I orginally began this post in response to Effective Principals: Rebels with a Cause by Greg Farr; and I finally just had to go on and create my own post. Here's to you, Greg Farr, you underrate your superiority and excellence.
I have been in the education biz for a long time... decades, for God's sake. I remember the embarrassment we all felt when a Nation at Risk was published... that was MY generation.
From the very first year of my educational practice, we (educators) have all been a bunch of losers who just weren't doing it right. Throughout my career, I have religiously quoted Ron Edmonds (the father of the Effective Schools Movement, which was hailed as the cure-all of my generation), "We currently know enough to educate every child. The question is how badly we want to." (Sound familiar?) So, it was a matter of wanting to. For the greater part of my life and all of my professional life, I have really, really wanted to educate each and every child. I have developed my craft in urban schools, no small feat.
My current school has gone from five consecutive years on the state's low performing list to number one in the state in five of six measured educational indicators; however, I am now beginning to believe maybe what we are teaching (and measuring) is not relevant, rigorous, or replicable beyond our small scope.
In education, we have a tendency to measure not what we want to (need to) measure but what we can measure... it's a lot like measuring someone's height because you can't measure their weight. If a person's weight is proportionate to their height then measuring their height might be a prediction of their weight; but if not, then what's the point of measuring their height?
In other words, why are we measuring the stuff we are measuring with standardized and criterion-referenced tests when what we really want to measure is children's ability to collaboratively problem solve and effectively communicate?
In America, we have a crisis of confidence in our educational system. We labor to provide an education that meets the standards of some by-gone era, and we are shocked and appalled and disappointed at our failure to excel in this worthless dinosaur. Our students decry our sad out-of-sync efforts, but we still labor feverishly at something that meets no needs of anyone or anything but the slavish assessment systems tht we have elevated into a god-like category.
Let's rethink what it is that we want to accomplish. Quite frankly, what IS it that we wish to accomplish? The bottom line is this: students should exit our educational system with excellence in problem solving and communication and an ability to continue their education beyond a formal preparation. This would prepare them for every eventuality. If we train them in regurgitation and finite sets of information, then we prepare them for YESTERDAY.
Then why ARE we using old "had been" standards for this brave new world in which we now live? Educators tend to lose sight of the present. Let's quit doing what we have always done harder and faster and better and longer. Let's find a system that engages our students by developing relationships with significant adults who serve as guides in how to become problem solvers and communicators, so our students can continue to educate themselves effectively long after we are gone. Every indication points to new skills needed for jobs that we don't even know exist today. We must train our students to be flexible and able to navigate the future with PROBLEM SOLVING AND COMMUNICATION SKILLS.
We need to stop thinking the way we have always thought... start using the present (because, baby, the future is here) to solve the educational problems we now face. I don't know about you, but from what I have read of Greg Farr, I don't think he's had a slacker moment in his entire life. And, if he's decided to quit searching for an answer and learn to do the old "crap" in a better, faster, more deliberate fashion because he has not been succeeding, then I am really scared for me and the rest of us.
Why don't we agree to collectively call a moratorium on terming ourselves as failures for our past efforts and start finding a way to reach and teach all of our students with a relevant, rigorous, and
WORTHWHILE goal in mind... the future. And, Greg, don't quit looking for the answer because if just doing it better, longer, harder worked then we would have found the answer years ago!
Interesting post and follow-up comments. I may be in your generation of teachers, Jan.
Kudos to Brett for describing cautions many people hold, including teachers. And thanks to Diane for bringing up use of electronic technologies in schools.
I find it useful to distinguish between schooling (getting up to speed more rapidly with what other people know than through personal, solo, trial-and-error) and education (social uses and extension of what other people know).
Hopefully, teachers simplify the schooling process and demonstrate our successes, so our income sources may consider if they think we give them fair value.
In any case, thanks for your post.
Posted by: Bob | July 19, 2007 at 06:51 PM
Interesting post. I'll offer a counterpoint from the view of the outsiders - the parents, businesspeople, and other community members who have been calling for this kind of accountability.
Why do we want independent assessments? The reason is that we don't trust the education system anymore. We've seen widespread deception (such as can be found in reporting on dropout rates), and we've seen an ongoing increase in the lack of preparedness for college and the workforce at the same time that grade inflation and social promotion are epidemic. Common sense tells you that if one person is responsible for both instruction and assessment, you're dealing with a serious conflict of interest, and you have reason to doubt the results of the assessment.
Let me be clear that I'm not trying to pin this on the teachers: most of the problems in education are not within their control. Deceptive reporting of dropout rates, for example, happens at the state or administrative levels, and social promotion and grade inflation are often caused by administrative pressures (or flat-out overrides) as well. But from the community's point of view, that's irrelevant: the problems remain, and need to be addressed. We want independent information because we don't feel like we're getting the straight scoop from the schools.
As to why we want the particular tests we have, it's partly out of common sense, and partly out of cynicism. Yes, of course we want kids with higher-order skills - but it's silly to propose that they can gain those skills without mastering foundational skills like reading and math, which is what the current tests address. We want to know that kids have mastered core skills - and if they can't be taught that, then what chance do they have of learning more advanced skills? How can we be expected to believe that a kid will be able to construct a sophisticated argument about a book's thesis if he can't read the book?
The cynicism I mentioned comes in questioning the motives of those arguing against assessment of core skills. We think that educators know as well as we do that kids have to master core skills before doing higher-end work. Therefore, the argument that we should stop testing in order to focus on higher-end skills must be disingenous - we think educators are simply trying to avoid accountability completely, since they're against testing on core skills (which can be done) and want to move the discussion to an area that's very difficult to independently assess. To do so would bring us back to square one - no independent assessment, just the same conflict-of-interest laden question of the same people doing the teaching and the assessing.
I'm not trying to pick a fight here - I just wanted to offer a counterpoint that I hear quite often in working with stakeholders, and which gets very little play within the walls of education. If someone can offer a way to independently and reliably assess those higher-order skills that schools want to teach, I think it could move the ball forward significantly.
Posted by: Brett Pawlowski | July 19, 2007 at 08:58 AM
Dr. Jan:
Good question. Why do we measure what we measure? Because such measurements are a solution to political problems, not educational problems, and teachers have no power. They are also solutions based almost entirely on a business model, which has virtually no application in education. Thus, our mandatory, high stakes tests produce data sets that provide convenient sound bites for politicians who gleefully use them to smite political enemies (the primary political enemy of some politicians, by the way, is the public schools and particularly teachers). What the data sets cannot and do not do is provide any information useful in the process of education.
Oh yes, we're "accountable." We're accountable for our test scores on tests that are of no use to us beyond telling us how we scored on the tests, and that suggest only how much time we'll have to take away from building problem solving and communications skills in the upcoming school year so that we can raise the scores on the next test so the process can continue to tell us nothing at all that we need to know or can put to use, and so the politicians can crow about how accountable everything is.
We certainly need all the parts of the curriculum, because what we're doing in terms of making kids more effective problem solvers and communicators is building bigger and better brains, and that is done through exercising the brain with math, which uses the brain in ways that reading does not, etc. But as a teacher of English, I know that what our kids need to do more than anything is to read, read and learn to understand what they read, and how to make inferences, how to make connections, how to lead an examined life. The precious time for this is all too often taken away by the need to generate the next data set. Most of the current generation are non-readers. They're great test-takers, but poor readers, thinkers and communicators. That's something we can't afford either way. But of course, that kind of skill and ability isn't easily and quickly measured by business methods or high stakes tests, and there is not a great deal of money to be made in the process of competent, dedicated teachers stimulating daily progress in their students.
Posted by: Mike | July 18, 2007 at 08:06 PM
Dr. Jan,
I came late to teaching and have always been a bit of an outsider. I am truly puzzled by many teachers' reluctance to try some of the new technologies, if not in the classroom, then in private, on their own time.
I read and admired Greg Farr's "Rebels" but wonder how successful his revolution will be if staff development is top down rather than bottom up. Students are more engaged learners when they take ownership of their learning, and so are teachers. If the faculty members are not convinced of the need for whatever their Administrators plan, no matter how valuable the workshop or conference, then little change will take place.
"Teacher voice" is as important as "student voice."
Posted by: diane | July 18, 2007 at 05:01 PM