Minnesota's NCLB Waiver Will Likely Encourage Schools To Push Students Out

The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) recently released a Q&A document about the new NCLB waiver the state got from the U.S. Department of Education. Reading through this document I have many many questions and many many concerns. Though the name of the new education law in Minnesota (and 9 other states as well) may sound nice the provisions leave me with some concerns. This policy is like the bystanders at the scene of an accident who think they are saving the life of someone in a crashed car by moving them out of it when in fact that movement might just be what snaps the victim's neck. I worry this policy will do this to education in our state.

Lets go through some of the statements from the Q& A that I find most bothersome or alarming:

"The Multiple Measurements Rating (MMR) that replaces Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) as the primary measurement of school performance. The MMR looks at a proficiency, growth, achievement gap reduction and graduation rates."

This MMR rating system is still very short of being comprehensive as it only measures schools according to criteria that fall in line with the "All growth is good/Progress" frame of thought. There is nothing in this formula that measures the quality of life within the school walls, how happy students are, how schools impact student self-esteem, or even how well they prepare them for the "real world." What about measuring student retention rates as well as graduation rates? What about measuring attendance rates? What about student and parent satisfaction ratings? No. This MMR still places faith in the almighty bubble and assumes that multiple choice assessment tests measure what we think they do and that they are an equitable tool for measurement.

"Nothing in the assessments themselves will change under the waiver. Nor will the requirements for students to take the assessments change."

Then why did we pursue the waiver? What in blazes does it do for our state? This will do nothing to slow the decline and decay of things people actually value in the schools (the arts, school sports, student projects, community service, etc.). In fact, as we shall see later, it will likely make these things worse for those attending the poorest schools, especially in large districts.

"Nothing in the waiver changes the state's rigorous academic standards in any way. The statewide standards remain in place. What has changed is the way we measure schools' ability to help students meet those standards."

These standards are based on a wholly ill-conceived notion in the first place that all students should learn certain things at certain times in exactly the same way. The standards are far less about student learning than they are about restricting what is officially recognized as student learning. But, we are far from a point where we are going to see an end in sight to the standards movement so I never expected an NCLB waiver to shrug off all the excess baggage we have accumulated over the years since A Nation at Risk.

"Using the Minnesota Growth Model, each student is given a growth score based on how their assessment score compares to their predicted assessment score. Predicted scores are generated by looking at the statewide averages for each score from year-to-year."

So, according to MDE the equitable way to measure student growth is with a norm-referenced test? This sounds GREAT for those schools serving predominately poor minority students with cultural differences test makers rarely consider when drafting their questions. Not to mention the fact that most child development psychologists will tell you that children tend to make learning gains in spurts. Did anyone consult any experts on learning when this policy was drafted?

"As with the previous NCLB system, all schools, regardless of Title I status, will be measured for accountability. Every school will continue to receive an AYP determination, and every school will now get an MMR as well. However, the new school designations (Reward, Celebration, Focus, Priority and Continuous Improvement) will only apply to Title I schools."

So, just like NCLB, the only schools this really affects are those serving poor students. And, to add insult to injury we are going to implement, only for the poor schools, a ranking system that will either punish schools by putting them on an altogether separate list aside from the AYP list (which isn't going away despite the waiver) or punish them with "Rewards" (see Alfie Kohn). Again, this all hinges upon a faith-based assumption that the tests used to make these determinations actually measure what MDE and DOE think they measure. They don't. NCLB has been a kind of witch hunt but this waiver will only throw fuel on those torch flames and give the public more pitch forks to go after teachers and schools.

"The MMR and new accountability designations are directed exclusively at schools. However, districts will continue to receive annual AYP determinations."

Here is one of two major problems I have with this waiver. For small districts with only one school for each grade level this won't be a problem but for urban and suburban districts this undoubtedly punishes the students in the poorest schools for an inequity created by the district their schools are in. By relieving districts of responsibility for their lowest-performing schools and placing all accountability on those schools the students who for one reason or another are stuck in those schools are the ones who will be punished. In those large districts teachers with more seniority will likely transfer out of those schools to places where the MMR and AYP police are not going to be riding their coat tails leaving these schools mostly staffed with young, inexperienced teachers (a group with high turnover rate that now has been encouraged by organizations like Teach for America that has now established a presence in these districts). Essentially what this policy will do is ensure that the poorest students in our urban schools will not have access to highly-qualified experienced teachers.

"There will no longer be any mandatory set-asides for staff development."

This doesn't sound very much like the NCLB waiver has actual school improvement in mind. Why on Earth, if you are concerned with school improvement for our most needy schools, would you eliminate teacher professional development requirements? Makes no sense.

The other major problem I have with this waiver, and why I think this is bad for students, is that under the new MMR the only students who's scores matter are the ones who have attended the school for one full year. This means that schools have an incentive to pass along students who are under-performing, who are not making the kinds of gains that would improve the school's MMR. When I taught at an alternative school I saw this trend all the time with some of our most at-risk students. They would bounce from school to school (some just to avoid truancy officers but others who were pushed out) and never see the consistency needed to establish meaningful relationships with staff or make a committed connection with their studies. We are going to create incentives for schools to do more of this and not just with "at-risk" students, now all students who are not "progressing" fast enough will be at risk of being pushed out. Minnesota might be able to increase their MMR scores but only by fudging the numbers.

I have seen this strategy done before. Back then they called it the Texas Miracle and then Governor George W. Bush used it to claim on the campaign trail that he was going to become the Education President.

"We are teaching children that every question has four possible answers"

Sacred Cows, Mechanical Bulls, and Matadors

When we stop seeing a technology as a technology, when we simply accept it as part of the way things are, when we stop questioning its real virtues and side effects it becomes invisible to us. And, when a technology becomes invisible to us, sacred cows are born. When we elevate an idea to a level where we can't question its logic we limit our choices and blind ourselves to alternatives.

In the first blog post in this series I discussed how school is a technology that has been rendered invisible to many. Perhaps it is a "forest from the trees" effect but for many, school's status as a technology seems to be rendered invisible most to those who are closest to it. Now this is not always true, like Neo in The Matrix there are plenty of school teachers, school administrators, parents, and students who have seen anomalies in the system, exposing sacred cows for what they are, causing them to once again question their value. And, as disruptive technologies take over, more and more of the tasks once done by schools, more and more of those close to the "trees" begin to question things once held sacred. However, most of those still engrossed in the school system remain unconscious of its nature.

There is a risk in identifying a sacred cow for what it is, especially when most of those around you hold it in high regard. To question the value of something long held in high regard by your peers puts you in isolation. Though you may find liberation in the truth, that truth might be difficult to convey to those blinded by their faith in the system and acting on that truth will at best brand one as unorthodox and at worst as blasphemous. Just ask Galileo, Socrates, Martin Luther, or Bradley Manning. In The Republic, Plato puts it best,

[Socrates] And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never moved out of the cave, while his sight was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time which would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very considerable) would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.

There are always many who benefit from the survival of sacred cows. The death of a sacred cow can upset traditional beliefs and make people move from a place of undeserved security. The death of a sacred cow can also upset many financially or politically who exploit the relationship believers have with the sacred cow. Killing a sacred cow can be dangerous and presents one with an ethical dilemma. The ethical dilemma comes in if you discover that the sacred cow is actually causing harm to others you may save others but only at great personal expense. On the killing of actual sacred cows in India, Wikipedia states:

In some regions, especially India, the slaughter of cattle may be prohibited and their meat may be taboo.

and

The law in India

Slaughter of cattle is allowed with restrictions (like a 'fit-for-slaughter' certificate which may be issued depending on factors like age and gender of cattle, continued economic viability etc.) in fourteen states, it is completely banned in six states, while there is no restriction in four states.^[20] Cows are routinely shipped to states with lower or no requirement for slaughter, even though it is illegal in some states to even transport cows for slaughter across provincial borders.^[21] Many illegal slaughterhouses operate in large cities such as Chennai and Mumbai. While there are approximately 3,600 slaughterhouses operating legally in India, there are estimated to be over 30,000 illegal slaughterhouses.^[22] Efforts to close them down have so far been largely unsuccessful.

While we are using the symbolism of Hinduism I think it an interesting side note to bring in the Hindu god of education, Ganesh (the remover of obstacles). In his left hand he almost is always depicted holding a hatchet. It is said that this hatchet he uses to cut through confusion to reveal the truth. So, while in Hindu faith the actual cow may be sacred, the iconography used to strike down the methaphoric sacred cow is one of slaughter.

So, what are the sacred cows in education, who protects them, and are they benign or harmful? There are probably more than we know but here are a few I can think of immediately:

1. Standardized Tests - This one should be obvious but to many people I talk to in schools, and especially in the public, it is not. The idea that what a person knows about a topic can be measured effectively with a standardized test is a sacred cow that has many beneficiaries. Those beneficiaries include test-makers, textbook and curriculum companies, politicians, and the privileged who have an unfair advantage when taking these tests. This sacred cow reached epic proportions when George Bush, Karl Rove, and Sandy Kress orchestrated the Texas Miracle which turned out to be a big lie. This lie laid the foundation for NCLB and RTTT, our nation's policy governing how education is done in our public schools. These policies have done a great job of defunding and closing down public schools in poor neighborhoods and outsourcing their care to for-profit organizations. Standardized tests have also done a lot to arbitrarily predetermine a student's future success. Does it do more harm than good? You can decide for yourself.
   
2. Data-Driven Decision Making - This one goes along with standardized tests. It is built upon the same foundation as standardized tests. That is that it is important to base our decisions on aggregated abstractions of reality rather than what is right in front of our faces. Sure your eyes can lie but data is incredibly susceptible to manipulation. The biggest problem with data-driven decision making is it lacks the moral component. Beneficiaries include all those who are also beneficiaries of standardized tests plus school administrators and education consultants. Does this sacred cow do more harm than good? I personally think it exploits children. But, either way it is a sacred cow in that it is simply not true that all decisions need to or even should be data-driven.
   
3. Multiple Choice Exams - Again, another sacred cow that goes hand in hand with standardized tests. This sacred cow is built upon the notion that one test the knowledge of a student on a topic by presenting them with a list of options to choose from. This is the same notion that guides the public to believe that smart people are people who are good at quiz shows. The fact of the matter is that the multiple choice exam is an extremely limited tool for measuring what a person knows and is prone to all kinds of problems. They are not an accurate measure of testing what someone knows. Beneficiaries of these forms of assessment include SAT and ACT test-prep companies, test-prep programs, and student response system manufacturers. Do they do more harm than good? Much of how students qualify for acceptance in to colleges and universities hinge on how well they perform on these things. You decide.
   
4. Curriculum Standards - Again, another one that goes hand-in-hand with standardized tests. This one is actually two sacred cows. One states that the way to improve schools is to just have higher standards. The other is to state that the way to improve education is for all curriculum standards to be the same. Again, two Swiss cheese arguments. We have been forging forward with the "teach harder" mantra since A Nation at Risk and in these three decades it has not produced better results. Plus, standardizing curriculum by nature creates inequalities. Also, curriculum standards are inherently content-based and most are about information. The value of information is increasingly going down as we outsource the holding of it more and more to the Internet and let tools like Google sort it out and recall it for us. This disruptive innovation means that our focus needs to shift from knowledge-based standards to teaching kids how to find and process information. But, without content standards the standardized test can't very well exist. So its beneficiaries include all those who benefit from the use of standardized tests. Do they do more harm than good?
   
5. Grades - This is a big one. This is a sacred cow that has lived for a long time and is of a hardy breed. What makes this one a sacred cow is that the belief is that grades are necessary for motivation to learn. That, somehow without grades motivating students to perform that they would not learn on their own. Or, the other argument is, that students cannot get into college without a student record comprised of arbitrary marks created by teachers. The fact is that students will learn without grades, and probably learn more, and that students attending schools that do not issue grades have just as good a chance of getting into college as those with arbitrary marks. Do grades do more harm than good? Before you decide read this article by Alfie Kohn. Who benefits from grades? This one is unclear except that they have been around education so long that doing away with this sacred cow makes people uncomfortable. Teachers expect them, administrators expect them, parents expect them. But, when was the last time in your adult life did someone ask to see your grades?
   
6. Bell Schedules - Often we hear a school begin to wrestle with this sacred cow by toying with whether they should do block scheduling, go with a seven period day, or go with an eight period day. This sacred cow depends entirely on another sacred cow, subject area, for its livelihood. How we schedule our time has little to do with learning today and is a holdover from when it was thought that the purpose of school was to prepare students for work on factory lines where they would need to be accustomed to a strictly regimented day governed by shift changes as measured by the clock. A greatly disproportionate number of our students will not enter into a work force where this kind of regiment is necessary or even productive. What we are left with is a device that does a great job of teaching indifference. In the words of John Taylor Gatto, "when the bell rings I insist they drop whatever it is we have been doing and proceed quickly to the next work station. They must turn on and off like a light switch. Nothing important is ever finished in my class nor in any class I know of. Students never have a complete experience except on the installment plan." Who benefits from this sacred cow? I don't know, but suggesting we get rid of it always causes people in schools to get uncomfortable. Does it do more harm than good? You decide.
7. Subject Areas- This sacred cow produces milk many other cows feed upon. Bell schedules, curriculum standards, and standardized tests all feed off of it. This is a sacred cow because the idea that there is a clear delineation between one domain of knowledge and another, that you can divorce mathematics from social studies, science from literature, art from language is just false. In fact, most innovations do not come from homogenous study of one domain, they come from the blending and mixing of ideas from multiple domains. In this way, separating subject areas can be detrimental especially when you consider what the National Research Council found about learning and transfer. So who benefits from this sacred cow? Besides all who benefit from the sacred cows it feeds, teachers, professors, and nearly every subject-area content experts in the field of education depend on this cow for survival (or so most think). However, there are plenty of project-based schools and interdisciplinary programs that prove this wrong. So does this sacred cow do more harm than good? You decide.
   
8. Credentialing - This sacred cow states that you can tell how qualified a person is to perform a certain task by looking at their credentials (namely the diplomas, degrees, and certificates they hold) and that this is an efficient way of sorting our population. Truth is I have seen doctors who were utter idiots and I have met high school dropouts who were absolutely brilliant. Just take a look at the list of people we consider to be highly successful in this world and the credentialing sacred cow goes out to pasture. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg all dropped out of college and neither Richard Branson nor Warren Buffet hold a high school diploma just to name a few. A person's credentials don't tell us whether they demonstrated a high degree of proficiency in an area of expertise or just skated by and got lucky on multiple choice tests (probably with test-prep coaching). Credentials are a poor indicator of someone's qualifications. Who benefits from this social instrument? Schools, colleges, and universities are the great beneficiaries of this sacred cow. Without credentials, how many people would choose to get educated in this way? How many would choose another method?
   
9. Objectives - I often hear that a teacher NEEDS to have clear objectives when they teach a lesson. I hear this over and over again all the time. However, this is a sacred cow because it rests on an unfounded notion that it is the teacher's objectives that are important in a learning environment. The teacher's objectives are not important in the learning equation, the students' objectives are. Learning objectives can only be set by learners, teaching objectives only have to do with learning in a peripheral fashion and for them to be effective the teacher must convince the learner to have the same learning objective as the teacher's teaching objective. This usually requires coercion and is dishonest. Objectives feed off the standardized testing and curriculum standards sacred cows and serve no other purpose than to impose these standards on students. They have nothing to do with learning. Students will naturally set their own learning objectives and in an optimal learning environment a teacher would not set objectives for a student but a help a student achieve their own learning objectives. Indirectly the data-driven decision making cow feeds off the objectives cow since it relies partially on to derive its data sources. This cow is hard to kill and in most learning environments will incur the wrath of the system.
   
10. Labels - This sacred cow is the child of data-driven decision making and standardized testing. We use abstract data to create student records that go into portfolios that are supposed to tell us about who a student is. No set of abstractions can tell us who a child actually is yet this data is used to sort kids into categories. High-performing, special needs, EBD, ADHD, LD, Low-performing, oppositionally defiant, learning disabled, retarded, average, etc. all are labels driven by data and we use that data to make data-driven decisions on behalf of the students we sort and label. The result of a label most often is that of handing one a sentence. Once we label someone we have prematurely determined their future. Plus, most of these labels are for conditions artificially created by the learning environment. Change the environment and you change the need for a label. This became obvious to me when I started working for an online school. Parents of children previously labeled this or that told me that their son or daughter's "disability" went away when they changed the way they educated their child. So, do labels do more harm than good? You decide.
    
11. Teacher Questions - In my undergraduate teacher preparation courses we spent a lot of time learning about how to craft high-quality questions. The problem is that, like learning objectives, the teacher's questions are not nearly as important as the students'. Questions help the the person asking questions to learn something. When I ask students a question I am learning more about them than they are about the matter of discussion. Teacher questions may be fine for formative assessment but they have nothing to do with learning. Student questions are far more important. The key to fostering optimal learning in a classroom environment is to get the students to ask more questions than the teacher. If I tell you something you will probably forget it, if I ask you questions about it you will wonder what it is that I am trying to teach you, but you ask me to tell you something it is because you have a need for that information. If I answer your question you are not likely to forget it. Who benefits from this sacred cow? This is unclear but just like bell schedules, grades, and teacher objectives this cow has become an engrained part of what we call school. Doing away with it is sure to cause some upheaval.

Some of these sacred cows have already been slaughtered. Others will be harder to kill. Either way the process is likely to be dangerous for the matadors who attempt to take these beasts down. In the case of school, all of these things are in one way or another a form of technology that has been so woven into the fabric of what we do that we stop seeing them for what they are and just accept them as part of the environment. These sacred cows are really more like mechanical bulls but neither metaphor quite fits.

On matadors, in Wikipedia it states:

The danger of bullfighting adds to the matador's mystique; matadores are often injured by bulls and 52 have been killed in the arena since 1700. One of the most famous bullfighters in history, Manolete, died this way in 1947. This hazard is said to be central to the nature and appeal of bullfighting.

Perhaps this is why change happens so slowly in education and why so many of us do things we know are wrong. Perhaps this is one reason why so many of our best teachers leave the profession battered and bruised. If this happens to me I hope to go out with the style and flare of a matador and I hope my work in the ring makes these mechanical bulls easier for the next person to take down. But, in the U.S. we don't fight bulls, we ride them.

Data Is Not a Flashlight #dayofdata #edchat #edreform

Yesterday the #dayofdata hashtag caught my eye as it floated down my Twitter stream so I decided to follow it and got sucked in by the current. At first I didn't know what it was but soon realized that this was the hashtag for an event featuring panelists that included "education reformers" such as Arne Duncan and Michelle Rhee. Needless to say, I found a lot of what I was reading in the stream of live tweets from the event objectionable to say the least. But one tweet in particular has caused a rash that I just can't get out from under my skin:

@rita_pin_ahrens
Rita Pin AhrensAimee Guidera: Data isn't a hammer, it's a flashlight. Need to make sure data is meeting people's needs. #dayofdata 1 day ago via Twitter for iPad · powered by @socialditto

A quick search on YouTube finds this video from EdWeek where Aimee Guidera explains this statement:


I was actually hoping for something more eye opening and enlightening than that (or at least illuminating since after all, it is flashlights she is talking about).

So, anyway, here was my initial response when I read that tweet:

@anderscj
anderscj@rachelgwaltney data as flashlight has the analogy all wrong. In Plato's allegory the light created only shadows and echos. #dayofdata 1 day ago via web · powered by @socialditto

to which I got this reply:

@rachelgwaltney
Rachel Gwaltney@anderscj Better than being entirely in the dark! #dayofdata 1 day ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto

@anderscj
anderscj@rachelgwaltney I think you missed my point. 14 hours ago via Twitterrific · powered by @socialditto

I have written about this a few times before but I think Plato's allegory is perfect for understanding the problem with student data. If we must use a flashlight in our analogy for understanding student data the flashlight is the instrument which we use to extract the data by shining it on students. What the flashlight produces as a result are not students but rather the students' shadows. By saying we need to use student data to improve instruction is like saying that I should use my shadow to help me improve my appearance.

The big problem, and the one that makes arguing with these dataphiles so difficult, is in Plato's allegory the prisoners who were released and shown what makes the objects, shown the truth, were seen by the prisoners who weren't released as having come back unable to see.

[Socrates] And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never moved out of the cave, while his sight was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time which would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very considerable) would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.

Who was at this event? Who was on the panel? Were there any teachers there? Did any of the panelists have any history in teaching (besides taping children's mouths shut and taking pleasure in firing people)? And who do these "reformers" listen to? A quick look at who the people at this event live tweeting follow on Twitter tells me they probably don't listen to the voices of educators who actually work with the students whose data they are concerned with. They probably see us as having lost our sight. We see students, they see shadows. The student doesn't matter so long as the shadow they cast looks good. The result is we end up bending and contorting students in ways that are unnatural and don't make much sense just so the shadows they produce with their data flashlight look good.

Reflection on #ties11 Opening Keynote - Joel Rose - School of One

Let me preface this post with two statements/disclaimers:

First, I love the TIES conference. I've been attending this conference and presenting at it every year for the past five years. I like the people at TIES and consider them some of my closest colleagues. I have a lot of respect for that organization and a lot of respect for the impact their annual conference has for education in Minnesota and beyond. That said, what criticism/observations in this post are more a general criticism aimed at the state of affairs in education today through which I believe this week in Minnesota TIES was a conduit.

Second, this post will contain a greater percentage of my own editorial than simply just reporting/recording what Mr. Rose said at the conference. I have some deep concerns and I feel obligated to express them. Readers of this blog who have been with me a while will find no surprises.

What follows is a record of my live-Tweets from Joel Rose's keynote along with my own reflection and commentary:

@anderscj
anderscjAt #ties11 waiting to hear School of One founder Joel Rose give opening keynote. 1 day ago via Mobile Web · powered by @socialditto

@anderscj
anderscjPromethean rep is talking now. Did they sponsor the keynote today? #ties11 1 day ago via Mobile Web · powered by @socialditto

Two years ago Promethean sponsored Dr. Marzano as the keynote speaker at the TIES conference. That year Promethean had paid Dr. Marzano a handsome fee to conduct and publish research showing that their products promoted student achievement gains. Marzano never let that research be peer-reviewed and what the research actually tells us says less about the technology products and more about teaching practices. But, I'm not going to rehash that whole debate here.

@anderscj
anderscjPromethian rep is restating Marzano "research" again. #ties11 1 day ago via Mobile Web · powered by @socialditto

@anderscj
anderscjJoel Rose started in ED as a TFA recruit then was an exec for Edison Schools. #ties11 1 day ago via Mobile Web · powered by @socialditto

This was how Joel Rose was introduced to the audience here at TIES. I am not quite sure those credentials instill a lot of confidence in an audience where the majority of those in attendance are educators who entered the profession with more than a five week training course on how to be a teacher. Also, Edison Schools (now EdisonLearning, Inc.) was a for-profit brand of charter school that failed. Widely touted as the school model of the future they failed to show the academic gains they promised and their stock fell from $40 a share to 14 cents. There are no Edison Schools in the United States today because they all closed or morphed into other entities. Edison got out of the business of running schools and entered into the business of offering services such as testing and after-school programs.

Anyway, Mr. Rose was also introduced as having 15 years experience in education which means that if he was a TFA recruit and then an administrator at Edison Schools that he couldn't possibly have more than 4 or 5 years experience in the classroom. Most likely what experience he brings to education is most strongly rooted in a form of assessment derived from the Edison Schools model.

@anderscj
anderscj"The reason we do school the way we do dates back to 1843 when Horrace Mann went to Prussia." Rose #ties11 1 day ago via Mobile Web · powered by @socialditto

Rose begins his talk by asking why schools today don't look radically different from how they looked in 1843. By now this is starting to become a cliche comparison but it is a pertinent question.

@anderscj
anderscjAbout 1/3 grad ready for college, 1/3 need remediation, 1/3 dropout. -Rose #ties11 1 day ago via Mobile Web · powered by @socialditto

Again, citing a statistic that I agree is troubling and needs addressing.

@anderscj
anderscjTeachers are the biggest private donor to public education. -Rose #ties11 1 day ago via Mobile Web · powered by @socialditto

Now, this was a great little side note in his presentation and it generated much adoration. What he did was show in a bar graph how much money has been donated by the Waltons, the Broads, and the Gates to public schools and then a bar that dwarfed these bars in comparison showing how much teachers give to public schools. Now, the way he figures this is if you take all the extra time teachers work grading papers and writing lesson plans and multiply that by what would be their hourly rate and add up all that money for all teachers the amount donated by teachers is ginormous. However, this kind of comparison is a bit dishonest as we are comparing the giving of time to the giving of monetary resources and to arrive at this statistic requires some massaging of the data. But, that was also how Edison schools showed for years that they were making gains in student achievement. This kind of data analysis should call into question the methodology Mr. Rose uses to show the academic gains of School of One. This also works as a rhetorical device to draw attention away from the effect private donors like Gates, Walton, Broad, and Zuckerberg have on public education.

@anderscj
anderscjWhy do we try to integrate technology? Why isn't tech just part of how we do school? -Rose #ties11 1 day ago via Mobile Web · powered by @socialditto

No disagreement there. On this point I agree with Rose. School needs a redesign and technology ought to be part of the fabric, not just an add-on. I'm just not sure that what School of One offers as an alternative vision really is radical enough of a shift. It still carries with it a lot of the bad stuff inherent in the current old model.

@anderscj
anderscjWe don't assume just b/c you are in 6th grade that you've mastered all the 4th grade content. -Rose #ties11 1 day ago via Mobile Web · powered by @socialditto

I wish this were framed different. This still implies that a linear progression with "prerequisites" is a necessary component of knowledge and skill acquisition. What if we decided not to assume that there is or should be such a thing as 6th grade or 4th grade content? Or chapters? Or levels?

@anderscj
anderscjWhat do you do with all that data? -Rose #ties11 1 day ago via Mobile Web · powered by @socialditto

@anderscj
anderscjOur algorithm takes all that data and customizes lessons for each kid. -Rose #ties11 1 day ago via Mobile Web · powered by @socialditto

Here is the crux of my rub. (oh that sounded dirty). The theme of this conference was "Its Personal: Transforming Pedagogy With Technology" but what the premise of this statement, which is arguably the single most distinguishing feature of School of One, is a form of personalization. The key difference between personal and personalize is where the agency lies and who is empowered to make educational decisions. If I create a personal learning environment I as a learner have the agency to make decisions about what is allowed to be part of that environment, what content I choose to study, what tools I choose that fit my needs, and what people and resources I find valuable. If learning is personal then personal learning transformed by technology must involve the learner making choices about the content, modalities, and direction. If my learning is personalized for me someone else is telling me what to do. The agency still lies with someone who is telling me where to sit, who to listen to, how to learn, and when to move on to the next thing. Learning that is personalized is not personal learning.

Now, if I choose to outsource the personalization of my learning to someone else that is my choice and can arguably fall within the realm of a personal learning choice. There are definitely times when this kind of arrangement is desired and needed by the learner. But in that choice the agency still lies with the learner and if that method doesn't work out there ought to be a choice to abandon the endevour.

And, what of the lessons? This is something I would like very much to know more about. From Mr. Rose's description of where they get the lessons in their lesson bank it doesn't sound like the lessons are created with a new learning system in mind. They sound very much like old school lesson plans be they taught by a teacher in a small group, online asynchronously, or online remotely. I would like to learn more about this aspect of School of One before I pound the gavel on this but if my impression from this talk is correct, what the algorithm does is simply shuffle the old school lessons and presents them to each student in an individualized schedule. Essentially, it sounds like the learning experience for a student at School of One on the pedagogy level isn't any different than any other school.

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anderscjOur kids take an online assessment everyday. -Rose #ties11 1 day ago via Mobile Web · powered by @socialditto

I find that revolting.

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anderscjWho ought to be getting to know students, a teacher or an algorithm? #ties11 1 day ago via Mobile Web · powered by @socialditto

This was my question. Nowhere in Mr. Rose's talk did he address how School of One does community building or what the role of personal relationships between students and teacher are. Nowhere is this addressed but we know from volumes of literature and research on this topic that this social element of the learning environment is extremely important. This is especially true when we are talking about the at-risk students Rose called our attention to at the outset. If you work in a school that serves that 1/3 of students who are likely to drop out you know how important relationship building and community is. Where is that in the algorithm?

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anderscj"I love the algorithm." teacher in School of One video #ties11 1 day ago via Mobile Web · powered by @socialditto

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anderscjIs anyone else feeling like John Henry right now? #ties11 1 day ago via Mobile Web · powered by @socialditto

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anderscjHow does School of One do community building? When do they build relationships? Is that part of the equation? #ties11 1 day ago via Mobile Web · powered by @socialditto

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anderscjIn the after-school program participants had double the academic gains of non-participants. -Rose #ties11 1 day ago via Mobile Web · powered by @socialditto

Yes, but are you comparing a group of students who have the family support and/or personal motivation and initiative to attend an after-school math program to students who don't have those things? How were students chosen for the after-school program? Did you compare students in this after-school program to students in another after-school program that used different methods? There are just too many variables to make this an actionable statistic.

@anderscj
anderscjTech has meant more lawyers, accountants, bank tellers, librarians, & ticket agents. -Rose #ties11 1 day ago via Mobile Web · powered by @socialditto

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anderscjIf some level of judgement is involved in a job that job will not be lost to technology. -Rose #ties11 1 day ago via Mobile Web · powered by @socialditto

Rose ended his talk trying to address a fear he anticipates teachers might have about School of One that it will mean teachers will loose their jobs. He cites economic data showing fields where technology has caused a transformational change showing that fields where some level of human judgement is involved those careers have seen increases while those that didn't saw decreases. He speculates that in education this will mean more jobs for teachers, not less.

I would like to push back on this notion for just a moment. It isn't like education has not yet seen a transformation, in fact we are in the midst of one right now. But, I think most are too close to the trees to see the forest on this issue, or rather, too close to the circuits to see the machine. The whole standards-driven education environment with high-stakes testing and standardized mechanisms for measuring student achievement, school improvement, and teacher "effectiveness" is a technology itself. It is the core processor driving School of One. The algorithm in School of One is only part of the equation. It is a subroutine in a much larger program called standards-based education.

The standards-based machine is a biased one. It has its own set of values and very little room for what falls outside it. The standards-based machine only understands inputs and outputs that can be easily measured by its sensors. It ignores all else. In its scans it misses important details because it does not possess the sensors to detect certain domains of learning, certain domains of understanding, certain domains of knowing. Those things, the things that are not easily standardized, are lost to the machine because the machine cannot process it. Because the machine cannot process them and the fate of schools depends on the machine showing good results schools will focus more energy and time only into those domains the machine can read. Therefore, we see reductions in the arts, reductions in family and consumer sciences, reductions in creative writing, reductions in physical education, and reductions in anything else that the machine has not been programmed to read.

Mr. Rose argues that domains that require human judgement will not be negatively impacted by the integration of his technology, a technology that not only supports the standards machine but makes it more efficient. Because the algorithm can only see what it has been taught how to read it will just as likely expedite the extinction of the domains already in decline. And to add a bit of irony to this, it appears computer science is among those domains.

TIES is the upper-midwest's largest technology education conference and very very little of what was offered this year addressed how to teach computer science in school. Not one session on programming, not one session on how to teach students to write their own algorithms. I don't blame TIES for this, this is a much larger trend. In the past two years at ISTE I observed the same phenomenon. Somehow we have come to a point where technology in education is something we use to put kids through their paces, to help to personalize their learning, to program students. I want students to learn how to program a computer, not to be programmed by one.

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anderscjWhat role does student choice play in School of One? #ties11 1 day ago via Mobile Web · powered by @socialditto

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anderscjWhat does School of 1 teach students about learning? Does it use tech 2 program stdnts or help stdnts learn 2 use tech 4 themselves? #ties11 1 day ago via Mobile Web · powered by @socialditto

This conference is huge. This year they reported over 3,100 participants and about 1/3 of the school superintendents in MN were present. That is a lot of students they are responsible for and for one morning they all were presented an infomercial for Edison Schools 2.0. I like to think that most of our school leaders have a good enough BS detector to sort through a lot of this and ask tough questions but I know in a group of people from any sector of life you will have some who buy in hook line and sinker. This is especially true if you are in a state of crisis. This year the number of schools not making AYP was staggering. That pressure can lead anyone to make decisions without asking the right questions. In conditions like those someone coming along selling an idea with a promise to solve all your problems receives a welcome reception. I suspect more superintendents were receptive to what Joel Rose had to say than would be if the standards machine were not causing a crisis in their districts.

Normally at the TIES conference the keynote address is followed by a small group presentation/discussion between the presenter and the superintendents. This is then usually followed by a Q & A session with the presenter. Rose had no such session. There was no opportunity given for other conference-goers to ask questions. There was no platform for push-back. I hope some of the questions I raise here were asked in the superintendents session but not being part of that club I will never know.

To TIES credit, the rest of the conference was filled with feature speakers that did justice to the other side of the personal learning coin. Christian Long, Chris Dede, Bernajean Porter, and Ananth Pai all were excellent and highlighted the value of personal agency in learning. Also, the one place I did see some computer programming was in the Classroom of the Future installation where the kids were fully immersed in a LEGO Mindstorms project.