My son can't sleep at night," his mother (and a friend of mine) said.
"Why," I asked.
"Because his teacher told him that he had to do well on the tests this week or she would be fired. He's worried sick."
That conversation, which occurred almost exactly one year ago, continues to haunt me. What kind of teacher would say that to kids? Or, digging deeper, what were the circumstances made the teacher feel so desperate that she would say that?
It doesn't matter where that 3rd grader and his family live, because that sort of pressure seems to be everywhere. And it seems to be increasing, as scores on state/city exams become the single most important measure of a teacher's performance -- and as pressure grows to publish the test scores of every individual teacher's students.
Everyone is familiar with Campbell's Law, developed by social scientist Donald Campbell:
"The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."
Scaring the sleep out of a child is surely an example of distortion and corruption. So too is firing people based on the snapshot of one day's bubble test score.
And then we have the cheating by adults, proven in Atlanta very recently and over the years in Austin, TX, and Connecticut, and suspected now in Washington, DC, Philadelphia, Houston and lots of other places.
Is help on the way? The Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) has released a thoughtful plan, "For Every Child, Multiple Measures," that is worth your attention. It has the support of the great Richard Riley, the man who set the standard for Secretaries of Education (IMHO). If we had reliable multiple measures, that would take some pressure off the end-of-the-year bubble tests.
We would still be holding everyone accountable, but children would be able to sleep at night during March and April, and teachers wouldn't feel it necessary to violate a basic code of decency.
Will the Common Core, now accepted in nearly every state and the District of Columbia, bring some sanity? That's what the pundits and the bandwagon-builders are saying, but hold your applause. At least until you read Tom Loveless' latest report, "How Well Are American Students Learning?" It was released by the Brookings Institution recently, the 11th in a series of "Brown Center Reports on American Education." Loveless takes a clear-eyed look at our latest enthusiasm, the Common Core, and, since that bandwagon is picking up steam, it's well worth your time. He writes about 'aspirational standards,' likening them to that diet you (and I) keep promising to go on. And he reminds us that there's more variation within states than between states, an important dash of cold water on those who are prone to celebrate Massachusetts and put down Mississippi. In short, don't expect the Common Core to change much.
What will it take to relieve some of the pressure? Can President Obama and Secretary Duncan really believe that weeks of test prep and tons of pressure are good for our kids? Why aren't leaders speaking out?
Maybe parents need to say 'no mas' to this -- if only so their kids can sleep at night.
March 2012 Archives
If you are reading this during daylight hours in March, chances are that millions of our children are now engaged in what's called 'test prep.' Just yesterday someone showed me the March calendar for a high-achieving public elementary school: two solid weeks of the month were blocked off for "TEST PREP," probably in caps lest any classroom teacher forget and do some real teaching.
The banality of "TEST PREP" clashes violently with the ideas I was exposed to last week. Last Thursday and Friday, I spent quality time with syndicated columnist Mark Shields, GE Chairman and CEO Jeffery Immelt, Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO), libertarian activist Giséle Huff, Stanford's Claude Steele, Assistant Secretary of Education Carmel Martin, and Roberto Rodriguez (President Obama's education advisor.)
These seven separate meetings (in Washington, DC and northern California) had only one thing in common: big ideas about life and learning. While their politics are different, all celebrated the human spirit. Oh, and no one talked about TEST PREP or about what is happening in real classrooms in many schools.
Both Roberto Rodriguez and Carmel Martin expressed the faith that pushing certain policy levers from Washington will produce the desired changes in 15,000 school districts and 100,000 public schools. So, for example, "doubling down" on early childhood education, as the Administration they work for has done, will dramatically increase enrollment in early childhood programs, and that in turn will lead to early reading competence. Investing $4 billion in 'turning around' low-performing schools will produce dramatic gains. Creating "Career and College Readiness" programs will make more kids ready for college and careers. And so forth. If either harbors doubts about the wisdom or efficacy of any of their policy initiatives, they did not let on. If either wonders whether federal policies under Presidents Bush and Obama might be responsible for the ubiquity of TEST PREP, we saw no sign.
Senator Bennet, whose previous job was Superintendent of Schools in Denver, spoke of finding new ways to train and 'incentivize' teachers. "What we do now makes no sense," he said, indicating that he wanted to use federal dollars to 'incentivize' school districts to use technology. He told us that he was worried about all children, not just kids in poor areas, being forced to attend schools that were failing to recognize the power of technology to radically change education.
Like Senator Bennet, Giséle Huff believes that today's technologies can transform education.
A libertarian activist who once ran for Congress, Huff now runs a small foundation. Perhaps because her office looks out on San Francisco Bay, she used a maritime metaphor to describe public education today. "Teach for America, KIPP and other programs are building rafts for a small number of kids, and that's fine as far as it goes," she said. "But I am worried about the ship's direction. We cannot abandon ship, but neither can we continue doing what we are doing; we have to change course."
GE's Jeff Immelt was bullish on America. He gave 10 reasons for optimism, with No. 5 being, "We do education better than anyone in the world." As evidence, he cited the number of foreign students who come here for their graduate training. However, I'd be willing to bet a new GE dishwasher that he has no clue about what's happening in K-12 classrooms this March.
Which brings me the question posed by Claude Steele of Stanford: Is education a commodity or a public good? If it's a commodity, who's buying, and what's being sold? If it's a public good, what are the benefits?
Steele, the new Dean of the School of Education at Stanford, suggested a double standard is at work. "For our own children, education is a commodity, a scarce resource that we are willing to pay for," he said. "People with resources will never give up privilege willingly," he said, which is why, he said, "When we talk about education for others, we say it's an 'opportunity.'"
However, if education is a commodity to be purchased, then I say 'buyer beware.' When even our good schools devote weeks to TEST PREP and the subsequent multiple-choice tests, that's an education system that is training kids as if life were a bubble test.
But life is not a series of multiple-choice questions, requiring only a No. 2 pencil. Navigating the future will require improvising, regrouping, falling down and getting up, growing and changing.
We know that the predictors of success in later life include diverse experiences in what Dean Steele calls "non-routine settings," but what could be more routine than weeks of TEST PREP? We also know that lots of reading and the experience of 'negotiating' with adults and other children also are preparation for, and predictors of, success. TEST PREP doesn't make the list.
So what on earth are we doing? "Americans are pragmatists," Mark Shields said. "While ideologues believe that what is right works, the rest of us believe that what works is right."
If Shields is correct -- and he usually is -- then most Americans must not know what their children and their neighbors' children are doing in class. If adults knew about the mind-numbing waste of time, I believe they'd do something about it.
Immelt concluded by noting that "the highway to the future is a toll road," meaning that we Americans have to be prepared to work creatively and aggressively if we wish to ensure our future. Hard, creative work seems like a reasonable toll to pay.
The toll barriers we've set up in schools, however, are entirely different. We're training kids to think inside the box and penalizing them (and their teachers!) when they don't.
TEST PREP education probably doesn't descend to the level of a "public evil," but it's certainly not a "public good." And if it's a "commodity," it's bargain basement, yard-sale stuff.
I often hear adults describing today's young people as 'digital natives,' usually with a tone of resignation or acceptance: "They are so far ahead of us, but we can turn to them for help," is the general message I hear.
My reaction is "Whoa there, Nellie," because to me that kind of thinking smacks of abdication of adult responsibility. Yes, most young people know more than we adults, because the fast-changing world of modern technology is alien to us--wildly different from the one we grew up in. But being a 'digital native' is not the same as being a 'digital citizen.' Young people have always needed ethical guidance and the security of rules and boundaries. That's more true now because today's technologies have unprecedented power to harm, as we have seen in documented cases of cyber-bullying and harassment.
I accept the general truth of what someone called the "Three C's 1-9-90" rule of thumb, sad and depressing as it is. Only about ONE percent of young people are using today's technologies to create; NINE percent are curating, collecting and critiquing, while NINETY percent are consuming.
If most youth -- 90 percent -- are texting, playing Angry Birds and Grand Theft Auto, and linking up on Facebook and Google Circles, then we adults should be ashamed.
Unless, of course, we are equally guilty.
And we are.
I would bet that the education community's use of technology follows a "Two C's 10-90" rule: TEN percent to create, and NINETY percent to control. I mean 'control' broadly, everything from keeping the school's master schedule, monitoring attendance and grades, tracking teacher performance, and imparting the knowledge we believe kids need to have.
If an important purpose of school is to help 'grow adults,' then the creative use of technology -- by adults and young people -- must be ramped up dramatically. We need to find ways to move kids out of the 90 ninety and into the 1 percent.
If, on the other hand, a central purpose of school is to produce willing consumers, well, we're doing fine.
What about Sal Khan and his burgeoning Khan Academy? Doesn't his approach blend technology and traditional learning in ways that are to be admired? Yes, of course. However, at least, so far most of the energy has been devoted to helping kids master the required curriculum. I think that's necessary, but it's not sufficient.
Schools today must provide opportunities for young people to create knowledge out of the swirling clouds of information that surround them 24/7. You went to school because that's where the knowledge was stored. That was yesterday. Think how different today's world is. Today's young people need guidance in sifting through the flood of information and turning it into knowledge. They need to be able to formulate good questions, because computers have all the answers.
(I speak about a lot of these themes at greater length in The Influence of Teachers.)
Here are a few ways to harness technology and foster creativity.
1. Every middle school science class could have its own hand-held air quality monitor (under $200). Students could take air quality measurements three times a day, chart the readings, share the information in real time with every other middle school science class in the city, region or state, and scour the data for consistencies and anomalies. That's creating knowledge out of the flood of information, and it's real work, not 'homework.'
2. Students could use their smart phones' cameras to map their own neighborhoods, documenting (for example) the number of trash cans on street corners. That information could be plotted and shared city-wide, and the data could be examined for patterns and anomalies. Are there more trash cans in wealthy areas? If so, ask the Mayor, the Department of Sanitation and the City Council for an explanation. Again, students will be turning information into knowledge. I wrote about this a while ago in more detail.
3. Why not measure water quality? A hand-held monitor/tester of Ph costs under $100, and the instrument that tests conductivity (ion levels, which relates to purity) is available for under $100. Turbidity -- how cloudy the water is -- is important to measure as well, and that can be done with an inexpensive instrument and a formula. Students could also measure the speed of the current and keep track of detritus. Then share all the data with other science classes around the city, region and state. Everyone could dig into the information looking for patterns. If one river's water seems relatively pure until it passes point X, students could endeavor to find out why.
4. Teams of students with held-held Flip Cameras are invited to participate in our Shared Poetry Project and become producers for our YouTube channel.
If you click on the link above, I suggest you watch example #3, which was created by some middle school students in New Jersey.
Work like this is, well, real work. Students are creating knowledge; they are designing projects and seeing them through from beginning to end. These projects have to meet real-world standards because the results are in public view.
These young people will be learning (or reinforcing) real-world skills that will help them once they move out of school. They're working together, they are gathering, assimilating and analyzing data, they are learning how to present what they are learning, and so on. This is career-track stuff, 180 degrees different from much of the 'regurgitation education' that is the hallmark of too many of our schools.
And here are two final benefits: the time they spend doing projects like these (and there are many more good ideas out there) is time they cannot spend playing games or otherwise consuming technology. Because students are using technology to create and are enjoying the fruits of their labor, they will be, I believe, less likely to use technology's power negatively. Strong in their own sense of self, they are less likely to feel the need to bully and cyber-bully others.
Technology is not value-free. We have choices to make, folks.
