A Rising Tide Of Asininity

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2022/03/05/americas-school-accountability-system-is-broken-here-are-the-issues-that-must-be-addressed-to-fix-it/?sh=575473e57f96

Surprise surprise! I got it right again! (OK, I’m not always right — just almost all the time.🧐). When I took my test and measurements course for my masters degree in school administration, one of the critical points made to us (critical now but at the time just one more data point) was that standardized testing is absolutely useless at evaluating the progress of an individual student, an individual teacher, or an individual school. All it is good for is making a bell shaped curve giving a generalized placement of performance according to a very narrow limited standardized test format and placed in a very broad setting. This is very useful in special education testing but useless for general evaluation of educational quality or performance.

Then President Reagan began screwing things up, as he had to find someone to blame for his policy failures. So he blamed teachers.

A propaganda report was issued worrying about a “rising tide of mediocrity “. A nonsense phrase meeting nothing. The report was pure propaganda, almost entirely data free. Nevertheless, based on that we desperately sought out an accountability system which would be based on the virtually useless data of standardized testing. This was designed to stimulate competition among schools and individual teachers. It’s actual primary effect was destroying teachers’ willingness to cooperate with each other. A teacher who found a clever way to get high scores on the test would never share that with another teacher because she had to compete. Collegiality and the mutual self-help system which has always been the hallmark of education was instantly corroded.

As always with standardized tests, it is mandated that, by the very nature of the test, a bell shaped curve results from the data. Failure to accomplish such a curve results in a test result skewed negatively or positively. The test will then be considered invalid and a new test created which will form the proper and only acceptable result: a bell shaped curve. When students began understanding how to find averages (because teachers were teaching it) the test manufacturers changed the test. They stopped calling them averages and began identifying them as “the mean“.

In other words, the test was no longer testing the students ability to understand the concept or perform it. It was deliberately making it hard for the children to understand so as to force a bell shaped curve because too many students were learning the concept too effectively and that’s not allowed in a bell shaped curve or any kind of standardized testing.  It is absolutely mandated that no matter how well a group performs or how badly it performs, 50% of those taking the test must be at or above the second quartile (the peak of the bell’s shaped curve) and 50% must be below it. 25% must fall at the first quartile or below and 25% must place at the third quartile or above. Please note that this is regardless of the actual level of knowledge or performance.

 This means that if the competition system really worked and all second grade students in a given year were now displaying at or above college level reading skills, the test would be adjusted until it showed that these incredibly brilliant children in fact were divided into 25% failures, 50% successes, and 25% high-performing extreme successes. The same would be true if the entire system failed so badly that not a single second grade student in the entire nation knew their alphabet. The same bell shaped curve would result.

Standardized testing does not test the quality of performance.  Criterion based testing does.

Now here we are 40 years later and guess what? Accountability and competition have proven to be a disaster for our public education system. Who would’ve guessed? Answer: anyone willing to look at the facts. 

Educational “experts” who never actually worked in the classroom but had extensive degrees, endlessly praised the system and supported and encouraged it to spread. I have stated on the record and will now repeat;  they are the equivalent of a medical doctor who says to his patient, “Thee hast an imbalance of thine humors. Tis necessary for to bleed thee that thee might becometh more balanced.“

At this point I can only say that stupid is as stupid does.

> The foundation of every recent accountability system, from the dawn of No Child Left Behind to the dusk of Common Core, has been the Big Standardized Test. And that foundation has cracked and crumbled. It has produced no results in the evaluation of teachers. It has produced no progress in student scores. Frederick Hess (American Enterprise Institute) has recently detailed how the bipartisan coalition that supported testing has disintegrated, in part because parents have lost faith.

…High stakes testing has had a hugely corrosive effect on education, pushing to schools to see their goal not as the full education of the whole child, but as preparing students to score well on the big test. It has shifted school resources away from any topics not on the test. <

Cassandra and Me

https://time.com/5775795/education-reform-failed-america/

A very important article which I don’t think will gather much attention. It should. So in the hope that at least one or two people may read it because I am posting this here as well as on Facebook:

I picked a few key excerpts from the article. Please read them, then please read the entire thing. Read it if you care about America’s children, America’s education system, or America’s future.

I do wonder however why no one seem to have looked at the foolish root of all these failures, the No Child Left Behind program, and identified it as the No Child Left Unharmed program back when it was a brand new idea.

Oh, that’s right! I called it that.  At the time it was created. Way back then. Or, to put it another way, “Why don’t nobody never listen to me??!!”

> The “reformers” relied on the business idea that disruption is a positive good. I call them “disruptors,” not reformers. Reformers have historically called for more funding, better trained teachers, desegregation, smaller class sizes. The disruptors, however, banked on a strategy of testing, competition, and punishment, which turned out to be ineffective and harmful.

...But every public school in the nation continues to be saddled with an expensive regime of annual standardized testing that is not found in any high-performing nation.

...Some charter schools get high test scores, but they usually get high scores by excluding students with disabilities and English learners or by high attrition rates.

Voucher studies in Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana, and the District of Columbia found that students in voucher schools actually lost ground compared to their peers in public schools. This is not surprising since some voucher schools have uncertified teachers and are free to teach a curriculum that mixes facts and religious stories.

...For almost twenty years, the Bush-Obama-Trump program of standardized testing, punitive accountability, and school choice has been the reform strategy. It has utterly failed. <

A Diatribe With A Side Of Recommendation

 https://quillette.com/2019/12/01/when-disruptive-students-are-coddled-the-whole-class-suffers/

I have two rather different responses to this article.

First, I have a response which, while it is based on my factual knowledge and experience, is profoundly emotional. It provides an excellent example of my attitude that both rationality and emotionality need to work hand-in-hand in order to create a balanced view of the world and, indeed, of reality itself.

Second is my own response to the problem; and it is a very real problem with which every educator has dealt to one degree or another. That is, how to deal with disruptive students.

I will begin with a set of excerpts which I found to be emotionally triggering. (Please forgive me for borrowing a term from those I refer to as the woking brain dead, but it is an effective descriptor in this case.)

> The worst-behaved students effectively are taught that the rules don’t apply to them in the same way they apply to others. <

And > ...where a single agitated student has the power to seize control of any classroom he pleases.<

Finally, > And to the extent that student misbehavior is seen as being a product of trauma, anyone who applies disciplinary measures to the student is accused of exacerbating that trauma. <

I tried to find evidence of the author’s source of his presumed expertise. I didn’t find any evidence that he ever taught in the classroom or worked with emotionally disturbed children.  I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he is simply profoundly ignorant of reality.  Otherwise, I would be forced to conclude that he, like so many who made comments on this article, simply believes in magic punishment. Personal responsibility is of course one essential element of proper emotional development for all human beings.  However, to dismiss the fact that children who are this emotionally disturbed are often victims of horrific abuse including being burned, beaten, and otherwise abused with the statement that one “who applies disciplinary measures to the student is accused of exacerbating the trauma” is an appalling attack on the needs of the most damaged and vulnerable members of our nation.

Most disciplinary action normally taken against a healthy, emotionally sound student, if taken against such children, would in fact be exacerbating the trauma. Stating a fact is not making an accusation.

I find the author’s opinion, which appears largely to be let us discipline these individuals as if they were not traumatized children, to be morally repugnant.  I note in the comments a cold, callous and inhuman response on the part of many. The conviction that the way to handle brutalized, traumatized children is to punish them more effectively is inappropriate even in the last century. These children are not being taught to “seize control”.  They are desperately acting out their terror and their fear of being placed in a situation where they feel profoundly threatened. No child wishes to have other children laugh at them, or fear them, or condemn them for being strange. assuming that these so troubled youngsters simply need discipline or isolation indicates something is very very wrong with a person who expresses that opinion.   The spread of civilization and the advance of our culture should have gone beyond this.

So many who have never been in a classroom except as a student, so many who have never worked with the emotionally traumatized, so many who know nothing of the reality of these situations are so ready to make their arrogant, smug judgments. I spent much of my professional career dedicated to working with the poor, the traumatized, the wounded children of our society.  At least when I open my mouth, you know that I have some experience upon which to base my opinions and my judgment.

End diatribe. Begin recommendation.

One of the points which I found irritating is the suggestion that suspension is some sort of magic solution.  Suspension works only when parents respond appropriately to it. One of my students was a particular problem. Although I knew that it would inevitably follow its normal course there were times when I simply had no choice but to suspend him.  The  problem was that once he was suspended,  he went home, took off his shirt, got on his bike, and then would ride around across the street from the school laughing at all the children who were denied his freedom. Then he was off to whatever adventures he wished, since his parents took no action in response to his discipline.

In short, any disciplinary action can be effective if it is appropriate to the child and if the parents are supportive of the school. Any disciplinary action can also be counterproductive and damaging to discipline if it is inappropriate to the child and the parents do not support the school.

As a few commenters pointed out there are very effective programs which can actually help troubled children.  Obviously, they should be utilized. However, I must acknowledge that the author makes one excellent point which must be implemented for the benefit of all, including the troubled children.  

When the policy of placing children in the “least restrictive environment“ was first adopted in California, I was a young teacher. I was asked by our district psychologist to attempt placing such a child in my class.  I thought the idea was an excellent one and gave it a try. To some extent it was successful. Although he did require a great deal of my attention, he was certainly not disruptive or a problem.  I found, however, that the other students tended to take advantage of him. 

So in a sense it was not a success. The least restrictive environment for this youngster was an environment in which he was not in a position where other students would take advantage of his trusting nature. This is the point to be made. Students who are truly emotionally disruptive and may throw a tantrum in which they endanger themselves and other students are not being indulged when they are not suspended. The abuse that is occurring is not abuse by that child. The abuse is being accused by a system which has placed them in an environment in which they are emotionally incapable of functioning.

To repeat for the sake of clarity , a least restrictive environment is an environment in which both the child and those surrounding the child are sufficiently secure that they can function effectively. The mistake the overly liberal are making is thinking that least restrictive is a term which simply means placing the child in a normal classroom. But that is extremely restrictive for a traumatized child. It is in fact in itself a form of abuse.

The problem is complex and difficult. Simplistic solutions will not be effective. There are many ways in which children can be at least partially integrated into the normal school environment. These should be employed. But magic punishments have never worked. They never will.

Part 2 -- The Best Educational System In The World, And How We Can Have It, Too

So now that we have seen what a superb educational system actually looks like, and noted how radically different it is from our own, it's time to ask the question, "How do we get there?"

In order to answer this question we must begin with an essential element of Finland's schools that cannot readily be applied to our educational system. This reality is that child poverty is rare in Finland. I have pointed out on repeated occasions that the only real problem with the American educational system is child poverty. Eliminate that one factor and we immediately rocket up to being rated as among the best schools in the world.

This does not mean that we do not need to pay attention to the system of Finland. It is a vastly better educational system than ours, even allowing the absence of child poverty. However, the fact remains that the biggest educational problem America faces today is that so many of our children come from poor homes.

That is an entirely different subject and one which would require extensive examination. So, as important as it is, I regarded as largely unaddressable within the context of the current discussion.

But there remain many things which we can and should be doing now. At this point I'm tempted to say the key to all of these educational reforms is…but I cannot do so. That is because there is no one key. There is no one magic solution. Well, with the exception of eliminating child poverty, there is no magic solution, there is no one key.

The things we need to do must start with centralizing our educational system in that the federal government should be responsible for education in this nation and it should establish the guidelines and rules by which everyone else operates. At the same time, we must give a much greater autonomy to the teachers and the principals of individual schools. In other words, we must both become much more centralized and much less centralized. This seeming contradiction makes sense when you realize that we centralize in some areas and decentralize in others.

At the same time we must stop the adversarial cancer which is in eating away at our educational system. When I first became a teacher, our district was just beginning to unionize. I was against teacher unions then, and to some extent remain so to this day. I felt that public service employees, such as teachers, policemen, and firemen, should not be unionized. Instead, I believed we should serve the public and in return be treated with the respect due to those professions. 

I was part of the first contract negotiations held in our district. Because it was a new practice to us, a representative of the California Teachers Association was present. At one point in the negotiations, while our group was in caucus, I said that I really felt that we were taking an adversarial position which was unnecessary. I commented that I sincerely believed that if I sat down with the district superintendent, he and I could quickly reach a solution and agreement with which everyone would be satisfied. I suggested that we all should take that attitude which should lead to a win-win situation. 

The CTA representative was shocked and angered. He said I was betraying my fellow teachers. He threatened to report me to the Labor Relations Board for my unacceptable attitude. He declared that we must treat the administration as our adversaries, any suggestion of developing a cooperative relationship he regarded as repulsive.

I responded as those of you who know me well would expect me to respond. A cooler and older head at the table suggested that both of us should calm down and we should continue on. We finally simply ignored the conflict and proceeded.

I tell this story to emphasize what I despised about unions. Why was it necessary for us to be adversarial? What was the need for that? Today I take more nuanced view, I'm not necessarily opposed to unions if those unions have the correct goals. IF.

If the union's goals are to protect its members no matter what... If the union's goals are to create an adversarial relationship with the administration... If the union's goals are not to make education the best it can be...then I oppose unions.

However, if the union's goals are to protect teachers who need to be protected and deserve to be protected while at the same time weeding out teachers who should not be in the classroom... If the union's goals include creating a cooperative and mutually beneficial relationship with the schools' administrators...if the union's goal is to make education the best it can be for the children's sake...then I strongly support unions.

In Finland a teachers' union works as a cooperative colleague of the administration. We need to create that situation. This requires a fundamental change the attitude of union leaders, not easy to accomplish, but I think my attitude is closer to that of the majority of teachers. So it is possible.

We also must eliminate the adversarial relationships between teachers. Teachers who work together to attain the goal of making their school a fine place for learning will have much greater success than teachers struggling to get the merit or bonus pay available from attaining higher test scores than those of their colleagues' classrooms. Teachers should not be enemies in a zero sum game. They should be professional members of the same team. No merit pay, no bonuses, only a fair wage for a dedicated public servant. 

The competitive model being pushed so hard in American education today, the model created by the Republicans and embraced by the Democrats, is poisonous. There is no competition in Finland, only the accomplishment and the development of the individual child. Our divisive attitude can be changed only if we change the politicians and they can only be changed if we change the opinions of the public. This could be done. However, the likelihood of attaining it in our current environment of political bitterness and hysteria is unlikely. It is not impossible, and it is worth working for, but it will not be an easy task.

Both responsibility and autonomy must be given to individual principals and their staff members. Teachers are professionals. Given the level of respect they deserve (in Finland they are among the most respected of all professionals) and given both the responsibility and the power to control their own schools in cooperation with their principals, teachers will get the job done. I have no doubt of that. They already have my trust and my support. Getting the rest of the country to agree to that won't be easy. Ever since Ronald Reagan first smeared the nation's teachers to shift attention away from his own failures, teachers have been the scapegoat for just about every single thing that's going wrong in our country.

Before Reagan's smears, teachers were highly respected and honored in our country. We can get back there again. I can only repeat that it will not be easy, but it is entirely doable.

Most importantly of all, education in America must return to being child centered. Children are not raw materials. They are not mere objects to be milled, ground, forged, and hammered into the correct shape. They are human beings who should all be encouraged and assisted in reaching their own full potential as an individual. Such an attitude cannot be attained in a test driven environment. If we are to improve our educational system we must ban standardized tests, or at least reduce the number of standardized test a student takes in his school career to one, as the Finns have done.

This is a mere outline. In order to actually obtain the reforms needed, much more planning is required. However, the outline is valid. We must begin the struggle and we must begin it now. We have one great advantage on our side. That is that even the conservatives admit that Finland's educational system is superb. There is the blueprint; we only need to follow it. There is the pattern; we only need to cut and sew it. There is the model; we only need to copy it.

It is said that it is hard to argue with success. Unfortunately, one of our political parties today has largely taken over the media, has dedicated itself to being pro superstition and anti-science, has based its actions not upon facts and reality but on fear and rage, and thus made sensible change difficult. However, these victories need not be eternal. We can turn the tide back to reality-based decision making.


For another view, see the following:
http://edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-daily/flypaper/2012/real-lessons-from-finland-hard-choices-rigorously-implemented.html

My disagreement with this article is that it assumes it was necessary to go through the extreme educational system which preceded the blossoming in order to reach the blossoming. I completely disagree. The earlier efforts were in fact failures and I do not see that is necessary to reproduce other people's failures before copying their successes. Nevertheless, I offer it to you for the sake of open discussions. It is a thoughtful article which at least approaches the subject without a rigid sense of Ideology.

Frankly, this is quite surprising since the The Thomas B. Fordham Institute tends to be a self-styled conservative organization which usually displays an extremely rigid sense of ideology. I do not recommend their articles in general, only this particular one and it is presented only as an alternative to my views.

I also cannot help but note that while this organization is forced by facts (a remarkable accomplishment for a conservative organization) to admit that the Finnish system, which is so antithetical to their ideology, is in fact highly successful; they manage to conclude that the only way to reach the Finnish system is via all the mindless rigidity of their ideology.

This attitude reminds me of the great Marxist screed. First we must have a dictatorship of the proletariat. This is undesirable, but a necessary stage. Then it will simply fade away. (As if dictatorships ever simply fade away.) However unpleasant this may be, it is a necessary base for finally attaining the real goals of a classless society.

So we must suffer all the bad, awful things before we can finally attain the good things? How sad.

The Best Educational System In The World, And How We Can Have It, Too

I am accustomed to truly bizarre statements being made by the callers when I am watching C-SPAN's Washington Journal.  However, I simply could not allow the statements made by one truly misinformed individual to go unanswered. During a discussion of how to improve American education, a caller made the following statement:

Finland has a decentralized, consumer driven model where where they use vouchers and local autonomy to direct education.

If you know anything about Finland's educational system, you know that this is a statement which is roughly equivalent to stating that in Germany the economy is doing well because they still maintain plantations where slaves grow and harvest cotton. Germany never had such a system. Germany certainly does not possess such a system now. And the Finnish education system is almost the exact opposite of everything this man thinks it is.

Which leads me to wonder where he got such bizarre misinformation. I suppose it could be FOXNews. But who knows?

I suspect it is more likely that he assumes Finland is doing those things because he has decided that they will magically work. Since he knows the magic formula (or, at least, believes he does) he assumes that a highly successful system such as Finland's must be using the methods that he knows will magically work. This is of course totally wrong.

It would be like saying I know that blowing your nose on paper napkins rather than Kleenex prevents cancer. I then find that there is a city in which cancer rates are unusually low. Therefore, without any further fact checking, I assume that everyone in that town must be blowing their noses on napkins rather than Kleenex. After all, how else could you explain the success in keeping cancer rates low?

Just to cover a few of the areas:

1.  Much of education is far more centralized in Finland than in the United States, but only in some ways. Most importantly, their system is a function of the national government and it controls many essentials such as the certification of teacher education programs which are not under the control of the US government. After all, in America, education is a function the state governments.

However, the caller was partially correct in that the national government of Finland has wisely delegated much control to local levels, including giving principals and teachers strong control over their own schools.

Therefore, the Finnish system is BOTH more centralized and less centralized than ours.  It depends upon which area you are discussing.

2.  There are virtually no voucher schools or charter schools in Finland. The creation of such a school is highly controversial and is generally regarded as damaging and negative to the nation's children. 

3.  Yes, parents are very involved in education, but they do not control education as parents do in America through local school board elections.

4. Finnish educators do not believe in homework.

5. Finnish educators regard the arts as critical to a child's education. These programs have not been cut back severely, as they have in the United States.

6. Finnish children get far more recess time then do their American counterparts.

I can go on and on but I've already addressed this in the following blog posts:

http://el-naranjal-del-desierto.blogspot.com/2012/10/educational-deform.html

http://el-naranjal-del-desierto.blogspot.com/2013/09/finland-strikes-again.html

Interesting Link:

 http://www.businessinsider.com/finland-education-school-2011-12?op=1

Anyone interested in factual data should click the link above. It lists many of the the things Finns are doing correctly in their schools. The authors say that the schools are decentralized, but as I pointed out above, this is simplistic.  They are more centralized in some ways, while less centralized in others.

Further, the authors don't mention a couple of matters which they should have included.  First, retention is very rare in Finnish schools. And second, charter schools and voucher systems are not used in Finland. Third, schools are non-competitive. Teachers don't compete with other teachers, children don't compete with other children, school districts don't compete with other school districts. The entire focus of the entire school system is on the benefit of, to, and for the children

Excerpt From A Reference Article:

-- School Management and Organization

The Ministry of Education and Culture oversees all publicly funded education, including the development of the national core curriculum through The Finnish National Board of Education and the accreditation of teacher training programs. Below the national level, Regional State Administrative Agencies and Centres for Economic Development oversee education.

At the local level, the authority comes from the Regional State Administrative Agencies and the Centres for Economic Development. The local government is responsible for providing basic education (grades 1-9) in 3,100 schools, 45% of which teach fewer than 100 students. However, larger schools exist, with the largest comprehensive schools enrolling more than 900 students. For upper secondary education, the Ministry of Education and Culture provides licenses to local authorities, municipal authorities and registered associations and foundations to establish schools.

Schools are managed by the teachers and staff. The local municipal authority in any given region appoints principals for six- or seven-year terms, but apart from this appointment, they largely leave the running of the school to the principal and his or her teachers. Principals are responsible for managing the school staff, ensuring the well-being and success of the students, and managing the school budget, although they do this generally in collaboration with the teachers. --

From:  http://www.ncee.org/programs-affiliates/center-on-international-education-benchmarking/top-performing-countries/finland-overview/finland-system-and-school-organization/

Final note: in a previous version of this post I stated that the central government was responsible for teacher certification. This is not correct. Only universities may issue teaching licenses in Finland. However, one of the functions of the central government is the certification of the teacher programs offered at those universities.  Once accepted into such a program, the potential educator receives his training at government expense.

Affirmative action. A great idea that failed in the real world. Intended to heal
and reverse the pernicious effects of racism, it inflamed and aggravated tensions without effectively meeting the needs of those suffering from centuries of abuse. The newer Texas system is more effective and race neutral. I strongly support it.

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fla-na-court-affirmative-action-20120222%2C0%2C2933055.story&h=5AQGVNaGlAQECsutT6tiT29W59cbAO5AKd8cKjSaHHbbL7g

Shawn's response: Being that Affirmative action was initially intended to promote "equal opportunity" in due time to "heal" discrimination and subsequently dissipate the need for such initiatives ... Yes I would agree that it "Failed" ... However, being that this didn't work for the "healing" of discrimination, it did successfully help A LOT of minorities in areas of the workforce as well as education obtain that which would have been even harder to obtain had not such initiative been in place. The fat that it "Didn't" work completely as planned proves that.

My response to Shawn: Agreed. It did good work in its day. I was a strong supporter in the beginning. I believe now that it has become more negative than positive and believe that we need to address the ongoing root problems that deny a fair chance. I've been convinced for decades that guaranteeing admittance to junior college, state college, or state university if you meet certain grade standards, is one effective solution.
No games, no tricks. You earn it, you get it. This promise must be made clear to all kids in elementary school and it MUST be kept. For those who fear a new entitlement, the grades must stay high in college and financial support must be on a sliding scale. Also, recall that the entitlement of the GI Bill made us the wealthiest nation in the history of the planet in the 50's

And later:

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fla-ed-affirmative-20120223%2C0%2C6933836.story&h=NAQHfASwMAQHwKhFLvL1-9tv8tDFeYGbhKXyzOZJmkCjmQQ

The other side of the story. Affirmative action did much good in the beginning, but I believe that the time has come to change the focus to ending the causes, not simply mitigating their results. I suggest four essential changes: 1. A "GI Bill" for America's youth. If you earn admission to higher education, you get it. Think of it as a salary for the work done in K through 12 education. 2. Stop the war on minority young men, which is a war on their families. These men belong at home with their wives and children, not incarcerated at such unbelievable rates. A white man arrested for drug possession is very likely to get probation and treatment. A Black or Hispanic man is almost certain to get imprisoned. 3. Give a future back to inner city kids. Growing up in gang and drug infested neighborhoods makes many children believe they will not live to grow up. Why try when you are soon to die anyway? 4. Give principals much more authority and responsibility for their schools. Government meddling by incompetent amateurs, from local school board members to US senators has steadily and predictably degraded our once world class education system into a test driven national disgrace. Reform not the schools, but the system of political education systems which care more about ideology than about teaching children.