Oregon's Race to the Top application made the Oregonian again today. The article implied (and the subtitle mistakenly claimed) that teacher evaluations would be tied to student test results. Sounds reasonable. Merit pay. Pay for performance. Empty cliches. Attempts to frame an issue so that the outcome desired by certain parties will be the inevitable result of the application of 'common sense'.
One can only marvel at the claim any educators were involved in the development of the Race to the Top application. (And by educators I mean people who have spent significant time teaching. During the last 10 years.) The list of celebrity authors and endorsers in the Oregonian seemed mostly to be a roster of former Oregon Department of Education staffers who now work as administrators in Oregon districts, community activists, and business people. Oh, and an OEA representative, which sure gives weight to the revolutionary potential of the plan.
There is no doubt that these folks are good and virtuous public servants. Reading the Race to the Top application leaves little doubt of their dearth of experience on the teaching end of their bizarrely formulaic approach to education.
The number of ways in which they demonstrate a complete misunderstanding of how schools work is too much to cover in one post, so I'll stick to just a couple.
First is the idea that teachers can improve their teaching by studying data regarding their own classrooms. This is just nonsense. Teachers who are in the room with their students all day should not need to collect outside assessment data in order to know who is where, what's working and what's not. To suggest that their practice can be improved by use of better data is akin to saying that their knowledge of their students' names can be improved through the weekly publication of a new class list. If there are teachers whose practice can be improved through frequent outside assessments, those teachers will never be remotely effective.
Second is the notion that the Oregon assessments are an adequate basis for measuring progress. The usefulness of these assessments is an article of faith for the ODE types, but it is a false religion. The tests aren't that good. The results lack any real diagnostic value. And whatever else is the case, they are not necessary to school improvement. Why do I think so? Because the Oregon State assessments have never played a role in a single decision that Corbett has made in the last decade, and we have improved. Not only have the test data not informed instruction, but we hold it to be a matter of some urgency that the pursuit of higher passing rates in the lower grades not be allowed to interfere with the long-term success of our students. This is one reason that Corbett's 10th grade passing rates are often higher than the passing rates in the lower grades. We believe that stopping to maximize 3rd grade passing rates has a dampening effect on future achievement. (Evidence of this is the statewide trend that 10th grade passing rates are about 25% lower than 3rd grade rates. Corbett understanding of the assessments makes sense of this cold, hard fact. ODE's claims regarding the assessments fail to account for the pervasiveness of this pattern). We do take time to orient our 3rd graders to the test environment in order to reduce the stress on 8-and-9-year-olds, but we have never made a single adjustment to our teaching based on the results.
In most cases, it doesn't matter that the State of Oregon gets these things wrong. Always. But as the legislature is continually mislead into translating this impoverished educational theorizing into classroom mandates, the state has the potential to do real harm. Let's hope that they are never that effective.
Frankenstein's monster? Who's to say that his interpretation of Swan Lake, though it might lack a certain (optional) aesthetic quality, isn't a miracle of modern pedagogy? He can certainly approximate the movements (or at least the location) of a dancer, and if only we can quantify his progress in the various dance-strands and link his success to his teacher's salary, he'll doubtless be soaring in no time. And had we started 20 years ago, there is a very real chance that his improvement would have kept pace with Oregon's progress on the 10th grade math assessment.
Is it time for a new approach? Or will the next profoundly unsound federal incentive produce the same profoundly unsound response from Oregon. How long can we afford to insist that the monster can dance?
Monday, January 18, 2010
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Oregon's High School Ratings and RTTT
I love Oregon. Oregon is in my bones. I was born in Oregon City and have lived in three corners of the state. Every attempt to leave Oregon (even for years at a time) has somehow become a round-trip. But some things about Oregon make me crazy.
Oregon's approach to education is frequently annoying. Particularly in the last decade, we have seen a state with a long tradition of local control become (due largely to its dependence on federal grant dollars) focused on state-wide compliance to the exclusion of nearly every other consideration. And it's not just a matter of material compliance. The education community in Oregon seems to feel the need to adopt and BELIEVE the rhetoric of its federal sponsors. (It would be fun to do research on the coming and going of certain federal 'stock phrases' in Oregon publications...RTI, PBS, PLC's, Data-Driven-Decision-Making. My favorite has to be the rapidly evolving 'scientific'-'scientifically based'-'research based'-'evidence-based", all casting about for some magical guidance that will replace the judgments of practitioners with something more mechanically sound. The fact that the phrase has evolved so rapidly and so thoroughly should be a hint that there is something about the notion that doesn't hold up to scrutiny.)
One of the federal fashions that Oregon has adopted without reservation is high school bashing. I don't know that they mean to (as I observed, the Oregon institutions seem to need to believe the federal rhetoric, making much of their practice unreflective), but that's the habit.
Oregon's blind spot regarding high schools played out in an interesting way with its Race to the Top (RTTT!) application. The authors claim that Oregon has no Districts that are performing poorly, only individual schools. Nobody who is familiar with the results of state assessments and report cards will be surprised to know that the vast majority of 'failing' schools are high schools. But here is the blind spot: if a high school performs abysmally, is it reasonable to assume the every elementary and middle school feeding into it is somehow healthy? Is it likely that the high school is taking incoming freshmen who are fully prepared for the rigors of 9th grade and crushing them into failure in the 15 short months between entering high school and the administration the 10th grade assessments? Are those 15 months (three of which are vacation time) really undoing 9 years of successful schooling?
This is an unsustainable proposition. And yet ODE's official position seems to be that a district that has not one successful high school is somehow not a failing district. Is it really feasible that a high school is failing while all of its feeder schools are successful? My experience is other than that. 10th graders who fail to meet state benchmarks nearly always entered high school at a significant deficit. Adept 9th graders become, with rare exceptions, adept 10th graders and competent graduates. Exceptions are rare and typically have to do with personal trauma or other significant life events. To claim otherwise can only indicate a lack of experience with high school students.
Oregon's dilemma? The cold hard truth about schools is politically undesirable and won't win any competitive grant money from the feds.
The naked truth is that doing is good job at schooling is a difficult and tenuous undertaking. It is fraught with political temptations and pitfalls. There are no guarantees. And every attempt to make the enterprise more predictable, more efficient, more uniform, has failed. Utterly. And yet those who control the purse-strings feel the need to create the illusion of predictability, uniformity, standardization, and simple cause-effect relationships in order to justify even a bare subsistence level of funding.
So what do we do? Do we lie? Never! Unthinkable! What we tend to do instead is to adjust our beliefs in order to survive. We begin to BELIEVE those stock phrases and unexamined assumptions that will align our rhetoric to the language of the funding agencies. Does the use of technology in the classroom improve student achievement? Yes, Sir! Is PBS effective? You bet! Can RTI change the world? Give us 10 minutes! (and a grant!)
Here's another cold, hard truth. Every effort at school reform, teacher reform, principal reform, every implementation of new math, new science, computerized English, curriculum mapping, improved textbooks...every educational cure deployed over the past 50 years, has gotten us to where we are today. And today, according to the establishment, we are in crisis.
And if we are in trouble today, what could be less rational than to turn to the same people who have, for 50 years now, promised that the next reform, the next innovation is the real, real, real, real cure? And yet, what are we doing?
And what are the alternatives? Are there any? And if there are, is there any way to access them from inside the current system? The system? The System? Someone at ODE used be fond of saying that we don't want a K-12 school system, we want a system of K-12 schools. What they meant, I think, was that local communities should still get to decide on the decor in the staff room.
Oregon desperately needs more schools that are outside the System. There are a few, including some very good public schools in Eastern Oregon where teachers and students produce wonderful results and take solace in the fact that Salem is further away than is Boise! And for children whose parents have the means, the connections and the drive to access them, there are private schools. Some of these are quite good, others are decidedly not, but they do have the virtue of greater independence from a centralized (and largely paralyzed) bureaucracy. And there are charter schools. Again, some quite good, some not, but all operating with some insulation from the Powers That Be and therefor capable of course correction and innovation.
The Oregon system largely hates charters. Charters are unruly. They are non-standardized. Some are extremely successful (which is in violation of Oregon's egalitarian mandate). And while no charter school can ever remotely be said to cause a financial hardship for a district, the accusations of 'stealing', 'pirating', 'cannibalizing', and 'union busting' ring through the halls (including union halls) of power at the mention of Charters. In fact, all of the pretend-conflicts within the current near-monopoly give way to rousing choruses of 'We Shall Overcome' at the very mention of Charter Schools. Why is that? Change is scary. Charters are scary. Charters can fail. (When other public schools fail, we just continue propping them up across the decades, so that doesn't really count as failing in the minds of TPTB). Worse yet, Charter Schools might succeed? And what if a school succeeded where others had failed? Would that make it (gulp!) better? Unthinkable! And what if it succeeded without conforming to the guidance of this week's hot education guru? That would be a double indictment of the education industry.
There are many reasons to fear-hate charters. Money is not among them. I believe that money is a smokescreen for those much deeper fears that will never be named in a public meeting.
Oregon's schools have room to improve. Dramatically. And Oregon's High Schools can improve, but there are limits to what they can get done until the rest of the K-8 experience is much more fruitful. So long as Oregon continues passing out lollipops to elementary feeder schools while kicking the high schools for dropping the ball, not much is going to change except the name of the vendor who will profit from the next wave of reform.
I support the goal of holding high schools accountable. But high schools cannot be held fully accountable until K-8 education provides the conditions that make high school success thinkable. High Schools would never ask for a free pass or special favors, but a level playing field would be nice. And while Oregon's K-12 system is mired in old habits and clinging to old wine-skins, Charter Schools in the K-8 range are probably the best hope for Oregon's struggling high schools.
Wonk bonus: in a fit of uncontrollable inconsistency, Oregon has declared its intention to name a proportionate number of elementary, middle and high schools to be on the turnaround list. This is because they recognize that if they stick to the Oregon rating system, the vast majority of schools that would qualify would be high schools and virtually all elementary schools would be excluded! So some elementary schools will be targeted for extra support in spite of having higher ratings than some high schools that will, consequently, receive nothing! It's impossible to know (although I suppose it's researchable) whether this has the end result of steering more of the grant money to certain districts at the expense of others.
Oregon's approach to education is frequently annoying. Particularly in the last decade, we have seen a state with a long tradition of local control become (due largely to its dependence on federal grant dollars) focused on state-wide compliance to the exclusion of nearly every other consideration. And it's not just a matter of material compliance. The education community in Oregon seems to feel the need to adopt and BELIEVE the rhetoric of its federal sponsors. (It would be fun to do research on the coming and going of certain federal 'stock phrases' in Oregon publications...RTI, PBS, PLC's, Data-Driven-Decision-Making. My favorite has to be the rapidly evolving 'scientific'-'scientifically based'-'research based'-'evidence-based", all casting about for some magical guidance that will replace the judgments of practitioners with something more mechanically sound. The fact that the phrase has evolved so rapidly and so thoroughly should be a hint that there is something about the notion that doesn't hold up to scrutiny.)
One of the federal fashions that Oregon has adopted without reservation is high school bashing. I don't know that they mean to (as I observed, the Oregon institutions seem to need to believe the federal rhetoric, making much of their practice unreflective), but that's the habit.
Oregon's blind spot regarding high schools played out in an interesting way with its Race to the Top (RTTT!) application. The authors claim that Oregon has no Districts that are performing poorly, only individual schools. Nobody who is familiar with the results of state assessments and report cards will be surprised to know that the vast majority of 'failing' schools are high schools. But here is the blind spot: if a high school performs abysmally, is it reasonable to assume the every elementary and middle school feeding into it is somehow healthy? Is it likely that the high school is taking incoming freshmen who are fully prepared for the rigors of 9th grade and crushing them into failure in the 15 short months between entering high school and the administration the 10th grade assessments? Are those 15 months (three of which are vacation time) really undoing 9 years of successful schooling?
This is an unsustainable proposition. And yet ODE's official position seems to be that a district that has not one successful high school is somehow not a failing district. Is it really feasible that a high school is failing while all of its feeder schools are successful? My experience is other than that. 10th graders who fail to meet state benchmarks nearly always entered high school at a significant deficit. Adept 9th graders become, with rare exceptions, adept 10th graders and competent graduates. Exceptions are rare and typically have to do with personal trauma or other significant life events. To claim otherwise can only indicate a lack of experience with high school students.
Oregon's dilemma? The cold hard truth about schools is politically undesirable and won't win any competitive grant money from the feds.
The naked truth is that doing is good job at schooling is a difficult and tenuous undertaking. It is fraught with political temptations and pitfalls. There are no guarantees. And every attempt to make the enterprise more predictable, more efficient, more uniform, has failed. Utterly. And yet those who control the purse-strings feel the need to create the illusion of predictability, uniformity, standardization, and simple cause-effect relationships in order to justify even a bare subsistence level of funding.
So what do we do? Do we lie? Never! Unthinkable! What we tend to do instead is to adjust our beliefs in order to survive. We begin to BELIEVE those stock phrases and unexamined assumptions that will align our rhetoric to the language of the funding agencies. Does the use of technology in the classroom improve student achievement? Yes, Sir! Is PBS effective? You bet! Can RTI change the world? Give us 10 minutes! (and a grant!)
Here's another cold, hard truth. Every effort at school reform, teacher reform, principal reform, every implementation of new math, new science, computerized English, curriculum mapping, improved textbooks...every educational cure deployed over the past 50 years, has gotten us to where we are today. And today, according to the establishment, we are in crisis.
And if we are in trouble today, what could be less rational than to turn to the same people who have, for 50 years now, promised that the next reform, the next innovation is the real, real, real, real cure? And yet, what are we doing?
And what are the alternatives? Are there any? And if there are, is there any way to access them from inside the current system? The system? The System? Someone at ODE used be fond of saying that we don't want a K-12 school system, we want a system of K-12 schools. What they meant, I think, was that local communities should still get to decide on the decor in the staff room.
Oregon desperately needs more schools that are outside the System. There are a few, including some very good public schools in Eastern Oregon where teachers and students produce wonderful results and take solace in the fact that Salem is further away than is Boise! And for children whose parents have the means, the connections and the drive to access them, there are private schools. Some of these are quite good, others are decidedly not, but they do have the virtue of greater independence from a centralized (and largely paralyzed) bureaucracy. And there are charter schools. Again, some quite good, some not, but all operating with some insulation from the Powers That Be and therefor capable of course correction and innovation.
The Oregon system largely hates charters. Charters are unruly. They are non-standardized. Some are extremely successful (which is in violation of Oregon's egalitarian mandate). And while no charter school can ever remotely be said to cause a financial hardship for a district, the accusations of 'stealing', 'pirating', 'cannibalizing', and 'union busting' ring through the halls (including union halls) of power at the mention of Charters. In fact, all of the pretend-conflicts within the current near-monopoly give way to rousing choruses of 'We Shall Overcome' at the very mention of Charter Schools. Why is that? Change is scary. Charters are scary. Charters can fail. (When other public schools fail, we just continue propping them up across the decades, so that doesn't really count as failing in the minds of TPTB). Worse yet, Charter Schools might succeed? And what if a school succeeded where others had failed? Would that make it (gulp!) better? Unthinkable! And what if it succeeded without conforming to the guidance of this week's hot education guru? That would be a double indictment of the education industry.
There are many reasons to fear-hate charters. Money is not among them. I believe that money is a smokescreen for those much deeper fears that will never be named in a public meeting.
Oregon's schools have room to improve. Dramatically. And Oregon's High Schools can improve, but there are limits to what they can get done until the rest of the K-8 experience is much more fruitful. So long as Oregon continues passing out lollipops to elementary feeder schools while kicking the high schools for dropping the ball, not much is going to change except the name of the vendor who will profit from the next wave of reform.
I support the goal of holding high schools accountable. But high schools cannot be held fully accountable until K-8 education provides the conditions that make high school success thinkable. High Schools would never ask for a free pass or special favors, but a level playing field would be nice. And while Oregon's K-12 system is mired in old habits and clinging to old wine-skins, Charter Schools in the K-8 range are probably the best hope for Oregon's struggling high schools.
Wonk bonus: in a fit of uncontrollable inconsistency, Oregon has declared its intention to name a proportionate number of elementary, middle and high schools to be on the turnaround list. This is because they recognize that if they stick to the Oregon rating system, the vast majority of schools that would qualify would be high schools and virtually all elementary schools would be excluded! So some elementary schools will be targeted for extra support in spite of having higher ratings than some high schools that will, consequently, receive nothing! It's impossible to know (although I suppose it's researchable) whether this has the end result of steering more of the grant money to certain districts at the expense of others.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Darning (socks, of course) with Faint Praise
The Superintendent's Pipeline, which is issued by ODE over the state superintendent's byline, very nearly mentioned Corbett Schools in a positive light today. That is, it very nearly mentioned Corbett, but swerved at the last minute to avoid a collision with it's dominant policy.
The Pipeline, dated today, congratulates Oregon's 2009 Advanced Placement State Scholars, which is appreciated. Oregon should recognize excellence at every opportunity. The announcement loses some of its power when it misstates the criteria for the award, but points for effort.
The article continues with a brief advertisement for the AP program (which we adamantly support) and mentions Oregon's 50% growth over the past five years in Advanced Placement participation. Oregon is right to highlight this growth. Corbett's growth during that same period was about 4800%. (No, I didn't fall asleep with my finger on the zero key!) In fact Corbett, which educates about one-tenth of one percent of Oregon's students, made up 14% of the State's growth over that five year period.
So naturally the article went on to spotlight Reynolds High School in celebration of its new AP Program. I applaud Reynolds' efforts and they will reap tremendous benefits for their children and the families involved. We are encouraged by the good work of the staff and students there.
But it is a mystery to me (or I wish it was mysterious) how an article from the State that celebrates AP State Scholars (one of whom graduated from Corbett High School) and highlights the growth of the AP program statewide (Corbett's growth is unparalleled in the State and it's rate of participation has led the state for the past three years) manages to avoid the word C-O-R-B-E-T-T. Somewhere there is an envious contortionist who can only marvel and despair.
So yes, the title of this post was misleading. There was no faint praise. There was no mention whatsoever.
At least Lara will get a kick out of having gone from being a Corbett grad to being "Lara Dunton of Troutdale"...
The Pipeline, dated today, congratulates Oregon's 2009 Advanced Placement State Scholars, which is appreciated. Oregon should recognize excellence at every opportunity. The announcement loses some of its power when it misstates the criteria for the award, but points for effort.
The article continues with a brief advertisement for the AP program (which we adamantly support) and mentions Oregon's 50% growth over the past five years in Advanced Placement participation. Oregon is right to highlight this growth. Corbett's growth during that same period was about 4800%. (No, I didn't fall asleep with my finger on the zero key!) In fact Corbett, which educates about one-tenth of one percent of Oregon's students, made up 14% of the State's growth over that five year period.
So naturally the article went on to spotlight Reynolds High School in celebration of its new AP Program. I applaud Reynolds' efforts and they will reap tremendous benefits for their children and the families involved. We are encouraged by the good work of the staff and students there.
But it is a mystery to me (or I wish it was mysterious) how an article from the State that celebrates AP State Scholars (one of whom graduated from Corbett High School) and highlights the growth of the AP program statewide (Corbett's growth is unparalleled in the State and it's rate of participation has led the state for the past three years) manages to avoid the word C-O-R-B-E-T-T. Somewhere there is an envious contortionist who can only marvel and despair.
So yes, the title of this post was misleading. There was no faint praise. There was no mention whatsoever.
At least Lara will get a kick out of having gone from being a Corbett grad to being "Lara Dunton of Troutdale"...
Friday, January 1, 2010
Oregon's Race to The Tap
Education in Oregon has been fad-driven for the past several decades, and the Department's current response to the possibility of "Race to the Top" dollars signals a strong commitment to staying the course. Unfortunately, staying the course against the winds and waves of adversity is only a virtue if one is ON a course. Oregon has no basis for making any such assessment: no prize, no vision, no star by which the course might be judged true. Achievement in Oregon has been stalled out for at least a decade, leaving the deployment of the latest educational fads the 'last refuge' for those who have no vision, no educational goals, and have never so much as caught a glimpse of a navigationally useful star. Lacking any sense of direction to call its own, Oregon looks around to see what others are doing and tries inconspicuously to imitate them. Oregon seems strongly committed, in fact, to 'staying' a fad-driven, grant-addicted non-course.
The tricky thing about educational fads is that their marketeers get together, hold industry sales events (called state, regional and national conferences) and proffer their wares as 'Best Practices'. The temptation to do so must be overwhelming. There is nobody in the room to counter false claims made by salespeople, so they are able to prey on the uncertainty of their prospective clients (superintendents, board members, principals, teachers) and lure them with the promise of higher test scores, lower dropout rates, and brighter, whiter teeth! And with the constant onslaught of criticism of public education in the press, the legislative chambers, and the chambers of commerce, why wouldn't educators be vulnerable to false promises of relief?
Why not look at what others are doing? It's a perfectly reasonable strategy. How else would we ever know what 'Best Practice' is? What's the difference between pursuing 'Best Practice' and otherwise just following the crowd? 'Best Practice' would involve the adoption of practices that are getting results. Are we adopting our latest version of 'Best Practice' based on incontrovertible evidence that these practices have born fruit elsewhere? How have our last 10 attempts at imitating what was then touted as 'Best Practice' worked out for us? What has been the impact on student achievement? A state with a 30% high school dropout rate at the end of 20 years of 'continuous improvement' could do with some soul searching. But there's no time. The next grant opportunity is here. It's time to 'improve some' more. (Not that we ever stopped!)
The cornerstone of Oregon's improvement strategy seems to be "Proficiency Based" learning. It's a pretty radical idea. The premise is this: students today earn high school credit by sitting in chairs for 135 hours per year. This should change, and students should instead be required to demonstrate proficiency in order to earn credit. Wow. This claim is so flawed as to defy simple description. But here are some problems with it:
1. Oregon law today doesn't allow the withholding of a credit or the reduction of a grade based solely on lack of attendance. So seat time is not a legal requirement for earning credit. (Why ODE would seem not to know this is a mystery.)
2. Most high school dropouts report that their number one reason for leaving is that they got hopelessly behind in credits toward graduation. If those credits are based solely on seat time, then by what criteria did these young people fall behind?
3. Nobody in Oregon would dispute the fact that too many 9th graders enter high school unprepared for the rigors of secondary coursework. If all they have to do is sit for 135 hours in order to earn credit, what is it that they are unprepared to do?
4. The seat-time claim is a clear indictment of virtually every high school teacher in the State. The claim is that they do nothing beyond taking role and that they fail to appropriately instruct or assess their students.
5. The seat-time claim is a clear indictment of every high school principal, as principals have evidently not provided adequate supervision to teachers who are dispensing high school credit without assessing their students.
6. The reduction of a rich course of study (say, U.S. History) to a list of proficiencies demonstrates a lack of understanding of the discipline and a lack of experience in a good U.S. History course.
7. 'Proficiency' is another word for mediocrity. It is a drive for standardization, and so far, standardization has always resulted in the lowering of standards.
Are the proponents of credit by proficiency utterly disconnected from how high school really works, or are they disingenuous in their claims? Neither should inspire much confidence, and yet one seems clearly to be the case.
So it's another round of fads, another quest for grant dollars, and another deferral of improved achievement in Oregon schools. Improvement will, once again, be right around the next bend.
This is not a Race to the Top. It's a Race to the Tap. It's a Canter to the Kool-aide. Granted, we are thirsty. And after the next election we may be dehydrated. We still should take some care regarding what we are willing to drink.
Corbett Charter School will not be imbibing at the Tap.
The tricky thing about educational fads is that their marketeers get together, hold industry sales events (called state, regional and national conferences) and proffer their wares as 'Best Practices'. The temptation to do so must be overwhelming. There is nobody in the room to counter false claims made by salespeople, so they are able to prey on the uncertainty of their prospective clients (superintendents, board members, principals, teachers) and lure them with the promise of higher test scores, lower dropout rates, and brighter, whiter teeth! And with the constant onslaught of criticism of public education in the press, the legislative chambers, and the chambers of commerce, why wouldn't educators be vulnerable to false promises of relief?
Why not look at what others are doing? It's a perfectly reasonable strategy. How else would we ever know what 'Best Practice' is? What's the difference between pursuing 'Best Practice' and otherwise just following the crowd? 'Best Practice' would involve the adoption of practices that are getting results. Are we adopting our latest version of 'Best Practice' based on incontrovertible evidence that these practices have born fruit elsewhere? How have our last 10 attempts at imitating what was then touted as 'Best Practice' worked out for us? What has been the impact on student achievement? A state with a 30% high school dropout rate at the end of 20 years of 'continuous improvement' could do with some soul searching. But there's no time. The next grant opportunity is here. It's time to 'improve some' more. (Not that we ever stopped!)
The cornerstone of Oregon's improvement strategy seems to be "Proficiency Based" learning. It's a pretty radical idea. The premise is this: students today earn high school credit by sitting in chairs for 135 hours per year. This should change, and students should instead be required to demonstrate proficiency in order to earn credit. Wow. This claim is so flawed as to defy simple description. But here are some problems with it:
1. Oregon law today doesn't allow the withholding of a credit or the reduction of a grade based solely on lack of attendance. So seat time is not a legal requirement for earning credit. (Why ODE would seem not to know this is a mystery.)
2. Most high school dropouts report that their number one reason for leaving is that they got hopelessly behind in credits toward graduation. If those credits are based solely on seat time, then by what criteria did these young people fall behind?
3. Nobody in Oregon would dispute the fact that too many 9th graders enter high school unprepared for the rigors of secondary coursework. If all they have to do is sit for 135 hours in order to earn credit, what is it that they are unprepared to do?
4. The seat-time claim is a clear indictment of virtually every high school teacher in the State. The claim is that they do nothing beyond taking role and that they fail to appropriately instruct or assess their students.
5. The seat-time claim is a clear indictment of every high school principal, as principals have evidently not provided adequate supervision to teachers who are dispensing high school credit without assessing their students.
6. The reduction of a rich course of study (say, U.S. History) to a list of proficiencies demonstrates a lack of understanding of the discipline and a lack of experience in a good U.S. History course.
7. 'Proficiency' is another word for mediocrity. It is a drive for standardization, and so far, standardization has always resulted in the lowering of standards.
Are the proponents of credit by proficiency utterly disconnected from how high school really works, or are they disingenuous in their claims? Neither should inspire much confidence, and yet one seems clearly to be the case.
So it's another round of fads, another quest for grant dollars, and another deferral of improved achievement in Oregon schools. Improvement will, once again, be right around the next bend.
This is not a Race to the Top. It's a Race to the Tap. It's a Canter to the Kool-aide. Granted, we are thirsty. And after the next election we may be dehydrated. We still should take some care regarding what we are willing to drink.
Corbett Charter School will not be imbibing at the Tap.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Corbett's Advanced Placement Passing Rates
Corbett High School was ranked 8th in the nation by Newsweek Magazine in 2009 based on its rate of participation in the Advanced Placement program. This is a remarkable achievement, but with a caveat: what about the PASSING rates? It's the second question that comes up at every conference and presentation that we do.
So what about Corbett's passing rates? There are a number of ways to look at this question, but let's get away from the sweeping statements and look at specifics.
Last year Corbett had .12% of all of the students in the State of Oregon. So what would be a reasonable passing rate? It seems to me that we ought to have .12% of the passing scores in each subject in order to have 'our share'. So how did we show up, subject by subject? I'm going to create an index where if got .12% of Oregon's total passes in a subject, we call that a "1". "1" means we got our share. If we got .24% of all of the passing scores in the state, we get a "2". With me? (The reason for presenting this way is simple...it eliminates the need for everyone to pull out a calculator to deal with decimals and percent signs.
Let's start with an easy one. In Biology, Corbett students posted .6% of all of Oregon's passing scores. Divide that by Corbett's .12% of Oregon's student population, and you get an index score of "5". So Corbett passed 5 times its share of AP Biology Exams last year.
Here are some other indexed results:
Subject Index
Biology 5
Calculus (ab) 6.5
Calculus (bc) 22 (yes, really)
Statistics 27
Micro Economics 8
World History 48 (not a typo)
Chemistry 13
Physics 18
Psychology 16
English 19
Spanish 7
Studio Art 29
What's Corbett 'fair share' in each case? A score of 1. Did we really have 48 times our 'share' pass World History last year? Indeed we did.
Corbett's passing rates are not remarkable if one divides the number of exams passed by the number attempted. And while we have kids earning college credit, class by class, exam by exam, at anywhere from 5 to 50 times the rate of their peers around the state, I can't bring myself to care. We are in the business of learning what we can and creating exceptional opportunities for kids. Business is good.
So what about Corbett's passing rates? There are a number of ways to look at this question, but let's get away from the sweeping statements and look at specifics.
Last year Corbett had .12% of all of the students in the State of Oregon. So what would be a reasonable passing rate? It seems to me that we ought to have .12% of the passing scores in each subject in order to have 'our share'. So how did we show up, subject by subject? I'm going to create an index where if got .12% of Oregon's total passes in a subject, we call that a "1". "1" means we got our share. If we got .24% of all of the passing scores in the state, we get a "2". With me? (The reason for presenting this way is simple...it eliminates the need for everyone to pull out a calculator to deal with decimals and percent signs.
Let's start with an easy one. In Biology, Corbett students posted .6% of all of Oregon's passing scores. Divide that by Corbett's .12% of Oregon's student population, and you get an index score of "5". So Corbett passed 5 times its share of AP Biology Exams last year.
Here are some other indexed results:
Subject Index
Biology 5
Calculus (ab) 6.5
Calculus (bc) 22 (yes, really)
Statistics 27
Micro Economics 8
World History 48 (not a typo)
Chemistry 13
Physics 18
Psychology 16
English 19
Spanish 7
Studio Art 29
What's Corbett 'fair share' in each case? A score of 1. Did we really have 48 times our 'share' pass World History last year? Indeed we did.
Corbett's passing rates are not remarkable if one divides the number of exams passed by the number attempted. And while we have kids earning college credit, class by class, exam by exam, at anywhere from 5 to 50 times the rate of their peers around the state, I can't bring myself to care. We are in the business of learning what we can and creating exceptional opportunities for kids. Business is good.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
J.K. Rowling for State Superintendent of Schools?
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix includes a magnificent parody of the anti-intellectualism that gave rise, in this country, to No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. In the novel, the Ministry of Magic invades Hogwarts and attempts to convert it to a test prep mill in which students prepare to pass their OWL exams and avoid unnecessary distraction such as wands and magic. This in a school for wizards!
The parallel to schools in Oregon where attention to passing the OAKS exam threatens to eliminate any possibility of classroom magic is unmistakable.
Silly? Perhaps. Fun? Undeniably. Hogwarts is a school the likes of which would never be tolerated in the pubic sphere. Classes are taught by 'unqualified' teachers who are only expert practitioners in their fields of study. Instructors raise their voices. Sarcasm is freely administered. Classroom activities sometimes end in injury (which in public schools is allowable on the football field, where an ambulance is always standing by, but never in the instructional program) and there is no guarantee against utter failure.
All well and good, but what of the Ministry of Magic working to reduce schooling to a series of basic competency exams? Certainly there is no parallel in our dimension!
Is there really a movement so plodding, so pedantic, so life-denying in our own place and time? Absolutely! It goes by the name of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. It is the brainchild of the nations governors and the state superintendents of schools. Forty-eight states have signed on to date. Oregon included. Who signed on Oregon's behalf? Nobody that I know. Not anyone who knows a much about education, so far as I am aware. And yet we are somehow signed up!
Common Core State Standards! What can that mean? All fourth graders the nation should know and be able to do the same things on February 19th of each year? And how is this educational travesty to be promoted if not by a single, national test? Call it an OWL, and OAK, or whatever one wishes, it is a profoundly wrong-headed notion. It would be a wrong-headed notion if it could be achieved with the waving of a wand, with no investment of time or expense. But in the world of muggles, there will be no wand waving. Instead, we will waste millions of hours and dollars on a process at the end of which we will not have achieved any significant gains and we will be looking for the next silver bullet, magic bean, and scientifically-based miracle.
Let's be clear. Common standards do not make sense for two 9-year-olds sitting in the same classroom. They make less sense to two 9-year-olds living across town from one another. And common standards for all 9-year-olds in America (among whom the oldest are 364 days older than the youngest) is stupidity the likes of which can only be achieved on a grand scale.
Rowling is smart. She tells good stories. That all makes sense. But how does she understand so much more about education than do the high-profile policy-makers in our state and nation? What a strange turn of events when a writer of fantasy displays more educational insight in her sub-plot than the majority of educational thinkers have been able to put together with decades of conferences, summits, legislative edicts, and re-re-re-re-re-reforms?
We educators like to call what we do a profession. Yet we tend to be cowards when it comes to actually professing. We leave it to the Rowlings, the Tolkiens, the Mathesons of the world to say what really needs to be said about schools and schooling while we professionals stand guard over the safe, the stalwart, the polished forms that are too often empty of meaningful content.
We professionals need to find our voice. We need to profess. We need to demand that what we be allowed to do what we know. That what we do should be fun. We need to be a little more fanciful and a little less concerned with appearances. We need to teach more like coaches and coach more like teachers. We need to develop real, authentic relationships with our charges and bring extraordinary expertise to their intellectual lives. We need to read literature with an ambulance on the sidelines and play football with a poet's passion.
We should demand that what we do is fun. Serious fun. More fun than Bill and Ted or Ferris Bueler. More fun that Charlie Bartlett.
The obstacles are many and they are formidable. The State of Oregon. The Ministry of Magic. The U.S. Department of Education. Every professional organization that I am aware of. Public opinion, shaped by years of uniformed (to put the best face on it) reporting.
It appears that Superintendent Castillo may have competition in the next election. Election? Is that really how we want to choose a state superintendent? Do we really want which ever applicant can mount the best political campaign? Perhaps we should consider an alternative. Many states appoint a superintendent. Maybe it's worth considering. And J.K. Rowling might be worth a look.
The parallel to schools in Oregon where attention to passing the OAKS exam threatens to eliminate any possibility of classroom magic is unmistakable.
Silly? Perhaps. Fun? Undeniably. Hogwarts is a school the likes of which would never be tolerated in the pubic sphere. Classes are taught by 'unqualified' teachers who are only expert practitioners in their fields of study. Instructors raise their voices. Sarcasm is freely administered. Classroom activities sometimes end in injury (which in public schools is allowable on the football field, where an ambulance is always standing by, but never in the instructional program) and there is no guarantee against utter failure.
All well and good, but what of the Ministry of Magic working to reduce schooling to a series of basic competency exams? Certainly there is no parallel in our dimension!
Is there really a movement so plodding, so pedantic, so life-denying in our own place and time? Absolutely! It goes by the name of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. It is the brainchild of the nations governors and the state superintendents of schools. Forty-eight states have signed on to date. Oregon included. Who signed on Oregon's behalf? Nobody that I know. Not anyone who knows a much about education, so far as I am aware. And yet we are somehow signed up!
Common Core State Standards! What can that mean? All fourth graders the nation should know and be able to do the same things on February 19th of each year? And how is this educational travesty to be promoted if not by a single, national test? Call it an OWL, and OAK, or whatever one wishes, it is a profoundly wrong-headed notion. It would be a wrong-headed notion if it could be achieved with the waving of a wand, with no investment of time or expense. But in the world of muggles, there will be no wand waving. Instead, we will waste millions of hours and dollars on a process at the end of which we will not have achieved any significant gains and we will be looking for the next silver bullet, magic bean, and scientifically-based miracle.
Let's be clear. Common standards do not make sense for two 9-year-olds sitting in the same classroom. They make less sense to two 9-year-olds living across town from one another. And common standards for all 9-year-olds in America (among whom the oldest are 364 days older than the youngest) is stupidity the likes of which can only be achieved on a grand scale.
Rowling is smart. She tells good stories. That all makes sense. But how does she understand so much more about education than do the high-profile policy-makers in our state and nation? What a strange turn of events when a writer of fantasy displays more educational insight in her sub-plot than the majority of educational thinkers have been able to put together with decades of conferences, summits, legislative edicts, and re-re-re-re-re-reforms?
We educators like to call what we do a profession. Yet we tend to be cowards when it comes to actually professing. We leave it to the Rowlings, the Tolkiens, the Mathesons of the world to say what really needs to be said about schools and schooling while we professionals stand guard over the safe, the stalwart, the polished forms that are too often empty of meaningful content.
We professionals need to find our voice. We need to profess. We need to demand that what we be allowed to do what we know. That what we do should be fun. We need to be a little more fanciful and a little less concerned with appearances. We need to teach more like coaches and coach more like teachers. We need to develop real, authentic relationships with our charges and bring extraordinary expertise to their intellectual lives. We need to read literature with an ambulance on the sidelines and play football with a poet's passion.
We should demand that what we do is fun. Serious fun. More fun than Bill and Ted or Ferris Bueler. More fun that Charlie Bartlett.
The obstacles are many and they are formidable. The State of Oregon. The Ministry of Magic. The U.S. Department of Education. Every professional organization that I am aware of. Public opinion, shaped by years of uniformed (to put the best face on it) reporting.
It appears that Superintendent Castillo may have competition in the next election. Election? Is that really how we want to choose a state superintendent? Do we really want which ever applicant can mount the best political campaign? Perhaps we should consider an alternative. Many states appoint a superintendent. Maybe it's worth considering. And J.K. Rowling might be worth a look.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
The Virtue of Boasting
Newsweek ranked Corbett #8 in the nation last year. We have improved since then. A lot.
On a per pupil basis, Corbett passed 25% more exams than the next most prolific Oregon school. 40% of Corbett's graduating Class of 2009 earned AP Scholar status. Outrageous. Over one third of Corbett's 2009 AP Scholars were in 10th or 11th grade and are back in Corbett again this year!
Now, if these facts reflected achievement on the football field, no-one would think twice about our 'crowing' a little...after all, to win is good. But because they are ACADEMIC achievements, it is considered bad form for a school to 'brag'. Why is that, I wonder? And why is it that we ignore the prohibition?
Corbett is a small fish, but we don't live in a big pond. Rather, we are swimming up a large, swift river. The current against us is substantial, consisting as it does in the orthodoxy of both the various education agencies and the corporations that make their living by reducing the complexities of education to a 'simple, guaranteed' consumable.
Believing and behaving in ways that disregard Corbett's approach to education is literally a multi-million (and probably billion) dollar industry. Education consultants charge thousands of dollars per day to speak at conferences. Districts pay thousands of dollars per day to train teachers not to teach, but to study and interpret data. Federal programs literally prohibit the use of what we believe to be best practice regarding at-risk students. It is impossible to exaggerate the degree of contradiction between what we do and what a lucrative education industry insists must be the done. Why are they so insistent? Why don't they give credence what we do? Because if the majority of educators immulate us, there is little left to sell, little left to buy, little profit to be made.
This is not to say that we are utterly without fellow-travelers. We owe tremendous intellectual debts to remarkable thinkers. We enjoy the counsel of the best minds in the field. No exceptions. Who are these 'best minds'? Kieran Egan, Mem Fox, Frank Smith, Howard Gardner, Parker Palmer, David Solway, Deborah Meier, Nancy Atwell and countless others who have written about education from the 'inside' as well as from 'the outside'. (Others include Michael Polanyi, Northrop Frye, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Neil Postman).
Those who have read these writers will quickly realize that they are not all of one mind. They don't represent a 'school' of thought or a program. One of the things they have in common is perhaps best represented by Nancy Atwell's comment, in The Reading Zone, that she has discovered that she no longer has a 'program' to market!!! All of these 'friends of Corbett' are authors, and some are teachers as well. They all sell books. Many of them speak in public. But none of them sells a program that lends itself to traditional 'staff development' in which teachers are told where to stand, what to say, how to test, or how to interpret data. None of them has anything to say about preparing for the Oregon Assessments. They all have something to say about becoming educated, about preparing for an uncertain future.
This is all well and good, but still, is bragging appropriate? CORBETT'S RECORD OF ACHIEVEMENT IS ITS 'HALL PASS', ITS PERMISSION SLIP FOR ITS UNORTHODOX PRACTICE. WE PRODUCE BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE. IT BUYS US BREATHING ROOM.
It gives us an answer when we are asked, again and again, why we don't do things the way that other schools do.
And what do we brag about, really? What is it right and proper to brag about? Just this: Corbett might be the most fully democratic school in Oregon. Corbett offers to every student what is the exlusive domain of the 'elite' in other schools.
Unless an interdisciplinary team determines otherwise, every 9th grader in Corbett takes Advanced Placement Human Geography. Every 10th grader takes AP World History. By age 16, Corbett students have more experience with AP courses, and therefore with college-level expectations, than do 80 percent of Oregon graduates. After 10th grade comes the real fire. Two years of Advanced Placement English. Advanced Placement Government. Many students add one, two or even three AP Math classes. Many of the students pass multiple exams prior to graduation. In fact, Oregon's 2009 AP State Scholar (the student who passed more AP exams than any other 2009 graduate in the state) graduated from Corbett last year. But that's almost beside the point. We know that students who score a 2 (with 3 considered a 'passing' score)have a significant advantage in college over those who have not attempted an exam. Even that is beside the point.
The point is that we don't sort. We don't select or 'deselect'. We don't decide ahead-of-time who is 'good enough'. We offer opportunities to every student. More than that, we make beneficial demands of every student. We schedule them, support them with extra study halls specifically designed for promoting their success, and we pay for the exams. Students benefit differently, based mostly on how much they are willing to work. (That's another thing we do...we admit that some students work much, much harder than others).
So we brag. We are proud. Proud of our students and proud of the opportunities that we offer. It's what makes us different. It's what makes our work worth doing. It's what creates space for us to be outside the box but still inside the system.
On a per pupil basis, Corbett passed 25% more exams than the next most prolific Oregon school. 40% of Corbett's graduating Class of 2009 earned AP Scholar status. Outrageous. Over one third of Corbett's 2009 AP Scholars were in 10th or 11th grade and are back in Corbett again this year!
Now, if these facts reflected achievement on the football field, no-one would think twice about our 'crowing' a little...after all, to win is good. But because they are ACADEMIC achievements, it is considered bad form for a school to 'brag'. Why is that, I wonder? And why is it that we ignore the prohibition?
Corbett is a small fish, but we don't live in a big pond. Rather, we are swimming up a large, swift river. The current against us is substantial, consisting as it does in the orthodoxy of both the various education agencies and the corporations that make their living by reducing the complexities of education to a 'simple, guaranteed' consumable.
Believing and behaving in ways that disregard Corbett's approach to education is literally a multi-million (and probably billion) dollar industry. Education consultants charge thousands of dollars per day to speak at conferences. Districts pay thousands of dollars per day to train teachers not to teach, but to study and interpret data. Federal programs literally prohibit the use of what we believe to be best practice regarding at-risk students. It is impossible to exaggerate the degree of contradiction between what we do and what a lucrative education industry insists must be the done. Why are they so insistent? Why don't they give credence what we do? Because if the majority of educators immulate us, there is little left to sell, little left to buy, little profit to be made.
This is not to say that we are utterly without fellow-travelers. We owe tremendous intellectual debts to remarkable thinkers. We enjoy the counsel of the best minds in the field. No exceptions. Who are these 'best minds'? Kieran Egan, Mem Fox, Frank Smith, Howard Gardner, Parker Palmer, David Solway, Deborah Meier, Nancy Atwell and countless others who have written about education from the 'inside' as well as from 'the outside'. (Others include Michael Polanyi, Northrop Frye, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Neil Postman).
Those who have read these writers will quickly realize that they are not all of one mind. They don't represent a 'school' of thought or a program. One of the things they have in common is perhaps best represented by Nancy Atwell's comment, in The Reading Zone, that she has discovered that she no longer has a 'program' to market!!! All of these 'friends of Corbett' are authors, and some are teachers as well. They all sell books. Many of them speak in public. But none of them sells a program that lends itself to traditional 'staff development' in which teachers are told where to stand, what to say, how to test, or how to interpret data. None of them has anything to say about preparing for the Oregon Assessments. They all have something to say about becoming educated, about preparing for an uncertain future.
This is all well and good, but still, is bragging appropriate? CORBETT'S RECORD OF ACHIEVEMENT IS ITS 'HALL PASS', ITS PERMISSION SLIP FOR ITS UNORTHODOX PRACTICE. WE PRODUCE BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE. IT BUYS US BREATHING ROOM.
It gives us an answer when we are asked, again and again, why we don't do things the way that other schools do.
And what do we brag about, really? What is it right and proper to brag about? Just this: Corbett might be the most fully democratic school in Oregon. Corbett offers to every student what is the exlusive domain of the 'elite' in other schools.
Unless an interdisciplinary team determines otherwise, every 9th grader in Corbett takes Advanced Placement Human Geography. Every 10th grader takes AP World History. By age 16, Corbett students have more experience with AP courses, and therefore with college-level expectations, than do 80 percent of Oregon graduates. After 10th grade comes the real fire. Two years of Advanced Placement English. Advanced Placement Government. Many students add one, two or even three AP Math classes. Many of the students pass multiple exams prior to graduation. In fact, Oregon's 2009 AP State Scholar (the student who passed more AP exams than any other 2009 graduate in the state) graduated from Corbett last year. But that's almost beside the point. We know that students who score a 2 (with 3 considered a 'passing' score)have a significant advantage in college over those who have not attempted an exam. Even that is beside the point.
The point is that we don't sort. We don't select or 'deselect'. We don't decide ahead-of-time who is 'good enough'. We offer opportunities to every student. More than that, we make beneficial demands of every student. We schedule them, support them with extra study halls specifically designed for promoting their success, and we pay for the exams. Students benefit differently, based mostly on how much they are willing to work. (That's another thing we do...we admit that some students work much, much harder than others).
So we brag. We are proud. Proud of our students and proud of the opportunities that we offer. It's what makes us different. It's what makes our work worth doing. It's what creates space for us to be outside the box but still inside the system.
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