Bridging Differences

Dear Diane,

You are so right—both about language misuse and the idea that we need to pay teachers, parents and kids for test scores! We may disagree a bit on the vocational ed issue—more on that at a later time. I'm going to digress for a long moment (1,000 words) to respond to some of our readers' inquiries and arguments. Readers are urged to go to the comment section (see below) and read them yourselves, and then add your two cents—or more.

Thought one. I asked Erin Johnson to give me countries (excluding city-states like Hong Kong and Singapore) that consistently outperformed the US. Here's the list: Finland, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Netherlands and Korea.

Erin says this is based on 2000 and 2003 test scores. Of course, we are assuming that the data is trustworthy: that all populations are included, that approximately the same percentage of students are still in school at the age at which the tests are given, that the translations are equally good etc, etc. Also, one needs to believe that such test are measuring more than I think they do. But still…. (Note “Instructivist”: even thermometers are not always a reliable way to tell if you are sick.)

Interestingly, in that list of six, all are very small compared to the USA and, except for Korea (I assume South Korea), they are (to the best of my knowledge) all advanced welfare states (compared to the USA) in terms of health care, etc. Income differentials are also less extreme. This might mean that tests are measuring other qualities that indirectly affect schooling. (See article by Lawrence Mishel and Richard Rothstein in The American Prospect, October 2007). Rothstein also comments that differences may be real but small. The top 15 may all differ by a few more or less questions right. Also, just which of these—surely not all?—outperform our economy?

Two. Any nasty cracks about lawyers, businessmen and 22-year-olds running NYC's Department of Education—which several readers chided us for—are not an attack on any of these categories of people. It's just that while I wouldn't feel comfortable if I were asked to be in charge of responding to the current banking crisis or reorganizing legal training, I'm troubled at how comfortable lawyers and bankers are at making decisions in my field. I think my opinions on both business and law are worth hearing—and I'm glad to hear theirs on K-12 schooling. But I shudder to realize that they are literally "in charge" of it. They fail both the vision and experience test for being “president” of schooling.

Three. Now for the fascinating issue that Daniel Polansky raised, and which perhaps Cal was also suggesting. That there is something unreal about my claiming that all (or almost all) students can engage in "high level" thinking. You've got me, Daniel! I fell into the trap of using a short-cut phrase I actually hate, and for just the reason Daniel aptly notes. If there's a "high," it's only because there's a "low." It's the dilemma we face whenever we insist on comparative terminology. No matter how fast the kids get in line to come in from recess there will also be exactly the same number at the end of the line—one. And one at the front, and so on and so forth.

What we have grown accustomed to calling "high level thinking"—and which somehow most rich kids are assumed to possess—is the smarts to think "abstractly," to be interested and able to be playful about abstract ideas, to pursue puzzling anomalies with curiosity and tenacity, to find the world interesting and to wonder "how come" and "so what"? (And to feel entitled to be taken seriously.)

Properly taught we can all be far more musical than we realize. Some will even have a knack that places them on a very different level of "play”—giftedness. But there's no basic divide between folks who are good with “their hands" vs. "their heads." Read Mike Rose's "The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker." There is no doubt that I was smarter and wiser than the 5-year-olds in my class—but there were “abstract” observations that my students made that pushed me intellectually. They weren't being "cute," they were playing with ideas that pushed my adult thinking, to a “higher level"? Read my first book, "The Power of Their Ideas," for more on this subject. I could go on forever. But it's a capacity that is insufficiently exercised in our schools, even for kids at the top of the socioeconomic ladder.

So much of our language leads us to make unnecessary comparisons that lead us into shallow traps. Like Daniel, I've been annoyed at the rhetoric of "all children can learn." It's an incomplete sentence. A good sound bite. But, learn what? Mice learn, too. It turns out they, too, learn how to behave—get in line, raise their paws, walk silently through the maze, etc.

I am arguing that virtually all humans can learn the same "kind" of stuff that rich kids do. (The rich can learn more, too!) But, yes, it takes a different kind of setting than the one I sadly see in most of our schools. Too often, elementary school is not a place where children can explore ideas and make powerful observations. Few are the schools in which “Ignorance” (like disagreement) is prized. It used to drive me crazy how kids who couldn't be dragged away from an activity that fascinated them at age 5 were considered ADD, unable to sit still and learn a year later. Ever wonder why parents in so many schools greet their children at 3 p.m. with questions about whether they were "good" in school today?

Given the reality of life, can we get kids to learn all the things we want them to by 18? But 18 is only about 1/5 of our life span. I only got interested in math at the age of 35. Big deal. But what I never doubted was that I was smart enough to do some things well and smart enough to join most of the conversations that would shape the future.

That's the strand in "progressive" education that appealed to me.

Diane?

Deborah

Posted by Deborah Meier at 8:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

In the past, say, a century or so ago, school reformers used "democracy" as the magic word. Whatever they were doing, whether it was imposing vocational tracking in the new junior high schools or using IQ tests to sort students for their future occupations, the reformers said that it was all to promote "democracy." Each child would learn where he or she fit best into the social order and could then make their appropriate contribution, whether as professionals (the tiny few) or housewives or clerical workers or manual workers, and so on.

Now, as you point out, the buzz word of the day is "equality." So New York City has a "chief equality officer," an economist who has designed a plan to pay poor kids to raise their test scores. This, he presumes, will lead to equality. On Monday, USA Today had a big story about how several districts across the nation are now paying kids to raise their scores or paying them to take AP classes or paying them to get a passing grade in an AP course. I am not an economist, so perhaps I am just not smart enough to understand the nuances of this plan, but I wonder: Suppose the policymakers decide that this experiment works. How much will it cost to pay every low-performing student to raise their test scores? How much will it cost to pay every student who agrees to take an AP course? Right now, these programs are being funded by private philanthropies and businesses. Has anyone figured out what it would cost to turn these programs into public policy?

I have deep objections to this mantra of cash-for-scores. I think it is wrong to pay kids cash-for-scores. I do believe in incentives, just not these incentives. I believe that grades are an appropriate incentive; so is the expectation that good work in school will prepare one to enter higher education. Those are education appropriate incentives. They require the student to learn the value of deferring instant gratification. Paying them cash to raise their scores does not do that.

And as psychologist Barry Schwartz of Swarthmore wrote in The New York Times several months back, 'if we have to pay people to do the right thing, no one will do the right thing unless they are paid to do it.' Down the drain will be any idea of intrinsic motivation, as well as any sense of civic duty.

Then there is the question of exactly what these tests mean and why they matter so much. Imagine that the incentivists carry the day. We will have created an educational system that strives mightily (and maybe even successfully) to teach kids to check off the right box when given a choice of four. Pray tell, in what line of work will that skill be valuable in the future? I don't know.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

You’ve quoted the part we most agree about from your book "Left Back." It’s amazing how much flows from that agreement. I suspect it’s this core that immunizes us against the "reign of (soft) terror" that we’re witnessing in the most innovative school districts, such as NYC.

In the 1980s many of us celebrated what we thought was the final victory—at last—of Dewey over Thorndike. Alas, we were dead wrong. It was a momentary blip. But, Diane, you were also right that progressivism came in many guises, including forms of Thorndyke’ism, and virtually all guises were far more hopeful about the uses of testing than they should have been. And some still are.

In opposing elitism we are both in the same camp. But what an “elite” education means is what we often argue about. I think we’d both agree that it is not necessarily what the particular elite of a particular moment in history designed for their children. Knowing Latin (regardless of its other virtues) was esteemed precisely because it separated one group out from the masses; similarly being “well-educated” meant speaking a particular dialect—not because it was superior but because it defined one’s status and class. Technology had no status in my youth, but today the very rich think it’s cool. And so on.

Each generation needs to rethink what ALL its citizens—from the least to the most advantaged—require. We can call that essential The Academics, followed by lists of traditional lore, or we can redefine the meaning of academia in ways that capture the passions of the young. But in either case, we must defend it against a largely thoughtless and heartless world. Including too many elite academics. As Gerald Graff reminds us, many academics seem as "clueless" about its broader value (see "Clueless in Academe") as their students do.

We are all capable of high levels of intellectual inquiry, of entering into the important arguments that shape the world, of playing with the important concepts, and of being creative and critical in a wide range of different arenas of life. This is as true for the cosmologist as the cosmetician, as teacher JP affirms in his "comments" on the blog that you quote.

Ted Sizer was right, I think, in noting that the most intellectually rigorous class he observed in his study of the American high school several decades ago ("Horace’s Compromise") happened to be a particular shop class, and the least rigorous happened to be an "academic" honor’s class. Anything that smacks of being "practical" is too often scorned, and anything that seems "impractical" valued. What an odd way to frame the argument to the young!

The what and how of schooling is where I want to remain flexible, while also firmly stating that the intellectual life is not reserved for an elite and can and must rest in everyone’s hands. Our letter-writer Cal is just plain wrong—and I say this as someone who has, I believe, "proven" the point—at least to my satisfaction.

But what to do about "reformers" (maybe we should rename them "deformers"?) who use their extraordinary power to rush through one after another measure that undermine such optimism about democracy?? They are on a different track entirely. Of late the buzz word for taking such Orwellian 1984 measures is "equality." Bah, humbug. You and I both know that there are other efficient routes to be taken to attain greater equality via tax policy, housing policy, health policy and on and on. It is no accident that M.L. King Jr.’s assassination took place during his involvement in a strike for higher wages and job security, as part of the long-forgotten War on Poverty.

Michael Bloomberg (NYC’s mayor, and if he had his way president) thinks that offering 4th graders $50 dollars is an important anti-poverty tactic! I do not joke. He has used the same perverted logic to argue that IQ testing of all 4- and 5-year-old will level the playing field. That such tests are known to contain infamous class and racial bias, and that testing all children at age 5 opens the doors wide to historically biased notions about intelligence doesn’t worry him. Nor are our leaders concerned with the technical psychometric limitations—the gross unreliability—of tests for children under the age of 8—not to mention ages 4 and 5!

Then, just yesterday—more or less—Bloomberg decided that not only will children be automatically held over based on 3rd-6th grade test scores, but he promises to show his toughness on behalf of equity by refusing entry into high school for students who fail the 8th grade benchmark. Apparently the proposal would leave thousands of already over-age 8th graders to linger there a year or so longer. It will automatically do one thing: increase actual drop-outs while simultaneously improving graduation rates—which are calculated based on 9th graders. If you’re unclear how this magic works, write me.

And then I read in The New York Times: “NYC has embarked on an ambitious experiment, yet to be announced, in which some 2,500 teachers are being measured on how much their students improve on annual standardized tests….The move is so contentious that principals in some of the 140 schools participating have not told their teachers….officials say it is too early to determine how they will use the data, which is already being collected.”

This stuff is not a NY-only phenomenon. Nor do most of the richest philanthropists in the field see anything wrong with any of the above. Eli Broad’s trustees chose NYC as their model not because they didn’t notice all this flim-flam, but because________

I urge readers to complete the sentence above. I’ll give the "right answer" next week.

Deborah

P.S. I note that our passions have led us to write our two longest letters of this year-long conversation!

Posted by Deborah Meier at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deb,

You and I disagree on some very basic issues involving curriculum and testing, but we are in agreement on some other very basic issues, such as the public nature of public education and the stupidity of replacing instruction with a testing regime. What you describe is the mindset of the business/lawyer types who run school districts and who assume that testing will provide the incentive and the fear to produce higher test scores. When we speak of education, they think only of higher test scores, as if that will prove their success. It may take some more time, but I suspect that we will eventually discover as a society that this current obsession with testing has gone overboard, even to supporters of accountability such as me, and that the zealots of today are producing a dumbed-down generation of students who know little more than how to respond to multiple-choice questions about isolated bits of information. These Know-Nothings know nothing about curriculum and instruction; all they reliably know is a behaviorist approach to life, how to reward higher scores and how to punish lower ones. It never occurs to them to consider the instrument on which they rely so exclusively (the test) and to wonder whether it was designed to bear the weight of rewarding and punishing students, teachers, and principals.

You mention the comments that have followed our columns. Like you, I read them all, and I am grateful to the readers who take the time to put in their own two cents. Their comments are often right on target. Last week, there was quite an interesting discussion among our readers after one of them posted a response disagreeing with me. One of our readers (Cal) complained that I was an “elitist” because I recommended that we should not only prepare students to take tests but “to be engaged and thoughtful citizens, to participate in and enjoy the arts, and to have the interest and capacity to read a book that was not assigned by the teacher…” Cal said that my view was “absurdly elitist” and revealed why our country fails to educate “the lower half of our population.” Cal said that reading books is “wholly inconsequential,” that being involved in the arts “won’t do a thing for our populace,” and that our country has gotten along quite well for over 200 years “without saddling public education with the responsibility to produce ‘thoughtful and engaged citizens,’ whatever that is.”

Well. I could not disagree more. I wrote a book (your least favorite of mine, I believe) called "Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform," in which I challenged the elitism of those who would deny a genuine education to “the lower half of our populace.” Every idea that Cal expresses was previously expressed by “educational experts” who believed that IQ tests enabled them to sort out those who would get a liberal arts education and those who were destined to be manual laborers. I urge Cal to read my book (check it out of the local public library) and read what David Snedden, Edward Thorndike, and other prominent social scientists said and how heartily they agreed with Cal’s sentiments.

The true “elitists” are those who think that some children are entitled to a good education, while other children are not. Who will sort the children into the deserving and the undeserving? At what age shall we begin the sorting? Shall we toss out the ideal of equal educational opportunity? Do we need the permission of parents to assign their students to “the lower half” that does not encounter the arts, literature, or lessons in American democracy?

Cal should also know that it is no will o’ the wisp fantasy to teach and practice citizenship, as that is in fact one of the basic reasons that we have a public education system: to prepare people to have the intelligence to participate in our democracy, to choose our leaders, and to improve our system of government.

The best responses to Cal came from other readers, and I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion. One teacher (Cassandra) writes that Cal “seeks to deny the power of literature to my students that people in the upper crust will certainly get. Literature is not just entertainment. Literature tells the story of what it means to be human. It tells the history of countries and of civilizations, as well as the history of human thought. It nurtures empathy and curiosity and intelligence…My students are entitled to a great education…They should be viewed as American citizens, entitled to the same rich education as all other citizens.”

Another teacher (JP) wrote: “The aim of a liberal education…is to help kids become autonomous thinkers able to determine their own life-outcomes rather than have others determine it for them. This is possible for every child. If I didn’t believe this, I’d pass out Dick and Jane and sit at my desk playing Solitaire all day…The most repugnant form of elitism comes in assuming that a great portion of the population doesn’t possess the faculty for an interesting conversation.”

I could not have made better arguments. What great readers we have! This is where our blog has value, in that we can provide a forum for thoughtful people to think out loud about education and why it matters.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

Like the distinguished panel of assessment experts whom Commissioner Mills called in to examine it wrote—the old CPESS model was a promising beginning. We had much work to be done if others were to follow suit. Instead others were discouraged and finally prohibited from doing so. If we had a commitment toward such approaches, we’d solve its kinks. Then instead of being a rare, fragile flower it could have been transplanted widely. What’s amazing is that within half a dozen years more than 40 schools, just in NY State, jumped on board without any support and against the grain. That more than half have not given up is testimony to its hardiness.

I wish Ed Week would make it easier for folks to read the comments we get to our letters. Some blogs do. Because as I suggested to one respondent last week, age-grading and course-passing as ways to organize “credit” toward graduation limits our options. It offers unacceptable trade-offs. What was nice about CPE and Mission Hill (K-6 and K-8 schools) was that we could place kids in groupings that made sense for their learning and did not have to decide artificially whether they had to repeat a grade or not. Ditto for passing courses. Like other Coalition schools, what we had to decide, child by child, was what was best for maximizing learning. Period.

You ask, how did our schooling fall “so effortlessly into the control of Know Nothings…”? Weep, and then, as we once said, “organize”.

New York City is now preparing to test all 5-year-olds (and encouraging day care, Head Start and nursery schools to do the same) on the Otis-Lennon IQ Test. Next it will be 6- and 7-year-olds. Decades of work to eliminate standardized testing of the young will be reversed. Just as we managed to eliminate standardized testing as part of Head Start (thanks to Sam Meisels and the Erikson Institute), NYC is implementing something even worse. IQ tests. As though we haven’t, as Emily Gasoi notes in her excellent commentary (posted after last week’s letter), a long history to draw on re. IQ testing.

Like NCLB it’s being sneaked in (without any public input) under the guise of Equity! Can you imagine the gall of calling IQ tests a means toward equity???? Yes—it’s supposed to make it easier and fairer for all children to get into “gifted and talented” programs.

Mozart was surely talented, in fact a genius, but whether his particular genius would have been detected in the Otis-Lennon IQ test no one can know. Howard Gardner has been writing for decades about the wide diversity of “gifts” and “talents”. But, above all, we know that race and class have an enormous impact on who seems “smart” at age 5. We also know a lot about what it means to “track” kids by test scores—into various different ability-grouped classes. When I came to NYC in 1967 that was the norm. Even in schools that had substantial diversity, classrooms were neatly divided by race and class. So are “talented and gifted” classes. And they will be after we make it easier for poor kids and black and Latino kids to take IQ tests. Finding the kids who score in the top 5 percent means eliminating most non-white and poor children. That’s basic to the design of most standardized tests, but above all of IQ tests. If the slogan “all kids can learn” meant anything it was in defying the odds that the tests claim to be able to predict.

Not only will this new round of testing create more mostly white classes, but it will misinform all parents and teachers about the intelligence and learning assets of their own children. It will make it easier, once IQ scores are available, to once again openly argue that “after all, you can’t expect” x or y to achieve high levels of intellectual work. They are “after all” intellectually deficient. Don’t blame the messenger for the message, we were once told. We’ve been there before; we will be there again. It’s the fall-back assumption of those at the top, that their superiority is “natural” and that those beneath them just don’t have “it”—the smarts. If we do this when we know better, it will literally be criminal—a deliberate sabotaging of our most vulnerable children.

How can we begin to talk again, you ask, about schools that truly educate? Where can folks who agree with us on this part of the argument weigh in, Diane? The absence of any form of public voice, or for that matter professional input, in places like NYC makes it hard. But people in truly totalitarian regimes have organized for change, so I know there are ways for us to reverse this one, too. The reforms that reared their promising heads 20 years ago shall not vanish from this land!

Deborah

Posted by Deborah Meier at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deb,

Your description of CPESS and other Coalition schools sounds like a memory from a distant past. Education is now in the grips of a very different mindset, one that seeks to turn schools into businesses or to use business as a model for success in education. Test scores have become the coin of the realm, simply because they provide an objective measurement. The problem is not testing kids, but using the scores to make judgments about students, teachers, principals, and schools. I have never been opposed to testing, but I think it is bizarre to assume—as most newspapers and pundits and policymakers now seem to do—that the tests are robust enough to make these consequential judgments about people and institutions.

I remember when I visited your school. I was impressed by the seriousness of the atmosphere and the dedication of the staff. However, I know how often people said, "If only we could clone Debby Meier." They meant that as a compliment to you, but also as an implicit acknowledgement that what you did could not easily be replicated. If it were easy to replicate, it would have spread across the nation. But it didn't. It remained a rare and fragile flower, not a hearty plant that could be transplanted or could—as gardeners say—naturalize or spread on its own.

We come back to our fundamental difference about the value of a common curriculum and of testing. I continue to think there is great value in knowing that children will encounter a common curriculum in history, science, and other subjects, even if they move from one school to another in the same district, or move to another city or state. No point rehearsing all the reasons, but at bottom I believe that we already have (weak) national standards, embedded in the textbooks and tests, and that we already have international standards in mathematics and science, where our students do poorly.

Yet I think this discussion, which you think is intertwined, is not entirely germane to the issues I raised about grading schools based on state test scores. We agree that the way this is done in New York City is harmful to schools and reveals nothing that will enable schools to improve. Indeed, if schools were to turn themselves into testing mills, doing nothing whatsoever other than test prep, they would be considered exemplary.

The issue that I raise is two-fold: One, how did American education fall so effortlessly into the control of Know Nothings from the world of business, law, and politics? and, Two, how can we—that is, the American public—begin to talk again about schools that prepare students not only to take tests but to be engaged and thoughtful citizens, to participate in and enjoy the arts, and to have the interest and capacity to read a book that was not assigned by a teacher?

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

I’ve been pondering your letter. The grading system is so absurd as to be intriguing. How could it have happened? It suggests a disconnect between the people making decisions “downtown” and reality of humongous proportions. Its source though puzzles me—since these are not dumb men. How could they have been led so far astray?

Ordinary common sense should have led Jim Liebman (the author of the NYC grading scheme) to have junked it before going public. For just the absurdities you pointed to. But ordinary common sense doesn’t work when you hire people to make important decisions who know literally nothing about the field itself. But disrespect for educators is so deep and pervading that none were apparently seriously consulted. No one apparently asked a school person: “Does this make sense?” “Are the results credible?”

It’s part of what makes me particularly nervous, Diane, at your belief that “national standards” would be based on genuine “expertise”. Not only do I have my concerns about the reliability of even honest experts—in the face of ordinary human bias—but we’re living in a world in which expertise is scorned when it comes to the fields you and I care about. Lawyers and financiers are at the top of the pyramid. Regardless of the nature of the decisions involved. The Kleins et als of the world will soon be grading scientists and scientific truths. This is not merely a phenomenon of right-wing “crazies”, but so-called sensible centrists—like Bloomberg et al.

Wacky indeed. But also scary.

It is not just test-score wacky either. In the high schools, 55 percent of the grade went to improvement in “courses passed”. Imagine how this encourages the dumbing down of courses!

When we started CPESS (Central Park East Secondary School) in 1985 we were above all interested, ala Ted Sizer’s seminal work, in building an educational model that totally bypassed the idea of graduation by credit hours (courses passed). We built instead a system of “accountability” based on a review of work accomplished and knowledge demonstrated in 14 fields. Ted Sizer called them “exhibitions”. It’s worth rereading Sizer’s books today. The old CPESS school got a waiver from the state of New York for its radical redesign. Kids took courses, but ala Cambridge, Oxford, and the world of doctoral candidacies, we came up with a graduation committee review and defense of student achievement. We claimed a student could graduate (however unlikely) who had failed every course, but passed all 14 subject reviews! (Fourteen was absurd, but that’s another story.) We told kids they might stay with us forever—we were in no hurry to get rid of them—but they would get our diploma only if they proved to us that they were ready. It meant that the teachers of course were there to prepare kids to do the kind of work that would meet our standards, which were—in turn—open for public review and critique.

We also engaged researchers to follow up on our students after they left us to see whether our standards held up in the real world. After all, accountability ought to be just another word for accepting responsibility for the impact of one’s work. (I keep reminding myself that democracy is built around the idea of accountable authority.)

Not only did CPESS have graduation committees for each student, but we brought in outside experts every year to examine different areas of practice—subject matter, as well our standards of evaluation. We videotaped sessions as well as archived work. Other schools in the Coalition of Essential Schools network tried other approaches built around the same underlying concepts of responsible authority. No two did it exactly the same way. A state-organized panel of independent experts—mostly in educational testing and assessment—concluded that graduates of these schools considerably outperformed comparable students. But maybe that’s irrelevant, as Nebraska’s Chris Gallagher notes, in a charming satire in Rethinking Schools (winter 2007-08). You can have so much more fun “sitting around and devising indexes and rankings and play with imaginary numbers.”

It’s brutally demoralizing to discover that a dozen years later the system has learned nothing from our work, and has at great cost installed such shabby and ill-informed judgments in the name of “accountability”.

Yes indeed, Diane, you have got it right.

Deborah

P.S. There are still a few dozen schools in NY State benefiting from that late 80’s waiver. They are holding on by the skin of their teeth, constantly forced to compromise—or get Cs, Ds and Fs! How much longer can they hold out? I do not know, but I‘d not guess for long unless…But that's for another letter, Diane.

Posted by Deborah Meier at 8:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Editor's note: Bridging Differences returns today from its holiday break with this entry from Diane Ravitch.

Dear Deb,

Let's talk about grading schools and about when it is appropriate to close schools. It seems that the accountability idea has become the overrriding passion in American education: Everyone must be held accountable, everyone must have their feet held to the fire on a regular basis, and every decision will be based on test scores. Students better raise their scores or they fail; teachers better raise their students' scores, or they will not get a bonus and might get some sort of sanction; and principals must see to it that their school scores continually go up, or they may be fired (or, if the scores do rise, the principals are in line for fat bonuses).

Hardly a day passes without a story from another school district about the adoption of bonus pay for teachers and/or principals, as well as other incentives or sanctions based solely on scores. Houston just got a big sum from the Gates Foundation for merit pay, and the state of New York just received a big grant from Gates to install a new value-added accountability system. It seems to be happening everywhere.

I find myself (once again) in the uncomfortable position of seeing ideas that I have supported as part of a broader set of reforms turn into unhealthy obsessions. I feel like someone who said that people should wear hats and then turned around to discover that people were talking about nothing else but their hats and walking around naked. Maybe there is a better metaphor to express my frustration about the new fanaticism about testing and accountability as the key element of the corporate culture imported into American education. I'll rely on our readers to suggest a better metaphor. As I recall, looking back on what I have written over many years, I always believed that a strong curriculum, sound instruction, and good working conditions were necessary preconditions to testing and accountability.

Deb, I think that one of the things that has occasionally drawn us together is that we both have a vision about education, what it might be, even when we disagree about this or that detail. Now I find that no one seems to talk about education anymore, just testing and accountability. Is it the market mentality that has taken control? Is it the business/corporate model that is driving all discussion of policy? Why is everyone submitting to these mindless, soul-less accounting schemes?

Take the latest grading system to come from New York City. Since our mayor apparently plans to run for president and intends to cite his education reforms, we should write about what is actually happening here. Our chancellor hired a law school professor to design the city's grading plan. The grading system gives each school a single letter, from A to F. This is no report card, which would measure inputs and outputs on a variety of particulars. Nope, just a single letter grade. Imagine if your child came home from school with a letter grade instead of a report card that pointed to her or his strengths and weaknesses; I certainly would find it objectionable.

The grading system has produced some very strange results. More than half of the 400 schools that are on the state or federal list of weak schools received an A or B from the city's Department of Education. A school that is on the state's very small list of "persistently dangerous" schools was awarded an A. At the same time, 99 schools that are in good standing with the state or federal government received a D or an F. Some schools that are recognized as outstanding schools in their community received a D or an F.

How did these strange results come about? The city Department of Education decided to base the scores overwhelmingly on changes in state test scores over one year, and to place most emphasis on "progress." Thus a school where 90 percent of the students met state standards in the first year, but only 87 percent in the next year might get a D or an F. And a school where 20 percent of the students met the standards in the first year, but saw an increase of a few percentage points in the next year might get an A or B.

Thus some really outstanding schools have been stigmatized as failures, while some very low-performing schools boast an A or B. This makes no sense to anyone, but the city has taken its new and unproven scoring system and decided to close 14 schools that received a D or F. Now, maybe these are truly awful schools, but some of them have gotten passing marks from both the state and feds. Some apparently are beloved community institutions. We will see what replaces them. My guess is charter schools and small schools. Will they be better? Who knows?

There remain many questions. Not only whether the scoring system is a valid measure of anything, but whether the tests on which they are based are sound enough to sustain these weighty decisions that determine the future of a school community. Somehow it strikes me that schools should be given extra support to help them get better, that closing them should be a last resort, not a first step.

What do you think?

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 7:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)