Blogs

On Wednesday, NPR ran a story on the use of "performance management" as a means of teacher evaluation in the Chicago school system.

From the NPR story:

Some urban school systems are turning to the tough tactics businesses and law enforcement use to improve employee performance. The sometimes-contentious approach, known as performance management, has yielded promising results in Houston, New York and some other districts. In Chicago, it's forcing city educators to embrace a cultural revolution in how they go about their work.

And:

Top district officials argue that performance management offers principals a way to tackle tough educational problems that seem insurmountable. And they point to other districts, like Houston, where these methods are working.

The superintendent there, Terry Grier, credits performance management with forcing his principals to use data to pressure their worst teachers to get better or get out.

Unfortunately, Houston ISD did not receive accreditation due to a developing cheating scandal. If a success story fails to receive accreditation, what does failure look like?

How can anyone make the claim that performance review is working in Houston when Houston ISD has yet to receive accreditation due to concerns of widespread cheating? And it's not like Houston is any stranger to allegations of falsifying data under pressure of a top-down mandate.

More importantly, the NPR story ran on March 10th. The news of Houston ISD not receiving accreditation was published on March 5th. Why didn't this get caught as part of routine fact-checking?

If this detail was missed, what other details were overlooked or ignored in pursuit of the narrative that the only thing wrong with schools is those darn teachers, and all that's needed is some common-sense know how from the business world?

I don't know what's more stunning: the lack of fact-checking in a piece put out by a respected, credible national news outlet, or the fact that as the world's economy is still teetering due to widespread malfeasance in the corporate world, we are still trumpeting increased corporatism as the "solution" to our education "problem."

I may be naive, but I believe that we will get a better understanding of how to improve our educational system with a more accurate depiction of the actual problems. Getting basic facts straight is a good place to start.

In an Op-Ed written by Ok Go member Damian Kulash Jr, he describes how his record company, with the help of YouTube, has made it impossible to embed their new videos in external sites. Since the change, there has been a marked drop in viewings of the Here It Goes Again video:

When EMI disabled the embedding feature, views of our treadmill video dropped 90 percent, from about 10,000 per day to just over 1,000. Our last royalty statement from the label, which covered six months of streams, shows a whopping $27.77 credit to our account.

(Seriously, take some time and click on the above link to the video. $27.77 for 6 months? Wow)

Leaving aside the incredible shortsightedness of a policy that eliminates free marketing, I was struck by the deadweight that musicians carry with them as part of a record deal. Industry lawyers needed to vet this change in policy, industry PR and Marketing people needed to articulate this new strategy, and these people's salaries are paid by the talent of the musicians "represented" by the label.

(Photo credit: betseyweber, original available here)

Except that, as this situation clearly demonstrates, the business needs of the recording industry often run counter to the creative needs and processes of musicians. The recording industry is bloated with administrative deadweight that contributes little to nothing to the people creating music.

And the more I think about it, the more I see parallels between what is happening with music and what is happening with education.

In education, as in music, there is an Education Industry that has differing goals and interests of the people upon whom they depend for their continued existence. While the goals of the education industry do not need to diverge from the actual needs of students and teachers, in practice the needs of the education industry require that organizations spend money that has little or nothing to do with student performance.

A broad range of companies and organizations lobby Congress about Education (at the national level, as well as at the state and local levels); several of the larger textbook companies spend money for lobbyists. It's almost like they lobby on issues that dovetail with the products they sell, to the point where it's difficult to tell if the product line follows the legal requirements, or the legal requirements follow the product line. But in any case, it's probably easier to tease out the relationship between lobbyist influence and business needs than the relationship that any of this has to making schools a better place.

It's also worth noting the money spent on lobbyists spent by the College Board -- you know, the people that brings us the SAT and Friends, and who create a need for a test-preparation industry that rakes in millions from anxious teens and their parents. These players occupy space in the educational market, and generate an incredible amount of revenue, yet I doubt you will find many people making the argument that learning how to take the SAT brings greater intellectual growth than creating a portfolio. What could happen if the resources poured into test preparation were instead directed towards Arts education, or -- to help counter increased rates of obesity -- Outdoor Education?

The money spent on testing becomes even more questionable when one considers the apparent correlation between family income and student performance on tests.

The existing conference model of professional development provides another example where industry needs have diverged from the needs of teachers and learners. Virtually all of these conferences have a vendor driven model (about the only exception I know of is Educon). For vendors, these conferences are an opportunity to connect with (aka market to) the people they view as their customers. For attendees, however, this means that a portion of their professional development experience is cluttered with sessions devoted to salespeople extolling the virtues of their product in the educational process. There doesn't need to be a disconnect between the needs of companies and their customers, but the vendor-driven model tends to put the product as the focus, as opposed to the needs of the learner. A more authentic approach -- and the approach taken by many classroom teachers -- is to assess what students need, and assemble resources based on that need. However, using technology in response to a need -- rather than buying up technology because vendors offer district-wide rollouts -- doesn't help people make sales quotas, and doesn't convince vendors that their sponsorship dollars are well spent.

The next time you are at a conference, wander onto the vendor floor. Do a quick count of the number of booths, and the number of people at each booth, and what the vendors are giving away. The cost of this marketing is reflected in the cost of products sold to teachers, schools, and districts. Given that schools are increasingly being held accountable for the cost of supplies (how many teachers have had to supply paper for your classroom?), it would be nice to see something that resembles restraint from organizations that profit directly from schools.

The process of reworking how we teach and learn requires more than just changing how the interpersonal exchanges between teacher and student take place; it will also require a critical rethinking of how we assess learning, and a critical rethinking of how we equip ourselves to teach and learn. Many companies make a tidy profit within the current supply chain, and they will not passively go away simply because there are better ways of doing things that renders them obsolete. And in case you're wondering, a teacher's lobby doesn't feel like the answer; the American Federation of Teachers has been pretty active, and they haven't done much. I don't know whether we need to get on or off the treadmill, but we certainly need to get moving. The educator's voice -- the principals and teachers working in schools -- has been largely absent from the conversation. How can the people doing the actual work become more involved in shaping the policy?

Saturday's print version of the Oregonian featured a front page article on improving low-performing schools. The article is about average for educational writing; as such, it provides a useful opportunity to examine some of the flaws in educational coverage as practiced by the main stream media.

The Oregonian article stays on the familiar ground of mediocre education coverage by hewing closely to the narrative that Change = Good and No Change = Bad. It's a stretch to call this kind of writing an intentional lie of omission, but the article certainly oversimplifies a complex topic by omitting many details that could be relevant. For example, any of the following details could have created a more complete picture:

• Duncan's reforms -- which are at the core of the current transition/transformation strategy -- didn't work in Chicago (The original article is behind a paywall, but a mobile-formatted version is available here);
• Other reforms promising accountability and measurement have been marred by fraudulent record keeping, including the Houston Miracle that helped inform NCLB;
• Charter schools might not be able to meet the needs of Duncan's proposed school closures and transformations;
• There are already charges of cronyism around the Duncan DOE;
• Closing schools and/or firing large numbers of faculty have an incredibly destructive effect on a community.

It's not like every article needs to include in depth coverage around every detail, but it would be nice if an article even included something that resembled nuance. For example, the Oregonian article reads:

Districts can avoid making the changes if they don't apply for the money. But if they decide not to seek the turnaround funds, they must explain in detail why they lack the capacity to do so.

A couple issues here:

First, calling the money "turnaround funds" misrepresents what is happening. In some cases, the schools will not be turned around, they will be closed, and handed over to charter companies. Journalists should do more than parrot the language of government press releases.

Second, the above quotation says school districts "must must explain in detail why they lack the capacity" to apply for funding. This would have been an excellent place to point out that the changes being advocated here haven't been proven to work, and, as noted above, in Chicago they didn't work. So, district time could be chewed up explaining why they don't want to spend time doing something that hasn't been proven to work. This has nothing to do with a lack of capacity, and more to do with not wanting to waste time on something that might not actually fix anything.

I'm not disputing - at all - that schools and districts can become more effective. The issues around educational reform are complex and nuanced. Unfortunately, the discussions of them are not.

The press could perform a useful function by presenting a more complete picture. For education coverage, this could start by acknowledging that the problems within schools do not have a single solution, and that the best solution to improving schools will likely vary based on the conditions within and around the school. Moreover, improvements will be incremental, and strategies for these improvements will incorporate ideas from a variety of sources.

This is a more difficult story to write, as it doesn't fit into any pre-made narrative. But, it has one tangible benefit: it's a lot closer to the truth.

---

Credits: Home Page photo from The Newseum.

Hi. We're your new overlords.


Hi. We're Apple.


We are delighted to inform you that regulations require you to carry a device that:

a. Tells us where you are at all times;

b. Records who you talk with, and for how long;

c. Can be used to record exactly what you say, and the responses of other participants in these conversations;

d. Collects email and text messages sent by you and to you.

You will never be informed when this information is examined by anyone.

Buy a phone. It's cool.


You must tell us everything you do, no matter how trivial. Identify your friends and acquaintances, and how you know them. We expect you to check in with us at least several times a day, every day.


Install apps for Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare.


Tell us everything you are curious about.


Install apps for Google and/or Bing.


Pay us, because tracking you and sorting through all the information you give us takes time and we need to pay people to do it. Additionally, we need to sell your data to advertisers, marketers, or possibly just hand it over to law enforcement regardless of whether or not they have any legal right to have it, and your data doesn't package itself. Your data is worth money, and you must pay us because we value your data. We value it so much that we will sell it, because that lets us make more money. So pay us. We need to continue watching you.


You will be charged a reasonable monthly fee for these services.

Thank you,

Your new overlords

In a recent listserv conversation, a participant asked about the steps schools are taking to monitor student computer use. One question dealt with the frequency with which browser histories on student machines were parsed, not as part of any examination into any suspected incidents, but as part of routine supervision and oversight of students.

I've seen more threads like this than I can count. Much of the impetus behind the more intrusive forms of supervision comes from a good motive: the desire to keep kids safe. High profile cases power calls for more supervision, as do "consultants" who conduct seminars tailored for the fears of parents and administrators (as an aside, if I remember the research correctly, scare tactics have been shown to have limited effectiveness for a short time period with students at or around middle school age. Scare tactics don't do much for older students. If any of my three readers knows better info on this, please share it in the comments).

But -- as people who work in and with schools, as people who help kids develop the skills to make rational, meaningful decisions about the world in which they live -- when do we have a responsibility to push back against well-intentioned but misguided efforts that conflate security with supervision?

Within the last two weeks, there have been news stories about the FBI wanting access to geolocation data obtained from cell phones, and the FBI wanting to require ISP's to retain web browsing records for two years. As we have seen before, even access to anonymized search records show an incredible amount of information about an individual. In the recent past, there was some outcry against the government requesting borrowing records from public libraries, and the entire question of warrantless wiretapping raised some hackles.

But the outcry against intrusions on privacy takes place against a backdrop where it's normal to share a steady stream of details about your life. My concern is that, if we make our schools into places where "normal" means having your browsing history tracked daily, people will take that level of supervision for granted. For a child born in 2002, a government that uses warrantless wiretapping is part of the fabric of their lives.

As teachers, as parents, as people who run schools, as people who care about kids: how are we empowering kids to develop their distinct interests, to take informed risks, to explore freely, and to know that it's okay to have hopes, fears, and dreams that are private, and intrinsically theirs until they choose to share?

I was at Educon 2.2 a little while back, and at that meetup we spent a lot of time talking about what school can and should be. I have been working on a follow-up post about the session, but I sense that as I try to make some sense about what learning can be within a context where there is a growing tension between constructive guidance and overbearing observation, part of what we all need to learn is how to deconstruct the myth that being observed and tracked makes us safer.