How is a raven like a writing desk?

Is it like modern education "reform," in that no one has seemed to come up with a reasonable answer?

This post is, surprise, about standardized testing (which you're probably sick of hearing about, but that's essentially all we hear about now when it comes to education policy, and I'm going to talk about it at length and hope others do too in the hopes that policy makers will finally get on board and realize it's. Not. Working.)

I read this poignant article yesterday that I thought summed things up very nicely: "[The standardized test] is a fundamentally flawed tool that will only debase the good work we teachers do in the classroom, the work that districts do in designing and implementing quality curriculum, and the work our students do in learning to become enlightened critical thinkers."

One of the author's main points here is that the secrecy surrounding standardized tests make it extremely difficult -- perhaps even impossible -- for teachers to accurately gauge which skills students still need to improve once the tests have been graded. It seems to her as if the testing services, Pearson in particular, care more about their own security (read: profit) than about students actually knowing the material.

She also mentions the fact there are bad test questions. For example: "How does the narrator's point of view contribute to the mood of the story?" I am an English teacher, and when I read this question, my first thought was, "Huh?" because that doesn't make any sense. The writer of this article concurs; as she states, an author does not use point of view to develop mood. When tests are written by psychometricians and not educators, how can the test developers be held accountable (*ahem* another magic word in education reform *ahem*) in creating legitimate questions that test real skills?

I have noticed both these problems on the GED exam, since this is what I teach. It is extremely frustrating on both ends -- student and teacher -- when a student fails the test the first time, and I can't help them improve. The reason I cannot do this is because, like the tests in the previous article, there is great secrecy surrounding the GED exam, which was also developed by Pearson.

For example, when a student finishes his or her exam, the computer generates a score. The student cannot see which questions he or she got incorrect. Therefore, a non-passing score could be a result of a few skipped questions, or an accidental marking of "C" when the student meant to click "B," or even a misspelling on a fill-in-the-blank, since the computer grading system has no nuance.

Moreover, the GED Testing Service (which as far as I can tell is not "accountable" to anyone) lists a set of skills for the student to work on for next time, but this is not very helpful to the student, or to me as an educator, because without seeing how the student missed the questions that pertained to the skills, the student's only option is to essentially regurgitate what he or she has already been studying. It's very possible a student has these skills down cold, but could have missed a question due to an unknown vocabulary word, or was reading too quickly, or legitimately does not know how to solve the problem. These are all things that are essential for educators to know in order to better serve their students.

When I give quizzes back, the students can see immediately not only which questions they got wrong, but why. I think understanding this premise is, in some ways, more important than getting a multiple choice question correct. Also, I give students a chance to correct any wrong answers, and while I do not change their quiz grade, their corrections give them another opportunity to think critically and understand their own thinking.

I could probably type for another hour here about my issues with the GED Testing Service, and really, all standardized tests that employ the same level of secrecy, but I won't. Instead, I'll let this article about the more rigorous GED do the talking for me. In this one, a point is made that testing companies have a monopoly and seem to care more about their own profit margin than about students succeeding. This is especially the case with adult education, I feel, since these adults have a) been out of school for so long and b) were exposed to bad education in the first place, especially if they grew up poor and urban (which mine did). These students can often not handle the higher rigor of the new GED. I'm not saying we should eliminate rigor, of course; I'm simply saying there has to be a better way.

Perhaps instead of privatizing standardized testing, we can have schools and districts be in charge of what students should know and how to measure their knowledge.

A change is (hopefully) gonna come

Last time, I mentioned an article that was a tongue-in-cheek account of what makes a "bad" teacher. On the other hand, this article (by the same author of the former one) explains what makes great teachers. She not only discusses traits that cannot easily be tested, but she mentions that she created this list based on data-driven observations. So if one person can develop a non-test-driven matrix for judging teachers (granted, an untested one, but it's worth a shot! It can't be worse than the current matrix!), why are we still using ridiculous "Value Added Measures" to determine whether or not a teacher is successful?

The current "reform" movement in fact makes the art of teaching worse, not better. We have long been aware that teachers need more money, more recognition, etc. etc., but this article makes an excellent point about what teachers would do with more time. They would not take longer vacations, or assign longer essays, or bitch about students with colleagues; instead, according to the article, teachers would develop stronger relationships with students and parents, perfect their teaching methods and share their practices with other professionals, and provide more nuanced comments on student assignments rather than give just a letter grade. Granted, this is one person's opinion, but being surrounded by teachers and knowing that most people go into teaching expressly to make a difference in students' lives, I don't think it's far-fetched at all. (Perhaps what teachers do with their time can be another factor in the way we determine whether or not a teacher is "great.")

If any policy makers are reading this: Please change things. I've said it before and I'll say it again because it's the best thing you can do: LISTEN TO THE TEACHERS!

Student Autonomy

I am a huge believer in the student-centered classroom. I believe that students learn best (and develop the motivation to learn) when they are given opportunities to take ownership of their own learning. There are many studies that prove students learn better (and, more importantly, are more interested in learning) when they can construct their own learning plans, compared to when teachers simply talk at them. There is an expression, in fact, that teachers should serve as a "guide on the side" rather than a "sage on the stage." The former phrase suggests that teachers' roles are to guide students in their own discoveries, whereas the latter states that teachers have all the answers and are simply regurgitating the information, which I strongly disagree with.

Many leading education experts agree that teachers should be more of a guide and less of a sage. At the forefront of this movement is Alfie Kohn, who for decades has supported progressive education. In this essay, he explains how widely-used reading practices in particular kills students' love of reading. When I read this, I agreed with him wholeheartedly, yet I also felt empathic for educators, whose professions revolve around formalized assessments, and thus encouraging students' own construction of their learning is often not possible.

I especially like the part toward the bottom where Kohn discusses self-determination theory. (I discussed this theory briefly as well about six months ago.)  Here, he offers further evidence that VAM are the opposite of effective education. Teachers and principals (in other words, those in the trenches) have known this for years. When will policy-makers (those who have no experience in the classroom, by the way) come to their senses?

Oh assessments...

Assessments are my life right now. As much as I may hate it, I teach to the test. Specifically, I teach to the GED, since that's why my students attend the program.

But just because students pass the GED doesn't necessarily mean they will be successful in post-secondary education, or, for that matter, in life. The same applies to all standardized tests. Life isn't standardized, so why should students' assessments be?

At its best, education should prepare students for life, which standardized tests do not do. Therefore, the standardization movement is unethical, since it does not accurately prepare students for real-world skills. I also think the movement is dangerous, since our society depends upon a well-educated populace with critical thinking and problem-solving skills. The standardization movement is essentially destroying our own future (not to be overly dramatic or anything). This will continue to be the case for as long as the movement is run by billionaires, for-profit testing corporations, and other people who are not teachers.

In the article linked above, a mother is concerned that Pearson's wrong answer in a textbook would carry over to Pearson's test; but more than that, she is concerned that the test is not allowing her children (or herself) the chance to hold them accountable. As the author states, Pearson is writing tests "we parents will never get to see. Tests we parents will never get to review. Tests we parents will never get to question." This is extraordinarily unethical, and extraordinarily dangerous. Any curriculum designer will tell you to BEGIN with the assessment to see what students know, not END with the assessment to penalize students for what they don't. (Of course, you need pre- and post-assessments to be entirely accurate, but the point of the final one is to see which skills students still have not mastered, not to be used as the end-all be-all of how to grade students and their teachers.) If the testing company is the only one that knows the answer, how can students, parents, and teachers know how to improve? (Moreover, if teachers have to be held accountable, why doesn't the testing industry have to live up to its own standards?)

I experience this same frustration with my students. We give them practice tests through the testing sites, and we are able to see a score, and nothing more, once the student has finished. That's it. This is incredibly unhelpful in terms of designing lessons and assessing skills. This is not how you learn. This is not how you teach.

Clearly, I am not a fan of the for-profit testing industry. Nor, as I'm sure you're aware, am I a fan of the larger movement in which billionaires seem to have ultimate control over education reform, regardless of how ignorant they are of the complexities of the school system. (Warning: This article is really long.) They continually harp upon accountability, but to whom are they accountable?

The current education reform movement, in a nutshell, seems to be saying that if you have money and power, you get to make the rules, and that teaching really isn't that hard, since they can get the answers (albeit wrong ones) from the textbooks. The entire movement undermines the entire profession of teaching, what with all this hate about teacher tenure and Teach for America, which doesn't seem to think that one needs experience or much training to become a teacher. That's why I'm glad that Harvard  may no longer be sending graduates to TFA -- at least that is one baby step in the right direction. But we have so far to go.

I'll take Policy Potpourri for 500, Alex (aka Link Storm 2014)

Most educational reforms, as most of us know, deal with testing and accountability. In many cases, this means several things: teachers lack control of their own curricula, academics take priority over everything else; and schools systematically find ways to deal with "bad kids" who inhibit learning.

To the first point: Curricula cannot be one-size-fits-all. All students, and all teachers, are different. But when one is teaching to a specific standardized test, this idea is often forgotten, and then teachers are stuck teaching things they themselves may not even care about. Thus, students become bored and disengaged, and no one can learn like that. Education needs to be relevant or you won't remember what you learned. That's basic learning theory. Additionally, as this article points out, racial makeup of schools (in regards to both students and staffing) does matter, especially in terms of how comfortable students and parents feel in their neighborhood schools. I believe that first and foremost, schools should feel like a community for all involved, not simply a place where one goes to learn stuff. When teachers can't control what they're teaching, it breaches basic theories about how students learn, and quashes the idea that schools act as safe communities who embrace their students' cultures. Perhaps more importantly, when teachers are not in control, their voices are not heard, and neither are their students'.

To the second point: We all know that there is not enough time in the day to do everything we want to do. This is even more problematic for teachers, especially when they must teach to the test. But is it really a bad thing when students don't have time for non-academic activities, like music, sports, and theater? Yes. The author here does an amazing job of advocating for the arts. I know from experience that the arts are vital. Especially for at-risk students. True, the arts are not tested. But we can still hold arts teachers accountable for what their students learn. Not all successes can be measured through numbers (and this is coming from someone who creates pivot tables for fun...).

And to the last point: Perhaps I am naive, but I don't understand why there is such a preponderance of expulsions and suspensions in the school system. First of all, if a child dislikes school, suspending him is not a punishment. Secondly, while I understand that teachers may not be able to manage a classroom with constant misbehavior (speaking from experience), taking a child out of school sends a message that the people in charge are giving up on helping her. This article alludes to the idea that expulsion rates correlate to drop out rates (and looking at this graph, you can see that "not being interested" -- i.e. the first and second points -- and "missing too many days" account for the most popular reasons for why students drop out (page 3)). We need to develop a culture that tells students school is important, but this goes back to making school relevant and interesting again.

Finally, to end on a good note, despite the fact that is so much wrong with education reform, the world needs passionate and caring teachers. This professor explains why beautifully.
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This week's post is brought to you by the letter B

...for backwards.

I've written before how much I think modern education policy is going in the wrong direction. This post will be no exception. First, the Young Education Professionals' Blog has this great piece about the "3 blunders of Common Core" and solutions for each. While CCSS does have good ideas, its biggest blunder is that things happened much too quickly. As any policy-maker or scientist can tell you, slower changes for something as gigantic as the national education system, work better. It's easier to tell what works and what doesn't when there are fewer variables.

Valerie Strauss has also reported about two different issues that I would like to address: The first relates to the concept above, that change must happen slowly, and that it doesn't come out of nowhere. Finally, this other piece suggests that collaboration is at the core of strong policy, especially when it comes to the classroom, which I firmly believe. But when you have Race to the Top and similar initiatives, competition takes the place of collaboration. Though competition is not in and of itself a bad thing, education is not the place for it. When it comes to improving schools, things work much more smoothly if collaboration is firmly in place.

I'm not saying anything that has not been said before. But perhaps if these things keep getting said by parents, educators, students, and other people who are actually in the trenches of education, things will finally start getting better.

The circle of liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiife

Inevitably, at least one point in our lives, we end up circling back to something we have done, seen, or heard before. We are, after all, creatures of habit, and the world orbits among trends.

Earlier this month, I had written a piece about how Ferguson is connected to education, and now others are drawing this connection even more explicitly. Students cannot be expected to learn if they are reeling from a recent tragedy like this. (They also cannot be expected to learn if they are hungry, anxious, sick, and a whole slew of other feelings, as numerous researchers have also noted.)  Teachers cannot be expected to teach if students are unmotivated, angry, and dour. Administrators cannot be expected to administrate if there exists an inherent distrust of "the authority" within a community. And parents cannot be expected to parent when the very lessons they are trying to teach are being undermined by the society at large.

Once again, we see how everything is connected. Schools do not exist within a silo. Therefore the policies that aim to improve them should involve the community at large. Education affects everything, therefore everything should focus, at least to some extent, on education.

Yes yes and yes

Just this. Perfect.

Different perspectives

Last time, I posted a link to an article that discussed an initiative at Dunbar High School in the District, called ninth grade academies, that dramatically helped their students achieve. The article asked why this initiative took so long, and when will the rest of the District follow suit.

Well, that has now happened. Because Dunbar's program was so successful, DCPS is now making ninth grade academies mandatory in every DC high school. 

As a result, this DC teacher, while working on the same initiative herself at her own school of her own volition, has brought up an interesting point about district-mandated policy changes. She claims the ninth grade academies as working well at Dunbar (and now her own school) because they were teacher-created, not administration-created. They work at Dunbar because those teachers know their students and could therefore craft policy around students whom they already serve.

However, Ms. Fuchs points out, ninth grade academies will only work if teachers are invested. Therefore the mandated policy from up on high is not a "magic pill." Not all schools are the same. Not all policies will work the same way at every school, even two in the same neighborhood.

In that vein, politicians may be beginning to understand that cookie-cutter policies do not work. This article clearly delineates the new federal education bill passed Friday. Besides the last two points, things definitely seem to be moving in the right direction. Finally.

The one day a year I listen to Alice Cooper

Finals were over yesterday, graduation is tonight, and teachers' last day is Friday. I have about an hour of paperwork to do, and then that's it.

For various reasons, I won't be returning to my current school, and I'm taking a break from teaching altogether for at least a year. I've been going back and fourth on this decision for a few months, but I'm 99% sure it's the right thing to do. However, there are times when that 1% erupts -- like when I got this note from a student at the end of his final exam:

"I would just like to thank you, Ms. Brown, for everything you have done for me this year, as well as for everyone else in the class. People like you giving years of their lives to ensure that we go on to live ours to the most. Teaching is among one of the most caring occupations I can think of, and few will rank higher on my list of teachers than you. Thank you again for helping brighten a year that may have otherwise ruined my life."

Right in the feels.

But then I tell myself I'm leaving teaching for reasons like this. And the fact that this is considered revolutionary.

There is so much work still left to be done.

The Common Core and Classroom Management

Two articles I've recently read discuss, respectively, how teachers are unprepared for the "Common Core," and how behavior management in high school can be a problem even for seasoned teachers, taking time away from teaching and learning.

Both articles are from Education Week, and I'm including them both because these issues are connected. First, if Common Core is implemented, it will require more teacher training, and there is a lack of time and money to provide it adequately. And if teachers are still struggling with classroom management, what makes administrators think they will have time to implement Common Core on top of the regular pressures of classroom teaching? If teachers are still learning how to implement the Common Core in addition to managing behavior, the classroom will be nothing but chaos. Policy makers should, at the very least, ask teachers what they want (or provide training) before putting anything else on their already overflowing plates.

The article discusses that, as usual, it is the at-risk students, such as those with disabilities, ELLs, and low-SES students, who will be the most affected by teachers' unpreparedness with implementation of the Common Core. Am I crazy, or shouldn't we close the achievement gap first before moving on to implementing a new policy? The Common Core, therefore, will probably have the opposite effect of its intention due to teachers' uncomfortableness with its implementation.

Again, seems to be a case of policy makers trying to do too much at once. Teachers are already doing too much at once. Trying, for example, to manage their classrooms basically on their own, and disciplining when they should be teaching, through no fault of their own, as the above article suggests. It's also noteworthy that most discipline problems come from at-risk students, and these students will be even more of a disruption under the Common Core, especially if teacher training is not provided.

It seems to me that most policies that are set on the state and federal levels seem to be detrimental to both students and teachers. Where do policy makers come up with these things? Do they ask students and teachers about them? Perhaps that should be their first step.

AP Classes, Homework, and Standardized Tests, oh my!

There aren't really any of my own thoughts in today's entry; instead, I wanted to post three articles about various (and large and important) controversies in education today.

Exhibit A discusses that AP classes, despite their labels, do not actually prepare kids for college. I would agree, because I have seen this first hand. Students in AP classes often do not have the requisite skills to succeed in those classes, let alone in college. This well-written article discusses additional flaws with the AP testing system.

Exhibit B is a short piece by Alfie Kohn, who argues that homework does more harm than good. I'm a proponent of the flipped classroom, which is not exactly homework, since homework basically serves to reinforce skills students have just learned. So I guess on this subject, Kohn and I agree.

Finally, Exhibit C is yet another example of educators attacking standardized tests. You'd think with all this backlash, the standardized testing movement would go away. Sadly, these policy reformers seem to be stubborn and ignorant of data.

The learning never stops!

I'm trying really hard not to slack off this summer, so I'm taking a teacher-ed class that the county is offering this summer. It's a four day session (which is now half-way finished) about Media Literacy, and it has been really fascinating. The course is based around how we can implement media like TV, movies, internet, advertisements, etc. into lesson plans, and it has actually gone above and beyond my expectations.

However, despite all the good that's coming out of this course, it reminds me about the things that are wrong with education. And here they are:

1) The first element that made me rather sad was the fact that teacher materials are rather hard to get. The county purchases textbooks from a certain textbook company, like many others, and this company provides additional materials to help us teach better. Ok, makes sense. But the instructor of the Media Literacy course said that the county was going to give each teacher a supplemental DVD from this company that had things like film clips with guiding questions to make our jobs easier. Except then they didn't because these DVDs cost $300... each. Probably because of copyright and stuff, but still. That is ridiculous. I realize this textbook company is a for-profit corporation (which is sickening to me), but that is outrageous. However, what I found even more offensive was the fact that these guiding questions (the instructor gave us a preview) were pretty simplistic for the most part. The textbook company seemed quite patronizing in that regard, saying that teachers are basically interchangeable and not even all that necessary -- all we do is press play, apparently.

2) Next, I've gotten to know teachers at other schools through this course, and the way they talk about how the SOLs make their jobs more difficult is rather baffling. For instance, one woman was saying she teaches a Read 180 class, which is a highly scripted course that helps struggling readers. She is supposed to stick to the script, but today she said she had to deviate from it in order to teach simile, metaphor and personification, which are not in the script for this course, but are on the SOL. Which these students, even though they are behind their peers, still have to pass. Umm, what? How does that make any sense whatsoever? That just goes to show that standardized tests do more harm than good, and that there is something wrong with prescribed programs, especially when they are so evidently contradictory.

3) The instructor today was talking about a project she had her students do in which they had to create and discuss a metaphor they created based on a specific text. She said this was a fabulous project, because the depth of conversation and analysis the students got into was much greater than it would have been if she had provided them with a more simple question-and-answer, or even a seminar. I thought that was really awesome, but then of course my mind went to the idea of standardized tests again, and how these tests aren't really testing what students know. It was clear to this teacher how well her students understood a text, but more importantly, how honed their critical thinking skills are, yet if they were to have a standardized test on the same text, it would be difficult to judge how deeply their thoughts could go.

4) Finally (and this is not from the course), this article is so well-written, so poignant, and so in-tune about what is wrong with national education standards when it comes to children in poverty. Why is there so much wrong with this profession?

Broken System Is Broken

Another disappointing discovery in the local policy department. I got an email from a student's counselor yesterday asking what grades this girl would need for the final quarter and the final exam to pass. She has failed all three quarters so far.

So this morning I sat down to start doing the math. Her three quarter grades averaged to a 45%. I was a little confused how to figure out how this would affect the rest of the year for her, but I was doubtful she could pass if she earns less than 100% from here on out. So I went next door to another (English) teacher to ask how he figures those things out.

However, he told me I couldn't use a number. I had to use a letter grade. Umm, but teacher, letters can't have averages. Apparently, though, each letter is assigned a number much like the GPA scale: A is 4, B is 3, C is 2, D is 1, and E is 0. Ok, I guess that makes sense.

But here's the broken part: A student needs a total of 5 points to graduate. Which means my failing student -- a girl who rarely comes to class, never completes her homework, bombs most tests, and barely completes classwork -- can theoretically get an A, then a D, and then it doesn't matter if she fails the last semester or the final. Think about that: we have built a system that actually encourages students to slack off after just nine weeks of school.

If you have failed three quarters, I don't think you should be able to pass the course. Otherwise, we are teaching children that it's okay to be lazy for most of your life as long as you do *some* work the last month or so of school. Teaching life lessons? We're doing it wrong.