A Definition of Insanity (#SOL15, Day 20)

I.

Imagine what you might be valuing if you required an employee to halt progress because he or she had accomplished the end goal more quickly than the other employees. This employee has produced more completed work than the others simply because he or she has been present more often and therefore worked more often.  Because you mistake sameness for quality, you require all of the employees to be no more than one day ahead or behind your schedule with regard to production.

But stuff happens that corrupts your schedule.

1. An employee's mother becomes ill and the employee takes a two-week leave.
2. The flu hits a family causing an employee to miss a series of work days, totaling 7 across three weeks.
3. The production is derailed by an unforeseen internal situation and the goal accomplishment is delayed by three weeks.
4. An employee determines a better product can be made and makes those adjustments which adds several days.
5. And so on.

As  result of these delays, you do not abandon your scheme, but rather readjust the schedule adding another two weeks in order for the 'team' to meet the end goal together. Now, what do you do with the employee who has already met the production goals you established?

Halt the employee from moving onto the next set of goals until everyone catches up.
(And we thought Samuel Beckett's Godot was absurdest theatre.)

II.

Most would see this scenario as idiotic, counter productive. But would you see this as amoral if we weren't talking about the product of widgets, but rather were speaking about the education of children?

I recently was listening to middle school ELA teachers discuss how one with near perfect attendance was told she could not move on to teach the next curriculum unit as her fellow teachers at her grade level had not completed the current unit because of absenteeism and lesson adjustment. The administrators require teachers to keep the same pace (within one day) so that everyone is teaching the same lesson or teaching an adjacent lesson in the Expeditionary Learning Module du jour.

Sameness is more important than actually learning.

There's so much wrong with this scenario from a human point of view that I hardly no where to begin.  Prizing sameness over quality has no place in public education. Stripping teachers of agency and reducing them to nothing more than script enactors who act as programmed regardless of who is learning and not is a recipe for failure. Mandating the use of a singular curricular product like Expeditionary Learning that was developed rapidly and whose units could not have been researched using the DOE's gold standard of randomized controlled trials.  Nonetheless these modules have been mandated by states and districts in what is like a modern day version of the emperor's new clothes. Only the brave say this product has limited teeth.

These problems emanate from shoddy leadership--leadership that has been wrought via the new education reformers. You know, the people with little practical knowledge as they quickly skipped or in some cases fully avoided actually teaching and were promoted into key leadership roles in schools and districts by external forces like governors, mayors, and the like.

Sigh.

I hope you want more for your children.
I hope you'll say so out loud.

Fixing NCLB

Below is a letter a friend and colleague, Jane M. Gangi, wrote to Senator Alexander in response to a request for suggestions and insights into fixing NCLB. You can write your own letter and send it to: fixingNCLB@help.senate.gov. 

I have included Jane's letter as I found it to be so informative and helpful.  Thanks Jane for the permission to publish this letter.

You can also read recent commentary by Jane (and a student of hers, Nancy Benfer) that Valerie Strauss published in The Answer Sheet in The Washington Post here: "How Common Core’s recommended books fail children of color" 

Dear Senator Alexander,

I am writing to urge you to repeal the testing requirements of NCLB. We do not need a standardized test for every child in America, nor do we need to throw away billions of tax dollars by funding corporations that make tests and make computers. We have the NAEP, which disaggregates data by ethnicity, income, and so on. The NAEP is given to pockets of children throughout the country, which statisticians say is enough. It is what is done in Finland; Finland does not test every child.

Instead, use the money we can save by stopping the harmful-to children practices of standardized testing to ensure equity in access to the arts, libraries (including lots of multicultural texts), librarians, field trips, school nurses (children have died without them), labs, playgrounds, infrastructure--those things and people that directly impact children. Provide professional learning for teachers to learn how to help children whose culture and socioeconomic status they do not share. Jan Richardson and Mary Ann Reilly have done phenomenal work with children in high poverty areas (and I can make other recommendations of professionals who are succeeding).

We also need to stop VAM, which the American Statistical Academy labels as junk science. We can tell whether teachers are doing their jobs through growth models such as, in literacy, running records. In our work in Newburgh, we expect children to make gains by starting from where they are and continually growing—instead of, as the common core expects, starting from where children aren’t, which only leads to sad consequences.

Please do all you can to stop Race to the Top—as pathetic a metaphor for education as ever there was. Instead, read this post for what education might be--passion-based. . Under President Obama and Secretary Arne Duncan, common core promoters have made money hand-over-fist while children suffer.

There were no early childhood educators who helped develop the common core and they must be brought on board. Please see Defending the Early Years: http://deyproject.org/. There were no special educators, who also must be brought on board.

On math—we have Jason Zimba, “architect” of the math standards on record as stating that these standards will prepare K-12 student only for community college, which means those who can afford private school, like the Obamas and the Gateses, will ensure their children have access to elite colleges.

Neither of the two “architects” of the English Language Arts, David Coleman and Sue Pimental, have ever taught, which leads to these serious errors:

·         of 171 recommended texts in the common core on the elementary level, there are only 18 authors of color (40% of the nation's children are of color). The proficient reader research has shown very clearly that children must make text-to-self connections. Besides proficient reading, having access to texts that represent them is also essential to identity development. Common Core Appendix B recommendations are flying off the shelves in part, possibly, because teachers think their jobs depend on those books.

·         of 171 recommended texts in the common core on the elementary level, less that 7% represent working class or poor children, when 21+ million children in the nation are poor. A recent report shows that 51% of children are poor.

·         of multiple ways to interpret text, children are confined to only "close reading,” which is one of many ways to read text. Missing are transactional reading, critical literacy, and other approaches more likely to help children love reading.

·         of a variety of genres, children must read 50% informational text on the elementary level and 70% informational text on the secondary level. 90% of writers read literary text in their younger days, 75% of genocide and human rights activists read literary text and viewed the arts when they were young (which evoked them to their life's work), and Silicon Valley geniuses read science fiction when they were young (thus America's ingenuity in creating ideas). At the very moment the US disdains fiction, which has been a key to its success, China now emphasizes science fiction--because China learned science fiction is the key to US creativity. China knows it can make things but also knows that it does not have ideas like we do, which we learned from fiction. 

·         that the common core is in no way internationally benchmarked. Finland does not begin to teach reading until children are 7; the common core has turned kindergarten into what used to be second grade. Shenzen, China, has the highest university pass rate in China: They allow free reading and choice and no tests. China is encouraging the rest of the country to follow Shenzen's lead at the very moment we do not.

Please see Lyndsey Layton’s article for an expose on how the scandal of common core occurred:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bill-gates-pulled-off-the-swift-common-core-revolution/2014/06/07/a830e32e-ec34-11e3-9f5c-9075d5508f0a_story.html

Please see Superintendent Kenneth Mitchell’s presentation on how much this federal and corporate takeover of education will cost the taxpayer with absolutely no benefit to children:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuS81wZo_yE&list=PL1h2WwSa-8dPkjIsR8MldKlcUAOvTGEI2&index=3

Thank you for your consideration,
Jane M. Gangi, PhD 

This Is What Education Reform Looks Like, Part II

2 first graders' writing and illustrations for Wall Story.

After I published the post, This is What Education Reform Looks Like, I received by email this description of education reform in action in a first grade classroom in New York. The writer is a literacy professor in New York. 

One of the saddest things I saw this semester was a 1st grade boy who, in October knew about 4 letters and about 3 sounds. An undergraduate worked with him throughout the semester, using used the Jan Richardson personal alphabet book and by December he knew all his sounds and most of his letters (mixing up q and p and b, which is understandable).

On the wall hangs a "data chart." Every time a child gained a sight word, he or she gained a sticker. Some had a hundred. He had one. Can you imagine coming into that class each day from his perspective? Here he had made great gains with little recognition.

The state, school officials say, require the data charts. 

After reading this I wondered for whom the data chart is really intended. What's its purpose? Surely there is no actual need to use extrinsic motivation for 1st graders to learn sight words. This happens all the tim with nary a chart in sight.

I recommend keeping a private chart as children are learning sight words so that the teacher can see the progress, make use of words children know, and support children to learn new words.

2. A little addendum...

My husband told me this story:

Years ago when his grandfather was in business in Hell's Kitchen (Manhattan) it was a common practice to post on a blackboard your delinquent customers so every one could see who owed you money.  The goal here was to use shame to 'motivate' payment.  A law was passed that prohibited publicly naming delinquent customers and the practice stopped.

Too bad such safeguards don't apply to children in New York.

3. Methods for Teaching Sight Words

1. Here's a link to a video that shows a four-step method to teach sight words.  I routinely use this during guided reading at levels A - E.

2. I also have used this app, Sight Words 1-300: Kids Learn, quite successfully with 1st graders. The children love the variety of games and the pace.



3. Link to Recommended Apps.

This is What Education Reform Looks Like

I. Choice

The other day a 9-year old boy reminded why we do not need to provide children with a steady diet of writing prompts we create/pass out in lieu of teaching them how to generate potential topics of interest. The boy generated this point on his life map:

from a boy's life map.

The child selected to write about his remembrance of learning that his mom had breast cancer.  This is a text he is struggling to write. As I worked with him that first day he got teary-eyed, went for a drink of water and returned.  I told him that his work was brave writing and that he should know that he could quit it at will.

If it hurts too much to write this, you can step back from it as you need.
He sighed.

My comment to the child was challenged because 'allowing' a student to not complete the topic does not engender grit. Implied in the statement, I suspect, is a belief grit is somehow more important than kindness, agency, and wisdom.

Let me say here, I'm not sure I even know what grit means as it is so overly (mis)used.  I do understand, even appreciate, the necessity (at times) of persevering and goal setting. I've read Duckworth, know there's a Ted Talk, and well before either of these, I too had read Aristotle. So the idea of grit isn't lost on me. Nonetheless, children ought to maintain the right to choose which costs they bear while persevering and which costs may just be too dear. Is this not an essential life skill? Is this not the bedrock of a democracy?

Before I began this work a colleague at the school told me that an 'expert' from central office was skeptical of the co-teaching work I would be doing. Apparently, writing about the fear you lived with at 7 when you learn your mom might die isn't part of the Common Core.  I kid you not.

I'm told the expert said that there's no need to teach anything other than what is in the CCSS (as she understands it). Teach them to write responses to literature like the people in Vermont do (the only approved model of writing it seems). In her schema there's no need for notebooks, seed ideas, choice, topic creation, art making, technology use (not for testing), or unsanctioned genres. There's no need for expression.  Give the children a prompt a day and a formula they can memorize in order to answer "correctly'.

Correct.
Be correct.

Folks, this is what education reform really looks like, especially in places where the children are economically poor, and the schools toil under central office and/or state control. 

Fortunately for this class, their teacher, assistant principal and principal are brave. Kids need brave adults given the education reform foisted upon them and their communities.

Reservoir in January (M.A. Reilly, 2015)

II. Absence

Choice.

Agency.

The absence of choice for children, teachers, and some administrators, in lieu of others knowing best, may well be what plagues U.S. pubic education the most.




III. Only an Expert

Many of the teachers I work with are routinely subjected to 'unannounced' central office 'expert' visits.  These are often 'education experts' who have never actually taught with the constraints of the curriculum products that school districts procure and insist be used--often as written with no alterations. It doesn't matter if the products make sense or not.  It doesn't matter who the students are, or who the teacher is.

Schools are part of an epic world where the present has no influence for there is faith in products, not in learners or teachers. Physical reality is shunned, not valued.  For the work at hand is not to teach children, but rather to enact 'correctly' the products exactly as they have been rendered by other people who are neither present, nor have they ever even visited. This is what our tax dollars are purchasing.

If these situations weren't so serious one might see a similar absurdity to those old Monty Python skits that began with the high-pitched voice of Cardinal Ximénez (Michael Palin) yelling, "Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition."  But, alas, humor is not the outcome sought by such educational inquisitions. Rather, the goal to these visits is mostly about enacting correctness.  Cardinal Ximénez has nothing on the new ed experts.

IV. This is the New Teaching

Teaching is not a transaction made among people who learn as they create meaning.  Education reform insists upon a preferred and correct way to teach. For example, no lesson seems to be able to be conducted without stated learning targets that all students must repeat.  I can do this... I can do that...  Don't worry if children cannot actually decode the texts used each day from the program. Just "chunk it" and magically they will comprehend. The level of error is so high.

Education reform in the United states is a closed set of materials that are issued to schools for use every day.
There is no room for interpretation.
There is no room for thinking.
There is no room for positive deviance.

This is a colony.
And we are footing the bill.

I wish this was hyperbole, but I have seen this played out repeatedly and we are the worse for it.

A Few Words About Love Before the Turn of the Year

Community Is Infinite (M.A. Reilly, 2012)

I. Faith in Other

I have been thinking about the mass of educational reform that has been occurring since the mid-1980s in the United States and trying to name what most disturbs me.  Yet, it was not with this in mind that I sat down to reread Pedagogy of the Oppressed and found myself lingering in Chapter 3, listening hard to Freire's words about dialogue.  He says:

Dialogue further requires an intense faith in humankind, faith in their power to make and remake, to create and re-create, faith in their vocation to be more fully human (which is not the privilege of an elite, but the birthright of all). Faith in people is an a priori requirement for dialogue; the “dialogical man” believes in others even before he meets them face to face.

And perhaps this is what is most missing from the reform efforts during the last three decades: faith in other-- a faith that is (in)formed by love.  Imagine a faith in other that is so profound, so elemental that it is present before one meets face to face? This is the foundation to Freire's work.

Faith and its correlate, love, are also largely missing in the corporate reform efforts of schools.  This is the do unto others crowd; the Manifest Destiny run amok crew.

And it may well be this absence of love and faith is why these reform efforts continue to fail, as they should (and do). These reformers don't have faith in you or me.

They do not know how to love us or even that they must.


II. And in the End...

Justice is What Love Looks Like in Public (M.A. Reilly, 8.14.14)

Freire told us that "true revolutionaries must perceive the revolution, because of its creative and liberating nature, as an act of love." Quoting Che Guevara, he adds, “Let me say, with the risk of appearing ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by strong feelings of love. It is impossible to think of an authentic revolutionary without this quality" (from Venceremos— The Speeches and Writings of Che Guevara, edited by John Gerassi (New York, 1969), p. 398.).

Nothing ridiculous there.

Love.

Let us begin and end with this in mind each and every time we think about ways to (in)form our work.

Wishing you the grace to love and the faith to try in 2015.








Cited
Freire, Paulo (2014-08-18). Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition (Kindle Locations 1289-1292). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition. 

Understanding Reform As A Design Challenge

Happiness is the Longing for Repetition (M.A. Reilly, 2009)

Design is as much an act of spacing as an act of marking. - Ellen Lupton

I. 

The importance of design can not be understated, especially when contemplating the current iterations of public education (re)form that situates people as problems to be fixed. For the last year I have been involved in designing↔implementing (think möbius strip) early literacy education across more than a dozen schools in a city. It has been and continues to be a time for enormous learning. Several understandings are emerging, not with great clarity, but with an odd sense of urgency.  There is something I am learning abut schooling, reform and learning that needs to be voiced even though I am unsure of its dimension and implications.

Much of what gets situated as teacher and pupil issues appear to be surface symptoms for larger design problems. I say this as I am observing that teachers are often more than willing, even eager, to refine practices when specific conditions are created.  For example, at one site where we are working the quickness of change among teachers as they add to and refine practices has been nothing less than stunning. Likewise, children who had been largely stalled as readers and writers at school, are making critical gains in the repertoire of skills, dispositions, and strategies they use while composing--be  it as readers or writers.

At this Pre K - 8 site, there are seven consultants from my company, including myself, working with the administrators, teachers, parents, and of course the children since the end of January. Whereas most of our efforts have been aimed at K-3 literacies, we also have been collaborating to staff who teach at grades 4-8 through special education, mathematics, and literacies work which will be emphasized next school year as we continue the project.

I feel very certain that within the space of five months, the K-1 teachers at this site will prevent reading difficulties--something that has not been done to date before here. This is as school where less than 30% of the children pass the state assessments and where we first saw that the majority of primary grade children were not making progress as readers.  We highlighted just two instructional changes and have modeled, directly taught, and coached teachers as they learn these practices.  And I think it would be fair to say that the use of these practices, in part, account for increased performance at the K-2 levels.  

So often, though, this is where we stop when telling stories about reform.  But I am coming to understand that this slice of the story is at best a topping.  Beneath it is a more compelling tale.

************

II. 

Contrast these two recollections.

It's December when I ask second grade teachers to identify the children in their classes who they are most concerned about as readers.  They name names and when I ask them what is it that makes them concerned, they all cite DRA levels--and the levels are shockingly low.  An issue though is that the data they cite is four months old, gleaned during the opening weeks of school.  The teachers say that that have not done any additional reading assessments such as a text level reading with these children, nor have they discussed the children as a group before. The teachers exists in what Dan Lortie (1975) in his seminal study of schools (Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study) characterized as egg-carton. He wrote:

Throughout the long, formative decades of the modern school system, schools were organized around teacher separation, rather than teacher interdependence (1975, 14).

So contrast that one recollection with this more recent one: It's early morning when I arrive at the school and a colleague of mine greets me and says, "It's wonderful to see the primary grade teachers all out in the hallways taking about their children to each other.  They're talking about how the kids are progressing. There's such energy in that." 

III.

A week or two later, the mathematics consultant who works with us is on site and I ask her to meet with my lead literacy consultant, the administrators from the school and a writer who is has come to see what is happening at the school for a book she is writing and myself.  I thought it particularly valuable to have the writer with us as we are at the beginning of something and having an outside set of eyes might prove helpful. We sit around one table and the discussion takes on rhizomatic dimension as ideas lead into ideas and the paths between and among become decidedly emergent and often co-specifying. 

One of the compelling questions we have been wrestling with is what is it that keeps children from advancing as readers and mathematicians.  This is a conversation that often ends with a discussion about teachers, parents, and children. Rarely though does the discussion extend beyond these factors and also attend about to how these factors are (in)formed by the design of the school and school system.  As we speak, I am sensing that we are in the middle of something and we are naming as a group more than we know as individuals. 

Later, I receive an email from the writer who shares these observations: 

XXX School and its whole leadership team were truly impressive. An unsung example of real excellence.  I learned a great deal from your discussion about redesigning instruction in math and ela--and was struck by the (principal's) commitment to "renew" XXX School on her own.  

The "on her own" comment is in relationship to other or program reform methods this writer has been chronicling in this city for the last year. I'm pleased as I realize that what we do with the principal and her staff has not been situated or understood as an external reform method. Working alongside, being in the middle of things, requires the agency of all.


IV.

Learner achievement is influenced by what teachers and students know and do, by the manner in which leadership occurs, as well as what each fails to know, act upon, and avoids. It resembles a tangled mess when attempting to sort this effect from that effect. But learner achievement is not only a people matter, it is a structural and environmental matter as well.  Last week I was teaching Pre-K and kindergarten teachers during a full day workshop and the conversation around the table was animated as teachers discussed their new or refined practices for independent reading and then studied video examples of vocabulary, phonics, guided writing and reading instruction.  

Almost all of what we studied is already occurring in their classrooms and the teachers were willing and able to compare their own practice with the video examples which featured not idealized practices, but actual practices recorded in classrooms.  Further, all of us who have modeled teaching--including some of the teachers--have made errors while teaching and we have been keen to note that in spite of our errors children continued to learn. The willingness to fail and learn is essential.

V.

I am driving home form the city and think that during workshops and out in the hallways--it is the teachers' lateral conversations--to each other--that most interest me. These forged spaces act as conduits that fuel better outcomes for children. What gets marked in these spaces is changing as we (teachers and administrators and consultants) focus on what children are doing, saying, and showing and the confusions and clarity that arise alongside these noticings.  All of this produces an energy that is greater than the energy used.  It is  this shift from potential to kinetic energy that I want to lean in and better understand.

Our time at this site will extend through next school year.  We recognize that external coaching is a temporary design fix, not a permanent solution.  As such, our work with those at the sxhool is to help craft the possibility of new spaces and markings. 

Child Forgetful, Data Foolish: Not Teaching Some

School Reform (M.A. Reilly, 5/2012)

I. The Invisibility Syndrome

There's something I've been noticing in some primary classrooms I visit: the children who are struggling the most to acquire alphabetic knowledge, to hear sounds, to remember sight words, or to apply this knowledge to actual reading are often left on their own.  You can recognize them easily as they are seated by themselves or when seated with other children they are not attending to whatever is in front of them (a book, a piece of paper).  Rather they stare.  Or they scribble.  Or they leave their seat and crawl on the floor. Now and then you will see them sitting very still almost as if their stillness might be an invisibility cloak.  Across time, it seems that if they are propped up behind a book it "counts" as reading.  Imagine what these young ones are learning about what it means to read as they sit behind texts they can't decipher and dutifully mimick what the other children do, turning pages and looking--and all the time not understanding or perhaps even knowing that understanding is a goal.

These are the children we (teachers, specialists, principals, superintendents of schools) most need to notice.

II. A Story

Pondering (M.A. Reilly, 2012)

Awhile ago I was in a classroom where a six year old sat by himself with a finger shoved through a piece of paper that he was twirling around.  The other children were seated on the classroom rug with their teacher.  The child happened to be seated at a reading table I was going to be using to model a high intensity reading lesson for the child's teacher with children who were just beginning to segment sounds and recognize letters.  I pulled out a small book and asked the child if he would like to read with me and he stopped twirling the paper.  I took that as a commitment of sorts and opened the book. 

So, we looked and talked about the pictures saying what we thought was happening in each.  I then began reading and as I did, I pointed to the words. I invited the child to point and read with me and at first he did not and then he began very, very softly to do so and to point.  I lowered my voice as I noticed he was able to read, chiming in at points of difficulty.  When we finished the book, the child told me he did not know how to read.  I explained that he had just read and did he want to do it again so he could see.  He reread the book a second time with very little support and was animated.  I happened to have a copy of the book as a flip book and showed it to him.  There was space for him to make his own illustrations and he said he would like to do this.  So as I taught a reading lesson to a few other children, he sat next to me and illustrated his story.  When he was done, I took a look and we discussed the pictures he had made. I then gave him the little book to take home to reread and to add to his home library.  I asked his teacher who the child might read the book to in the class and she quickly connected him with another child.  The two sat next to each other on the rug and read the story. When I asked the teacher about the child she said he was non-communicative and preferred to sit alone. She told me he did not want to participate.

Encounters like this give me pause. They make me wonder how it is permissible for a child to attend school and not be included, not be overtly taught.  How is it we misread such situations?  If this was one classroom and one story, it would still be wrong--but it is not an isolated tale.  The very children who need the most from us and need it consistently are often the ones who receive the least or when taught are relegated to the teaching assistant instead of the teacher.  Is it any wonder that across the country there are children turning 8, 9, 10 and 11 years old who cannot decipher or encode simple sentences. Who among us would not be 'impaired' by such treatment?

III. Counting without Reason

Stopped (M.A. Reilly, 6/2012)

In the mad rush to accumulate 'data' about children, I wonder if our failure to be more discerning and economical about what we value doesn't obscure the classroom landscape so that the very children we need to understand are situated as another set of figures in an already too large set.  Does counting children's assessment results oddly dismiss our responsibility to teach them?  Among the masses, the strugglers get missed or dismissed.
Sometimes when I talk with principals they want to share student achievement successes their students are experiencing.  These stories are grand and important and a pleasure to hear.  But the relative success of a school cannot be measured using only a part of the whole.  How focused are we on the silent children?  The children left alone?  The children whose progress appears stalled or perhaps not even started? 

I once worked in a district where the number of young people scoring 3 and higher on AP tests was well celebrated by superintendent and the Board, while those not completing high school were less discussed--less visible--even at times rationalized.  Practices such as forgetting the very struggling children in order to attend more directly to "those on the cusp" of passing the state test was becoming accepted practice at earlier and earlier grade levels. I know this system is not the only one where such actions are occurring.  I have even heard of these practices being touted as test smart practices--of ways to beat the test.  The only things "being beaten" are the children we allow to be forgotten, sacrificed. Does this administrative attitude set the stage for the teacher to forget some of the children in the classroom? Does it fuel the belief that there are children who cannot learn?  Does it work to undermine our own confidence to teach all?

IV. A Confession of Sorts

Here's what I want you to know though: in every classroom, the child who is struggling can and does make progress as a reader and/or writer when provided a mix of direct instruction and experiential learning that is consistently offered.  I don't want to suggest the nature of this work is easy--as it is not. I have found that it helps to have a partner to discuss the theories being formed about the work and the children's learning for this is complex work and as such, the way is nomadic.  There is no finished map someone can give you,  common core included, although there are other journeys you can study if so inclined. 

The made journey with others offers the most significant possibilities for deep learning.

The drive to make sense of the struggle and to build a bridge between what children know and need to know is powerful, demanding and enticing.  We are bound to make errors, lose our way,  and regroup.  We will be imperfect.  But know this:  It is this drive that education reform must produce and nurture.  Everything else misses the proverbial mark.

The Issue of Representation in Schools: Be the Revolution

The issue of representation is the deciding issue in education in this century.

As the division between "economic haves and have nots" increases at accelerated rates and the clarity between actual and fictive is rendered less clear through personal, institutional, and national educational practices and beliefs—how we position and are positioned matters. Such action often sets a trajectory that for some children is nothing less than fatal, while for others affords them the kingdom.

Allow me to be specific. Across the last 30 years, in the K-12 public schools, I have heard teachers, administrators, parents, community members, and even students utter these statements.  Additionally,  I have uttered some as well:

• He's a shop kid.
• She tries, but she's special ed.
• I just got two bilinguals in my general ed class. Now what am I suppose to do? 
• Mrs. X, your son is just not honors material.
• You should see what my honors kids are doing...
• My special ed kids need me to take it slower. They are incapable of doing x. 
• Let's face it: bilingual students just learn differently.
• My honors-child cannot and will not be in class with non-honors children. They will slow him down.
• What are we going to do with all the level 1s? They are bringing down our school profile. 
• Place all the bilingual students in course x. No exceptions.
• Give me the band kids, they're fabulous in math. 
• These partially proficient kids need to be placed in... 

I want to suggest that as these phrases become accepted discourse at a school, the language and the meanings carried shape expectation by turning opinion into "the" truth.   Further, the language also homogenizes people who may share some similarities (perceived and real) by limiting their definition to a single group identification so that terms such as: bilingual, special education, honors, shop, band and so on carry specific meaning. In these scenarios, the child is no longer multifaceted. She is bilingual. She is special ed. Such categorization locates actual performance beyond the realm of possible by lodging it within an epic construct that becomes institutionalized and across time is often thought of a defining tradition: At School X, this is what we know to be true. As new faculty and students join existing faculty and classmates, they learn these truths and in doing so, essentially render a dynamic place of learning into an epic world where the "past is locked into itself and walled off from all subsequent times by an impenetrable boundary..." (Bakhtin).

As our beliefs about children solidify--it becomes more difficult to engage in new thinking; to consider other possibilities. Odd traditions find permanence in places where epic stances are the norm.  Again Mikhail Bakhtin states, "tradition isolates the world of the epic from the personal experience, from any new insights, from any personal initiative in understanding and interpreting, from new points of view and evaluations. The epic past is an utterly finished thing, not only as an authentic event of a distant past but also on it's own terms and by it's own standards; it is impossible to change, to re-think, to re-evaluate anything in it."

I think about all of the rhetoric regarding "reform" of schools and the too-easy placement of public schools as places of chronic failure.  I can't help but think while those who are often far removed from actual schools banter questions about reform and reform models from lofty places--those of us who actually work in schools could exercise a profound and lasting revolution by taking a single action.

If we consciously took a stance to resist categorizing children and instead dwell in possibility, the revolution would be upon us.  Rather than limit ourselves to definitions of children via fixed categories, imagine what might happen if we practiced seeing possibility in other and uncertainty in ourselves.  Imagine how different the learning trajectory for both child and self might be.

Profound change has always rested in our hands.  Now is the time to accept responsibility and shape the outcomes that are so possible.

Race to the Top (of What)?

With regard to the allocation of Race to the Top (RttT) competition, a colleague of mine,  Deb, writes: "Since when should a child's education be dependent on adults 'winning' a race?"

Well Deb, it does seem to be all about winners and losers and according to a Huffington Post article, the words that were used in the grant application:

The words "charter," "evaluation," "rigor" or "standards," "assessment," "accountability," and "online" or "e-learning" were mentioned more often in winning applications. On average, winners included the phrases "professional development" and "data-driven" almost twice as often as losers.

A distinct advantage reported in the NYT also was afforded to those states who employed full time professional grant writers, as opposed to South Dakota whose grant in the first round was written by a working teacher and a community volunteer.   Seems hardly like a fair process.

Another concern with RttT is the blatant privileging of charter schools.  If a state wanted to earn 40 points out of the 500, it needed to demonstrate how it was going to increase the number of charter schools.  Given the scores for those who won, the exclusion of this "priority" would have likely rendered an application a "failure".   So given the advantage and importance then of including in the grant a plan to increase charter schools, one might assume then that there is a plethora of research that clearly indicates superior student achievement outcomes in charter schools.   

In the RAND report, Rhetoric versus Reality, Brian Gill writes "None of the studies suggest that charter-school achievement outcomes are dramatically better or worse on average than those of conventional public schools" (2001, p. xiv).  In another RAND study (Charter School Operations and Performance), Ron Zimmer writes that "charter schools generally have comparable or slightly lower test scores than do conventional public schools...Charter school students tended to do slightly worse than comparable students in math in both elementary and secondary conventional public schools" (2003, xxii-xxiii). 

The research published by Economic Policy Institute and Teachers College Press that was conducted by Carnoy, Jacobsen, Mishel and Rothstein (2005) state that "based on 19 studies, conducted in 11 states and the District of Columbia, there is no evidence that, on average, charter schools out-perform regular public schools. In fact, there is evidence that the average impact of charter schools is negative" (p. 2).

Hmm. 

Okay, so no improvement in student achievement.  Why then the privileging? Why would the USDOE allocate $4.35 billion and ensure states pushed for the development of charters when the research does not show academic gains?

Consider what the DOE claims: 

Awards in Race to the Top will go to States that are leading the way with ambitious yet achievable plans for implementing coherent, compelling, and comprehensive education reform. Race to the Top winners will help trail-blaze effective reforms and provide examples for States and local school districts throughout the country to follow as they too are hard at work on reforms that can transform our schools for decades to come.

Why would our government want us to follow that which research says does not clearly improve student achievement? Where exactly does this trail, blazing or not, actually lead?  It makes me wonder if RttT is nothing more than a dressed up and more expensive version of Reading First.  Remember that when Reading First was authorized, schools districts that won grants were forced to purchase "proven" reading materials.  By 2007, none of the proven materials were included on the USDOE's website "What Works Clearinghouse" as these products did not have the requisite research to merit their inclusion. Tons of dollars were channeled to a few companies who certainly got wealthier.  Is this the same prospect with RttT?  Are we throwing dollars at some trumped up promise with the hope that something catches and "works"?  And we might well ask, works for whom? In what conditions? 

"Improvement," Richard Elmore (2000) suggests, "is more a function of learning to do the right thing in the setting where you work than it is what you know when you start to do the work" (p.25).  Developing the capacity to be responsive to emerging conditions appears to be a critical factor in occasioning improved outcomes for learners.  Yet, privileging the development of local sensibilities and capacities to be responsive to such changes is absent from the RttT. By its very name, we can assume there is a bottom, some "other" that serves as the base one must move from as the winning states race off to find some top. 

I wonder how long it will take for us to stop racing about and learn to dwell where we reside—to be present in the actual moment so that we can take measure of local circumstances?   All these large scale initiatives, like RttT frankly have me worried.  I wish for once, our government might consider Wendell Berry's advice.  He aptly observed that we would be wise to "learn to prefer small-scale elegance" (1989, p. 22).

The Slow Fuse of Possibility: Why Race to the Top Is a Maimed Thing

Occasioning learning is not to be confused with causality. Whereas simple matters can often be attended to through linear methods, complex learning resists such methodology.  This in itself was not a new "discovery".  What was an "ah-ha" moment  (thanks to my colleague, Kelly Harte)  was the hypothesis about why some of us continuously teach "basics" and resist/refuse to "teach" more complex content and how this same constraint of thought informs educational policies at the federal and state (at least in NJ) level.

During my 25+ years as an educator,  I have heard some colleagues explain that they cannot move on to more sophisticated concepts and processes as the students have not mastered the simple understandings that are seen as prerequisites to more complex understandings. Teaching students how to solve a simple algorithm, requires something pedagogically different from creating a set of conditions or engagements whereby students are able to compose more complex expressions, that may well (and often do) include simple algorithms. Occasioning requires a very different set of thinking protocols on behalf of the teacher as there is no single outcome. Occasioning produces possibilities, not certainties.

Teaching the "basics" and situating the basics as simple, not complex learning-- dulls possibility. That is the true educational crime; the long term horror. Emily Dickinson wrote, "Imagination lights the slow fuse of possibility."  If we were serious about an educational revolution we would privilege the imagination and dwelling. Our metaphors to describe our intentions might well include these words, rather than words like, "race" or "top."

In these new times, when we are posing questions (I hope) and composing answers to educational challenges I would recommend we listen to poets more so than education tsars, like Arne Duncan, who are replicating input-output systems such as Race to the Top.  Duncan's rhetoric posits educational issues and couched dilemmas within the confine of causality. Problem x can be solved by "scientifically based research" solution y.  The predetermined constraints, such as accountability systems based on value added analysis, determine the parameters of the field well ahead of any reality. In many ways this rhetoric rests on the same logic that informs teachers who only teach "the simple basics".

Input.

Output.

These methods work well for simple situations.

The costs of teachers only teaching the basics are well discussed, especially in popular press. Just see last week's LA Times for an example.  Less discussed is the immeasurable costs associated with Race to the Top.  I would suggest that both situations (teaching only the basics and Race to the Top) are simply too much to bear.

Rather than listen to the educational pundits, like Duncan, I would offer we turn an ear to the poets and philosophers. Consider William Carlos Williams who admonished the poets in "Deep Religious Faith." He closed the poem, writing: "Shame on our poets:/they have caught the prevalent fever/impressed by the "laboratory"/they have forgotten/ the flower!/which goes beyond all/laboratories./They have quit the job of invention./The imagination has fallen asleep/in a poppy cup."

These are wise words--words we could hold close, and ones that might inform our decisions. Imagine educational policy that privileged the imagination?  How different schools might be.  Or perhaps, John Dewey's wisdom might be dusted off and offered for our consideration. In response to the question about What is the matter in education? John Dewey answered:

It lies, I think, with our lack of imagination in generating leading ideas. Because we are afraid of speculative ideas, we do, and do over and over again, an immense amount of dead, specialized work in the region of "facts." We forget that such facts are only data; that is, are only fragmentary, uncompleted meanings, and unless they are rounded out into complete ideas-- a work which can only be done by hypotheses, by a free imagination of intellectual possibilities--they are as helpless as are all maimed things and as repellent as are needlessly thwarted ones" (Dewey, 1937, Philosophical Review, 36, 1-9, from an address to the Sixth International Congress of Philosophy, Harvard University, 15 Sept. 1926).

If we were serious about redesigning education we would understand that the role of the federal government and state government is to occasion local brilliance, not constrain it.

Shame on our politicians. Impressed by the laboratory, they have forgotten the imagination.

Your Mirror Lies. August, 2010.