June 2009 Archives

One the biggest scientific discoveries of the past two centuries was the theory that explains how species evolve over time. As we dive into a debate over the wisdom of national educational standards, I think we might have something to learn from the natural world.

The big idea that Darwin explained in his landmark book, On the Origin of Species, is that there exists within a population of any species a range of traits – later found to be encoded in the organisms’ DNA. He called this “variation.” In his book, Why Evolution is True, Jerry Coyne describes recent evidence for this process in wild mice. Most mice in the wild have dark brown fur, which helps them hide against the earth where they live. But not all mice have dark fur. There are some variants with lighter fur, which, under normal circumstances, do not survive as well as their darker cousins. However, change the earth, and this survival pattern changes. Mice living on the white sand dunes of Florida’s Gulf Coast are white with a faint brown stripe down their backs. Predators have captured a higher proportion of the darker mice, selecting the mice with genes for lighter fur to survive and reproduce.

This is not a predictable outcome. It is hard to know in advance which variations will be favored, because conditions and selective pressures change over time. Therefore variation in a population is a very healthy thing. Which variation out-competes its fellow organisms better really depends on the nature of the selective pressure. In a drought, the variety of giraffe with a long neck might survive better. Or perhaps a variation with a particular facility for digging for water, as elephants can do with their trunks in the riverbed. In a time when predators are evolving and attacking, variations that can run away may survive better, so speed may be favored. And different species evolve different adaptations, different strategies to respond to these various selective pressures. In response to pressure from predators, some species evolve to be fleet of foot, while others evolve spiny fur that causes injury to the predators, while another may evolve the ability to hide. But these adaptations emerge from the variations within the original populations of each species.

These ideas about the value of variation lead me to thinking about competition of a different sort. Right now we are in the midst of intense international competitive economic pressure. Increasingly, policymakers and educational reformers assert that we have an economic imperative to improve our educational system, or we will find ourselves left behind by our better-educated rivals in India or China. This line of reasoning began in the panic that followed the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957, and was renewed by the alarmist Nation at Risk report in 1983. The current push for national standards is being driven by similar fears.

National standards, it is suggested, will “raise the bar” across the US, creating a common base level of educational attainment, thus making us better able to compete with other nations. What will this look like? Currently each state has its own set of content standards in science, social studies, English, math and other subjects. In California, our science standards emphasize plate tectonics because of our frequent earthquakes. In the process to create one set of common standards, such variations will be eliminated as we must agree on what all students must learn coast to coast. There will presumably be some high level convocation, with representatives from each state, that will hash out this common set of standards. Then there will be tests created, aligned with these standards, that will allow us to arrive at a clear benchmark so we can compare how well students perform whether they are in Ketchikan or Kalamazoo.

We have seen where this will lead. I am in California, a state with the sort of “tough” standards that advocates of national standards seem to like. Schools that do not meet these standards are put on a sort of academic probation – which becomes a deathwatch, as the growth targets under NCLB are utterly impossible to meet. As has been widely documented, these schools narrow their curriculum to emphasize what they know will be on the tests. Subjects not emphasized on the tests, such as history and science, music, art and physical education, are all given short shrift. Extra hours of math and reading are poured on, and even there, instruction is mapped out to address discrete concepts and skills we know will be tested.

In addition to striving to eliminate variation between educational systems in different states or regions, we are trying to eliminate variation in our population of students. Some have become convinced that the only acceptable outcome for our students is graduation from a four-year college. Therefore we are making high school even more rigorous, so graduates meet the toughest university entry requirements. And since research shows that most students who succeed in completing the most demanding sequence of high school math courses took Algebra in grade 8, many schools and states are beginning to mandate that ALL students take Algebra in the 8th grade, whether or not they understand fractions or other basic math concepts.

I believe this entire drive takes us up a blind path. We are trying to make all states, schools and students alike, when in fact, we should be fostering greater variety.

This does not mean we make school less challenging. School should be immensely challenging. But there is nothing that says that each student will do best facing the same challenge.

Our students do best when they can discover and pursue their particular passion and skill. Just as in any population of living things, they come to us with a great deal of variation. Some are natural visual artists, while others excel at logic and mathematics. Why must we pound them all into the same shape?

Our economy has been driven into the ditch by highly educated people, most of whom make their money by moving money, rather than actually producing anything. Our current economic situation has many highly skilled people out of work wondering where the jobs are now, and without a clue where they might be a decade from now. The smart ones are looking ahead and seeing things like green technology and local agriculture. A four-year degree is a wonderful thing, but as many college graduates are discovering, there is nothing magical about it.

This future, going back to our story about natural selection, will favor a population with a wide variety of adaptable skills. I spoke recently with a building contractor. He said he cannot find young American-born people to work on the homes he remodels. He said, “The only Americans who know how to build things are forty or fifty years old! Instead, in our area, it is people from Mexico who can do this productive and necessary work.” We need people who can work with their hands as well as their minds, to build the technologies and tools of the future. A university education is not a bad thing, but it is not an end in itself.

Our students should not all be on the same path. They should have a greater say in the path they choose, and we should seek to develop a wider variety of challenging alternatives for them. There should be career-oriented institutes emerging from our high schools, linked to internships in the community.

Programs like the Engineering Academy at Oakland Technical High School in Oakland provide students with hands-on challenges connected to solving real-world problems, like the bridge-building competition shown here. The Buck Institute for Education has developed an exciting Problem-Based Learning approach that is proving successful in many settings. Around the country a number of high schools are starting green career technology programs.

Our students come to us with a variety of interests and abilities. Our role as educators should be to develop those interests into passions, and those abilities into real skills. For some reason this has become defined as a less “rigorous” approach by those who want everyone to achieve the same things at the same time. However, I believe this is actually a far more challenging path for all of us, and ultimately will yield a much more versatile and adaptable generation of students. Ironically, all this standardization may wind us making us LESS competitive in the long run.

What do you think? Are national standards useful? Or should we encourage greater variation rather than standardization?

Photo by Oakland Tech parent Rhita Williams, used by permission.

Posted by Anthony Cody at 9:12 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

National Standards have emerged as the latest and greatest educational reform, and last week 46 states agreed to participate in an effort to create them. There are some good reasons for national standards. They might allow teachers to collaborate on common curriculum and assessments, and share effective instructional strategies for reaching students. But I do not think good reasons are why this has become so popular.

I think that national standards are a wild goose chase of the sort policymakers love to lead. I think it has become popular for three big reasons. First, it allows us to defer judgment of the strategies central to NCLB. Both Democrats and Republicans signed on to Bush’s major domestic policy initiative in 2001 because it allowed everyone to pretend they were doing something about the achievement gap. Politicians do not have to pass the tests they demand students pass, and they are not judged by how well they have taught students to pass the tests. They did not even need to provide the funding promised when NCLB was originally passed. But they can claim they took “tough” action. Eight years after NCLB began, objective measures like the National Assessment of Educational Progress have revealed stagnation in growth of student achievement, and no significant closing of the achievement gap. So we should be pausing to examine the fundamental strategy embedded in NCLB – standardized tests as the linchpin of reform. But it is easier to fixate on what has emerged as the biggest excuse for this failure – the lack of national standards. If only we had the same yardstick to compare one state to another, the argument goes, that would allow this system of standardization to take full effect.

Secondly, it gives politicians a new project to promote to demonstrate they are still serious about fixing the educational system. We can have commissions and hearings and proclamations about competitiveness -- very exciting! Third, it allows the testing and publishing industries a chance to make literally billions of dollars of profit from revamping the curriculum and tests from coast to coast.

Let’s take a look at the primary argument advanced by those favoring national standards. These standards are supposed to fix the problem posed by the unfairness created by the fact that some states set “easy” standards, and thus ace their NCLB challenge, while others, like California, have much “tougher” standards. But if this was the problem, then shouldn’t we see the tough standards approach working within California, -- an educational system of thousands of schools and millions of students -- where we have had highly prescriptive state-wide standards and tests aligned to them for more than a decade?

I have taught in California for 23 years, and while I see our schools becoming more adept at preparing students for these tests, I do not see the deeper learning and equitable outcomes I would associate with real progress. I see students dropping out, and teachers leaving the profession in droves. Meanwhile, the Governor is preparing to make huge budget cuts to the already cash-starved schools. But while the schools whither from lack of funding, and many of the students in urban districts like mine are taught by revolving streams of poorly trained interns, the Governor can continue to proclaim that we have “world-class educational standards” and we are “holding schools accountable.”

What really matters for our students? First of all, they are affected by underlying economic conditions. They need three square meals a day, decent health care, and safe neighborhoods. In their schools, they need teachers who can earn enough to stay in the profession, so they become experts. They need teachers who have time in their day to plan and collaborate together, to develop themselves as professionals. We all need opportunities for parents and teachers and students to come together to create nurturing communities centered on learning. That learning should be tied as closely as possible to the aspirations of those students, their parents and the communities in which they live. National standards will have very little effect on these things, and in some ways could even work against them.

And what about a democratic process? We are apparently about to be handed a set of standards that will dictate what is taught in millions of classrooms across this nation. How will these have been arrived at? Who, besides the Gates Foundation millionaire’s club, and the standardized test companies and the publishing companies will have been engaged in this profoundly civic process?

I would dearly love to be proved wrong in these rather cynical thoughts. I would be thrilled if teachers, parents and students across the country were actually invited to become engaged in the deep questions surrounding what, as a nation, we agree all students should learn, and how that learning could be measured in ways that move us away from the standardized tests decried by candidate Obama a year ago on the campaign trail. But somehow I do not think that is likely to be the process. Rather, I see this as an exercise in distraction, a wild goose chase on a national scale.

What do you think? Will national standards fix what is wrong with NCLB? Are there other good reasons to support them?

Photo credit: Dustin DeKoekkoek, Creative Commons

Posted by Anthony Cody at 10:21 AM | Permalink | 7 Comments | Recommend

When I reached a point in my life when it was time to reflect on my choices and priorities, I realized just how important it has been for me to feel recognized. And it does not seem to satisfy me to hear that recognition as part of a larger group. In order for me to really feel seen and my work honored, I want my particular contributions recognized.

I think many of our students share this need from deep within – the need to be seen, recognized and honored as individuals.

What happens to a student when he gets this recognition? I know from my own experience there is a deep feeling of satisfaction, a welcoming of one’s self, a feeling of belonging that each of us needs. This can build in a student a knowledge of who he is as a person, of what, at his core, he is capable of. This is an essential element of personal empowerment, recently discussed here.

Unfortunately, students sometimes experience teachers who dole out recognition with an eyedropper, and criticism with a ladle. Do you remember working hard on an assignment and getting it back covered with red marks, and not a single positive comment? If a teacher is difficult or impossible to please, many students will not bother to try.

But vague, superficial praise is also an enemy of self-worth. Our students hear “good job” fifty times a day, and it becomes background noise. Praise for his work as part a class is likewise not going to make a student feel recognized.

Learning to do something in a new way is hard mental, spiritual work. It takes a bit of confidence that we can conquer the challenge. It involves a risk, because it is something new, that we have not succeeded at before. As teachers we are constantly pushing our students to this edge, and we often feel the resistance. “I don’t get it.” “I don’t know how to do that.” “This is too hard.”

But our students can do hard things, although they may not know that yet. Our challenge as teachers is to get them to try, and then reflect back to them the growth that occurs as a result. For students to feel truly seen, we have to slow down and witness them in the act of learning. What is new and unique about what they have done in this piece of work? How have they changed as a result? When we can reflect that movement, and allow students to see that growth unfolding, then we can have a big impact. This is one of the deep sources of power in formative assessment.

In order for this to work, our assignments have to be challenging. They need to include creative dimensions that challenge our students to express themselves individually. If everyone is coloring the same picture, the best that could be said is that you did a great job staying within the lines. Students have talents that go in different directions, so while we want them all to learn the basics of writing and math, I think we should give them room to develop their special skills. So if they are natural performers, create opportunities for public speaking or skits. As a science teacher, I often have given assignments that contain a core of science concepts, but allow students to deliver them through poetry, song, an artistic poster, a creative story, or a factual report. Students need to discover what makes them special, and as teachers we can help them along the way. Public events like the science fair pictured below give us a chance to share that sense of accomplishment with parents and siblings.

Magic happens when students are recognized. These can be defining moments in a child’s life – when she discovers she is actually good at solving logic puzzles – her first step on the road to becoming a scientist. We need to create as many opportunities for these discoveries as we can, and be watchful so we can help our students recognize and develop the special genius that resides within each of them.

What do you think? How do you go about recognizing the talents of your students? How important do you think recognition is for them?

First photo used by permission. ed4553, Creative Commons. Second photo by Anthony Cody.

Posted by Anthony Cody at 11:57 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend