Theme 3 concluding post

For what should we be held accountable and what form should accountability take? These were two of the big questions for this Theme. Judging by your posts, I’d say folks probably had the clearest sense of where they stood on this issue than any other so far. Specifically many posts indicated a clear sense of the reasons for/against standards based accountability, what to test for, who to blame for the struggles of under-performing students, what’s wrong with test-based standards, and what promising alternatives to test-based standards might look like. Altogether folks had really interesting things to say and shared many valuable resources!

What’s wrong with the current narrowly focused test-based accountability regime? Well, you sure told me! According to Toni T, it skews the curriculum too heavily toward the subjects that are tested for, like reading, and away from other important ones, like civics. Jay M argues that in doing so, it also teaches students that subjects outside the areas tested for are unimportant. In doing so it makes it impossible for teachers to argue with students who have the testing regime to back them up. Similarly Kimberley R points out that the pressure to meet proficiency has had a demoralizing effect on teachers, no longer able to teach to their passion and in response to what they see as important in their classroom. She quotes one teacher in New York as saying that teaching has become a case of ‘forget the child, just prove you can make them score acceptably’.

So why should we have standards-based accountability? According to Levinson, the main reason is that standards are social goods that enable us to set ideal social goals and gather useful information about our progress toward them. Perhaps arguing along similar lines, Rachel N entered a moderate defense of standards-based teaching and testing on reading. In her experience as a teacher at an MiBLSi school (Michigan’s Integrated Behavior and Learning Support Initiative), she testifies to how core curriculum and testing has helped her help her students. She writes:

In order to understand if a student is not achieving grade level reading expectations, you have to have a common assessment that shows a disparity.  In order to have that assessment be valid, you have to have fidelity in the teaching of the corresponding program.  You have to buy in to what you are doing.  Whether I liked it or not, I needed to teach my core reading program.  Then, I had more supports available to me to assist those students not making progress.

This is the heart of it-kids need to learn how to read.  This is what I feel is good about our MiBLSi progress.  We have a system (albeit broken at times) that is holding us accountable for doing our job.  We teach.  Some students learn.  We teach, some students don't learn.  We don't just move on!  We don't shrug our shoulders and hope for the best next year.

Lisa E also suggests a related argument relating back to a question from our previous material, namely the question concerning how important it is to prepare students to compete on the global labor market. She writes:

…a portion of an international test was given to a group of students in Belgium and a group of US students from an above average school in New Jersey.  The Belgium students scored 76% on the test while the US students scored only 47%.  Interestingly both the Belgium and US students thought the test was pretty easy. One student from Belgium commented (in rather good English I might add) that “if the kids in American can’t do this they are really stupid.”  That is a troubling assessment from a high school student from another country.  Report after report shows American students falling behind students from other industrialized countries in math, science, and even in reading.  Considering that in 2010 our per pupil spending ranked fourth highest in the world, there also seems to be a disconnect between what we spend and what we produce.

If part of the worry here is that is our economic prosperity depends on having a globally competitive labor force is, it’s not obvious how worrisome that should be. In ‘The new global labor market’, Richard Freeman points out that our economic prosperity also depends quite a bit on trade policies regulating the fluidity of global markets and welfare policies regulating the distribution of wealth within nations. On the other hand, problems like global climate change and the international banking crisis make it clear how inter-connected our fate is to the fates of other nations, and it is difficult to imagine that problems like these can be managed well if our citizens are insufficiently prepared to think critically about them, or at least meet their global peers with similar competencies.

This issue relates to a few others that many discussed, including whether measures of student proficiency should be comparative or individualized to the student and the issue concerning the underlying causes of student under-performance (relative to standards anyway!). Bill H touches on both of these when he writes:

If I have a student that reads at a second grade level at the beginning of his freshman year and reads at the fifth grade level at the end of the year, that student has made tremendous progress but this progress will not be recognized because that student will still be compared to students who read at, or above, grade level. Many wonderful and talented young people are being “hung out to dry” by the current assessment system.  Schools are being defunded because of lack of progress.  This seems the most backward of all systems.  Shouldn’t failing schools be funded at a higher rate to help improve them?  Standardized testing does not and cannot measure progress for every student as a “be all, end all”.  Things like test anxiety, lack of proper nutrition, trouble at home or in a relationship and good old apathy make the current system a joke.  Why must we use only one assessment tool when it is clear that there are so many others to use, as well?

I think Bill (and others like Lisa H who made a similar point) makes a great point here, though I would disagree were the implied conclusion that we should do away with comparative assessments (though Bill isn’t making that claim, given the question he poses in the last sentence, but anyway, just ‘spose it were). One reason for that relates to the point above about the need for a globally competent citizenry (if not competitive workforce). But another reason is actually hidden in Bill’s second point about how the current accountability regime has punished and defunded failing schools. I’m very powerfully inclined to agree that things like poverty and troubles at home explain to a large degree the troubles that many schools have (and for more on this, see the fine posting by your classmate Toni T). And so I’m very powerfully inclined to agree that a better accountability system would re-allocate resources in just the way Bill suggests—to each according to need. But re-allocation of this sort is impossible without comparative assessment.  

If what’s needed then are additional (not necessarily alternative) assessment tools that measure individual growth, what are some possibilities? In addition to the NAEP site visit model Rothstein and Jacobsen discuss, Lisa E mentions ‘a value-added model…that takes a look at student’s individual assessment gains from the previous school year and projects how much growth a student should make in the new school year...’ Jay M also outlines an intriguing ‘portfolio model’ for secondary education in which students ‘…bring artifacts as evidence that they will present in front of a panel made up of teachers, administrators, and community members who decide if the student is eligible for promotion or graduation.’

Altogether, it seems that the possibilities for valuable assessment in addition to standardized testing are numerous (site visits, student/faculty interviews, portfolios and value-added measures) and a fully adequate accountability regime will need to make use of all of them. Adding these measures while retaining standardized measures enables us to gather valuable comparative data while also showing people how well they are progressing and supporting student and teacher morale. Finally, it will recognize the social issues that contribute to student success and failure and allocate resources and support toward struggling schools, not away from them.

Theme 2 concluding post

Children’s interests. Parent’s rights. Teacher’s expertise. Government power. All of these things come into play in thinking about who should have authority to make curricular decisions. As always, a diversity of viewpoints was expressed in our blogs. By and large, most folks favored something like Gutmann’s democratic vision. But not a few (including Jeffrey B, Erin V, and Jessica K) wanted to give more authority to teachers as guardians of the interests of children. In these concluding comments, I’m going to focus on a few particularly interesting highlights from our discussion relating to the following things:

• Opt-outs and parental authority (and a pedagogical comment on responding to others) 
• Evolution and popular democratic control 
• Brighouse and Swift on parent’s rights

I also want to make one brief pedagogical comment on the use of links in blog writing. While it is fine to list related resources at the end of a blog, the best blogs I’ve read so far do two things here: They integrate linked resources into the blog and discuss the content of the linked resource as part of the case made out in the discussion. At the very least, anyway, it is a good idea when linking to a resource to explain what the link is to and its importance or relevance to the discussion. This way your reader knows what it’s doing there and whether it’s something they might want to follow.

Opt-outs and parental authority

When a parent strenuously objects to some part of your curriculum, should you excuse their child from it? That sure seems like one easy way to handle things that (a) is responsiveness to the wishes of parents and (b) does not disrupt the learning of others. In interesting comments on this, however, Jessica K and Kimberley R question whether this is quite correct.

On (a), Jessica remarked that children exempted from, e.g. a sex education unit, are just as likely to end up learning about it on the playground as at home. One point of this, I take it, is that opt-outs are not in fact the shields parents might think they are. Insofar as that’s true, teachers I suppose can honor the requests of parents without fear that their children will learn nothing. On the other hand, the suggestion could be that opt-outs are problematic insofar as parents who request them may have no alternative plan of instruction. In that case, what the child learns depends on what her peers tell here, and that’s problematic.

By contrast Kimberly argues relative to point (b) that opt-outs can take forms that potentially threaten the learning of others. She writes:

…there are other cases where this “opt-out” option for families has affected the rest of the school district. For instance a Davis School District in Utah pulled a controversial book off of their library shelves and placed it behind the counter for “request only” because of one parent’s complaint. This parent did not agree to the book In Our Mother’s House by Patricia Polacco being a part of the library shelf for her child or any other child to have free access to. Because of her feelings that homosexuality should be discussed at home, she gathered other parents to sign a petition. In this situation, the parent may be looking out for her child’s best interest, but she imposed her belief upon the rest of the school.

I think probably the truth here is that opt-outs can do both good and harm and we have to be careful thinking through the consequences in each particular case. If the opt-out would affect the learning of others, then the parents requesting it bear a larger burden in justifying the request.

On a pedagogical note, Kimberely’s comment here is a model of the kind of thing I hope to see people doing in responding to others—engaging with the ideas in a way that helps advance our thinking about the issues. Generally I’d like folks to avoid commenting as a teacher, e.g. on the quality of the writing or on how it could be improved. Leave that to me for now!

Popular democratic control and evolution

As I mentioned above, by and large folks favored some version of Gutmann’s democratic ideal. But not everyone. Some disagreement is measured, guarded. In thinking about controversies such as those over evolution, for instance, Jessica K writes:

It is imprudent to think that one idea, theory or principle suggested by one individual or group could be the best for all.  The ongoing national controversies about the teaching of evolution show the risks of an educational system dominated by factionalism. Who is to say no students should learn about evolution because its teaching goes against the wishes of a few? Parents have the responsibility to talk with their children at home about their faith and what evolution means to them. As an educator, I need to be thoughtful of those beliefs, and I am: I explain that evolution is science-based, but that they are free to disbelieve its principles and will not find themselves alone in that stance.  If parents had greater control over the educational system, it is unlikely that evolution would be taught in schools, nor the controversy that surrounds it…Parents already wield considerable power in schools.  I see how much power parents have in the educational system, and I realize the value of differing opinions: their input assures us that everyone's needs are being taken into consideration.  Still, I think it sensible to limit parents' control. Think back to all the books challenged or banned from school libraries because parents could not see their educational or historical value.  Many of these works are some of our most important national literature.  To deprive students of access to such opportunities is to do them a disservice. It is vital that everyone understands their role in the educational system and ensures that everyone does what is best to create unbound, happy, productive citizens.

To some extent Jessica is of two minds here. On the one hand, we want educational institutions to be responsive to the diversity of viewpoints. No one theory or principle suggested by any one individual or group could be the best for all, she says. At the same time, some knowledge—Jessica seems to suggest—must be protected whatever some citizens think about it. On this point, Erin V is rather more blunt. She also questions how much influence the public at large—through the schools boards they elect—should have. She writes:

I think it is dangerously arrogant to proclaim a democracy will always uphold critical thinking and other important skills. I’m sorry to bring this up again, but remember the case of the Texas Board of Education from my previous blog? The people who instituted a white-washed, Euro-centric, anti-secular curriculum were all democratically elected officials. I believe in the power of democracy, but I also know that democracy depends on the will of the people and the will of the people can change.

The upshot, I take it, is that democratic systems make sense only if they provide very wide scope for teachers or education professionals to ultimately determine what gets taught in the classroom.

It is hard to argue with the claim that the truth should prevail in the classroom. Of course, controversy persists over educational authority because it persists over the truth about hard issues such as morals and the place of faith in public life. Insofar as teachers and teacher’s unions align themselves with particular, controversial perspectives on these issues, they will always face criticism from those who disagree. Since it’s always possible that we teachers are mistaken, it makes sense that we should be in some way or other held accountable to the public. I don’t know if that’s to say anything different from what Jessica and Erin are saying here. But I do want to take a moment to say something about the evolution controversy, which a few other folks did mention or discuss.

It is sometimes said that evolution is “just a theory”, one having no more nor less credibility on the origins of life on earth than other theories, such as creationism. This is partly right and partly wrong. One reason for this is that, actually, there are no viable scientific alternatives to evolution as an explanation of the origin of species. But the origin of species is a different question from the question concerning the origins of life. Indeed one coherent philosophical view on the relationship between these accepts some form of creationism about the life question and evolution about the species question. In other words, primitive life is divinely created and this primitive life, by virtue of the laws of evolution, developed into the many different species we have. This view is coherent because the theory of natural selection—which is the core principle of the theory of evolution—has nothing to say about how life began, but only on how it persists, adapts, and changes into new forms.

But here's the rub: The hybrid “divine creation plus natural selection” view of the origins of life and species is a philosophical view that, so far as I know, has no empirical support. At this time, it's simply the case that no one really knows how life began (though there are many different scientific theories on this, none has garnered anything like the support of evolution as an explanation of speciation; see here for some of these theories: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-simpler-origin-for-life). On the other hand, there's a veritable mountain of hard data supporting the view that all life on earth evolved from a common ancestor, i.e. the theory of evolution is correct. There's not space here to review this. I'll just mention the fossil record, which includes various extinct species bearing phylogenic resemblance to past and present species, the ‘structural homologies’ in earth’s diverse species (e.g. the common skeletal structures in vertebrates), and the evidence by example from artificial selection (e.g. the diversity of animals humans have bread through trait selection). For a deeper review of the multiple lines of evidence for evolution, see this site here at the University of California, Berkeley: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/lines_01. In short, it is just not so that evolution is 'just a theory.' It is widely accepted fact, its truth confirmed by a diverse and very large mass of evidence.

Now I mean to draw two different conclusions from this. One is that there's little if any scientific grounds for forcing school biology classes to discuss anything other than evolution when their topic is the origin of species. There’s just too little scientific support for creationism as an alternative explanation of the origin of species. This is not to be disrespectful of anyone’s religious beliefs. It is to respect the facts. There is, therefore, no reason even to tell students who disagree with evolution that they are free to believe anything else that they like. Of course, they can, but only in just the same way that they can do anything else they should not do. We are free to believe anything we want, but not rationally free to.  

The other thing, however, is that there's plenty of good philosophical grounds for ensuring that the limitations of the theory of evolution are well understood and for finding other ways to discuss that question philosophically somewhere in the curriculum. Evolution does not, so far as I know, explain the origins of life on earth, and creationism is as credible here as ‘spontaneous generation.’ The origins of life are deeply mysterious, and even if science could answer it compellingly, still, there is still a further question it cannot: Why are we here? Why don’t we talk about alternative philosophical or religious explanations of the origins of life in this sense in schools?

Brighouse and Swift on parent’s rights

Finally, I want to briefly clarify something about Brighouse and Swift’s view on the rights of parents. One interpretation I saw in a few posts has it that Brighouse and Swift favor deferring to parental authority, full stop. That’s not quite right. It is true that they favor deferring to parents on some matters. This is because they believe that parents have a very weighty interest in enjoying certain goods (the “relationship goods”) that come along with having a close relationship with their children. Such goods include the peculiar pleasures, intimacy, and challenges of acting as a fiduciary for a developing human being. But by the same token, Brighouse and Swift believe that it is legitimate for educators or governments to intervene in parental decision-making insofar as doing so will not prevent parents from enjoying the relationship goods.

It is somewhat ambiguous how this particular theory applies to certain cases, such as the Yoder case. Some believe that, because Amish children educated past the 8^th grade might as a consequence abandon the Amish way of life, the relationship goods theory implies that we must allow Amish parents to remove their children from public schools at that age. But this is not clear. This conclusion follows only if it is true that it is impossible for Amish parents to have a good, parental relationship to their children if their children pursue schooling instead of Amish work. But this is hardly clear. Is it not the parent's fault if they choose to break ties with children who, as a consequence of a cosmopolitan education, decide to abandon the Amish way of life? It’s an open question so far as I can tell.