Market-based education reform was the silver bullet.

However, the market is a tricky thing when applied to an institution where people are the inputs and outputs. And it wasn’t long before market-based reform started to crash and burn.

Even after his market-based policies weren’t working out, President George W. Bush touted No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2011 speech to the US Chamber’s Small Business Summit. “You measure everyday, that’s why you’re successful business people,” he said. “I mean, you know what your business is doing. I believe we should extend that same principle to our public schools.”

Watch the 56 sec video clip here

And he did apply that principle to US public schools. However, by the time Bush gave that speech to the US Chamber, NCLB had been failing for 10 years. But it wasn’t from lack of high standards.  In fact, Bush set a very high standard for his own education reform, when he outlined his NCLB policy goals. One goal in particular, was the most audacious objective ever set in education. He proclaimed that because of NCLB, 100% of US students would read on grade level by the school year 2013-2014. Not only was that goal unrealistic, but it was statistically impossible. He and his reformers moved forward anyway. 

The 2013-2014 school year has come and gone, and in many states over 50% of students are failing the reading portion of their high-stakes assessments every year. Some studies claim the achievement gap is wider than ever before. 

That didn’t stop more market-based reforms. President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top (RTTT)  was the same philosophy, different jingle. His ambition was that competition and reward – two aspects of the market economy – would motive teachers and students to do better on tests. Instead, President Obama’s RTTT only exacerbated an already failing NCLB 

Politicians go to business summits to talk education policy. However, educators do actual research and access academic journals to study the problems with market-based school reform. Here are just a few reform failures featured in academic, researched-based publications over the last couple of years.

1. Goodhart’s Law

Good economists will the remember Goodhart’s Law when making policy. Charles Goodhart was a famous economist, who warned, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” And in an article in the Peabody Journal of Education, O’Neill (2013) refers to this while he examined market-based education reform. The measure (the test) has become the target, and educators chase that target. The results are disastrous for the learning environment. Teachers, who are understandably worried about accountability measures, teach to the test. In turn, schools become test prep factories rather than institutions for learning. Students become focused on the target as well. Students become test taking drones, while critical thinking is compromised. Goodhart’s Law is in full effect in many of today’s schools.

2. Education Industrial Complex 

People have been trying to figure out a way to make money off education for many years. Market-based reform has made that possible. In an article for the Anthropology Education Journal, Yang (2010) calls education reform an industrial complex and targets anyone who profits from it as being part of the problem. Obviously he means testing companies and publishers who develop the curriculum and assessments.  However, Yang (2010) goes further to include, “all the private tutoring companies that profit from Title I schools; all the people in the academy who receive federal grants to study the achievement gap as if it were a phenomenon that exists outside of the logic of public schooling; all the non-profit educational consultants who coach schools into doing more with fewer resources,; all the grant makers who tie test scores to their giving; and finally, all the teachers who pay to be credentialed” (Yang 2010, p. 145). Even worse, the education industrial complex has turned students into commodities.

3. A Giant Bricolage 

School leaders will do anything to achieve in this market-based, data driven environment. Principals and assistant principals spend their days chasing a target usually communicated as a school grade. Koyama (2014) asserts, under the immense pressure of accountability, principals strived to achieve by using bricolage – whatever comes to hand, such as intensive reading programs, test prep, data mining, professional development, and even an extra quarter of school in some cases.  Unfortunately, these efforts have done little to move the student achievement meter. Even worse, teachers feel less supported by administrators than ever before and are leaving in droves.

4. Exodus

While administrators are breaking their backs trying to negotiate the demands of the state and achieve the almighty A+ school grade, their teachers are walking out the back door. The Alliance for Excellence in Education detailed in their report, On the Path to Equity: Improving the Effectiveness of Beginning Teachers, that half of new teachers leave the profession before year 5. In a recent article in the Atlantic, Barnwell (2015) a teacher in an urban school district, described his exodus from k-12 education as being caused by incessant demands of accountability and assessments by the state. When teachers are asked about why the are leaving, they typically cite lack of support by administrators, and the fact they can’t be creative because of the demands for accountability. 

5. The Death of the Intern

Market-based competition in schools is also hurting College of Education (COE) programs. In fact, the Dean of the COE at Purdue University – Maryann Santos de Barona – described market-based reform as the reason colleges of education have so many problems working with teachers and administrators in public schools. “Teachers and administrators are reluctant to let our faculty research in their classrooms, as this represents a risk that might impact test scores,” Santos de Barona said. Most COE professors will confirm, an intern friendly environment is hard to find these days when teachers’ paychecks and evaluations depend on student test scores. 

6. Joy has become obsolete 

This is rarely talked about in academic journals and never addressed in policy circles, but it’s certainly worth mentioning here. Joyful is not a popular word public school teachers use when describing their jobs these days. Happy is not a feeling students experience when they get off the bus and head into a public school building. Unfortunately, the focus on the target the market-based approach enforces has sucked even the smallest amount of joy left in the teaching and learning experience. Teaching and learning for the sake of teaching and learning no longer exists. If it can’t be measured or tied back to a standard, it isn’t happening in schools. 

Not all is lost, however.

This can all be fixed by focusing on the learning experience rather than focusing on the target. In addition, schools should be recognized as learning institutions rather than warehouses and factories for big businesses to make profits. Also, all high-stakes must be removed from learning. Once students know they can learn without consequence, student engagement will increase. Teachers should be trusted to do their jobs without unrealistic evaluations and accountability measures looming in the background.  And finally, joy can fix just about anything; bring back joy in schools because amazing things happen when people are happy.

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References 

Barnwell, P. (2015, May 27). The Ongoing Struggle of Teacher Retention. The Atlantic. Retrieved May 28, 2015, from http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/the-ongoing-struggle-of-teacher-retention/394211/?utm_source=SFFB

Bangert, D. (2015, May 27). Awkward … Ed reform called out at Purdue. JConline – The Lafayette Journal and Courier. Retrieved May 28, 2015, from http://www.jconline.com/story/opinion/columnists/dave-bangert/2015/05/27/bangert-awkward-ed-reform-called-purdue/28031101/

Hayes, M. (2014) On the Path to Equity: Improving the Effectiveness of Beginning Teachers. Alliance for Excellence in Education http://all4ed.org/reports-factsheets/path-to-equity/

Koyama, J. (2014). Principals as bricoleurs: Making sense and making do in an era of accountability. Educational Administration Quarterly 50(2) 279–304. DOI: 10.1177/0013161X13492796

 O’Neill, O. (2013). Intelligent accountability in education. Oxford Review of Education 39(1) 4-16. DOI: 10.1080/03054985.2013.764761 

Yang, K. W. (2010). Rites to reform: The cultural production of the reformer in urban schools. Anthropology & Education Quarterly 41(2) 144-160. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1492.2010.01075.x

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Really angry.

I radiated it. Not just anger, but also frustration and indignation.

When casually asked, “Hey Kathleen!  What have you been up to?” Instead of the standard reply, “Not much. How are you?” I would fly into a full-fledged, red-faced rant about any and all of the following:

• testing companies
• unnecessary faculty meetings
• education mandates coming from non-educators
• school grade calculations
• VAM scores
• 10 page Danielson teacher evaluation rubrics
• testing companies
• testing calendars
• closed media centers due to testing (we closed ours Feb-June)
• remedial reading programs made by the same people who make the tests
• Jeb Bush
• Arne Duncan
• Bill Gates
• my local school district’s leadership team
• the superintendent
• my former boss
• my local school board
• every school board
• governors who don’t know anything about education
• Pam Stewart
• legislators, every last one of them
• unions who don’t support their teachers
• teachers who complain but don’t vote or stand up for what they want
• parents who complain but don’t vote or stand up for what they want

I even got with other angry people and we got pissed off together. We took to school board podiums; we went to conferences; we went on the news; we stood on the side of the road with signs; we assembled and mobilized.

I had the pleasure of working with education activists whom I love and respect, women who had been fighting this fight long before I quit my job in public education to join them.

And the ranting worked. We got things done. We got our local School Board to opt out of state tests (they later opted back in). Together, we brought national awareness to these issues and helped hundreds of thousands of people refuse high-stakes assessments.

I put on webinars, wrote blogs, and conducted research. All fueled by my anger.

My anger was energizing. It helped me work harder and longer. It was like a drug that made me clear and focused.  I felt like I could do anything the more and more pissed off I got.

Then something happened.

I was out on a long run, Rage Against the Machine playing through my headphones.

One of my favorite songs to run to, “Take it back! Take it back! Take it back!” was interrupted by a phone call. I looked at the screen and the name of my former boss appeared. He was also a former friend before he made the list. I knew something was up, because it had been a year since he had called me. I had a sinking feeling.

“Kathleen?”

“Yeah, George.” I said cautiously. I missed him, but I was too angry to tell him that.

“Kathleen, have you gotten a call about Coach?”

I knew before I even asked, “No, why?”

He told me that our friend, who was my mentor for the last 10 years, suddenly had a heart attack and died just a couple of hours before.

The Universe opened up and a huge hole appeared.

Coach, who was like a father, brother, and best friend all rolled into one, was gone. He had given me my start in education, had yanked me off the slow, arduous path I was on and changed the trajectory of my life. And in the last year of my angry rebellion, I had pulled away from him because my fight against all things public ed was more important than staying connected with him. He had invited me to the movies, and I passed. He invited to several other outings with his family, and I made excuses why I couldn’t go.

And now he was gone.

While standing there on the side of the road, hanging up the phone, the anger left my body like smoke coming off an extinguished candle.

I tried to be angry but I couldn’t find it anymore. I knew I was done fighting.

My outrage was replaced by anguish and my natural tendency to second-guess past decisions, although he taught me to never look back.

“Make a decision and then move forward.” He’d say. “Don’t look back, Jasper.”

So that’s what I am doing. Moving forward, eyes straight ahead.

Over ten years with him, I learned to empower people to realize their potential and take action to achieve their goals. I challenged young people to look at the world differently and reach beyond their comfort level. He taught me how to do that, and that’s what I want to do.

The absence of anger has made me realize how much I miss working with high school students and teaching them to be part of the solution. How can I expect them to do that when I am busy yelling about the problem?

Resentment and discontent are soul-sucking and toxic. So, I’ve decided to be the solution rather than focusing on all the troubles.

I’m not abandoning my feistiness towards education issues and bad policy. I will continue to bring awareness to those elements. However, I am going to spend my time helping others find ways around these problems.

ConversationED will be a solution to the problems many people face in public education in this country, by helping people hack their education. That’s right, if you are dissatisfied in education and education policies, we will help you hack your education to find ways YOU can make it better.

Here are just a few hacks we are working on:

• Workforce Essentials: Things you wish they’d teach you in school like organization, time management, professional communication and problem solving.
• Resume Building – Quick and Dirty Tricks to get noticed in a Sea of Applicants
• Finance – Understand your loan terms before you owe government-backed companies hundreds of thousands of dollars for your liberal arts degree.
• Down with the 5 Paragraph Essay – Learn How to Write for Real.
• The MLA Lie: No one uses it after high school so we’ll teach you APA – the formatting your professor wants you to use.
• SAT/ACT prep – Skip the FSA, get the concordant score, and move on with your life.
• Happiness courses. Yup that’s right, how to be happy. This is something we believe everyone should have a chance to learn.
• Wellness – Nutrition, Exercises, Mindfulness and a more productive life.
• Academic Courses that don’t Suck:
  • Genetics I, II, & III (Skip the parts of the cell and get to the good stuff!)
  • Math as a language
  • Research
  • Pairing literature with history

We are going to help people circumvent a bad system and decide for themselves how they want to learn and thrive. Maybe you can’t leave public education or you don’t want to. We will be here when you want something different, a solution to whatever problem you are feeling in your learning.

This is going to take us a while. We have a very small team and by small I mean 3 people. But those 3 people are the most creative educators I know.

I’ve missed being an educator. I’m back, and I hope you will join me.

If you want to learn more about what we are doing and how to hack your education, we have a really cool infographic you can download for free. Click Here to get the FREE infographic. Or click the image to the FREE infographic and Hack your ED!

In addition, they are still insisting students struggling to learn English must take the regular tests after one year instead of two.

They will not consider the waiver requested by the Regents.

Both requests were aimed at reducing stress on students and yielding more useful results. State officials say that federal rules that require testing students at their chronological age, with narrow exceptions for students with very severe disabilities, set up some disabled students for failure and turn the tests into stressful guessing games. School officials in districts with many immigrant students say one year often is not enough for new arrivals to be ready to take language arts exams written in English.

Certain civil rights groups, as we know, have been behind this draconian testing too, along with, U.S. Assistant Education Secretary Deborah Delisle who is leaving to be the new CEO of the ASCD. The requirements, she says, are “necessary to ensure that teachers and parents of all students, including (English learners) and students with disabilities, have information on their students’ proficiency and progress in reading/language arts and mathematics” and “to ensure that schools are held accountable for the academic achievement of all students.”

The U.S. DOE is on a trajectory to privatize public schools and the only way they can do it to make it look like teachers are failing to teach students with disabilities or students learning a new language. They will continue to sacrifice the mental health of children and jobs of many teachers to do this. In New York, like everywhere else, testing has been tricky business.

What happened to the Individual Educational Plan (IEP)?

We have also been in the process of witnessing the end of special education, and a return to the old days of stigmatizing children. Instead of institutions, students will be segregated into for-profit charter schools with Teach for America, turnaround teachers. Or parents will be pushed out of public school into homeschooling.

It is amazing the lengths high ranking authorities at the U.S. Dept. of Education will continue to go to make public schools, teachers and their students look bad, all while they are breaking up special education and converting public schools into charters.

The IEP meeting is where parents who want their children to take a test, or not, should work it out. No so-called advocacy groups or politicians have the right to paint all students with one broad stroke. The purpose of special education is to individualize!

The U.S. DOE is overstepping its authority. They should have been sued a long time ago. The State of New York needs to protect its children! As does the rest of the country.

Some will say these draconian plots are because those at the U.S. DOE don’t know anything about kids with disabilities, and it is easy to get that takeaway when you watch Education Secretary Arne Duncan bumble about trying to explain why there is no concerted plan for children with dyslexia.

But the assault on special education has been going on since the day the ink dried on PL 94-142. Few politicians wanted to fund it. That we had some good years in the seventies to pull children out of dismal institutions and insist that they could learn and should have rights like every other child was a miracle.

Where is the safety net now? This push to test all students this way heightens the stigma children face—does not remove it. There will be no pleasant futures made based on these test scores for many of these children.

It is pure meanness. I know of no other words to describe it.

Nancy Bailey is an education activist and a former special education teacher.  Her book is titled Misguided Education Reform: Debating the Impact on Students.  Her blog is http://nancyebailey.com. Catch up with her on twitter @NancyEBailley1

Our vision began with A Nation at Risk creating an urgency based on competition against Russia and emerging global economies. We have since transitioned into leaving no child behind, and we are now focused on “college and career readiness”.

These have all sounded good from their inception, all have been used in campaign speeches and state of the union addresses. They have been the cornerstone of education policies and created a nearly one trillion dollar industry. These visions have crafted every sub-category of our educational debate. The US Department of Education wants to “promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness”, the Florida Department of Education wants to “increase the proficiency of all students”, and my own local school district wants to be the “top producer of successful students in the nation.”

Who can argue with such great soundbites? I will.

“Achievement”, “proficiency”, and “success” along with other great buzzwords like “rigor”, “data”, and “accountability” have done wonders for elected officials, government appointees, and educational leaders (who are rarely, if ever, educators). Policies are crafted around these words, bills are written around these words, textbooks and curriculum packages are sold around these words, and students are forgotten because of these words. All these words fit under the current national education vision of “college and career readiness” and I am here to say that this vision is wrong and it is this vision that is currently hurting our students and will suffocate our future.

What is our purpose of education? Currently, the purpose is to fit children into college enrollment statistics or cubicles/uniforms that already exist. All the education policies of today, from the national level to the school level are doing this. Ask why I teach algebra to my students and one of those two options will be the answer. These two ends for children have created the education industry. In this industry created by our national education vision, college and career readiness can be analyzed and measured. Therefore, all stakeholders within the industry, from state chancellors to students, can be measured against the metrics and held accountable. New tools for success in these two ends, from tests to entire schools, are being created and used. Students are reduced to data points, teachers are rendered obsolete, and we can claim success based on two simplistic ends: college and career readiness.

The problem is that the current vision ignores 2 large issues. The first is the rate of change in the global economy. Advancements in technology, communications, and thought are making the world much smaller and competition much more fierce. The second issue is the disabling of the greatest advantage the United States has: innovation. As a country we were born, raised, and launched to prominence due to our spirit, creativity, and thirst for newness and adventure. We can regain all this by simply changing the vision of education.

What should be the purpose of education? First and foremost it should be about the students. It should be about what they can do for themselves and the future. Since none of us can predict the future, we need to abandon the focus on college and career readiness. With our current vision, by the time students graduate from high school their education will be obsolete. So, we should have an education vision that is adaptable, focused on the student, and ready for innovation.

Our vision should be about Learning and Knowledge. Yes it is vague. Yes it is difficult to measure. Yes it will look different for nearly everyone. Yet students are people (which we currently do not acknowledge) and people are complex. So, our education must be complex. We cannot fit students into molds. We must give them all the knowledge possible so they can learn to think and create their own molds. Can a test measure this?  No. Can a pre-designed curriculum deliver this? Not on its own. As much as I love Khan Academy, it works best when I am there to give a high five, or a touch on the shoulder. With this vision, we will need teachers. We will need our schools to support our students, not the other way around (which is what we currently have).

In the current focus on “college and career ready”, we are narrowing our potential, alienating students, and stifling innovation. Why do I teach algebra to my students? Because it is knowledge, it can be learned, and most importantly, it can be fun. It’s not a means an end, it is the end itself. If we focus on Learning and Knowledge, we can set every student on their own path. We can teach students for the sake of learning, not some utilitarian design (be it a test score, enrollment requirement, or a job skill). We can ensure students have a love of thinking, a love of discovery, and what our world truly needs:  a love of creativity and innovation. But this can only happen if we Challenge the Vision.

Joshua Katz is an educator and activist in Orlando Florida and regular ConversationED author.  His blog is greaterwhenheard.com.  Check out his Ted Talk Here.

The student topics chosen get more interesting and entertaining each year. 2015 examples include a study of accidental inventions, a step-by-step guide to video editing and an exploration of the Bermuda Triangle. I’ve collected a few examples in a beautiful Smore online flyer.

What If The Genius Hour Model Was Used For Professional Development?

I began to think about this essential question as the student enthusiasm for this project continued to grow. Could this model work to facilitate passion-driven learning for educators in an informal setting? I began to visualize the successful application of my idea:

I imagined teachers excitedly embarking on pedagogical explorations this summer and beginning the school year super-charged with new instructional strategies to utilize with their new students.

I envisioned teachers of all subject areas and levels using powerful tools like Twitter to personalize their PD.

I contemplated educators collaborating online as they pursued similar pedagogical passions – sharing “web gems” and “twitter treasures”

I began to formulate a plan for Passion-Driven Learning for educators using the Genius Hour model I described here:

Plato Would Have Loved Genius Hour

This is what I came up with. Click the image below to view it.

Lee Araoz is an educator, K-12 technology coordinator, staff developer and educational consultant. and master teacher. His blog is TheGoldenageofEducation.com. You can follow him @LeeAraoz on twitter.

Here are the usual soundbites and what I wish would be said instead.

1. We should respect teachers and pay them more.

Instead:

What we have seen is an erosion of the professional development of teachers, not to mention the demolition of teacher tenure in states like California.

Let’s improve the schools of education and require a teaching degree from an accredited university along with strict state credentials. No more diploma mills and fast-track prep. Our students need real teachers who are fully prepared to teach, and we need to discuss the important meaning of tenure to the teaching profession.

Teach for America will become Teacher Aides for America. Let young people out of college work under the supervision of fully degreed and prepared teachers who have been in the field for at least five years. If they then choose teaching they will receive assistance to return to school to become real teachers.

2. Public schools fail and we need competition—charter schools.

Instead:

We have had charter schools for 23 years and there is no proof they are better than traditional public schools—many have worse results. Let’s put a hold on new charter school development and investigate every single charter school to ensure they are rejecting no children and are making legitimate progress.

We will also penalize those charter company operators who siphon money from the state and fail.

3. We need choice.

Instead:

Any school that accepts funding in the form of a voucher will have to demonstrate beforehand that they provide a better education compared to the traditional public school from where a student originated. There will also be consistent monitoring.

4. Students need to be prepared to compete in the 21st century.

Instead:

We are going to bring more jobs home to America and pay workers fairly (living wage). We will encourage young people to pursue careers they are interested in and provide them with career education and support in high school and beyond.

We will help them find their vocational strengths in high school. In order to do this we will bring back a well-balanced curriculum that includes the arts and which starts from an early age.

We will include good vocational-technical education.

5. Common Core State Standards are great!

Instead:

Common Core State Standards are controversial and were never tested. We need to revisit how they were developed, why they were created, and whether they are as good as many say. We need to weigh the two sides of opinion and explore standards in general and the role the state and federal government have played in creating standards.

We need independent research studies done on the Common Core pronto!

6. There is too much standardized testing.

Instead:

We know many parents are concerned about high-stakes testing because there is too much of it and it is designed to fail students, fire teachers and close schools.

Let’s put a moratorium on testing and let school districts, teachers and parents determine what tests are necessary to help their children succeed…and that includes testing tied to Common Core.

Furthermore, no child should be punished for not taking a test. Parents should have the right to reject any testing they don’t think is appropriate without repercussions.

Every local school board should bring teachers together with parents to discuss the meaning of school accountability. After all, who are public schools supposed to be accountable to?

7. Make four year public colleges free.

Instead:

How do other countries provide public college tuition free? Let us have a task force to examine this refreshing idea. We did this once in California, so why can’t we do it again in this country? And we will also look into giving parents and students who have been paying for college in recent years some kind of rebate. Yes. Education is that important.

8. Students attend dropout factories.

Instead:

How many students are dropping out and how much of this perception is due to bad record keeping in the school districts? Why do students drop out? Let’s ask the students who drop out how we could encourage them to stay in school.

9. We need universal preschool.

Instead:

Universal preschool has been used by politicians to garner support for years. Let’s get down to business and increase developmentally friendly preschools especially for the poor—which include more children who were once in the middle class. Let’s revisit Head Start and see how we can help increase supportive early public childhood education. Education for the poor should include necessary wraparound services, and no child should be denied health care.

10. We will reinvent education.

Instead:

Our public schools have served us well for many years. But the defunding of schools since the early 1980s and the involvement of big business in the corporatization of schooling needs to be investigated. While business has a vested interest in public schooling, and philanthropy is welcome, corporate venture philanthropy should not be allowed. Public schools are great democratic institutions that belong to the people. They should not be turned into businesses.

11. We need new leaders in education.

Instead:

Anyone who is a leader in education, overseeing public schooling, will have to have been a professional teacher for at least 5 years and have earned a degree in the area of their expertise. Gone will be the days of public policy wonks and MBAs who never professionally set foot in a classroom, running our schools.

12. We need to stop throwing money at schools.

Instead:

While we need to audit state and local school districts better and question selective federal grant programs that do not serve all children, we also need better transparency of both charter and private schools. But the reality is that public schools have been defunded for many years. And tax dollars are being thrown at untested programs that do not benefit all children.

13. We need to put the best teachers on the Internet.

Instead:

While technology can supplement the classroom and be a good resource for teachers and students, it is not a proven mechanism to replace public schools and public school teachers. We still need good public schools where children get to socialize and learn to be tolerant of one another. And real teachers still matter greatly.

_________________________________________________________________

I’m sure you can think of other comments about education that you would like to hear expanded or where you disagree. Feel free to comment on any of the above.  I would also like a discussion about the following areas which seem ignored:

14. Special education,
15. The loss of the arts,
16. School facility overcrowding and danger.

_________________________________________________________________

Nancy Bailey is an education activist and a former special education teacher.  Her book is titled Misguided Education Reform: Debating the Impact on Students.  Her blog is http://nancyebailey.com. Catch up with her on twitter @NancyEBailley1

All stakeholders in education have enabled the culture that places value on test scores regardless of a student’s body of work throughout the year. In fact, the student’s body of work throughout the year seems to be no part of the national conversation. I believe the reason is because there’s only one measure of a student’s body of work throughout the year: grades.

Nothing irks me more when I hear a politician, or even worse, a school administrator ask “how will we know how well they are doing?” It’s called a grade, that’s how! (but thanks for doubting my job) It’s my job as a teacher to assess content knowledge and evaluate mastery for my students. But that part of my job is not taught to me, not discussed in professional development, or not part of my evaluation. Yet, the ability to assess content knowledge and evaluate mastery is a key component to my profession. And we have yielded that authority to The Test, yielded it to data.

We should have never lost that authority. There should be heavy investment in that authority.  The University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR) put out a report in June of 2012 that had documented the importance of GPA and its correlation with retention, graduation, and long term earnings.  Read the report here, or at least Page 3 and Box 1.1.  It is clear that a student’s body of work through the year is the most important aspect of their education. Yet, teachers have yielded the authority to grade students based on in-class evidence (projects, discussions, teacher-created assessments) to the results of standardized or multiple-choice tests. Disclaimer: I would be okay with that IF AND ONLY IF the teacher either vetted or created those tests, especially in collaboration with other teachers.

I do not blame my colleagues for this. We are in a system that strives to de-humanize students as numbers, we have policymakers that place ever higher stakes on the outcomes of those numbers, we have school administrators that drive their staffs to improve those numbers, and so we have teachers that channel all their energy into creating the cutest and most “engaging” way to have students turn themselves into numbers. (See “when those scores came back, I about did the SUPER SUPER happy dance”: authority yielded.) We are blindly enabling a dehumanizing culture, unaware of the consequences, and we have yielded one of the most powerful authorities we have: assessment.

It’s time for teachers to reclaim the authority to assess content knowledge and evaluate mastery. How can we do that?

1. Your grade should mean something.What does it mean for a student to pass your class? What does an A mean? A C? Does your grade truly reflect what the student knows of your content?
2. Stop accepting fluff for a grade. We have to discontinue the practice of assigning points and scores for activities, behaviors, and projects that have nothing to do with our content.  Make sure you create or vet anything assessed to ensure its validity. It would be ideal to do this with colleagues.
3. Work together. Make sure you are developing your assessments with your colleagues, and MOST IMPORTANTLY how those assessments will be scored. In fact, try this: develop an assessment for your classes that your colleagues will grade. You grade their students as well. This obviously does not apply to multiple choice tests.
4. Your students are your data. If you are asked about data, talk about your students. Tell their stories. There is no better data than your students and their stories. You want to see my data? Talk to my students. No, it’s not simple. Why? Because they ARE HUMAN, and humans are complex.
5. Articulate your authority. Defend your grading policy.  When asked about validity or accuracy, stand up for yourself. You are a professional, your team is a team of professionals, you know what good work looks like, you know what learning looks like, and you know what mastery looks like.

Here is a great model of assessing mastery, from Around the Horn on ESPN.

Check out part 1 – The Space Race

Check out Part 2 – A Nation at Risk

Check out Part 3 – No Child Left Behind

Last week I gave these “college and career ready” students an assignment: prepare a group presentation on important topics in education and present those topics to the class. Because they are recent high school graduates, their idea of important education topics and my idea of important education topics were drastically different. For example, I would have picked teacher evaluations, education reform, or the consequences of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top on the learning environment.

When they chose topics like dress code, shaming in school, music education programs, testing, and sex ED, I didn’t protest. I sat in the back row of my giant classroom, and listened to these future educators, standing side by side, nervously presenting in an auditorium to their peers.

Each presentation was 5-10 min.

As the third group of the night set up in the front of the room, their PowerPoint came into view onto the giant screen. In giant letters read College Readiness? with this image underneath:

Then the group of five young women launched a series of questions at us.

“How many of you know how to balance a checkbook? Raise your hands” Only eight students, out of eighty, raised their hands.

“How many of you understand credit and how interest rates work?” Two students put their hands up.

“How many of you understand your student loan terms?” Not one hand went in the air.

“How many of you feel overwhelmed because you never learned time management skills necessary for our life here in college?”

Every hand shot up.

I looked at their presentation title again: College and Career Readiness?

I peered at the question mark and smirked.

The term “college and career readiness” is political speak, that actually translates to, “We need more tests, so testing companies can make more money, so we can get more dollars for political campaigns.”

In fact, “college and career readiness” has absolutely nothing to do with college or career. It’s a catchy slogan invented by people, who stand to gain hundreds of millions of dollars from Common Core and high-stakes assessments. And the slogan has been extremely effective in selling education reform over the last 15 years.

It’s like a salesman pitching you a timeshare in the “Orlando Area”. He says you’ll be minutes away from Disney World. It’s only when you check in that you realize the “Orlando area” is 110 square miles and you are nowhere near that damn mouse or his friends. Your family is pissed.

The phrase “college and career readiness” is just as ambiguous as the timeshare in the “Orlando Area”. Like the timeshare, it was pushed onto us by a bunch of sales people, also known as politicians. And we’ve learned that “college and career readiness” is as much about the real world as a timeshare off I-4, somewhere in Orlando, is the same as a hotel in Walt Disney World.

Arne Duncan – the US Education Secretary – said in 2011, “The truth is that we want all students to develop employability skills. And I am pleased to say that the Common Core standards, developed by the states, deliberately incorporate what is often thought of as career-ready skills, such as problem solving and communication skills. The next generation of assessments currently being developed by the states under the Race to the Top assessment competition, will also assess these higher-order skills.” 

Mr. Duncan is not an educator. In fact, he has never taught anything. He never had to construct lesson plans, or deal with students who don’t have enough to eat at home. He has never stood in front of a classroom trying to engage a bunch of apathetic teenagers. He is not and never will be an educator. Still, he is extremely proud of his education reform efforts, which produced the Common Core Standards and the all the profit generating assessments that go with them.

And Mr. Duncan loves to use the slogan “college and career readiness”.

Although his slogan is appealing, my students’ college and career readiness skills won’t prevent them from going into tens of thousands (in some cases, hundreds of thousands) of dollars in debt with federal subsidized, student loans. They will make decisions about financial aid that will affect them for the rest of their lives, without ever having a class on interest rates, loans or credit. The skills students really need to survive in the real world are not assessed on the PARCC exam, the FSA or the SBAC. Those skills aren’t assessed on the ACT or SAT either. 

Keeping students ignorant about interest rates and federal loan terns is all part of the design. If students understood their federal student loans, they probably wouldn’t take the money. If everyone understands how they’re being used, who will the feds exploit?

Instead these students will have to learn the hard way about balancing bank accounts only when theirs become overdrawn and riddled with overdraft fees.

This is not the students’ fault. They have done exactly what we asked them to do – pass tests that assess “21^st century, college and career readiness skills”.

By the way, 21^st century skills – another catchphrase – are more about beating China in algebra than they are about cultivating independent, self-sufficient young adults.

At the end of the presentation the group outlined a set of demands they want public schools to implement:

• Authentic internships with real companies (Not just an on the job training class where kids leave school before the end of the day and go to their low-paying job at McDonalds).
• 2-3 semesters (at least!) of study in high school in finance, budgets and accounting. This should include everything from balancing a checkbook to paying bills to taking out loans. They also wanted to know about complex financial subjects, like interest rates, that affect their lives.
• Comprehensive training for all students on resume building, interviewing skills and how to act once you get the job.
• Intensive training in time management. Students said they are overwhelmed because they have never learned this invaluable skill.

After class a student approached me and said, “I spent my whole life preparing for tests that do nothing for me after high school. It was all a complete waste of time.”

I said, “Well kid, not a total waste of time. You did learn the Pythagorean Theorem.” 

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