Bridging Differences

Dear Diane,

I don’t even trust myself to write standards (of the sort that can be specs for tests) for one school, one district, one state—much less the whole nation! I’m bound to have a better idea a week later.

And, given those who are considered the experts these days on matters of schooling, I cringe at the very idea.

I think it would be fair to argue that an institution that is funded by public monies must defend itself on the grounds that it serves, first and foremost, a public purpose—one which by its nature is held in common by all citizens, voters, and their offspring.

Here’s my suggestion. They must serve to prepare future voters to be knowledgeable and skilled citizens by the time they reach voting age—smart enough to preserve, protect, and improve the democracy of which they now are full members. We need a national “bar mitzvah” ceremony that seriously stops and takes stock of how well it has used children’s time (12-13 years of involuntary schooling) and the public’s money.

There is no reason the young can’t be offered “more,” or that we will all agree on precisely what “habits of mind” a voter needs to decide on matters of enormous complexity! But I’d have to connect the dots if I wanted to make it mandatory, not just accessible. There’s a difference, for example, between preparing future citizens to understand “the economy,” and preparing them for a specific job in it.

We cannot abandon democracy just because we are a long way from where we need to be, not to mention a long way from ever having discussed what it is, much less what it takes to nourish it. But that’s the direction—first and foremost—I want us to head in. That’s the argument I want us to engage in—school by school, community by community, state by state. Hopefully, we will come up with interesting and different answers. Meanwhile, we can also consider how we could go about assessing it down the road.

Here’s a shocking idea along such lines: It’s not mathematicians who need to decide how much and what kind of math we need! We need citizens with many different forms of expertise to weigh in on the kind/level of mathematical problems 18-year-olds should be able to make sense of. Then mathematicians can help us lay out ways to get there. If calculus is more important than statistics, let’s hear the argument.

If we give up on democracy every time it seems inefficient or even absurd (as Churchill put it), there would be no trace of it left on earth.

Yes, NAEP can, as you suggest, Diane, help us in the process by assessing K-12 students in a wide range of ways—and perhaps samples of other citizens of varying occupations—about what they know, make sense of and can demonstrate. To do that well we have to change the way we think of assessment. Instead of using a technology built on ranking, let’s use NAEP’s sampling as a way to provide better understanding of the problems. Having some portions that can be repeated for decades for comparison purposes is wise, but it should not be the be-all-and-end-all. And, as with all tests, we need to consider the ways it can be abused—the dangers—ahead of time. We need information as a tool for informing the public debate, not for enforcing solutions.

Yes, Diane, the Broader, Bolder proposal is a huge step in the right direction.

It’s not only in schooling policy that we face a dangerous fork in the road. Our disrespect for genuine expertise (the absence of any school people in the current policy debates) is mirrored in every field (even in the appointment of a financier to head GM!). So, too, the range of expertise. We confuse the role of citizen vs. expert, but even more dangerously we confuse the role of both in our capitulation to fiscally powerful private interest groups. This goes for policy discourse in many fields—not just education, but health, energy, and on and on.

The emperor wears no clothes—more charters, teachers paid for test results, and a national test are solutions that distract us. Not one of these is backed by “evidence”—even if we agreed that test scores were the purpose of education.

Next week, let’s imagine we could mandate a dozen or fewer books that rarely get read by anyone but teachers and educators but deserve a wider public audience?

Deborah

Posted by Deborah Meier at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

The current effort to develop national standards in English and math is something to which we will surely pay close attention. I understand that you reject consequential curricular decisions made outside the school, but my view is that “it depends.” That's my view of lots of things. Ideas that sound good in theory may turn out to be even better or worse in practice. If you live long enough, you become a devotee of “it depends.”

National standards, in my view, are a good idea, but it all depends on whether they are done well, whether they leave room for teachers to teach without dictating how to teach, whether they truly raise standards of practice across the nation, and whether they avoid narrowing the curriculum. In this country, with our strong tradition of federalism and localism, there are more ways to do national standards badly than to do them well.

The promise of national standards is equity and excellence. Equity because national standards should assure that students across the country, no matter where they live, will encounter the same expectations. Excellence because national standards should (hopefully) identify the learning goals that are common in high-performing nations.

I grant you that this is a tough order to fill. To make equity real, the resources available in poor communities must be sufficient (what used to be called “opportunity-to-learn" standards). One can’t expect kids in poor areas to learn more just because a document got published, nor can one expect kids to do better because officials set the bar higher. Indeed, if performance is already low, setting the bar higher will cause more students to fail.

And it seems paradoxical, if not impossible, to fulfill a mandate that serves both equity and excellence. Maybe this is a circle that can be squared by wordsmiths, but not by most teachers and schools.

So, I grant the good intentions of the groups that hope to create national standards. I know why they want to do it, and I wish them well. At the same time, I am cautious, perhaps even wary, because I see how many terrible state standards already exist and fear that the same dumbed-down, vague blather might be foisted upon the nation and called “standards.”

We will watch as this project develops. But in the meanwhile there was good news this past week. The group that we both support—the Broader, Bolder coalition—released its plan for accountability, after briefing U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan. This is indeed a valuable set of ideas that could easily be folded into the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as NCLB rides off into the sunset.

I especially like the proposal for state-directed school inspection teams. People ask, “What could we rely on if we didn’t do all this testing?” Here is a good answer. Establish state inspection teams that regularly visit schools to survey the quality of teaching and learning. Use these inspections to identify schools in need of extra help, and then send in the extra help. A number of other nations use inspection teams, because seasoned educators can diagnose problems and come up with valuable assistance far better than a test alone.

What do you think?

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

The diverse views we get in response to our exchanges is a reminder about why we should not expect one right answer to the question of “why educate?" We need enough consensus to persuade the public that it should be paid for with public dollars, and enough leeway to let many views flourish. In some ways that’s an impossible task, but it’s at least a “direction” I want to keep us struggling for, rather than settling for whoever’s in power in D.C. setting curriculum and assessment for the whole nation!

Distributing such powers includes acknowledging different answers to the what and the how. More local control promises more variety (and more sense of ownership)—if nowhere near as much as I would actually like. But it too has its down-side, its trade-offs which I also need to frankly face. This is at least as true of schooling as many other policy questions—like health, transportation, energy, and myriad other issues.

Which is why I enjoy Paul Hoss and John Doe’s unremitting and single-minded criticisms. Even if John Doe may be a front man, or provocateur, who cares?

Paul raises the question that many of my friendly critics do. But “you” are the exception—think of all those other people who would carry out your ideas irresponsibly or stupidly, etc. It’s a familiar argument—one of some merit in arguing on behalf of democracy in general. One answer: Think of all the dumb policies we’ve arrived at in this nation democratically. Is that an argument for trying another system? Second, even my ideas are better for having to listen to and abide by what others think as well—to have to “persuade” rather than mandate. Third, if I want more people to be “like me,” then I have to allow them to not be like me, I have to try to imagine the settings in which both adults and kids can best learn from each other, and arrive at independent and free choices. Within limits. Its those limits that seem to me to be the interesting question—in a democracy who sets "limits," and how do we set them?

John Doe seems partly to misread my not-so-cleverly stated concern about whether “standards” are a euphemism for a national curriculum—where all schools are on the same page at the same time. The other part of my argument is that such a curriculum takes the adventure out of teaching, and without that adventure the kids miss too much of what is at the heart of intellectual achievement. It weeds out teachers to whom doing the same narrow curriculum year after year is stultifying, and it doesn’t help those with the intellectual liveliness to engage children’s minds. So it fails my test on all grounds.

Alas, my California friend couldn’t switch schools, or even cities or states if we had a national curriculum in order to find a more compatible intellectual climate. Nor could I as a parent.

So here again, means and ends connect. The ends I’m after require the risks involved in encouraging people to expose kids to adults who have different approaches to the meaning of history and literature, who can spend far more time on one aspect of science and skim at most other important topics, who can pick up on students' interests and shift direction, or use the occasion of a hurricane, flood, election, Supreme Court controversy to focus attention in their particular field.

But it is a risk. Of course, democracy itself is based on such a risk. That’s why we get all these absurd balancing institutions, parliamentary rules, etc. They each cause us trouble at times, a waste of precious time and sometimes we have to change them to get anything done. But they are safeguards. “Getting things done” may be easier in a dictatorship of one sort or another, but we have decided that the drawbacks are greater than the benefits. ( Still, Canada is a democracy and does it differently….)

Democracy rests on an argument, one that we have not done such a great job at convincing young people of or older ones either. Our Constitutional “balance of powers” and basic human inertia has saved us from ourselves, time after time. But it would be useful if we understood the trade-offs well enough to design a school “system” that took them seriously—and helped kids and teachers tackle them in real time and real life. Always, also, keeping in mind the risks, and doing our best to explore ways to minimize them. When and why does consensus sometimes work better? Or a unicameral legislative body? (For me, at present, for example, the issue of maximizing choice runs into the issue of strong neighborhoods and diversity and how we can have both.)

Meantime, I believe we are headed in a dangerous direction by ignoring the risks of a national curriculum—which is really what’s at stake. The lure? Higher test scores, or better educated adults, standardization or standards?

Deb

Posted by at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

Ah, data. A new study from the Center on Education Policy finds that state tests scores have been rising steadily since the passage of NCLB. But the report is based only on state tests, which are notoriously unreliable and even invalid because of the test-prepping that every district is doing. We should have learned by now that when state scores soar, but NAEP scores don’t, trust NAEP. It is the audit test. No one can practice for NAEP.

I am sure that you, like me, have been inundated with reports about how charter schools will save American education, especially because of their ability to impose military-style discipline and to accept “no excuses” (e.g., poverty, poor health, other disadvantages). How many times have we heard that the “no excuses” schools have proved that they can close the achievement gap because they are so much better than regular public schools?

Last week, Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes released a major national study of charter schools that examined the performance of more than half the nation’s charter schools. It found that only 17 percent of charters recorded improvement that was better than the local public schools. Another 37 percent showed gains that were significantly below those of their local public schools. In the remaining 46 percent, student performance was indistinguishable from that of local schools. Overall, the performance of 83 percent of charters was either the same or worse than the local public schools.

The lead researcher, economist Margaret Raymond, said that “If this study shows anything, it shows that we’ve got a two-to-one margin of bad charters to good charters. That’s a red flag.” The study was funded by foundations known for their support for charters, among them the Walton Family Foundation. I give Raymond a blue ribbon for intellectual honesty; it is not often that we see a report or study that conflicts with the political agenda of its funders.

Charter boosters Andrew Rotherham of Education Sector and Richard Whitmire, former editor of USA Today, wrote in response to Raymond’s report that it is time to close down low-performing charters. They noted that there are about 4,600 charters operating currently, but only 300 of them are part of a high-performing charter network. Undoubtedly there are some others, beyond the 300, that are successful, but by Raymond’s analysis, more than a third of current charters are worse than their neighboring public school and most are no better.

Yet because of the constant hype in the media by charter promoters, most of us have been sold a bill of goods. That includes President Obama. He has called for states to lift their caps on charters so that we can have thousands more of them. This would allow poor kids to escape their “bad” public school to attend an even worse charter school.

If the charter sector doesn’t clean up its act, and if the federal government doesn’t take a strong stand on behalf of quality, we will be inundated with even worse schools than we have now. The only difference is that they will be managed by private entrepreneurs collecting public dollars.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 1:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (30) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

Yes, it seems so obvious to you and me. Using their metrics, the boosters of mayoral control can hardly point to any trend that supports their claims. On NAEP data, the two biggie mayoral control cities show no change, and on graduation data, NYC shows some improvement, but Chicago shows none, even if we go by the city's data. If we look at the data in the recent RAND study, it confirms many others—charter schools do no better re. test scores than their comparable neighborhood schools—some better, some worse. The data on merit pay don’t exist, of course—and it’s already a national priority. But that most comparable jobs use “performance-based” pay just isn’t a fact. The Economic Policy Institute has published a report on the subject that hardly is conclusive, but the logic suggests serious trade-offs that none of the folks in D.C. seem to be even aware of. If you do X, there are “unintended” but inevitable consequences—especially if you’re not even aware of them. (As for the charge that local control leads to more corruption? Having the right friends in the right place may lead to millions under mayoral control vs. hundreds under local control.)

School reformers perhaps should be required to publish “cautions” the way drugs do—if you do this, watch out because….(In bigger print, however.) In fact, it’s an essential “habit of mind” of a well-educated person—paying attention to trade-offs.

Regarding the kind of national standards being proposed is really a national curriculum. One of the arguments for it is a give-away: with national standards, if a kid moves from school x to y, he’ll barely miss a heartbeat. Again, no concerns over unintended consequences—teacher burn-out at the very least. There are forms of standards that could avoid this—if we feel the need for them—such as those CPESS modeled (“habits of mind”) alongside some broad sweeping propositions in each field. More like the Advanced Placement English test (at least the way it used to be). It didn’t require everyone to read the same books or spout the same answers. It directed “attention” to certain themes and ideas so that students could use what they had read and studied to come up with their own responses to timeless issues in literature. Ditto for history or science. These wouldn’t be “specs” for test producers, but specs for schools to consider in designing curriculum and assessments.

The class-size debate isn’t on the “reform” agenda. But it has been assisted by two excellent books. An EPI (Economic Policy Institute) book in the form of a debate and a wonderful study and brief in favor of smaller classes by Garrett Delavan, "The Teacher’s Attention."

NAEP then could do the deeper and broader job of seeing how these play out over time, including a look eight years down the line—in college, on the job, as a voter.

I had a fascinating conversation with a teacher who has been teaching physics for 15 years in L.A. and the surrounding area. She teaches 200 students on most days (in groups of 40 or so), at least three of the classes have the same test-prep curriculum. She feels bored. Ready to “move on”—but to what? I asked her to describe what she wishes she could do—even if it were unrealistic. Her wishes? Small classes so she could explore science more deeply with kids, the opportunity to do some interdisciplinary teaching with colleagues, to be able to approach physics from directions that might not match the state exam, to expand her own intellectual horizons alongside of and separate from her students. What kid wouldn’t say, “amen”?

In such settings, a teacher with 15 years of experience wouldn’t be at the end of her career (and wits) in the classroom. Imagine schools, in collaboration with universities, as the site for teacher-training—prolonged apprenticeships. My friend would then also be teaching other colleagues and would-be colleagues and learning from some interesting scientists on campus.

This was the “reform” idea of the late '80s. But it’s getting harder, not easier, to imagine this happening today. But, you ask—how did we move so far from this vision in such a short time, so that we now have a bipartisan plan for schools that make the old factory-model look innovative? Partial answer: We left practitioners like me and educational scholars like you out of the loop and instead turned to financiers and lawyers!

Deb

Posted by Deborah Meier at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (24) | TrackBacks (0)