The Definition of Proficiency and, Ultimately, of
Education
Thursday, July 26, 2007
An entry, pretty insightful in many
ways, by Erin Richards in the July 21 Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel School Zone Blog brings up a
couple of interesting points, but I believe that
she has misunderstood the value of her
observations and misinterpreted the results.
After attending a session at the Hechinger
Institute on Education and the Media, she
writes, "In [Tony] Wagner's opinion, one problem
is that nobody agrees on what constitutes
'effective education.'" Yes, of course that's
true. Nobody agrees on what makes great music,
beautiful figure skating, or excellent marinara
sauce, either. (I know that in all cases
here--including Wagner's--the "nobody" part is
an exaggeration: of course there are groups of
people who agree that Beethoven is great. Let's
let that slide for the sake of discussion.)
For the most part, this lack of agreement is not a problem: it's a reality and in fact a strength. It's called "many ideas," "two heads are better than one, " or even the "D" word that so many conservatives loathe, "diversity." The current trend in education to test everything that breathes, best exemplified by the NCLB, runs directly counter to this, however. It's an attempt to remove this wonderful multiplicity of ideas and substitute for it a hegemony of ideas (actually, one idea). And to further exacerbate this, it's a hegemony of bad, even dangerous, ideas.
A few days later, in the same blog in the same newspaper, Alan J. Borsuk makes a very telling point: "What gets tested gets taught." He concludes from this, rightly, that "[s]chools are spending more time on reading and math [the two areas required to be tested by the NCLB]and less time on other subjects such as science, social studies and various kinds of arts, as a general trend." The intersection of these two ideas reveals the danger: if we all agree with Bush and Spellings and swallow the NCLB's wrong assumptions and bad policies, we damage American education.
For the NCLB assumes that the only things that matter are those that can be tested by mindless tests. Even the report from the Center on Education Policy, which occasions Borsuk's article, falls into the trap: The press release, kind of an executive summary, states, "[t]he weight of evidence indicates that state test scores in reading and mathematics have increased overall since No Child Left Behind was enacted." Of course they have increased! That's all that's being taught--how to pass these tests. What is happening here is that "proficiency" and "education" are being re-defined as "passing tests." It forces schools to concentrate on the meaningless--passing tests--rather than education, whatever it is. In fact, decrying the demise of other subjects such as social studies and science, the Center on Education Policy's report calls for more testing in these subjects. They just don't get it.
The impetus behind this reduction of education to tests of testable trivia comes from the belief in the value of objectification. It's akin to the difference in the Olympics between swimming and diving, or between speed skating and figure skating: swimming and speed skating are races, and excellence is determined by who wins, an assessment that can be objectively determined (and with modern technology, there can't even be any arguments in the case of races that are decided by .001 second and cannot be assessed by the eyes of observers).
But diving and figure skating are more iffy. While there are rubrics for the judges to follow and clear scales of performance to be applied, it comes down to the judges: experienced experts carefully who apply all their knowledge and skill and experience to determine a "winner." It's to some extent a subjective matter: identical performances by skaters or divers on different days with different judges very easily will give different results. And this is what drives the testers like Spellings crazy, this is what they can't handle: diversity.
Richards writes, "an 8-year-old knows that the only way she gets better at gymnastics is by watching videotapes of herself and listening to her coach's evaluation." Her use of a gymnastics example is felicitous: gymnastics is one of those judged sporting events, where proficiency cannot be unambiguously measured. This is a great model of education, a sort of No Gymnast Left Behind (Really!), if you will: you have experienced coaches [teachers]; you have an almost one-to-one educational situation, not 8 classes a day of 35 students each; you have the necessary equipment and supplies; you have careful and constant feedback [not one-time, high stakes tests] from the coach [teacher]; and the result of a poorly executed move is positive advice and feedback designed to help, not punish; the penalty for a mistake [such as failing to make Adequate Yearly Progress] is not immediate termination. Yet, in the Bushy education model we are supposed to agree on, what are these evaluations, tests, and assessments; and who are the coaches? Multiple choice tests of grammar and memorized word definitions pass for measures of writing proficiency. What is the value of this?
You have to be very careful of "education" reports that profess to show increases in "proficiency" when what they really show is that force-feeding our children a steady diet of test-taking strategies produces higher scores on a limited number of trivial tests. We don't all agree on what education is, but whatever education is, it's not this. NCLB stinks like rotten fish in a marinara sauce.
For the most part, this lack of agreement is not a problem: it's a reality and in fact a strength. It's called "many ideas," "two heads are better than one, " or even the "D" word that so many conservatives loathe, "diversity." The current trend in education to test everything that breathes, best exemplified by the NCLB, runs directly counter to this, however. It's an attempt to remove this wonderful multiplicity of ideas and substitute for it a hegemony of ideas (actually, one idea). And to further exacerbate this, it's a hegemony of bad, even dangerous, ideas.
A few days later, in the same blog in the same newspaper, Alan J. Borsuk makes a very telling point: "What gets tested gets taught." He concludes from this, rightly, that "[s]chools are spending more time on reading and math [the two areas required to be tested by the NCLB]and less time on other subjects such as science, social studies and various kinds of arts, as a general trend." The intersection of these two ideas reveals the danger: if we all agree with Bush and Spellings and swallow the NCLB's wrong assumptions and bad policies, we damage American education.
For the NCLB assumes that the only things that matter are those that can be tested by mindless tests. Even the report from the Center on Education Policy, which occasions Borsuk's article, falls into the trap: The press release, kind of an executive summary, states, "[t]he weight of evidence indicates that state test scores in reading and mathematics have increased overall since No Child Left Behind was enacted." Of course they have increased! That's all that's being taught--how to pass these tests. What is happening here is that "proficiency" and "education" are being re-defined as "passing tests." It forces schools to concentrate on the meaningless--passing tests--rather than education, whatever it is. In fact, decrying the demise of other subjects such as social studies and science, the Center on Education Policy's report calls for more testing in these subjects. They just don't get it.
The impetus behind this reduction of education to tests of testable trivia comes from the belief in the value of objectification. It's akin to the difference in the Olympics between swimming and diving, or between speed skating and figure skating: swimming and speed skating are races, and excellence is determined by who wins, an assessment that can be objectively determined (and with modern technology, there can't even be any arguments in the case of races that are decided by .001 second and cannot be assessed by the eyes of observers).
But diving and figure skating are more iffy. While there are rubrics for the judges to follow and clear scales of performance to be applied, it comes down to the judges: experienced experts carefully who apply all their knowledge and skill and experience to determine a "winner." It's to some extent a subjective matter: identical performances by skaters or divers on different days with different judges very easily will give different results. And this is what drives the testers like Spellings crazy, this is what they can't handle: diversity.
Richards writes, "an 8-year-old knows that the only way she gets better at gymnastics is by watching videotapes of herself and listening to her coach's evaluation." Her use of a gymnastics example is felicitous: gymnastics is one of those judged sporting events, where proficiency cannot be unambiguously measured. This is a great model of education, a sort of No Gymnast Left Behind (Really!), if you will: you have experienced coaches [teachers]; you have an almost one-to-one educational situation, not 8 classes a day of 35 students each; you have the necessary equipment and supplies; you have careful and constant feedback [not one-time, high stakes tests] from the coach [teacher]; and the result of a poorly executed move is positive advice and feedback designed to help, not punish; the penalty for a mistake [such as failing to make Adequate Yearly Progress] is not immediate termination. Yet, in the Bushy education model we are supposed to agree on, what are these evaluations, tests, and assessments; and who are the coaches? Multiple choice tests of grammar and memorized word definitions pass for measures of writing proficiency. What is the value of this?
You have to be very careful of "education" reports that profess to show increases in "proficiency" when what they really show is that force-feeding our children a steady diet of test-taking strategies produces higher scores on a limited number of trivial tests. We don't all agree on what education is, but whatever education is, it's not this. NCLB stinks like rotten fish in a marinara sauce.
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