Discipline, Education, and the Concept of Moral Hazard

The term "moral hazard" has been bandied about lately as a term of economics and the question of whether the government should be "bailing out" failing companies. As an economic term, "moral hazard" means the hazard that comes from insulating an entity form failure and the conseuqences of it. "Running the risk of moral hazard" is the idea that a risk we take in insulating others from failure is that they will never learn from their mistakes and may take as big or bigger risks in the future.

While the term has been used in economics, I think it is high time we apply it to the world of educational psychology. More directly, we educators should remain cognizant that every time we "keep students from failing" by artificially insulating them from the consequences of negative actions, we are ensuring that they do not learn from mistakes. In other words, if the best way to learn from mistakes is to realize that they are mistakes, then interfering with the experience of consequences of mistakes means interfering with the best feedback mechanism one has.

Many times in my career as a teacher have I argued this position and many times, unfortunately, I have lost the argument. In a previous post, I referred to one such incident: me and several other teachers brokered a deal with a senior in danger of failing that if he does x and y, we would see to it that he could pass. Repeatedly, he broke the deal. Repeatedly, the other teachers (without me) rebroekered the deal - all to ensure that he could pass despite having broken the agreement on which his success depended.

Many other times, I have seen the risk of moral hazard come into play when teachers explain rules and cosnequences to students only to, when push came to shove, chafe and allow students to break said rules without undergoing the consequences.

Why do we teachers allow and evene encourage such moral hazards to occur?

I believe that, just as in the current economic situation, it is hard to "hold the line" and enforce consequences when the consequences are severe. It is all well and good to say that companies that are irresponsible shall be allowed to go bankrupt, but it is painful to sit by and watch this happen. Thus, the government ends up caving in and taking the emotionally easy way out by not letting companies go under and people go unemployed.

In the same way, teachers allow such moral hazard becasue, as teachers, we generally do not like to hurt kids. We want to see kids happy, and we do not enjoy seeing kids fail. Unfortunately, we do not often realize that while this is a noble feeling, we often do more harm than good by protecting students form the consequences of their actions, and in the process, interfering with the feedback mechanism of natural consequences. She who places her hand on the stove and gets burned will not do it again. She who places her hand on the stove and is repeatedly saved from such an experience (by having their hand yanked away from the stove, etc) will never, or very slowly, learn that the stove burns. But as no one wishes to see a child get hurt, we protect them and unknowlingly slow down their learning process.

I have learned - and this will sound strange - to find a small (very small) bit of accomplishment in allowing students to fail of their own accord. I see it as a learning opportunity for the student. Of course, I don't actively want students to fail and do not try to make them fail; on the contrary, I want to do everything in my power to see them succeed SHORT OF PROTECTING THEM FROM DESERVED CONSEQUENCES. If this sounds strange, let me illustrate with an example.

One particular student of mine did just about everything wrong in the second and third marking period. He showed up late, talked back, did not do work, disrupted class, etc. I talked with him many times and warned him that he was heading for a failing grade. When his third quarter grade showed up as an "E," he did everyhing he could to try and convince me to change it...to no avail. I explained to him that that was the consequence of his actions and that if he wanted to avoid failing the class, he must improve in quarter four. I would not change his grade or offer him any special benefit of the doubt.

From then on, he has improved greatly. He has been much better in class and is now earning a "B." I tell him as frequently as I can that I am proud of his change in behavior, and when asked what accounts for this new and improved showing, he simply tells me that he knows that acting up will result in a failing grade.

So, there you have it. Fairness means helping children succeed while holding to the rules when they don't. The minute one allows the rules to be overlooked and protecting kids from consequences of their actions, one is running the same "moral hazard" risk the economists talk about: we run the risk of interfering with people's ability to learn from, and correct, their mistakes.

Is "African-American" a Valid Educational Category?: A Pragmatic View

Recently, a sparring match has surfaced between William Seletan and John McWhorter over whether test performance statistics should subcategorize by racial makeup. The hubbub is over a recent NYT article noting that No Child Left Behind is failing to close the black/white achievement gap. The question: why even keep score of such an arbitrary categorization of race?

Seleatan's point is that in the age of genetics, race is hardly the most pertinent or salient category. He writes that McWhorter is relying on an arbitrary categorizing when he:

[is] for airing "findings that shed less than positive light on black people." Not bad parents. Not people with low-performing kids. Black people.

McWhorter suspects that Seletan's motive is simply to put a hush on any statistic that might make black's look bad.

Just as that is antithetical to what getting past race is supposed to mean, we will not pretend that it's okay that black students don't read and do math as well as white kids in order to provide a way for people like William Saletan to demonstrate that they aren't racists.

To be honest, this is a hard discussion to think about and there are good and bad points made on all sides. But my pragmatic inclination is to say that what counts as a valid category is any category that has something pertinent to say (as measured by whether most people believe it does). By this pragmatic light, race is still a valid category (even if it is not a valid genetic category). We still - and especially black intellectuals - talk of black culture as somehow being seperate from white culture.

While my personal sympathies lie with Saletan - I really cannot see how different skin colors are valid educational subgroups) - my social symphaties lie with McWhorter. The very fact that we as a society are so obsessed with the "black/white achievement gap" (that does bear out statistically) means that there is something to subcategorizing educational statistics by racial groupings.

And I further agree with McWhorter that as long as we are talking about the black/white achievement gap, we should be divulging and publicizing statistics reporting on it, even if it makes one group look bad. And as a teacher, I will go even further to suggest that current statistics suggest that blacks DESERVE to look bad right now! Whether race is a valid genetic category, the statistics tell a story of a whole group of people going awry in many areas, such as criminality, educational performance, and single parenthood. I agree with McWhorter that to put rosy dressings on such statistics would do a disservice to the black community, who obviously needs to hear (and get angry at) such statistics.

So, I think it would be unfair for Seletan to win this argument if only for the fact that, in a pragmatic sense, we are a society that DOES see "racial makeup" as a valid social category. As long as we are talking about the "black/white achievement gap," and as long as such a gap is borne out statistically, refusing to break future stats down by race would be the equivalent to posing a question only to censor the answer. And as long as we are concerned with how blacks are performing as an academic group (no matter how loose that grouping is), I think it would be nothing short of pussyfooting not to let them (and others) see their dismal report card.

Why Don't Students Like School (A review of Willinham's fantastic new book)

A new book by cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham has come out entitled Why Don't Students LIke School? I am generally skeptical of books claiming to take the latest brain/mind research and apply it to education primarily because of the "brain based ways of learning" fad promulgated by motivational speaker Eric Jensen (and preached unquestionably in professional developments). I picked this kone up, though, primarily due to a blurb on the back of the book by education theorist ED Hirsch, who I very strongly admire. Surely, any book Hirsch reccomends is at least worth a shot.

I was right. This book is fabulous in its 'back to basics' approach. Willingham's main point seems to be that the best way to increase a child's ability is repitition, repitition, repitition. By increasing the number of facts a child can recall automatically, one increases the amount of 'free space' a child has available to think. [ex.: (3+4) - (2-1) is a lot easier when one can recall the math facts automatically.]

Anyway, I strongly, strongly reccomend this book to all concerned with education theory. I hope this book gets used within the schools, but suspect that Jensen will be the continued drug of choice, as his theory manages, unlike Willinham's, to confirm all the constructivist impulses that educators have been in love with for the last 20 years.

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If you are a teacher, like myself, you have doubtless been inundated by advice about teaching to multiple intelligences, active (rather than passive) learning, teaching students to think rather than memorize facts, etc. If so, then you can't afford to pass up this book, which will provide a very helpful guide as to why some of these well-intentioned ideas are wrong, and what it means for you as a teacher.

Dan Willingham's Why Don't Students Like School? is a book applying findings of cognitive psychology to the world of education. Sound a lot like Eric Jensen and his wildly popular book Teaching With the Brain in Mind? Well, unlike Jensen - who educators hear a lot about - Willingham is a PhD in cognitive psychology (while Jensen, who has a bachelors in English, is "working towards" a PhD from an online university, while making his real living as a motivational speaker). Long and short: Willingham is the real deal and I move to suggest that this book infinitely deserves more popularity amongst educators than anything Jensen has written.

Willingham's basic theme is that, despite everything you've heard, nothing works to increase student ability like factual learning and practice. In fact, one of his first ideas is to point out that what seperates the excellent student (or adult) from those performing less well is their ability to recall facts. The more facts you know about your subject, the more you can understand your subject because of significantly less energy spent on fact recall or retention. With facts learned to automaticity, more time can be spent on higher-order concept learning, and once that becomes automatic....etc.

While that may sound mundane, think of how many times you as a teacher have heard the idea of "rote memorization" and "regurgitation of fact" denegrated. Of course, Willingham is not advocating the strawman position that teachers do nothing but drill, drill, drill and enforce memorization of text passages. (No one actually holds that position!) What he reminds us, though, is that the critical thinking we hear so much about teaching our kids simply CANNOT happen without giving kids the requisite background info that must be employed to think critically. (One cannot critically reflect on whether the revolutionary war was justified without some big factual understanding of Colonial American and Empirial Britian, for example.)

Another big idea in educaiton that Willingham works to dispel is the idea that we all have different learning styles - auditory, visual, kinesthetic, etc. Cognitive science, in fact, has shown the opposite: with minor variation, we all learn very similarly. While I may have a better memory for visual phemonena than you (who may be better at remembering sounds), we remember IDEAS not through the media in which they were delivered, but by...thinking about them. When memorizing words and definitions, we are not being asked to memorize sounds or visuals, but ideas, and the fact that I am an auditory or visual learner does nothing to predict what presentation method will help me memorize the best. (The amount I studied, of course, will.)

I don't want to give the impression that Willingham's book is about bashing education icons and maxims. It is not It is a book for teachers designed to bring up ideas we may not have thought about, and to suggest how to apply these ideas to our classrooms. Each chapter is focused around a question ("Is Drilling Worth It?" "Why is it So Hard for Students to Understand Abstract Ideas?") and gives a detailed, but engaging, answer. At the end of each chapter, the author makes several concrete suggestions for how the answer can shape how we teach as well as reccomendations for further readings.

All in all, this is one of the single best education books I have read, and cannot wait to share it with fellow educators. As mentioned, I sincerely hope that this book becomes as widely devoured as those by Eric Jensen and Howard Gardner. Willingham offers a valuable and very constructive counterpoint, especially to Jensen's "brain based ways of learning."

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Anyone looking for more can visit Willingham's website, where there are plenty of good articles and videos.

Show Up, and Get a B - Another way k-12 does not prepare for the real world

I have recently come across an interesting article documenting a sad trend in college students increasing sense of entitlement. According to the article, professors and administrators are noticing an increasing sense amongst students that they are entitled to certain grades, and an increasing aversion to earning, rather than getting, grades.

The article makes some interesting points but I think it misdiagnoses the problem at lesat a little bit. As a k-12 educator, I think that this sense of entitlement in college students comes from the disjunct between the k-12 schools indirect teaching of entitlement and the college's continued emphasis on earning, rather than being entitled to, academic success. Like it or not, k-12 schools ARE leaving kids unprepared for college by getting them used to the idea that all children will be successful and that effort, rather than product, will be rewarded. Unfortunately, the real world doesn't work that way, leaving those students unprepared for the large paradigm shif that will doubtless come their way.

“I tell my classes that if they just do what they are supposed to do and meet the standard requirements, that they will earn a C,” he said. “That is the default grade. They see the default grade as an A.”

Why do the students think this way? As a teacher, I have seen many teachers TELL students that the default grade IS an A, and that one works to maintain, rather than earn, the high marks. I just dealt with a student yesterday who relayed that her teacher told her exactly this (and I have seen countless other teachers do this).

Of course, mathematically, this is quite untrue. The default grade at the beginning of each quarter is a 0%. If the first assignment is worth 100 points, and the student does half of the assignment, the grade becomes a 50% F. If they do the entire assignment, of course, their grade is a 100% A. From there, the grade can change based on the number of points per assignment and the relative weighting of the assignments, but in no way is the default grade ACTUALLY an A (despite what we tell students).

And there is another way in which the "default A" is unworkable. As Charles Murray points out in his book Real Education, "C" measn "average" in education parlance, or at least, it used to! It is a statistical truism that half of kids will be at or below average and half of kids will be at or above average. If our grade books were redesigned to allign with how they should look, student grades would create a bell curve where "C" would be the tip. "A" means "excellent" in education parlance, and as such, we are giving out too many "A's" if we are giving them to stduents who are not excellent in their subject. (My estimate would be about 10-15% should be getting "A's").

I think that it stems from their K-12 experiences,” Professor Brower said. “They have become ultra-efficient in test preparation. And this hyper-efficiency has led them to look for a magic formula to get high scores.”

The first half is right; the second is not. In the county in which I teach, for instance, 60% of the overall grade for a class is made up of classwork, and 25% is made up of tests and quizzes. On top of this, classwork is most often graded for completion, rather than accuracy. (Tests are generally the only thing grade for accuracy.) This literally means that a student can do all classwork without understanding the content, bomb every test and quiz, and still walk away with a "D." If she does all homework in addition to classwork, she would recieve a "C," and if she does all classwork and homework while scoring 50% "F's" on all tests and quizzes (still not understanding much of the material), she would recieve a 85% "B". I see it happen all the time where a student has a "C" in a class but does not know anything but the rudimentary skills for the class. This trend is at its worst when that student gets passed to Spanish II (or Algebra II) without mastering the requisite amount of info from the previous class.

My point: this teaches students that effort is to be rewarded above product. While this sounds like a good idea, the article points out that it is not. In essence, we are sending kids from an institution which, for 12 years, has taught them that effort rather than product is what counts and throwing them into a 4 year institution that operates in precisely the opposite way! In a college spanish class, it is rare that homeworks are graded for anything but accuracy (if they are graded at all), and tests constitute the majoity of the grade. Contrast that with the high school spanish class where student classwork and homework is graded on completion and together constitutes 75% of a stduent's grade.

There is another huge problem with what k-12 institutions' inadvertent inflating of grades and putting primacy on effort rather than product: it leads to students who become easily discouraged when they get bad grades.

“I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade,” Mr. Greenwood said. “What else is there really than the effort that you put in?”

“If you put in all the effort you have and get a C, what is the point?” he added. “If someone goes to every class and reads every chapter in the book and does everything the teacher asks of them and more, then they should be getting an A like their effort deserves. If your maximum effort can only be average in a teacher’s mind, then something is wrong.”

What's the point? First, the point is to learn, rather than to earn a grade. (We are not good at teaching this in k-12 either.) Second, it is unrealistic (unless surrounded by k-12 walls) to expect that hard work garauntees a product worthy of a high grade. The real world does not work that way. If two people work just as hard at work and one turns in a better finished product than the other, then the better product will yield higher rewards. In college, one can put in all the work one wants, but if one doesn't understand the subject well enough to pass the test, then one does not deserve to pass the course as if one did understand the subject.

But k-12 works differently. In our zeal towards egalitarianism and a very chimeric belief that all children should have success, we have created a aystem so singley focused on this goal that it is artificially padded. In our desire to see all students experience success, we have made a system that places little emphasis on mastery (an elitist concept, that!) and put it on hard work (which all students are at least capable of). And even then, we treat students who do not work hard as "students with special needs" and offer even more "supports" that do little more than ensure that less effort is required of them (lest they earn an F at something!).

For those who think I am exaggerating this last piece, a previous post the story of a student I work with who simply does not show up to class and does little work. The school, however, has made deal after deal with him that he can pass the year if he does x and y. When he doesn't follow through, they re-instate the deal. When I asked why - why not let him experience the consequences of his actions - the most common response is, "Well, if we do that, he might not graduate, and that would be a shame." In other situations, I have been explicitly told to grade students for effort rather than product, or to use a more relaxed standard when grading certain students.

In the bizarre world of k-12 ed, this makes a certain bit of sense to most teachers. Fairness, we are repeatedly told, means giving everyone a tase of success. But as I hope to have pointed out, this egalitarian model does not fit with what kids will experience after high school either in college or the world of work. I shudder to think at how poorly we are preparing students for the merit-based world they will face after high school, where one is not entitled to grades, praise, or raises, no matter how hard one works, and where what matters is product rather than effort.

We Almost Got Through the Evolution Unit Without a Hitch.

My coteacher and I are administering the unit test on evolution starting in two days. Thus, the unit which entails treading on thin ice is almost over...but not without a snag. Over the past two years, my coteacher and I have fielded many questions and endured many explanations about such things as gaps in the fossil record, how evolution could produce such complex things as humans, and general disbelief that we are related to simians.

And today, another such comment occurred. During a brief video on transitional forms - "fishibians" to be exact - a student suggested that scientists stop "making stuff up." I treated this comment like any other - with a brief reiteration of the various lines of evidence for evolution.

But, unlike many other times in the past, this comment really bothered me. Generally, I can "brush off" such comments as made by students that are simply in disbelief that evolution could produce such varied and complex creatures (didn't we all experience a twinge of disbelief when first exposed to the theory?)

Her comment got me thinking about the low state of science education in this country and our underperformance in conveying how science arrives at its conclusions. To me, it is as absurd to ask whether one believes in the theory of evolution as it is to ask whether one believes in the theory that the holocuast happened. There is a difference between whether one believes it and whether it happened. But when we ask whether someone believes in evolution, it makes such a question sound like evolution is a story that depends for its validity on our assent. Of course, what is true is true regardless of whether someone mistakenly ignores evidence and chooses not to believe the theory.

What I and other science teachers try to do is to get kids to understand that scientists would not simply state a theory and write about the theory if there were no evidence for the theory. Scientists do not make things up, and the rare ones that try are quickly called out by the peer review and "open disclosure" policy in sceince that demands replicable experiments and that findings be made public for examination. (Anyone who wants to see how quickly science sniffs out frauds can examine the piltdown man hoax

But the crucial issue, to me, is how little we spend in our science classes talking about (a) the scientific process and how it works, and (b) how scientists come to know things like the theory of evolution from employing that process. We talk a lot about facts to do with cell biology, genetics, macromolecules, and evolution. But what we forget to talk about is how the scientific method was used to get these facts. We talk about the double helix model of DNA but neglect to talk about how Francis and Crick came to the theory, and how the theory survived the scrutiny of other scientists. We talk about genetics, but do not emphasize (or underemphasize) the magnificence of Gregor Mendel's experiments (and later experiments by folks like Hershey and Chase).

If we did this more - focused on science as a method used to solve problems and adduce evidence to suppport conclusions - then we might not get as many comments about how scientists are "making all this up." Stduents might better understand not only that there is evidence for evolution, but how that evidence points to evolution (and how evolution has survived test upon test).

So, my coteacher and I are almost done the unit on evolution. But everything seems to indicate that we as a nation are nowhere near done teaching people about evolution.

Would Privatizing American Education Threaten Democratic Values?: An Analogy Between Schooling and the Media

This article... argues that, in an increasingly fragmented world, privatised control of civic education in state-funded schools in England threatens the integrity of public education and the civic objectives of state schooling.

This quote is taken from an abstract for an article in a prominent education journal. It voices a common criticism towards the idea of privatizing American education, via either a voucher or a wholly private model. The argument is that, by getting rid of the "common school," education becomes unstandardized and, hence, threatens the idea of a common value set needed for a functioning democracy. Here is a nice summary of what the argument often looks like:

The Undermining America Argument: Choice will siphon off needed funds from public schools and, as a result, the quality of public education in the United States will suffer. In addition, choice will undermine democratic values and lead to segregation and division.

The problem I have with this argument is twofold. First, it contains an assumption that I am not convinced is valid: democracy relies on the citizenry sharing common values. While this statement is often bandied about as fact, it is generally never, but really should be, argued for. But this is a discussion for another time, as this objection is not the one which concerns us here.

The primary reason I object to the argument that a plurality of private schooling option would undermine necessary common values is simply that the conclusion is dubious. And such can be seen if we look at an analogy: that of the media, and whether it functions best as a monopoly or plurality.

The irony that one notices is that the biggest defenders of public "common" schooling tend to be on the political left. This has been true since John Dewey and Edward Thorndike all the way to the present day, as seen with Jonathan Kozol and Alfie Kohn. (Yes, the right supports public ed as well, but vouchers and privatization seem to be primarily a "right wing" phenomenon). But another argument found primarily on the left argues against the "monopolization" of the media. There is a disjunct between these two arguments. One the one hand, it is said that monopolizing education is healthy for democracy, and on the other, that monopolizing the media is unhealthy for a democracy.

What?

Wouldn't one expect that those in favor of pluralism in the media would also be in favor of pluralism in education? Both the media and the education system, after all, have to do with the exact same thing: educating citizens. Why is it that there exists no argument that pluralizing media sources would result in an undermining of democratic values?

The reason is that those in favor of citizens having a plurality of media sources to choose from argue, rightly, that a diversity of voices is good for democracy and when news sources become monolithic, a well-educated citizenry is threatened. An extremizing of this argument can be seen here:

Arguably, the US's much-vaunted "free media" practice a form of adroit self-censorship that's all too reminiscent of Soviet models of the past. Example: could a state-owned American media machine have been much more avid as a cheerleader for the US occupation of Iraq?

In other words, the minute we have an entirely state-run media (or corporate run monopoly on media) then the easier it is for society to be indoctrinated rather than educated.

But I fail to see how this argument would not also work brilliantly as an argument against a monopoly of state-run schools! Let's try it out by taking the above quote and changing a few words:

Arguably, the US's much-vaunted "liberal education" practice a form of adroit self-censorship that's all too reminiscent of Soviet models of the past. Example: could a state-owned American school system have been much more avid as a cheerleader for the US occupation of Iraq?

The point I am trying to make here is that, if critics of privatization of schooling as a threat to common values were consistent, they would also be equally against pluralism in journalism and the press. If different people get their news from different places, we will ot all receive the same news, and therefore (allegedly) democracy will break down.*

Of course, we rightly realize that a plurality of media sources does not hurt, but helps democracy by offering people a choice on what news to receive, and keeping everyone in check by making it extremely unlikely that the type of indoctrination hinted at in the above quote could take place. People can choose their news and news organizations must compete with each other.

The exact same can be said for why pluralization of education outlets is a benefit to democracy. Allowing choice in educaiton means that one source (federal or state governments) do not control the curricula for every child. This means that, while certain schools will choose to indoctrinate in certain ways, a diverse populace will be sustained. Schools will be forced to compete for business, and as a result, will strive to produce better education than competitors. (Can you imagine how low the quality of news would be if the federal government or Foxnews were the only game in town with no one to compete against?)

In closing, democratic values are not threatened, but strengthened by, a plurality of news media sources. No one (save for Dr. Sunstein) takes seriously the argument that, for a democracy to function, we must all receive the same news. Thus, I don't see how the education situation is not directly analogous. No one should take seriously the idea that for a democracy to properly function, all students must receive exactly the same education.

*[Ironically, legal professor Cass Sunstein actually does make a similar argument in his book Republic.com, where he argues that the proliferation of media sources is a bad thing because it produces a fractious polity which, apparently, makes democracy less workable rather than more robust. Not many agree with Sunstein, for good reason.]

Doing All We Can to No Avail

It is crunch time at _____ ________ high. The third quarter is almost over, and everyone (staff, that is) is feeling the squeeze. I forgot how much the end of the third quarter bothered me last year, but now it is all coming back.

Waht makes the third quarter's end so disheartening for me - a special educator - is that this is the time when students who have slacked for three quarters are in danger of officially failing for the year - recieving "E's" for three of four quarters. Of course, they have not offiially failed yet so the question I hear all day every day is: what can we do to make sure they pass?

This question would not bother me - does not bother me - when it is about a student who is trying hard but coming up short. I will help those students as much as possible. The problem is that the large majority of those who we are trying to avoid failure for the third quarter are those who have shown little to no effort. It is hard for me to get up the motivation to help students I truly feel do not deserve to pass, pass. It is one of the most heartbreaking parts of my job.

A colleague of mine was the first to fall victim. He has been asked to "assist" a general educator in a class where many of the seniors are in danger of failing (a class they need to graduate). While looking at the students' "numbers," my colleague noticed that almost all of these students have a 0-10% classwork grade, a 10-20% classwork grade, and very nonexistant test/quiz grades. Long and short, these students are not failing because they try and come up short; if it were that, they would have at least decent classwork and homework grades. Rather, they are failing because they do not take the class, or school, seriously. How would you feel if you were charged with helping kids who do not help themselves and "finding a way" to turn their E into a D? Probably exactly like my colleague feels.

I have a Study Skills class, where students can work and get help on assignments for other classes. Recently, two students have been placed into that class because they are in danger of failing certain classes they cannot afford to fail. Both were put in my class last week; I have yet to see them. They have been cutting class. Perhaps they do not want help? Perhaps they are not serious enough to think help warranted? Nonsense, says my supervisors! Find a way!

In all honesty, this is a main reason I suspect that many teachers quit. Those who were once optimists have their hopes dashed on a daily basis, and those who were pessimists become hardened pessimists. I am well aware of the saying, uttered by plenty of busy body mentors, that we need to "focus on the good ones," and "do only what we can." We "plant seeds," rather than grow trees. I cannot accept that. Does that mean I don't care enough or that I care too much?

At some point, we as a society have to accept the fact that others cannot be held responsible for one's own succses or failure. Yes, teachers CAN inspire unmotivated students to learn, but to make such "cans" a job requirement (we MUST inspire even the most uninspired) gets us away from teaching and makes us cheerleading babysitters who occasionally instruct. At some point, we need to accept the fact that those who do not do enough to pass will fail, and that the worst thing we can do for those students is to send the message that we will catch them when they fall. Sometimes, falling is the only way to let you know how important it is to walk.

Teaching Them to Be Students

Music teachers are not often philosophers. Yet, at a staff meeting yesterday, where the faculty talked about a new curriculum for "freshman seminar," a high school course required of freshman to teach them basic academic skills, a music teacher responded to a question posed to us: What do you think all freshman should be taught?" Her reply got to the core of what was on many of our minds: "we need to teach them how to be students before we can TEACH them anything." She commented that before she can teach a student how to play the oboe, they must be taught how to learn, take and use guidance, attempt success, and not give up if they stumble. These are things that, sadly, many students do not come to high school knowing.

This is an often neglected and integral piece of the educative process: in order that students can learn, they must learn to be students first. In an age where we tell students many grand stories extolling the virtues of challenging authority - from the American founders to Galileo - we neglect to teach them the value of authority and the wisdom to know how and when to accept it.

We live, quite justly, in a classless system, where anyone from anywhere has the civic freedom to move up or down in the world based on their own efforts and a pinch of luck. Because of this, I think, we are inherently distrustful of words like 'authority,' 'wisdom,' and to the ideas that come with them. To accept instruction from those who know better than we hints at the idea that some are "better" than others and that the learner must bow to the teacher.

But just like skepticism in matters of science, while sometimes good, can be taken to the extreme, so can the idea that authority should be rebelled against. In order to learn, students must at some point accept the fact that they do not know all they need to know and must become willing (even grudgingly) to receive information from those in a position of authority.

This is what I think the music teacher means by saying that students must learn to be students before they learn anything. We must teach them the wisdom to know when to challenge authority and when to accept that authority may have something to teach them. They must learn when to have an ego and when to pack it away for the sake of their betterment. They must learn that while "doing their own thing" can be good, they must also do things that are not of their own design or choosing, but are things that BOTH things can benefit them. (One without the other becomes detrimental to well-being.)

These are some of the things students are not coming to us with. Sometimes, it is as if they come to us convinced that they inhabit a universe of one. We, as teachers, must take as our first mission to widen their universe.

Liking Children versus Liking to Teach Children

There is a big difference between liking to teach children and liking children. Many, I think, get into teaching because they posess a like for children rather than a like for teaching children.

I started thinking about this when reflecting on what it is I dislike so much about teaching where I do. After all, I really do like to teach children. I got into teaching as a profession after taking a long-term substitute job at a high school where I worked in the 'resource room,' (where kids go when they need extra assistance with work, or accomodations for their disability). I vividly recall "connecting" with several students - particularly one I suspect was an undiagnosed autistic girl. I spent many hours teaching her physics, and got quite a few compliments on being able to get through to her when most teachers couldn't. I knew then that I wanted to try special education.

So, that I like teaching children is not in dispute. But I have been coming to the realization that, as much as it hurts me to admit it, I don't have the innate love for kids that many teachers do. If my job involved no possibility of teaching, for example, I would find being around kids for 6.5 hours per day too daunting to bear. It is not the kids that get me through, but the teaching of them.

And what makes matters difficult is that, where I teach, teaching is very frustrating and comprises only a small percentage of what "teachers" do. Teachers first have to motivate, then control behavior, and then, get a little teaching done. Kids actively resist us at every turn and are quite fond of defying our attempts to instil things into their brains.

This is why I think teaching where I do is so hard for me, and perhaps, not (as) hard for many others. Many of the teachers really love the kids, and don't mind as much that the kids aren't learning nearly what they should, just as long as they get to interact with them. But for me, who likes teaching kids more than being with kids, it is a source of endless frustration and dejection that the "teaching kids" part is such a small role, while the "handling kids" part takes most of the time.

If you haven't been able to tell by now by my blog entries, I am not a coddler. I do not feel bad when I don't appease kids. I don't have much trouble with trading pain for gain. I suspect, though, that a lot of teachers who like kids more than teaching kids are the opposite: their desire is to encourage over instruct, and enable rather than equip. This has been my particular experience with those who go into elementary education; they are teachers more because they like kids than any drive to teach. Students become "little guys," which is a sign, to me, of an overly motherly approach that sacrifices rigor and high-expectations for happiness and high self-esteem.

I cannot be that way. Alas, I am going on to study for my PhD, where I might teach college students - where classroom management is not the ultimate concern, and where teachers are not expected to baby, but to teach, and students are expected to exercise some independence.

I think I am making the right choice.

The Problem of Student Motivation

Recently, I have come across an interesting article: "Who is Responsible for Student Learning," by Baylor University education professor, J. Wesley Null. The main thesis of the article is that in an age where "accountability" is a buzz word, we must remember that, as wrong as it may sound to some, teachers can only do so much in getting students to learn. We often forget that the other half of the responsibility MUST lie with the student.

Null suggests that the view which sees teachers as the primary responsibility-holders to student learning confuse the business of education with most other businesses. There, if the product falls short of expectations, the workers are the likely culprit. As Null rightly points out, this ignores one key difference between "factories" and education: students, unlike cars and insurance policies, are agents that are often actively resistant to being "worked on." If a car turns out not to work well, something in the workmanship is likely to blame. If a student graduates history class without being able to recall history facts, it may be due to poor teaching by the teacher, or poor learning by the student.

Null provides an analogy to bolster the point:

[I]f a husband and wife enroll in, say, a marriage course at their local church, should the pastor who teaches these classes be blamed if the couple's marriage never improves? Or do the husband and wife have a joint responsibility to improve their own marriage?

Obviously, we would suggest that the pastor can persuade, guide, cajole, instruct, and remind. What we would not say, though, is that any of this can make the marriage work. In the end, teaching, guiding, and reminding are only so good as the will of the person recieving the instruction, guidance, and reminders.

That this is analogous to the limits of the teacher's role is obvious. What we do with this recognition is not. When teachers say things like, 'we can only do so much,' or try to shift at least some of the "blame" onto parents, students, and an anti-intellectual culture that many students come to us imbued with, we are seen as offering a subterfuge. In turn, teachers may be charged with laziness and unwillingness to be accountable.

In some sense, this view is sometimes justified. There certainly are such things as bad teachers, and often, those teachers ARE shielded from accountability by the ill-thought-out mechanism of tenure. And, as a "public service," there has to be some way to hold teachers accountable for results. Otherwise, poor-performing teachers can pawn all responsibility onto their students.

There are several other reasons for our collective uncomfortability with blaming at least some of education's failure on students:

(1) Doing so forces parents and society at large to take a critical look at their practices and whether they may be (inadvertently) sending teachers students who have not been taught such basic prerequisites to learning as respect for authority, impulse control, and some reason (internal or external) to value the enterprise of education. It is easier to blame teachers for students' low performance.

(2) As trivial as it seems, all of us have become familiar with the "feel good" teacher movies like "The Ron Clark Story," "Dangerous Minds," and "Freedom Writers," where a teacher is able to overcome all educational obstabcles with students by pure dilligence and tenacity. Take this, couple it with the egalitarian idea that every child has equal potential, and we grow intolerant with the view that student failure is not purely a symptom of bad teaching.

(3) As most of us have had at least 12 years of direct experience with teachers, teaching is the one job that most people have seen close-up, and as such, most people feel is not so difficult. I think that this inadvertently plays into notions that student failure is due to bad teaching because, unlike most professions, it is easy to "play at armchair teaching." Laypersons might not be quick to offer opinions on how accountants can do their job better, but are generally unafraid to criticize the "common sense" discipline of teaching.

It is difficult to know how to strike a good balance between holding teachers accountable for results and accepting that teaching, unlike other professions, requires willingness from producer AND PRODUCT in order to be successful. it may even be as simple as involving teachers who produce scores of underachieving students in more stringent observations and professional developments. It may also involve offering teachesr financial incentives, as some districts have done, for good results (thus not penalizing underperformance, but simply rewarding outstanding performance.

But what many don't realize is that teaching is hard as it is. It is even harder when we teachers are held solely or even primarily accountable for students low performance on tests (when they admit, as they often have to me, that they do not studey), for low homework grades (homework is the responsibility of the home), and even student truency.

As Null correctly notes, and as hard as it is for many parents and policy-makers to hear, "Individual agency matters. Put another way, one person cannot be held responsible for another person's behavior."

On Schemes and Schools: How We Got "Here" from "There"

Below is a recent review I have written of Diane Ravitch's bok, "Left Bac: A Century of Failed School Reform." In the book, Ravitch attempts to give an in-depth history of the progressive turn in education and its excesses. In the end, she argues that progressivism bears the responsibility for the Amreican education system losing its way. While I disagree with Ravitch on a number of points (she is very anti-utilitarian when it comes to education, and I cannot see education justified any other way), her historical arguments are very persuasive. Highly reccomended!

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Diane Ravitch's "Left Back" is both a history and a polemic. As the subtitle suggest, Ravitch does not only cover the history of educational ideas over the past century, but the history of "failed" educational ideas. As other review rs suggest, Ravitch's book is a history of, and argument against, progressivism in education.

Most of this book centers around two recurring dualisms of 20th century educational theory: essentialism v. utilitarianism, and learning as transmission between teacher and student v. learning as natural student-led proces.
The debate between essentialists (like Bagley) and instrumentalists (like Dewey and Thorndike) was over whether educational learning was valuable in itself or whether its value derives from its utility. In Left Back, Ravitch demonstrates that the concept of justifying education in utilitarian terms (how useful it is to students' lives) may have been an interesting idea at one point, but, like many ideas, it was pushed too far. Not many people - even the eseentialists - would argue that education should not have utility to students lives, but the overselling of this idea by progressives resulted in everything from hastily done tracking (tailoring instruction to students' predicted 'station' in later life), to the stripping away of academic rigor (why take biology when one can take a class on how to grow plants?).

The debate between those who argued for teacher-led education versus those who argued for student-led education was an outgrowth of the previous debate. The 'student-led' advocates (William Kilpatrick, Carl Rogers) rediscovered and revamped the Rousseauian idea that the best education is a non-coercive process of letting the student explore what she likes, and fostering her creativity. By contrast, the 'teacher-led' advocates (Leon Kandel, Michael Demiashkevich), believed that learning was as often an artificial process that necessitated the teacher being a teacher, and that part of s good education was learning things beyond what one would learn on one's ow.

In each debate, the progressives (utilitarians, student-led believers) won the day, often in spite of public outcry against them. In fact, one ironic theme in Ravitch's book is that while the progressives constantly invoked the word "democratic" to support their various cure-alls, the movement was, at every turn, undemocratic. Progressives always saw themselves as superior to the clamor of "reactionary" parents (who audaciously wanted their kids to learn subject-matter), were constant enthusiasts of tracking students at an early age by their predicted 'stations' in life, and constantly spoke of "creating a new social order," rather than educating independently-thinking students.

The undoubted hero of the book is William Bagley (an education philosopher that may have been John Dewey's most serious rival that is unjustly all but unheard of today). For his part, Dewey is portrayed as an out of touch intellectual whose "innocence was [often] comical" [p. 207) Many will object to this characterization of an educational icon, but Ravitch is certainly not the first to suggest that Dewey was entirely too aloof to articulate a philosophy with any real clarity.

Some negative reviewers comment that Ravitch's characterization of the various progressive movements is an unfair and mistaken straw-man. While I have only read a handful of the plentiful original sources she cites, it is difficult to see how an author who quotes so frequently from primary sources can be said to have gotten them (many unambiguous in meaning) wrong. My thoughts are that this book is a fair portrayal of progressivism, and that the reviewers may be mad because Ravitch is not afraid to mix history and polemic.

All in all, this is a stunning work for anyone who wonders how we got here - social promotion, self-esteem movement, flexible standards - from "there." Ravitch may have mixed history with polemic, but the book is well-researched history and necessary polemic. Ravitch's conclusion:

"If there is a lesson to be learned from the river of ink that was spilled in the education disputes of the twentieth century, it is that anything in education that is labeled a "movement" should be avoided like the plague. What American education most needs is not more nostrums and enthusiasms but more attention to fundamental, time-tested truths." (p. 453)

"Don't read it! Just see the movie!"

Being a high-school teacher has, I fear, has made me more quick to anger when watching horrible parents. I never used to get too angry when in the presence of bad parents (like those who let their kids run around unatttended in the supermarket), but being a high-school teacher forces me to see poorly parented kids as potential poorly parented young adults.

Here is the most recent situation to get my blood boiling: a family friend has their elementary aged child in a school-sponsoered book club. The book they were assigned a few weeks ago has gone unread and, today, the family is going to see the movie (in leiu of reading the book).

Normally, a situation like this would be mildly annoying to me. But upon hearing about this, my "teacher mode" turned immediately on, and I have not been able to stop stewing over such a blatant act of parental irresponsibility. Here we have a great example of a parent tacitly informing their kids that skirting rules is completely permissible, and that the parents glowingly endorse such rule-skirting. In addition, this child (who actually does like to read) has now been introduced to the dilemma that all children eventually face: why read the book when I can just see the movie?

I recall when my parents found out that I had not read a required book for a high school class. What did they do? They called the teacher! They let the teacher know that I had not read the book, and advised the teacher to "catch me in the act" by pulling me aside and quizzing me on it. I did not find out that my parents put the teacher up to it until years later, and to tell the truth, I am glad they did. It encouraged me to read (if only by force) which eventually lead to a joy for reading.

Would I do what my parents did in this child's situation? Yes. Being a teacher has made me appreciate that, sometimes, one must be creative in teaching kids how and why to follow rules. Yes, this means that the child may not like you for a time, and yes, this certainly means that the child will be discomforted when the teacher "calls them out," but they will learn the lesson they should learn and be the better for it in the long run.

When I think of this story, I cannot help but think about kids I teach who expect A's simply because they show up to most of my classes (and the parents who back them up). I cannot help but think of the stduents who miss inexcusable amounts of time from school with their parents permission, and those whose parents don't make them do homework or study, but pretend that they value education.

With any luck, this student will never have a teacher in high school that has the audacity to set expecations and hold students accountable for them. Unfortunately, unless the student goes to a private high school, it seems unlikely that they ever will.

A Nasty Nexus: The Unsavory Mix Between Public Ed and Private Motivational Speakers

I have recently been doing some scattered research on possible dissertation topics, and one subject that has always interested me is the phenomenon of public school districts sinking millions of dollars into "programs" pushed by educational "consultants" (read: motivational speakers). It is a troubling trend to me because these companies, whose goal and expertise is the "hard sell" of educational ideas, are like vultures that happen to prey on under-critical schoolboards that have no monetary accountability (as they are spending the tax payers' money).

One such speaker is Flip Flippen. I first heard of Flippen when working for the Carroll County (MD) public schools. The previous year, the district had bought whole hog into Flippen's "Capturing Kids' Hearts" program. (Thankfully, the school where I worked refused to sign on, despite huge pressure from the district.)

Like most "education consultants" (motivational speakers) Flippen is not, and has never been, an educator. His claim to fame is in speaking to businesses (for a good fee). In typical motivational speaker fashion, Flippen's new book, The Flip Side bears jacket endorsements from NFL greats like Terry Bradshaw to MLB greats like Nolan Ryan (neither of which, I think, are known as extraordinary business men).

What is significant about all of this is that two years after the Carroll County School System sunk millions into Flippen's program, they quietly dropped it. (Flippen's frenzy-starting book "Capturing Kids' Hearts" also appears to be out of print according to amazon.com.) A colleague at the time described a Flippen workshop he had attended recently as a "come to Jesus" revival of sorts. It was quite systemically designed to make the participant feel good and excited (Flippen's got an enigmatic speaking style similar to Tony Robbins). My colleague, I think accurately, suspected that Flippen was able to exdrcise his charisma on some very gullible school-board members who, unlike business persons, don't have to scruitinize what they spend money on, as the money is not hard earned.

Anyhow, what made me want to write about this trend - and it does not stop with Flippen! - is a blog-entry I came across, bearing an eerily familiar description of Flippen's education seminars:

I went to the workshop in August, and Capturing Kids Hearts was far worse than I expected. I have written letters to both my state senator, and representative asking them to investigate this group and pass a law giving teachers protection from some of the tactics used in the workshop...

I had jokingly referred to co-workers having “drunk the kool-aid” because of their devotion to “Capturing Kids Hearts”. It wasn’t too far off the mark. The tactics used by the presenter reminded me greatly of cult recruiters or Amway/timeshare sales people. Their leader is the savior of schools...

This is the second time in 5 years a workshop did this the other was required this was strongly recommended.

As an educator, I have had to endure many motivational speakers pontificate on the strength of their system - the latest was Brian Mendler - and I am simply shocked at how gullible these school systems are. For-profit folks like Flippen and Mendler can make a hell of a lot of money pushing their product to school districts, who giddily sink millions into books (every teacher at the Mendler seminar was provided with two of his books, paid for by the county, who has better things to spend money on).

It is simply a shame that there is such an admixture of profit-seeking motivational speakers with financially unconcerned and unconstrained (and fad-loving) educational bureaucrats.

The Tyranny of Undertesting: Why Underreliance on Tests Helps Kids Fail

The grading policy for Baltimore County High Schools goes like this:

Classwork - 60%
Homework - 15%
Tests/Quizzes - 25%

For those who don't see the problem with this, let me explain. Under this schema, it is entirely possible that a student can pass a class with a 70% C having done all classwork, some homework, and have gotten 0%s on assessments. As most teachers' policies is to grade classworks and homeworks (primarily) on completion rather than accuracy, this means that it becomes possible for students to pass a class without having demonstrated any real mastery of the material.

What made me think about this today was a meeting I sat in about a student who recently got placed into a less intense math class than the one he previously in. While the student passed algebra I last year with a C, the guidance counselor explained to me that she and the math teacher feel that he did not at all master the Algebra concepts, and thus, they could not keep him in Algebra II. We wondered - briefly - how it was possible that he passed Algebra I with a C and it did not take long to spot the reason.

As an educator, I see it all too often: students "skirt" by with C's and D's under a system where this grade ignores whether they mastered content, and only attests that they have done the majority of the work put in front of them (correctly or incorrectly). Thus, students are passed on without any obligation to really learn the material, and as a result, are ill-equipped for the next grade.

If it were my decision, I would place test/quiz grades at about 40% of the grade, so that a student who may not be a good test taker can pass without brilliant scores, but to eliminate the overly large possibility of students passing classes without demonstrating mastery of the content.

Critics would certainly tell me that this simply raises stakes too high, and that classworks and homeworks can do the job of assessments in testing students knowledge of the material while not penalizing poor test-takers or boiling the class down to one's ability to regurgitate facts. My response: first, ability to regurgitate facts is not per se a bad thing (unless that is ALL that is measured); second, homeworks/classworks cannot fully do the job of assessing student knowledge because they are more often graded on completion (and generally done when students have access to books/internet/peers.

I am fully aware of the dangers of TOO MUCH emphasis being put on tests, but I am not sure others are aware of the dangers of TOO LITTLE emphasis on tests. (Most of my graduate special education professors talk of the 'tyranny of testing' but never talk of the 'tyranny of undertesting.') As a result of Baltimore County's thoroughly misguided grading policy (where tests/quizzes count for 25% while classwork/homework counts for 75%), we are failing students by allowing them to pass into classes without having demonstrated adequate mastery of the subject. In other words, not making tests a bigger part of the grade ensures that they can dig themselves into bigger and bigger holes the further through school they get.

Why Are We So Stuck on Progressive Education?

Here is an interesting indictment of progressive education from a parental point of view. Written in 2005. the article is written by an education consultant who happened to be a parent of children attedning a public school steeped in many progressive ideas about education.

What were these "progressive" ideas with which this parent disapproved? Ideas like "whole language educaiton," dislike of worksheets and anything that smacked of "instruct and drill" - all of these things start from a common premise of "progressive ed:" learning by listening to the teacher instruct is synthetic and "inauthentic," while learning by self-discovery of the student is natural and "authentic." The best example of this idea that learning shold be self-discovery, rather than knowledge acquisition from an external souce, is best seen in the author's discription of whole language educaiton.

Whole language is progressive education’s belief system applied to reading. Its theorists believe learning to read is as natural as learning to speak, and therefore it isn’t necessary (and indeed it could be harmful) to directly and systematically teach and drill children on the sound-letter relationships, called phonemes.

They believe learning to read is primarily an exercise in recognizing whole words..

The same trend of replacing "instruct and drill" educaiton with more natural "self-discovery" method can be seen in the author's discription of the way his children's school taught math.

The NCTM standards document openly disdains “paper and pencil practice” of basic arithmetic computational skills, and it demands that calculators be used even in kindergarten. It emphasizes how math should be taught (through hands-on activities and problem solving rather than teacher-led instruction and practice)...

Teaching language by ignoring instruction in phonics and expecting students to start with reading sentences, and teaching math by ignoring instruction on basic mathematical operations and expecting students to engage in conceptual problem solving. Both of these techniques make the mistake of seeing operations like reading and math as something basic that children can figure out themselves if just "guided" the right way. Of course, it is quite absurd to believe that children will discover on their own how to sound out new words - "gauche" or "bivouac" - if they do not learn basic and more complex phonics, and equally as absurd to think that a child will discover how to divide 25.86 by 7 unless taught division FACTS.

As predicted, whole langauge education went bust about a decade ago, as did the idea that students can learn math without learning math FACTS. The problem, though, is that progressive ideas never really seem to die, but rather simply change shape and tact. As a high school special educator, I can certainly attest that progressivism is alive and well at my high school. While we (grudgingly) accept the fact that lecture must occur, we still have not lost our progressive disdain for worksheets, drills, fact learning, and textbook work. In my graudate courses, we still talk of Dewey (and Vygotsky!!) as if they rule the day, constructivism as the only way to properly educate, and the tyranny of testing students recall of facts (in favor of "holistic" and "authentic" assessment.)

But here is the killer question. Why has progressivism stuck around for so long, even though it has failed, time after time, to produce the results it claimed it could? Our author paints the situaiton well:

But the overwhelming body of empirical research is basically an indictment of the progressive education model. And it’s not just recent research—educators have had experimental research evidence for decades that unequivocally conclude that current progressive theories don’t work—evidence that large numbers of educators have chosen to ignore

That such evidence exists against progressive education may be denied by some, but any read-through of Project Follow Through, Maureen Sout's "Feel Good Curriculum," or any work by ED Hirsch should suffice to demonstrate that it does.

Thus, the question remains: if the desired results continue not to be produced, then why has progressive pedagogy (in various incarnations from "progressivism" to "constructivism" to today's "brain based learning,") continue to flourish?

I suspect that the primary reason progressivism's approach remains en vogue despite its failures is because educators like children and we dislike to disappoint or upset them. Progressive education feeds off of this desire by giving us a way to "toss" the "instruct and drill" method that students dislike, in favor of more friendly activities, like playing math games with blocks, and letting kids design their own project specifications.

That educators have an emotional connection to progressivism (the softer approach) can be seen by their constant caricature of the "old way" of education as draconian, authoritarian, and dry. Progressive education, by contrast, is often accompanied by pretty phrases like "educating the whole child" (as opposed to educating only part of the child?!), "authentic education" (rather than fraudulent education?!), and "child-centered education (was there ever an education that did not have the child as its aim?!). If the old education is the authoritarian father, then progressivism is the nurturing mother (this, in a field with far more mothers than fathers in its employ).

This emotional pull is, I feel, the force that keeps progressivism kicking after all of these failed years. As the author says, the fact that we keep going back to "more of the same" (first progressivism, then constructivism, now "brain-based ways of learning" - the same ideas dressed differently), despite repeated failures to make gains defies logic. And I am not sure logic was involved. My guess is that the stubborn persistence of progresivism in education has more to do with the emotional sway it has over educators lost in its nurturing language.

Is Tenure for School Teachers Necessary or Productive? (No.)

When we think of tenure, we think of academic freedom - the liberty of teachers to delve into controversial ideas without fear of losing their jobs. We think of professors like Bertrand Russell who was denied various teaching positions due to some controversial writings he produced (as a professor). Tenure's rationale, then, seems to be a desire to leave professors free to engage in research without having to think about whether their choice of subject or position will affect their employment status.

This concern of academic freedom, though, doesn't seem to have the same import at the primary and secondary school level. Unlike professors, teachers do not engage in research and publishing in addition to teaching duties, do not often have complete freedom to write curriculum, and, even if they do, are strongly advised not to engage in teaching that could be considered controversial or edgy. Because of this, it is tough to see why primary/secondary school teachers need tenure to protect them.

One of the most universal criticism of tenure - at any level of education - is that it makes it difficult, bordering on impossible, to fire incompetent teachers. Once a teacher/professor has tenure, she is stripped of the market pressure to perform that exists in any job where fear of termination could be a motivator. In a recent blog entry, Stanley Fish writes of a professor who, up until now, has been protected by tenure (and even now, it will be extremely hard for the University to terminate him). This professor - Denis Rancourt - is supposed to teach physics, but tells his students that he will teach whatever he feels like teaching (often political activism).

While tenure protects incompetents like Rancourt, many feel that, at the college level, the cost is worth the benefit of ensuring that academics are free to pursue their scholarly interests without fear of termination. The University of Delaware's Linda Gottfredson, , who does controversial research on the relationship of IQ to factors such as race, health, etc, produces very scholarly important research that, without tenure, she may not engage in for fear of termination. Even if tenure protects some bad professors, it is often argued that without its guarantee, professors like Gottfredson would let the topics of their research be motivated by economic concerns, rather than the pursuit of truth.

We know that the same cost of tenure - the insulation of incompetents from firing - exist at the primary/secondary school level, but do the benefits? No. As mentioned, primary and secondary teachers do not have the research responsibilities that do college professors. Thus, the only "controversial" stances they could take would be in the classroom, which has always been ill-advised (witness the sad examples of James Keegstra and Jay Bennish as unfotunate examples of teaching "controversially" to high school students).

I am quite at a loss to find any benefit in primary and secondary school teachers recieving tenure. If academic freedom is the rationale for tenure, then the only question left is whether primary or secondary school teachers have such academic freedom concerns that they should be granted the freedom to pursue ideas that might otherwise get them fired. I simply cannot see that teachers of 5, 12, and 17 year olds would ever need that kind of freedom (and would be concerned if teachers, like Keegstra, took positions in their classes that could conceivably result in termination).

According to this article the push for tenure amongst primary and secondary school teachers:

The start of the tenure movement paralleled similar labor struggles during the late 19th century. Just as steel and auto workers fought against unsafe working conditions and unlivable wages, teachers too demanded protection from parents and administrators who would try to dictate lesson plans or exclude controversial materials like Huck Finn from reading lists.

This, too, is a rationale that is antiquated. Rarely do teachers control whether Huck Finn should be required reading, and rarely would a teacher be fired over their lesson plans. Whether Huck Finn is part of the curriculum has become an administrative issue, and the lesson plans that (public school) teachers teach are heavily dictated by the demands of a curriculum that they didn't write. (Whether this should be so is debatable, but I think this decision is correct for public schools.)

Again, the rationale for tenure amongst primary and secondary school teachers seems to be antiquated and unnecessary. One of the only articles I have found to argue for the justice of tenure for primary/secondary school teachers has the following abstract:

This speech responds to arguments for reform or abolition of teacher tenure acts. The author argues that, inadequate as tenure laws may be, they provide in many States the most practical safeguard against managerial caprice in the educational establishment. Court cases that uphold or prove the value of teacher tenure laws are presented.

Teh large problem with this argument is that "manegerial caprice" is not exclusive to the education industry, and protection against it is hardly a reason to argue that schools are unique in needing protection from it. One can certainly argue that, without tenure, good teachers might be fired simply because they are not liked by peers or superiors, but this could just as easily happen at a bank, a restaurant, or a law firm. It is unclear why schools are unusual in needing protection from "managerial caprice." If it is argued that schools are particularly susceptible to such political decision-making, then this seems more like a "childishness" problem, rather than a problem warranting exceptional "tenure" protection.

A Gallup Poll report suggests more of the same:

Those in favor, including teacher unions and state school board associations, have long held that tenure is necessary to protect teachers from dismissals based on unpopular opinions, arbitrary administrations, or simply the ebb and flow of cultural tides. "I'm in favor of job security for all types of work, including teaching," says Todd, a 45-year-old respondent from Maine who is "somewhat familiar" with tenure and likes what he sees. "Teachers put in a lot of time and they deserve to know their job will always be there."

As we have discussed, dismissal because of unpopular opinion is much more likely with college professors, and "arbitrary...ebb and flow of cultural tides," is not a factor that is exclusive to schools.

But a new argument is that since teachers works so hard, they deserve job security for life. I am a teacher, and can attest that we do work hard. But I can also attest that (a) good teachers (the ones the quote focuses on) wouldn't need tenure to be able to keep their jobs; and (b) there aer plenty of other professions with people that would "deserve" job security if the criteria is how hard the work is.

Anyway we slice it, justifying tenure for primary/secondary teachers is a stretch. Unlike college professors, we don't have much occasion (or is it advisable) to hold opinions in the classroom that would warrant tenure protection. Second, we do not, by in large, control the curricula and, therefore, do not need "academic freedom" for curricular purposes. "Job protection from arbitrary administrations" is a weak argument, as there are many other professions that could fire based on unsound reasons. And, lastly, arguing that teachers deserve tenure because they work so hard ignores all of the other professions that work as hard or harder, yet do not need tenure and do not argue for it.

Are the SAT's Discriminatory? Yes, and...?

Many educators and education professors have suggested that the SAT is a faulty test because it unfairly discriminates in favor of those who grow up in affluent, book-laden, and educationally rich environments. Against this, John McWhorter has written a recent article arguing, in essence, that throwing out the SAT is " throwing a baby out with the bathwater."

I cannot expand much on the content of McWhorter's wonderful article, but I do want to clarify his argument a little. What McWhorter is really saying, and I agree, is that even if the SAT discriminates in favor of students who know fancy words like "lugubrious" and can do advanced algebra, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this fact. In fact, discriminating between students based on who can handle the material being tested better is basically what tests should do.

The major line of argument against the SAT is that the test discriminates against those who may never have had occasion to learn "college words" or learn advanced math (even if the lack of opportunity was due to no fault of their own). Of course, this begs a question: are students who do not know how to do these things the students who are capable of being in college? As McWhorter points out, "as most of us would suspect[,] mastery of advanced vocabulary is vital to understanding the texts presented to a college student." If a student can't perform to a certain standard on the SAT vocabulary test, then regardless of whether their lack of ability to do so is environmental or not, this student may well not have the requisite knowledge that college demands.

What is unfair about that? It is sometimes argued that penalizing a student with a college-inhibiting low score on the SAT for something that may not have been the student's fault is unfairly discriminatory. (Why deny a student the opportunity at college simply because their parents could not afford private school, books, or tutors?) This is best answered as a question: Are the purpose of college admissions tests (a) tests designed to filter applicants based on their ability to demonstrate desired skills; (b) instruments for administering social justice?

For those who might actually have answered (b), here is a thought experiment. Before becoming a lawyer, every student must take their state's bar exam, testing their readiness to practice law (the same way that every medical student must pass a series of exams before practicing medicine.) As law is highly specialized, the purpose of such tests are to "weed out" the prepared from the unprepared. It would be a catastrophe if we argued - as we do about the SAT - that the tests are unfair because they discriminate against those who might not have had the money to go to a top 100 law school. Even though the tests might discriminate thus, the fact is that the "weeding out" process of the tests is necessary to ensure that only those who are prepared to practice law actually practice law.

The same logic should be applied to the SAT tests. The question is not whether they discriminate (they do), but whether the things it tests are actually those things that are prerequisite for a successful college career. We need to get past the idea that the SAT's are wrong because they discriminate against students (who may have gotten higher scores had they lived in more affluent or academically rich environments). Until that sad day where we make college admissions a tool of social justice, and suggest that mathematic and vocabulary ability is unimportant to predicting college success, then I agree with McWhorter: Long Live the SAT.

Brain Breaks: Where's the Evidence?

Early this week, my "mentor teacher" and I were talking about some particularly off-task students in my classroom. She mentioned the idea of giving students "brain breaks." As she is familiar with my skeptical ways, she abruptly followed her recommendation with an assurance that the need for "brain breaks" is thoroughly evidence-based, based on the latest brain research ("brain-based learning" is another fairly recent fad in education). Unfortunately, I decided to find out for myself, and what I found - typical of the education world - is that "evidence based" often, in educator slang, means "cited in an article which was cited in an article which was...." You get the idea.

Now, the idea that students require brief "brain breaks" for every twenty-or-so minutes of real learning has strong intuitive appeal. When we introspect and, especially when we look at students, it is hard to quarrel with this idea. 90 minute periods are long, students get restless, and the idea that students require breaks for every x number of minutes "just makes sense."

But "just makes sense" is different than "has an evidentiary basis." So, when my mentor teacher suggested that brain breaks did have a strong evidentiary basis, I asked her where I might be able to find such evidence. She pulled out three books outlining the idea of brain breaks. Out of those, two did not cite any research (even though both suggested that validating research existed), and one dropped the name of an educational theorist - not a researcher - who postulated that breaks may be good things for kids.

I spent some time online as well, figuring that as there exist tons of websites extolling the virtues of brain breaks, I could certainly find references to the research that validates them. I must have gone through 30+ websites, all to no avail. I chased down any articles that were cited, only to find that articles which were cited as evidence of brain breaks were articles that themselves cited other articles, which in turn, cited other articles. I have not yet found the "holy grail" articles that vitiate this circle by outlining original evidence (rather than citing articles that cite articles). Those websites or articles that did not cite other articles simply and blithely said things like "research shows that..." without going into what that research is. This gives the impression that once one says that research exists on something (whether it does or not) enough times, people just start to assume the truth of the statement.



I am not saying that such articles do not exist, but I suspect that if there is really that much scientific research validating "brain breaks" (as adherents are quick to suggest), then articles doing so would not be so hard to find citations for. This is not just a problem with the idea of brain breaks, but with so much in education (the virtually unquestioned theory of Multiple Intelligences for instance, which has gained credence primarily by "intuitive appeal," anecdotes, and a few very poorly designed studies.) In the world of education, "evidence-based" is not a very trustworthy descriptor.

So, I will probably try out brain breaks in my classes, and I suspect that they will work, at least in their ability to better keep students focused and alleviate the drudgery of 90 minute periods. (I do not expect that they will raise academic scores, but this is a prediction only.) But I will not suggest that they are evidence-based until I can find, or someone can show me, the evidence (not an article that cites and article) of their efficacy.

Review of Rand-Influenced Book on Education

Today, I reviewed Jerry Kirpatrick's book "Montessori, Dewey, and Capitalism." It is a book that defends (a) a free-market capitalistic model of educaiton; and (b) the appropriateness of Dewey's and Montessori's methods of education in that framework.

I gave the book 2 out of 5 stars.

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First off, Jerry Kirkpatrick has written one of only a few books that defend education in an environment of the free market. For that, he deseves some praise. While I find fault with much that he says, I am in agreement with Kirkpatrick that schools need to be opened up to the competitive forces of the market.

Kirkpatrick is concerned to defend a particlar type of education - that utilizing the insights of progressive educators John Dewey and Maria Montessori - as the only proper plan of education in a capitalistic society. He suggests that in a capitalistic society, the "old way of educaiton" that teaches students to submit to the school's authority would be in contradiction with capitalism's anti-authoritarian structure.

My first objection is that, despite Kirkpatrick's argument, I do not see how any social structure REQUIRES a certain type of education. I do not see how a mixed economy or socialist country could not just as easily have a "lecture" style of education as it could a Montessori style. To suggest that a philosophy of educaiton and a philosophy of social organizaiton must be alligned is like saying that that a nation's philosphy of science must be alligned with its philosophy of social organization.

Secondly, Kirkpatrick takes it as unquestioned that Montessori's anti-authority method of education meshes well with capitalism's anti-authority structure. I do not see this as correct. When students move past high school, they will experience many "authoritarian" relationships, like that between them and employers and that between them and moneylenders. (I have even heard it argued elsewhere that an "anti-authoritarian" style of education leaves kids ill-preared to function in a capitalistic system, which involves learning to obey rules, laws, and mores.)

While I am not against the Montessori method of educaiton, I suspect that Kirkpatrick's confidence in it is exhuberant. Many well-argued books have been written outlining the dangers of current schools' infatuation with "progressive education" ideas ("whole child" education, "whole language" education, education as self-discovery rather than subject-discovery). The interested might read Stout's "Feel Good Curriculum" and Hirsch's "The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them," as starting points.

In brief, Kirkpatrick makes a big mistakes, probably related to his belief in Ayn Rand's philosophy. First, he is very much against coercion, extremizing this view into the idea that coercing children is an unqualified wrong. It is interesting to note, though, that even in a capitalistic society, the need to coerce children is recognized in an almost universal agreement that kids below a certain age need to be restricted in certain ways, as they lack the executive functioning skills to self-regulate. Kirkpatrick recognizes that students need freedom, but does not recgnize that students also need a good amount of structure. Before one can be self-disciplined, one needs to be taught discipline. (One cannot just "discover" how to be disciplined.)

Kirkpatrick goes on to describe what an educaiton system in a free market would look like. I think the discusison is a bit facile to be honest. Kirkpatrick is confident that a free-market system would do away with grades, rankings, standardized tests, degrees, and certificates. I see this as a very hasty and wrong judgment that misinterprets a key role of schools: to signify to future employers, colleges, etc, that the child has mastered a certain content and acquired certain skills. Without diplomas, grades, and tests, the very term "graduation" loses all meaning. (How would we know when a chlld is graduated? How would we know when to pass a child on to the next level? How would future employers know how their perspective employees did in school?)

Kirkpatrick also sees rankings, letter grades, and degrees as very bad things. Of course, as an educator, I can attest that the grading system is what often keeps kids motivated to work harder, and without it, students would find it very hard to know where they need improvement and how much improvement they need. If there were no such things as "exit requirements" I question whether many people would see any point to education at all (aside from those who learn solely for the enjoyment of it).

Quite simply, I think Kirkpatrick's book could benefit from a lot of rethinking. Particularly, he discusses his own ideas, but not once discusses existant or possible criticisms (as for his championing of Montessori and Dewey, there are many, many critics he could have dealt with. He chose not to.) As for his facile confidence that a free-market would gravitate towards a Montessori appraoch, he did not bring up the fact that the large majority of private schools in existence are non-Montessori schools with more "authoritarian" structure. (Is there a reason to suppose that this trend would reverse? We don't know; Kirkpatrick doesn't bring it up!) There are also many critics of a free-market approach to education that not once do we hear Kirkpatrick grapple with.

I give this book two stars. One star is for being one of the handful of books discussing education in a free market framework. The second was for Kirkpatrick's very learned, but skewed, history of the transition from "classical" to "progressive" education.

Special Ed Students Immune From Failure?

Yesteday, I took part in an IEP (Individualized Education Program) meeting for an autistic student on my case load. The goal of the meeting was to evaluate whether the student is progressing academically with the strategies we have put in place for him.

And, out of the blue, there it was. One participant, a "resource teacher" specializing in autism, said, "Well, the child is recieving special ed services. There is no reason he should be failing."

I worked hard to keep my jaw from dropping. A few months ago, I would have said something to follow up such a comment - something to the effect of, "Special education students can fail, if they are not doing the work required desipte our best efforts." I would have said something like this but have learned to keep my mouth shut so as to avoid an "everyone against Kevin," scenario. Sadly, the view that kids recieving special ed services should not fail is commonplace.

To clarify, I do not accuse those holding this view of suggesting that students should pass simply because they recieve special education services. Their view is more nuanced: if a student receiving special education services is failing, then it must be because their work is not appropriately tailored to suit their abilities or strengths. This was what the participant at Friday's meeting was saying: as the student is failing classes, it must be because we special and general educators are not meeting his/her needs.

IF there is one over-arching problem with special education as administered in public schools (particularly high schools), it is this: special education inadvertently ends up shielding students from accountability. Special educators will pay lip-services to the idea that students must "meet teachers halfway," but these words collapse each time we introduce new services for a child in proportion to how badly they are failing. The worst part is that, by high school, students often know this and use it to their advantage. (I can't tell you how many times, for instance, I have seen kids recieve new services only to become lazier, thereby recieving new services, etc.)

The situation gets particularly delicate when we realize that, fairly often, a student is placed into special education because they are coming in far below the grade level required of the actual grade they are in (10th graders reading on a 3rd grade level, for instance.) Thus, when we talk about what "modificaitons" we need to make to their work, it often consists of reading things for them, scaling down the reading level of readings we give them, and, in a nutshell, making "10th grade english" into "3rd grade english that carries a 10th grade credit." This obliterates the entire idea of a "standards based" education by allowing some students to pass the same class as their peers, while having to master far less content in order to do so.

"Well, the child is recieving special ed services. There is no reason he should be failing." There has simply got to be a better way.