The Board members explained to the press that the program
wasn’t helping the Lynnfield schools raise their "standards"–that
is, their scores on the new tough state tests. Sometimes equity and excellence
just don’t mix well. So sorry
The stories of Chicago and Lynnfield capture a dark side of the "standards-based
reform" movement in American education: the politically popular movement
to devise national or state-mandated standards for what all kids should know,
and high-stakes tests and sanctions to make sure they all know it. The stories
show how the appeal to standards can mask and make way for other agendas: punishing
kids, privatizing public education, giving up on equity.
not help to develop
young minds, contribute to a robust democratic life, or aid the most vulnerable
of our fellow citizens.
By shifting the locus of authority to outside bodies,
it undermines the capacity of schools to instruct by example in the qualities
of mind that schools in a democracy should be fostering in kids–responsibility
for one’s own ideas, tolerance for the ideas of others, and a capacity
to negotiate differences.
externally imposed expert judgment.
Standards-based reform systems
first, an
official document (sometimes called a framework) designed by experts in various
fields that describes what kids should know and be able to do
second, classroom curricula–commercial textbooks
and scripted programs
third, a set of assessment tools (tests) to measure whether children have achieved
the goals
fourth, a scheme of rewards and penalties
directed at schools and school systems, but ultimately at individual kids, who
fail to meet the standards as measured by the tests.
School administrators (and possibly teachers) are fired if schools
fail to reach particular goals after a given period of time, and kids are held
back in grade, sent to summer school, and finally refused diplomas if they don’t
meet the cut-off scores.
the tests are intended to
serve as the sole criteria for rating schools, for admission to public colleges,
and for as many other rewards and sanctions as busy state officials can devise.
an inch deep and a mile wide
embody a fundamentally misguided
approach to school reform.
Six basic assumptions
1. Goals:It is possible and desirable to agree on a single definition
of what constitutes a well-educated 18-year-old and demand that every school
be held to the same definition.
2. Authority: The task of defining "well-educated" is best
left to experts–educators, political officials, leaders from industry and
the major academic disciplines
3. Assessment: With a single definition in place, it will be possible
to measure and compare individuals and schools across communities–local,
state, national, international.
objective tests that provide a system of
uniform scores for all public, and if possible private, schools and districts.
Such scores should permit public comparisons
4. Enforcement: Sanctions, too, need to be standardized, thus removed
from local self-interested parties–including parents, teachers, and local
boards.
. Equity: Expert-designed standards, imposed through tests, are the
best way to achieve educational equity. While a uniform national system would
work best if all students had relatively equal resources, equity requires introducing
such a system as rapidly as possible regardless of disparities. It is especially
important for schools with scarcer resources to focus their work, concentrating
on the essentials. Standardization with remotely controlled sanctions thus offers
the best chance precisely for underfunded communities and schools, and for less
well-educated and less powerful families.
6. Effective Learning: Clear-cut expectations, accompanied by automatic
rewards and punishments, will produce greater effort, and effort–whether
induced by the desire for rewards, fear of punishment, or shame–is the
key to learning.
compassion requires us to stand firm, even in the face
of pain and failure in the early years.
standards-based reform movement took off in 1983
When teachers as well as students know what constitutes failure,
and also know the consequences of failure, a rational system of rewards and
punishments becomes an effective tool. Automatic penalties work for schooling
much as they do for crime and punishment: consistency and certainty are the
keys. For that reason
Nation At Risk–launched
an attack on dumb teachers, uncaring mothers, social promotion, and general
academic permissiveness. Teachers and a new group labeled "educationists"
were declared the main enemy, thus undermining their credibility, and setting
the stage for cutting them and their concerns out of the cure.
Two claims were thus made: that our once-great public system was no longer
performing well, and that its weaknesses were undermining America’s economy.
weak (see Richard Rothstein’s 1998 book, The Way
We Were?).
The constituents who originally coalesced around A Nation at Risk began
to argue that the fault lay either in the nature of public schooling itself
or in the excesses of local empowerment.
cure would have to combine more
competition from the private or semi-private sector and more rigorous control
by external experts who understood the demands of our economy and had the clout
to impose change. This latter viewpoint has dominated the standards-based reform
movement.
Now, fifteen years after analysts discovered the great crisis of American
education, the American economy is soaring, the productivity of our workforce
is probably tops in the world, and our system of advanced education is the envy
of the world.
Constructive debate about reform should begin
by acknowledging this misjudgment.
we have the lowest
voter turnout by far of any modern industrial country; we are exceptional for
the absence of responsible care for our most vulnerable citizens (we spend less
on child welfare–baby care, medical care, family leave–than almost
every competitor); we don’t come close to our competitors in income equity;
and our high rate of (and investment in) incarceration places us in a class
by ourselves.
acknowledge the absence of a sense of responsibility
for one’s community and of decency in personal relationships. An important
cause of this subtler crisis, I submit, is that the closer our youth come to
adulthood the less they belong to communities that include responsible adults,
and the more stuck they are in peer-only subcultures.
We’ve created two
parallel cultures, and it’s no wonder the ones on the grown-up side are
feeling angry at the way the ones on the other side live and act: apparently
foot-loose and fancy-free but in truth often lost, confused, and knit-together
for temporary self-protection. The consequences are critical for all our youngsters,
but obviously more severe–often disastrous–for those less identified
with the larger culture of success.
Our schools have grown too distant, too big, too standardized, too uniform,
too divorced from their communities, too alienating of young from old and old
from young. Few youngsters and few teachers have an opportunity to know each
other by more than name (if that); and schools are organized so as to make "knowing
each other" nearly impossible. In such settings it’s hard to teach
young people how to be responsible to others
until they are reconnected no list
of particular bits of knowledge will be of much use.
Because of the disconnection between the public and its schools, the power
to protect or support them now lies increasingly in the hands of public or private
bodies that have no immediate stake in the daily life of the students.
Site-based school
councils are increasingly the "in" thing, just as the scope of their
responsibility narrows.
expected to conform to the intelligence
of some central agency or expert authority.
The locus of authority in young
people’s lives has shifted away from the adults kids know well and who
know the kids well–at a cost.
The big trouble lies instead in the company our children
keep–or, more precisely, don’t keep. They no longer keep company with
us–the grown-ups they are about to become.
alternative
set of assumptions.
1. Goals: In a democracy, there are multiple, legitimate definitions
of "a good education" and "well-educated," and it is desirable
to acknowledge that plurality
2. Authority: In fundamental questions of education, experts should
be subservient to citizens.
need to see how responsible
adults handle disagreement
3. Assessment: Standardized tests are too simple and simple-minded for
high stakes assessment of children and schools.
based on multiple sources
public, constitutionally sound, and subject
to a variety of "second opinions" by experts
allowing schools maximum autonomy to demonstrate the ways they have reached
such norms through other forms of assessment.
4. Enforcement: Sanctions should remain in the hands of the local community,
to be determined by people who know the particulars of each child and each situation.
5. Equity: A more fair distribution of resources is the principal means
for achieving educational equity.
publicly accessible comparisons of educational achievement should always
include information regarding the relative resources that the families of students,
schools, and communities bring to the schooling enterprise
6. Effective Learning: Improved learning is best achieved by improving
teaching and learning relationships, by enlisting the energies of both teachers
and learners.
Human learning, to be efficient, effective, and long-lasting,
requires the engagement of learners on their own behalf, and rests on the relationships
that develop between schools and their communities, between teachers and their
students, and between the individual learner and what is to be learned.
human learning is less efficient when motivated by rewards and
punishments
in the absence of strong human relationships rigorous intellectual
training in the most fundamental academic subjects can’t flourish.
fear is a poor motivator,
estoring a greater balance of power
our hope lies in schools that are more personal, compelling, and attractive
than the internet or TV, where youngsters can keep company with interesting
and powerful adults, who are in turn in alliance with the students’ families
and local institutions.
the worst thing
we can do is to turn teachers and schools into the vehicles for implementing
externally- imposed standards.
less than 200 students ages five
to thirteen–so that the adults could meet regularly, take responsibility
for each others’ work, and argue over how best to get things right. Parents
join the staff
a
school-wide interdisciplinary curriculum
We invented our own standards–not out of whole cloth but with an eye to
what the world out there expects and what we deem valuable and important. And
we assessed them through the work the kids do and the commentary of others about
that work.
Our standards are intended to deepen and broaden young people’s
habits of mind, their craftsmanship, and their work habits.
a place that lives by the same
standards it sets for them
school itself can negotiate the needed compromises.
that these differences can be sources of valuable
education when the
most youngsters have a sufficiently deep hunger
for the relationships these schools offer them
the hunger for grown-up connections is strong enough
to make a difference, if we give it a chance.
But as Ted Sizer, who put the idea of standards
on the map in the early 1980s, also told us then: we need standards held by
real people who matter in the lives of our young.
anything public must be
all things to all constituents (characterless and mediocre by definition), and
from various elites who see teachers and private citizens as too dumb to engage
in making important decisions. That’s a heady list of resisters.
Americans invented the modern, standardized, norm-referenced test. Our
students have been taking more tests, more often, than any nation on the face
of the earth, and schools and districts have been going public with test scores
starting almost from the moment children enter school
public schools have been required to produce statements attesting
to their financial integrity–how they spend their money–at least as
rigorously as any business enterprise
In short, we have been awash in accountability and standardization for a very
long time. What we are missing is precisely the qualities that the last big
wave of reform was intended to respond to: teachers, kids, and families who
don’t know each other or each other’s work and don’t take responsibility
for it. We are missing communities built around their own articulated and public
standards and ready to show them off to others.
portfolios
examined
and in the case of high school students, judged) by tough internal
and external reviewers
oral exam.
The standards by which a student is judged are easily accessible
to families, clear to kids, and capable of being judged by other parties. In
addition such schools undergo school-wide external assessments which take into
account the quality of their curriculum, instruction, staff development, and
culture as well as the impact of the school on student’s future success
(in college, work, etc.).
What is
missing is balance–some power in the hands of those whose agenda is first
and foremost the feelings of particular kids, their particular families, their
perceived local values and needs. Without such balance my knowledge that holding
David over in third grade will not produce the desired effects is useless knowledge.
what kind serves us best. I believe standardization will make it harder
to hold people accountable and harder to develop sound and useful standards.
The intellectual demands of the 21st century, as well as the demands of democratic
life, are best met by preserving plural definitions of a good education, local
decision-making, and respect for ordinary human judgments.
There will
always be a party of order and a party of messiness.
two indispensable traits of a democratic society: a high degree
of tolerance for others, indeed genuine empathy for them, and a high degree
of tolerance for uncertainty, ambiguity, and puzzlement, indeed enjoyment of
them.
schools can make a difference, that they can alter the odds.
factory-like schools we invented
a century ago to handle the masses were bound to enlarge the gap. But trained
mindlessness at least fit the world of work so many young people were destined
for. We seem now to be reinventing a 21st century version of the factory-like
school–for the mindworkers of tomorrow.
teams need to research, reflect, implement, redesign,
background section for the facilitator
Rick DuFour
Linda-Darling Hammond, Karen Seashore Lewis
My action research
read it on the Web,
clear purpose and goal
we were the ones who generally had less opportunity for real input into policies and procedures that either allowed or threw up barriers to good teaching and learning.
The principal is the key
must understand the process
provide teachers with training and support.
personally offer appropriate feedback to teams on a regular basis, and allow teachers to be risk-takers.
about professional learning and growth
we teachers were the people who held the ultimate solutions
Setting norms
Sharing teaching ideas
examine research and articles on instruction to broaden their knowledge base, and work together to develop and collectively implement new strategies.
voluntary or mandatory.
provide the necessary help in terms of support structures and incentives.
up to 3 years for professional learning teams to become ingrained
the culture of the school begins to shift and teachers begin to support one another as professionals. In fact, team members begin to take responsibility for the success of each other as teachers.
no "one size fits all"
Imagine that you have freedom to design your school to operate anyway you want it to, and that you will be provided with sufficient resources do implement the design.• What will your teachers be doing from the time they walk in in the morning until the time they leave in the afternoon? • What would you (the principal) be doing during the school day?• How would you like the school day to be structured?• What types of meeting rooms, student learning rooms, laboratories, classrooms, and other space would you like to have in this school?• What clerical positions would be needed? What would clerical staff responsibilities be with respect to facilitating teaching and learning?
teachers focusing exclusively on teaching and learning during the school day. The principal also takes a leadership role in the instructional process and involves teachers in helping him/her make instructional decisions.
The school day is structured so that teachers have two hours a day to work together to address student strengths and weaknesses and improve instruction. Teachers have comfortable and relaxed surroundings in which to work together. They have access to technology and a high comfort level in using it. School firewalls have been altered so that students in the school can access and create wikis, blogs, social bookmarks, rss feeds, and other digital tools when useful for learning.
Students who consistently disrupt learning for other students in class are temporarily placed with a smaller group of similar students within the school where trained teachers work with them in academics and behavior modification.
hands-on learning, projects and problem-solving.
clerical staff to handle non-instructional paperwork, and non-teaching staff monitors students at lunch, during class changes, and at other times when students are not engaged in instructional activities. This frees up extra time for teachers to meet with parents, attend IEP meetings, and prepare for classes.
Teacher leadership is viewed as a necessary role in the school.