IF THE SHOE FITS...

In last night's installment of the PBS Frontline two-part series on the 5th anniversary of 'Bush’s War,' an intelligence analyst deep inside the White House during the run-up to the invasion says: We eventually came to the point where we were trying to wrap intelligence around a plan that had been chosen already—and everything we know about making good policy is that the intelligence should drive policy, not the other way around. 

Well. There are other descriptors for this pattern, of course: saying what people want to hear—or perhaps, counting your weapons of mass destruction before they’re hatched. This ready-fire-aim syndrome is hardly limited to the current administration.  Still, it strikes me that federal education policy-making has routinely and increasingly put proclamations and plans ahead of thoughtful intelligence-gathering.

It has been clear, for a very long time, that schools where students of significant poverty are concentrated are not likely to yield robust academic achievement results. It’s also clear that the United States cannot afford to sponsor two distinct tiers of public education—productive schools and failing schools—and maintain social equilibrium and economic supremacy.

So—what to do about that? What intelligence needed gathering to formulate efficient policy to address this increasing gap? What combination of policy levers (mandates, carrots and sticks, exhortation, capacity-building, resource allocation) would work best? 

If you’re working in a public school today, you know that the policy template laid for K-12 schools is heavy on the sticks and mandates, accompanied by a few bits of admittedly brilliant oratory: leaving no single child behind because of the soft bigotry of low expectations. Built on the “Texas (Not-Really-a) Miracle,” we are now stuck with a search for intelligence to support this ineffective policy, looking for data to back up the persistent notion that punitive accountability, “efficient” teachers and high expectations will be able to fix the problem of underachieving segments of the population.

This quest for supporting evidence has taken some interesting turns. One is the proliferation, even celebration, of international school achievement comparisons, where “apples to oranges” evaluations, using some pretty shaky foreign data, prop up the idea that blame for the socio-economic achievement gap rests on our schools and teachers.

Another is the increasing call for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on sophisticated data analysis systems which will connect student test scores (now that we have them) to teachers’ “performance.” This phenomenal pot of money could, alternatively, be used for laptops, reading tutors or school-based health care for kids, of course, but none of these would yield intelligence of school failure.

And what happens when eminent scholars like Richard Rothstein present compelling and thoughtful intelligence on the gaps already present as children enter school? Or when ordinary teachers, who have first-hand evidence, point out that none of their students come to school ready to learn? Another bit of clever oratory: “Excuse-making!”

Has any policy failure ever taught us to think before acting? At some point, a policy must be perceived as genuinely successful or public opinion will turn against it—threatening the authority and influence of the policy creators, revealing the fallacy and danger of embarking on a bold plan without good information.

Just as we can’t extricate ourselves from Iraq without further destabilizing an entire region of the Middle East—not to mention further endangering our own dedicated and hard-working military forces—we are stuck with the policy infrastructure investment in No Child Left Behind.

It would be nice to think that we could gather good intelligence to drive the real and difficult policy changes that will ultimately be needed to address the gap. Let’s make the policy fit the facts.

Comments

[Bob Heiny]

Yet, in the spirit of comity, teacher leaders know (some analysts argue) that NCLB policy follows facts, including from the largest empirical study of effects yielded in several reliably identifiable and repeatable teaching-learning processes. From that position, policy implementation does not follow facts used to underwrite the NCLB policy. Education analysts who give priority to both internal and external validity evidence say it's curious why teachers choose to limit student learning by using less than demonstrated most effective instructional procedures. I'm not sure how these positions fit your analysis.

[Nancy Flanagan]

What, specifically, are we talking about here, Bob? Reading First? Other whole-school curriculum reforms? The ones where educational publishers provide test evidence proving that having a systemic curriculum and instruction model is better than, say, the chaos that prevailed before the implementation of a plan?

NCLB, in its implementation, has forced some outrageously disorganized and dysfunctional school systems to adopt pre-programmed reforms. That's an improvement. We are still, however, looking to solve/blame societal problems on the backs of schools and teachers, rather than seeing the bigger picture of how American society has failed kids.

As a teacher, I believe that I can have great impact on my students' learning and prospects for the future. And I accept responsibility for choosing (in collaboration with my colleagues) the best, most effective instructional methods. You are suggesting that teachers "choose" to limit learning when they reject certain "managed instruction" models. Perhaps teachers have more first-hand experience with the student learners in question.

Why would teachers deliberately choose to subvert teaching methods and materials that research has deemed "best practice?" I can think of a few reasons--perhaps the indicators of effectiveness (test scores) are narrow and one-dimensional. Perhaps they have discovered oppositional research (think: Dibels). Perhaps the research was done on a different student population. Or perhaps they've actually used the materials and found them...I don't know, boring? limited? focused on simple reproduction rather than application or synthesis?

We need to know more about effective teaching than how to leverage test scores.

[Bob Heiny]

Thank you for clarifying how you consider an alternative view that part of an issue rests in NCLB policy instructional implementation.

[Bob Warner]

Hot talk! I teach in the most diverse area of the most diverse county in the country, Ridgewood, Queens, NY. "...teachers choose to limit learning". Really? Do you personally know a teacher who chooses to limit learning? The most ineffective teachers I know use the script, then blame the lack of accomplishment on the student. "Everyday Math", "America's Choice" etc., are great as a guide for new teachers, but as for a teacher's job of communicating relevance, the programs should become secondary to what the student should know to function in their community.
-Bob

[Bob Heiny]

Yes, BW, I know teachers who limit learning by choosing less efficient ways of teaching a lesson. Good question.

Still in the spirit of comity, if someone can teach a lesson so students meet a learning criterion in seconds or a few minutes (let's say, to tell time by 5 minute clock intervals), and others choose to take an hour, the second aggregate of teachers can limit student learning. They take time with one criterion while more efficient teachers may have students meet more than one criterion in the same time block.

Likely, all teachers know others who offer less efficient lessons, thereby limiting student learning when choices of teaching efficiency exist.

Does this help to clarify why some of us say that teachers choose to limit student learning?

[Bob Warner]

I'm going to get t-shirts printed up: "Meeting Criteria In Seconds!" Mad funny, as my students would say, and exactly what I was alluding to in the post. Poor teachers move on, whether anyone learned anything or not. They did their "job", right? (note: these are rhetorical questions,Bob H., and they're not asked in the spirit of 'comity'[variety of language is important]; they are callous digs at any empirical and removed viewpoint, and should be taken as such.) There may be such a substantial gulf between disciplines (I've since read your blog) that both opinions make sense, but probably not. Geometry teachers who attempt to climb through a chalkboard to teach dimension are my heroes. History teachers who take their students to the Capital, heroes as well. How would you measure the effect of these experiences? How do you grade a communal or cultural experience? (note: NOT a rhetorical question, please answer). Seriously, how does a field trip or exploring local politics fit into learning measurements?
Waiting patiently,
Bob

[Nancy Flanagan]

Gentleman Bobs,

Thanks for extending the dialogue. Oddly enough, while you were duking it out (nicely) over here, and I wasn't paying attention, I wrote another blog on one aspect of "efficiency" in teaching: the syllabus.

I'm not certain we should be elevating speed (read: efficiency) as a teaching goal--but what I am convinced of it that there is a huge gap between something that is "learned" enough to be tested, and something that is "learned" and becomes forever a functional part of a personal knowledge base.

For example, I will always know how to read, write, subtract, play the piano, distinguish between noun and verb, recite the Gettysburg address and explain its significance, etc. etc. There are other things I could do once, competently, for a test, but can't do now--things like distinguish between the five Latinate cases (took 4 years), quadratic equations (ditto), or explain the first law of thermodynamics --all things that I was once successfully tested on, that have fallen out of my head due to disuse.

Kids learn things deeply when they use them and apply them--which takes time and patience. I'm also not convinced that even if we could teach things more efficiently, the "leftover" time would be put to good use. I'm thinking specifically here about elementary reading students who learn to decode at age 4 or 5. They're "reading" earlier and more efficiently than ever--but when they're in 4th grade they have problems making meaning out of text, and they have lost all interest in reading for pleasure.

Most of the things I know, things that are integrated into my intellect, I learned gradually over time, or learned in combination with emotional investment or pleasure. Not efficiency.