Should have known better... AKA "Common Sense"

More than one person with a public image has proclaimed Ahmed Mohamed should have known better. He, a 14-year-old boy with a Muslim name, should have known how his teachers would have responded to him bringing a device with wires to school.

He should have used common sense.

More than one educator has criticized Cheryl LaPorte for including a task where students copied an Islamic religious phrase in order to get a sense of the complexity of Arabic writing. She should have known how students and parents in her school district would respond.

She should have used common sense.

One child brought a textbook publisher's image and word choice to his mother's attention who then brought the image to the media. As the conversation expanded, people commented that the publishers should have done better. They should have known that it was misleading to refer to slaves as "workers", in the same category as immigrants or indentured servants with a chance at freedom. 

They should have used common sense.

In each of these cases, someone has used the phrase "common sense" to defend the exact opposite position.

• Ahmed's defenders said his teachers should have used common sense before responding. It was a clock.
• LaPorte's defenders said concerned parents should use common sense before responding. The Shahada isn't a magical incantation. Simply writing the phrase doesn't make one Muslim.
• The publishing company defenders said readers should have used common sense before responding. The word choice in the single image isn't indicative of the entire slavery-related curriculum.

With respect to Thomas Paine, an appeal to "common sense" is a lazy and counter-productive way to engage in discourse in a multi-cultural, diverse, society with multiple perspectives. If your reader agrees with you, congrats! You've preached to the choir, rallied the troops, and strengthened groupthink. If your reader disagrees with you, congratulations! You've shut down the conversation and implied that anyone who disagrees with you lacks basic, common sense.

I've reached the conclusion that if we truly want to engage with others, seek to understand, or get where others are coming from, the phrase it's just "common sense" has got to go. If your fall back position is "it's just common sense", consider instead, the power of claims and counterclaims. Also presented as point/counter-point or pro/con, the approach (albeit an approach steeped in Western civilization and not necessarily the best or right way) forces readers and writers to be transparent in their thinking.

Adopting an approach of claim/counterclaim as the writer forces you to see the topic or issue at hand from more than one perspective. More than that, it removes you from the equation. I've written before about the challenges of confirmation bias and the challenges of changing one another's mind. One way to ensure your reader won't change their mind is to suggest that you are right and they are wrong. Using claim and counterclaim is a small step towards checking your own biases and actively working to see the other position.

An example: 

Claim: Given recent events, students should get every opportunity to see and interact with the complex stories, people, and aspects of the Muslim faith in order to combat stereotypes.

Counterclaim: Given recent events, teachers should back off of teaching about aspects of the Muslim faith that goes beyond the basics. 

Neither is about me, my opinion, or my experiences. Both can be supported or refuted with evidence. One isn't right and one isn't wrong. For me, the power of writing down a counterclaim is that it forces me to literally think from the "other side." Not the other side of the issue mind you - it's hubris to suggest all situations are ORs - rather, from the other side of my claim. As a reader, you can refute my claim with a different one or re-state the counterclaim so that it better matches your take on the situation. Pick a topic you're passionate about and give it a try. 

See how it feels and then put your claim out there - and be open the counterclaim. 

Cuomo and Tests

While it's not exactly an air of something rotten in the state, there is certainly an eau de confusion in the Empire State. I have long been a fan of our state's history, especially when it comes to education and I suspect 2012-2015 will be the basis for a chapter or two in future books on the topic. You know, all those books, that are written on the history of education in NY. The many, many books.

This by Chalkbeat does a nice job summarizing where things stand now in terms of teacher evaluation. It remains, alas, until the guidance documents are released by SED, it's a lot of speculation around the edges and on email listservs. 

In the meantime, Governor Cuomo is providing his commentary.

Cuomo, asked by a reporter why he decided to reverse his stance and delink the tests from the teacher evaluation, said that’s an incorrect characterization.

“I think if you read the report you’re going to find out that your two questions are not accurate,” Cuomo said. “There are teacher evaluations that are in the report and they are connected with tests.”

Here's the thing that I will *not* stop shouting. I will stomp my foot, beat my breast, and sealion ALL over Twitter threads that claim the contrary.

There. Is. Nothing. In. APPR. That. Requires. Tests.* (in the traditional sense as we think of them or as, I suspect, Cuomo thinks of them.)

It's possible to calculate growth scores without using a 0-100 numerical scale.
It's possible to collect pre/post data using authentic, meaningful tasks.
It's possible to capture evidence of student learning without a bubble sheet and #2 pencil.
It's possible to leverage this mandate so that school is better for students, not worse.

It's not only possible, it's necessary. This is an unprecedented chance to do the really hard work of creating assessments that are done with, not to, students. It's a chance to make another crack in the wall between curriculum and assessment. The hard part is that schools need to time to revise and strengthen assessments so they meet the APPR criteria so let's hope they get it. Teachers need space to organize their thinking about target setting and they need tools to ensure their assessments are quality.

*For the "locally-designed" AKA SLO component.

(It can be done. It is being done. I'm happy to share. Feel free to tweet me at @JennLCI, check out a conference session I did on the topic, or drop me a line.)

Part 4: 50 States, 50 Sets of Standards v. One Country, One Set of Standards

Part 1, the introduction, is here.
Part 2, a defense of resource sharing, is here.
Part 3, an analogy that fewer choices helps us be more creative, here.

Part 4: I give.

This morning on NPR, Shankar Vedantam reminded listeners that we don't change our minds. It's similar to a This American Life episode that became the basis for a unit and curriculum I helped design that invited students to compare Regents writing to "real" writing. The task was organized around the essential question: What's the point of writing an argumentative essay if we rarely change our minds? 

I've reached the inevitable conclusion that there doesn't seem to be a point. Vedantam's gist was a bit more nuanced: we can change others' minds but not unless we find the right framework. 

I can't seem to find the words to persuade someone who believes 50 sets (actually 1000 when you add all up) is better than one, or 20, set(s). I'm not sure how to convince someone who thinks "locally-grown" standards are inherently better because they were written by teachers with a particular accent as opposed to those with accents from multiple states and regions. I'd like to think someone making the alternate claim could find the words to get me to change my mind, but I'm not persuaded by quotes from long-dead Founding Fathers or a general claim of "because it's better." I'll do my best to keep my mind open, though, and keep looking.

So I conclude my series by conceding. Tribe mentality in runs deep. We get a bee in our bonnet, a hum in our dinger, we set up camp and call it home. I'm not sure if I'm a counselor at Camp Common Core but I am on team "Let's Save Teachers' Time" and a card-carrying member of the "We Can't Go Back in Time" club. And yet... and yet....

A writing standard from a national set of standards: Develop claim(s) and counterclaims fairly and thoroughly, supplying the most relevant evidence for each while pointing out the strengths and limitations of both in a manner that anticipates the audience's knowledge level, concerns, values, and possible biases.

A writing standard from a state-developed set of standards: 

• Challenge or support a point of view with supportive facts and opinions 
• Compare differing points of view in order to draw conclusions 
• Determine the validity of both sides of an argument, supporting or refuting one or both sides of the argument

I'm struck by the similarities. And differences. Both require we help students see the other side of an argument. The first one asks that students consider their audience when writing and to be fair. The second one is about challenging and determining validity. In both cases, I wonder - what are the implications when the adults in students' lives struggle with the demands of the standard? How do we model these standards or find anchors for them if adults are so rarely willing to do it ourselves? 

Part 3: 50 States, 50 Sets of Standards v. One Country, One Set of Standards

Part 1 here.

Part 2 here

Freedom to innovate.
Ability to be more nimble.
Unique state personalities. 

"Laboratories of Innovation"
The 10th Amendment.

When I've asked those who are staunchly against the idea one set of standards or read their writing, there's generally a pattern. If the person has identified as against a particular set of standards, the response is generally about how horrible, terrible that particular set of standards is.* If not, the response tends to be around the reasons listed above. My take away from these conversations and readings is that if each state is allowed to develop their own content standards, then they'll be able to experiment with new ideas and meet the unique needs of their students. I disagree.

My claim: One country with one set of learning standards helps increase educational innovation.

If you haven't heard her name yet, I'd like to introduce you to Frances Tariga Weshnak. She's a chef and all-around badass. She speaks multiple languages and forged a life for herself after her father kicked her out as a teenager. Right now, she's a part of Top Chef Season 13 but I first saw her on Chopped and Cutthroat Kitchen.

Alas, last week Frances was asked to pack her knives and leave Top Chef. She knew it was coming as soon as time was called and when she presented her dish, my husband and I commented on the difference between this chef and the one we saw on the other shows. Granted, editing may have a great deal to do with but I'd like to use Frances to support my claim that having fewer options can make us more creative. 

On Chopped, chefs are given four ingredients and a pantry. Frances was amazing. She was confident, assertive, and a problem-solver.

On Cutthroat Kitchen, chefs are given a dish to cook and access to a pantry for 1 minute. Frances excelled. She dealt with any sabotages thrown her way and served up three great dishes.

On Top Chef, chefs are given a meal theme and access to a grocery store and a budget. Frances floundered. She kept changing her mind, substituting ingredients, and doubting herself. She appeared to spend so long figuring how to start, she didn't have enough time to ensure it was a quality dish.

The sheer number of decisions that teachers have to make is astounding. What resources to use, which instructional strategies to use when, which is the right way to frame a question, how to best capture evidence of student learning through assessment, when to push, when to hold back. How to make content relevant for each and every child. If teachers start with the same standards - the grains of sand that make up the castle of a child's education - it is easier to share resources, it is easier to share lessons from experimentation, it's easier to focus on what matters. Kate, a math educator, made a similar point as a comment on Part 2. 

With a shared set of standards, teachers at least have a shared, specific starting point. When innovation happens, there's one less variable that has to be eliminated in order to figure out what made the innovation successful. With 50 sets of standards, the starting point is "Math" or "Science." Finland, a country held up as an example by some of the same people who cite the reasons at the top of this blog, has national standards. New Zealand, a personal favorite of mine in terms of culturally competent ed and quality assessment practices, has national standards. For me, this really goes back to the issue of 50 states or one country. Do we want innovation to stay locked at the state level or do we want it to go national?

*Most people tend to hate on the Common Core when it comes to "one set of standards." It's worth noting that the following content areas have national standards, and in some cases have had them for years:

Dance (as a form of expression)
Dance (as a physical activity)

Music

Media Art

Theater

Visual Arts

Physical Education

Health

Science

Social Studies

World Languages

Mathematics (From National Council of Teachers of Mathematics - foundation for CCSS-M)
Technology
Business Education
Computer Science
Supporting Gifted Learners
Supporting Students Learning English

The National Council of Teachers of English has their own philosophy set of standards around reading and writing English

Part 2: 50 States, 50 Sets of Standards v. One Country, One Set of Standards

Part 1 here.

As I suspected, I've been reframing my claim as I've been writing and reflecting. My original claim: One country with one set of learning standards helps reduce teachers' workload and frees up more time to talk about pedagogy.

Where I am today: One country with one set of learning standards helps reduce teachers' workload.*

How I got there: 

There is something delightfully powerful about being in a room when designers are sharing their creations - be it young scientists at a fair or teachers at a conference. I had the pleasure of facilitating a middle-level session during a recent TriState Performance Assessment Design Consortium conference. Teachers from three states shared tasks and assessments they'd designed as a part of a professional development program. Students also attended and participated in an eye-opening panel and were available for questions during a poster session. 

Teachers share. There have always been task, lesson, unit, and assessment warehouses. Teacher Pay Teachers didn't invent something new, they just monetized it. For decades, there was a teacher store in my area whose stock came entirely from retiring teachers or those leaving the profession. New teachers who bought the contents of a retiring teacher's filing cabinet could be fairly confident the materials were quality and would work in their school as they came from local teachers. The store closed at just about the same time as the internet became ubiquitous and sharing moved online. 

Now, when a teacher is looking for a task for a particular purpose, the process usually starts something like this:

1. google the term or concept or visit a favorite website
2. filter through search results to find something that looks interesting and applicable
3. review the selected task to figure out if it'll work in her state
4. revise the task as needed to make it work in her state, for her students, and with available resources

Teachers didn't need one set of standards to share lesson plans, units, or curriculum. One set of standards, though, makes it easier. At the PADI conference a 6th grade ELA teacher from NY could sit in on a session with an ELA teacher from CT and know that the task would align to her state standards. A teacher in a CC-adopting state can go to any number of websites:

• Achieve the Core
• AFT's Share my Lesson
• NY's EngageNY
• Better Lesson's collection
• and are many more

Rest assured, I'm fully aware of the counter-claims about this level of standardization. I've been told several times that the coding and organization of CCLS is about publishers and technology, not teaching. I'll leave it to those making that claim to defend it. I'm having a hard time seeing, though, how making it harder for teachers to share quality resources is a good thing.

*I'm working around to the idea that 50 versions of that one set is better than one identical set. Still mulling that over.

Part 3 here. 

Part 1: 50 States, 50 Sets of Standards v. One Country, One Set of Standards

It took a while to get around to it, but I listened to the Hamilton's Broadway album last month. I hesitate to say I joined the cult of Hamilton but I've no qualms claiming it's the single best musical every written. Ever. In the history of the world. Forever. And I'm not gonna waste my shot. Part of what makes Hamilton so compelling is the combination America's founders optimism with the personality, music, and lens of today. There's also the sheer adoration creator Lin-Manuel Miranda clearly has for the grand experiment that is America and our founders.

The musical 1776, to which Miranda pays homage during his show, had a revival when I was in my musical theater phase in high school and between these two shows, I often have snippets of songs pop into my head when discussions of American history come up. In both shows, disagreements between representatives from different states are made stark. Both stories go back to the concept of "these American states" and the reminder that we are living in one country comprised of 50 states.

Therein lies, I suspect, one of the issues at the heart of the Common Core debate. For the sake of this series, I'm setting aside arguments about compulsory education, sorting children by their birthdate into grades, or how we reduce learning to a number or symbol via grades. I want to wrestle with the question of if it's better to have one or 50 sets of outcomes for students.

Claim 1: 50 states, each developing their own sets of standards, helps empower the concept of states as laboratories of democracy.

Counterclaim: 50 states, with 50 states of standards, results in silos of innovation as a lack of a shared language makes it difficult to share resources.

Claim 2: One country with one set of learning standards helps reduce teachers' workload and frees up more time to talk about pedagogy.*

Counterclaim: One country with one set of standards isn't a problem. The problem is CCSS.

I'm Team Claim 2. In my first "series", I'm going to share the evidence that got me there and my thinking. Full confirmation bias confession: I haven't found any compelling evidence to support that claim that "50 states, 50 sets of standards" is better or worse than "one country, one set of standards." If you're an advocate of Claim 1, I'd love to hear how you got there and what evidence helped you make up your mind.

*I'm likely going to end up clarifying and re-wording Claim 2 as I write and reflect but the gist will remain the same.

Ready for Part 2? Have at it!

On Being A Non-Parental, Tax-Paying Educator

Real thing said to me on Twitter: "You don't have kids, do you?"

The first time someone came after me on social media about my parenting status during a discussion about a particular education issue, I laughed it off. The second time, I got angry. Like really angry. I think that particular exchange was what led to me being blocked in some quarters. The last time it happened, I just felt incredibly sad. The speaker picked up on something I said or didn't say and went for the jugular. I wasn't empathetic enough. I didn't communicate that I understood why she* was so angry. I wasn't able to convey in 140 characters that she was heard. That I recognized she was frustrated and angry and confused about the changes she was seeing. And because I didn't say what she wanted to hear, she came back at me in a way that was designed to hurt. Her anger doesn't excuse it. The topic doesn't make it ok.

Another real thing. Said several times: "You don't have skin in the game. You don't have kids."

I started working at a summer camp for students with special needs when I was 13. I have my BS in Elementary Education, my MEd in Special Education, all of a PhD in Special Education except for that whole dissertation thing. I've taught in several grades and levels. I have my permanent certification. I've taken courses in psychometrics, statistics, and test design. For the last 10 years, I've worked with teachers, schools, and districts around rubrics, quality assessment design, and assessment audits. I'm published in peer review journals, newsletters, and am working on two books related to quality assessment practices. I have to know how quality assessment works because schools and teachers ask me to help them design better ones. Understanding standards, tests, and assessments is mandatory for my chosen career. A career that I adore, am grateful for, thankful for, and cherish. tl;dr My skin is in it. It's literally my job to understand these issues.

Thing tweeted at me by someone who was, in fact, not my mother: "Once you have children, you'll understand."

Each time it's happened, I've been tweeting with a stranger. I don't recognize the face and I don't know the name. Had it been a familiar face, they would have known that I don't have children because I chose not to have children. My friends know I'm at this point in my life because this is where I wanted to be. If they knew me back in college, they likely remember that brief phase I went through where I announced to everyone that I was going to be child-free. It was a bit obnoxious but it was my truth then and it's my truth now. I become extra familiar with my gynecologist every five years and I live a quiet life with my husband and cats. If this post does wander past the eyeballs of those who've used that phrase in discussions, I'd ask them to consider the impact of those words on someone who isn't child-free, but is childless. Who wants to be a parent, but isn't or can't.

"If you had children, you would see why [Common Core, testing, etc. etc.] is a problem."

I can do my best to empathize. I can my best to understand that there are things about the system of public education that I cannot understand. I will never sit across from a teacher in the parent chair. This, however, does not mean I don't get a voice or am not allowed to disagree with parents. This does not mean that a parent's reading of an assessment is more "right" than my reading. It does not mean I have to say, "you're right. CCSS is forcing teachers to tell children that gay penguins are better parents than a mom and a dad." There are teachers, doctors, lawyers, psychologists, and others who work with children without being parents. Being a parent isn't a pre-requisite for understanding an issue or doing one's job. At the same time, I know parents who support the Common Core or saw no ill effects on their older children when they took the state tests and sent their younger kids to school on testing day without tears or teeth gnashing. Let's say, though, that the woman who said the quote above was right. Which group of parents should I, a non-parent, trust? What am I to infer around these issues when one group of parents opposes something another group of parents supports?

"Until [State Ed, the feds, the Governer] listens to parents, the opt-out movement will rise."

Despite the death of NCLB and the birth of ESSA, 3-8 testing remains. Students will still be taking federally-mandated ELA and Math tests. The Opt-Out conversation here in NY isn't over. It remains to be seen what it will take for white, suburban parents to opt back into the system, if the ESSA changes meet their demands. And make no mistake, I'm not saying parents shouldn't speak up or are inherently wrong. Rather, I'm wondering about what we mean by "public education" and to whom that system belongs to. Even if I wasn't immersed in assessment, I would still be a taxpayer who believes in a free quality liberal arts education for all children. What are the implications when one group of taxpayers is told their voice isn't worthy enough?

There's a distinct possibility that New York State is going to create a new set of standards, due in part to a backlash from parents about this thing called Common Core. When that happens, it will mean pulling apart and re-doing 3+ years of curriculum and assessment design. It will mean starting over with a new language and a new framework. And it will be exhausting and frustrating and put even more pressure on teachers. My fear is that it still won't make some parents happy. I'm fairly confident that it's going to keep us from, yet again, talking about the concept of "good schools" and the decisions parents make about moving into or out of certain districts.

I'm fairly confident that my right to participant in any of those conversations isn't dependent upon the status of my womb or a signature on adoption papers.

*It's always a female presenting Twitter user - based on avatar and name. Male-presenting avatars and names that offer a commentary on my comport speak about my tone or the way in which I approached them with a comment.

What We Mean by "Student Voice"

Like most human beings who communicate with other human beings, I have verbal/written tics. My speech and writing is often peppered with phrases like:

• my hunch is
• I suspect
• I wonder
• it's likely that
• patterns suggest
• invite
• consider

And make no mistake, it's not a fear of sharing my opinion, some shrinking violet syndrome, or passive aggressiveness. Rather, I'm working as hard as I can to engage in thoughtful discourse. I often fail. Miserably and in grand, ranty-fashion but, like most, I'm a work in progress. My speech pattern stems from an unwillingness to accept generalities or assume that an anecdote represents the whole. It will likely come as no surprise that I'm agnostic but then again, I'm a registered Democrat. See? #Fail.

Allow me to present the following: 

Claim: Policymakers must listen to students if they want to help schools get better faster.

Multiple texts expand on and support this idea:

• Source of claim
• Alex Wiggins wrote about shadowing a student
• Students have tried to change the law to get their voices heard.

Counterclaim: Students are as failable as adults and their voices needed to be treated as such.

This is an example of student voice near where I live. Pictures from WKBW:

In South Carolina, a white school security officer handled a black child so roughly, she was injured. The officer was fired. White and students of color protested his firing by walking out of school. 

Add to the challenge of these claims and counterclaims is the tension that we tend to listen to voices that say things we agree with (AKA confirmation bias.) A favorite data point of those in my district who wanted to keep the old mascot was a poll of the student population that said 95% of students were against changing the name. Listen to the students! they said. It's their school! They know what the want! Except what they wanted was to keep a name that is a racial slur. A few weeks ago, I listened as a young woman receive praise for her testimony at a recent Common Core hearing in which she presented multiple pieces of misinformation about how Regents exams are graded. After the hearing, she was surrounded by adults wearing STOP COMMON CORE and was told how brave, and truthful, she was.  

When it comes to the students in my district, I practice a fair amount of adultism. I look at those young faces holding those protest signs and I think, "oh... babies. You sweet children. You've so much to learn." But then, I read the words of Kiana Hernandez on testing and I think, "From the mouth of babes! You go, sweet child, you!" It seems fairly obvious to me that the first group of students is wrong and misguided. Given that, are there are other things students might be advocating for that are also misguided? This is the question that I tend to circle back to when I see people advocating for completely student-directed, self-guided curriculum. That's what I wondered as I watched that girl get praised by adults who agreed with the factually inaccurate thing she said. 

My hunch is that it's not so much about student voice as it is about lifting the voices that are often shouted over. My fear is that we elevate those voices we agree with and continue to ignore the younger voices speaking about their lived experiences. My hope is we adults are listening carefully to what students are saying, not just listening to see if we can use their words to further a particular claim.

Rusul Alrubail  wrote a great post on how blogging for self-reflection is over-rated. "It’s time," she says, "To make [blogging] a tool for empowerment and advocacy." I suspect the same holds true for elevated student voice and student advocacy. If the things students are saying or asking for isn't about empowering those who are disempowered or advocating for equity and equality, perhaps the goal should be education, rather than elevating. 

Recommended reading: This piece by Melinda Anderson explores recent patterns in student activism, primarily by students of color, that seems like the student voices we'd want to elevate - and learn from.

On Jargon

I'm working up the courage to start my own podcast. As a part of my brainstorming/courage building pre-work, I've been listening to podcasts at every possible opportunity. As it so often goes, listening to one leads to another and suddenly I'm binging on a podcast about medical history hosted by a doctor and her husband. It hits all my sweet spots with history, a feminist bent, and goofy humor, but the parts I cheer for the most are when Dr. McElroy, the host, busts out medical jargon - and then repeats herself using a more colloquial term. And she does it a lot. Almost every episode, she refers to the same thing using two different terms - the one the members of her profession use and one that her husband, a layperson as it were, would understand. In one episode, her husband scoffs at an especially complicated term and asks her why doctors don't just use the more common, less "doctor-y" term. You can almost hear her shrug as she says something to the effect of, "because we're doctors and that's what we call it."

Doctors and Nurses get the Physicians Desk Reference and the Stedman's Medical Dictionary.
Psychologists get the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V).
Lawyers get a government sanctioned Glossary of Legal Terms.
Teachers get the Googles.

And I'm being only mildly snarky. Consider the word "curriculum." There's no shortage of exasperated blog posts from educators explaining the flaws of the Common Core Curriculum or explaining why the Common Core Standards aren't a curriculum and it's wrong to suggest it is.

How about a word closer to my own heart? Almost daily, there's a tweet or post proclaiming the virtues of a great rubric. I click and pause. The tool being shared is indeed a great resource but it doesn't meet the criteria of a rubric. According to whom, one might ask. And it's a reasonable, frustrating question because it's 2015 and we don't have an official definition. Google the word's etymology and you'll get a brief history of red ink in manuscripts. We don't have an AMA or a Judicial Branch saying, "This word? It means this."

I've written before about the challenge of assessment literacy among educators. That challenge, though, extends past just assessment and runs deep into the heart of what it means to be a member of a profession. Education nomenclature is a messy, jumbled, chaotic process that is often dictated by publishers and vendors. (There's a reason most people refer to scanned answer keys as ScanTron.) How might things be different were there an official education lexicon? If teachers shifted as comfortably between the language of their field and more common terms non-teacher parents and community members could understand?

Different sources have attempted to make the final call.

• The Glossary of Ed Reform takes a stab at some common terms. 
• ASCD focuses on terms relevant to their publications. 
• EdWeek spent several days trying to define two words: "formative assessment"

Meanwhile, Diane Ravitch advocates for EdLingo BINGO as a way to deal with "the useless words that fill the air." Carol Dweck had to write a lengthy text explaining what "growth mindset" is and isn't. The tension between these two things would be amusing if we weren't talking about a profession. On the other hand, there are 3.5 million teachers in this country. Fewer than one million doctors. There are, though, 2.7 million nurses. Those two groups talk to each other in the same cryptic language that is inaccessible to a layperson.

What are the implications when a profession can't talk to each other? I could easily make the claim that teachers talk just fine to each other. It's when others take over the conversation that it gets muddled. If that were the case, I wouldn't be able to link to a teacher blog railing against the federally mandated Common Core Curriculum and one describing how she developed her own curriculum based on the Common Core Standards. Alas, I can. 

So what's the answer? Do we crowd-source a dictionary of education terms, using researchers in that field as a check and balance? Do nothing? Right now, I just get ranty when reporters call the 3-8 tests "exams" or I see a Likert Scale labeled "rubric." There isn't likely to be a voice from on high declaring the final word (pun intended) but in the meantime, in the absence of an official dictionary, consider this a call for more thoughtful word choice. A call which goes hand in hand with a need to consult the experts. Which is, as many like to proclaim, something we don't exactly have a handle on in education.

The Big Picture of High School Graduation Criteria

In American public high schools, students generally need three things to be considered done with a free public education.

1. Passing scores on exit exams
2. Sufficient course credits
3. Be at least 17 years old

Not all states use the same criteria for exit exams, credit hours, and date for aging out of compulsory education. I'm in NY so I use that as a reference point. Your mileage and experiences may vary. What also varies are the slow, small changes some districts and communities have been taking over time to shift away from these particular criteria, which was all the rage when the United States made the decision to educate all of its younger citizens, not just those who could pay tuition.

Exit Exams
For the majority of students in NY, a passing grade on Regents exams is needed in order to demonstrate they've learned what's expected. This idea of "what's expected" lies at the heart of the standards conversation - which is too big an issue for this particular post. Currently, students need to pass 4 or 5 exams, depending on which pathway they are on. NYSED is in the process of expanding the pathways to include an arts degree and revamping the Global Studies Exam with has kept many a student from graduating on time.

For a minority of students in NY, mastery of the standards is demonstrated via research papers, portfolios, and projects. The criteria for success on their work is determinded through a consortium that operates with the full consent of NYSED and its members are regular ol' public education schools. Anne Cook, the director, reports they have fewer students drop out than Regents-giving high schools and their students report being better prepared for college. The consortium is not new. It's been around since the late 90's and as public interest in alternatives to high stakes exams grows, media outlets are covering more and more schools across the country that are quietly looking to document this criteria in a non-exam based way.

Course Credits
For the majority of students in public education across the country, they have to earn a sufficient number of course credits to graduate. These Carnegie units [Yes, it got its name exactly how you think it got its name] are strictly time-based. A common joke when discussing the issue of course credits is to point out the part of the learner they measure; students get credits based on how long their butt was in the seat, not necessarily how well or much is learned. Typically, students aren't given credit for having sat in a particular seat unless they get a grade that reflects they did what the teacher expected while sitting in that seat AKA pass the course. The challenge of how we describe "passing" is at the heart of the anti-grade movement and likewise a separate issue from this post.

For a minority of students in public education, measurement shifts from time to mastery. As it is with all things in education, this approach has many names: Competency-based education (CBE), performance-based, mastery-based, etc. [For what it's worth, I'm fairly confident that it took a while for Carnegie to shake out as the name for time-based education and then it became the only name. So it goes in education nomenclature. This does a good job trying to define mastery-based learning] This approach is not new nor does it look the same everywhere. It was not invented by Gates, Pearson, or Rocketship. It's based on the basic philosophy held by any adult who has met more than one child: not all children develop in the same way or at the same pace. What is new is the attention it's getting - especially when a publisher or vendor relies on teaching machines (H/t Audrey Watters) to make learning personal. It's important to note - and the purpose for this post - this approach is no more representative of CBE than a pit bull is representative of the subspecies canis. 

Aging out of Compulsory Education
For the majority of students in the world, passage through public education is based on how many times they've gone around the sun. To paraphrase Sir Ken Robinson - they're organized based on their date of manufacturing. Parents debate enrolling a "young 5" or waiting until they're a "young 6." To put it more bluntly, the "staircase" many point to as a problem with the Common Core was built long before Common Core came along. It's merely a runner on those cement steps.

For a minority of students here in the states, some districts are shifting how they think about the concept of time and age. The Adams 50 School District in Colorado is one that moved away from a traditional concept of grades. Ira Socol writes a great deal about his district's approach to grouping. For others, the shift away from course credits forced a reconsideration of how students are grouped and graduate. New Hampshire has passed policies that allows local districts to determine if demonstrating competencies allows students to graduate "early."

States, districts, and schools have choices about how they handle the three components of exiting a free public education. To that end, we can make claims about each of them in turn. Some possible ones might include [and note, I'm not married to any of these, just taking my claim writing skills out for a walk]:

• Claim: Exit exams are the cheapest, most cost-effective way to ensure students have mastered the expected content.
• Counterclaim: Portfolio-based and performance-based exit tasks, though more costly, are worth it as they allow us to expand what it measured and how students demonstrate their learning.

• Claim: Traditional course credits are the most effective way of ensuring students get the full developmentally-appropriate liberal arts experience including group work, discussion, and review of previously learned content.
• Counterclaim: Competency-based learned shifts the focus from time-based measurement to actual student ability and allows for more varied, personalized engagement with the content. 

• Claim: A society needs to keep children in school until the age of 17 or 18 to develop their social and emotional skills, regardless of how much learning they're experiencing in school. 
• Counterclaim: By allowing students to exit out of school once they have mastered the outcome expectations for public education, students are free to pursue their own areas of interest. 

Looking forward to hearing your claim.

"Thanks for the feedback!" NYSED to NYS Educators

Edited on November 23 to add the NYSAPE Common Core Survey. 

For years, likely since the first day the website went up, there has been a "Teacher Participation Opportunities" link on the New York State Education Department's Office of State Assessment (OSA) website.

Following the link leads to a series of options available to NY teachers to participate in a variety of test design and assessment writing activities. These activities typically require sub coverage and travel to Albany, a 9-hour round trip and an overnight stay for those in the Southern Tier. Some are "once and done" work in which the teachers go to Albany, engage in a particular task, get a nice thank you letter, and not know what will become of their work until the test is published or the scores released. Some are extended projects in which teachers return multiple times to Albany or continue the work back at home. The biggest challenges of this approach to getting teacher feedback: 

•  teachers have to volunteer or be nominated,
• SED can filter who they bring to do the work, and
• the proceedings aren't public. 

This novel idea of involving NYS teachers in the design of the NYS tests and exams isn't new. Teachers in 1891 were asked their opinion on the exams.

At least as early as 1891, blanks for suggestions and criticisms "relative to the character and scope of the examinations" were shipped with each set of examination papers. These comments are tabulated and studied carefully.

So basically, teachers have been involved in the writing of the NYS tests and exams since pretty much the beginning. Opinions about if it's the *right* kind of feedback, if the *right* teachers are giving feedback, and what that feedback looks like in the modern area vary.

The feedback process around standards isn't nearly as long. The formal presence of standards didn't start until the 90's. Any NYS teacher of a certain age remembers the booklets with the 1996 standards, printed on really thin paper with different colored covers. Inside the front cover of each book was a list of the teachers who participated in their construction and anchoring. This is from the LOTE standards, the only ones that haven't been updated since 1996. 

When the time came to update the standards following the change in NYS law in 2007, Albany came to the field. In April 2008, I was at the Western NY forum and used this new thing called Twitter to share out what was happening. It's interesting to note that many of the things I tweeted, the things the teachers in the room were asking for, are a part of the Common Core design. But I digress. 

Shortly after the forums concluded, the committee wrote up their findings and began working on what are now called the "lost" standards by some advocates. I prefer the moniker the "paused" standards as NY stopped that work in order to be a part of a new initiative to create multi-state standards. "Common" standards, as it were. NYSED provides a timeline of those decisions here. Opinions about why New York made that decision, if the "paused" standards are better or worse than the CCSS, and what it means to have 50 states with 50 sets of standards area vary.

Which brings us to 2015 and NYS is again seeking out teacher feedback.

1. Want to comment on each specific Common Core Learning Standard? Commissioner Elia wants to know if the standard is acceptable, if it should be moved, changed, or re-worded.
2. Want to comment on the CCLS, tests, or APPR in general? Governor Cuomo and his task force are all ears. (It remains to be seen, though, how discrepancies between Elia's survey and Cuomo's task force will be resolved.)
3. Want to comment on the latest draft of the Science standards? The Science department at NYSED will open a survey on December 2. Draft standards are available now.
4. Want to comment on the proposed changes to the NYS Social Studies Regents? The look, design, and structure of the exams are open for feedback.
5. Want to be a part of writing NYS tests, assessments, and exams? The offer from them still stands. (Be sure to check dates though, some have closed for now.)
6. NYS Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE) created their own survey which touches upon testing, APPR, and the CCLS standards. It's unclear how these data will be used. 

In addition, updates from SED frequently appear on the agenda for events like Middle-Level Liaisons, DATAG,  Social Studies conferences, etc. It's a safe assumption that those SED personnel are talking to the teacher- and administrator-leaders of those organizations. So let it not be said NYSED in 2015 doesn't want your opinion. 

But as we know, that's only step 1. 

Lie back and think of England

There is a certain cognitive twitch that occurs only when one is writing a multiple choice question for poetry. It's a brain hiccup caused by the tension of doing something that shouldn't be done but has to be done.

Everyone in the room, myself included, knew the non-negotiables:

• goal was to write a common assessment
• it needed to include poetry
• it had to generate quantitative data (ergo, scanning MC questions versus hand scoring written responses)

It simply wasn't a viable option at that moment to switch gears completely to curriculum-embedded, performance tasks like some districts had done. Things had been negotiated. Compromises had been reached. So, there we were. Trying to find a poem that was equal parts complexity and simplicity.

As most teachers do, this group found a way through and used student choice, several different poems, and a focus on the CCSS Language standards to make it an assessment that would generate useful information without causing too many brain cramps. 

On my travels to my next adventure, I kept re-living the day. Why didn't we push back harder? Why didn't I advocate more vocally for a better assessment when asked to support this group of teachers? Did we capitulate because as a room full of white women, we were socialized to follow the rules? We did what was asked. We met the mandate while doing our very best to ensure quality assessment. No one left feeling like we would be imposing something unethical or unfair on the students but at the same time... a multiple choice question about poetry. Did we do the right thing?

In a twitter exchange on the theme of the thinking behind certain mandates, Peter Greene tweeted to me, "So just lie back and think of England?" Which, first, no. And second... no. (No time to click the link? The phrase is wrongly attributed as advice from Queen Victoria to her daughter-in-law about producing an heir but has come to represent a trope that women need to suffer through sex for the greater good. Here is where every real nerd will repeat, "The Greater Good.")

It would seem there are three ways to deal with policy mandates with which we disagree.

1. Refuse it. The Opt Out approach appears to be about changing policy by refusing to participate. It's not necessarily about finding a way through, it's about finding a way around. 
2. Be excused from it. New Hampshire's approach to annual testing is asking permission to come at it from a totally different direction. 
3. Find a way through it. Leveraging mandates to make the best of what's been asked.

I compulsively read everything I can on cognitive biases and how our brains are lazy by design. So I spend a lot of time while traveling trying to figure out the holes in my logic model. See - I'm okay with #3. I'm okay with schools looking at policy and saying, "Welp. This is silly. But, it's policy. How can we attend to this in a way that honors what we value and protects our students?" And then moving on. I don't see it as capitulation, but I suspect that's because I'm treating it as a narrow issue of assessment/curriculum design. 

Some authors like to compare the Opt Out movement to activities through history, especially during the Civil Rights era and each time I read one of those blog posts, I struggle against my instinct to reject them as hyperbole. In some cases, I've no problems connecting parts of a system (impact of cultural appropriation on the well-being of Native Americans) but here... (Opting Out of a state test as a gesture towards more equitable schools), I struggle. 

There is, I suspect, a great deal to be said about what it means to leverage mandates. It's a close cousin to "asking for forgiveness instead of permission" and lives in the narrow space between doing what is required and what is right. Is it a matter of changing of what we can? Or do I have a giant blind spot around the Opt Out movement? 

What exactly is "standardization" in assessment design?

I'm going to do my best to keep this really short and concise and write according to The Notorious RBG: 'Get it right, keep it tight.'"

Background:

Peter Greene made a claim that the correct number of standardized tests is zero.

I presented a counterclaim that standardization isn't the problem. 

Greene expanded on his claim to clarify his intentions around the tests. 

While reading Peter's updated claim, I realized that at no point was the phrase "standardized" actually defined. We both gave our opinions on what it means:

From Greene: 

"Standardized" when applied to a test can mean any or all (well, most) of the following: mass-produced, mass-administered, simultaneously mass-administered, objective, created by a third party, scored by a third party, reported to a third party, formative, summative, norm-referenced or criterion referenced.

From Me:

Welp, first, minus ten to me because I didn't state a definition, I asked questions that implied one. So to restate the intention of my questions. Standardized means doing the same thing for a group of students. The "thing" can be the nature of the task, the amount of time, the scoring criteria, or the directions to the students.

This is the quote from Peter that made me consult my bookcase and/or Google.

This broad palate of definitions means that conversations about standardized testing often run at cross-purposes. When Binis talks about the new performance assessment task piloting in NH, she thinks she's making a case for standardization, and I'm think that performance based assessment is pretty much the opposite of standardized testing.

I wasn't making a case for standardization, I was identifying an example in which a standardized process is used to develop a performance-based assessment. This may be switch-tracking (from The Hidden Brain Podcast - check it out. It's really cool!) by both of us but it remains that when we use the word or phrase, we've a different meaning in mind. So... to the Googles!

From Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing AKA "The Testing Standards" (This is basically the sourcebook for writing a quality measure of student learning), written by the AERA, APA, NCME, 2014

A test is a device or procedure in which a sample of an examinee's behavior in a specific domain is obtained and subsequently evaluated and scored by a standardized process. Tests differ on a number of dimensions... but in all cases, however, tests standardize the process by which test takers' responses to test materials are evaluated and scored. 

 According to the alpha and omega, a test by its very nature is standardized. Which makes the phrase "standardized test" redundant, it seems.

From the Code of Fair Testing Practices, which is a supplementary document for the Testing Standards.

The Code applies broadly to testing in education regardless of the mode of presentation, so it is relevant to conventional paper-and-pencil tests, computer-based tests, and performance tests.... Although the Code is not intended to cover tests prepared by teachers for use in their own classrooms, teachers are encouraged to use the guidelines to help improve their testing practices.

From Stanford's primer on performance-based assessments:

[Describing performance-based assessments] Teachers can get information and provide feedback to students as needed, something that traditional standardized tests cannot do.

.... in the early years of performance assessment in the United States, Vermont introduced a portfolio system in writing and mathematics that contained unique choices from each teacher’s class as well as some common pieces. Because of this variation, researchers found that teachers could not score the portfolios consistently enough to accurately compare schools. The key problem was the lack of standardization of the portfolios.

Here, the authors use standardized in two ways: first to refer to the multiple choice test we tend to picture when we hear "standardized test" and then to refer to the process of creating a uniform approach to scoring student writing samples.

From Handbook of Test Development, edited by Downing & Haladyna:

The test administration conditions - standard time limits, proctoring to ensure no irregularities, environmental conditions conducive to test taking, and so all - all seek to control extraneous variables in the experiment and make conditions uniform and identical for all examinees. Without adequate control of all relevant variables affecting test performance, it would be difficult to interpret examinee test scores uniformly and meaningfully. This is the essence of the validity issue for test administration.

Now, for the kicker. Why does any of this matter? Because of this - assessment literacy.  If you follow no other link from this post, please follow that one. Peter and I are reading the same book but we're not on the same page, as it were. He's a teacher, I'm out of the classroom, working with teachers around assessment design. This isn't an issue of "He's right and I'm wrong" or "I'm the expert, trust me." It's more compelling, instead, to consider the implications - and there are many of how we talk about testing and assessment. From teacher preparation, to academic writing, to communicating with parents and the public. I suspect, that until the profession agrees on a common glossary, we're going to keep nibbling at the edges.

Unintended Consequences of Making Standardized Tests the Enemy

President Obama's "2%" video has generated a number of claims, counterclaims, rants and praise. Larry Ferlazzo rounded up many of them if you're looking for texts that support your opinion or challenge it. There's a lot to be said about it and there's a text written basically for every possible counterclaim or supporting claim. My general take away vacillates between "meh" as unless Congress changes ESEA, state-wide annual tests will persist and yeah! let's talk about what healthy assessment systems look like! The challenge remains, though, around how to deal with mandates - to leverage them to support student learning, to ignore them, to advocate parents opt their children out to send a message, or door #4. Regardless, it's a deeply personal decision every educator, school, and district must make.

That, however, is not the issue at hand or why I dusted off my semi-irregular blog. I get ranty about semantics and I own it. It comes from a place of absolute adoration for the teaching profession. Since my first ed course in college, I've loved the hubris that comes with labeling, describing, and attempting to capture the unseeable. It's the place that made me comfortable as a young teacher to speak up when a teacher's aide referred to my students with special needs as "TMR." In her day, "Trainable Mentally Retarded" was an acceptable moniker for a certain type of student. I had the concept of people first language to fall back on and the rules of the framework to help me find the words to speak up and find a way through the awkwardness. 

It's the love for the language of teaching and learning that rears up occasionally and results in me offering unsolicited opinions. Before I offer up the claim I disagree with for semantical reasons, I'd like to lay out the evidence for my counter-claim.

Ever give the same test or task to a group of students?

Ever use an answer key to score students' test?

Ever ask students to hand in their work after a certain period of time?

Ever assign a grade on a scale of 0-100 with a pass/fail cutpoint (i.e. 65)?

If your answer to any of these questions is yes, then you've given a standardized test. 

Ever talk with other teachers to reach consensus around what quality work looks like?

Ever set aside examples of student work to refer to later as an example of a "good" paper?

Ever review a task to make sure it's fair, accessible to students with disabilities, free of bias?

If your answer is yes, then you've used standardization to help you do your job.

Peter Greene wrote a post in response to Obama's comment titled The Correct Number of Standardized Tests. His claim is that the correct number is zero. He says, "Students need standardized tests like a fish needs a bicycle." If that's the case, then it raises a whole slew of questions about grades, final exams, and what it means to fairly assess students. Meanwhile, the NYS Performance Consortium uses standardized processes. These teachers in NH are using standardized tests (which are actually performance tasks) to assess their students. And more to the point, when you ask Kiana Hernandez about standardized tests, she talks about those created by the state, her district, and her teachers.

I recognize that his point isn't about standardized tests per se but the large-scale once a year tests. However, he ends his post with "the number of necessary standardized tests is zero." I'm all about performance tasks, portfolios, and authentic assessment. I'm all about the maker movement and kids doing things in school that have meaning to them outside of school. I'm also all about the profession of teaching and having a robust public education system. I want there to be a standardized approach to how we collect large-scale evidence of learning in order to inform systemic decisions and policy. Right now, we're using multiple choice because they're easy, familiar, and faster than the alternative. Hopefully, we'll move to a system like what NH is cooking up where the tasks are embedded within the curriculum and assessment is a part of a learning, not an interruption. But even when we get there, there will still be a need for some degree of standardization. To suggest that standardization itself is a problem ... well, that's a whole nother case of worms about the purpose of public education and society.

The aide in my school way back when didn't mean my students were "trainable." She didn't think less of them, she was used to "TMR" and rattled it off as a placeholder for "the students with mild to moderate disabilities in the 15:1 math class but in a general education class for Science and Social Studies." I suspect Greene is using "standardized tests" as a placeholder for "the tests given once a year that cause an incredible amount of stress and do little to inform what happens in my classroom." I go back to the questions I asked in my semantics post: What's gained or lost by using or not using precise language? What does the profession gain or lose when using shorthand to refer to a given concept or idea? 

My CCLS Changes and Recommendations

Earlier today, NYSED released the link to the tool they're using to collect recommended changes to the Common Core Learning Standards. The CCLS are slightly different than the original CCSS in a few key ways: NYS added #11 to reading about literature, a handful of other standards around creativity, culture, and choice and one or two to the math standards.

The survey is clear about what it is and what it isn't. It's not a place to share general opinions about the giant ball of sticky wax referred to as "Common Core." It's a place to comment on individual standards. Each. Individual. Standard. Which, according to my Excel file, is 1115 literacy standards. I will be sharing feedback with SED based on my experiences around curriculum and assessment over the last four years. Some of my feedback will include:

* Creativity was added during the adoption process - in some grades, though, it appears under Reading Informational Texts and in others, it's in Speaking and Listening, some it's both. I'd advocate for putting them all under Speaking and Listening like it is in 12th grade.

* Cultural connections in Kindergarten and First Grade (RL.9a) is worded oddly. I suspect it's about inviting students to see connections between their own lives and the experiences of those in a book they're reading but it should be cleaned up and clarified to ensure alignment in curriculum design.

* The "seek to understand" standard has always been one of my favorites but like cultural connections, the wording seems a bit hastily. I've drafted a proposed re-write based on work from anti-racism/cultural competency educators.

* The study of dialects and accents appears only in 5th grade. Feels like a waste of an opportunity to invite students to engage with the English language and all its odd quirks. I have ideas for how to expand that into other grades.

* In some of the original CCSS, there's a sense of writing by committee that becomes clear when you've started at the standards many, many, many times during design sessions. Small things like a word being used in 3rd, dropped in 4th, but re-appears in 5th. Because that's the kind of person I am, I have a running list of those odd quirks and will be passing them along.

Those who advocate opting out of state tests have reported that, in order to opt back in, they want the standards to be fixed so they are developmentally and age-appropriate. Let's hope they pass along their feedback around what changes need to be made to ensure that happens.

Why I Remain Committed to Educational Measurement

Gene V. Glass's name appears dozens of times in my EndNotes library. I bought his latest book the day it came out and will slow my skim to a read when I see his name, or that of his colleague Audrey Amrein Beardsley in my RSS feed. Like many whose day job involves the messy world of assessment and curriculum, I respect his thinking and value his take on events. His recent decision to shift his title and focus out of educational measurement was likely not an easy one, but it was likely the inevitable next step in his journey.  He, more so than most, know the boondoogle that is trying to quantify learning and his voice against large-scale testing used for accountability purposes will hopefully be listened to by those who set policy.

His points, though, haven't influenced my commitment to educational measurement. When I begin working with a new group of teachers, I often share a part of my educational philosophy: I believe we can talk about, describe, evaluate, measure, and learn about student learning without using numbers. I believe assessment is at its best when it is indistinguishable from learning. 

This, I believe, is the next level of educational measurement and why I remain committed to the field. 

My EndNote entries that included Glass were from a time when I was studying classic test design, cut score setting, and tests designed to evaluate the system from 10,000 feet. When I got back to the 1-foot perspective and shifted to focus on assessments that are more learner-centered, dynamic, and useful to teachers and students, my citations switched to researchers like Linda Darling-Hammond, Grant Wiggins, Giselle Martin-Kniep, and others. It is my firm belief that through the efforts like New Hampshire's teacher designed accountability measures, NY's Performance Consortiuum, California's exit portfolios, we're learning from the authentic assessment experiences of the 90's and creating a new approach to measurement in which the walls between curriculum, assessment, and instruction are blurred or non-existent; that all that remains is the learning. Our job as curriculum writers, assessment designers, sages, guides, teachers, and/or facilitators to create the conditions for learning and then get out of the way. 

The video below was created to talk about measuring learning in moocs but I nearly stood up and applauded at the two minute mark when Gardner Campbell makes the important - albeit simple sounding point: Why is measuring learning so hard? It depends on what you mean by measuring.

Is Opting Out *REALLY* the only option?

If I can be so bold, may I beg your indulgence for committing the sin of telling, not showing as I begin this post? Unfortunately, I neglected to take a picture of the student’s work and will do my best to convey its awesomeness.

A few years ago, I was working with a group of middle-level teachers designing assessments to meet NYS’s teacher evaluation system. They had a fair amount of leeway around the assessments’ design but had a few non-negotiables:

·         There would be no new testing. Any tasks had to be embedded in the curriculum and be seen by students to be a writing task, not a writing test.

·         The task had to offer novelty to the students by asking them a compelling, interesting authentic question. This required an interdisciplinary approach.

·         The task had to align to the Common Core Learning Standards as well as the district goal of perseverance. So while we were focusing on the craft of writing, the task needed be an opportunity for students to work on a task until they were satisfied with it and see their growth.

The task itself was complex in its simplicity. Students were presented with the essential question, “Does setting influence character?” and two writing prompts. [During the initial discussion of the question, a Social Studies teacher pushed back, raising a concern that the question didn’t cross disciplines. That it was an ELA question and didn’t really fit into SS or into life outside of school. One teacher turned to him and with a lovely raised eyebrow asked, “Any concerns about your daughter going on Spring Break to Mexico with her friends?” The ensuing conversation really highlighted how powerful essential questions can be.]  In the beginning of the year, students were prompted to select any character from any text they wanted and place them in NYC on September 10, 2001 and then a second scene dated September 12, 2001. Students’ work was evaluated on their ability to construct a narrative (W.8.3) through dialogue (W.8.3b) and show a change in their character development based on the change in setting.

I’ll date this anecdote by sharing that in the first round of the task, we read a lot of scenes involving Edward, Bella, Jacob, and Ironman in NYC. Although the adults struggled with cognitive dissonance, the students created scenes that were complex, powerful, awkward, and lovely. They struggled with the idea of character beyond just the moveable widgets in their stories but as it was a key component of the curriculum, it was something that could be addressed during the year. After revising the student handouts, we worked to anchor the rubric, revised it as needed, and gave the students feedback using a developmental writing rubric. The teachers took the work and feedback back to their classrooms and used them as a part of regular instruction, giving the students the option of using it for a portfolio piece. [And by the way, we used the work to set SLO baseline scores and targets for teacher evaluation but that’s another post.]

Time passed and it was time to try out the post-assessment. By then, students had been studying American History for about six months. So, this time, they had to create two scenes, placing a character in Philadelphia on July 3, 1776 and July 5, 1776.  During the “try out” period in which the teacher-designers gave the task to one or two groups of students and brought their work back to the group for rubric anchoring, one of the participating teachers floated into the meeting room with a grin that nearly split her face.  “Wait. Until. You. See. These.” She laid out her student work and not unlike a group at a baby shower, we ooed and awed over the responses. One particular students’ work elicited the same response from every reader: Well… how about that. It captured the complexity of character, nuance around American independence, and that eagerly sought trait of voice. The student’s first scene began: I am not a patient man but I have no choice. The middle part of the scene involved the unnamed character doing a variety of chores and physical labor on a farm on the outside of the city and ended with the line: Only one thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-nine days until I can earn my freedom and be with my family. The second scene was virtually the same, there were a few small changes in details but the character’s routine was similar. The ending, though. Oh the ending. Only one thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-eight days until I earn my freedom and be with my family. What this student understood was that for the vast majority of people living in the country born between July 3 and July 5, 1776, little had changed. 

Our first task was to use that students’ scene to anchor the top level of the rubric (“The student’s narrative is unexpected, surprising, or otherwise reflects an approach to the prompt that does not follow a common structure.”) The teachers followed the same routine as before; the tasks and feedback went back to the students who revised them and considered them for their portfolios. In addition, this time, they compared their baseline writing to their newer pieces and reflected on their growth as a storyteller. About a month later, the students took the 2013 state assessments. It’s my understanding that the teachers are still doing these kinds of tasks and their students are taking the state assessments. Their “Opt Out” numbers didn’t make the news.

In response to a flurry of recent editorials about the Opt Out movement, Leonie Haimson and Jeanette Deutermann make the claim that “opting out is the only option.” I recognize that my own confirmation bias flared up when I read their first sentence using two of my trigger words: exam and failed. Setting that aside, I’m struggling with their claim. Should the students from the anecdote above have opted out? Did their parents do the wrong thing by not forcing them to opt out? I’m especially struggling with their last line: The Opt Outs will continue until real teaching and learning return to our classrooms. 

 There’s a part of me that takes umbrage on behalf of teachers who do incredible work to ensure that state tests are only a pause in that real learning. That don’t devote weeks to test prep and support students through challenging conversations. I also want to speak up on behalf of teachers who do devote weeks to test prep because the pressure they feel is so great, they feel they have no other option.

My counterclaim: Opting out is not the only option. What about the option of ensuring that the other 177 days of the year are full of amazing, incredible, powerful learning moments? What about the option of having open conversations about what test prep can be instead of buying yet another test prep book? What about using the science of our profession – as troubled as it may be – to push back against what are perceived as poor quality items? 

The thought that keeps rolling around in my head: Opt Out won. The mouse roared and the elephant blinked. Now what? 

Gee willikers, Mister! I never thought of that!

It's a common theme among those who are not fans of Common Core to use sarcasm and derision when talking about teachers who attribute a change in their practice to those same standards. (I weighed the pros and cons of linking to particular writers who practice this habit and decided no. It's about patterns, not personalities.) The refrain is usually:

Educator: As a result of Common Core, I started doing this.
Response: Scoff. You needed Common Core to do *that*? Why weren't you doing it before?

A recent article in the NYTimes about changes in the English classroom has received the same response. Only this time, the subject of the refrain is the reporter. Several teacher-bloggers took to their pages to share their disdain at the reporter's lack of understanding around English classrooms pre-CCSS and their opinion on her seemingly uninformed understanding of the travesty that the CCSS are.

It's a provocative writing device as it attempts to establish the author of the response as a voice of authority. A sort of a: *I* knew about this before so my opinion on the matter is more righter than yours. The drawback is the attempt to shame the educator or reporter who spoke about the change in practice. And shame is the really the best adjective as many of these posts imply that the only right thing that teacher can do is hide her head, apologize for not knowing about *that* and rescind all support for the CCSS.

When I read posts with that tone, I'm reminded of Ignaz Semmelweis. Well, not him personally, I had to Google his name, but of his work. Prior to Mr. Semmelweis, midwives and doctors would rotate between deliveries without washing their hands. Mothers were dying at high rates and it was seen as just one of the consequences of giving birth. So these medical professionals were doing the best they could with the information they had and along comes Ignaz and they discovered they needed to change something in their practice. They weren't bad before, they weren't uninformed. In fact, they likely thought they were doing everything in their power to keep the mothers alive.

There are two connections I see to the education profession. 

First, why the disdain? Why the condemnation of teachers who come forward to share how they've reflected and evolved? Going after individuals who share stories of how their practice has changed is a bit like claiming you've been washing your hands all along. It's possible some doctors were. It's possible some had Clean Room Level 4 birthing suites. At the same time, when the profession realized a change was needed, the doctors who didn't know about hand washing weren't bad doctors the day before the "wash your hands because ew..." staff meeting and then good doctors once they started washing their hands. One would think we'd want to elevate the voices of teachers who share their thinking, not shame them back into silence. More to point, it's possible some doctors never lost a mother or a child. To their thinking, they didn't need to wash their hands as their practices were just fine, thank you very much. To those teacher bloggers, good for you but why not dial up the pride in reflective practitioners and dial back the disdain?

The second, more important, issue is race and social justice in education. Mad props to #educolor for their work on the matter and for offering a place for educators to listen and learn. The conversations about race and social justice aren't always smooth. They're not easy and people are going to get it wrong. 80%-ish of educators are white women, many of whom were good students praised for being well-behaved and doing the "right" thing in school and speaking up takes an incredible amount of courage. To reveal a past mistake in pubic? Not easy for anyone - especially teachers that are in predominately white schools where students are most often introduced to Black Americans in the month of February or via the Social Studies curriculum and slavery. When teachers are getting scoffed and derided for sharing their thinking around pedagogy, what's the benefit to sharing their thinking about the really hard and important stuff?

Teachers are increasingly asking. "Here's where I'm struggling. Where am I stuck?" or sharing, "Here's what I'm trying now. It was hard to get here but I'm glad now that I'm here." It baffles me that anyone would respond in any way other than, "Thanks for sharing. That must have been hard. Can you tell me more about that?"This isn't about protecting delicate white lady feelings or otherwise suggesting teachers can't handle critiques. (I'll refrain from commenting on the patterns when some bloggers are offered critiques via Twitter.) It's about saying, "Dude. Don't be such a jackass." Or fine. Be a jackass but take a moment and consider what happens when that teacher Googles her name.