is the title of a piece now online at Education Week and appearing in the August 25 dead tree edition. It is by Alfie Kohn, and if you know his work, you know he is one of nation's foremost critics of what is becoming our conventional approach to education, especially with the notion of data-driven instruction, which he abhors, as do I.
I'm not sure, but I believe you can get to this piece by free registration. Quite frankly, if you are seriously interested in educational issues you probably should subscribe to Ed Week - it is the paper of record and the best single source of information on education.
The complete title is Turing Children Into Data: A Skeptic's Guide to Assessment Programs, and begins with a famous saying from Einstein: Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
Please continue reading.
What is key about the article is the six questions Kohn says should be asked about any of the cleverly named programs now being foisted upon education and the American public. Before I get to those, however, let me set the scene as Kohn does, with his 1st paragraph:
Programs with generic-sounding names that offer techniques for measuring (and raising) student achievement have been sprouting like fungi in a rainforest: "Learning-Focused Schools," "Curriculum-Based Measurements," "Professional Learning Communities," and many others whose names include "data," "progress," or "RTI." Perhaps you’ve seen their ads in periodicals like this one. Perhaps you’ve pondered the fact that they can afford these ads, presumably because of how much money they’ve already collected from struggling school districts
Kohn offers his six questions in order to help school districts, and the public, have a better understanding before they commit scarce dollars to such proprietary approaches. Here are what he calls "a few pointed questions":
1. What is its basic conception of assessment?
2. What is its goal? (on this the first sentence of his explanation read "Ask not only what the program does but why it exists."
3. Does it reduce everything to numbers? For this one, it is worth including the full 1st paragraph of his explanation, with a little added bolding by yours truly:
If all the earnest talk about "data" (in the context of educating children) doesn’t make you at least a little bit uneasy, it’s time to recharge your crap detector. Most assessment systems are based on an outdated behaviorist model that assumes nearly everything can—and should—be quantified. But the more educators allow themselves to be turned into accountants, the more trivial their teaching becomes and the more their assessments miss.
4. Is it about "doing to" or "working with"? Let me add one sentence of his explanation:
One sure sign of disrespect is the use of incentives or sanctions to make teachers get with the program, including compensation that hinges on compliance or on some measure of student achievement.
5. Is its priority to support kids’ interest? Kohn thinks it critical not to dampen what is students' desire to learn.
6. Does it avoid excessive assessment? Adding one sentence from this explanation:
The more that students are led to focus on how well they’re doing, the less engaged they tend to become with what they’re doing.
Kohn notes that even good educators can be credulous when presented with cleverly named assessment programs. He concludes like this:
Many companies and consultants thrive on this credulity, and also on teachers’ isolation, fatalism, and fear (of demands by clueless officials to raise test scores at any cost). With a good dose of critical thinking and courage, a willingness to say, "This is bad for kids, and we won’t have any part of it," we could drive these outfits out of business—and begin to take back our schools.
I wish he were right. I wish educators and committed parents could take back our schools. I wish our concept of education were not being narrowed to a set of concepts being foisted by think tanks and foundations, funded by certain wealthy interests, and deliberately excluding the voices of any who might deign dare to offer a competing vision - excluding because perhaps they fear loss of control if that competing vision were ever given a fair hearing. Fear - not only of loss of control, but loss of profits, for corporations, hedge fund managers, educational service providers.
In approximately 2 hours students will be entering my room. I don't have time to tend a diary this morning. I saw Kohn's piece. I felt obligated to help more people know about it.
Hence this diary.
Peace.