Some Stolen Musings About Mastery

Hugh MacLeod is upset with people "fixa­ted on the desi­red RESULT, that they have lost all genuine, inte­llec­tual inte­rest in the actual STEPS that will actually get them there."

According to MacLeod,

The Wall Street ex-fratboy who moves West to Sili­con Valley, not because he gives a damn about tech or inno­va­tion, but because he can smell the gravy. The pain­ter who doesn’t have a sin­gle inte­res­ting idea in his pea-size brain, but just knows he wants a big show in a famous New York Gallery ASAP. The small-town knuc­klehead who moves to Los Ange­les “to become famous”. The guy who signs his life away to a large com­pany because he ima­gi­nes it must be fun to have a big office in a tall building.

They say they are result-focused, when in rea­lity, all they are is reward-focused.

They have no inte­rest in tin­ke­ring with something, eight hours a day, day-in-day-out for deca­des, pur­suing an idea, achei­ving mas­tery. They just want the magic wand. They just want the “bacon”.

MacLeod's analysis applies to corporate ed reformers and political appointees like Melody Schopp who want to give students and teachers and students the "gift" of a testing regime that punishes excellence.

MacLeod also allows one to answer the perennial question about whether education is an art or a science.  At the Core Knowledge Blog, Robert Pondiscio points to a Dan Willingham video in which Willingham asserts "teaching is neither art nor science, but 'somewhere in between.'"

MacLeod's observation allows for an even cleaner answer: it doesn't matter!  The real question is how does one get students to seek and appreciate mastery.  At an Ignite event, MacLeod asserted,

. . . I can honestly say MASTERY is more satisf­ying than money. If you’re up for it, yes, MASTERY MATTERS MORE THAN SUCCESS.

19. And it’s por­ta­ble. It tra­vels with you, whe­re­ver you go. No land­lord, No boss, no sud­den relo­ca­tion, no reces­sion, no Wall Street analyst can take it away. It’s something that truly belongs to you, for always.

20. So when a kid asks me for career advice these days, I tell her, “Don’t worry about money, don’t worry about suc­cess. Worry about Mas­tery– that is something pre­cious you can actually con­trol. And yes, if you’ve achie­ved mas­tery, you’re more likely to be suc­cess­ful and pros­pe­rous, any­way.” Again, MASTERY MATTERS MORE THAN SUCCESS. So go for it. . . .

My Candidate To Replace Melody Schopp And Arne Duncan

Sir Ken Robinson lays out a great vision for lifelong earning and survives a tough interview committee.  He even does mean Elvis "Thank you very much."







It's sad and frightening that every South Dakota policy maker will ignore him.

The Light At The End Of The Tunnel Is A Probably A Train

South Dakota Secretary of Education Melody Schopp has announced members of the HB 1234 work groups.

The first few lines of the Johnny Cash classic come to mind: the train is a comin' and the policies will come from people who sit in back rooms and smoke big cigars.

Damn, Cash was a genius,

Why Would A Wise Forest Animal Eat A Talking Pineapple?

Or why I don't want any part of my pay based on a standardized test.

The New York Daily News covers a New York State test developed by Pearson PLC.  Students were asked to respond to questions from a story about a race between a talking pineapple and a hare.

In the story, an apparent take-off on Aesop’s fable about the tortoise and the hare, a talking pineapple challenges a hare to a race.  The other animals wager on the immobile pineapple winning — and ponder whether it’s tricking them.

When the pineapple fails to move at all and the rabbit wins, the animals dine on the pineapple.

Students were asked two perplexing questions: why did the animals eat the talking fruit, and which animal was wisest?

Let's be clear, none of the animals were named Socrates and none claimed to be the wisest animal because it knew nothing.  Apparently the unanswerable questions had been tested elsewhere.

The new exams have higher stakes for principals and teachers statewide, whose evaluations will be based in part on student scores beginning as soon as this year.

Scarsdale Middle School Principal Michael McDermott said the question has been used before and “confused students in six or seven different states.”

If Governor Daugaard or Education Secretary Schopp want read the story and take a stab at answering the questions, they can do so here.  I'm sure that they will claim that South Dakota checks its tests more carefully.  That claim may be true, but the difference between South Dakota's inane questions and New York's inane questions is difference of degree not of kind.  South Dakota's tests have their fair share of inane questions.

I have my own slightly less inane multiple guess question:

After hearing about the pineapple and the hare, Governor Daugaard and Secretary Schopp will

a. stubbornly insist that standardized testing is a great way to evaluate teachers.
b. claim that paying math and science teachers more than English, history, art or music teachers will help students answer the question about why the animals ate the pineapple.
c. offer Pearson a 10 year contract to write Dakota STEP tests.
d. all of the above.

Melody Sings Off Key Again

Scott McCloud asks the key question about education reform

What will it take for Americans to stand up and fight not just against our schooling systems but also against educational reform efforts that take those systems in wrong directions?

McCloud points out that U.S. efforts are a model for reform; unfortunately, it's a model for how not to reform education.  He quotes a an Alberta Views article that concludes,

By contrast we can also learn what not to do from reform in the US, whose education system is in decline. Its elements, implemented over the past two decades, are largely ideological: "market-based" reforms (the application of "business insights" to the running of schools); an emphasis on standardization and narrowing of curriculum; extensive use of external standardized assessment; fostering choice and competition among schools, often with school vouchers; making judgements based on test data and closing "failing schools"; encouraging the growth of charter schools (which don't have teacher unions); "merit pay" and other incentives; faith that "technologically mediated instruction" will reduce costs; an overwhelming "top-down" approach which tells everyone what to do and holds them accountable for doing it. 

On  the other hand, McCloud notes,

it's pretty clear what we should be doing instead. As a recent book, Surpassing Shanghai, notes, school systems around the world (like Japan, Finland, Singapore, and Shanghai) that consistently outperform the U.S. on international assessments do things very differently:

1. Funding schools equitably, with additional resources for those serving needy students
2. Paying teachers competitively and comparably
3. Investing in high-quality preparation, mentoring and professional development for teachers and leaders, completely at government expense
4. Providing time in the school schedule for collaborative planning and ongoing professional learning to continually improve instruction
5. Organizing a curriculum around problem-solving and critical thinking skill
6. Testing students rarely but carefully -- with measures that require analysis, communication, and defense of ideas.

 Marc Tucker makes a similar point in this Atlantic post

You would think that, being far behind our competitors, we would be looking hard at how they are managing to outperform us. But many policymakers, business leaders, educators and advocates are not interested. Instead, they are confidently barreling down a path of American exceptionalism, insisting that America is so different from these other nations that we are better off embracing unique, unproven solutions that our foreign competitors find bizarre.

Some of these uniquely American solutions -- charter schools, private school vouchers, entrepreneurial innovations, grade-by-grade testing, diminished teachers' unions, and basing teachers' pay on how their students do on standardized tests -- may be appealing on their surface. To many in the financial community, these market-inspired reform ideas are very appealing.

Yet, these proposed solutions are nowhere to be found in the arsenal of strategies used by the top-performing nations. And almost everything these countries are doing to redesign their education systems, we're not doing.

 Melody Schopp's Department of Education, however, continues to focus on tests.  South Dakota will continue to "hold schools accountable for student proficiency and closing achievement gaps through continued annual public reporting of disaggregated student outcomes in math and reading."  A high school's "student achievement score will be based on the percent of students scoring proficient or advanced on the statewide assessment in reading and math delivered in 11th grade."

Other alleged reforms are not specified because Schopp is looking for an "appropriate" or "valid" "assessment tools" from SMARTER Balanced consortium.  Since, SDDOE's document is jargon laden, I'll lapse into a cliche:  it seems as if SDDOE is trying to sell a pig in a poke.

There's nothing in Schopp's draft that will improve South Dakota's K-12 education.  The draft indicates that SDDOE will continue to push schools to test more and insure that students learn less.  Instead of adapting what works, SDDOE will conform to the nationwide trend of serving as bad example of education reform.

Melody Schopp Should Watch Chopped

I was nosing around the South Dakota Department of Education website and came across this page suggesting a "framework for teaching."  The framework comes from the work of Charlotte Danielson and has four domains and twenty-two components.

I have a few suggestions for Secretary of Education Melody Schopp.  First, keep the DOE's language simple and concise.  Instead of using wordy jargon like "framework," "domain," and "component"; use a simple clear adjective like "cookie-cutter."  Everyone will understand what South Dakota's Department of Education wants from teachers.

Second, read some Emerson.  Here are a three of my favorites from "Self-Reliance."

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. 

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. 

I know that Emerson doesn't fit into Schopp's STEM-centric worldview, but Walt Whitman presents a simple challenge to any STEMmy cookie cutter.

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Something tells me that Schopp will get plenty of applause for mandating that teachers act in a cookie-cutter fashion.  Teachers, meanwhile, will get more sick and tired.

A careful reader might legitimately accuse me of mixing metaphors by using boring astronomers and kitchen utensils to make my point, so I'll return to the kitchen.   Schopp needs to watch Chopped.  Contemporary classrooms aren't like my mother's kitchen where everything was neat and orderly.  They're like the mystery basket that has canned tuna, blue cheese, cranberries, saltines, and a pork chop that need to be turned into a dessert in 30 minutes. 

On Chopped, the chefs combine the ingredients to the best of the their ability in the limited time.  They are judged on three broad criteria: taste, creativity, and appearance.  The judges actually cook for a living.  There's no room for cookie cutters on Chopped.

If Schopp were to watch Chopped, she might understand that the French Chef in the Black Hills and the rustic baker in the Southeast Corner will both do a better job with the mystery baskets that compose their classrooms if they are not hampered with the requirement to use a cookie cutter.

I Wonder If Arne Duncan Is A Light At The End Of the NCLB Tunnel Or An Oncoming Train

I'm intrigued, confused, hopeful, and worried about this New York Times report.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has announced that he will unilaterally override the centerpiece requirement of the No Child Left Behind school accountability law, that 100 percent of students be proficient in math and reading by 2014.

Mr. Duncan told reporters that he was acting because Congress had failed to rewrite the Bush-era law, which he called a “slow-motion train wreck.” He is waiving the law’s proficiency requirements for states that have adopted their own testing and accountability programs and are making other strides toward better schools, he said.

I am happy that Duncan is taking steps to end to impossible 100 percent requirement.  The process, however, does give me pause.

In Friday’s conference call, Mr. Duncan and Ms. Barnes [Melody Barnes, director of President Obama’s White House Domestic Policy Council] said the Department of Education would issue guidelines next month inviting states to apply for the waivers. For a waiver to be approved, they said, states would need to show that they were adopting higher standards under which high school students were “college- and career-ready” at graduation, were working to improve teacher effectiveness and evaluation systems based on student test scores and other measures, were overhauling the lowest-performing schools, and were adopting locally designed school accountability systems to replace No Child’s pass-fail system.

Those requirements match the criteria the administration used last year in picking winning states in its two-stage Race to the Top grant competition. Ms. Barnes said states would not be competing against one another with their waiver applications. But the similarity irked critics.

I have three main fears.  First, Duncan's record spotty record doesn't give me hope that he will accept sensible plans.  In short, we'll get more bureaucrats telling teachers what to do and Race To The Top through other means.

Second, Duncan seems to favor those who defer to him.  South Dakota's Melody Schopp took a stand earlier this summer to unilaterally change South Dakota's standards.  I realize I may be acting on stereotypes about Chicago politicians, but I can't believe that Duncan is going to make things easy on Schopp and South Dakota nor do I trust Senators Thune and Johnson or Representative Noem to apply effective and proper political pressure.

Third,  this action feeds the conservative narrative that Duncan and Obama are trying to centralize everything and further politicize the process.  The Times report indicates that the politicization is happening.

When Mr. Duncan sketched an outline of the administration’s waiver plan in June, Representative John Kline, the Minnesota Republican who is chairman of the House education committee, demanded that Mr. Duncan show by what legal authority he would override the federal law. Mr. Duncan responded by citing provisions of the No Child law itself that give the education secretary broad waiver powers.

On Friday, Mr. Kline said in a statement, “I remain concerned that temporary measures instituted by the department, such as conditional waivers, could undermine” efforts by Congress to rewrite the law.

Mr. Kline’s committee has completed three overhaul bills focusing on elimination of federal programs, financial flexibility for states, and charter schools. But the committee has not yet produced bills rewriting the law’s crucial school accountability and teacher effectiveness provisions.

Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who is chairman the Senate education committee, said he understood why Mr. Duncan was pursuing the waiver plan, since “it is undeniable that this Congress faces real challenges reaching bipartisan, bicameral agreement on anything.”

I applaud efforts to remedy the harm done by NCLB. RTTT, however, is not an improvement.  Given Washingon's recent performance. I'm worried that Duncan and the politicians who oppose his efforts will simply make matters worse.

A Rather Sweet Melody Was Heard

The Sioux Falls Argus Leader reports,

In a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Schopp said Wednesday that the state intends to use 2010 benchmarks in calculating whether public school students and schools made "adequate yearly progress" in this spring.

It means, for example, that only 63 percent of high school juniors at a school will have to have scored proficient in math last spring, instead of 72 percent. Just 69 percent of students in grades 3-8 must have scored proficient in reading, not 76 percent.

Schopp's logic is impeccable.  The article claims she wants to send "a message that she's tired of waiting for Congress to update No Child Left Behind."  Further,

"Without making these changes, we believe our accountability system, as it currently stands, would inappropriately label schools as failing. This situation would eventually trigger a number of NCLB-related sanctions that our department simply does not have the capacity to address," Schopp wrote to Duncan.

Of course, Schopp's move is not without risk.

By going ahead with the plan, Schopp acknowledged the state "could potentially be out of compliance" with No Child Left Behind, meaning the government could withhold funding.

Losing funding frightens me, but this may be worth the risk, especially if other states go along.  The Argus Leader goes on,

Like South Dakota, Idaho is not waiting to see what that plan will be. Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna last week was the first education chief to announce his state's plans to defy No Child Left Behind.

I'm going to quibble with the august publication a bit.  Montana informed Duncan in May that that state would not be raising its requirements.  If I'm not a good enough source for the Argus Leader, NPR agrees.

Our story implied that Idaho was the first state to refuse to comply with No Child Left Behind. Actually, Montana sent a letter to the Education Department in April, announcing that state would not be raising its NCLB requirements. That letter preceded Idaho's announcement.

The larger point is that Duncan is not going to punish 15 or 20 states.  If others join South Dakota, Montana, and Idaho, the funding levels will remain the same.  One would hope that fewer strings will be attached.