Back to school reveals that we need to refocus on what matters for success

This American Life episode of Back to School questions what really matters when it comes to helping students find success and looks at what teachers can truly be responsible for.  Host Ira Glass asks are we really measuring the right thing and takes a look at if test scores really matter or do they just tell us what we already know.

Not surprisingly what Glass uncovers is that when we focus on test scores not only are we focusing on the wrong thing, but we are completely missing the boat when it comes to helping our students succeed who need it most. Need translates into youth living in poverty who do not have support at home and are being raised in an unstable and chaotic setting. Glass looks at how poverty-related stress affects brain development and provides a birds eye view from the perspective of a teenager who had this experience growing up. 

Experts like Paul Tough, author of the new book How Children Succeed, economist James Heckman, and doctor Nadine Burke Harris discuss more effective ways to meet the needs of school children and it doesn't have anything to do with test prep or scores.  Instead of viewing students as data points what we need is to help young people with the development of non-cognitive skills like tenacity, resilience, and impulse control.  Tough discusses research that suggest these skills can be learned and points to the success of various programs that revolve around early interventions both in the home and in school. Economist James Heckman then discusses they ways in which this shift in emphasis could change the way we practice education and the way we think about learning.

This is an important program for all those accountability, high-stakes testing nuts to pay attention to.  If you know one of them, send them a link to this show.

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Don't Occupy Wall Street. Occupy Schools.

All these people are out there at the one year anniversary of occupying Wall Street as if this is the reason they don't have jobs. Poor kids were duped into blaming and blocking what consists of a lot of average Joes putting in their 60 hours a week just doing what they know how to make a living. These protesters aren't occupying the real culprit behind the unfair economic system that benefits the rich and corporations at the expense of the rest of us...our public schools.

There is a clear and widening disconnect between what is happening in public schools and what young people need for success in the world. The reality is our nation has been sold a bad bill of goods. 

The "drill, kill, bubble fill" culture that is being rewarded today does not produce a suitable candidate for employment in our post industrial world. Even if our youth all march through a one-size-fits-all K-12 curriculum and go onto college, little has been done to foster the ability of young people to discover a livelihood best suited to their unique strengths, talents, and passions.

This is because every single kid is grouped by date of manufacture and expected to meet the same learning goals at the same time and pop out the same way at the other end with little to no attention focused on customizing a program to unique individuals. 

Instead they're served up a similar ration of English Language Arts (where work is rarely written for publication), math (which is rarely connected to the real world), social studies (that is rarely tied to social activism), and science (that rarely considers the environment in which children live).

At the end of the K-12 tunnel every kid emerges supposedly ready for college and career, but rarely have they had a chance to spend time focusing on what it is that "they" are passionate about. Instead they focus on earning the magic carrot of a grade and diploma rewarded to students who are best at memorization, regurgitation, and compliance along with following orders that we all know often are not in the best interest of children.

This system is of course not the one reserved for the children of the rich / corporations or the policy makers and politicians who send their children to the elite private schools that serve up a very different course selection which John Taylor Gatto so eloquently explains here and in part one of this series of videos.

As educators like John Merrow, Linda Darling-Hammon, Deb Meier, Diane Ravitch and most all of those who work in public schools have been trying to express, our corporate and politician-driven testing industry is at the core of the problem. It drives this dumbed down curriculum and severely punishes school leaders, teachers, parents, and our students who don't comply by shutting them down, firing them, threatening them, and leaving them behind.

Occupy Wall Streeters:  It's time to change direction. Charge forth toward schools and focus on the root of the problem.  Our students and teachers need your energy and insights. Find out the testing schedule in your school or district. Occupy those schools. Start an opt out brigade with a people's wall around that school protecting our public school students and staff from being subjected to these ineffective measures. 

You have nothing to lose but those in our public schools have everything to gain.

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Transform education by measuring what matters. Hint: It's not test scores.

There’s been a lot of talk about the ethics behind corporations running schools and thus profiting off students. But if we’re really concerned about folks profiting off our kids why aren’t we spending more time focusing on assessment? If we do away with measuring success with test scores the result would be billions saved that could go toward resources and personnel dedicated to support students.

Let’s face it: Teachers know and parents are waking up to the fact that these tests are one of the most expensive and least effective ways to measure student or teacher success. So why are we willing to let the government and policymakers forcibly impose this corporate-driven assessment from companies like Pearson upon our children even if it makes them sick???

What if instead we measured success in things that really mattered to students, parents and teachers.  

For example...

Students have:

• A plan to find and develop their passion(s).
• A team of mentors, guidance, and/or advisors to help guide them in discovery and development of their passions.
• Customized success plans that they help design.
• Advisors who are deeply involved in and responsible for their lives and their success.
• An opportunity to learn about what they are interested in the world with real world experts.
• Reported they are satisfied with support they receive from the school.
• An authentic portfolio that can be used for career, academic, or civic pursuits.

Teachers and schools are measured by:

• Success is moving students along to
• Career
• College and/or
• Civic endeavors

that enable them to achieve their plans and goals for personal success.

Pie in the sky?
No.

The ability to do this, do it at scale, and report progress already exists.

Here’s how it works?

Primary Schools
For primary schools it works by incorporating the Schoolwide Enrichment Model and Total Talent Portfolio. In schools incorporating this model students and their teachers know they’ve got talent and they build upon students talents, interests, passions, ability and learning styles.  This method honors the idea that children are more than numbers and data. Instead they use Total Talent Portfolios to help them pursue engaging activities in areas of deep personal interest. The portfolio reveals that our children are unique individuals who are represented by much more than a number but instead what they have done with samples of real work and meaningful work that is not just handed in but worthy of the world. Visit this and this to see what this looks like in action..

Secondary Schools
See how this works for secondary students by checking out Dennis Littky and Elliot Washor’s Big Picture School model. As I reported earlier this year, these schools take on the responsibility of ensuring each student moves on to the college, career, or experience that aligns with their interests and goals and their teachers are evaluated on their ability to help make that happen.  

This is possible. It can be done. It is being done. It is the corporations that are getting in the way with infiltrating our schools with the multi-billion dollar testing industry that is good for politicians and good for business, but we all know this is not good for children and is robbing them of the very resources they need for success.

If we work to move the conversation to measuring success by meeting our student’s personal goals in college, career, and/or life experiences we accomplish these goals:

• Instead of teaching to the test we teach to the student.
• Billions of dollars are restored toward resources for students.
• Schools are held accountable, not for test scores, but for placement in what matters: college, career, and/or civic duty.

Here are three things we can do about this.

1. Demand this data from schools.
2. Opt out of tests.
• There is a group for doing so in every state on Facebook. Find it by searching “Opt out of standardized tests” followed by the name of your state.
3. Talk to politicians about alternatives.

Let's stop celebrating test scores and accepting the status quo. Our children deserve to be more than a number. They deserve more than to be prepared to be compliant little beings who memorize, regurgitate and fill in bubbles on demand..OR ELSE! Parents and teachers must stand up for what matters for our children. The evidence is not one-size-fits-all tests. Instead let's honoring and recognizing the personalized success plans that are unique to each child and prepare them to move on to the college, career, and/or civic experience that will help them achieve their goals.

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Here's what our standardized tests are really measuring. Shame!

Seth Godin does a great job of explaining why doing well on standardized tests does not a great nation make in this video.  

Listen as Godin explains how the founders of public school worked to preserve the interests of corporations (Andrew Carnegie) and government (Woodrow Wilson). Godin quickly outlines that to which those like John Taylor Gatto has devoted hundreds of pages. 

We needed public school for two reasons:

1) We were afraid we'd run out of good factory workers.

2) We were afraid we'd run out of folks who wanted to buy stuff.

So we created public schools to serve two purposes:

1) Train people to be compliant factory workers who were great at sitting in rows and following instructions.

2) We needed to teach people that if they wanted to fit in they needed to buy the stuff we told them to buy.

Our standardized tests measure our success in accomplishing these goals.

That's why people like Yong Zhao who heads Global Ed for University of Oregon explains countries like China are not proud when their students do well on these tests.  They know they kill innovation and creativity.  

Parents, teachers, administrators, do these test scores really make you proud?  If not, what will you do about it?

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Break the barriers of IEPs and test scores to bring music to the ears of ALL children

Editor's note: John Skelton shared with other parents and educators in The Opt Out of Tests New York group the actions he took to restore the ability of a student with an IEP to participate in music class. I'm sharing here in hopes that it will prove useful for others who want to do the same.

Guest post by John Skelton | Parent and Teacher

To put this story in the proper context, I must first tell you a few details. I teach orchestra at a public middle school about an hour north of New York City. Orchestra is a regularly-scheduled class during the school day, just as math, ELA, and other such subjects are.

Obviously, one difference about what I teach compared to something like math is that students choose to take my class. While that does mean that I don't need the compelling force of a governmental curriculum to motivate my students to learn, it also means that music, as a discipline, is treated as less important. You know..."just an elective" (as if choice were a bad thing).

This past year, I had a 6th grade violin player who was really quite advanced. I was expecting great things from him because he was easily one of the best players in the group. He studied privately. He performed conscientiously. He was eager to take part and show what he could do. However, he also had the misfortune of having an individual education plan (IEP) which required him to be in an academic intervention services (AIS) class for a specific number of hours. I first noticed this when, about two weeks into the school year, he stopped showing up at my class. When I asked him why, he showed me his schedule which had AIS where Orchestra used to be. He told me both he and his parents were none to happy about the change.

My first stop was to the guidance office. Surely, they could find a better alternative. Alas, they said they could not. There was no other period available for his 6th grade schedule. Furthermore, they were the first to inform me about "seat time" (the aspect of his IEP that said he had to have so many hours of services, etc.) Perhaps, they told me, I should talk to the teacher to see what steps I could take.

The teacher had no problem with a suggestion for compromise that I brought to her. (I told her that perhaps he could come to my class and her class alternately.) However, she said I should check with her lead teacher just to be sure. I happen to be on very good terms with this lead teacher (the head of our special education department in my building).

When I explained the situation, she got very upset that he was being put in this position. She told me something very valuable, which I am now paraphrasing:

An IEP is not supposed to deprive a student of opportunities. By federal law, all students are to have the ability to get an equal education. (It is possible that the school could have been sued for this, but I think it goes without saying that less severe measures should be explored first.)

The special education lead teacher told me to take three very important actions:

1) IEP ReviewTalk to the parents and tell them to call our school psychologist (who runs the CSE meetings) and request a review of the IEP. Parents have the most power to determine what services are provided and they need to exercise it when their children are being disenfranchised.

2) Inform relevant parties

Talk to the school psychologist and give her a heads up about a call from the parents. The school psychologist in this case wasn't doing anything wrong, so this was just as a courtesy. (She had no responsibility for the ineptness of the guidance department.)

3) Follow up

Follow up, follow up, follow up. I must have presented my compromise (alternating days) about a dozen times and checked on the status of the situation at least twice that much.

The verdict

The end result was a very informal solution, and as it turned out he was given a different AIS teacher later in the year who had no problem letting him out of class whenever I wanted him.

It would've been very easy, on the other hand, to have let this all just fall through the cracks. It's not like I didn't have an orchestra without him. As a teacher of an "elective" course, though, it has always been imperative to recognize that subjects like mine are far more important in the lives of some children than even math or ELA might be.

A note to teachers...

If you find yourself in a similar situation as a teacher, I urge you to always advocate for what's best for the student.

A note to parents...

If you're a parent in this kind of scenario, you should never allow the institution to take your power away from you.

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Help ensure "back to school" doesn't mean "back to tests."

Editor's note:  John Skelton shared with other parents in The Opt Out New York group the steps and documents he took to successfully opt his child out of tests. I'm publishing this article here in hopes that it will prove useful for others who want to do the same.

Guest post by John Skelton, parent & teacher

My daughter will be entering 3rd grade in the Fall. As an educator (I teach middle school music), I am well aware of the travesty that is state testing. In fact, not only do I see how harmful it is to education in general, I experience directly how much it destroys programs like mine that arguably are just as vital to the development of a child. So in June, I decided to contact my daughter's principal with the following email:

Hi Dr. XXXX,

I would like to schedule a meeting with you at your convenience to discuss my daughter, XXXX. She will be entering 3rd grade next year and I would like to opt her out of the high stakes standardized state tests that are administered at that grade level. I believe such tests are counterproductive to a quality education and lack validity as a measure of learning. On the other hand, I understand firsthand the position that educators are put in by testing mandates.

I'd appreciate the opportunity to discuss alternative assessments as well as the logistics involved in not having her sit for these tests. As this is for next May, I am in no immediate rush. However, since this is a complicated issue, I'd like to give ample time to consider the matter conscientiously.

Thank you so much!

I did end up sending a follow-up about a month later to which he responded with suggestions for meeting times. As advice to those who are looking to opt their children out, I need to stress three things at this point:

1) Conduct your discussion in person. It's okay to say why you want to meet, and in fact it's protocol to do so, but don't get into any conversation over email on the matter itself. Also, try to keep it low-key. If you don't trust an administrator, by all means get things in writing, but don't start off with a letter from your lawyer. Keep in mind that many administrators are caught off-guard by this kind of request. All they really want to do is keep their schools running smoothly and you need to show them that you're not going to drag the press in...unless that's what you need to do. :)

2) Be pleasant and civil. Don't make any assumptions on whether or not your child's administrator likes or hates these tests. Come prepared for a showdown, but don't rule out the possibility of an ally - MANY educators hate high-stakes testing. Make it about you and them against the tests. You're helping the educators too.

3) Do this all well in advance. Don't go in a week before the test and make your demands. No one denies that you have the same rights on testing day that you do now, but a little courtesy goes a long way.

When we met, he was very supportive and in agreement with me on testing. I did not have to explain my reasoning. I knew it would be a good conversation when he said, "I can't force someone to do something. Last thing I checked, it was a free country." He didn't even see a need for an alternative assessment. We'll be meeting again closer to September once he checks on a few things from his higher-ups.

I went in with four pieces of information:
1) The specific Supreme Court rulings recognizing a parent's rights to make educational decisions for their children,
2) The procedure for test refusal from the Student Information Reporting System (SIRS) where the score of 999 is entered,
3) The paragraph regarding AIS (which shows that the AIS score of 650 makes that a non-issue), and
4) A couple paragraphs from a NY Times article from April 16, 2012 where the Chief Records Officer in NYC said that portfolios would be an acceptable alternative.

I didn't need #1. I showed him #2 when he said he wasn't sure what the procedure was. (When I showed it to him, he accepted it without any difficulty.) I mentioned #3 only because he brought up AIS as a possible concern. Finally, I showed him #4 when he said he'd still need to check on how the opting out will play out.

________________________________

If you have any questions regarding my experience, please feel free to email John Skelton at jskelton440@gmail.com. There will also be updates posted on the "Opt Out of State Standardized Tests - New York" page.

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Doing Their Dirty Work

In 1991 after winning his third Teacher of the Year Award, John Taylor Gatto wrote a resignation letter which he submitted to the Wall Street Journal called, “I Quit, I Think” and left his job, stating that he was “no longer willing to hurt children.” More than two decades later and our teachers are still in a catch 22. They got into this field to help children but find themselves in a system that forces them to engage in practices that, like Gatto, they know are hurting children.  Below is a guest post from one such teacher who authors The Rural Teacher blog. 

Dirty Work by Steely Dan
Times are hard
You’re afraid to pay the fee
So you find yourself somebody
Who can do the job for free
When you need a bit of lovin’
Cause your man is out of town
That’s the time you get me runnin’
And you know I’ll be around

CHORUS:
I’m a fool to do your dirty work
Oh yeah
I don’t wanna do your dirty work
No more
I’m a fool to do your dirty work
Oh yeah


Light the candle
Put the lock upon the door
You have sent the maid home early
Like a thousand times before
Like the castle in its corner
In a medieval game
I foresee terrible trouble
And I stay here just the same


I will admit it – I am a FOOL.


I’m a fool because I keep doing “their” dirty work. I didn’t have a NY State Exam to give, but I really didn’t do much to stop it. Sure, I post and tweet and talk, but I haven’t quit teaching. I haven’t walked out. I didn’t stay home on May Day. I didn’t even convince one parent to ‘opt out’ their child. Just as Steely Dan says, “I foresee terrible trouble, and I stay here just the same.”


The current conditions for many public school teachers are depressing. There are the whispered conversations in darkened classrooms about the “tests”. There are the veteran teachers like me who worry about ‘making it’ to retirement without being found ‘ineffective’ and losing our jobs. There are the novice teachers who grew up being tested themselves and sort of ‘roll with it’. There are principals who are opposed to the testing personally but who feel obligated to ‘do their jobs’. We all just keep doing their dirty work.
This is not an indictment in which I’m going to say that we should all walk out and if we don’t we are complicit. 


Unless you are “on the ground,” I guess you really can’t understand the Catch 22 many of us feel that we live in. 

• We don’t WANT to do the “dirty work” of giving children flawed tests created by people who don’t know a thing about child development. 
• We don’t WANT to have our students reduced to numbers. 
• We WANT to TEACH!! 
• We WANT to have joyful classrooms where every child is valued as an individual and celebrated for their uniqueness.
• We WANT to be held accountable – in fact we are often are own worst critics – rethinking and rehashing lessons that weren’t all that great. We go home and our students come home with us in our heads. We think about them. We wonder what will happen to them when they leave us in June. We hope that they will be happy and successful.

Intertwined with all of what we want professionally is what we must do for our families. For many of us, there would be no health insurance for our own children if we walked away. We wouldn’t be able to keep roofs over their heads, food on their tables, or provide any support toward higher education or technical school or whatever they dream for themselves. So many of us cannot simply walk away – it would be financial suicide.


So, what are we to do? I don’t have the answers, that’s one thing I know for sure.

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Parent opts child out of field test and opts into meaningful learning

Opt Out of Field Tests

Students across the nation have been unnecessarily subjected to the most expensive and least effective assessments possible over the past few months...standardized tests. While in all cases this resulted in stolen instructional time, in many cases it was even worse and also resulted in students forced to take tests against parental will even if it meant emotional and  physical distress to the child.  


In many states the system isn't done stealing instructional time. They are now going into a round of field testing where they use children as involuntary subjects on which to experiment.  Parents should know that they DO NOT have to do this. They can opt their child out as New York City parent and teacher Veronica Vega is doing.  Below is her opt out letter which can be used as a model for other parents who value student learning.  


Dear Principal,


Please do not allow my child Steven Herrera Jr. in 5th grade to sit for any New York state field test in any subject the week of June 4-8.


My child has been subjected to excessive amounts of state standardized state testing this school year.  The tests in April consumed six days of 90 minutes each, in addition to the huge amount of time devoted to preparing for those tests.  It is unacceptable that even more valuable classroom time be allocated to state testing.  Furthermore, I object to my child being used as a guinea pig for a second time by Pearson and the State Education Department, especially as field test questions were already embedded in the April state tests, making my child a research subject for a for-profit corporation without my consent or permission.


It is my understanding that there will be no negative consequences for the school if children do not take these field tests, and make-up exams will not be given.  Therefore, I do not give permission for my child to take the June field test.


I would respectfully request that the school not give the test at all, and that all students benefit from a day of instruction rather than waste yet another day on test-taking.  If, however, the school does give the tests, I expect it to offer an alternative instructional activity for my child.


Sincerely 


Veronica Vega-Herrera


You can join parents across the nation who are opting their children out of tests and related activities in your local opt out group.  Find your states opt out group in two ways:1) Type in the search: Opt out of State Standardized Tests - Your State i.e. Opt Out of State Standardized Tests - Ohio2) Go to the page url: https://www.facebook.com/groups/OptOutYourState i.e.https://www.facebook.com/groups/OptOutOhio

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