MEA results are in. So what do they say?

The results of the last MEA test have been posted. Depending on how you view the scores you get a different picture.

Team Duncan – Strategic Planning vs Strategic Thinking

Arne Duncan has been at his post as Education Secretary for several months now. I’ve been following his escapades closely at change.org and my own blog. High off Mr. Obama’s election as President, I was on board Team Duncan when I heard of his appointment. Since then, I’ve taken a different stance. Not quite a 180, but I’ve developed a healthy criticism for Duncan and Obama’s education policies.

Way back in 2007, Robert Evans wrote an article arguing against the strict application of strategic planning for schools. “The Case Against Strategic Planning” was given to me by my father in-law after he attended, of all things, a planning sessions at a local private school. The paper is a great read for anyone involved in education, parents and kids too. I suggest you take some time to read the whole piece.

As I read Evans’s article I began to realize much of what Duncan and Obama have detailed in their “race to the top”, “pillars of reform”, etc. are exactly what should not be happening.

Evans states people often confuse construction of plans with creating an actual strategy. Strategic plans focus on step-by-step problem solving, timetables, measurable results, and fixed outcomes. Plans focus on structure and are not open to flexibility, often avoiding addressing uncertainty and unpredictability.

Just look at Team Duncan’s support for merit pay, longer school days, standardized testing, and charters. Not that I disagree with those things, Duncan and Co. fail to realize all the nuances of each approach and think about how to utilize them best to reach their goals.

Duncan and Obama are ignoring all the flaws of strategic planning. They are basing their policy decisions on predictability, objectivity, and structure.

Predictability:

Every teacher knows that schools are fluid environments, as are the communities they operate in. Political, technological, and social landscapes have changed drastically in even five years. Sometimes in ways we could not have predicted(twitter who knew?). The world will not wait while you debate. A plan cannot become and end in itself. Saying we want to close the bottom 5,000 schools and reopen them in five years might seem like a blueprint to better education, but it cannot be a replacement for addressing the realities facing our schools.

Objectivity:

In crafting a beautiful plan it can be easy to overlook the soft data effecting schools. Hard data is so nice, cut and dry. I love it. Graduation rates, test scores, and the like line everything up so nicely. When we base a merit pay system or funding system like No Child Left Behind, which Duncan and Obama still support, on something like our current testing system important mitigating factors are ignored. Our current testing system does nothing to show a students understanding of the material. Current standardized tests prove nothing except how well a student can memorize and fill in bubbles. True understanding can only be shown from written exams asking for problem solving and analysis. This is something I have argued for time and time again.

I also spoke recently on how one disruptive, which doesn’t necessarily denote misbehaving, student can skew test scores for an entire classroom. Linking merit pay to the current testing system doesn’t take this into account. Nor does it factor in the many other tasks teachers perform such as implementing new technology, mentoring colleagues, or tutoring students for example. Without this soft data one cannot get the complete picture of what a teacher is doing.

Structure:

Schools do not often produce rational outcomes. Anyone with children knows kids are pretty damn irrational at times. I don’t care, toddlers to teenagers just do some stuff that make you slap your forehead. Human judgement can adapt to whatever kids can dish out better than a strict plan. Focusing on the plan as an end all be all puts all the weight on the means totally forgetting the end. Look at the 5,000 schools business again or the D.C. voucher debacle. Duncan is missing the most important questions he should be asking. “Why am I doing this? Is this the best way to pursue my objective?”

I’ve spent all this time criticizing Team Duncan on what they should not be doing, I’m going to switch gears and talk about what they should.

Duncan and Co should employ some strategic thinking. Strategic thinking is in many ways the antithesis of strategic planning. Strategic thinking is flexible, creative, considers hard and soft facts, and collects opinions from teachers and students. An outline, not a blueprint.

Innovations are not something to push out like merit pay, charter schools, or longer schools days. New reforms should be adaptable. We should expect to modify them during implementation, as education is fluid. Static reforms are bound to fail. Like so many things in life, reforms must evolve or be pushed aside.

Simplify plans. Having many standards forces us to spend less time on each one. Testing many standards will bring us down the same road. Leaner standards and adaptable skills allow us to prepare students for anything that is thrown at them.

Strategic thinking leaves room for schools to roll with the punches. Less targets over shorter periods of time keep a school flexible. A school can adapt to new situations, instead of being bound by a five year plan that was out of date in less than five months.

Lastly, strategic thinking takes information from many sources into account. Something as trivial as gossip or hearsay from teachers and students can provide valuable candid insight into what’s happening in the trenches. Students and parents should be surveyed on the status of their school and learning experience. Weak spots can be caught quickly and strengths bolstered. Hey, if parent involvement matters to Obama and Duncan, then it should be encouraged in all forms, especially one as helpful as this.

Flexibility has always been a key to education reform. It is a corner stone of strategic thinking. If we are talking in business terms, as some reformers including myself occasionally do, what business can expect to last long that is not adaptable to change? Remember the key to strategic thinking is in the name. Thinking! We should be thinking, considering, evaluating, reevaluating reforms. Always adapting to changes when applicable. Otherwise we will fall back to more of the same ol strategery.

Change in Education?

Or more of the same?

I am loosing faith in “Change”. EdSec Duncan seems to be more hype than “Hope”. I had a lot of confidence that Arne Duncan would clean house and sow the seeds for some real gains in education. There is a bit of egg on my face at this point.

While Duncan and Co certainly push changes in the education system these changes are more novelties than substantial improvements. Some take issue with the business like manner Team Duncan takes on education reform. Personally this is not a problem for me. If the business world presents a solution to an education woe we should use it. That being said, business and education are not entirely the same. Teaching a student is vastly different from running an add agency or producing a product. Ideas should be kept in perspective. Business solutions can translate to more effective ways of running a school (It does concern me that, excusing the rising costs of stuff and inflation, education continually gets more and more money for the same mixed results. Money is not the solution obviously). Business solutions do not translate well to business of learning.

Why this lack of education in education reform? Team Duncan is no team of rivals.

from Change.org:

Something that stands out about Ed Sec Arne Duncan and his inner circle – Klein, Sharpton, and, lord help us, Newt Gingrich at the *cough* “progressive” Education Equality Project; Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Mayor Bloomberg, and the whole Billionaire Boys’ Club gang; Michelle Rhee, Wendy Kopp, and the “give us a rookie idealist and a five week crash course, and we’ll give you a competent, expert teacher” gang at Teach for America – and their whole “reform” discourse is how much talk and proposed action we hear about teachers, and how little about teaching.

An obvious cause is that Duncan and most of his gang have more background in management (or, lord help us, politics) than in education. And the frightening thing is, when we listen to them, there’s little evidence they’re aware of the difference between an MBA and a Ph.D. in education. It’s like the hospital comptroller thinking he should have the right to dictate surgical techniques in the O.R.

Clay Burell goes on to say that Team Duncan may actually have a deeper understanding of education, but they continually fail to show this. Burell leads in to a recent post by Diane Ravitch at Bridging Differences. Ravitch uses accountability and high stakes testing as an example of how Team Duncan are just pushing more of what doesn’t work.

from Bridging Differences:

I think our society is in dangerous territory on this subject of accountability. The so-called “reformers,” the guys (yes, guys) who call themselves the Education Equality Project, would have the world believe that accountability is the key to improving American education. They think it can be done fast, not incrementally. They think the key to improvement is punishing the bad students, the bad teachers, and the bad schools. Their latest formula, as enunciated by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, is to close down 5,000 schools and re-open them. I wonder where he plans to find 5,000 new principals and thousands of new teachers, or does he just intend to reshuffle the deck?

This approach rests squarely on the high-stakes use of testing. One only wishes that the proponents of this mean-spirited approach might themselves be subjected to a high-stakes test about their understanding of children and education! I predict that every one of them would fail and be severely punished.

We agree that a better approach is needed to assess how well students are learning what they are taught. We agree that current standardized tests are not adequate to the task of determining the fate—whether they should be rewarded or punished—of children, teachers, and their schools.

Some thoughts Ravitch’s post

Things in education should be done incrementally. Playing fast and loose with children’s education is unacceptable. When you rush a reform without thinking it through it can have severe detrimental consequences. I’m not saying that everything Team Duncan proposes is a ticking time bomb, but it seems they are putting little thought behind their plans. There is far too many buzz words being tossed about and far too little contemplation of what they mean.

Bad students, teachers, and schools should face some consequences. I hate using the word “bad” however. That word has such an implication to it. Bad is something I say about the outdated milk. There’s no saving it. Straight to the garbage. Let’s say failing to meet standards for lack of a better word. Consequences should be assistance to meet standards. Talk about throwing the education system under the bus. Would you punish a child who has reading difficulty rather than provide assistance to meet that goal? Recalling an earlier post by Clay they might.

I am not against testing. It is a good way to find trouble areas in curriculum and in spotting students in need of help. Students should be meeting certain standards before moving ahead. Otherwise we are just pushing students into new territory before they even have a grasp on where they were. That is an excellent way to loose a student. And of course ultimately a HS diploma must be more than a piece of paper.

But the current tests that are being pushed are ineffective. Standardized tests prove nothing except how well a student is at regurgitation. Multiple choice cannot show a true understanding of a topic. Problem solving and analysis type tests are the only way to show this.

The thrust of their “strategic plan”, which negates strategic thinking, ignores a large looming issue. They are trying to duct tape a crumbling 19th century factory. The foundation itself is shaking. They are rebuilding what doesn’t work already with band-aids. There needs to be consideration for how we teach students, what skills they need for this new century, and how to inspire life-long learning. Duncan and company has contracted assembly line sickness. I’m not sure if they will survive the disease.

Not More, but Better – Curriculum based reading tests

A post over at edwise reinforces my feelings on how we test students and what we require them to read.

from edwise

In a New York Times op-ed, E.D. Hirsch, Jr. argues for a simple change to reading tests: ditch the random comprehension passages in favor of curriculum-focused ones. He made this case last year in the AFT’s American Educator, which we covered here at Edwize. Key passage:

Students now must take annual reading tests from third grade through eighth. If the reading passages on each test were culled from each grade’s specific curricular content in literature, science, history, geography and the arts, the tests would exhibit what researchers call “consequential validity” — meaning that the tests would actually help improve education. Test preparation would focus on the content of the tests, rather than continue the fruitless attempt to teach test taking.

A 1988 study indicated why this improvement in testing should be instituted. Experimenters separated seventh- and eighth-grade students into two groups — strong and weak readers as measured by standard reading tests. The students in each group were subdivided according to their baseball knowledge. Then they were all given a reading test with passages about baseball. Low-level readers with high baseball knowledge significantly outperformed strong readers with little background knowledge.

The experiment confirmed what language researchers have long maintained: the key to comprehension is familiarity with the relevant subject. For a student with a basic ability to decode print, a reading-comprehension test is not chiefly a test of formal techniques but a test of background knowledge.

We are going about education all wrong. There are so many paths to knowledge. The key is getting kids interested and keeping them interested. Show them that they can learn and discover on their own and outside of the classroom. When it comes to reading, getting children involved and excited is the most important. There will be time to discover classics, or present them in conjunction with other social science lessons. Getting children to read is the biggest challenge. Let’s say for example, you let students choose their own reading material. A student picks Twilight. After they’re finished you can introduce them to Dracula, open up comparisons between the two, etc. The possibilities are endless.

On the issue of testing, ultimately we are trying to examine if a student has a certain understanding of a given material. If a student can prove that they can analyze a passage of Harry Potter, answering particular questions, then that still proves that can perform the task, just as much as a random passage would. We are purposely trying to trip up our students. Of course the greatest difficulty with this method would be coming up with relevant tests for each school and classroom. That would be a bit impractical and expensive. However as a classroom method I see this as a successful approach.

Not More, but Better – Curriculum based reading tests

A post over at edwise reinforces my feelings on how we test students and what we require them to read.

from edwise

In a New York Times op-ed, E.D. Hirsch, Jr. argues for a simple change to reading tests: ditch the random comprehension passages in favor of curriculum-focused ones. He made this case last year in the AFT’s American Educator, which we covered here at Edwize. Key passage:

Students now must take annual reading tests from third grade through eighth. If the reading passages on each test were culled from each grade’s specific curricular content in literature, science, history, geography and the arts, the tests would exhibit what researchers call “consequential validity” — meaning that the tests would actually help improve education. Test preparation would focus on the content of the tests, rather than continue the fruitless attempt to teach test taking.

A 1988 study indicated why this improvement in testing should be instituted. Experimenters separated seventh- and eighth-grade students into two groups — strong and weak readers as measured by standard reading tests. The students in each group were subdivided according to their baseball knowledge. Then they were all given a reading test with passages about baseball. Low-level readers with high baseball knowledge significantly outperformed strong readers with little background knowledge.

The experiment confirmed what language researchers have long maintained: the key to comprehension is familiarity with the relevant subject. For a student with a basic ability to decode print, a reading-comprehension test is not chiefly a test of formal techniques but a test of background knowledge.

We are going about education all wrong. There are so many paths to knowledge. The key is getting kids interested and keeping them interested. Show them that they can learn and discover on their own and outside of the classroom. When it comes to reading, getting children involved and excited is the most important. There will be time to discover classics, or present them in conjunction with other social science lessons. Getting children to read is the biggest challenge. Let’s say for example, you let students choose their own reading material. A student picks Twilight. After they’re finished you can introduce them to Dracula, open up comparisons between the two, etc. The possibilities are endless.

On the issue of testing, ultimately we are trying to examine if a student has a certain understanding of a given material. If a student can prove that they can analyze a passage of Harry Potter, answering particular questions, then that still proves that can perform the task, just as much as a random passage would. We are purposely trying to trip up our students. Of course the greatest difficulty with this method would be coming up with relevant tests for each school and classroom. That would be a bit impractical and expensive. However as a classroom method I see this as a successful approach.

It’s the Kids Stupid – Thoughts on blog education comments

Obama gave his big education speech today. I’ll talk about it at length tomorrow, although from what I’ve read it’s not news to anyone who’s been paying attention.

Instead I wanted to address a few common comments on standards, merit pay, and accountability.

It’s not fair to judge teachers by student test scores
You can use test scores, you just need to change the way tests asses what a student learns. Standards need to be cut back to the three Rs. Instead of multiple choice, tests should be problem solving based and analytical as well as stress comprehension. Test scores would also measure progress as well. Progress made is as important as maintaining high scores. Those already with high scores should be encouraged to maintain them. Those with low scores should be encouraged by the progress they make.

Standards encourage teachers to “teach to the test”
Also I’d like to address the “teaching to the test” comments I’ve seen around the interwebs. Standards, when applied correctly, do not encourage teaching to the test. As I’ve said measuring a students ability to problem solve and comprehend and not using multiple choice exams would curb that. But really, why does teaching to the test get such a bad rap. Does anyone accuse the Harvard Law professor of teaching to the test when he teaches his students what he/she believes is essential to complete their class and then tests them on that? No. They call that an Ivy League education.

There is no worry about lack of creativity in the classroom. Standards do not cut out things like history, art, etc. Many “peripheral” subjects provide excellent opportunities for developing comprehension and analysis skills. Nor do standards tie a teachers hands to how they have to teach a class. NBLC aside, proper standards don’t tell a teacher how to teach. You can teach any damn way you please, as long as it gets the desired results.

Student testing should only be one piece of the teacher assessment. A few other indicators should be coupled with test scores. Not too many though, as that would dilute assessments. Standards, assessed from outside the school, prevent teachers from just giving everyone an A to boost their scores. Student and parents evals should be taken with a grain of salt. But they are an integral part of most colleges, so why not at every level?

School choice will destroy public education
I’d also say that accountability coupled with vouchers you would get a really good indication if schools were performing well or not. Vouchers would also prevent schools from becoming homogenized. Parents could choose schools with good music programs, excellent sports, or other schools that fit children’s needs.

America is entrenched in a romantic vision of education. That vision is outdated. It comes from an industrial based society where a high school degree could get you a factory job you’d have for life. You weren’t competing for jobs with graduates from any number of foreign nations. Our education system worked well for the 19th and early 20th centuries. We’re almost a decade into the 21st century. It’s time to take off the rosy glasses, roll up our sleeves, and get to work. This isn’t about the adults, it’s about the kids.

Drills – On learning the basics before mastering the game

A lot of education professionals abhor standardized tests. “Our kids will be taught to the tests!”, some say with disgust. Is that entirely bad? An article by Dan Winters at Edweek says not necessarily.

from Edweek

Creativity and the Fundamentals

One of the criticisms I’ve come across about accountability measures based on standardized tests goes something like this: If we assess students based on standardized tests, teachers will “teach to the test”, which when translated, means drill and kill, followed by rote memorization and robotic hypnosis while all creativity is thrown out the window. Here’s another one of those false dichotomies that is propagated throughout the educational kingdom.

When I think of creativity and flair on the basketball court, one of the first players that comes to mind is Pete Maravich. He was one of the most creative and flamboyant players of his day and age. No one would accuse him of being boring or stale in his approach to the game.

However, the funny thing is, when reading his biography, I noted that his dad, a high school and college basketball coach, instilled in Pete the necessity of learning and practicing the fundamentals until they were second nature. He performed session after session of ball handling drills that helped him master the basics. Indeed he was fanatical about practice, repetition, and drill. The end result is that he was able to create and ad-lib because he had mastered the fundamentals of the game.

Bringing this back to education, I value students who can think critically and reason with complexity and synthesize information in order to create, and produce new products, but this can only be accomplished by students who are masters of the fundamentals of language, math, and subject matter content. I think the debate would be furthered by a “both/and” mentality as opposed to an “either/or” mentality.

Finally, I’m thinking of classrooms with teachers who get the most remarkable results on standardized tests and those classrooms are lively places with rich interaction and student enjoyment. It’s just that those teachers are also attuned to the building blocks of academic success and don’t allow their students to miss out on these critical components of learning. Our standardized measures are not the ends that we seek, but I contend that they are a requisite means toward those ends and we are justified in pursuing those goals, measuring them, and expecting all students to achieve them.

There isn’t anything wrong with “teaching to the test”. Would anyone accuse an MIT professor of teaching to the test if they taught their students the information and skills they thought were important in meeting their standards? No. Would you try to force your child to play Beethoven on their violin before they’ve got a grasp on their scales? No.

Rather than dismissing standards as forcing teachers to stifle creativity, let’s recognize that the right standards can be a helpful tool. Instilling our children with the basics will allow them to create their own music. Of course that does not mean our standards and means of assessment don’t need to be reformed first. Uncomplicated basic standards need to come first. Tests that assess how our children apply those basic skills, rather than if then can just pick A,B,C, or D, must follow.

The moral of the story: a little practice never hurt anyone

Education Crazy Talk – What direction should ed policy go?

This morning I read this article at Change.org. The piece by Alaskan teacher Doug Noon rips Arne Duncan’s education policy to shreds. Noon is mostly skeptical of Duncan’s reliance on standards, accountability, and teacher incentives to improve our schools.

from Change.org

His program is doomed. It’s doomed because it’s aimed at the wrong target, and it can’t be fairly implemented. With test scores as the standard of excellence, very few teachers will be “incented” to apply themselves. We know that standardized tests measure students’ backgrounds more than real learning. And we know that students with special needs require more time and attention than the achievers. We also know that, due to the fact that poor and affluent people tend to live in different neighborhoods, some schools serve more challenging populations than others. None of that is a matter of chance.

Test scores should be a standard of excellence. Without standards how can we know where are, who needs extra help, and who can be given more challenging work. The way we test those standards is flawed. Specifically multiple choice exams. Life is not multiple choice. Life is applying what you have learned to any given situation. A little example. In preparation for grad school, I took the GRE exam last summer. I didn’t study or practice. At this point one understands you either get these type of tests or you don’t. I scored a 1020 on the multiple choice sections, an average score. On the written section I scored a 5.0, the upper 27th percentile. Now that’s a big discrepancy in my scores. It demonstrates the unevenness between multiple choice and open-ended assessments in gauging what a student has actually learned.

Standards are still important. That much of NCLB I agree with. It places the wrong kind of standards on schools. Multiple choice questions are not good measures of applied knowledge. They are only good measures of how good one can memorize.

First we need to simplify our standards. Students should have more open-ended questions. The questions would show whether or not the child actually had a grasp of the concepts being tested. This will also push students to do more than just show up and receive a C.

I’d like to make my case for Outcome-based Education. If I sound a bit ignorant on the subject I apologize. I’ve only just started researching it. OBE recognizes all students are capable of improvement, some faster or slower than others. All can succeed, regardless of class, race, gender, or ability. It doesn’t matter if the district is poor or “challenging”. That is no excuse for failure in teachers or students,(though Noon seems to think is an excuse for poor teacher performance. If I’m wrong let me know Doug). I have simplified OBE a great deal, but I urge readers to look into in greater detail as I am.