Goals Gone Wild

Back in February my school district changed platforms for our websites. As a result, we had to make all the usual design decisions, figure out workflow, and move content over. As part of that process, I realized that we did not have a link to our Unified Improvement Plan (UIP), an annual improvement plan required by the Colorado Department of Education. I then asked for a copy and posted it on our website (pdf). And then I read it.

Our UIP has two goals (Priority Performance Challenges), and I thought it might be worthwhile to look at each one individually.

Goal 1: To improve writing skills building-wide
At first blush, this is a goal I can strongly support. I think writing is critically important for our students. It allows them to express and communicate ideas, interact with others and their ideas, and refine their own thinking through the writing process. I also appreciate how it says "building-wide", which implies that the adults in the building will be working on this as well.

Now, while I strongly support this, that doesn't mean I don't have suggestions on how to improve it. As much as I support "writing", I think that's way too limiting of a concept. As Dr. Richard Miller, the English Department Chair at Rutgers University says,

To compose, and compose successfully in the 21st century, you have to not only excel at verbal expression, at written expression, you have to also excel in the use and manipulation of images. That's what it means to compose.

So I think a significant improvement in this goal would be to replace the word "writing" with "composition." It's not enough for our students to improve their "writing", but they have to be able to "consume and produce in the media forms of the day" (Jason Ohler - 1, 2, 3). Writing (in the traditional "text" sense), is still a hugely important component of that, and the writing process is also critical. But it's not enough. For students to communicate ideas, express opinions, interact with others and their ideas, and even refine their own thinking in 2016 (and beyond), they need not only text, but images, and sound, and video, and hyperlinks, and infographics, and storify's, and . . .well, you get the idea.

So while I like the idea of improving our students' (and staff's) abilities in this area, I think we are missing the boat when we limit it to simply "writing." But as I read further in the UIP, I was dismayed to see the "Action Steps" we were going to take to try to achieve this goal.

While these are all well-intentioned, I have serious concerns about our conception of what "good writing" (or I would prefer "good composition") looks like. In the first section, I think it's great that we're making sure all students have technology (of course I would), that we will utilize PLC time to discuss writing strategies, and that we will "imbed" (sic) writing more frequently (although I'm not sure that's actually happening in many of our classes). But the emphasis on "Data Days" and working on "skills missed in common assessments" is a bit worrisome. That seems to place more emphasis on how we're doing as a school and on specific, school-defined "skills" as measured by common assessments, and less emphasis on developing each student as a writer. (Those don't have to be mutually exclusive, but I worry about the focus there.)

I also really like some of the ideas in the second section focused on Mindset, but the implementation of that third item, "alter grading practices," seems to be lacking. While some individual teachers have certainly done this, our grading practices across the faculty are very much not aligned with a growth mindset (1, 2)

It's the third section that really, really concerns me. While "SLO" has the word "Student" in there, I think that again the emphasis here is on "results" as viewed from the school perspective. The use of "common assessments" and "MAP data" almost necessitates a narrow focus on "academic" writing skills and less of an emphasis on the actual purpose of writing for our students. Again, these are not mutually exclusive, but where is the student, their ideas, and their reason for writing in any of this? If our students were writing for a purpose, about things they care about, with audiences that matter, then those "academic" aspects could help achieve their goals. But when we focus on the "academic" aspects and ignore the reason and purpose for writing, I don't think it works at all. It actually turns off and discourages our students from writing for themselves. It focuses on the "performance" of writing for an assignment, instead of the "purpose" of writing for oneself (and others).

Plus, by focusing on "common assessments" and "MAP data", we ignore something else Miller had to say,

That's writing in the 21st century. It's multiply authored, it's multiply produced, and that's where English is going.

Multiply authored. Multiply produced. We, of course, would call that cheating on a common assessment or on MAP testing.

Finally, I would point out that none of these implementation strategies seem to involve developing the adults in the building as better writers (composers).  There appears to be no effort to ask staff to compose on a regular basis, or participate in any "writing in the 21st century" as Miller puts it, or to improve their skills and abilities in this area. If we don't model for our students, then we are not only missing an opportunity, but are pretty darn hypocritical.

Goal 2: To decrease the number of students that opt out of testing
Okay, read that again.

Yep, that's what it says. 50% of our goals as a school for how to help our students learn and grow focuses on getting more of them to take state-mandated tests. This totally flabbergasts me. In fact, I hesitated to write this post because this goal reflects so poorly on my school (and, selfishly, on me). This is not only not a worthy goal, it's flat-out embarrassing.

And then there's the way we are going to achieve this goal:

More "Data Days." More class time practicing standardized test items. More time spent trying to convince our students and their parents that these tests (and "test-taking practice) are helpful to them. Less time spent actually helping our students to learn and grow. (As a side note, because of a new state law, district's were required to formalize the opt-out procedure. Our district did so (pdf), but note the attempt to coerce the parents by making them feel guilty. Even worse, when parents did opt-out, we sent them a follow-up letter trying to make them feel guilty again and encouraging them to change their minds.)

I think our UIP is a pretty good demonstration of "Goals Gone Wild":

• The harmful side effects of goal setting are far more serious and systematic than prior work has acknowledged.
• Goal setting harms organizations in systematic and predictable ways.
• The use of goal setting can degrade employee performance, shift focus away from important but non-specified goals, harm interpersonal relationships, corrode organizational culture, and motivate risky and unethical behaviors.
• In many situations, the damaging effects of goal setting outweigh its benefits.
• Managers should ask specific questions to ascertain whether the harmful effects of goal setting outweigh the potential benefits.

It also is a pretty good example of Campbell's Law:

The more any quantitative social indicator (or even some qualitative indicator) is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.

Even when Campbell's Law doesn't rise to the extremes that we saw in the cheating scandals in DC, Atlanta (and who got punished 1, 2) and elsewhere, it has a truly corrosive effect on the culture of learning (1, 2) in our schools.

I'm not questioning whether the folks who wrote our UIP were well-intentioned - they were. Or even whether they thought these goals would be good for kids - they did. But if we're going to be required to take the time to complete this plan, I think we should spend a lot more time thinking about this from our students' perspectives, about what it means to be a good writer (composer), about whether participation rates in state-mandated tests are a metric that is useful for our individual students, and about what it really means to be educated and literate in 2016 and beyond (1, 2, 3).

The True Cost of Testing: Part 2

My last post on The True Cost of Testing generated a couple of follow-up questions I thought I might address.

One of those questions was what would we do to replace final exams? Don't we need some kind of assessment at the end of a semester/year? Maybe, maybe not, but if you do believe we need some kind of assessment at that point, I suggest an alternative. I wrote about this a while back, I think we should replace final exams with conferencing with students. Meeting with them individually and actually talking with them to see what they know, what they are still struggling with, and what they would like to do next would be much more valuable for the student than a final exam.

Another question focused on what should we do with that freed up time? We have about 175 instructional days with students but, as discussed in the last post, we lose about 17 or so to testing, which means we really have something more like 158. So one possibility is simply to give those days back to instruction. That effectively adds 11% (17/158) more days to our school year without actually increasing the number of days or spending any more money. That's an idea that everyone from Bernie to Donald could presumably support.

Alternatively, we could stick with 158 days. That would save us about 10% of our current budget, so that means we could hire 10% more teachers. At my school, that equates to about 11 more teachers, which could either translate to lower class sizes or additional offerings (or both). Which is better for students, 17 days of testing, or 158 days of instruction with 11 more teachers in the building?

Or perhaps we don't spend that saved money on additional teachers. Since we currently have 158 days of instruction that we're clearly satisfied with, then perhaps we use those 17 days differently. I'd suggest that the 2,150 students and 150 staff members participate in various forms of community service. Think what we could accomplish in our community with 2300 people, 17 days, and $2 million. Think also what the students could learn.

This undoubtedly would take many, many forms, some of them costing no money just donated time, and others taking both time and some money, but let me give just one example. What if we worked with Habitat For Humanity? With $2 million, 17 days, and that many volunteers, I think we could easily build 10 houses for families in need in our community. That's per year. Just from my school. Now only would it provide desperately needed affordable housing, but think of all the students would learn in that process. It could very much be an apprenticeship model, with students doing good while learning.

Even with 10 simultaneous houses going up, and even if students and teachers were split into 3 shifts a day at 6 hours each, that still wouldn't take all 2300 of us, so there still would be plenty of other volunteer opportunities going on at the same time for those 17 days. Maybe reading with students in elementary schools, maybe tending a community garden, maybe visiting seniors living in assisted living. And, obviously, we're only limited by our imagination in terms of finding activities that benefit the community while simultaneously teaching our students valuable skills. Part of the learning process would presumably be the students researching what the best use of that time might be.

So, once again, what would be the impact on the culture of learning in our schools? What would be the message we send to students (and teachers) of what we value and who we are serving?

The True Cost of Testing

Next week my school is giving the state-mandated testing to our freshmen, sophomores and juniors. Colorado, like many states, has made some changes this year, and they are definitely an improvement. The overall amount of testing is decreased somewhat, and sophomores will no longer be taking the PARCC exam but instead will be taking the PSAT. While I'm not a fan of PSAT and SAT either, they are at least somewhat useful to some students.

When the news was announced in December, the focus was primarily on three things: the reduced amount of testing, the switch from the ACT to the SAT, and the timing of the announcement. What was missing was much discussion of the merits of testing in general and the cost (both direct and indirect) of the testing. For this post, I'm going to just focus on cost.

I've so far been unable to find anywhere on the Colorado Department of Education site the cost to the state of these state-mandated tests. (I'm sure it's there somewhere, I just haven't found it yet.)  This article seems to indicate that the current ACT for juniors costs about $2.1 million a year, and they are budgeting $1.8 million for the sophomore exam, plus an additional $432,000 for juniors who want to take the writing portion. The cost for PARCC/CMAS (9th graders and 11th graders in science) is harder to figure out, but this article from about a year ago shows the state will pay Pearson about $27 million for PARCC and CMAS. If we assume that the high school portion of that is about 10% (very rough estimate), then add in another $2.7 million. So, somewhere around $7 million in direct costs to the state. That figure, of course, doesn't include the indirect costs of staffing, materials, time, etc., nor does it include the same types of indirect costs to school districts.

But even what little focus there has been on that really quite large sum of money then ignores the opportunity costs that are ultimately paid by school districts (and kids). Let's look at my building as one example. Next week we will spend three days on state-mandated testing. While we run an abbreviated schedule in the afternoons, most folks will acknowledge that the classes held during that time are not optimal for learning. The students who took the tests in the morning are tired, and some students who do not have to take the tests in any given morning choose not to come to school just for the classes in the afternoon (definite surge in our absentee rate). Given all that, many teachers make the reasonable decision to limit their instruction during this time to less critical matters. Not that we don't try to make the time worthwhile, we definitely do, but it's tough to try to reach the same level of learning as in a typical day. So, for me, I consider those three days pretty much lost for instruction. (If you disagree, you can pro-rate the numbers I'm about to share accordingly.)

So what does this "cost"? Well, according to district budget documents, we spend $9597 per student per year (that's including federal, state, and local funds; the amount directly from the state is less than that). We have about 175 days of "instruction" (theoretically), so $9597 divided by 175 works out to just under $55 per day per student. Since we have roughly 2150 students at Arapahoe, a single day of instruction costs roughly $118,000. That means that for each and every day of instruction we choose to "give up," we are "forfeiting" that money. So each day of testing is costing us $118,000, or roughly $354,000 for the three days of state-mandated testing. (Keep in mind that does not include the pro-rated cost of the $7 million the state is directly paying, or the indirect costs to the state and especially the districts that I'm sure adds several million more.)

But, sticking to just the lost instructional time, we're now at $350,000 (just at my school). But there's more, of course. We currently choose to take a day of instruction in the fall to give the PSAT to all Juniors. (Yes, despite the fact that we're now going to be giving it to all sophomores in April, we are still going to turn around and give it to all of them again in October when they're Juniors. Why? National Merit.) So that choice means we're deciding to spend another $118,000 on testing. We're now up to $472,000 (just at my school).

But, of course, there's still more if you don't limit it to state-mandated testing. What other types of testing do we have at my school? Well, we give MAP testing in language arts and mathematics to our students. That's a bit harder to quantify in terms of cost, since we don't devote parts of entire school days to it. Instead, students are tested in their language arts and math classes (twice a year in 9th and 10th grade, just once a year in 11th I think). Making a very rough estimate again, I'll say that equates to about half a day per year per student, so $59,000. We're now up to $531,000 (just at my school).

We also have many students who take AP exams at the end of the school year. When students take an AP exam, they not only miss the 3 or so hours they are writing the exam, but they often miss the entire school day as they are pretty exhausted. There are certainly many arguments in favor of the usefulness, importance and value of AP Exams, but there are also arguments against. No matter which side you fall on, certainly those days are not available for instruction for those students. (And even for those students who are not taking an AP exam, teachers adjust what they are doing in class because so many students are missing due to the AP exams). I don't really have the data to completely quantify this, but our students write close to 900 AP exams in a given year, so if we take 900 times $55 per day per student, that adds $49,500. We're now up to $580,500 (just at my school).

My school also requires final exams each semester. We devote four days each semester exclusively to final exams, so eight days throughout the school year. While there are certainly some folks who will argue that final exams are useful, necessary and important, there are also arguments that they are not. Whichever you believe, they certainly don't much resemble instruction. So eight days times $118,000 adds another $944,000, so we're up to $1,524,500 (just at my school). Since many teachers also take at least one day to review for the final exams, you could perhaps add in more here (although that review has some instructional value, so I'll leave that out for now).

Then you add in the individual tests that teachers give. This is even murkier territory, since I do believe assessment - when it is done well - is very valuable, and how teachers give these assessments varies tremendously. But certainly there are a fair number of teachers who give "unit" tests multiple times a year that take an entire class period. That's time that is no longer available for instruction, so there is an opportunity cost associated with it. Let's make a conservative estimate and say that each students loses 4 days a year cumulatively to these tests. That adds another $472,000, so we're up to $1,996,500.

Now, that's waaaaay too many digits of precision, so let's just say $2 million as a rough estimate. We spend $2 million a year on testing . . . just at my school.

Two. Million. Dollars.

We can debate my estimates and I'll freely admit that I'm just ballparking all of this, but at least it gives us a place to start the discussion. If we ignore the $7 million the state spends in direct costs, and if we ignore the additional millions the state and school districts spend in indirect costs, and just focus on what my high school spends on testing each year, $2 million is a good number to work with.

That's the cost of testing.

Yet even that isn't the true cost of testing, or at least not the total true cost of testing. My daughter is a sophomore this year, and in her language arts and math classes they have been doing some practice PSAT items. They are not spending a lot of time on this, but they are spending some. And just because they are practicing for the PSAT doesn't automatically make it a poor use of time, the skills they are practicing may (or may not) be valuable.

But I think we have to acknowledge that in addition to the actual time spent testing, we are impacting what we do in our schools. Even if you believe those practice items are valuable, keep in mind that those items change each year as the tests change. We used to do CSAP practice items, then TCAP, then PARCC, then ACT, and now PSAT and SAT. While those are certainly related, each time the test changes we change the prep we do. I think it's awfully hard to argue the high ground here about how valuable these items are when they keep changing based on which test we're giving.

And it doesn't just influence those test prep items. We change what we do in our classes based on these tests. From major changes like adjusting the entire curriculum, to more minor changes like materials selection and the emphasis we place on different topics within that curriculum, the current test ends up driving a lot of what we do (even if we don't want to admit it). Again, that doesn't necessarily mean that the things we are doing are bad, but I think we need to be honest and acknowledge why we are doing them. The question we need to ask is what would we choose to do with our students in the absence of those tests? Instead of trying to do things better, we should do better things.

It's not just the time (and dollars) spent on actual testing, it's the impact on the culture of learning in our schools. It's the message we send to students (and teachers) of what we value and who we are serving.

That's the true cost of testing.

This Week

This was my daughter's schedule at school this week.

Monday: Regular bell schedule, but she had MAP testing for two hours (no Math or Social Studies class)

Tuesday: School starts at 11:30 am due to mandated state ACT testing. Has each of her regular six Tuesday classes, each for 23 minutes. (Side note: Total passing period time is 25 minutes, or longer than any individual class.)

Wednesday: School starts at 12:06 pm due to PLC day and PARCC EOY testing. Has three of her regular Thursday classes, each 40 minutes.

Thursday: School starts at 11:05 am due to PARCC EOY testing. Has the other three of her regular Thursday classes, each 60 minutes.

Friday: Regular bell schedule, but she has tests for two hours, one in Science and one in Spanish.

Totals for the week:

Passing time: 70 minutes
Instructional time: 910 minutes
Testing time: 756 minutes

I wonder if she could've done something better this week?

Monitoring Student Use of Social Media

This past weekend a story regarding Pearson monitoring social media for "security breaches" related to PARCC was a popular topic of conversation in my network (original story, although the server often has trouble handling the traffic). I'm not going to focus so much on that story here, as many others have written about it, other than to point out one thing. While students don't seem to have the opportunity to agree or disagree to the terms of service of PARCC, our states, school districts and schools do. We all agreed to this, this is part and parcel of administering PARCC to our students. (Not sure if it was just Colorado, but as a proctor I had to sign a form agreeing to the terms of service.) So I think it is worth some conversation at the state, district and school level about whether we are okay with this or not. Schools can't really blame Pearson for doing what they said they would do (although others can).

In response many folks have wondered why we aren't outraged by the many school districts that are also monitoring students' social media use. Now, to the best of my knowledge, my district is not actively monitoring our students use of social media. But in some respects, I am. Let me explain.

As part of my presence on Twitter I engage in at least two activities that wander into the territory of monitoring. I have a search column set up for the name of my school, primarily so that I can retweet mentions of my school and occasionally answer questions or address concerns. And - as a result of various interactions over the years - I follow some students, both former and current. On occasion, both of these activities have resulted in me coming into contact with student behavior that I have acted upon. This ranges from contacting a student to suggest that a particular tweet might not be looked favorably upon by a college admissions officer or future employer (and discuss digital footprint with them), to meeting with a student and their counselor because there is some concern the student might be engaging in behaviors that could be harmful to themselves or others.

Now, I don't think this is "actively monitoring" my student body. I am not attempting to monitor all student accounts, nor am I actively looking for "misbehavior" on the part of our students. But I readily admit that this could be a slippery slope. It's all well and good for me to say that I'm not surveilling our students, but are they just supposed to trust me on that?

This is something I've thought about a lot. A. lot. And I'm still not completely comfortable with where I've landed, because I think this is a very complicated subject and the parameters around it are constantly changing along with the uses of social media. But, at the moment, this is my best attempt to thread the needle of privacy vs. obligation. If we see a student in need, are we not obligated to try to help? I've chosen to err on the side of caring, but that doesn't mean I might not cross the line.

Part of the way I'm currently viewing this is through the lens of a parent. I ask myself as a parent of a teenager, if another caring adult noticed something of concern in my daughter's social media activity (or any activity for that matter), would I want them to ignore it? I would not. On the other hand, I wouldn't want her school (which, conveniently or inconveniently, is also my school) to be searching through her social media activity looking for something we deemed "inappropriate." It's a fine line.

Because this is such a tricky issue, some school districts have implemented policies to limit or forbid employees' use of social media in relation to their students. My district does not currently have such a policy, but they are working on a draft of one (including possible rules around texting). I think this is a mistake. We don't have policy around whether a teacher can talk to a student in the grocery store or at a volleyball game, whether they can call a student's home or what they are allowed to say to them in the hallway, so we don't need policy specifically regarding social media. Our existing policies cover social media just fine, we don't need a new policy for every new technology or social media platform that is created. As near as I can tell, these policies are really not about student safety, but about school district liability. I don't think anyone believes that simply having a policy in place would stop an adult who means harm toward a student to not act, the policy is just there so the school district can say we have a policy against it.

Our students are active in these spaces. We have a choice, we can ignore these spaces and implement policies designed to protect our institutions, or we can thoughtfully engage with our students and try to help them learn, grow and stay safe. I'm reasonably comfortable with my current position, although I'm constantly reexamining it to see if my thoughts have changed. I'm curious as to how others navigate this issue. Is it okay to "infringe" on a student's privacy if they are at risk? How do we determine they are at risk? Who decides?

#myoptoutletter

Our daughter will be opting out of the PARCC testing this spring at my high school. Some folks will applaud this decision, others will vehemently disagree, but we thought it was important to share our thinking. This is the letter we submitted to my administration and the school board this morning.

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February 28, 2015

To: Arapahoe High School Administration and LPS Board of Education

This letter is to let you know that our daughter will be opting out of the PARCC testing in the Spring of 2015 (both the PBA and the EOY). This request is not meant in any way to reflect poorly on Arapahoe High School or Littleton Public Schools. Our daughter loves her teachers and frequently comes home and tells us what a good job they are doing, with specific examples of what she thinks they did well. But as educators with a combined 48 years teaching every grade level (except Kindergarten and 2nd grade) from Pre-K through 12th, as well as professional development for adults, we do not feel like this testing is in the best interests of our daughter or the school.

We feel that the skills that this testing purports to measure reflect a very narrow and flawed version of what it means to be educated; of what it means to learn and to have learned. We don’t necessarily think that the standards themselves are bad; as standards go most of the Common Core State Standards (and the Colorado modification of them) are well written. To paraphrase Yong Zhao, there’s nothing wrong with the Common Core State Standards, as long as they weren’t common and they weren’t core.

While at times we may disagree with a specific assessment one of her teachers gives her (the content, the format, or the way it’s delivered), in general we believe that her teachers are in the best position to assess her progress as a learner (in conjunction with our daughter herself). More importantly, we believe these teacher-given assessments at least have the potential to help her grow as a learner. Standardized testing such as PARCC, however, is mostly designed to meet the needs of adults.

Instead of taking the tests, she will instead use that time to learn. She might read a book, or work on assignments from her teacher, or watch videos on YouTube of things that interest her, or perhaps just catch up on sleep to compensate for the ridiculousness of beginning school for teenagers at 7:21 am each day. Whatever she does, it is more likely to contribute to her growth as a learner than taking the tests, and less likely to negatively impact her and her school as a whole.

We don’t just think that these tests are bad for our daughter, we believe these tests are bad for all the students at Arapahoe, and for Arapahoe in general. These tests are forcing teachers to narrow their focus; to value a fixed, pre-determined set of skills that someone else has decided that all students need over the needs and desires of the living and breathing students that are actually in their classrooms. While there are many criticisms we would make about the curriculum currently being taught and the restraints that imposes on both teachers and learners, we still put our trust in Abby’s teachers to make the best of that curriculum.

But in our current environment, the mandated testing is overwhelming teachers’ abilities to make decisions in the best interest of their students. Because the results of these tests are being used to evaluate teachers, teachers and administrators are being forced to toe the line in order to keep their jobs. While some folks would argue that this “only” represents 50% of a teacher’s evaluation, we have both seen how this has come to dominate all the discussions of teaching and learning in our schools. I would ask school administrators the following question: If there is a teacher who you have observed many times over the years that you feel is a master teacher, and yet the results of mandated testing over a narrow band of skills don’t support that, would you really change your evaluation of that teacher? There is so much more to teaching and learning than students simply performing well on a single test on a single day.

Make no mistake, we believe in high standards, we just don’t think that this approach actually helps promote them. We believe you can have high standards without being standardized; in fact, we don’t think it’s possible to truly have high standards if you are standardized. The goal of K-12 education is not to help all students master a pre-determined, fixed set of knowledge all at the same time and at the same pace. Algebra may (or may not) be important for all students to learn, but it is ludicrous to state that all students must learn it by the time they are fifteen years old. Why not fourteen? Or sixteen? If a student decides they need - and want - to learn Algebra at eighteen and master it then, is that so bad?

Anyone who has had children, or has met more than one of them, knows that each and every student is different and learns differently, yet we continue to act as if they are widgets on an assembly line, performing the same processes for the same amount of time on each one of them, and expecting that they will all turn out identical at the end of the line. Not only is this not true, we shouldn’t even want it to be true. We say we value diversity and each individual student, that we value and cherish the individual personalities and strengths of each and every child, yet we’ve developed a system that values conformity and compliance over individuality and initiative. We say that we value critical thinking, yet we are apparently unwilling to model it for our students.

We believe in a vision of education that focuses on the needs of each student over the needs of the system. We believe that school should be a place where students are encouraged to pursue their passions, and then actually prepare them to achieve those passions. That doesn’t mean we don’t value community; we believe one of the greatest strengths of the concept of public schools is bringing together students with different strengths and different backgrounds into a common space where they can learn and grow together. Where they can find others who share their passion, but also learn with and alongside those who have other passions. We believe that the way you meet the needs of society is by meeting the needs of each individual student. If you truly meet each student’s needs, then in the end you will meet the needs of society.

For all of these reasons (and many more, but this is already fairly long), we are choosing to opt our daughter out of testing. We have given her the option of opting out each year but this is the first time she has chosen to do it; previously she has never wanted to stand out and “be different” than the other students. She is aware enough now to understand, however, that taking these tests is not only not in her own best interests, but also not in the interests of her friends, classmates and teachers. We think this is important enough that we would give her this option even if it did “negatively” impact Arapahoe or Littleton Public Schools but, thankfully, with the recent changes at the state level surrounding the 95% participation rate, that will not happen.

Which is why we also have a request for the leadership of Arapahoe and Littleton Public Schools. Littleton Public Schools is the highest scoring district in the Denver Metro area, and one of the highest scoring districts in the state, and Arapahoe scores very well as a school. This puts the school and the district in a position where others might listen if they stood up and said this is not in the best interests of our students. A school and a school district that always come out looking good under this system is in the unique position of making the case for why this approach is fatally flawed. Instead of simply reacting to events and the decisions of others, we would ask you to lead.

We - the students, parents, educators and citizens of Colorado - need you to be proactive, not reactive. Instead of reacting to and appeasing the folks who are imposing this system on us, we need you to advocate for a different version of learning, a truly higher standard of what we expect from our schools, a vision for what school can and should be. We don’t need schools that are “better” at scoring well on standardized tests, we need schools that are different, and we need you to advocate for that vision and for our students. We hope you will. Our students deserve nothing less from us.

Sincerely,

Karl and Jill Fisch

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More Information

Colorado Department of Education

• Assessment Home
• PARCC Testing: Math and Language Arts
• CMAS Testing: Science and Social Studies
• Colorado Law
• Parent Information
• Letter from State Commissioner of Education to Superintendents re: 95% penalty removal (pdf)

 Denver Post

• Article on holding districts "harmless" if don't reach 95% participation
• Opt-Out Movement: Just say no to new Colorado assessments

United Opt Out

• Main Page
• Colorado-specific Page
• FAQ with Colorado Department of Education
• Refusal Guide for Colorado (updated February 2015, pdf)

Update 3-4-15: LPS has a page (not sure if it's brand new or was just updated) with FAQs about PARCC/CMAS that includes a mention of opting out.

If I Had A Million Dollars

We first started seriously discussing laptops for our students in the fall of 1999. At that time, the obstacles were cost and infrastructure (wireless), and not everyone was convinced that they would help students learn. Over the years the cost came down, the infrastructure began to be built out, and more and more folks were convinced that laptops would not only be helpful for students, but essential to their learning process. Yet still we didn't do it.

It took until the Fall of 2012 to pilot a program, and then the Fall of 2013 to roll it out for all Freshmen at AHS. We did it via a Bring-Your-Own-Device program, counting on a large percentage of our students to bring their own, and then we would provide laptops (netbooks) for those who couldn't afford one or didn't want to bring one. The district provided support in terms of helping us with a few netbooks and, more importantly, guaranteeing that if we didn't get enough students bringing their own, they would help us financially to make up the difference. It turns out that our students did bring their own in the expected amounts (roughly 65% that first year, and now well over 70%), but it was nice to have that insurance. Since then we've now rolled it out to two classes (this year's Freshmen and Sophomores), and next year will roll out it to a third class (Freshmen, Sophomores and Juniors), and possibly to our Seniors as well depending on a few things (more on that later).

Two weeks ago my school began receiving what will ultimately be 993 Chromebooks from our district. These weren't purchased because we've finally decided that laptops are important enough instructionally for our students to provide them, we're receiving them due to mandated state testing. Because both the PARCC and the CMAS tests are taken via computer, and because we can't sufficiently lock down the netbooks we had previously, the district decided to replace them with Chromebooks - and, of course, we had to add significantly more in order to test all of our students. After sixteen years of not being willing to spend money to support our students instructionally, we are willing (actually, forced) to spend money to support testing. Our Superintendent told us in a faculty meeting that district-wide more than $1 million dollars was being spent to purchase Chromebooks.

Now some folks might argue that I shouldn't complain, we are getting laptops that we will be able to use instructionally when we are not testing. (And, given this influx, this may allow us to accelerate our rollout to include Seniors next year - one year early.) I am certainly appreciative of this, and we will do our best to take full advantage of it, but I still think it's important to note the priorities of our national and state leaders, and what actually makes school districts spend money they otherwise wouldn't.

Since we have so many of our own students bringing their own devices, much of this $1 million will end up sitting most of the time in carts, unused (once we've rolled out Connected Learners to all four grades). So I wonder what else we could've spent $1 million on? I'm sure we could all come up with lots of ideas, but here's one pretty simple one: let's hire more teachers.

Now, I realize that $1 million doesn't go very far when you're talking about hiring teachers, but what if we did this. What if we hired eighteen teachers and provided six teachers each to three elementary schools in our district that we identify as being the most at-risk. Each school could decide how best to utilize those teachers. One school might decide to create one more class at each grade level (K-5), thereby lowering class sizes and student-to-teacher ratios across the board. Another school might decide to leave classes the same, but have one teacher work at each grade level, helping the existing teachers co-teach, or working with individual or small groups of students. Or a school might choose to place all six of those teachers in K-2, creating two extra sections at each level. How many of you think any of these ideas - or some permutation I haven't enumerated - would have a more positive effect on students than state-mandated testing? Which is more likely to change students' lives?

The problem with testing isn't limited to the dubious quality of the data we get when we purport to measure what's "important" for students to know. It's the opportunity cost of the testing. It's not just the $1 million spent on chromebooks that will often sit in carts instead of spending it on something that will help students learn. It's the tremendous monetary value of the staff time that goes into administering these tests including, but not limited to, a district assessment coordinator and their secretary, building-level assistant principals and counselors that spend an inordinate amount of time coordinating these tests, and the time that teachers spend in proctor training for these exams.

And then there's the value of the lost instructional time, not just the time students spend taking the tests, but the time taken in class to prepare for the tests (even teachers who don't do test-prep are very much encouraged to expose their students to the format of the test ahead of time), and the lowered quality of the instructional time that we typically have on testing days (where we test in the morning and have altered schedules in the afternoon).

And then there's the effect on students, both psychological and philosophical. Where they are stressed by the testing, and their motivation is decreased by constantly being told what they aren't good at. And it's the philosophical message we send to students, that being able to prove that adults are doing their job is more important than the students' learning.

If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you the opportunity for more learning, not more testing.

You Keep Using That Word

Yesterday was our first day back after winter break and we had a faculty meeting (it was one of our few non-student-contact days). We heard from teachers, our principal and our superintendent (which is a nice mix, although I feel compelled to point out that there was at least one important group we didn't hear from: students). A variety of topics were addressed, but I think it's fair to say that "accountability" was a major theme.

Both my principal and my superintendent addressed standardized testing and, to be clear, it was very nice to hear from both of them that they believe we are testing too much, and that they are both working in the political arena to try to convince the state to reduce the amount of required testing. But I found it interesting that they both repeated almost exactly several sentences that I hear many folks in education use: "I'm not against accountability. I think accountability is important. We need to be held accountable to make sure we're doing our jobs."

Every time I hear phrases like those I find myself thinking of a line from The Princess Bride,

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Google gives me this definition, which I guess is as good as any. (I also find the use-over-time graph very interesting.)

 

Of course, since it defines accountability in terms of being accountable, we have to dig a bit deeper.

So accountability is being responsible for and justifying our actions or decisions. In our current environment, and the way that most folks in the education discussion seem to use it, that means using test scores to "justify" that what we're doing with our students is "working." Therefore we need some amount of standardized testing to prove that we're being successful, to hold us accountable. That's wrong.

The problem isn't so much with their understanding of the word accountable, it's with their assumptions of who we are accountable to and what we are accountable for. We are not accountable to the test, or to the state, or even to the curriculum - we are (or at least should be) accountable to our students. We are (or should be) responsible for our actions and decisions in relation to our students' wants and needs - what they care about, and test scores don't measure that. Even for folks who believe that learning is mastering a fixed body of knowledge and being able to regurgitate that on command, test scores wouldn't hold us "accountable." Test scores don't measure the quality of our actions and decisions while interacting with our students. And, if you don't believe that mastering a fixed body of knowledge and regurgitating it on command is "learning," then using test scores for "accountability" is even more ludicrous.

Test scores don't hold me accountable as a teacher; they don't make sure I'm "doing my job". Standing up in front of (or beside) students each and every day, meeting their needs and helping them find out what they care about, and then helping them learn more about that, that holds me accountable. As long as educators continue to agree and reinforce that test scores are the way to keep us accountable, we're never going to make any progress. It's inconceivable.

Data Doesn't Create Meaning. We Do.

I found this TED Talk by Susan Etlinger to be interesting in and of itself, so I think it's worth 12 minutes of your time. Several of the things she said really resonated with me, so I'll discuss them briefly after you watch.


At just past the one-minute mark, she says:

We have to ask questions, and hard questions, to move past counting things to understanding them.

This is reminiscent of the oft-used quote (usually attributed to Einstein, but he probably didn't say it), 

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted

but I sorta like this one better. Because counting things is often a good thing but we can't stop there, we have to provide the context, the understanding, the wisdom to do something good with what we've counted.

At about the 6:30 mark, she says,

this is what happens when assessments and analytics overvalue one metric — in this case, verbal communication — and undervalue others, such as creative problem-solving

This sums up my main objection to PISA/PARCC/CMAS/fill in your own state test. We're so proud of ourselves for coming up with the metric that we've stopped asking ourselves whether it's an important metric in the first place. (I just finished Yong Zhao's new book where he goes into great detail discussing the history of education in China, and why the PISA results - and especially the conclusions assigned to those results - are almost meaningless.) We are overvaluing a metric that may (or may not) show how well you will do in school, but has very little worth in determining how well you will do in life.

At about 8:20, she brings it home,

And at this point, you might be thinking, "Okay, Susan, we get it, you can take data, you can make it mean anything." And this is true, it's absolutely true, but the challenge is that we have this opportunity to try to make meaning out of it ourselves, because frankly, data doesn't create meaning. We do. So as businesspeople, as consumers, as patients, as citizens, we have a responsibility, I think, to spend more time focusing on our critical thinking skills. Why? Because at this point in our history, as we've heard many times over, we can process exabytes of data at lightning speed, and we have the potential to make bad decisions far more quickly, efficiently, and with far greater impact than we did in the past. Great, right? And so what we need to do instead is spend a little bit more time on things like the humanities and sociology, and the social sciences, rhetoric, philosophy, ethics, because they give us context that is so important for big data, and because they help us become better critical thinkers. (emphasis mine)

At various time in my life I've taught students mathematics, so in some ways I'm a big fan of data. But the mistake we've made (and are currently doubling-down on with our new state tests) is confusing data with meaning. Data is only as good as the questions you ask, the way you ask them, the way you collect it, and - critically - how you then interpret the data.

Or, as Susan says at about 10:40,

if I don't know what steps you took, I don't know what steps you didn't take, and if I don't know what questions you asked, I don't know what questions you didn't ask

In education we currently have a love affair with data, without bothering to ask whether the questions we're asking are the right ones, or the only ones.

Data doesn't create meaning. We do.

Data doesn't define learning. We do. Or at least we should.

The New NCLB: No Curler Left Behind

The Denver Post is my local newspaper. I always find it interesting that during the Olympics they prominently run a "medal count" graphic each day, showing which countries have won the most medals. It's always struck me as kind of silly, as if the number of medals says anything about the success and worth - or lack thereof - of both the individual athletes and the countries they represent.

I've also always marveled at how different the Post's (and others') coverage of education comparisons is from their Olympic ones, and wondered how it might look if they covered the Olympics the same way they do education. Thankfully, Richard Florida has come through with a post that does it for me (in a way).

Because, really, it shouldn't be the total number of medals we're comparing, right? After all, does anyone really expect Slovenia to get more medals than the United States? So it was good to see Richard Florida point out that the United States is currently coming in a dismal 22nd place (behind Kazakhstan) in medals per 10 million people at Sochi.

Unfortunately, that's the good news. When you rank countries in number of medals per GDP, the U.S. comes in even worse: 23rd. (Jeesh, even Kazakhstan rose up to 17th).

Where's the outrage in Washington, D.C.? Why isn't the Denver Post writing editorials decrying the state of the U.S. Olympic program? Why isn't NBC holding a day-long "Olympic Nation" (with accompanying website) to figure out what we're doing wrong? I mean, if an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre Olympic performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

Well, I for one will not stand idly by while our children's future slips away. Clearly we need some changes, and we need them fast. So I propose a Blue Ribbon panel to examine this issue. I think we should get someone eminently qualified to lead this panel. I propose Bill Gates, but I suppose I'd be okay with someone like Eli Broad.

This really needs to be a public/private partnership, however. After all, the Olympics are a national priority and surely the government has a role here. I think we should come up with a new government program with incentives to the States to develop better Olympic athletes. Given the prevalence of racing in the Olympics, I thought Race to the Top sounded pretty good, but unfortunately I found out that was already taken. So instead I propose we call it NCLB: No Curler Left Behind. Perhaps we could get the Governors of all the States together and they could come up with some new standards for our Olympic athletes. (Personally, to be successful in today's world I think that all of our athletes should be well-versed in the four C's: Curling, Cricket, Camel Racing and Caber Toss.)

But it's not enough to create the commission and choose some extremely successful businesspeople and politicians to head it, we need some concrete proposals to get the discussion started. Clearly our athletes are not measuring up to expectations and I think we all know part of the reason - they simply aren't being held accountable. I think we need to have them test their abilities more frequently against the competition so we can find out what's working and what's not, and then make the necessary adjustments.

So my first proposal is to hold the World Championship in each Olympic sport three times a year, once every three months. That will give us some formative data in order to make better decisions. If some athletes aren't performing up to expectations, perhaps we can hold them back and have them repeat a season or something.

My next proposal is so obvious I can't figure out why it's not already in place. Whose idea was it to have the Olympics only once every four years? If we have the World Championship in each sport three times a year (in the first nine months of the year), then at the end of the year we should hold the Olympics. Each year, not once every four years. Surely holding the Olympics every year would hold the athletes (and their coaches and trainers) more accountable?

And since corporate sponsorship is a big piece of how we pay for our Olympic Team,  perhaps we can ask Pearson to get involved in developing the criteria and then performing the judging of the Olympics? Since we're well into the 21st century, I think we should utilize the amazing technology we have available to us and test our athletes on computers. True, it's not quite the same as actually performing on the ski slope or the ice rink, but it is much more efficient and makes it much easier to compare them. We could then develop Performance Leveraging Committees (PLC's) to analyze the data and improve our implementation of NCLB.

Now, some folks will worry about the athletes, coaches and trainers who are struggling a bit but, when push comes to shove, if they aren't cutting it, we should be cutting them. If after a year or two of world championships and Olympic competitions they aren't winning Gold medals (or at least making Adequately Yearly Progress toward the Gold), then we should disband those teams and send them to more successful teams. And, frankly, we shouldn't limit those teams under the umbrella of the United States Olympic Committee, we should get the market involved. I mean, why should Park (PARCC?) City and Steamboat Springs and Lake Placid and Colorado Springs get to hold a monopoly on U.S. Winter Olympics training? A little competition would do Team USA some good, wouldn't it? Who wouldn't want to be part of Team Coca Cola Skeleton Racing in Atlanta?

I haven't though this next idea completely through yet, but it's pretty exciting so I thought I'd share it anyway. What if we flipped the Summer and Winter Olympics? I mean the Russians are basically already trying that by holding the Winter Olympics in the beach resort city of Sochi, why shouldn't we try a 100% flipped environment here in the U.S.? That would be some disruptive innovation right there.

Now these aren't my only ideas, but I don't want to dominate the conversation too much. I think we can all agree that if we would just raise the bar a little bit and hold these folks accountable, their performance would improve. (In the case of the Summer Olympics, I would suggest we literally raise the bar; perhaps to 10 feet in the high jump, and 25 feet in the pole vault. After all, our athletes should be outperforming the rest of the world.) And we should learn from those countries that are currently kicking our butt. If it works in Slovenia and Latvia (I've heard some people refer to it as the Slavic Miracle), it should work twice as well in the U.S., right?

I have a lot more to say, but I'm getting a little tired and my eyes are getting red, so I think I'll sign off for now, but I hope this idea goes viral. If I get some time tomorrow I think I'll extend this idea to the NFL. I hope the Broncos are listening . . .

What If We Said No?

It's interesting, I sometimes feel like I'm in the movie Groundhog Day. In the last month or so I feel like I've repeated some form of the same conversation with different groups of people. First it was with a group of students, then it was with a group of parents and community members, then it was with a group of teachers and administrators.

In each group we were having really interesting conversations around a variety of education topics and the topic of standardized testing came up (of course). In each group there was pretty much a group groan, and then a general statement of dislike of the tests (or at least the quantity and frequency of them). But what really struck me in each case was the sense of inevitability, the feeling of being powerless. In each one of those discussions the assumption was that we did not have any control over this situation, that some things were "out of our control" and we just had to deal with them. That got me wondering:

What if we said no?

I'm serious. What would happen to us if we simply said no (or perhaps, "no thank you" to be a bit more polite). It reminds me of a story I heard once from Cris Tovani who was talking about some social studies teachers in her building talking about how they "had to do" such and such. She simply asked them, "Why?" They responded that the "state" mandated it. So she went and researched it and came back and told them that no, actually, the state didn't. So they then said the "district" mandated it, so she looked into that and it turns out that wasn't true. They then replied with "well, we have to cover it in our curriculum." Turns out that wasn't the case either. They just had assumed all these years that someone was telling them they had to do it. Turns out it was no one but them.

So here are my (serious) questions. What if Arapahoe High School said "no thank you" to the PARCC tests? What exactly would happen to us? Is there state funding associated with (not) taking those tests? Accreditation? Would our school board close us down? Would Secretary Duncan stop by and yell at us? What exactly would happen? I mean parents can choose to opt their students out of the tests, so what if all of our parents did - surely that's their right and they couldn't close the school down. Could they? (By the way, I truly don't know the answer to these questions, but I think someone should ask them.)

Arapahoe is a high performing school in a high performing district. We've been a John Irwin School of Excellence with the Colorado Department of Education since the award's inception, and we consistently exceed the state averages on the state-mandated CSAP/TCAP/ACT. What if we said that we'll give the PARCC tests, but only once every four years. It's not like the Common Core State Standards are going to change during those four years. (After all, next year's Kindergartners will likely still be employed in 2075, and we're implicitly saying to them that the Common Core State Standards will still be relevant to them then - so surely once every four years right now is enough.)

What if we said that would give us a baseline of data to work with (and to be held "accountable" with), with a check-in every four years, but that we didn't need to spend weeks testing all of our students each and every year? What if we said that we believe that the high quality assessments that our teachers already develop and give our students provide us with the timely, relevant, meaningful on-going data necessary to help our students learn? After all, we devote ten PLC days a year to develop those essential learnings and common assessments, either we think those are worthwhile and provide us valuable information about our students - or we don't. If we do, why would we need to take away instructional time, spend a significant amount of money, and put stress on our students and teachers each and every year simply to give the PARCC test?

Who is the someone that says we have to do this? What exactly are the consequences if we don't? If there actually are consequences that we don't like, can we propose that those consequences be modified or waived if we can demonstrate that we are already doing better, more timely, and more effective assessments, and that giving the PARCC tests each and every year is not only a waste of time, but actually decreases learning time for our students?

I wonder if we'll find out that - just like at Cris Tovani's school - it turns out it's nobody but us. I anxiously await the answers.

Let's Put It to the Test

For years in various forums (blog posts such as this one, professional development sessions, speaking engagements) I've been saying that state and federal legislators should be required to take the standardized tests that they make our students take. They should take them under the same conditions that our students take them and then publicly report their results - and their thoughts after taking the tests and seeing the results. (I've also suggested that high school educators be required to take each others' final exams, but that's another blog post.)

As successful adults and leaders in our society, surely they would be up to the challenge, right? And surely the results would prove their hypothesis, that the skills measured by these tests are both necessary and sufficient to be a successful adult and contributor to society, right?

Well, it looks like one school board member at least had the same idea. This article in the Washington Post is trending in my Twitter stream today:

“I won’t beat around the bush,” he wrote. “The math section had 60 questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess ten out of the 60 correctly. On the reading test, I got 62% . In our system, that’s a “D”, and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading instruction.

He continued, “It seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have a bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours toward a doctorate.

Yep. He goes on to say,

“If I’d been required to take those two tests when I was a 10th grader, my life would almost certainly have been very different. I’d have been told I wasn’t ‘college material,’ would probably have believed it, and looked for work appropriate for the level of ability that the test said I had.

. . . "I can’t escape the conclusion that decisions about the [state test] in particular and standardized tests in general are being made by individuals who lack perspective and aren’t really accountable.” 

So, again, I renew my call that all state and federal legislators, as well as all education reformers that use standardized tests as the primary measurement of how successful schools are, to take the mandated state tests in your area and then publish the results. (As a bonus, I think all education reformers should be required to send their children to the same types of schools they are designing for other people's children, but that's also another blog post.)

There's a difference between standardization and high standards; between recall and application; between testing and accountability; between schooling and learning. I fear that many of our so-called leaders have forgotten this. Perhaps it's time for them to walk-the-walk and be held accountable on the same tests they are requiring of our students.

Update: The hashtag for this is #takethetest

The CSAP is Dead. Long Live the CSAP (err, TCAP)

The Colorado Department of Education just announced the name of the test that will replace the CSAP next year - it will be called the Transitional Colorado Assessment Program (TCAP). It's "transitional" because it's a bridge between the current test and the new test that will be coming in 2014 once our new state standards (based on the Common Core) are fully in place. (I predict it will be called the Colorado Common Core Assessment Program, or C³AP ™.)

No word on whether the TCAP (or the C³AP ™) will, in the words of Will Richardson,

. . . tell us anything about the qualities we most want from our children: a love of learning, a willingness and the patience to grapple with important, real problems, and the ability to make sense of the world as they experience it.

What Should Students Know and Be Able To Do?

(Cross-posted at The Huffington Post.)

I'm a teacher. A parent. A citizen. Those are the lenses I view teaching and learning, educators and students, education and school through. That doesn't make me an expert, and I don't have all the answers, but I think I have some good questions, so let's get started with one of those questions.

This is the question that educators are constantly asking themselves.

What should students know and be able to do?

It gets back to an old argument in education, the argument about which is more important -- content or skills. Like most teachers I've talked with, I think that's a false dichotomy. I want both. I want students to know some content and have the skills to be able to use their knowledge. I don't want them to just "cover" the material, I want them to uncover their own understanding, and to think critically about the content.

My bias, however, is that too often in schools we err too much on the side of content. I once heard Cris Tovani, a wonderful reading teacher in Colorado, say,

Yeah, as a teacher I can cover my curriculum. I can get to that finish line. But often when I get to that finish line and look around, I'm all by myself.

That's even more true today, when we live in a rapidly changing, information abundant world. We live in exponential times. There's just too much content out there. As Eric Hoffer said,

In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

He said that more than thirty years ago, and I think most of us would agree that the pace of change has only increased since then.

Schools were designed for an age when information was scarce, when students came to school because that's where the information was. It was in the textbook, it was in the teacher's head, and -- if they were lucky and had a good library -- it was in the additional resources the school library provided. But now, now we live in an information abundant world. I don't hear many people complaining that they don't have enough information (although they may complain about the quality of that information), yet schools are still designed around the concept that this is where you go to get information. That needs to change.

Which leads, I think, to an even more basic question. A question I think that, despite all the education reform lately, we haven't really talked much about.

What's the purpose of school? Is the primary purpose of school to meet the needs of society, or to meet the needs of the students?

There's a strong argument to be made that since society is investing so many resources into educating the young, that schools should be designed to meet the needs of society. After all, if schools don't meet the needs of society, why should society support them? This is the argument that is currently in fashion.

But I'd like to suggest an alternative, that the primary purpose of school should be to meet the needs of the individual. That if we meet the individual needs of students, we will ultimately meet the needs of all students. And if we truly meet the needs of all students, we will then meet the needs of society. I think this has always been the case, but it's even more important in a rapidly changing, information abundant world, a world where society doesn't even know what its needs are going to be in five years, much less in thirteen (for K-12 education) or longer (if you include post-secondary education).

This is a problem for many of the current school reform discussions because, despite the rhetoric about leaving no child behind and racing to the top, they rely on a standardized view of success, a one size fits all approach. I think individual students are different, and to ignore that fact is to deny the evidence that is all around us, at least if you ever met more than one kid.

No, I'm not talking about lowering expectations. I think we can have high standards without being standardized. Standardized curricula create standardized minds. Standardized minds create collateral debt obligations and credit default swaps. You know all those folks on Wall Street aced their standardized tests. They were the best and the brightest, the success stories from our schools, at least by our current definition of success in schools. Yet clearly there must be more to success than just those test scores.

So, I would suggest we need to slightly modify the question we ask ourselves as educators. Instead, perhaps we should be asking,

What should this student know and be able to do?

I think the addition of just one word might just make all the difference.

What’s Core?

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a joint effort by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) in partnership with Achieve, ACT and the College Board. Governors and state commissioners of education from across the country committed to joining a state-led process to develop a common core of state standards in English-language arts and mathematics for grades K-12.

As Tom Hoffman points out, we really need to take a closer look at the draft standards. Why? Here are his Top 10 Reasons:

1. Your state has probably already committed to using them.
2. The federal Department of Education is exerting heavy pressure on states to adopt the Common Standards.
3. An impressive and powerful list of partners and supporters are backing the Common Standards initiative.
4. These "college- and career-ready" standards, if implemented, will become the basis of all subsequent K-12 English Language Arts standards.
5. These standards, if implemented, will become the basis of all subsequent K-12 English Language Arts curriculum and assessments.
6. The results of those assessments will, if implemented, be used to evaluate not just schools and students, but the performance of individual teachers.
7. The creation of data systems to attach test scores to individual teachers is a basic requirement for federal Race to the Top grants and a top priority for the federal Department of Education and other powerful interests.
   
   But . . .
   
   
8. The Common Core State Standards Initiative English Language Arts Standards are not actually English Language Arts standards.
9. The Common Standards for English Language Arts are narrower, lower, and shallower than the Language Arts standards of high performing countries.
10. We are inviting testing companies to determine the future of our schools with virtually no accountability or public input.

Tom expands on these in his post, please go read it now. Tom’s also written many other posts about this (too many to link), so visit his blog and scroll down. Other folks have recently written about this, including Bud Hunt, Chris Lehmann, and David Warlick.

Now, since most if not all of those folks used to teach Language Arts, I’m not sure if I have much to add to their perspective. Instead, let me throw out some questions from a non-Language Arts teacher perspective. As always, I’m just thinking out loud here.

1. What’s Core?
   
   People use different buzzwords – some use core, some use essential learnings, your school or district may use something else, but I think this is a critical question for all of us. Tom is very concerned that these standards are too narrow and shallow and are not reflective of the fact that English Language Arts is a discipline. On the one hand, I agree with him. If you just read the list of standards in isolation, they do appear to be somewhat shallow, and I worry that the following observation from Tom might be accurate:
   

   the obvious interpretation is that they chose to define the standard as "support or challenge assertions" rather than "construct a response or interpretation," as every international example they cited did, because the former is much easier and cheaper to score reliably on a standardized test.

   When I explore the full document (pdf), I do feel a little bit better based on the examples they give, but certainly Tom makes his case that other international standards seem to go much deeper, and that it’s possible these standards are being tailored in a way that makes them easily assessed on a standardized instrument.
   
   But, on the other hand (and yes, I know, I always seem to have a lot of hands on hand), I worry about Tom’s suggestion to add more and more levels of detail into these standards. Because this runs into my own personal dilemma with standards, that in some respects they are too comprehensive, too overwhelming, too restrictive, and perhaps not wholly necessary.
   
   This is a real struggle for me, because I do think that students around the world need many of these skills, and much of this content, yet I can’t help but think that we all are so in love with our content areas that we lose sight of what’s truly essential. I say this from the perspective of a parent of a nine-and-a half-year old who wonders if “literacy criticism” or “the concept of genre” are essential. They may be, I’m not sure. But I can’t help but think of that study a few years back (sorry, can’t find a link at the moment) that indicated it would take something like 26 years to “cover” all the various standards in place at that time (and we have more now). Is this what education – and life – is supposed to be about? It just seems to me that, somehow, some way, what’s essential, what’s really core, should be a much shorter list.
   
   
2. Malleable or Inflexible?
   
   Chris makes a good point about national testing and the resultant depersonalization:
   

   Once there is a national curriculum and a national test, we will see a further blurring of the line between "education" and "training" where kids are given online instruction and online assessment that can be delivered to any student, regardless of geography.
   
   . . . It has the risk of the ultimate deprofessionalization of teachers and depersonalization of education.

   
   And the NCTE’s Definition of 21st Century Literacies state that
   

   These literacies . . . are multiple, dynamic, and malleable.

   So the literacies are malleable, yet standards are fixed and inflexible? We want all kids to flourish and live up to their individual potential, yet we’re going to achieve that by standardization? How do these things coexist?
   
   
3. Necessary, but not Sufficient?
   
   While the full pdf includes more examples that take this into account, the list of standards themselves seem to ignore the current technological world we live in. Only three of the standards (Reading #12 and #13, and Writing #12) seem to even come close to acknowledging that we live in a rapidly changing, technologically enabled, globally connected - and interconnected – world. These standards could’ve been written fifty years ago. That doesn’t make them bad, as many of these abilities are certainly still necessary, but are they sufficient?
   
   These standards don’t seem to address that reading, writing, speaking and listening are all very, very, very (did I mention very?) different in our current world than they were one hundred, fifty, twenty or even ten years ago. Yes, many of the standards apply in our world today, but I still don’t think that fully addresses how we read, write, speak and listen in a read/write, always on, always connected, participatory world.
   
   I think their definition of text is way too narrow, and way too limited. While one would hope that the more complete document would be taken into account, I could easily see the assessments targeted solely at the stripped down standards. Which then would mean instruction would be targeted only at the stripped down standards. Which then would mean our students would be perfectly prepared to graduate high school . . . in 1985.

So, as Bud points out:

The validation committee’s pretty light on language artists.

I would add that the workgroup that developed the standards also seemed to be pretty light on actual practitioners, although testing companies were well represented. In fairness, the NGA points out in the FAQ (pdf) that teachers were consulted:

NGA and CCSSO have asked for and received feedback from national organizations representing educators, such as the National Education Association (NEA), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), and National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). These organizations each brought together groups of teachers to provide specific, constructive feedback on the standards. The feedback was used to inform the public draft of the college- and career-readiness standards. Numerous teacher organizations are also involved with the initiative through the National Policy Forum, which provides a means to share ideas, gather input, and inform the common core state standards initiative.

I would strongly suggest that you take some time to review the standards and some of the thoughtful posts about them, and then provide your feedback. Particularly if you’re a Language Arts teacher, but even if you’re not because, as Tom points out, as they are currently worded all teachers will be responsible – and held accountable – for students meeting these standards. And, as he points out in another post, it appears as though the end goal just might be high school graduation requirements.

Where can you provide some feedback? NCTE has issued a statement and is soliciting feedback, and you can provide feedback directly to the validation committee by October 21st. If you’re a member of NEA or AFT, you might also consider letting them know what you like or dislike about these draft standards.