Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

Can We Talk About Change Without Hurting Feelings?

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“Last night, George Couros Tweeted this:

“I think when we say things like ‘school is broken’ it really demeans the hard work of so many educators who make school awesome everyday.”

As I would have expected, it was retweeted and favorited widely. The sentiment is, of course, that the failures of schools, perceived or real, shouldn’t be ascribed to the teachers who work with our kids every day. As George suggests, there are a great number of caring, smart, hard working adults in schools around the world who are trying to make school “the best seven-hours of a kids day” as my friend Gary Stager puts it. 

What I can’t read in that Tweet is to what extent George feels schools are in fact “broken,” if he feels that way at all. And if they are failing in some aspects, is it possible to say that without “demeaning” the people that work in them?

As someone who finds the experience of traditional schooling to be increasingly out of step with the real world, and as someone who has come to believe that schools actually are “broken” in many ways, how do I write and speak about those viewpoints without being heard or read as hurtful or demeaning to educators in schools? Is that possible?

And if schools are in fact “broken” in either large or small ways, are we to hold all teachers blameless for that? Really?

Responses to George’s Tweet ran from sentiments like it’s easier to say it’s broken than to be a part of the solution, to the system is flawed and teachers struggle within it, to moving the rhetoric away from schools altogther and to put the blame squarely on the system. 

I feel a tension underneath all of this that makes this conversation difficult. First, the definitions of “broken” and the concomitant “solutions” are so all over the place that it’s hard to even know what we’re talking about here. I think the fact that only 44% of our kids reporting engagement in high school strongly suggests “broken.” I think the difference of educational opportunities for the kids in Camden vs. the kids at Lawrenceville Prep is “broken.” I think spending an inordinate amount of time on curriculum that will soon be forgotten, curriculum that most kids don’t care about despite our best efforts to make them care, curriculum that then gets assessed in ways that really don’t show if kids can actually apply it and is used to evaluate teachers in a blatantly unfair way…all of that is “broken.” Among the solutions, I think we need to get rid of most of the stuff we currently teach and, instead, create classrooms where kids have more freedom and agency to pursue the things they are most interested or passionate to learn. And I think we have to fundamentally redefine the roles of the adults who share space with kids in school. 

Others will disagree. Their versions of “broken” may be much less extreme than mine. Their solutions less radical or progressive. And that’s absolutely fine. Let’s talk and debate and listen.

But what might be most “broken” is the idea that we can’t have these conversations around change, conversations that push a re-examination and re-evaluation of the fundamental functions of schools and classrooms and teachers, that we can’t talk about that openly and honestly because we might offend some of those caring, smart, hard working adults in schools who may take those conversations personally. That any negative descriptor for the school experience can’t be used because it might be found demeaning. 

If the two are inseparable, then we better be fully ok with the status quo.

Josh Stumpenhort, one of those responding to George, Tweeted the “System is not broken. Just in need of a revolution. :)” 

Last time I checked, revolutions aren’t painless. 

Oh, The Irony

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Richard Elmore:

While learning has largely escaped the boundaries of institutionalized schooling, educational reformers have for the past thirty years or so deliberately and systematically engaged in public policy choices that make schools less and less capable of responding to the movement of learning into society at large.

Standards and expectations have become more and more literal and highly prescriptive in an age where human beings will be exercising more and more choice over what and how they will learn.

Testing and assessment practices have become more and more conventional and narrow as the range of competencies  required to negotiate digital culture has become more complex and highly variegated.

Teacher preparation, hiring, induction, and evaluation practices have become more and more rigid and hierarchical in an age where the teaching function is migrating out into a more individualized and tailored set of learning environments.

We are continuing to invest massively in hard-boundary physical structures in an age where learning is moving into mobile, flexible, and networked relationships. 

In other words, it would be hard to imagine an institutional structure for learning that is less suited for the future than the heavily institutionalized, hierarchical world that education reformers have constructed. [Emphasis mine]

Elmore takes no prisoners. Read the whole thing.

“Until These Things Change…”

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Meredith Broussard:

It may be many years until Philadelphia’s education budget matches its curriculum requirements. In the meantime, there are a few things the district—and other flailing school districts in America—can do. Stop giving standardized tests that are inextricably tied to specific sets of books. At the very least, stop using test scores to evaluate teacher performance without providing the items each teacher needs to do his or her job. Most of all, avoid basing an entire education system on materials so costly that big, urban districts can’t afford to buy them. Until these things change, it will be impossible to raise standardized test scores—despite the best efforts of the teachers and students who will return to school this fall and find no new books waiting for them.

Amazing, and depressing read. 

The Committee of Ten…Corporations

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Mary Ann Reilly:

I often wonder how different school might be had the NEA task force, Committee of Ten, (a group of 90 elite men) determined that observation, reasoning, and judgment could be cultivated through multiple methods and studies as opposed to tying each to a discrete subject. I often wonder how different their recommendations might have been had a few women, some newly arrived immigrants, some people of color, some students,  and representatives who hailed from work other than teaching been part of the committee.  How might the recommendations have been different? Replacing 90 elite men who served on the Committee of Ten in the 1890s with corporations in the 2010s who are informing the Common Core really isn’t much of a change…

If you take 90 men, hailing from elite schools (college presidents, headmasters, professors) and ask them to name what an excellent education contains–we should not be surprised that their answers (all were in agreement) will reflect their lives, their truths. Habermas told us that without a metalanguage to challenge the given assumption, power tends to  serve up itself as the model of excellence. Today it is Achieve, Inc., Pearson, McGraw Hill, ETS, state DOE, federal DOE who are the new Committee of Ten.

The Committee of Ten…Corporations

By

Mary Ann Reilly:

I often wonder how different school might be had the NEA task force, Committee of Ten, (a group of 90 elite men) determined that observation, reasoning, and judgment could be cultivated through multiple methods and studies as opposed to tying each to a discrete subject. I often wonder how different their recommendations might have been had a few women, some newly arrived immigrants, some people of color, some students,  and representatives who hailed from work other than teaching been part of the committee.  How might the recommendations have been different? Replacing 90 elite men who served on the Committee of Ten in the 1890s with corporations in the 2010s who are informing the Common Core really isn’t much of a change…

If you take 90 men, hailing from elite schools (college presidents, headmasters, professors) and ask them to name what an excellent education contains–we should not be surprised that their answers (all were in agreement) will reflect their lives, their truths. Habermas told us that without a metalanguage to challenge the given assumption, power tends to  serve up itself as the model of excellence. Today it is Achieve, Inc., Pearson, McGraw Hill, ETS, state DOE, federal DOE who are the new Committee of Ten.

Making Ourselves Vulnerable

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George Siemens:

Learning is vulnerability. When we learn, we make ourselves vulnerable. When we engage in learning, we communicate that we want to grow, to become better, to improve ourselves. When I first started blogging, I had a sense of fear with every post (“did that sound stupid?”), loss of sleep soul-searching when a critical comment was posted, and envy when peers posted something brilliant (“wow, why didn’t I think of that?”). When a student posts an opinion in a discussion forum or when someone offers a controversial opinion – these are vulnerability-inducing expressions. On a smaller scale, posting a tweet, sharing an image, or speaking into the void can be intimidating for a new user. (I’m less clear about how being vulnerable becomes craving attention for some people as they get immersed in media!). While the learning process can’t be short-circuited, and the ambiguity and messiness can’t be eliminated, it is helpful for educators to recognize the social, identity, and emotional factors that influence learners. Often, these factors matter more than content/knowledge elements in contributing to learner success.

Walk down the vendor floor of any big edu-conference and you’ll see our obsession with making learning less messy and less “vulnerable.” Struggle, patience, courage, persistence, failure, passion…none of these are quantifiable to the degree that reformers or most edupreneurs need them to be to “count.” Yet schools will spend time and money (lots of it) on stuff that organizes, compartmentalizes, personalizes, standardizes, and captures “learning” in order to be compared “successfully” to other districts down the road.

If we fail to recognize the inherent risk that goes with learning something new, we fail our kids. Yet we try to mitigate that risk in almost every decision we make. 

2 in 2000

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So here’s a little state of the world update from my recent trip to Wisconsin to speak at the state school board association conference there.

First, let me say there are a lot of folks who are beginning to talk with more relevance around change when it comes to education. The rhetoric, at least, around inquiry and problem based, student-centered classrooms seems to be expanding despite the frequent references to “higher student achievement” and “college readiness” that at the end of the day still drives the conversation around reform. As most know, Wisconsin is at the center of the firestorm when it comes to rethinking education, and not much of that rethink resonates with the real world, to be honest. But I met a lot of people who seem at least to be waking up to the realities of the moment and who seem willing to engage deeply in the big questions that all of us have to be asking when it comes to what best serves our students and their learning lives.

Two moments of zen…

First, as I normally do, I asked the 2,000 or so folks in attendance to raise their hands if I could go onto Google and find examples of their best practice or thinking around how to meet the educational challenges of the day and learn from their experiences or connect with them for a conversation. Two hands went up. Two. I know that most of these folks were school board members, but the silence that followed really struck me. How can they make policy and advocate for meaningful changes in what happens in schools without any practical sense of the connected, transparent world in which we now exist?

Second, US Senator Herb Kohl was in attendance (at least until I got up to speak…maybe someone warned him.) Twenty-four years in the senate, a man respected in Wisconsin and obviously well-liked. He helped present some awards to teachers and gave a short, very supportive speech to the audience thanking them for their work with kids in their state. Seemed like a very nice, thoughtful person.

But I couldn’t help thinking as I watched him amble out of the hall that there’s no way he has any clue about what’s really happening with education right now. In fact, in this country run by primarily old white guys who probably don’t know the difference between a Blackberry and a strawberry, guys who pretty much get their talking points from aides and advisors, I can’t imagine many if any of them have a clue. I think some of them probably woke up a bit with the whole SOPA protest, but by and large, I wonder to what extent our leaders can even hold a conversation around the ways in which the Web is impacting education. And the money to keep things status quo is flowing on Capitol Hill.

Sigh. Sigh.

Crazy Days

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Meant to post this yesterday, but didn’t get time. I think the headlines tell the tale around education right now.

MICHIGAN

NEW JERSEY

WISCONSIN

CONNECTICUT

I didn’t even get to look at Texas…

These are some crazy days, and I fear we haven’t even seen the half of it. And I wonder a couple of things. What will it take for people to figure out that the disruption here is far greater than budgets and unions which are right now the easy scapegoats in the reform message? And, if we keep going down this road to oblivion, what rises from the ashes?

The Urgency for Change

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I feel like I should do some fun tool blogging or great classroom blogging or something before heading down the depressing road of writing more about change in schools, but I guess I can’t help myself. Especially after taking pictures like the one at right at a school I visited a couple of weeks ago and after reading quotes like this one:

“Unless we change direction, the combined impact of these proposals will do for public schooling what market reform has done for housing, health care and the economy: produce fabulous profits for a few and unequal access and outcomes for the many.”

That’s Stan Karp of the New Jersey Education Law Center lamenting the cuts and “reforms” here in my great state and elsewhere in a blog post in the Washington Post. (If you want to see a video of Karp giving basically the same riff on the topic, check out his YouTube video and there is a transcript here.) It’s a really powerful exploration of the current conversation around change and the many problems surrounding it.

The critical point to me, however, is this: all of this orchestrated bashing of teachers and schools is opening the door for folks outside of education to come in and “save the day” Superman style, a fact that, as Karp suggests, could undermine the whole democratic ideal that we built schools upon. You can catch whiffs of it everywhere, when people say that “competition” is what will save education, to the “approved providers” the Jeb Bush and his Excellence for Education crew are promoting in their reforms to the growing number of personalized and customized tutoring programs that are cropping up all over the place. It may not be on a lot of folks’ radar at the moment, but rest assured, we’re going to see more and more corporate attempts to not just provide content (as they’ve done forever with textbooks) but, increasingly, to provide instruction as well. And, as Karp suggests in the quote above, that reality will surely make worse the already growing educational divide for our kids.

There is no question that businesses will play a part in the “reforms” or “transforms” that we so often talk about in this community. And there is also no question that we need to promote a different vision for what teaching and learning look like. But there is a big difference between the vision we have for students having equitable, thoughtful access to technology and teachers as opposed to the vision where only a few do. I’ll once again quote Allan Collins and Richard Halverson:

For education to embrace both equity and economic development, we believe that our leaders will have to stretch the traditional practices to embrace the capacity of new information technologies. This will require schools to forfeit some control over the learning processes, but will once again put the latest tools for improving learning in the hands of public institutions (as opposed to the hands of families and learners who can afford access.) (145)

As schools, we are going to have to “forfeit some control,” as we well should as the learning opportunities outside the classroom become more ubiquitous and effective. But we have to make sure that those opportunities are equitable and open as much as we can. That’s the real urgency of the debate right now, how do we use these new (and old) technologies to lift everyone up instead of just a few.

The Wrong Conversations

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(This is gonna be a tough post to write. Not that blogging shouldn’t be tough to begin with. But this one feels like it might be harder than most.)

By all accounts, it’s been a crappy week for education. To be honest, I haven’t participated in much of it, but reading the accounts from Chris and Bud and others, and some of the Tweets from Sunday’s Education Nation sessions, it’s hard not to sense the anger, frustration, sadness and even paranoia that has infected our little part of the education world. While I know it was all heartfelt and sincere, I think I turned it all off on Sunday when a Twitter thread started to assume that certain books about the mess we’re in had been somehow pulled from Amazon by NBC so as not to interfere with its one-sided reality about what fixes we all need to make education better. It goes without saying that it was much more fun watching Tucker win his soccer game and the Jets beat up on the Dolphins than watch the attempted dismemberment of the profession live and in Tweeting color.

But the last few days have me wondering a few things, among them, how many people are really tuned into this “conversation”, how many of those will still be tuned in a month from now, and, the toughest one, are we just asking the wrong questions to begin with?

NBC understands as well as anyone the short attention span theater that is most effective to deliver a message to an increasingly dumbed down populace in this country. Crank up the machine for a few days of flooding, intensive marketing under the guise of “conversation” in sound bites and then run to the next crisis. And the irony is that education really is failing if the vast majority of people go no further than to tune into Brian Williams or Oprah for an hour, receive the intended message, and then return to their lives thinking schools are broken and that billionaire-funded charters are the answer. Mission accomplished. (Of course the greater irony is that “student achievement” really has nothing to do with the critical thinking necessary to even attempt to navigate this morass of pseudo research and rock star opinion.) My sense is that very, very few people are “engaged” in these ideas, and most of them that are are angry. And rightfully so. NBC has the money and the bandwidth and the agenda in their pockets. “We” have a lot of  passionate, kid-loving change agents who see the world a bit differently and are growing increasingly frustrated at our lack of a seat at the table.

But I guess I’m just wondering, do we even want a seat at that table? Are NBC and Oprah, and to a certain extent even the growing heroes in the movement like Diane Ravitch engaged in a debate that, at the end of the day, is going to be worth the time and energy we’re spending on it?

And this is where it gets really hard for me, because while in my heart I know that to not fight these battles in the short term to preserve the very best of what schools and classrooms are and can be would dishonor the teachers and students currently in the system, I’m continually persuaded that at the end of the day, the focus on “fixing” schools occurs at the expense of a focus on expanding the learning opportunities we give our students. I wish the two were the same, that better learning was seen as the impetus for better schools. But right now, to the mainstream at least, better “knowing” means better schools. Say what you will about online social learning tools, the networks and communities that so many of us are engaging in do afford deep, rich learning in ways that physical space cannot match. (And yes, we can say the same about physical space.) The mainstream is not yet open to the opportunities for learning our students now have, due in large measure to these technologies, and it’s nowhere near open to the idea that because of these innovations, the best outcome for our kids may be “schools” that look very little like what they look like today.

We need to be open to those ideas and more.

This post, “We’re Not Waiting for Superman, We Are Empowering Superheroes” by Diana Rhoten of Startl is the latest of many to push me in this direction. In it, she suggests that we are faced with a “massive, radical, design challenge,” that “we need to reframe the problem and the conversation, from one about re-forming schooling to one about re-thinking education and re-imagining learning.” So much of what she says in this post makes sense to me. Here’s one snip especially:

Our vision of technologically enabled learning is not one of the lone child sitting at her desktop (or laptop) passively consuming PDFs or browsing Web pages. We believe the potential of technology for learning is much greater. We believe its power resides in its ability to deliver active and interactive experiences where a learner participates in the very construction of knowledge by crafting and curating, mixing and re-mixing information with digital tools, a process which can be and should be greatly augmented by online and offline social interactions between friends, in a community of peers, or an extended network of people (both professional and amateur) who share her interests.

Technology is just a tool. Its effects ultimately depend on the people who use them, how and where. Thus, technology does not negate the role of people or place in learning, but it does change their definitions and their dynamics. And, so just as we design new technologies for learning, we must also consider the contexts for learning that will facilitate their best use … whether that is at school, at home, at the library, on the job, or a place we have not yet imagined.

And she frames what I think is a coherent (for these times, at least) vision for innovation on the edges (echoing Christensen) when she says:

We believe the edge is place in the system where the risk of failure and the opportunity for success are most allowable, and we want to be the people who to take the risk to demonstrate the opportunity. We’re not Pollyannaish about the challenges of working on the edge. We know much of what we try will fail; that’s what innovation is about. We also know that it will take time for the work we support to travel from the early adopters to the mainstream, but we don’t see an alternative. Better to demonstrate what could be than to wait for what might be.

Exactly. We should all be innovating, testing new models, failing, reflecting, trying anew, sharing the learning with others who are working on the edges in their own classrooms and projects. It’s one of the great pieces of what we do at PLP, because we are innovating and succeding and failing and rethinking on the edge. And I know that’s hard because it’s not valued and supported in most places, and I know most teachers simply can’t or won’t. It’s too hard. There’s no time. Too many barriers. But those that can, must right now. Because the reality is we simply don’t have the media, the money or the muscle to compete with the current narrative about schools, and to fret over that fact I think cuts deeply into what energy we do have to think clearly about what’s best for our kids. And because in the long run, this conversation can’t be about schools first. It has to be about learning. And through that lens, we need to be advocates for whatever is best for our kids, whether at times that might be a technology over a teacher, an online community over a school, a passion based project over a one-size fits all curriculum, a chance to create with strangers of all ages over a classroom of same-age kids working hard to game the system. Those types of innovations will at some point get the notice of the mainstream.

Let NBC and Bill Gates and Oprah have at the “fixing schools” conversation. Let’s keep our energies and our laser like focus on the learning, in whatever form that takes.

10 Questions for Arne Duncan

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1. Can you describe how you personally use technology to access, create and share information?

2. In terms of technology use, what were the most innovative ideas for education that you saw in the Race To The Top applications that you reviewed?

3. The National Education Technology Plan calls for the end of “one size fits all learning.” Do you agree and, if so, what does that mean for students and teachers?

4. The plan also calls for teachers to take part in “online learning communities” and “personal learning networks.” What types of professional development should schools be engaging in to achieve those goals?

5. If you were to counsel teachers and administrators in their participation in these communities and networks, what three suggestions would you give?

6. Do you agree that skills such as collaboration, problem-solving and self-direction (among other “21st Century Skills”) are important for students to develop and, if so, how are current assessment regimes checking for those skills?

7. Do you believe that every student in the United States should have ubiquitous access to the Internet and, if so, what plans are in place to achieve that? If not, why not?

8. According to the National Council of Teachers of English, the following are the characteristics of “literate readers and writers” in the 21st Century. How are you personally meeting these standards?

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and
cross-culturally
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of
purposes
• Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous
information
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments

9. How do you see technology being used by your own children and grandchildren to learn in the future?

10. (Yours?)

"Disposable Reform"

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Steve Hargadon held an interesting interview with Linda Darling-Hammond last week that covered, for the most part, the ideas in her new book “The Flat World and Education” as well as some of her earlier works like “The Right to Learn.” While I was hoping to hear her go a bit more into depth about the role of technology in the reform or transformation of schools, and to also be more specific as to how to get to reforms she says we need, she did articulate a number of compelling ideas around why change is so slow and why it’s so difficult to move the needle on schools here in the US. I’ve snipped three fairly short segments from the full interview that I want to touch on in three separate posts. (Full recording here.)

The first discusses the idea that reforms are hampered by the lack of teachers who can teach in progressive ways, and that replication of successful school models is extremely difficult due to diverse circumstances (some have leadership, money, infrastructure, others don’t) and a political reality that forces us to change course every few years while other countries are going through a steady process of “continual improvement.” She says it’s hard to build a “system of good schools” here. Take a listen:

Here is one quote that’s worth mulling over.

“Progressive educational philosophies, that is approaches that are child-centered, that are really focused on empowering forms of learning that allow people to inquire for themselves and pursue knowledge in self-initiated ways as well as in other ways, those kinds of reforms demand infinitely skilled teachers, and our system has never been organized to produce infinitely skilled teachers in sufficient qualities to fuel those reforms over the long haul.”

The other day I Tweeted the question “What % of teacher ed programs prepare teachers NOT to be the focal point of the classroom?” and the responses were telling. Most said 5-10%, and my sense is that’s pretty accurate. No question, we’re not producing “infinitely skilled teachers” who are also “infinitely skilled learners” as well, and that’s exactly what we need to make these progressive philosophies happen in the classroom. It’s not rocket science; if we want students who “pursue knowledge in self-directed ways” and flourish in an inquiry driven environment, we have to prepare teachers to do that for themselves. And we’re not. We prepare teachers to teach, not to learn.

But I also found it striking that she connected our difficulty in sustaining change with what she termed our “disposable culture” here in the US. We try one reform and dispose of it, then we try another and dispose of that one, and then we try yet another. And I can’t help ask, whose fault is that? Throughout our education, we’re give out disposable assignments, have kids work on disposable projects that lead to disposable tests. I mean really, how much of what we actually have our kids do in school is really worth hanging onto in a “change the world” sense? I don’t mean to saddle the current system with causing everything that ails our society, but you have to admit, we own some of that…we reap what we sow.

Over the next couple of days, I’m going to put some thoughts together on two of the other topics she brings up, professional development and assessment. Regardless the lack of a discussion around technology and learning networks in much of her writing and discussions, there is no question that Darling-Hammond has one of the clearest voices in articulating the issues we’re facing in education today. Definitely worth listening to.

What Do We Need?

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So I’m asking for a little crowdsourcing feedback for a chapter I’m writing. I’m trying to frame out all the things that ideally need to be in place for an existing school to make the transition to one that provides a more relevant learning experience for kids in the context of the social online technologies that are disrupting the current model. Call it School 2.0, a 21st Centuryized School, or something else, but I’m wondering what qualities or conditions should we be working toward in order to successfully make a transition like that?

Here’s what I’ve been thinking (in no particular order in terms of the big buckets):

  1. Technology

    1. Personal technology (computer, mobile phone, iPad, etc.) in the hand of every student, teacher, administrator, support staff

    2. Ubiquitous access to the Internet for every student at school and at home

    3. A robust network infrastructure at school that permits real-time access for all students simultaneously

    4. Excellent real-time support

    5. Responsible Use Policies that encourage technology use

  2. Curriculum and Instruction

    1. A deep understanding on the part of every staff member of how to use technology, and specifically the Web, to learn

    2. Sustained, continuous professional development

    3. Performance-based assessments

    4. Teachers fluent in how to translate their personal understanding of technology into the classroom

    5. Personalized learning opportunities for students

    6. Student centered pedagogy

    7. Inquiry-based curriculum

    8. A balance between meeting the requirements of state testing and reshaping learning to teach students the skills they need

    9. Instruction for teachers and students about web-safety

  3. Change Management

    1. A shared vision for modern learning in the school

    2. A shared vocabulary to facilitate conversations around change

    3. Support for trying (and failing) when implementing changes in the classroom

    4. Teachers working with each other across disciplines

    5. Common planning and discussion time for staff

    6. Community education around the new vision and how change will take place

    7. Measurement of progress and adjustment along the way

  4. Leadership

    1. Making a strong case for change with every constituency including students, parents, teachers, staff, administration, board of education and community

    2. Leadership that encourages modern learning among teachers and students

    3. Teacher leaders that embrace and extend the vision

    4. A innovative budgetary approach

What have I missed?

We Need a Test for That

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Lately, I’ve been finding myself wondering if maybe the best strategy for changing education is to join ’em, not fight ’em. I mean, if the only material that we think is important is the stuff that our kids are going to get tested on, well, then let’s have MORE tests! (Play along!)

How about a test that every student has to pass on how to live a more carbon free, planet-friendly life? (Wonder how many of them even know what “carbon free” means.)

How about a test on “managing, analyzing and synthesizing multiple streams of simultaneous information?” (I love the NCTE.)

Or here’s a good one. Let’s make a test for a child’s ability to talk to strangers online, not as in whether or not they should, but as in how they go about doing it. (I want my kids to talk to strangers online, btw.)

What if we made a test to see if every kid knew “20 Easy Ways to Use a Wiki?” (Um, actually, let’s not do that. Too many grownups are doing that already.)

Here’s one: Let’s put together a test to see if our students can “Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts?” (There’s that rascally NCTE, again.)

How about one that checks to see if they can solve a real problem in their communities and create a plan to implement the solution? (Eh, why bother? Probably would never get funded.)

And finally, how about one that tries to figure out whether or not they can effectively use all of the people, resources, technologies and whatever else they have at their fingertips to learn just about anything they want to learn without sitting in a school with a teacher in the room? (Isn’t that our ultimate goal here?)

Not finding too much of that in “Common Core” which will, no doubt, soon lead to the “Common Test” which, no doubt, will be written by folks with a “Common Interest” in making money, deciding what’s right and wrong for everyone, and being able to say that they’ve “reformed” education.

At least those with the means can start getting their kids some not-so-common test prep in kindergarten now. Never too early to think about the test.

Sigh.