Corporate Based School Reforms Fail

Many South Dakota schools had some snow days this week, so it seems appropriate to use Saturday as a make-up day to discuss education.

A new study finds that corporate based school reform is failing:

The reforms deliver few benefits and in some cases harm the students they purport to help, while drawing attention and resources away from policies with real promise to address poverty-related barriers to school success…

The study examines reforms in New York City, and Chicago. The Washington Post reports "little has been accomplished and some harm has been done to students, especially the underprivileged." The Post's article also points out "benefits of corporate-based reform have been exaggerated."

In a related story, John Merrow examines Michelle Rhee's tenure as chancellor of Washington D.C.'s schools. He points out that Rhee has been widely considered a success and copied:

At least 25 states have adopted her ‘produce or else’ test-score based system of evaluating teachers.

But politicians (and citizens) in those 25 states might want to take a closer look at what she actually accomplished. Sadly, DC’s schools are worse by almost every conceivable measure.

Further, Merrow points out that those who need education most were hurt the most under Rhee:

The most disturbing effect of Rhee’s reform effort is the widened gap in academic performance between low-income and upper-income students, a meaningful statistic in Washington, DC because race and income are highly correlated. On the most recent NAEP test (2011) only about 10% of low income students in grades 4 and 8 scored ‘proficient’ in reading and math. Since 2007, the performance gap has increased by 29% in 8th grade reading, by 44% in 4th grade reading, by 45% in 8th grade math, and by 72% in 4th grade math. Although these numbers are also influenced by changes in high- and low-income populations, the gaps are so extreme that is seems clear that low-income students, most of them African-American, did not fare well during Rhee’s time in Washington.

These failures accompany  a cheating scandal that Rhee may have helped cover up. Merrow alludes to Watergate:

This story is bound to remind old Washington hands of Watergate and Senator Howard Baker’s famous question, “What did the President know and when did he know it?” It has a memo that answers an echo of Baker’s question, “What did Michelle know, and when did she know it?” And the entire sordid story recalls the lesson of Watergate, “It’s not the crime; it’s the coverup.”

Even with the defeat of 2012's HB 1234, South Dakota is moving ahead inexorably with the corporate based agenda that will fail. The results of the three city study predict the following as the corporate agenda moves forward in South Dakota:

• Reported successes for targeted students evaporated upon closer examination.

• Test-based accountability prompted churn that thinned the ranks of experienced teachers, but not necessarily bad teachers.

• Emphasis on the widely touted market-oriented reforms drew attention and resources from initiatives with greater promise.

The report beats a dead horse, but because no one seems to listen, the point must continue being made:

The reforms missed a critical factor driving achievement gaps: the influence of poverty on academic performance. Real, sustained change requires strategies that are more realistic, patient, and multipronged. 

What's Holding Schools Back?

George Will contends teachers engage in propaganda and are responsible for holding education is on the wrong path:

The real vocation of some people entrusted with delivering primary and secondary education is to validate this proposition: The three R’s — formerly reading, ’riting and ’rithmetic — now are racism, reproduction and recycling. Especially racism. Consider Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction. It evidently considers “instruction” synonymous with “propaganda,” which in the patois of progressivism is called “consciousness-raising.”

Will then goes on a predictable rant to blame political correctness and a burgeoning bureaucracy for public education's failings. I don't know about the examples Will cites. I have enough trouble getting through all of the literature that I think students need to read and discuss to engage in sensitivity training. Will, however, makes an important point about bureaucrats: "the number of bureaucrats — including consciousness-raising sensitivity enforcers and other non-teachers — increased 702 percent" since 1950 while the number of students has doubled.

This slide from The Tempered Radical provides a supporting visual for Will's point that educrats are making teachers' jobs harder. It also sets the tone for a Monday:

 

The results of the wonks' agenda driven education policies are best summed up by retiring teacher George Conti:

For the last decade or so, I have had two signs hanging above the blackboard at the front of my classroom, they read, “Words Matter” and “Ideas Matter”. While I still believe these simple statements to be true, I don’t feel that those currently driving public education have any inkling of what they mean.

Tweet Of The Day: Education Policy Edition

I wish that retaining quality teachers was as much a priority in the reform narrative as weeding out the bad ones. #edpolicy
— John Spencer (@edrethink) March 31, 2013

Quotation Of The Day II: Alleged Education Reformer Michelle Rhee Is A Hypocrite Edition

From Diane Ravitch:

In Tennessee, [Rhee] told the Nashville reporters that she is “a public school parent.”

For some reason, she prefers not to admit that one of her daughters attends an elite private school in Nashville that has small classes, lovely facilities, a rich curriculum, and experienced teachers; better yet, the students do not take standardized tests. (Rhee herself graduated from an elite private school in Toledo, Ohio, with similar policies and practices.) [Emphasis mine because Rhee is a testing for testing sake advocate.]

Why should she hide that fact?

Is it because she advocates that Other People’s children should have large classes, inexperienced teachers, merit pay, evaluations based on test scores, and nonstop testing?

A Minor Musing: Will A Student Who Graduates Under Common Core Standards Be Able To Understand Dave Barry's Recent Column?

Dave Barry does an excellent job of reviewing 2012. In the process, he probably gives Common Core advocates a bit of hope when he references Hamlet.

It was a cruel, cruel year — a year that kept raising our hopes, only to squash them flatter than a dead possum on the interstate.

Example: This year the “reality” show Jersey Shore, which for six hideous seasons has been a compelling argument in favor of a major earth-asteroid collision, finally got canceled, and we dared to wonder if maybe, just maybe, we, as a society, were becoming slightly less stupid.

But then, WHAP, we were slapped in our national face by the cold hard frozen mackerel of reality in the form of the hugely popular new “reality” show Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, which, in terms of intellectual content, makes Jersey Shore look like Hamlet.

The fine folks who are reassuring English teachers throughout the nation that "classic literature will not be lost with the implementation of the new standards" are probably a bit disappointed that Barry does not claim that 2012 was "the best of years and the worst of years" or that "the entire year consisted of the month a April, notorious for being cruel." Those after all are allusions to classic literature that should not be "lost." It's unclear whether Common Core advocates understand the pop culture references.

Of course, the students who are expected to understand Hamlet live in a world dominated by Jersey Shore and Honey Boo Boo. They probably have not heard of either Dickens or Eliot. Emphasis on non-fiction, something the Common Core demands, makes it impossible to teach all of the literature, classic or otherwise, that has been taught in the past. Longer school years will not occur in the current political environment.

Ironically then, the emphasis on non-fiction will mean that Barry's wonderful column will be less appreciated because the "classic literature" will be taught less frequently and totally divorced from the culture that students inhabit.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/12/29/v-fullstory/3160638/dave-barrys-year-in-review.html#storylink=cpy

Quotation Of The Day: What Education Reformers Don't Get Edition

John T. Spencer gets what every ed reformer does not:

I'm struck by the fact that the biggest things I believe about education are not practical, theoretical or even pedagogical. They're more spiritual than anything else: the notion of kids as both amazing and broken, the idea of humility as the best method of leadership, the notion of learning as a holistic process; being progressive and hopeful and yet respecting the voices of the past.

Nearly every education reform, including Referred Law 16 begins with the premise that kids are means to make rich people richer. The people proposing them are arrogant enough to believe that they know more about students than people who have been in the classroom for decades. They believe that students need know only what's on the test that Pearson or some other textbook company publishes. The past matters only when it doesn't confront reformers with the truth: the virtue in most request is conformity.

South Dakota Poverty And ACT Scores

At the Madville Times, Cory gives a quick overview of South Dakota's ACT scores. The most interesting numbers for me come not at the top but at the bottom of the scale.

The bottom four schools are McLaughlin, Dupree, Eagle Butte, and Todd County.

Earlier this year, the Census Department reported that four of the nation's poorest counties were located in South Dakota

Western South Dakota is home to the three counties with the nation’s highest poverty rate, and four of the top 10, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics.

South Dakota has long had several counties toward the top as Native American reservations have a major presence in -- and in some cases occupy all –- the most destitute counties. The state has never had the top three dating back to at least 2003, when the bureau began distributing the figures in an easily readable electronic format.

The figures, based on 2010 income, show Ziebach County with the highest poverty rate, at 50.1 percent, which is down from 62 percent in 2009. Todd County at 49.1 percent and Shannon County at 47.3 percent are next, with Corson County ranking ninth with 40.9 percent. [emphasis mine

For those who need a quick refresher in South Dakota geography, McLaughlin is in Corson County, Dupree is in Ziebach County, Eagle Butte is technically in Dewey County, but it's so close to Ziebach County that the county line is a distinction without a difference. In fact, Wikipedia places the community in both counties.

I teach the young'uns to say "correlation does not equal causation." In the case of poverty, however, I would like to test the hypothesis by seeing what would happen to ACT scores if poverty in those counties were reduced.

Quotation Of The Day: The Idolatry Of Numbers

Alfie Kohn points out that our love for numbers warps school reform. The introductory quotation and the first two paragraphs serve as important reminders:

“As we tend to value the results of education for their measurableness, so we tend to undervalue and at last ignore those results which are too intrinsically valuable to be measured.”

-- Edmond G. A. Holmes, chief inspector of elementary schools for Great Britain, 1911

The reason that standardized test results tend to be so uninformative and misleading is closely related to the reason that these tests are so popular in the first place. That, in turn, is connected to our attraction to  — and the trouble with — grades, rubrics, and various practices commended to us as “data-based.”

The common denominator? Our culture’s worshipful regard for numbers. Roger Jones, a physicist, called it “the heart of our modern idolatry ... the belief that the quantitative description of things is paramount and even complete in itself.” [italics and bold in original]

Plains Pops: Stuff I Liked From Todays NYT Edition

This Joe Nocera editorial hits some important notes about the educational debate:

Teachers — many of them — will continue to resent efforts to use standardized tests to measure their ability to teach. Their leaders — some of them — will denounce the “billionaire hedge fund managers” who are financing many of the reform efforts. Reformers will continue to view teachers’ unions as the greatest roadblock to higher student achievement. How can such a poisonous atmosphere not affect what goes on in the classroom? Alienated labor is never a good thing. “It is not possible to make progress with your students if you are at war with your teachers,” says Marc Tucker.

Tucker, 72, a former senior education official in Washington, is the president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, which he founded in 1988. Since then he has focused much of his research on comparing public education in the United States with that of places that have far better results than we do — places like Finland, Japan, Shanghai and Ontario, Canada. His essential conclusion is that the best education systems share common traits — almost none of which are embodied in either the current American system or in the reform ideas that have gained sway over the last decade or so. He can sound frustrated when he talks about it.

This David Brooks analysis of Mitt Romney's disdain for the the 47% is also worth reading:

Romney, who criticizes President Obama for dividing the nation, divided the nation into two groups: the makers and the moochers. Forty-seven percent of the country, he said, are people “who are dependent upon government, who believe they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to take care of them, who believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.”

This comment suggests a few things. First, it suggests that he really doesn’t know much about the country he inhabits. Who are these freeloaders? Is it the Iraq war veteran who goes to the V.A.? Is it the student getting a loan to go to college? Is it the retiree on Social Security or Medicare?

It suggests that Romney doesn’t know much about the culture of America. Yes, the entitlement state has expanded, but America remains one of the hardest-working nations on earth. Americans work longer hours than just about anyone else. Americans believe in work more than almost any other people. Ninety-two percent say that hard work is the key to success, according to a 2009 Pew Research Survey

It says that Romney doesn’t know much about the political culture. Americans haven’t become childlike worshipers of big government. On the contrary, trust in government has declined. The number of people who think government spending promotes social mobility has fallen.

The people who receive the disproportionate share of government spending are not big-government lovers. They are Republicans. They are senior citizens. They are white men with high school degrees. As Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution has noted, the people who have benefited from the entitlements explosion are middle-class workers, more so than the dependent poor.

Finally, this Susan Cain analysis of Obama as an introvert contains an important conclusion:

Culturally, we tend to associate leadership with extroversion and attach less importance to judgment, vision and mettle. We prize leaders who are eager talkers over those who have something to say. In 2004, we praised George W. Bush because we wanted to drink a beer with him. Now we criticize President Obama because he won’t drink one with us. . . .

Would it be better if Mr. Obama palled around with more senators, attended more cocktail parties, cut a schmoozier figure? Sure. P.R. is part of a politician’s job. And as the personality psychologist Brian Little says, we all need to act out of character occasionally, for the sake of work or people we love.

But on the long list of attributes of a successful president — or of any leader — an outgoing persona is low on the list. The charisma of ideas matters more than a leader’s gregarious charms.

Quotations Of The Day: The Hollowness Of The Common Core Edition

From this Marion Brady post on The Answer Sheet:

First, a bit of common sense that the Core ignores:

Knowledge grows as we connect bits of it — as we discover relationships between, say, street width and sense of community, between birth order and certain personality traits, between capital investment decisions and political stability.

Compartmentalizing knowledge gets directly in the way of the basic process that makes kids (and the rest of us) smarter.

Then, of course there are a few other secrets that reformers and Core advocates try to ignore:

The standards have been swallowed by just about everybody, and as soon as they’ve been digested, Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Educational Testing Service, and other manufacturers of standardized tests will be ready with contracts in hand for computerized tests in numbers sufficient to crash web servers.

The tests, of course, will build in a failure rate set by some faceless decision-maker — an easily operated spigot for meeting stockholder expectations. Open it — boost the failure rate — and up go sales of tests, test prep tools, instructional materials. And, of course, profits.

Even if I’m wrong about the eight other problems with the Common Core Standards (and I’m not), I don’t see any wiggle room on this one. If I’m right, the current reform effort’s centralizing of control of education, its micromanaging of classrooms by non-educators, its blocking of all innovation not tied to the core, and its reliance on destructive, simplistic tests that fail to take account of the fundamental nature of knowledge, and of human complexity and variability, will, in Senge’s words, exact an “enormous price."

That price will be the inability of our children and our children’s children to cope with a future shaping up to be more challenging than anything humans have thus far faced.

Quotation Of The Day: Education Polarization Edition

From this John Merrow post:

Companies like Pearson are getting rich while we blather and battle. They step into the vacuum and measure everything that’s measurable. We should be measuring what counts, instead of counting whatever we are able to measure.

Our school and political leaders ask, “Can kids read?” but they and we must also be asking, “Do kids read?”

Are are we also polarized about the purposes of public education? I am not sure whether we are polarized, indifferent or excluded from the conversation, but we have a real problem. The goal of school is to help grow American citizens. Four key words: help, grow, American, citizen. Think about those words:

Help: Schools are junior partners in education. They are to help families, the principal educators.

Grow: It’s a process, sometimes two steps forward, one back. Education is akin to a family business, not a publicly traded stock company that lives and dies by quarterly reports.

American: E Pluribus Unum. We are Americans, first and foremost.

Citizen: Let’s put some flesh on that term. What do we want our children to be as adults? Good parents and neighbors, thoughtful voters, reliable workers? What else?

A Primer For Understanding Educational Jargon When Used In A Political Context

Over the past two days*, Valerie Strauss has published two posts that give some of Joanne Yatvin's clarifications of educational jargon,  Today, Yatvin offered some some definitions of common educational jargon. Yesterday, she illustrated what some of the terms mean in context. Much of this jargon will be used throughout South Dakota and the rest of the country between now and election day, so I thought it would be helpful to combine some of Yatvin's definitions with her examples of their usage into a little primer.

Jargon often confuses people because it uses common words but alters the definition dramatically. For example, when one hears the term data, one usually thinks of the results of research. Yatvin's definition points out that data has a different meaning when politicians discuss education:

Data: Plentiful numbers that give very little useful information to schools or teachers.

She also shows how the skillful jargon users, whether they be politicians or textbook publishers, combine the common connotation with the jargony usage to obfuscate:

Our newly published reading program is research-based.

Meaning: Perhaps only one study supports the program’s methods, and that may be a study conducted by the author or publisher. Another possibility is that the program only superficially follows the methodology found effective by many studies.

Moving on to terms more specific to education, Yatvin helpfully defines reformers and the plans they produce:

School Reformers: People with impressive titles who have had little or no practical experience in schools.

School Reform Plans: Untested notions for improving public education, many of which have been tried before with negligible results.

Yatvin also concisely uses the fact that people "with impressive titles" are also known as experts to illustrate how the concept of reform is used in actual educational jargon:

A team of experts has reviewed the new standards and found them appropriate for children of this age.

Meaning: The experts selected were college professors, think tank members, and private sector consultants who may never have taught children or spent any time observing in classrooms. Very likely, no practicing teachers were considered “expert” enough to be included in the team.

Yatvin's most important contribution to understanding politicians' use of educational jargon comes when she unpacks a key phrase:

All schools in America should be showing high student achievement.

Meaning: Achievement means only improved test scores, which could be the result of intensive test preparation, student sub-group manipulation, or cheating. Moreover, achievement and learning are not synonymous.

She provides two definitions that illustrate why distinctions about achievement are important. Many of the reforms designed to produce high test scores rely on carrot and stick inducements:

Carrots and Sticks: Rewards and punishments—mostly punishments--intended to motivate schools to produce higher student test scores.

Merit pay is one inducement bandied about to improve test scores; it may be either a carrot or a stick:

Merit Pay:  Extra money given to teachers for raising test scores.  No better teaching required.

Politicians first started using political jargon after the passage of NCLB. Recently,the Obama administration has added a new term that may confuse some South Dakota voters:

The Department of Education has given many states NCLB waivers.

Meaning: The DOE has allowed some states to substitute their own plans for school improvement for the requirements of NCLB, as long as those plans are just as demanding or even more so.

In short, NCLB, the Obama administration's waivers, and most state reforms are designed to ensure accountability, a burdensome term:

Accountability: A government invented system that asks a great deal from public schools and gives little in return; it does not apply to charter schools.

*[Update]: This post originally attributed definitions to Strauss. I apologize for any confusion

Another Education Reform I'd Like To See

This is what school should look like:

I now want to teach a class centering on New Model Army, Hobbes's Leviathan, & Steven Johnson's Emergence. cc: @arroberts
— Alan Jacobs (@ayjay) July 13, 2012

Too often novels like New Model Army, philosophical works, and science treatises are taught in isolation.

These particular works may not work for K-12 but the principle would certainly work at the K-12 level. I incorporate a short look at the big bang theory when I teach creation myths, but it would be good to tie in some math as well.

Unfortunately, The odds of having high school classes allowing students to do in-depth study of material from several disciplines are nil.  In fact, one probably has a better chance of seeing the 1992 Dream Team as they were then play the the current USA Olympic Team in a best of seven series.

A Useful Metaphor For Educational Reform Efforts

From this National Geographic article:

In a "eureka" moment worthy of Dr. Frankenstein, scientists have discovered that two 3,000-year-old Scottish "bog bodies" are actually made from the remains of six people.

According to new isotopic dating and DNA experiments, the mummies—a male and a female—were assembled from various body parts, although the purpose of the gruesome composites is likely lost to history. [ Emphasis in original]

The most recent efforts began with NCLB which was based on a Texas Miracle that never happened. Reformers then urged everyone to emulate Michelle Rhee whose alleged results did not stand up to scrutiny. Every state created new "tough" standards and schools started testing just to test.  Meanwhile, teachers began creating curriculum maps to perfectly demonstrate that each lesson met some standard.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan attempted to institute Race to the Top which is billed as being both the same as but also different from NCLB.  Meanwhile, one can now get NCLB with waivers.  New Common Core standards arrived, so no one uses the old maps but the curriculum remains the same.

NCLB, Rhee, RTTT, waivers, and Common Core have created "a gruesome composite" "assembled from various body parts" with a purpose that has been "lost."

Some Questions About "Great Teachers" And HB 1234

David Montgomery is an indefatigable live event tweeter. (I really do mean that as a compliment even though calling someone a tweeter doesn't sound very complimentary.)

He tweets

Standing ovation for @BobbyJindal as he finishes his speech at the South Dakota Republican Party convention.
— David Montgomery (@ArgusMontgomery) June 23, 2012

Presumably, one reason for the adoration can be found in this Charlie Hoffman tweet that Montgomery retweets.

#SDGOP12 Governor Bobby Jindahl tells crowd at GOP Convention that putting a great teacher in every classroom the best way to improve Ed.
— Charlie Hoffman (@Charliebh) June 23, 2012

I doubt that anyone will argue that every classroom should have a great teacher.  If that's the case, why is HB 1234 premised on the fact that only 15% are great and 85% are sub par?

For the sake of argument, let's say that only 65% of South Dakota's teachers are excellent.  Under HB 1234 15% of South Dakota's teachers will be recognized as excellent when the bonuses are published as part of their salary.  Another 50% of the state's teachers will be doing an excellent job, but the public will deem them to be deficient because they weren't good enough to get a bonus.

I cannot in good conscience tell a student to consider a career in education in South Dakota when that job contains an 85% chance that that the people with whom she socializes or worships will believe she's incompetent.

Quotation Of The Day: Another Education Reform Edition

From this Valerie Strauss Answer Sheet post:

At the center of the modern school reform movement is the philosophy that public schools should be treated not as civic institutions but rather as corporate entities. . . .

Another central characteristic of school reform is the role of teachers: They don’t have one, at least when it comes to making decisions. Teachers have been scapegoated for many of the problems facing public schools, and their voice has been ignored in the education policy debate.

Teachers Need To Understand Godin's Heirarchy

Seth Godin asks those "selling a product or service to a business--to a non-owner" to consider the following hierarchy. The list is ordered with the primary needs on top.

• Avoiding risk
• Avoiding hassle
• Gaining praise
• Gaining power
• Having fun
• Making a profit

Godin asserts:

. . . a sales pitch that begins with how much money the organization will make is pretty unlikely to work. Instead, the amount of profit has to be tied in to one of the other more primary needs of the person sitting across the table from you (as well as the committee or boss she reports to).

Godin's analysis applies to current education situations on three levels.

At the most basic, students in the classroom have a similar hierarchy.  Granted, they don't get paid, but they are risk averse.  They may view school as a hassle, but appreciate the efforts to eliminate unnecessary hassles like repetitive homework.  I'm unsure about the wisdom of giving freshmen "power" but they need "autonomy."

On the ed reform level, South Dakota's HB 1234 and nearly every other effort I've read about seem premised on the belief that giving teachers a small chance to earn a little extra money justifies condemning them, increasing their risks and hassles, and reducing their autonomy, thereby making the job less fun. The reformers then feign shock that teachers resist merit pay.

Finally, at the larger societal level, the current crop of self-appointed reformers understand how to use the concept of reducing risk to sell their ideology.  Americans will put up with the hassles, insults, lost dignity, boredom, and expense of airport security with relatively minor complaints because these affronts are in the interest of national security.  To tap into that sentiment, some education reformers assert that public education is a threat to national security.

Teachers have used Bloom's for decades.  In the current climate, mastering Godin's may be more important both in and out of the classroom.

Education Tweets Of The Week: Teacher Frustration Edition

John T. Spencer nails it

Too often the term "professional" is used to devalue teachers and make them practitioners rather than true professionals #edchat #edpolicy
— John T. Spencer (@johntspencer) June 5, 2012

Teachers are fighting against the factory model of education but also fighting against a manufactured crisis of "bad" schools. #edchat
— John T. Spencer (@johntspencer) June 5, 2012

And yet, you can't push for policy reform without thinking about the way tech is transforming education and society #edpolicy #edchat
— John T. Spencer (@johntspencer) June 5, 2012

You can't push for innovation without recognizing the political structures that need to change #edpolicy #edreform #edchat
— John T. Spencer (@johntspencer) June 5, 2012

A Minor Musing About Attacks On Teaching Literature

Diane Ravitch asks why David Coleman dislikes fiction.  She admits that she doesn't know why Coleman, "a member of the writing team for the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts/Literacy," would speak disparagingly about literature or why the Common Core Standards will reduce the amount of literature that high school students will read.

Perhaps Coleman agrees with Joel Stein who suggests that too many adults read young adult novels. Perhaps he worries that young girls will become depressed if they  read too much dystopian fiction.  He may agree with Tim Parks who asserts that readers don't need the intensification of self that novels provide.  He may have had an English teacher who made him angry by asking him to find too many symbols.

Because he peppers his little essay with the phrase "college and career," I suspect, however, that he agrees with Thomas Jefferson who infamously claims,

“A great obstacle to good education is the inordinate passion prevalent for novels, and the time lost in that reading which should be instructively employed. When this poison infects the mind, it destroys its tone and revolts it against wholesome reading. Reason and fact, plain and unadorned, are rejected. Nothing can engage attention unless dressed in all the figments of fancy, and nothing so bedecked comes amiss. The result is a bloated imagination, sickly judgment, and disgust towards all the real businesses of life."

This objection has several flaws.  First, those who suggest that elementary and secondary education exists only to prepare students for a career come perilously close to asserting that students exist only to do the work of their employers, so they do not exist as end to themselves.  One does not have to be Kant to understand the moral risk of seeing human beings primarily as means to profit others.

Second, focus on what Jefferson calls "all the real business of life" or being college and career ready in Coleman's case leads to missing the gorilla because one is too focused on watching the bouncing ball. For those unfamiliar with the experiment, this YouTube video illustrates the problem. In this case, the bouncing ball serves as a metaphor for test scores.



Finally, a comment on Ravitch's post reminds all of us that fiction is a necessary tool in any effort to speak truth to power:

“…A good writer is the watch-dog of society. His job is to satirize its silliness, to attack its injustices, to stigmatize its faults. And this is the reason that in America neither society or government is very fond of writers.”
~ John Steinbeck

One hopes Coleman is merely too focused on test scores.  That mistake is forgivable; believing that human beings should be treated as a means to end or attempting to limit efforts to expose injustice is not.

A Question About Educational Research

Writing in the New York Times "The Stone," Gary Gutting asks an important question:

But how reliable is even the best work on the effects of teaching?  How, for example, does it compare with the best work by biochemists on the effects of light on plant growth? Since humans are much more complex than plants and biochemists have far more refined techniques for studying plants, we may well expect the biochemical work to be far more reliable.  For making informed decisions about public policy, though, we need to have a more precise sense of how large the difference in reliability is. Is there any work on the effectiveness of teaching that is solidly enough established to support major policy decisions?

He answers in the negative, noting:

Without a strong track record of experiments leading to successful predictions, there is seldom a basis for taking social scientific results as definitive.  Jim Manzi, in his recent book, “Uncontrolled,” offers a careful and informed survey of the problems of research in the social sciences and concludes that “nonexperimental social science is not capable of making useful, reliable and nonobvious predictions for the effects of most proposed policy interventions.”

Gutting causes me to wonder how many educational reform policies have been based on unreliable research?