Raise the Bar or Build Thier Own Course

A former state superintendent will be coming to my Politics of Education class next week. I feel like I have gotten to know her well enough to know that she will ask more than one tough question. I think I know one she will ask.

Virginia was a leader early in the standards based education reform movement. It's infrastructure for developing and administering effective accountability measures is strong. Currently our third grade reading pass rate is hovering in the 80% range through out the state. The advanced pass rate, students who answered more than 31 out of 35 questions correctly, has been steadily since 2005 from 18.8% to 38.9% in 2008.

I can just hear it now. Dr. Demary will ask us, "So, almost everybody is passing. Isn't it a good time to raise the bar?"

Every fiber of my teacher being wants to say no, but all of my learning in educational leadership says yes. I am torn. I believe in high standards but, I am not convinced that raising the bar is the best way to get teachers, and more importantly kids, to jump higher.

I think the reason for this is internal struggle is that I am not sure that bar jumping is what we should be teaching kids to do. I think we need them to build their own obstacle courses, not just master hoop jumping. As it stands now, on reading tests kids are asked to identify characters, setting, conflict, etc. They are required to read for comprehension, all worthy goals. We are not asking them to write their own stories, to tell the story where they are the main character. It is as if they are the actors in someone else's play.

If we buy into the post-modern perspective, that there is no single over arching story, then the reasons for assessment change a little. Our nation is a teaming tangle of stories. Maybe this is why fame has become such a fascination for our young people. The goal is not to help move the plot of the greater human story along but to be famous enough to be featured in the individual stories of the nation.

So what would I do? If it were my decision I would start evaluating beyond basic skills in areas closer to 21st century skills. Maybe it is a voluntary assessment for an additional ribbon on a degree. Maybe it is the certification movement pushed down into high school. Maybe a kid runs track, is in the debate club and earns a social media certification in order to make himself more competitive in college.

When Dr. Demary, (one of my education heroes) asks what do we do now that most of our students are passing the SOL tests, this is what I will say. "When students in your class pass a test you have prepared them for you don't give them the same test but raise the number of correct answers needed to pass. You teach new content, you expand on their solid foundation evidenced by their test scores. You start teaching them something new, something that might be even more important than what they mastered already, like critical thinking, creativity, and team work. There is only one problem though, it is hard to test those kinds of skills. Maybe the tests have outlived their usefulness? Maybe the kids could help build their own obstacle course to test their learning."


Image: http://www.japanwindow.com/images/20051012002715_051008_undoukai_041.jpg
Image: http://vaperforms.virginia.gov/indicators/education/3rdGradeReading.php

Raise the Bar or Build Thier Own Course

A former state superintendent will be coming to my Politics of Education class next week. I feel like I have gotten to know her well enough to know that she will ask more than one tough question. I think I know one she will ask.

Virginia was a leader early in the standards based education reform movement. It's infrastructure for developing and administering effective accountability measures is strong. Currently our third grade reading pass rate is hovering in the 80% range through out the state. The advanced pass rate, students who answered more than 31 out of 35 questions correctly, has been steadily since 2005 from 18.8% to 38.9% in 2008.

I can just hear it now. Dr. Demary will ask us, "So, almost everybody is passing. Isn't it a good time to raise the bar?"

Every fiber of my teacher being wants to say no, but all of my learning in educational leadership says yes. I am torn. I believe in high standards but, I am not convinced that raising the bar is the best way to get teachers, and more importantly kids, to jump higher.

I think the reason for this is internal struggle is that I am not sure that bar jumping is what we should be teaching kids to do. I think we need them to build their own obstacle courses, not just master hoop jumping. As it stands now, on reading tests kids are asked to identify characters, setting, conflict, etc. They are required to read for comprehension, all worthy goals. We are not asking them to write their own stories, to tell the story where they are the main character. It is as if they are the actors in someone else's play.

If we buy into the post-modern perspective, that there is no single over arching story, then the reasons for assessment change a little. Our nation is a teaming tangle of stories. Maybe this is why fame has become such a fascination for our young people. The goal is not to help move the plot of the greater human story along but to be famous enough to be featured in the individual stories of the nation.

So what would I do? If it were my decision I would start evaluating beyond basic skills in areas closer to 21st century skills. Maybe it is a voluntary assessment for an additional ribbon on a degree. Maybe it is the certification movement pushed down into high school. Maybe a kid runs track, is in the debate club and earns a social media certification in order to make himself more competitive in college.

When Dr. Demary, (one of my education heroes) asks what do we do now that most of our students are passing the SOL tests, this is what I will say. "When students in your class pass a test you have prepared them for you don't give them the same test but raise the number of correct answers needed to pass. You teach new content, you expand on their solid foundation evidenced by their test scores. You start teaching them something new, something that might be even more important than what they mastered already, like critical thinking, creativity, and team work. There is only one problem though, it is hard to test those kinds of skills. Maybe the tests have outlived their usefulness? Maybe the kids could help build their own obstacle course to test their learning."


Image: http://www.japanwindow.com/images/20051012002715_051008_undoukai_041.jpg
Image: http://vaperforms.virginia.gov/indicators/education/3rdGradeReading.php

think outside the bubble

Have you ever seen a kid learn something you weren't teaching them at the time? When did learning actually occur? Was it while you were teaching, when they were doing seat work, in your class discussion? Was it valuable? Might it help them later in life?

The paradigm we operate with in education today is entirely technical. Policy makers and the public believe that students learn what we teach them. Period. But what might they be learning while we are busy trying to teach them to pass a test? If we only look for student achievement in relation to what we have taught we might never talk about the elephant in the room, that kids might not need everything we are teaching them. Or, kids might be able to learn some things that could be essential to their lives, if we only stopped paying so much attention to those test scores. If we become aware of what happens outside of the mind control testing we might see what is really happening in our students' lives.



This is what the post-positivist paradigm has brought us to in education. We have become bean counters. On TLN a teacher in New York has been discussing hourly measurable objectives. Yes, hourly. Can you imagine what that is like? Measuring ... constantly. Maybe it only bothers me because I am in preschool where the standards have only begun to quantify our students' learning. When we focus on quantity what do we sacrifice in quality? This is what testing has wrought, a world where nobody is looking at what really matters, kids lives.


Think outside the bubble ...


p.s. This video is based on some visual cognition research done at the University of Illinois. Check it out, its fascinating. As an avid road cyclist and commuter I am asking you to please take this public service announcement to heart while you are driving to work. You could save a life.

VA's Gov. Kaine to recieve albatross NCLB Opt-Out Bill

If there is one thing NCLB is good at it is being a dart board for politicians hoping to look good in the eyes of their constituents. Kaine, a proponent of early childhood access and friend of teachers, will be handed the albatross Virginia's Opt-out bill to be officially killed. Signing off on the bill could be a politcial boost or boon depending on whether the bill is killed in the U.S. Congress or turned into a better (more realistic) bill that the state would then have to reapply for funds under. Sometimes people forget that the NCLB is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in wolf's clothing. The original ESEA was a much kinder beast. If it took off it's costume would we follow it to school one day?

We have been discussing Virginia's theoretically possible Opt-Out from NCLB on an accomplished teacher's forum here in Virginia. The discussion has mostly centered around the same things that this post talks about. Politics. Most teachers seem to know that some sort of accountability measures are necessary and helpful, they also see the technocratic approach of NCLB as unnecessarily restrictive and punitive. So our "what if" conversation has mostly been a "what is" conversation.

The possibility that Gov. Kaine will sign the bill is extremely slim. If there is one universal truth in politics and education that I learned in a class about NCLB it is "never look soft" on accountability. According to Maria Glod, a Washington Post writer who covered Virginia's frustrations with the ED over English Language Learners and testing, she reported:

Virginia's Board of Education would be directed to recommend whether the state should pull out of a federal school accountability system under legislation that cleared the General Assembly Saturday. It now awaits consideration by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D).

This means that there is only one political stop gap between the bill's passing (and making many teachers happy, at least for a little while) and Kaine wringing its neck and looking like the farmer who killed the family bird. If the board tells Kaine to kill it he is off the hook. But, if the board says yes...

However, there is a reality check in place in the bill. Glod writes:

the bill would require the board to present a plan to the governor and legislature by June 30, 2009.

Plenty of time to come up with a $350 million dollar short fall and a plan for all those Title I specialists.

Questioning our Questions

The question seems to be the building block for education in this accountability driven era. However, why and how questions are asked can differ from one social setting to another.

I just read an ethnographic study conducted from 1970 - 1975 by S.B. Heath. This study is a seminal work that was published in a book titled Ways with Words in 1983.

In this classic the researcher conducted her research in response to requests by African-American parents in her community and white teachers of the community school to help them find out why students where not succeeding academically and where turned off to school. The study talks about how the the changes resulting from the educational reforms of Brown v. Board and the E.S.E.A of 1965 (now known as NCLB) brought black students into schools with white teachers.

What struck me was that the research that was conducted then is still applicable today and it could still be affecting how well students from different backgrounds succeed in school.

The study examines reasons for questions in homes of working class Blacks, in the public school, and in the homes of the white teachers of the school.

The reasons for questions in the teachers homes and in the school were often questions the teacher already knew the answer to, sometimes questions the adult didn't know the answer to, or veiled "directives or condemnations" of children's behaviors. Often these white adults asked their children and their students to give information out of context. They might ask, "What color is that?" The questions the adults didn't know the answer to were questions mostly about a child's preference, "What do you want?" and the third type of question asked, "Why can't things be simpler than they are?" was clearly rhetorical and considered the "polite" way to chastise a child.

In contrast, in the students homes, they were not asked questions that took objects and events out of context. Instead of three types of questions there where five types of questions in children's homes.
1) Questions in children's homes might ask a child to relate an object or event to another that they and the questioner both understood. (What's that like?)
2) They could serve as a "story starter" (Did you see Maggie's dog yesterday?)
3) An accusatory question (What's that all over your face?) When asked a "condemnation" question students could either, bow their head and say nothing or tell a story or joke that would cause the questioner to "forget" why they asked the question.
4) A question of preference "What do you want?"
5) Or, a question that the questioner and the child both new the answer to. (What's your name?) In this last situation the student is expected to give the the questioner the nickname that the questioner calls him or her and it is meant to affirm their relationship.


Needless to say, I thought a lot about the questions I asked my preschoolers today. I tried to be more balanced about the types of questions I asked but, I know I am part of a system. I asked kids to read words, tell me numbers, and describe the relative weights of objects. I also tried to ask, "What did you have for dinner last night? What word does that sound like? and Where were you when the police called about your sister?

I have seen all of the behaviors described by Heath to greater or lesser degree in my classroom. The best part of the study was Heath's refusal in her description or her reporting to condemn the students or their parents way of using language. Her ideas about a "two-way path" for language understanding in schools and communities ties democratic ideals to academic research and education.


I have had a colleague tell me about her experience serving on a test review committee. When too many African-American boys got a question right on the test the question was deleted from the test. So my question is, are we asking the "right" questions?

Day care is not preschool!

Day care does not equal preschool. There is a big difference, the profit model versus the services model. There are a great many quality day cares but, a day care is not a preschool for one major reason, accountability. As a Head Start teacher I am accountable to congress, as a day care provider I am accountable only to the parent.
The New York Times published an article on a study that links time spent by young children in day care to disruptive behavior in 6th grade. I can totally see the validity in my personal experience. However, I came across a blog that tried to use the report to argue against universal preschool. I couldn't believe it. I guess the part that really made me mad is that the blogger equated the two, preschool and day care. I worked in a day care for two weeks. I couldn't stand it, there was no organization, no curriculum, the ratio was 1 teacher to 12 kids which became 1 - 23. After the 24th kid, then they might pull someone in to help, if there was someone available. I challenge anyone to come to my class and tell me it is like a day care. There is too much learning going on.