Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

Utter Lack of Intellectual Bravery

By

Jesse Stommel:

Those of us responsible for education (both its formation and care) are hugging too tightly to what we’ve helped build, its pillars, policies, economies, and institutions. None of these, though, map promisingly into digital space. If we continue to tread our current path, we’ll be left with a Frankenstein’s monster of what we now know of education. This is the imminent destruction of our educational system of which so many speak: taking an institution inspired by the efficiency of post-industrial machines and redrawing it inside the machines of the digital age. Education rendered into a dull 2-dimensional carbon copy, scanned, faxed, encoded and then made human-readable, an utter lack of intellectual bravery.

That last is precisely how I think of current education reformers who are tied to efficiencies over real opportunities to think about education and learning differently.

The list of things we need to “break” is daunting and almost all-encompassing. But the justifications are spot on. 

Read the whole thing.

Here Come the Parents

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From the WSJ:

But McGraw-Hill executives say that the new adaptive e-books will offer better learning methods for a cheaper price than traditional textbooks. Mr. Kibby and Mr. Christensen said that they have seen a lot of demand for their learning products coming from individual students and parents rather than just educators and school officials. [Emphasis mine.]

So, um, anyone surprised? We can’t really call it “opting out” quite yet, but if an education is defined by passing a test…

Born To Be Taught?

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Chad Sansing:

Kids have to own learning. To hold on to it, to connect it, to love it and launch from it – they do. Learning without love isn’t learning; it’s production. It’s not freedom; it’s indenture. It’s not an awakening; it’s a sedation.

Why, I wonder, do we stop seeing kids as creatures who were born to learn and, instead, start seeing them as born to be taught?

Especially now when access provides kids with opportunities to learn so much more than schools could ever hope to deliver, when kids now have a freedom to learn that schools are more and more going to be competing against, how do we stem that shift?

How about this: find one interest, one passion in each child and, regardless of the subject, let them learn. Engage them. Encourage them. Nudge them into places the curriculum can’t follow and, as Chad suggests, make room for the perhaps unexpected learning that may well sustain them much more than the teaching we’ve prepared for them.

Just one thing.

Applying the Learning

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John Abbott:

And here is the crunch…it is far easier to measure what has been learnt than it is to assess how effective are the learners skills when they have to be applied outside the domain in which they were originally developed, in other words proof that you have learnt something under certain circumstances is no true indicator that you will be able to perform as well somewhere else on a different kind of problem.

Unless of course the learning takes place through performance to begin with.

What I Know Now

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In her overview of Learning to Code as one of the top ed-tech trends of 2012, Audrey Watters also shares her favorite ed-tech quote of the year, a pithy suggestion from designer/programmer Bret Victor:

“For fuck’s sake, read Mindstorms.”

It wasn’t the first time that I’d seen that quote, but it reminded me that it was in fact that quote, nearly 30 years into my life as an educator, that finally led me to read that seminal work on learning by Seymour Papert.

About time, don’t you think?

The irony is that the first edition of Midstorms was released in 1980, just a year before I decided to go back to school to get my Masters and become a teacher. And I can’t help but wonder what a different type of educator I would have been had someone, anyone in my program understood its importance and led me to it. Just this one snippet early on in the book might have changed much about my teaching:

For people in the teaching professions, the word “education” tends to evoke “teaching,” particularly classroom teaching. The goal of education research tends therefore to be focused on how to improve classroom teaching. But if, as I have stressed here, the model of successful learning is the way a child learns to talk, a process that takes place without deliberate and organized teaching, the goal set is very different. I see the classroom as an artificial and inefficient learning environment that society has been forced to invent because its informal environments fail in certain essential learning domains, such as writing or grammar or school math. I believe that the computer presence will enable us to so modify the learning environment outside the classrooms that much if not all the knowledge schools presently try to teach with such pain and expense and such limited success will be learned, as the child learns to talk, painlessly, successfully, and without organized instruction. This obviously implies that schools as we know them today will have no place in the future. But it is an open question whether they will adapt by transforming themselves into something new or wither away and be replaced (9).

Now, 32 years later, I’m just coming to know Papert and Mindstorms and much more about learning and education that I never knew or understood before. And I think about that often. My contextual knowledge of how kids learn, the history of progressive education, the workings of technology has only been developed over the last decade, moreso even in the last five years as my important new teachers like Gary Stager and Chris Lehmann and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Ira Socol and Sylvia Martinez and Tom Hoffman and many others have led me to the ideas and authors and thinkers who have framed education for me in a totally different light. I’ve envied (and still do envy) their brilliance, and the lens that they’ve brought to this conversation for far longer than I. And, importantly, I’m thankful for their willingness to share those lenses with me on an ongoing basis as I find new questions that need answering. Better late than never, right? 

But aside from giving me the chance to frame my thinking about schools and kids and learning in a much different and, I think, more relevant way, it’s made me wonder the extent to which most educators carry these lenses with them as well. How many have read Mindstorms? How many are really familiar with Piaget’s learning theories, with Dewey’s progressive vision for education, with Sarason’s thinking on learning? How many of them truly understand why we have the schools we have today? How many have a context for teaching that’s based on learning? How many know what they don’t know? 

I didn’t. Looking back, my preparation to be a teacher was abysmal. And I still have a lot to learn.

It all speaks, once again, for the need for us to see ourselves as learners, more than teachers, especially now that technology and the Web have “enable[d] us to so modify the learning environment outside the classroom” in ways that allow us to meet great teachers and debate important ideas with others far removed from our schools or programs, ways that allow us to learn the things we should have been learning in school. If we’re going to adapt, as Papert suggests, it’s going to be because we as a profession see our role much differently now, as something new, something different, not just something better. 

And so it’s been with a lot of frustration that I’ve been watching the proceedings at Jeb Bush’s Excellence In Action National Summit on Education Reform in Washington DC these past two days. I won’t go deeply into the details, but suffice to say that as I watch Bush, Joel Klein, Condoleeza Rice and others talk about their views on “reforming” education, of using technology to deliver curriculum in new ways, of “raising student achievement” via the Common Core Standards, of competing against the world and making America strong again, I find myself wanting to scream one thing at them all:

“For fuck’s sake, read Mindstorms!”

Please.

Papert writes:

My own philosophy is revolutionary rather than reformist in its concept of change. But the revolution I envision is of ideas, not of technology. It consists of new understandings of specific subject domains and in new understandings of the process of learning itself. It consists of a new and much more ambitious setting of the sights of educational aspiration (186).

Schools and teachers and classrooms still have an important role in our communities, and as I’ve said before, I don’t want them to go away. But, as Papert and many others suggest, they must change. They can’t be about courses or credits or grades or curriculum or teaching first and foremost. They have to be about learning. But the way we understand that word must be grounded in something much deeper than test scores and competition. We as educators have to own that word in its purest sense if we’re to move schools in ways that best support and nurture our kids. And we don’t have much time to waste. 

So if you haven’t already, for goodness sake, read Mindstorms.

Please.

I Wonder…

By

Michael Wesch:

I used to think of the shift we need to make in education as one in which we move from making our students simply knowledgeable (knowing a bunch of stuff) to being knowledge-able (able to find, sort, analyze, criticize and ultimately create new information and knowledge). But more important than anything is that we must inspire them to wonder. Wonder is the wellspring from which ideas and creativity flow. One could even argue that there is no truly creative act or critical thinking without wonder, for it is only through wonder that we attempt to go beyond what has been said and done.

Maybe Ken Robinson is wrong in that schools don’t kill creativity as much as schools kill a sense of wonder, and that without wonder, we have no reason to be creative. Without that initial question… But schools can’t dictate what kids wonder about, right? 

And therein lies the problem…

A “Behaviorally Different Species” of Learner

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Ben Williamson

In the traditional conception of school, the learner was invoked as a docile individual who turned up to school to be instructed in a core canon of curricular content and codes of behavioral conduct. Now, in our digital times, the learner is being reimagined as a more active, interactive, connected and collaborative individual—a behaviorally different species to the normalized learner of mass schooling. The contemporary connected learner travels continually between formal and informal sites of learning, building networks of knowledge through the use of sophisticated software and the real-world application of soft skills, positive attitudinal dispositions, and behavioral competencies. For such a learner, the behavioral competencies of communication, perseverance, interaction, thinking skills, emotional literacy, empathy, problem-solving, and other personal attributes are now increasingly desirable in a world where more jobs will be recruited on soft performance criteria such as relationship management and customer satisfaction.

I’ve been thinking even more about this shift away from formal (traditional) learning to more informal learning within the classroom. Could we at some point give credit (real credit) to a student for the development of those “soft skills” as they manifest themselves within her work to learn something she chooses, not something that we have assigned her to learn? 

Echoes of not valuing the immeasurable…

Enamored by Their Own Ideology

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Arthur Camins:

Similarly, I have been trying to understand the persistence of education reformers, especially those in federal and state government, in the light of so much contrary, well-articulated evidence. I have been trying to understand how teachers who oppose charter schools and merit pay, or who make the case that schools alone can’t undo the effects of poverty, have come to be defined by education reformers as the enemy – supporters of and apologists for the status quo. Somehow, educators who do not support the reformers’ ill-conceived version of disruptive innovation, but who have proposed myriad significant improvement, have been cast as defenders of bad teachers who supposedly believe poverty is destiny. Reformers have become so enamored by their own ideology and so invested in their own course of action that they are unable to recognize the evidence that challenges their policies and unable to recognize the damage it is causing to students.

Let’s not forget this either: Few of the “reformers” are educators. They are lawyer-politicians or businessmen who have never been in a classroom, never experienced school other than being there as a student, and have motivations other than doing schools differently instead of better. 

Palliative Care

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Richard Elmore from Harvard, quoted here:

“I do not believe in the institutional structure of public schooling anymore,” Elmore said, noting that his long-standing work at helping teachers and principals professionalize their practice is “palliative care for a dying institution.” Elmore predicted “a progressive dissociation between learning and schooling…” His comments reflected his concerns that technology, and the networked learning that is emerging in the 21st century, is a key reason for the collapse of institutional schooling, and that nueroscience is revealing how inadequate our schools are for addressing the way children actually learn. “The modal classroom in the modal school [in the United States] is exactly the opposite of what we’re learning about how human beings develop cognitively,” he said.

(Full, unfastforwardable video here. See 1 hour, 20 minutes in.)

Good news. Bad news. For the record, I like Elmore, and I can totally see where he’s coming from, but I don’t think he’s arguing that school is going away. But the institutional structure of school cannot and will not weather the affordances of the Web. 

So, like it appears Elmore’s next book will be about, what now?

Important, Intriguing, Beautiful Questions

By

Ken Bain:

People are most likely to take a deep approach to their learning when they are trying to answer questions or solve problems that they have come to regard as important, intriguing, or just beautiful. One of the great secrets to fostering deep learning is the ability to help students raise new kinds of questions that they will find fascinating. Sometimes that means beginning with the questions that are already on their minds and helping them see how those inquiries lead to new puzzles.

I love this. And I love the idea that we can allow students (and ourselves) to find beauty in questions. That we should foster that. I mean really, how many beautiful questions did you explore in your education. How many that came from our own hearts? How cool would school have been if there had been more of that?

I look at my own kids and know this: up until this point, their teachers have supplied almost every question they are to find an answer to. (This is changing as next year they’ll both be attending my old high school where inquiry based learning is taking root.) My kids have by and large lost much of their desire to question other than to clarify whatever it is they are supposed to learn. And I know this, too: much of that is my own fault. (When do I get to play the “parenting do-over card”?)

In the context of questions, schools need a reframing. (Can you imagine an exit test where kids ASK the questions instead of answer them?) Bain articulates an interesting shift:

One secret might be in reframing the very nature of education. We often “sell” education as the chance to learn some subjects—chemistry, history, philosophy, business, whatever. In my new book, I explore a different kind of education in which students think of their experience in school as that chance to expand their own capacities and pursue intriguing and important questions and problems. Education can help people become more creative and productive individuals. At the heart of that approach is the realization that every student brings to each question a unique perspective that can be explored and expanded. 

And finally this. What is the purpose of school for kids? Is it learning? Really?

The problem that often arises is that we strip people of any sense of purpose. We give them assignments to do rather than stimulate their curiosity with fascinating questions that provoke and challenge. We hold them responsible to a rigid code of conduct rather than helping them to grow. We say to them, I’ve got a mold, and I’m going to fit you into that mold, and if you don’t fit, I’ll trim something off around the edges. We should be saying: what are your questions, what is your background, have you considered this possibility, have you explored this avenue?

Yes, we should.

The Reform Formula

By

Richard Rothstein:

Klein and Rhee have recently founded an organization called StudentsFirstNY to raise millions of dollars from New York City’s wealthiest. It will support candidates in the city’s upcoming mayoral race who adopt an agenda that puts “the interests of children” over “special interests” (read: teacher unions) and commits to expanding charter schools, eliminating teacher tenure, and using student test scores to evaluate teachers. The group’s mission statement incorporates the fanciful Klein autobiographical tale, saying that “while there are many factors that influence a student’s opportunity to learn, a great teacher can help any student overcome those barriers and realize their full potential.”

Klein’s actual biography tells an important story, just not the one he imagines: It’s more evidence that student achievement mostly reflects the social and economic environment in which children are raised and that the best way to improve academic achievement is to address these conditions directly.

Great read that speaks volumes about the power of words and stories when it comes to building a movement and the money to support it. 

“These Pills are Your Grades”

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Stunning.

The Doctor:

Although A.D.H.D is the diagnosis Dr. Anderson makes, he calls the disorder “made up” and “an excuse” to prescribe the pills to treat what he considers the children’s true ill — poor academic performance in inadequate schools.

“I don’t have a whole lot of choice,” said Dr. Anderson, a pediatrician for many poor families in Cherokee County, north of Atlanta. “We’ve decided as a society that it’s too expensive to modify the kid’s environment. So we have to modify the kid.”

The Parent:

“My kids don’t want to take it, but I told them, ‘These are your grades when you’re taking it, this is when you don’t,’ and they understood,” Ms. Williams said.

The Educator

The superintendent of one major school district in California, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, noted that diagnosis rates of A.D.H.D. have risen as sharply as school funding has declined.

 “It’s scary to think that this is what we’ve come to; how not funding public education to meet the needs of all kids has led to this,” said the superintendent, referring to the use of stimulants in children without classic A.D.H.D. “I don’t know, but it could be happening right here. Maybe not as knowingly, but it could be a consequence of a doctor who sees a kid failing in overcrowded classes with 42 other kids and the frustrated parents asking what they can do. The doctor says, ‘Maybe it’s A.D.H.D., let’s give this a try.’"

Cheap and easy wins the day…again.

Schools vs. Abundance

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I ran across this graphic in a Chris Anderson Wired article from a few years ago, and with a bit of editing, I think it speaks to the dissonance between school (scarcity) and not school (abundance) that I tried to capture in Why School? 

At the district, school, classroom, teacher, and student level, this is a hugely complex shift to navigate. 

Wondering which of those categories to the left you’re finding most difficult to come to terms with and what strategies you have for dealing with them.

Our Numbers Obsession Will Kill Us

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It’s been an assessment oriented day here on the ol’ blog.

From the Boston Globe:

But if Shaffer and other next-generation test designers share a dream of replacing pen-and-paper exams with process-oriented problem-solving exercises, they also share a thorny challenge: The skills they’re trying to measure are much harder to detect and quantify than, say, whether someone knows the quadratic formula. “It’s not just that [complex skills] are harder to isolate—it’s that they don’t exist in isolation,” said Shaffer.

Breaking down these multifaceted skills into testable qualities is difficult, and it’s something educators have been trying and failing to do for more than half a century. The first president of ETS, which has long administered the SAT, set out in 1948 to develop a test that could evaluate a student’s intellectual stamina, ability to get along with others, and so on—but the company eventually concluded it was too hard to measure in a reliable way. More recently, in the late 1980s and ’90s, the Harvard developmental psychologist Howard Gardner participated in an effort to design new kinds of tests in the humanities that could be graded objectively. Ultimately, he found that the nuance required to measure softer skills collided with the demands of standardization. When a test needs to reliably compare students from across schools and districts, “there is pressure to simplify, have ironclad rubrics, essentially move toward multiple choice,” Gardner wrote in an e-mail.

And there you have it. “The nuance required to measure softer skills collided with the demands of standardization.” And god knows we need to standardize because if we don’t, how in the heck are we going to rank kids, evaluate teacher effectiveness, give letter grades to schools, assess teacher preservice programs, and beat Finland?

Here’s the thing: You may think the Common Core is more about critical thinking and skills than about content, a move in the right direction, but it doesn’t matter. The assessments will HAVE TO BE about the quantifiable, since we’ve done such a good job at raising the stakes around how the results will be used.

We’re borked.

According to the late Gerald Bracey, who conducted extensive research and authored numerous books about the misuse of data on education among policymakers, politicians, and the media, a measure of some of the most valuable achievements that test results cannot capture include: creativity, critical thinking, resilience, motivation, persistence, curiosity, endurance, reliability, enthusiasm, self-discipline, leadership, resourcefulness, and a sense of wonder [Emphasis mine].

The immeasurable. 

James Paul Gee:

“[Historically], the testing industry, because it was pragmatic, only tested what it was easy to test. But as a parent, I don’t want you to just test what’s easy to test, I want you to test what’s important to test.”

Sadly, that ain’t gonna happen. 

“Agreeing” on Student Achievement

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From today’s New York Times:

The Chicago teachers’ strike was prompted in part by a fierce disagreement over how much student test scores will weigh in a new teacher evaluation system mandated by state law. That teachers’ unions in much of the country now agree that student achievement should count in evaluations at all reflects a major change from the past, when it was often argued that teaching was an “art” that could not be rigorously evaluated or, even more outrageously, that teachers should not be held accountable for student progress.

A couple of quick points.

1. One could argue that “unions in much of the country now agree” because they were strong armed into doing so by Race to the Top bribes of stimulus money to states who accepted these new teacher evaluation systems. Fighting it was a no win for the unions which have been the target of intense and focused attacks over the last few years. 

2. No one ever argued that teachers should not be held accountable for student progress. 

3. Most importantly, think about this piece: “unions in much of the country now agree that student achievement should count in evaluations.” Since it’s so obviously clear that “student achievement” only comes in the guise of test scores, I guess the rest of what accounts for learning doesn’t matter much.

One of my goal in the coming months is to keep being the rhetoric police when it comes to the way the mainstream media talks about this stuff. 

Why Does Algebra Need to be “Tackled”

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From the headline on down, this article on “A New Way to Tackle College Algebra” just grates on me. I don’t want to continue the debate as to whether or not algebra should even be something we make kids take as a course; there’s enough of that going on elsewhere. But what I do want to point out is the seemingly uninspired reasoning that lies behind sitting kids down in front of computers to learn algebra because too many of them are struggling with it in traditional classrooms.

It’s the last quote that has me scratching my head:

Dr. Moore said that he hoped U.T.-Arlington’s pass rate for algebra would eventually increase to 75 percent, and added that he believed savings would come from students not having to repeat the course.

“In my gut,” he said, “I know this has to work.”

Ok, so first of all, 75 percent is the “hope.” And what about the other 25%? What, they don’t really need to pass it?

Second, does he care at all whether or not the students learned anything about Algebra that might actually be relevant to their lives? Or is the goal just to “pass the course” in whatever form that takes.

And finally, “has to work” for what end? To avoid the embarrassment of having a school where less than half the kids get a C or better in the class?

Please tell me if you read this differently, but I see this guy sitting in his leather chair worrying about nothing else other than getting kids through algebra. I get no sense that there is anything wondrous or beautiful or interesting about the process. It’s all about “improving results” or “improving students’ success." 

Blech.

The way we talk about this stuff has to change. The value we place on the exercise has to change. I can’t imagine any kid would read this article and think, "Man, I can’t wait to go to UT-Arlington and take algebra." 

And pay for it to boot.

The Thin Value Proposition

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I think Chris really nails it here:

For-profit education assumes a thin value proposition of the promise of educational technology, using these tools as a way to automate and teacher-proof teaching while having the effect of creating a more standardized curriculum (which will most likely be tied to a standardized assessment) that may allow students more ability to proceed at their own pace but will, in the end, be more restrictive in terms of student ownership over their own learning. That is a profound failure of the promise of educational technology.

It’s becoming more and more apparent in my travels that what teachers and administrators all over the place are feeling is a continued narrowing of student outcomes to those things that are easily measured which can then be used to evaluate anything and everything about schools. The idea that there is any real concern about “student ownership over their own learning” on the part of policy makers or for-profit planners is becoming laughable on its face.

But here’s the thing: a few days ago I listened to two rising seniors in high school welcome back their teachers at an opening day with two very moving, articulate speeches. They talked with emotion about the teachers who they will never forget, the bus drivers who eased their transitions to school, the administrators who have guided them at important points in their lives. They never once talked about how well prepared they felt for the test. Never once did they suggest that the most important things they are taking with them from high school are grades or content knowledge or problem solving skills, all of which are no doubt a part of the equation for “success.” The value of school they spoke about came directly from the relationships, the encouragement, the patience, the nudging, the inspiration that came from the adults in the room, all of which will serve them to a greater degree than than passing the test.

That’s what we will lose if we see technology only as a way to “automate and teacher-proof teaching,” if we envision it like some as a low-cost way to deliver the curriculum to get better scores and “higher student achievement.” That’s a deeply scary scenario.

The “Immeasurable” Part 2

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I’ve been thinking about ways to represent the emphasis on the measurable that I wrote about a few weeks ago, and I’ve come up with this graph which, I think, comes close to capturing the problem right now. 

What I’m trying to get at is that our school assessment lives primarily in the bottom left part of that graph, and that we rarely if ever get to the “immeasurable” stuff that resides toward the top right. To put it another way, we focus in schools on that which is quantifiable when, I think, our real value as places of learning rests in that messy stuff that isn’t.

What do you think? Am I capturing something worth capturing here? Am I missing something? 

Wrong Direction

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I’m not picking on Knewton since this language mimics the pitch of others in their space, but when the VP of Sales says this, I just have to shake my head:

Knewton can make a precise recommendation on what a student should work on next, and even the best format (modality) for that student to consume it most effectively.

Which of course trains a student to wait to be told what to learn and how to learn it. Perfect for the world we live in.

#thatisall

Lies

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From the inimitable Deb Meier:

The pundits say, over and over, that only a better-educated workforce will save us. People believe it. Actually, it’s a lie. Plain and simple. (Litmus test: If it were really true, we’d see massive support for free education all the way through college and beyond.)

And, later:

As schools become part-and-parcel of the “market” system, operated by business entrepreneurs with an eye on their own agenda, and whose kids go to school elsewhere, we’ve lost one of the last public spaces…

Schools as the commons has rarely been a reality. But reinventing them as the “commons” is the right fight at the right moment in our history. Let’s not let it slip away under the hammer of billions of corporate dollars. I’m exhausted, Diane, even thinking about how hard it will be defeat their agenda.

Thinking…

The Sorry State of Standardized Writing

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A couple of items from the world of writing and assessment have been niggling at me of late.

First, news that the Hewlett Foundation is sponsoring a $100,000 competition to create automated essay scoring software that, in theory at least, will do as good or better job of assessing student writing on standardized tests than the current human graders do. I get the reasoning behind this. Current “scoring mills” have turned test essay readers into skimmers, and the reality that the more kids write regardless of quality the better they score are well documented. And as currently structured, there is no way current assessments do anything to improve student writing. As always, it’s a time and money issue, but my initial reaction to this is if we value writing enough to make sure every child can do it reasonably well, we should also value the time and effort it takes to evaluate it reasonably well.

I remember the long, long hours of reading and responding to tens of thousands of essays during my English teacher days. The turnaround wasn’t always fast. The notes and marks and narrative comments on the page went largely unread despite the fact that I didn’t give a grade to most pieces. I spent as much time as I could holding conversations with kids about their writing both one on one and in small peer groups. The best assessment and advice came in that analysis and feedback where we had a chance to reflect and experiment with the writing. I know that many of my students learned to really appreciate failure in that process because it was a safe place to try things, to push their practice without any stakes, high or low. I know at the end of the day that every child, including my own, should reach some level of expression that allows them to communicate ideas clearly and compellingly, but I also know that the paths to that place are varied and filled with stops and starts. It’s a highly complex process, much more than putting comma in the right place and simply varying sentence structure (though both of those can’t hurt.)

Having said that, it’s scary to see what passes for acceptable writing on the state tests. Yesterday, Michael Winerip’s piece in the New York Times showed examples from the state scoring guide of writing from the state high school English Regents exam that should be scored a 1 on a 2-point scale:

These two Charater have very different mind Sets because they are creative in away that no one would imagen just put clay together and using leaves to create art.

I’m wondering why that would even get one point. Are we really satisfied that student is sufficiently ready to communicate in writing to the larger world? I get the tension here, too:

If the standard is set too high, so many will fail — including children with special education needs and students for whom English is a second language — that there will be a public outcry.

But if the standard is set too low, the result is a diploma that has little meaning.

But will machine scored essays fix this? The Hewlett Foundation seems to think so:

“Better tests support better learning,” says Barbara Chow, Education Program Director at the Hewlett Foundation. “Rapid and accurate automated essay scoring will encourage states to include more writing in their state assessments. And the more we can use essays to assess what students have learned, the greater the likelihood they’ll master important academic content, critical thinking, and effective communication.”

Look, I’m on board that kids should write more, and that learning what a student has learned by having her write is better than having her fill in bubbles for questions she can use her phones to answer if we let her. But here’s the problem: this is more about money than it is about serving kids well. Let’s be honest, while it may be less consistent and more complex, and while it may take more time and money to get it right, human graders have a distinct advantage over machines when it comes to writing: emotion.  I love the way the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) puts it:

Automated assessment programs do not respond as human readers. While they may promise consistency, they distort the very nature of writing as a complex and context-rich interaction between people. They simplify writing in ways that can mislead writers to focus more on structure and grammar than on what they are saying by using a given structure and style.

Here’s what I know will happen once we move to the machines: we’ll help kids learn how to write what the machines want instead of focusing on the power and beauty and uniqueness of human communication. I can name a slew of brilliant writers who would probably fail the test because they wrote in a unique, compelling style that went far beyond our traditional thinking around “good writing.” Sure, in the name of efficiency we can choose to set the bar low and reward kids for putting together a sentence that’s barely readable but conveys a simple thought regardless. But why wouldn’t we choose something better? 

In the end, I’m getting tired of “efficiencies” when it comes to education. But that’s a larger discussion of priorities that really needs to be left to another day…

A Couple of Bold Ideas at Educon

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The past couple of Educon days at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia were, as always, packed with fun catching up with old friends (and meeting new ones) but, as always, also filled with conversations that have me thinking more about what “reform” looks like and what bold schools might do to get there. It was fun not to lead a session this year and just be an attendee (though I really need to stop putting stuffed animals on my head). Anyway, just want to share out a couple of what I think are compelling narratives around change to start the week.

First, I’d heard of the iSchool in NYC but as with a lot of other innovative schools, I’d never had the chance to get my brain around what they do. I’ll admit to a certain bias for learning the lessons of schools that have been in place for decades that have made a real shift toward more progressive learning. The iSchool is going into it’s fourth year. Nevertheless, the teachers and principals who presented two sessions at Educon made a great case for inquiry/challenge based learning in way that fits the “doing both” spirit of the bold schools I’ve written about. To get some sense of the culture, check out this 5-minute video on “Disastercamp” where students attempted to answer the question “How can first responders to disasters use social media to improve communication and coordination for disaster relief?” And here is another, the 16 Module, where students dive into the question “What does it mean to be 16?” It’s the type of learning that I’d like for my own kids.

But here, perhaps, is the best part. When it comes to prepping for the NY State Regents test, students get access to self-paced, online test prep courses they work through on their own that is then supported in the classroom. That means way more time is freed up to do the real learning work of inquiry in the classroom with teachers who are learners as well. (In one of the sessions, one of the iSchool teachers said they basically start with a theme for a class and then create the curriculum as they go, that they can innovate on the fly which, to me at least, suggests they are learners first, teachers second.) Interestingly, that’s the same approach I heard from Knewton a bit ago, and I’m starting to wonder what’s really wrong with tacking in that direction during the transition we’re in. I do find it kind of scary that former NYC schools chancellor Joel Klein doesn’t take issue with this either. If we’re going to be stuck with the test, why not just offload it to technology and spend our time in more valuable learning pursuits? (That’s worthy of a post in and of itself down the road.)

And here’s the other story that I find interesting: I had a chance to chat with Chris Walsh who is the Director of Innovation and Design for the New Tech Network of schools. They’ve either started or refashioned 86 schools across the country at this point and they have an eye on 30 or so more next year. It’s a pretty interesting model for change, especially in the way that communities, not schools, fund their work with New Tech. Basically, through fund raisers, donations and other contributions, the community “invests” in the change that happens at the school which, no doubt, helps those changes weather the problems of leaders leaving, pressures from state governments, etc.  In theory, it allows schools to shift in measured, sustainable ways. I haven’t had the chance to dive into all that New Tech offers in terms of PBL and technology to know if their curriculum is truly “bold,” but that’s an interesting model nonetheless, and makes me wonder how to drive more community investment in change.

As always, the great thing about Educon is the sincerity you sense of everyone in the building in trying to figure out what’s best for kids in terms of learning and schools. No one’s trying to sell you anything or promote themselves or make it about anything other than figuring it all out for their unique spaces and for the larger community. Looking forward to the conversations continuing.

The Rise of State Schools

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So this pretty much sums it up as well it can be summed up right now:

U.S. schools under the jurisdiction of state and federal governments are now scripted processes that view knowledge as static capital, students as passive and empty vessels, and teachers as compliant conduits for state-approved content. The accountability paradigm is antithetical to human agency and autonomy and thus to democracy, but it serves the needs of the status quo and the ruling elite; in effect, accountability paradigms driving compulsory education are oppressive.

Amen.

Easier vs. Better

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Look, I can get to why schools look and act the way they do. They were built to do a certain thing…“educate” every child…at a certain time when folks didn’t have a lot of easy access to “quality” content or instruction. It was a monumental undertaking, and regardless of the fact that the founders of the system wanted to create factory workers instead of problem solving, creative, collaborative, lifelong learners, I have no doubt that a lot of people (excluding John Dewey) thought “yep, this is the best thing for the kids in our society. They’ll all get an education if we line ‘em up and nudge them through, and we’ll all be better for it.”

Or something like that.

But now the premise has changed. We’re getting more and more easy access to “quality” content and instruction (if we’re literate enough to know it when we see it), and that means that some of those once fine ideas for “getting an education” just don’t fit any more. Many of those old answers are feeling less and less useful when it comes to actually developing learners out of our kids instead of workers.

Yet we stick to them. And I know the reasons are many and complex (it’s what we know and what we expect schools to be,) but I think at the end of the day, we’re loathe to change because it’s just easier this way. It’s not what best for our kids, but it’s what’s easiest for us. (I know…a lot of you are thinking “there ain’t nothing easy about this,” and you’re right. Caring for kids and doing right by them educationally in whatever system we have is hard, hard work.)

But I’m thinking it’s time to call some of these old school habits out and ask, “are we really doing what’s best for kids, or are we doing what’s easiest for us?”

Like:

  • Is it better for our kids to be grouped by chronological age, or is it just easier for us?
  • Is it better for our kids to separate out the disciplines, or is it just easier for us?
  • Is it better for our kids to give every one of them pretty much the same curriculum, or is it just easier for us?
  • Is it better for our kids to turn off all of their technology in school, or is it just easier for us? 
  • Is it better for our kids that we assess everyone the same way, or is it just easier for us?
  • Is it better for our kids for us to decide what they should learn and how they should learn it, or is it just easier for us? 

You get the idea. Add yours below.

So, are we in the business of easy? Or do we want to find ways to do this education thing in ways that best serve our kids given the realities of this moment?

Just askin’.