A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

I have noticed that having just a little knowledge about something can lead to problems. Anyone at the beginning stages of learning a language has probably faced a situation where you say something well enough to a native speaker who then thinks you actually speak the language as they begin rattling off sentences that you have no hope of understanding. Or you begin working on a simple leaky faucet that becomes a major overhaul of your pipes and only a plumber can put it right. This is also called “getting in over your head” and it is exactly where some public school administrators are at when it comes to standardized testing, except that in this case the problems are not individualized but passed onto students, their families and ultimately our society as a whole.

The appeal of standardized testing is easy to understand. It promises to be an objective measure of a student’s knowledge or cognitive ability in an easily digestible and usable form. This “objective measure” has all of the trappings of science which lends it an illusory sense of  credibility. Tradition and economic realities have solidified the status of standardized testing and there is an assumption that the tests do what the creators of the tests say they do. These are powerful rationales which seem to make sense but they represent only a partial knowledge of something which is in fact even larger and very difficult to understand in its fullness. Unfortunately, the appeal is built on a false premise and therefore draws  incorrect conclusions.

The truth about the appeal of standardized testing is that it is an easy way out. Reducing students to scores makes it easier to manage their educations and relieves teachers of the very difficult task of assessing them using more in depth and meaningful methods. Although our society is currently caught up in a love affair with “big data”, there are limits to its accuracy and usefulness, and it can lead to lazy thinking which in turn leads to false conclusions. This lazy thinking is what bothers me most because administrators use data that is descriptive as if it were prescriptive, treating the end result as a symptom that can be isolated and fixed with specific interventions. That approach is “finger in the dike” patch work and lulls its users into a sense that they are accomplishing something because they can point to the numbers with reverence. But, as Stephen Jay Gould so thoroughly demonstrates in The Mismeasure of Man, this type of testing is inherently biased and is, in fact, based on 19th century racist theories about the inferiority of Black Africans and Native Americans.

This sorting of human intelligence has been used in the past as a justification for social policies such as slavery and the displacement of native populations and military capability. It is now being used to maintain or channel people into classes. An incomplete understanding of the background of the tests yields an incomplete understanding of what the tests do. The marketers of these tests highlight the ability of the tests to measure some cognitive functions such as recall or reading comprehension without mentioning that the tests are even better at measuring economic status. Another omission is that these tests can not measure intelligence and do not have the ability to predict individual success. But hey, it’s marketing.

We’ve been sold a shoddy bill of goods. But quality control has been hindered by those with too little knowledge and too much authority. Ignoring the political economics of standardized testing whether through denial or ignorance limits our ability in the education community to appreciate quality education when we see it. It limits our ability to recognize where we have gone wrong. It’s time to stop accepting mediocrity with a smile. I think it is time to “return to sender” and stuff these tests where they belong.

Boom-town Education Spending

Any longtime Seattle resident driving around town today can easily point to the number of cranes and other building machinery as evidence that we are in a big-time boom cycle. At the same time we can point to our schools for evidence of poverty in spite of the wealth accumulating all around.  To say that this discrepancy is upsetting is a bit of an understatement.  How dare our leaders claim scarcity when it is clearly artificial?

Scarcity. Part of the most rudimentary economic equation. Supply and demand. But we are fully into the swing of the 21st century with its huge technological advances and the economic equation at this point is far from rudimentary. Economic laws have been studied, researched and experimented upon. We are in an economic stage completely infused with the ideology and programs of Neoliberalism, an ideology that recommends privatization, deregulation, free markets and personal affluence and overlays and blends in with the economic objectives of both the Democratic party and the Republican party. We have greater productivity than ever before, markets flooded with product, unmanageable piles of consumer waste, many signs of historic abundance. So how else can it be true that there is scarcity unless it has been manipulated to appear so?

I for one am (We are) tired of hearing the same claims over and over; I’m fed up and unwilling to accept them anymore. This seems to be a sentiment shared by many, which has been expressed by the State Supreme Court in the McCleary decision. There is money and there is a way to get to it and the State is obligated to fulfill its duty of providing adequate education to the state’s citizenry. Let the taxing begin. The one percent have more than enough personal wealth, it was produced by the people in the first place and only ended up in their pockets because they were in the right place at the right time. They own the organs that crank out the myth of scarcity but they don’t own the minds of the people. Minds are more important than money.  It’s time to invoke a new mantra: mind over money.

Minds are supposed to be nurtured in school. Minds that will ultimately mature and be set to the task of creating new wealth. With our multi-tiered educational system many minds will benefit from school. The wealthy have the best shot, since they have the best private schools and are advantaged in every possible way. Many students in public school have a very good shot but far too many do not and the poor have the least chance of all. Money can help nurture minds and lift up the poor. This is money well spent because innovation comes from well nurtured minds, especially those from lower stations because they simply have farther to go and come up with bigger schemes. This is a major source of new wealth.

Though money can nurture minds it cannot make new minds while minds are the only source of wealth since wealth is a construct of the human mind. This means that when we do not spend enough on education we are selling ourselves short by limiting the potentialities of all available minds. We need them because we will be facing increasingly more difficult problems and Neoliberalism is blind to the most pressing problems confronting us now and into the future.

The best way for Seattle to maintain its trajectory of prosperity is to put the money where it will be most effective. While building new office towers and apartment buildings all over town has some justification, it pales in comparison to spending more on education. There is a fountain of creativity, innovation and new wealth bubbling through the corridors of our public schools. It’s a lot of work tapping into it, it takes a lot of money to gear up and create an environment that is capable of teaching everyone but don’t tell me the money isn't there. Be honest and tell me someone just doesn't want to spend it on the poor. I won’t even ask why because I already know. Our prosperous state and our wealthy city can and should provide for the education that our students deserve.

Seeds of Destruction

It’s back to school and as usual we begin the year with several days of professional development. This is generally a good way to get teacher heads back in the game after a rejuvenating summer. The focus this year is on that double edged sword we commonly refer to as technology, aka educational technology or edtech. I consider it a happy thing from my point of view as the school librarian who is responsible for teaching information technology. I was the person who planned and set up most of the day’s activities with the edtech themes of collaboration and communication. I arranged sessions on digital storytelling, video production, the SmartBoard, our school’s class web pages and on collaborating on projects with schools around the country and around the world. But there was one rather long session that I was not responsible for setting up. The one on using our district’s new gradebook program from Pearson. And that is the one that made it clear to me that what we were doing was sowing the seeds of our own destruction. We are building and implementing systems that will ultimately further decay our influence, power, and professional stature. The way it is happening is exploitative and sneaky.

My school has been implementing a system of standards based grading for the last four years. When this process was initiated by our principal, I was an early adopter of the concept. In fact I had begun doing something very similar in a Math class I was teaching 8 years ago, before it was even on the principal’s radar. I was trying to make a grading system that was more fair and focused on each specific skill that I was teaching. My support for the principal’s initiative was based on my own experience creating a more accurate grading system but further because it was also a move toward my actual preferred pass/fail system. Standards based grading is a way to remain conscious of removing behavioral issues from academic grading, which I also support. But if technology is a double edged sword, the same can be said of standards based grading. There is a notion of equity on one edge but the other edge has been tempered by corporate America and the realization struck me during the training how that is so.

We are learning to use Pearson’s new addition to their gradebook of a standards based grading option, which two schools in the district are piloting, mine and one other. Both the incorporation of the use of technology in the classroom and the implementation of standards based grading promise a leveling of the playing field which will help eliminate the “achievement gap”. Yes, both have the potential to help educators achieve that goal but simultaneously both further the agenda of corporate education reformers and pave the way for a more streamlined, cost effective system that can generate profit. This is how the demonic brilliance of our capitalist system works. Corporate managers have very long time lines with distant event horizons well plotted. They have time to watch the workforce produce goods and services and they don’t even have to limit their scope to their own employees because any independently developed idea can ultimately be bought (or back engineered). So all of the work that we as teachers do to implement standards based grading ultimately becomes an asset of Pearson.

Here’s a bit of what the gradebook program looks like. When a teacher creates an assignment it is entered into the program by selecting which CCSS standard will be learned by the students. These are all preloaded into the system and there are complex algorithms that weigh scores and average all of the student’s work over the quarter. These programs can differentiate ad infinitum and are capable of tying directly into the standards based Smarter Balance testing that is being put into place this year. But here is the troubling part and I can easily envision this coming down the road. Once the dust settles in a few years and the entire district is on the system, cost cutting initiatives like using software to teach the standards will be sold as a way to personalize education while quietly resulting in a reduction in the teacher force.

As these systems form and gel, opportunities will arise to increase profit by cutting labor costs. It is naive at this point in time to think that this is not the ultimate goal of the corporations behind ed reform. Neoliberal front-men who push ideas like standards based grading are largely unconscious of their complicity with these corporate goals, having been suckered into believing that they are working toward equity when in fact they are helping to increase and solidify the stratification of our society and the implementation of a profit driven education system. All of the work teachers put into creating this system of standards based grading is done out of sincerity and I admit it is oh so easy to be swayed by the hype. Claims of equalizing access to a rigorous education are superficial, they seem to make sense and I don’t want to blame teachers for going along to get along but there is a point when things get ridiculous. Except it won’t be funny when teaching jobs are turned over to Pearson’s machines.

Selling the Common Core

I have to compliment Sonja Santelises on an excellent performance. She is obviously very intelligent and committed to her project. She brings a warm personal voice to the discussion about Common Core Standards (CCS) without being wonky and conveys a sense that she understands her topic in a profound way. Unfortunately, she confirmed all of my suspicions that her presentation would be a slick sales job.

She began by declaring that she was not going to address the "political" aspects of the issue, even in light of the "tsunami of opposition" because that would be distracting. Though I didn't like her dismissiveness of other voices, I could see her point. There were time constraints.  She then followed with two personal anecdotes about her father and her husband, both African American males who persevered and got college educations. Her expressions of love and pride for these two men who beat the odds were heartwarming. Of course, they did this before there was a CCS so what was her point? The point is that they were held to high standards by someone in the schools they attended. Done, again, before the CCS.

In Act II she began showing data from her PowerPoint. Here's where the academic sounding mumbo jumbo started flowing. She showed NAEP test questions and Smarter Balance questions, analysed them authoritatively, and boy are we behind. What occurred to me in this part of her presentation was how much it was like an insurance sales pitch. Build up some anxiety that we can then relieve. Actually, the entirety of Madison Avenue tries to do this, create the sense of need which can then be satisfied with product X. In this case the CCS and the ideology behind it was being promoted. She repeatedly said that there was no curriculum, that we were on our own to find the winning combination that would properly implement CCS. She also said that the only way we will know that we are succeeding is by testing and tests are very definitely a product that is for sale. Her presentation assumes that money is already spent.

A good portion (the best portion for me) was when she spoke about how crucial having high standards and expectations are for low income kids. There was very little to disagree with as she spoke authentically about her personal project of educating poor children. Though it was clear that she believes that holding the kids to high standards is crucial, I never felt that those standards had to be CCS. It seems as if any standards would work as long as they were used to teach goal setting and perseverance. And that teachers believed their students could achieve. This point is much more pertinent than any points she made about CCS.

There was a brief Q&A in which she fielded a question about gym and art. Of course, these are important but we don't test them. She expressed genuine concern that these are necessary parts of education but made no commitment. And that was the end of the show.

So her pitch was to convince us to embrace the CCS for the sake of equity and it was masterful on several levels even if the basic logic was flawed. I'm still not buying it. There is no connection between CCS and student achievement and the claim that there is no curriculum to buy is disingenuous. The tests are bought, there is certainty of failure, and curriculum salesmen are ready to support us. By denying politics at the beginning of her talk Santelises was also denying economics and denying economics guarantees a partial picture.

We will continue trying to fill in the rest.

What does a Corporate Ed Reform shill look like anyway?

At our last staff meeting the principal's chipper announcement was that we had a grand opportunity coming up in two weeks to hear a speaker who has taken a special interest in our school in conjunction with two other "poverty" middle schools. She is someone he heard speak at a conference and found her very inspiring and was eager to share and learn more about her way of serving students like ours in the public schools of Baltimore. 

She is Sonja Brookins Santelises and I'd never heard of her so, being the curious librarian type, I started doing some research. One of the first articles I found by her was Abandoning the Common Core Is Taking the Easy Way Out and it was written in her current professional capacity as Vice president for K-12 policy and practice of the Education Trust. 

Further research followed.

OK, so she's a Common Core apologist but what does that have to do with her coming to speak to our schools? I'm going to chase down just one idea at first and it has to do with the issue of the college readiness gap. Santelises seems to be peddling the idea that the Common Core will help close the gap by leveling the playing field at a much higher standard for all. But this idea is a product of magical thinking. It is also anti-diversity. Any standard imposed on a community from outside that community has the effect of imposing conformity, uniformity, interchangeability, assimilation and other psychologically intimidating pressures. This creates a complex stratification in society with a dramatic sort of thermocline between those who can conform to corporate culture and those who cannot.

Those who can conform are rewarded with access to corporate payrolls, even those from lower socio-economic origins. Those who can't are relegated to non-unionized service industry jobs. What the Common Core ideologues are peddling is that college is the key unlocking access to those plush corporate jobs. And here's where it gets interesting. It is worth going into debt to get the keys. Once you are in debt you need to keep those jobs to make payments and become even more willing to conform to the corporate vision for society, which is dangled in front of the eyes of those who don't conform in the first place unless they are willing to indenture themselves as well. 

Now there's a good reason for learning about integers!

I'm backing up a little bit because I made the claim that belief in the Common Core as a cure for our equity ills is the product of magical thinking. That needs a little clarification. I make this claim based on the fully fleshed out ideas of Stephen Jay Gould in The Mis-measure of Man. Human intelligence is not quantifiable. The most we can expect from our attempts to measure student achievement is our own confirmation bias. Other information gleaned may be interesting, mildly helpful at times, should never be prescriptive but is certainly in some way quantifiable. We have the ability to measure certain cognitive functions like memory or number sense. That does not mean we know how any individual will respond in any situation. Intelligence is demonstrated in an individual's response to an unknown situation. The Common Core standards are corporate standards for a corporate agenda and do not address individual accomplishment. Believing any of this will advance social equity is indeed magical thought.

I also claim that Common Core standards are anti-diversity. Standards are standards, how can they limit diversity? Yes, of course, it's not the standards themselves, it is the context in which the standards are used and everything that has been excluded from the standards. Differentiation plays no part in the Common Core standards. No information on student interests, talents, personality types, learning style, multiple intelligence or other preferences is gathered under the Common Core tent. Nothing of Civics or Ethics. Narrow standards.

Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. After all I haven't met Santelises yet. She has a positive track record in Baltimore. It's just that I can't ignore the red flags with the Common Core and Education Trust. 

College readiness, college debt, corporate servitude, ed reform. 

There's lots of work for progressive educators trying to maintain a balance and make those needed checks too.

Whatever Happened to Cooperation?

Recently, I had one of those brief staff room conversations with a teacher colleague that keeps nagging me. It was the day that a WA State court pronounced unconstitutional the recently approved law allowing charter schools to operate in Washington State. The teacher announced, "Too bad about the charter schools thing, we really could use some competition." My comment to her was "I think what we need is more cooperation not more competition." She then said, "Let me know how that goes for you." To which I replied, "Cooperatives are awesome. I'm a life long customer of PCC (the network of worker self-managed food stores), been a member of Group Health for over 30 years - it is really the model for the entire country, and I don't get ripped off when I'm banking because I use credit unions." She didn't have anything else to say after that.

It is easy to overlook alternative models for social organization in this era of corporate dominance but they continue to exist as they have since the founding of our country. Ben Franklin established the first library, the first fire department and even the first fire insurance company for what used to be called "the common good". Add to that the hundreds of Utopian communities that have been established in the US, among them the Amish and the Mormons. Add also the tradition of barn raising and even rural electrification. All examples of cooperative effort for the common good, a way to provide security and assurance for the group that individuals could never provide for themselves. Schools fall into this same category. There are many other examples. These types of cooperative efforts are actually corrupted by the competitive spirit, not invigorated by it.

I use this anecdote not to disparage the teacher who is in favor of charter schools but to try to understand how a teacher can come to believe that the competitive model could improve public education. We should all know by now that competition and its system of rewards and punishments is good motivational practice for lower level production activities but when it comes to jobs requiring higher level critical thinking for complex problem solving it is the collaborative force of cooperation that is the order of the day. The best motivators for this type of work are purpose, mastery and autonomy, so it can't be motivation that is the issue. Instead, I think competition is being used as a euphemism for corporate structure, wherein every activity is judged by its profitability and no other standard or rationale. By this logic charter schools will challenge public schools in the competition of educating our young by using techniques that get the best results and abandoning those that are less productive; using public funds without public oversite.

This too is a wrong way of thinking but readers will have to wait for my next blog post (yes, I know, it could take weeks) to go deeper with me into the complexities of social organization.

Slow Writer

Well it's confirmed that I am a very slow writer. For some reason I still haven't figured out how to affix the spigot to the trunk of my tree of creativity that just lets the sap run free. What I get is a lot of gum. Wads of it. Sometimes in an unstable ramble. Then everything lays fallow as I ponder and absorb as much information as possible. And a new blob emerges.

I'm now an official candidate for the SEA Board of Directors, on the SEE slate headed by Jesse Hagopian for president of the SEA and I'm thinking I might turn this little pile of blog-like blobettes into an actual propagandizing political tool for the common good of public education.

Speed is always relative and now perhaps my writing velocity will increase and the flesh of this dress that I present will fill out beautifully. There are so many adornments possible but missing from the cloth of public education. We need to do right. And time has compressed itself with the urgency of finding the right course.

Forward. Good visibility with clear vision, an excellent goal and power from both within and without ensures success.