An Educational Contrarian

The big questions to me are at the systems level. We intended to build a system that would foment excellence and now everyone is scratching their heads and wondering why we don't seem to be getting there. Implicit in that is the notion that our tests and our standards are themselves systems capable of fomenting excellence and so the problem must be elsewhere. Perhaps instruction? Teacher quality? etc. I noticed that the commissioner blames teaching in one of your articles, but I don't buy that. What is missing is an honest conversation about what the tools we call tests and standards were actually designed to do. Were they designed to foment excellence or were they designed for some other purpose? And if they were designed for some other purpose and we adopt them and don't see the excellence we want, wouldn't it behoove us to lift the hood and see if somehow we have a mismatch? What you've identified in your work is evidence of the mismatch. Our standards consist of...

I find it unremarkable and simply a given that when establishing policy in virtually every professional field: medicine, engineering, construction, etc., policy makers and regulators turn to experts who understand the field. This helps ensure that the technical components are properly addressed and in turn helps ensure that the policies will have the desired effects. I wish policy makers would offer the same courtesy to the field of education. The lone qualification for someone to make education policy in this country is the completion of a high school education, as if having been in a school imparts expertise. I walk through buildings every day and yet that in no way qualifies me to build them. I go to my doctor when I'm sick but that doesn't qualify me to practice medicine. I use a computer but that doesn't qualify me to write code. But education seems to be different, treated as something any idiot can understand, and so no expertise is required to write the laws t...

Alfie Kohn does a nice job articulating just how trapped we are in a standardized test paradigm and the implications for teaching. Click here for the full article.

No pilot is allowed to fly a plane unless they can demonstrate a thorough knowledge of each instrument and the information it provides. In education, however, we find it perfectly acceptable to allow someone who has no understanding of what a test instrument is, how it was made, or what it was designed to tell us, use that instrument however they see fit. Such use is akin to a pilot flying a plane without regard to altitude, the amount of fuel left in the tanks, or whether or not the wheels were lowered for landing. No amount of good can come from it. Strange that we now run schools under a similar scenario and then accuse those willing to work in that environment as being responsible for whatever failures occur.

In a recent Ed Week editorial Marc Tucker at the National Center on Education and the Economy argues that the Common Core standards offer a way out of a twenty-year trend of declining expectations for students. He points to the notions of grade inflation and fewer hours of study per college course as evidence for these declining expectations, noting that students now receive credit for coursework that would have been deemed sub-standard twenty years ago. I find those points entirely valid. But in order for the Common Core—or any other set of statements regarding what students should know and be able to do as a result of schooling—to contribute to a solution we first need to examine the motivational system in which such a thing operates. By “motivational system” I mean the processes by which we attempt to induce behavior in teachers and students such that it moves us towards a better state. The motivational system in schools is pretty straightforward: students take s...

That question is one that we absolutely must ask ourselves in 2013. Policy makers adopted an educational formula that imposes behavioral statements as educational standards, standardized tests as the basis for all quality determinations, and accountability to those tests as if they capture the bulk of what students should have learned over the year. The system cannot be said to be working effectively by anyone examining the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Our standing internationally continues to head in the wrong direction, curriculum winds up limited by the tested material, and the goal of a K-12 education to produce students ready to face the worlds of college and work seems ever further away. The response, however, is the system of standards, standardized tests, and accountability is itself just fine—in spite of the limited evidence the system is moving us closer to the overall goals—and we just need to do two things: fine tune a few of the parts, and really hold...

At a conference this week I heard a panel attempt to define what personalized learning is. It was interesting, all over the board, and inconclusive. I felt for the educators given the challenges they faced and their willingness to try something new. What was missing from the conversation was a defined rationale. The panel agreed it was the right thing to do, but at no point did I hear them offer a reason that was compelling. It was like they sensed it and yet weren't quite sure how to give voice to their logic. What I hoped to hear was the idea that individualized learning is about moving from the current state of things where time is a constant with the result that achievement varies widely, to one where the level of proficiency is the constant and time, effort, and the instructional path by which each student arrives at that point are the variables. The path would be determined explicitly against a student's needs. The lack of a rationale for any educational endea...