#philofounded

You are telling me to be proficient but I’m already barley moving

I feel I am truly starting to see how the meanings of Freire, the issues with testing, and all the other themes from our class our demonstrate in Ravitch. Our education system seems to be in one word: hopeless.

While my stance might be pessimistic, it is hard not to avoid how our twisted democratic and capitalist society is preventing successful education reform. Again this not a need to be socialist or authoritarian. As a society, we as people need to change our expectations and be ready to fight for the long term instead of trying to find the quick fix.

This idea of instant gratification has become so redundant as to where we need to point the figure but it is hard not to. In chapter 3, the situation in San Diego is disturbing. We see fast economic gains due to strong arm policies and also on just an “get tough attitude in general. (Ravitch, 47). The Gotham reference clearly refers to comparing Bersin and Alvarado as Batman and Robin fighting the forces of evil. But the evil being fought is teachers and test scores (Ravitch, 49). San Diego didn’t need to be reform, but because capitalist are always looking for more money and better production, San Diego needed to be better. These ideas are similar to Chapter 6 with NCLB.

Chapter 6 was very interesting because for the intentions to create stronger educated society were present, it did not account for past failures of similar attempts  or state differences. More importantly it confused test indicators with academic success and literally dumbed down what it means for a child to be proficient (Ravitch, 89-90).

This whole book so far has been discouraging. We continue to go forward with go intentions but have no true answer because our cultural does not allow for it. We never learn from past mistakes nor take account for the obstacles. The biggest obstacle in my mind is how we see capitalist ideology infiltrating education. The fight to unravel this intermingle seems to be impossible.  Every chapter in Ravitch speaks to this idea. Chapter 4: San Diego was for strong armed policies and accountability. We see these themes in business when their operations produce ineffective results and productivity. Chapter 5 speaks to the idea of political intervention at the domestic level and creating a system of winners and losers. Chapter 6 with NCLB combines all the themes so far just mention and blows them up to the macro level. We never learn. 

Again, apologies for the late post. This post may not be a true reflection on the Ravitch but the common theme I got from the first chapter is how as a profession, teachers tend to go through the phases of reform. While this may not be with all teachers, I know many can agree that reform is truly driven by administrators, the state, and other elements who the majority do not even have step foot in the classrooms. Not only is this wrong, jt will continue to cause our education system to falter.

The 'it thing' (meaning reform) will always take time to grow and administrators will not necessarily see the changes right away. Again the idea of instant gratification is a huge component in why we as a society, cannot be patient in any type of domestic reform. As a Aristotle once said, "Patience is bitter but its fruits is sweet". 

We need to be patient to see how reforms will pan out over time. To make sure they are fair for all students, we should then avoid making reforms simply about testing to see quick results. Innovative assessments created by inspired teachers to push students intellectually is the key. Finding the balance of meeting with state requirements and also the weight of grades will key. Society will make this process harder and 10x difficult due to instant gratification, and again: no patience. 

“When teachers are asked to implement standards that they feel “do not make sense” it is not that teachers are simply ignorant and require professional development, it is in my opinion, the initial reaction of a person engaged in a craft/practice that is highly dependent and responsive to local conditions.” Ravich

Digging back into Death and Life this week, I found myself picking up from the history to get a view into where we are today with the Common Core. I spent some time reading Ravitch’s blog posts that are tagged “Common Core” and found, seemingly consistent with her approach overall, that she says that she is "agnostic" about the Common Core and wishes to "see how they work in reality before supporting or opposing them. I know the case for both views."

She seems to be keeping a close eye on the situation, however, and posts and cross-posts various writing and questioning by others around the Common Core as well as engages in her own research. Issues range from who is behind the writing and promotion of these standards, what research are they based on, what are the implications of them for different populations -- young children and special education -- etc. An approach she has is to often ask “What do you think?” to which she gets engaged response.

One post that I thought that caught my attention was written out of Ravich’s own research. Posted on January 27 and titled Exploring the Origins of the Common Core she engages here in the question around the purpose of schooling:

“The Common Core standards are derived, in part, from an abstraction (the patchwork quilt of research) and are being pushed on to practitioners. The research strands that I examined tended toward the notion that knowledge acquisition is the endgame of school-based learning. ...

Knowledge acquisition learning is about remembering and being able to manipulate abstract knowledge. We determine that a student has acquired knowledge by testing or providing a task that can only be completed if the individual has the requisite skill or knowledge. The Common Core is intended to set the standard for this type of learning and so there must be tests. ... If we believe in an educational system that prioritizes knowledge acquisition in the service of a national security agenda (economic competitiveness, technology dominance, etc.) then testing is necessary.

We experience the consequences of this priority in classrooms every day. I don’t have to detail them here.

If we believe that education is about more than knowledge acquisition, and that national security can be achieved through other concepts such as healthy communities, sustainable resource uses, national unity, world peace, or the elimination of hunger and poverty. Then we need to take responsibility for our practices, assert our own understandings of those practices, expose those practices to peer-review and challenge “what does not make sense” collectively.

I am finding that engaging the ‘nonsense’ has been a good learning experience.”

Apologies for the late post. Sometimes life's activities can take a life of its own and be distracting. I am sure we all have been there. 

I truly enjoyed reading Bowles and Murphy. Just like Freire, these two authors provide eye-opening insights into the system of education and what factors in our society contribute to its lack of efficiency.

Let's look at Bowles. The evolution of adventurism in America is an interesting paradox to the development of the eduction system. To see how the development of the frontier and the relationship of the development of education, was truly reveling to the understand the roots of the relationship between our economic culture and education culture.

To me this relationship as discussed by Bowles was the most interesting. It reveals how the misinterpretation of the role of our economy and education among our society and how education is influenced by our capitalist culture; in turn our economy. 

First the idea of equalizing education does not play into equalizing our economy. The values of meritocracy driven by our capitalist society hurts our education system because it reinforces the ideas of how work ethic means only success. 

The idea of school reform being backwards speaks to these constant misintrepretations (p. 9 Bowles). I truly believe with his statements on how in order to progress forward we need to focus on our reaction to human nature rather than social logic (p. 9 Bowles). Clearly our social logic is twisted and blended with historic racial undercurrents and stereotypes to this day we cannot dismiss as a society.

So how do we fix this? While reading both articles and reflecting on our course's reading it seems if we cannot reveal the issues with our society in general, why do not we not teach or inform our students and kids of these problems?

For example while reading the introduction of Bowles, the idea of the frontier, the effects of industrialization, the man as a machine, and the inflation of educational insinuations are great stepping stones to reforming our population. If kids are the future, then should we take Freire's advice and start our liberation with them? While it may be hard because: a) youth may not understand the issues at hand and b) their discussions of these issues with parents will cause potential uproar; we need to take a shot.

In class last week I said, during our discussion, that I didn’t have a good answer – or more specifically, I don’t have my words well organized enough – to clearly address the “accountability” question in education. These days, I find it very difficult to engage with this question well since the conversation about accountability is framed by testing and what I believe is a deficient-model approach to the situation. I can therefore only be critical within that context although I strive to also be constructive.

Diane Ravitch does a good job unpacking the various assumptions in the teacher accountability debate. And they are helpful to me to clear some of the air towards a potentially more useful path for accountability overall.

Also, I think my professional background is important here I think because it provides me a view of what is possible. I have been working with educators within a large almost 40 year old communities-of-practice network connecting K-University teachers across disciplines, and increasingly, inside and outside of school. The philosophy of this network is one of “teachers teaching teachers” and therefore grounded in a democratic vision of learning where the things that everyone brings to the table are important and vital in the mix. This impacts how professional development is approached as well as what happens in the classrooms and with youth on the ground.

My vision of what is possible is grounded in these beliefs then that we are all learners, that knowledge is something we build and construct together and that schooling is the place for us to foster democracy. This vision has also been expanded by the larger network of the Internet and what I can see was happening as the teachers I work with explored these tools with their students as well as with their colleagues. Teachers and students making, creating and ultimately, leading their own learning, together in an increasingly decentralized knowledge economy.

So, when the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative (of which my network is a part and I co-direct our DML work) came out with the principles of “Connected Learning” last March, I could see so clearly that we had, as a community, returned back to Dewey and to the traditions that I so deeply care about in considerations about learning. And there are exciting and rich conversations that get to what we mean by accountability in this arena too, from discussions about what does equity mean in a connected learning framework and how do we assess outcomes so that we can continue to grow it together.

All this while another accountability struggle has raged on various levels in the schools and on the streets. This return to Dewey is essentially happening while teachers strike in Chicago against a “neo-liberal disciplinary machine that would turn public schools into another tool of casino capitalism while destroying any vestige of the relationship between education, public values and democracy.” The irony in all this, and even some of the interconnected bedfellows, can sometimes be very confronting to me.

But this is where I have landed. And I do believe we are accountable for both what does work as well as what doesn’t in education. I am interested in being part of a movement to build more equitable public institutions of democracy and learning for all. And I am accountable for all this too. So I am asking myself, where can I find some answers and language that ties the pieces together in a way that is useful to the larger conversations, and important advocacy, happening today? This, I believe, is my current inquiry.

Taking this inquiry into our readings this week then, I found the article on Chicago’s Board of Education and taxation from the turn of the 20th century both fascinating and thought-provoking, with a new-to-me heroine Margaret Haley from the Chicago Teachers’ Federation (Taxation and Social Conflict, Marjorie Murphy). So many notes and parallels that made this think of things happening today. It took me first to Chicago and the more recent strike by teachers there and then back here to Philadelphia where the property tax battle rages on and the Philadelphia School District faces a multimillion dollar deficit and is talking about closing schools.

Post-Chicago, there are many lessons to be learned and many educators who have been collecting reflections and thoughts so I gathered together a few of these to review and share:

Andrew Cody writes for EdWeek and is an organizer himself. He talked to several of the teachers in Chicago and asked “how did the teachers in Chicago pull off the most successful strike of the new century?”

Sam Chaltain writes “The teachers' strike has ended, but the teachable moment remains ripe.”

Henry Giroux writes On the Significance of the Chicago Teachers Strike: Challenging Democracy's Demise

And as Bill Hangley in the Philadelphia School Notebook reports, Learning from Chicago: As charters and cuts erode teacher jobs here, Philadelphians draw lessons from the organizing successes of another big-city union.

Bill’s report, of course, brought me back here to Philadelphia, where groups like the Teacher Action Group have been working to put this learning into action through inquiry groups and coalition building with the Philadelphia Coalition Advocating for Public Schools around a community-based proposal for the future of our local schools.

Around all this, a schools and property tax battle is playing out here today too. Even as I was drinking coffee and browsing my twitter feed, a local teacher colleague tweeted something about how Philadelphians shouldn't be angry about tax increases as they will fund her school.  A short conversation followed with one person countering that the solution to the school situation should not be about taxes and another person agreeing with that but also adding that we should pay for what we value. I agree with both, so I spent a little time digging into this topic a little bit more, finding resources like the Philadelphia Idiots guide to Property Taxes and the City School published by the Committee of Seventy.

60% of Philadelphia’s property taxes go to the schools and the Philadelphia property taxes haven’t been re-assessed in over 10 years says the Committee of 70. I am one of those property owners, with a small house in Center City, and I know that I pay far less property tax than the potential value of my house would be if I sold it today. That is not fair and I support the movement towards property reassessment because of that.

However, there are real hardships in this and the burden of over a decade of (incompetence? deliberate avoidance? need to do more muckracking on this to find out) is hard for many, impossible for some, to absorb quickly. I’m in that position too as Center City real estate is still a high-valued market. And the rub of the situation is that the $94 million that is supposed by recouped here is being planned for to help the school district close it’s current budget gap.

What an official mess.

This made me turn to look more closely at some of the alternative plans for the schools to see if there were suggestions around the budget in particular. There are many plans that have been put forward as alternatives to the “BCG Plan” made by a hired external consulting group for the School Reform Commission (SRC) back in August. The Philadelphia Coalition Advocating for Public Schools community-school proposal discusses the budget (pgs 11-15) and puts the financial responsibility squarely at the feet of the state (and the SRC), describing how they believe that with a reassessment of priorities, the district “would be enjoying a budget surplus rather than a deficit.”

The original plan by BCG has been highly criticized as relying on market-driven and anti-community solutions. Philadelphia Federation of Teachers president Jerry Jordan originally called the plan to hire BCG "cynical" (well, he called it more than that, but let's stop on cynical for a moment) which, I would say, seems well said based on PCAPS description of the situation. The PCAPS authors write:

“… because the BCG Plan assumed that state funding would not return to pre-2011-12 levels, even with the state’s fiscal position improving, the harmful effects of the governor’s budget cuts for Philadelphia weren’t limited to just one year. Under the BCG approach, that reduced funding amount becomes the norm, and Philadelphia schools must then learn to continue operating with substantially less assistance from the state. Thus, because the BCG Plan projects ahead five years, that one-time reduction ultimately has at least a six-year impact.”

So even just stopping here, let's look back to the accountability question. Who is accountable here?

In August of 2012, after 20 years of working in the field of education, I decided to take the GRE. It was a decision I made despite the fact that the GRE is against everything that I believe about education and learning. Because of this it pained me to pay ETS and to buy into the system in this way, literally. For a variety of reasons though I thought it could be useful to take and, in truth, I was curious. With standardized testing such the rage in education right now, I was wondering how I would do on one of these tests after 20 years as a professional in the field, as a moderately successful student before that, and a person who stays fairly current, is reasonably well-read and writes online frequently.

Well, I failed. Badly.

“Did I study?” my friends asked. Yes, I did study. I knew that my math skills, which were reasonably good in high school, were very very rusty having done little beyond the basics now for a couple decades. And it turned out it was kind of fun too – remembering how to solve problems, figure out the length of sides and degree of angles, solving for %s. In some cases helpful too. I also worked on vocabulary – downloaded apps that I would play with in those in-between moments, take practice tests, etc.

“Maybe it’s because you have such a bad attitude about the GRE” they would then conjecture. Sure, I’m positive that was a factor. Having everything I viscerally believed about standardized testing confirmed by Nicholas Lehmann back in the 90s, I have never looked back. I’m sure that somewhere in the back of my mind there are elements of resistance kicking that got in the way. Even so, on top of practicing for months, I even took a full week of my vacation to focus. Though I am a critic, I wasn’t trying to fail. In fact, I was trying to succeed!

Yet.

So … maybe you know this if you’ve taken this test anytime in recent history. But first you get to the study center and they ask you to leave everything behind in lockers – nothing can come with you. No watches, calculators, etc. let alone smart phones, etc. Then because you arrived early, you wait. Anxiously. I saw people – most much younger than me – in the waiting room literally still studying, cramming, before they go in. Some were actually sweating and most tap their feet or fingers or some parts of themselves with nervousness.

This was not a happy environment. And the walls were painted that mental hospital green, I suppose to keep us feeling calm. But, at least for me, it just cast a sickly gloom on top of everything else around me. No one smiled. This was not a place to be smiley.

Finally it was my turn. I enter the test center main doorway after signing some sort of agreement (I don’t remember what I signed … a promise to not disclose, I believe), was wanded by security, and pointed to my cube. I got one pencil, one scrap of paper and an old computer (monochrome screen, flat keyboard). Oh, and optional headphones that I suppose could have used to block out any additional noise since there was clearly no music around to tap into.

I truly felt like I had entered a dystopic novel.

Finally I start to take the test. All that fun I had solving math problems was very helpful and calmed me down right away … I know how to do this one, and this one … and I started to go through them at a steady consistent pace. I didn’t linger too long if I was stuck, planning to come back to those I found harder, I double-checked my answers in quick ways I learned, I got the easier ones out of the way.

I was barely half-way done when the timer timed out.

Next up verbal and quantitative reasoning. This part was generally fine and I even had time to go back and review. Wheew. But then, the Analytical Writing section was next. This section is meant to measure "your ability to articulate complex ideas clearly and effectively; support ideas with relevant reasons and examples; examine claims and accompanying evidence; sustain a well-focused, coherent discussion; control the elements of standard written English." This is the part graded by both one “one trained reader, using a six-point holistic scale” and "reviewed by e-rater, a computerized program developed by ETS, which is used to monitor the human reader." I was asked to write to an “issue task” prompt first with an essay in response to the prompt. I had 20 minutes. The prompt was, in my mind, a complicated philosophical question and the tool I was using was a crude word processing program.

I barely got my thoughts together by the time the 20 minutes had ended.

By this time I was shaken – I’d timed out on 2 of the 3 sections. The next ones went almost the same way, with me not able to complete the math on time, finishing the reasoning part but unable to complete a decent essay in 20 minutes. I probably got a little further on the math second time around and I did at least complete an essay this time – the “argument task” prompt was, to me, more straight forward – but my answer was truthfully fairly idiotic, IMHO. I was really just trying to get something finished and didn’t really care what I had to say to do so.

So no need for me to share my actual score – you can probably guess how this turned out in the end. I walked away a bit upset but ultimately had to have a sense of humor about the whole thing mostly because it wasn’t a high stakes situation for me (I did not send my score anywhere!). But, as a person in that room among all the others, I knew my low-stakes situation was privileged. For most of them, this was a really big deal. Although, as ETS will let you know, you can choose to cancel your scores after taking the test and "canceled scores are not added to your permanent record." However, "If you wish to take the test again, you must reregister and submit another test payment." (Which, I believe at the time I took it, cost $120.) Oy. Besides all of this, I really did try to notice what this test did test in me, besides the ability to take the test in the allotted time with the allotted tools in the allotted conditions that they provided. And as generally self-reflective person, I have failed to come up with anything more than that. What I know now is that I am a poor “Computer-based GRE® revised General Test” taker. I’m not sure that there is anything else to know. All this to say that I remain very disturbed by what standardized testing experience means on the greater scale. I am very disturbed when I watch Frontline’s replay of the Michelle Rhee story in DC that standardized test-scores were, and remain, a prevailing factor in assessing success for youth as well as for teachers and administrators. In Philadelphia where you read about the same kind of testing scandal taking place that you saw in DC, you don't have to dig far to see that there are actually thousands of examples of this across the country. And I am disturbed by sanctions Seattle teachers face for boycotting tests that they believe, as professionals in their field, are inherently flawed and don’t show student learning**.

As Yong Zhou wrote after scandals were reported in Atlanta, "[This] should serve as a wake-up call to proponents of test-driven reform policies: it’s time to abandon high stakes testing in our schools. Decades of high-stakes testing has not brought improvement but has corrupted our schools. The cost is too high."

On the post-secondary level too, what we know is that the GRE is an artifact of a school of thought that chose to make higher education a meritocracy yet so many of them continue to require it even today*.

With roots in intelligence testing that go back generations, the mental measurement establishment continues to define merit largely in terms of potential ability rather than actual performance. The case against standardized mental testing is as intellectually and ethically rigorous as any argument about social policy in the past twenty years. And yet such testing continues to dominate the education system, carving further inroads into the employment arena as well, having been bolstered in recent years by a conservative backlash advocating advancement by "merit." Like a drug addict who knows he should quit, America is hooked. We are a nation of standardized-testing junkies. Meritocracy's Crooked Yardstick, FairTest.org, August 21, 2007

I do not believe in meritocracy in education – for youth or adults. I believe learning should be a democracy and in fact, institutions of learning should be our most democratic space for both practice and for social renewal. (*Note: I chose to come to Arcadia University for my masters’ degree in Education because, at least in this school, they do not require the GRE for admission. I applaud them for making this decision. See FairTest.org's list of 4-year colleges and universities with test optional admission policies.)

Every time I read Freire I find myself not necessarily ashamed, but wondering how as humans we continue to find ourselves in this cyclical cycle of oppression. 

Freire's Chapter 1 dives into some thought provoking ideas that all teachers need read and understand. For his message, at least to me, revealed the value of personal reflection and how to determine whether or not I am contributing to the dehumanization of our culture. Education is a reflection of our culture. It frightens me that as teachers, we do understand how much our words, actions, and treatment towards students continues to uphold Freire's warnings and comments of the oppressed.

These sentiments were revealed again while reading the article, Missing the Mark, and the effect of I.Q testing on our cultural outlook on race and socio-economics. It seems throughout our history, whether through violence or policies, humans are consistently trying to separate each other apart and make sure one cultural group is superior than the other.

I believe this speaks to the Greek historian Thucydides comments on why there is war in the first place: Honor, Fear, and Self-Interest. For honor, we protect our prestige, our rank among the food chain. For fear, we try to squash potential competitors or those that challenge our superiority. For self-interest, we engage in activities to ensure survival no matter what. 

Those three reasons alone speak to everything Freire talks about regarding the battle between the oppressed and the oppressor. Why else would you have such a system, if one did not strive to be the superior being? 

It is almost impossible for any human being to want to not strive be the top person in any one of those three-categories: Honor, Fear, and Self-Interest. But I believe there can be a happy medium in succeeding in upholding those ideals while not being an oppressor.

At the end of the day, the main aspect of life human beings seek to secure is security. We do this through actions of self-interest. We see this after the Cold-War with countries seeking nuclear weapons in order to secure their survival in the nuclear age. However, if we can get everyone on the same page, truly create equality, eliminate this oppression: then there would be no challengers of: Honor, Fear, and Self-Interest.