin people, or that there is climate change because it’s been a rough winter in the Northeast and Midwest. Of course there are good teachers, good schools, and good students in the United States. But when 85 percent of American students say they’ve never taken a very difficult class, and when two thirds of American students say school is boring, there clearly is a problem. To pretend otherwise is just plain wrong.
Laurence Steinberg
Professor of Psychology
Temple University”
John Ogozalek writes:
“Many years ago (25+) Dr. Steinberg wrote an op-ed piece for the Times comparing attitudes towards schooling in the U.S. versus cultural differences in Japan.. It was a fascinating article and I used the piece for years because my students were invariably insulted by what Dr. Steinberg wrote and it provoked great classroom discussions. (In fact, I used the article when I went for a job interview back in 1993. The upscale suburban school where I was interviewing wanted me to teach a sample class. That Dr. Steinberg lesson was so good that the principal offered me the job right on the spot. Thanks, Doc! Though, I decided not to take that job and ended up staying at my small, rural school, a decision I’ve never regretted.)
“The first time I used that op-ed piece my kids were so interested that I had them write letters to Dr. Steinberg. This was all prior to the advent of e-mail, blogging, and twitter. We’re talking the last century. And, the good doctor very generously replied in writing, making a point very similar to his comments above -that, yes, data does matter. I really appreciated Dr. Steinberg’s willingness to correspond with my class way back then and I vividly remember reading his comments verbatim and using his letter again and again to teach my kids about how social sciences work. Great.
“But then I picked up a copy of Dr. Steinberg’s 1996 book…”Beyond the Classroom” which expanded on that original Times op-ed piece. And, damn, there was my class -my students!- mentioned in a not so nice way.
“The kids had written letters that, in hindsight, I should have had them revise more and proofread. That was my mistake, my sloppiness -a lesson I learned as a new teacher many years ago. But, boy, the reference to my students in that book was sort of nasty and, if I remember right, kind of factually off base, also. Wow. Had Dr. Steinberg been a bit sloppy, too? I remember being pretty mad. I was hurt because our original correspondence had been so positive and friendly. And, these were great kids! But there we were, amid the ocean of data in that book… one of the few islands of real life people.
“I remember writing Dr. Steinberg repeated letters after that book came out hoping he’d revise later editions of his work. I think I had some of the kids write, too. But then I bought another copy and nothing about my class seemed to be changed. I kept writing Dr. Steinberg so much about the book that, if I remember correctly, he eventually threatened to TELL MY PRINCIPAL ON ME! (Which is still really funny because as union president I was such a pain in the ass to my principal back then that when I went to tell him he might be getting a call from a professor down at Temple University, he just sort of shook his head and said nothing. What next!)
“My wonderful wife remembers all the details of the “Dr. Steinberg affair” much better than me, God bless her. We were talking about it yesterday after Diane posted that great piece based on my original letter to her.
“For years, I kept my copies of Beyond the Classroom really WAY beyond my classroom, stored in a derelict farmhouse we have down the road on the family property. But then, we had to clean out that building and the books and most of the other stuff associated with the “Steinberg Affair” got chucked into a trash truck. Actually wheelbarowed in by one of the students I’d hired to help out. How’s that for irony? Sorry, doc.
“I had to move on. I have so many students I need to worry about every day…kids I care about. I barely have enough time to talk to all the wonderful people I see each morning….kids who are happy or scared or bored or just plain missing from my classroom….where are they? The only reason I have time to be writing this right now is that we have yet another snow day off….otherwise I’d be sitting in my classroom at this moment….6:30 a.m…getting ready for another day.
“I can actually laugh about my much younger self, the great and scary times I had as a beginning teacher and the way the world was back then prior to the internet. But here we are, Dr. Steinberg, still on opposite sides of the same divide.
“Data does matter but we’re not just numbers. We’re people and this system is dehumanizing us.
“To that end, Larry, I really would like to bury the hatchet from years ago. I’m sure you’re a fascinating, intelligent, great guy to talk to. I WOULD buy you lunch.
“But Diane Ravitch, as I wrote to her yesterday, deserves dinner at the best restaurant in town!
“Be well.
-John O.”
A respected researcher recently pointed out to me that there is a vast divide between most economists of education–who devoutly believe (it seems) that whatever matters can be measured, and if it can’t be measured, it doesn’t matter–and education researchers, who tend to think about the real world of students and teachers.
Here is an excellent example of the divide.
Bruce Baker takes issue with the currently fashionable idea that education can be dramatically improved by identifying the “best” teachers, giving them larger classes, and getting rid of the loser teachers.
Or, as he puts it:
“The solution to all of our woes is simple and elegant. Just follow these steps.
Step 1: Identify “really great” teachers (using your best VAM or SGP) who happen to be currently teaching inefficiently small classes of 14 to 17 students.
Step 2: Re-assign to those “really great” teachers another 12 or so students, because whatever losses might occur in relation to increased class size, the benefits of the “really great” teacher will far outweigh those losses.
Step 3: Enter underpants Gnomes.
Step 4. Test Score Awesomeness!”
He has a suggestion: Why not try the same at the fancy private and public schools?.
“One might assert that affluent suburban Westchester and Long Island districts with much smaller average class sizes should give more serious consideration to this proposal, that is, if they are a) willing to accept the assertion that they have both “bad” and “good” teachers and b) that parents in their districts are really willing to permit such experimentation with their children? I remain unconvinced.
“As for leading private independent schools which continue to use small class size as a major selling point (& differentiator from public districts), I’m currently pondering the construction of the double-decker Harkness table, to accommodate 12 students sitting on the backs of 12 others. This will be a disruptive innovation like no other!”
Late last night, I posted a commentary that connected two seemingly unrelated communications. One was an article in Slate by psychologist Laurence Steinberg, saying that our high schools are not rigorous enough, our seniors are not learning enough, and bemoaning both kids and schools. It happened to arrive about the same time as a letter in my inbox from a teacher in upstate Néw York.
I pointed out that when I was a member of the NAEP governing board (NAGB), we devoted an entire meeting to discussing the well-known problem of seniors not caring about NAEP scores. They know that NAEP counts for nothing, and many turned in blanks or doodled or made silly patterned guesses to show their disdain for being asked to take yet another test of no significance.
When Steinberg saw my post,he tweeted (I paraphrase): when given a choice between anecdote and data, I choose data.
I responded that Mark Twain said there were lies, damn lies, and statistics.
The serious answer is that before one uses data to condemn or judge people, one should evaluate the quality of the data. In this case, I can testify as a fact that the governing board studied the 12th graders’ lack of motivation to comply. We thought about offering cash or pizza parties for agreeing to take the test seriously. No one had a good answer. The data are not reliable.
Maybe the Puritans started the tradition of saying that the younger generation is going to hell. Why can’t we ever stop wailing about the kids? Whatever they are, they reflect the society they were born into. I expect great things from them, despite the obstacles we older folks place before them, despite our dysfunctional politics, despite adults’ misguided priorities, despite all the bad educational policies our kids must overcome.
At the time I wrote last night, little did I know that the teacher and the professor graduated from the same college and had long ago had a similar exchange.
The teacher wrote this morning:
“Thanks to Diane for posting my original letter and for working so hard on behalf of teachers and our students.
“I turned on the computer this morning to look for my letter and nearly fell out of my chair when I saw my name mentioned alongside a reference to Dr. Laurence Steinberg. You see, Dr. Steinberg and I exchanged a number of letters many years ago about an op-ed piece he had written in the Times. I’d used his piece in my classes back in the early 1990s and my students took great issue with it. They were, to put it nicely, mad as hell at Larry.
“[Dr. Steinberg….. can I call you Larry? The fact that I’ve bumped into you again this way in the middle of the internet after all these years is just a little weird, isn’t it? We ought to get together someday. I’ll buy you a coffee. Hell, I’ll even pay for your lunch. We both graduated from Vassar College so we can talk about the beautiful campus there when we need a break from arguing about education.]
“Suffice to say, that if I had to re-do my correspondence with Larry again there’s definitely things I would do differently. And, I’d like to think that Larry might feel the same way.
“But, Larry, Diane couldn’t be more right. Many of these tests are bogus. And, the kids know it. They’re certainly smart enough not to waste their time, especially considering the fact that we all seem to have so much less of that time nowadays.
“I’m so tired of hearing the same old cliche, “Kids today….blah, blah, blah….” After teaching in a high school for 26 years, I can say that these “kids today” are much more serious and hardworking than my own classmates back in the 1970s. They have to be. We’ve given them no choice.
-John Ogozalek”
This article was written by a teacher in Los Angeles. She describes the implantation of the Common Core standards. She is especially perplexed by the practice of “close reading,” which means that students are expected to comprehend text without any context or background knowledge.
She and her colleagues were disappointed by the “professional development,” which was not at all professional.
She writes:
“Our trainer started the session by apologizing sincerely for all the anxiety and confusion surrounding the rushed implementation of the Common Core State Standards in LAUSD. The first slide in her PowerPoint presentation showed the governance structure of LAUSD. At the top was the elected school board. She was letting us know that if we had issues with the Common Core State Standards, we needed to bring these up with the school board. Everyone else down the line, she implied, was just following marching orders, and it would do no good to call and harass them.
“We were lucky. When I returned to school, I found out that the math teachers had had a similar training session. However, theirs started with the trainer telling them that no “negativity” would be tolerated, and that it wasn’t a question-and-answer session. In essence, they were told to sit down and shut up and not bring up concerns about the reordering of the teaching of important concepts that is happening in math under the Common Core State Standards.
“At least we were treated like professionals.”
Then came the training about how to teach the Gettysburg Address by close reading.
The teacher writes:
“When we discussed the sample Gettysburg assessment, several teachers pointed out that the assessment offers no background on the Gettysburg Address. Students are not to be given any information about the speech, even if they are relatively new to the country. Many of us in LAUSD have students in our regular English classes who have only been in the United States a year or two, and they most likely do not know our history.
“Other students may simply not remember their U.S. history lessons from middle school, and may have forgotten who Abraham Lincoln was, or why the Gettysburg Address is important, or even that “address” in this instance means a speech and not a location.
“If a student is clueless but lucky, she might be sitting next to a student who does know this information. (All the Common Core assessments I’ve seen so far require discussion with a partner, but forbid talking to the teacher. So if you are a genius or sit next to one, you hit the Common Core lottery.)
“But those kinds of concerns are apparently very pre-Common Core, and are outdated now.
“When we asked if we could do a little pre-teaching to provide context, our trainer somberly shook her head.
“She actually said it would be best to simply give the “cold, hard assessment,” and that we need to “remove the scaffolding sometime.”
“Then I noticed a relic on the wall from the pre-Common Core era—a poster of Bloom’s Taxonomy. The Bloom’s Taxonomy chart is a pyramid. At the bottom is the foundation of all learning. As you go up the pyramid, the tasks increase in complexity (notice I did not say “rigor”).
“At the base of the pyramid is knowledge. Next up is comprehension. After that come application, analysis, synthesis, and then at the top, evaluation.
“I couldn’t help myself. I raised my hand to ask a question.
“Isn’t giving this assessment without giving the students the background—the context for the speech—kind of like expecting them to come in on the Bloom’s taxonomy chart at comprehension, without making sure they first have the knowledge?”
“Then something interesting happened. The trainer looked like I had zapped her with a stun gun for a second. She actually physically jerked. Then she recovered, and said we could discuss that after the training. (We didn’t.)”
I received a letter from John Ogozolak, a teacher in upstate New York, where the economy has long been in serious trouble, with a paucity of jobs and economic opportunity.
I decided to share it, because like him, I too have wondered what message we give our high school students. The politicians and the media constantly tell them how dumb they are, how lazy and shiftless, yet they are our future. What kind of world are they graduating into? Will there be jobs? Will they have a chance? Will there be social mobility and opportunity? Or will they find themselves slipping down into the bottom end of the economy?
John’s letter arrived only hours after I read this column in Slate by Laurence Steinberg, who studies adolescents, declaring that our high schools are a total disaster, and our kids are learning nothing, based on the fact that test scores for seniors are stagnant.
I responded to Larry Steinberg, whom I knew years ago, and pointed out that the NAEP scores for seniors are meaningless. When I was on the NAEP board in the early 2000s, we devoted a full meeting to discussing the fact that high school seniors don’t even try on NAEP tests. They know the tests don’t count towards high school graduation or college admission; they don’t count for anything, and the kids don’t care about them. They doodle on the answer page, they answer in patterns (like checking off every A), or they leave pages blank. They aren’t dumb. They know what they are doing. They are asked to jump over a meaningless hurdle, and they treat it as a joke. But the adults take their tomfoolery as evidence that they are unmotivated, possibly stupid. I don’t think the kids are stupid. I imagine how I feel when someone calls me on the phone and starts asking questions; usually I hang up, or I say something uncooperative because I don’t like to be interrupted for no reason to fit into someone else’s plan. I expect that the seniors feel the same way.
I often wonder why we have so little confidence in our young people, why we demean them so often, and why we never stop to think that they are products of our society, for better or worse. If we are disappointed in them, we should be even more disappointed in ourselves. They are our children. And let me be clear: I have met many high school students, and I have been impressed by their wit, intelligence, humor, courage, and passionate sense of justice.
Anyway, read Steinberg’s column, and contrast it with what John wrote. John is a teacher. He knows his kids. He sees them every day. He worries about their future, not because they are dumb but because our society offers them diminishing prospects and doesn’t tell the truth:
I teach 12th graders economics in what the New York Times described this past summer as the 4th poorest county in New York State.I start off the semester course trying to give the students a sense of what’s rich, and middle class and poor in this country. The kids read from Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed and we discuss the growing gap between the rich and poor in this nation.I try to make economics REAL to these young adults while connecting their experiences to some of the important theories you’d find in a typical Economics 101 course in college. These kids are on the verge of walking out of the school and being faced with paying for college and making their way in the world.Then…..the students and myself get walloped at the end of the course with an asinine “assessment” created from a computer bank of outdated questions that someone in an office at the county BOCES prints out. We get a test just because some law says we have to. You couldn’t call it a standardized test. One version had misspelled words and even the same question repeated twice. But, of course, I couldn’t revise the test prior to administration……because I as the teacher couldn’t be trusted.
It’s truly sick, Diane. I’m not a believer in conspiracy theories but I have to wonder if there’s some grand scheme somewhere to numb high school students with mindless drivel and endless tests so that they don’t get around to asking the big questions….like why is their generation getting screwed. It’s frustrating to sit back and watch this educational car crash happen. I’ve sent letters to the Times, to the newspaper in Albany, my legislators….. I tried writing a blog but I don’t have the time really for its upkeep among other issues. I went to rallies and held up signs…..We still try to have some fun in class while learning. That’s about my biggest form of protest.
In this post, which arrived a few days ago as a comment, Ron Lapekas, a retired teacher, explains why standardized tests have no value or validity for many students:
“I am a retired teacher. I always thought the SBT’s (Stupid Bubble Tests) had little value for my East Los Angeles 99% Latino students for several reasons.
“First, vocabulary necessary both to understand the questions and the answer choices made any test results meaningless, even in math. If you don’t understand the question how can you evaluate the correctness of the answer?
“Second, we didn’t get the results until the end of summer. I never gave SBT’s to my students because, as I told them, I grade work, not answers. If a student doesn’t know which answers were incorrect, if there is no way to review how the answers were selected, and if there is no way to give feedback to the students, SBT’s are not education tools at all.
“Third, SBT’s are so standardized that they are useless for our most challenged and disadvantaged students. Unlike business models used by the Broad-Gates advocates, you can’t order students to learn and you can’t demand that they all learn at the same rate in the same way. That is like pushing rope.
“Fourth, evaluating teachers by student test results is like comparing the driving skills of drivers driving different models of cars built in different years. My students arrived with different levels of knowledge so I taught from the lowest level. This bored some of the better prepared students — but they were “better” because of test scores, not because they understood how they got their scores. By the end of the year, 70% of my students were at grade level and the other 30% had significantly improved their understanding. (As one teacher told, me he would rather have my “F” students than some teachers’ “A” students.) But I could do this because I had tenure.
“Fifth, the administrators have lost touch with the classroom. If they have been out of the classroom for more than five years, they have no clue how to teach the “new” standards. Therefore, they abdicate their duty to evaluate the teacher’s teaching schools and use the arbitrary test scores and “measurable” or observable factors such as disciplinary records, pretty bulletin boards, and classroom organization instead. For example, I was once down-checked because I re-taught a topic my students didn’t understand and, therefore, did not follow my scripted lesson.
“Lastly, SBT scores are used more as “evidence” to dismiss teachers than they are to identify areas in which to focus attention to improve teaching skills. As noted above, few administrators have a clue about how to teach subjects according to the “new” standards so they use checklists with ambiguous and arbitrary descriptions.
As most readers of this blog will agree, until all students enter a classroom with uniform background knowledge and skills, proper nutrition, and enough time to learn, evaluating teachers by the scores of their students will create false data for the Broad-Gates “data driven” models.”
Please help this great group of students crowd-source a national convening of student leaders to fight false reforms.
I first learned about its spokesperson Hannah Nguyen when she challenged Michelle Rhee. I subsequently met Hannah and gave her a hug when I visited Occidental College in Los Angeles last fall.
Hannah and her allies must raise $2,000 by February 15. I sent a donation. Send whatever you can: $5, $10, $25, $50, $100.
The EmpowerED 2014 conference now has a website where you can find all the information you need:
This is a statement from the organizers:
Students all over the country, from Portland to Philadelphia, are tired of feeling powerless and unheard when it comes to decisions that affect their education. That’s why they’ve begun to form student unions and fight back against threats to their educational rights. From massive walkouts and sit-ins to creative street theater and flash mobs, these students are demanding that their voices be heard.
EmpowerED 2014 will be the first event ever to engage a student community in a conversation about their education. It is a conference designed for students by students. The conversation will be initiated by a handpicked team of student leaders from Chicago, Newark, Portland, Providence, and Baltimore, who will share incredible stories of how they have elevated student voice and fought for educational justice in their communities. The students in attendance will then have the chance to work with the student organizers in workshops to build organizing skills, share their ideas for education, and collaborate on developing a student power movement in their Los Angeles.
Here is the link to the crowdfunding campaign once again:
We are still $2000 short of our goal, so we need all the support we can get at this point! Once again, the majority of the funds will go directly to the student organizers’ travel to LA, and the rest will be for conference materials such as food, printing, workshop supplies, etc…
If you teach in the Los Angeles area, please tell students about the conference! It will be a wonderful event where students will have a voice and be given a space to collaborate on building a local student power movement. The conference is entirely student-run and led by students for students in the LA community.
Thank you so much for your time and support.
Peace and power,
Hannah Nguyen
The Néw York Times blog published a debate about whether parents are to blame for “failing schools.”
The question is: “Do parents care enough about schools?”
Various writers offer their opinions.
The debate is based on President Obama’s assertion in his State of the Union address that parents don’t demand enough.
Of course, that begs the question of which schools are “failing” and how they are identified. It leaves aside the fact that the overwhelming majority of such schools enroll high proportions of students who are poor, are English language learners, have severe disabilities, and/or are racially segregated. It leaves aside inequitable resources that affect class size and availability of programs, after-school activities, music, technology, and other amenities that affluent districts take for granted.
Leonie Haimson has an excellent contribution arguing that this is an effort to shift blame from policy makers to parents
Brian Jones says that the question shifts blame from society–which is indifferent to children–to their parents, many of whom struggle for daily survival in a society that accepts poverty as inevitable.
Jersey Jazzman recounts stories of high school sports teams recruiting players from other districts to help them in the competitive world of athletic competition. He explains why this has happened. It goes hand-in-hand with our current misguided belief that education as it was once understood–that is, the development of each child in mind, body, and character– has been replaced by purely utilitarian goals: education for college and career.
He writes:
“Our obsession with creating an education system whose primary function is to feed the job market is inevitably going to lead to behaviors like this. We are teaching the kids that their number one goal is to get what they can, whatever the cost. Civic pride, like playing for your home town, is a quaint notion; loyalty and teamwork are valuable only in what they can do for you as an individual. Of course, this is a natural response to being used: if big universities and TV networks and apparel brands are going to make a ton of dough off of student athletes, those players will naturally want their cut. That is the beauty of the unrestrained free market.”
– See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2014/01/professionalizing-high-school-sports.html#sthash.cDKkB2Ml.dpuf
Diane Ravitch's blog 