Recently, filmmaker Shannon Puckett, seeded by kickstarter, produced a solid documentary on educational reform entitled "Defies Measurement."
As it happens, a principal focus is Chipman Middle School in Alameda, California, a school where one of my friends' kids attended back in its golden era. Or perhaps I should simply say "its era." It was an outstanding middle school which was destroyed by the No Child Left Behind Act, and, as that act intended, got replaced by a charter school.
I was alerted to this film by this blog entry by David B. Cohen on the Education Week website.
This movie is viewable and downloadable at the Vimeo site here.
In addition to the movie itself and the fine commentary by David Cohen, I'll add a few thoughts of my own below the squiggle. Actually, though, I encourage everyone to view the film itself. It packs a lot into a short (one hour) running time.
At an hour's running time, it's about as compact as a fully-fledged argument can be. Sure, the many who disagree with the educational policies of Bush and Obama won't need a whole hour's presentation to understand the message. But for those who don't get it, this hour packs all the relevant points into one place.
Common Stats
It includes the well-known statistics about why our educational system is not actually in trouble, but that it's economic opportunity that's out of whack. If you only measure public schools having 10% or fewer of their students living in poverty, then these schools are, indeed, number one in the world. Is it fair to leave out so many schools? Sure, because the nations we're compared to don't have the widespread poverty that we do.
Authoritarianism
The heart of the film establishes the point that, from the learner's point of view, the most important outcomes of education simply cannot be measured. Standardized tests are a tool for the masters to sort the people under their authority, not for determining the most relevant educational achievement from the learner's point of view.
I'm not speaking as some stereotypical moonbeam here. Some of the most relevant skills in life, such as the ability to act proactively, to find your place in an effective team, to develop the mental tools of creativity, and, yes, to help yourself and others to enjoy life to the fullest, simply don't register on standardized tests.
Common Core
One throwaway line that I found particularly relevant to current ed reform debates concerned the Common Core and its Jekyll / Hyde nature.
Jekyll is the standards themselves, which are much better than what the textbook companies used to impose on their own.
And yes, I know that states have authority to set their own standards. But I also remember the outstanding standards and assessments that California developed in the late eighties and early nineties independently of textbook companies. The Empire struck back with a vengeance. One Republican governor elected, and all that outstanding work was tossed. They didn't even wait for the normal replacement schedule. They were replaced by the same old textbook nonsense as before, except perhaps even more overbearing and inappropriate than ever.
So yeah, the standards were set by textbook companies. When rich elites, like those behind Common Core, develop standards, they at least have the clout to withstand the textbook industry. Of course, real teachers would probably do even better. They already proved that in California twenty-five years ago.
So that's Jekyll.
Hyde, of course, is the idea that we'll somehow test ourselves into achievement. In addition to the familiar points about the destructiveness of over-testing, I'd like to offer one more. Standardized tests lock students into a particular sequence of conceptual development from year to year. However, in education, what matters is not the conceptual development of the curriculum, the topics. For successful learning, what matters is the psychological development of the student. Obviously, because people are not standardized like widgets, learners must vary in many aspects of their conceptual development, so adherence to a single sequence must disadvantage some of those learners.
Actually, though, adherence to the curricular model over a focus on students' intelligence probably disadvantages all students, because the psychology of learning often varies from the internal logic of a curricular subject.
More Authoritarianism
And to me, all of this tragedy is rooted in American culture's peculiar emphasis on behaviorism in guiding educational policies, as well as the common perception that knowledge is an object to passed on like a gold watch or a pearl necklace.
To me, behaviorism is the idea that operant conditioning, the carrot and the stick, will somehow develop the mind. Yeah, it works great for training dogs and horses, but nobody really cares what mental concepts the dog or horse employs to perform tricks. Like standardized testing, operant conditioning serves the masters, not the subjects. I mean, how many dogs do you know that spontaneously teach themselves to walk on their hind legs or even to shake hands? Dogs don't actually see much utility in things like that. To me, behaviorism means treating humans like animals.
Is there an alternative policy tool to behaviorism? Sure. Lots of them. From Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences to Piaget's constructivism to Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, alternatives abound. Of course, most of them involve some sort of empathy towards students as real human beings, rather than the blank slates of authoritarian fantasy.
On the one hand, these alternatives are actually educational tools that teachers can master in order to improve their instruction methods. But on the other hand, the educational system's particular policies will either further or inhibit their use, so policy makers need to understand them. At least, they do if they actually care about education and not just numbers and control.
Bipartisanship
My personal political sympathies tend to lie with the democratic wing of the democratic party. But I have to say, from Ted Kennedy's sponsorship of the No Child Left Behind Act, to Obama's and Arnie Duncan's doubling down on it, the bashing of education enjoys true bipartisan support. In fact, many educational arguments advanced on this site could just as easily have come from my Fox-News-Addicted father.
I don't know what to do about this. It's frustrating. Yeah, they've got us surrounded.
But please view the film "Defies Measurement."