Two education opinion pieces in the New York Times the past two days have got me thinking about who we seek to engage with in conversation about education. For those passionate about and working for educational change, the short answer might be “anyone and everyone,” right? Well, recently I’ve been wondering if that would be the best use of our time.
To demonstrate what I mean, I’ll briefly describe the two education pieces. The first, by NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof in yesterday’s paper, discussed Washington DC Chancellor of Schools Michelle Rhee’s approach to educational reform, focusing on identifying good and bad teachers, and rewarding or getting rid of them based on their results (aka test scores). The second, appearing in today’s paper by education writer E.D. Hirsch, Jr., proposes more content-specific curriculum and standards so that students will have the knowledge background to score better on tests.
While both pieces unfortunately take an uncritical look at the practice of assessing students and teachers based on test scores, the two writers come from very different starting points. Hirsch’s argument begins with a fundamental stance on the importance of content standards for all children. Looking into his many books confirms this, with titles such as What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know, What Your First Grader Needs to Know, and Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. And here is an excerpt from Hirsch’s op-ed:
These much maligned, fill-in-the-bubble reading tests are technically among the most reliable and valid tests available. The problem is that the reading passages used in these tests are random. They are not aligned with explicit grade-by-grade content standards.
Meanwhile, Kristof’s starting point is that education in the U.S. reflects a deep injustice and “national shame,” and that education itself can be a powerful force for societal change, as he writes in yesterday’s piece:
Education reform could be the most potent antipoverty program in the country, and Ms. Rhee represents the vanguard in this struggle to try new tools to revive American schools.
Just as Hirsch’s starting point with content-standards is clear from his previous writing, Kristof’s social justice, human rights-based starting point is also apparent from his previous columns about the fighting and devastation in Sudan, and the sex trafficking of women around the world, among other topics.
Which leads me to the point that, given that there is an urgent need to work for educational change according to human rights and democratic values and that our personal time and energy is limited, we ought to consider how open people are to questioning their assumptions about education and re-thinking their positions. Perhaps Hirsch, whose core educational stance seems to be the importance of specific pieces of knowledge, may be less likely to think about democratic education than Kristof, who already bases his reporting on the very same values that are at the core of democratic education – namely, participatory decision-making, individual freedom, personal responsibility, and social justice.
The implication being that when there is a choice of who to engage with and reach out to, it may be wise to target those who appear more open and who appear to share one’s values, rather than getting stuck speaking with those who seem to be strongly lined up against those values. This does not mean some people should be completely dismissed, and for sure there will be times when we guess wrongly about where people stand.
Yet, we can get bogged down if we focus on those who are strongly set against our views and are most vocal about it (because, let’s face it, people with the most polarizing of views are often the most emphatic). We may even get burned-out and never realize that while we’ve been putting our energy into the several dozens of outspoken critics we’ve missed out on the several hundreds or several thousands of sometimes quieter potential allies. And I do know that indeed there are many more people who are closer than farther to the views of this blog: that education ought to reflect and practice the democratic values and human rights that our nation and our world hold dear.
So, (as hard as it is to not respond passionately to E.d. Hirsch, Jr. every time he writes something new) let’s not expend all our energy on those who, at least for now, are set in their beliefs in a standardized educational model. Instead, let’s target, identify, and reach out to those people who already know that every sector of our society must reflect and practice the values of a democracy if we are to build a more just, sustainable, productive, and peaceful world. Perhaps they already work for justice in a different sector, such as housing or immigrant rights or world hunger. Perhaps they always tell you about new happenings in the fields of sustainable energy or equal rights for same-sex couples. And perhaps they’d be open to transferring those same motivations for justice and personalization to the education and youth realm.
It is these individuals who can help lay the groundwork for a grassroots, people-powered movement to hold school leaders and policy-makers accountable for an education system and practice guided by our democratic values.
ps – as I posted this, I found a word cloud of Hirsch’s op-ed on Wordle, and decided to do one for Kristof’s, as well as my own post about them both. Thought you might find them intriguing (thanks Gretchen for the Wordle link). You can find these and make your own at www.Wordle.net:
Today’s DE Blog post (also shown below)
Who are these people of which you speak, Dana? Do you know? And which ones are the ones who have influence in Obama’s cabinet? I’m not so good at figuring out WHO to talk to, but I’m ready to follow directions when someone figures it out.
Also, Dana: what research are you aware of that offers alternatives to what exists now in terms of testing? Are there do-able alternatives ripe for the taking–if our law makers decide to go for it?
I LOVE how you use you Wordle to compare and contrast the different articles. I was particularly interested to note that ours had the word “people” fairly large; Kirstoff’s had “teachers” and “rhee”; and the other guy had “students” as his biggest. Not sure what it all means, but it feels significant!
Great questions, Gretchen! You bring up a whole new level of thought about WHO. I was thinking first in terms of the *kinds* of people to spend energy talking with, as in there a lot of people sharing similar values who just may never have thought about education in a more empowering, democratic, participatory way. And that we just might be able to see some grassroots movement if we focus specifically on people fitting that description.
Your points are well taken, that in addition to grassroots movement building, there are key leaders, policy-makers, and others that could be strong allies, or who have such important positions (e.g. Obama’s administration, senators, etc.) that we ought to contact them. Hear hear! It takes a lot of thought, perhaps thinking about our connections and seeking connections with those who may be closer to those kinds of people. But it’s something to really work on.
As for alternatives to current testing, yes, there are many great options out there, I’m sure you’ve seen some cool schools doing things differently too. One is Jefferson County Open School, which uses a Passages program incorporating an advising group and demonstrations of learning to the entire school community. (Locally driven assessments, which are often looked down on by both Dems and Republicans today, though some key educators, notably Deborah Meier, are big backers of this kind of local control).
As for more research-based assessments, here are two that could be used immediately for assessing schools (and note that is assessing SCHOOLS and not individual students, which I think is a better way to go):
- The Learning Climate Questionnaire that assesses the extent to which teachers (or schools) create autonomy-supportive environments for the learners as opposed to controlling environments. Autonomy-supportive settings are linked to greater intrinsic motivation, greater understanding, higher creativity, and a greater desire to continue learning as compared with controlling environments.
- The Hope Study, which assesses educational environments for the degree to which students perceive the settings as supporting autonomy, belongingness, competence, engagement and psychological health. You can find more in the 2007 Phi Delta Kappan article written by Ron Newell and Mark van Ryzin.
Also, a friend and colleague of mine, Laura Stine in Oregon, has been involved with many democratic and alternative schools, and she promotes the use of “Post-School Outcome Studies,” essentially studying what happens to students after they leave a school, noting if they are working, satisfied with their life, contributing to society, etc.
This is a great topic, and it will be important to have alternatives to standardized testing “shovel-ready,” as the saying goes today. So let’s keep identifying and strengthening those that are out there.
Thanks for the thoughts on Wordle – love that tool, it has many possibilities.