Thursday, January 28, 2010

Data Driven Decision-Making?

Current educational literature contains few ideas that are so widespread or so damaging as "Data Driven Decision Making". (This phrase has recently displaced "Rigor, Relevance and Relationships" as the shibboleth of the neo-know-nothings who both create and profit from the state and national consensus regarding educational practice).

Because most preachers know very little about their own sacred texts, it is entertaining in the extreme to occasionally ask some unsuspecting proponent of DDDM what exactly is meant by the phrase. The typical response is a moment of shocked silence (surely everybody knows that!) followed by an disturbingly similar disclaimer (delivered with almost catechism-like exactitude): "Well, when we say data, we don't mean just numbers...we mean informal data, too, like the observations that teachers make in the classroom and all sorts of ordinary things..." Wait a minute! If when 'we' say 'data' 'we' don't really mean what everyone else means by that word, then why are 'we' using it? If what 'we' really mean is 'decisions driven by the immediate experience and judgment of each classroom teacher' then why don't 'we' just use those words? Well, that's just not what 'we' mean. Quite the opposite. What 'we' more often mean is a sort of slight of hand by means of which a teacher's direct knowledge and judgment regarding her students is discarded in favor of abstract data analysis.

And what is ironically called 'Professional Development' is in reality quite the opposite: training teachers to interpret data regarding their own students as though they had never actually met, never spoken, never shared a passion for learning, a love for the world or for each other. Training teachers, in fact, to distrust their own eyes, their own judgment. Training teachers to avoid risks, to avoid controversy, to play it safe.

What can ultimately be meant by 'Datadrivendecisionmaking' except the abdication of personal responsibility? If the decision was driven by data, then no other decision was possible. Nobody else, properly trained in a the proper conduct of Professional Learning Communities could have decided otherwise. If the results are disappointing, it's not anyone's fault. Nobody is responsible. The decision was not mine, after all, but was driven by the data. The decision was the result of technique and not judgment. And when (not if, but when) the results of this sort of manipulation are disastrous, it is the technique and not the decision-maker that needs refining, resulting in a need for new workshops, new trainings, new shibboleths, new profits for prophets.

Data Driven Decision Making is finally just another delay tactic. It will buy a few more years while its proponents claim that it's too early to judge the results. About the time that the results might be accessible, the next new thing will come along to replace it. The new innovation will require several years of implementation, of course, before its effects can be judged.

The Banishment of Professional Judgment

Much of current programming in education only makes sense if one begins with the assumption that most (if not all) teachers are below average. Sounds silly, I know. But a quick review of common practices makes sense of this claim.

The Standards Movement, to take the broadest example, assumes that teachers are incapable of guiding or evaluating the reading progress of a 9-year-old. It not only assumes that the teacher is not expert, it assumes that the teacher is so incapacitated that only an expensive, time-consuming commercial program can provide reliable instruction and that only an expensive and time-consuming outside assessment can provide real 'data' regarding a student. It further posits that the numbers generated by the test paint a better picture of a student than the teacher is capable of producing independently.

The 'Professional Learning Communities' movement, ironically enough, teaches teachers what to say to each other when they collaborate. It trains them to systematically sift through data for the purpose of replacing each teacher's independent judgment regarding their children (which would require competence) with a common approach. Thus, if students are posting an inappropriate number on a sub-strand of the outside assessment then the teachers ought to agree to a one-size-fits-all strategy for changing that number. The marvel of this movement is that it recruits teachers to collaborate in ridiculing the notion that any of them really know what they are doing! PROFESSIONAL Learning Communities?

Positive Behavior Support is a miracle of commercial packaging. Who could possibly be opposed to Positive Behavior Support? Only those who remember B.F. Skinner and his claim that promoting pro-social behavior is just a question of conditioning people to respond in certain ways to certain stimuli. For most PBS practitioners (who one has to believe have never heard of The Skinner Box) PBS is just a harmless network of bribes for good behavior. They don't even remember that the word 'positive' in this context means the introduction of a new stimulus to the situation and that it has nothing to do with warm and fuzzy feelings. Prizes for good behavior is all they know about the program. Fine. That should be enough. To take something so essential to human community (one's conduct around others) and to reduce it to an exercise in prize-grubbing is an insult to our children as well as to our teachers. It takes the virtue out of behaving well (because now good behavior is competition for a limited number of prizes) and it strips the teacher of her traditional role of a caring adult who models and encourages virtue. PBS replaces virtue with greed. It is cynical. And within the context of this discussion, it strips the teacher of any significant role in facilitating the development of virtue through daily interaction in the flow of teaching and learning.

I don't know how many letters of recommendation I have written for students, teachers and administrators. Whatever the number, I can say with some certainty that there is one adjective that I have never used to describe a prospective candidate for admission to college, scholarships, or employment. I have never described a candidate as "proficient". Proficiency is assumed. It is a minimum standard. To lay claim to it is to lay claim to mediocrity.

Credit by Proficiency obscures differences among students. It eliminates the achievement gap by limiting advanced achievement. If proficiency is the goal, then nobody needs to worry about being more than proficient. While giving the appearance of rigor, Credit by Proficiency promotes mediocrity.

If I could waive a magic wand and make every student in Corbett proficient readers, writers and mathematicians, I would not give it a moment's thought. No, thanks. Or maybe no thanks. No thanks at all. Why? Because proficiency is not a worthy goal for our kids (and not just because they are ours). Proficiency that is not won in the context of meaningful, life-impacting relationships with teachers (whether a favorite or a least favorite is beside the point)is largely useless. Most of the value of high school (where the credit by proficiency movement is growing) consists in the interactions between students and teachers and among students. To leave our high school with only proficiency in math and without the benefit of hours of time with our math teacher is to miss the whole point. Writing proficiency? Absent the encouragement and demands and expert guidance of our English teachers, the achievement of proficiency (measured, no doubt, by some standardized test) is hollow.

Education consists in relationships. Proficiencies, academic standards, social skills, all of these are only significant in the context of long months and years of mentoring. Mentoring requires skill. It hinges on judgment. Eliminate the professional judgment of those whom we have tasked with mentoring the next generation and there is nothing of value going on at school.

Standards, PLC's, PBS, RTI...if these reflect our beliefs and our aspirations regarding children, then it would be much more efficient to leave them at home with a computer and an online account. Data could be collected moment by moment, prescribed correctives could be delivered immediately, disruptive behavior would no longer disrupt (we could take lessons from game designers on how to reinforce desirable responses) and certificates of proficiency could be downloaded and printed off at the completion of each unit. Diplomas could be printed at birth and password protected pending the accumulation of the prescribed proficiencies. Letters of recommendation could be customized to each young graduate.

If we believe in the virtue and the efficacy of meeting together, of sharing more of ourselves than our proficiencies, of putting children in contact with magnificent adults, then why would we simultaneously employ practices that reflect a very different (and thoroughly cynical) view of the world? One explanation is that too many schools and school districts don't trust that they have gathered magnificent adults to mentor their children. So they compensate by preventing the adults from making important decisions, from exercising judgment, from evaluating their own work.

I am occasionally called 'cynical' for the swiftness and harshness with which I dismiss so many of the educational fads of the day. Quite the opposite in the case. Cynicism is the core value of these various fads, and my response is an emphatic rejection of cynicism. Every program cited here demonstrates a profound distrust of teachers. All offer a meager vision for our educational future. They betray a lack hope for our children. To reject them is not cynical. I am an unrepentant optimist. Were I not, I would be more polite to those in power whose cheerful cynicism causes immeasurable, ongoing harm to children and to the efforts of every good teacher within their spheres of influence.

If we can't find ways to let our great teachers be great, and if we instead impose on them those strictures that are designed to restrain the incompetent, then I fear that a self-fulfilling prophecy may result when great teachers refuse in ever greater numbers to participate in this folly.

We need to reassert the necessity and support the development of professional judgment in the work of teachers. We need to strip away every tendency to devalue or limit its exercise. That, or we will achieve standardization...and the standard will be mediocrity or worse.