A dozen years ago, Richard Rothstein wrote an excellent paper called “Holding Accountability to Account,” showing how incentives can perversely affect and undermine the goal that are sought (it is free on the internet).
In 1990k Andrea A. Gabor wrote a book about W. Edwards Deming called The Man Who Discovered Quality, in which she explained Deming’s contempt for merit pay and bonuses, which cause employees to think about themselves and not about the organization and its larger purposes.
Muller wrote a recent article about “metric fixation” in which he reviewed the flaws of data-driven work
“When reward is tied to measured performance, metric fixation invites just this sort of gaming. But metric fixation also leads to a variety of more subtle unintended negative consequences. These include goal displacement, which comes in many varieties: when performance is judged by a few measures, and the stakes are high (keeping one’s job, getting a pay rise or raising the stock price at the time that stock options are vested), people focus on satisfying those measures – often at the expense of other, more important organizational goals that are not measured. The best-known example is ‘teaching to the test’, a widespread phenomenon that has distorted primary and secondary education in the United States since the adoption of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.”
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more on data driven education in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=data+driven+education
AltSchool shift raises concerns of profits placed over educational promise
Roger Riddell Nov. 8, 2017 https://www.educationdive.com/news/altschool-shift-raises-concerns-of-profits-placed-over-educational-promise/510293/
- The announcement by Silicon Valley personalized learning startup AltSchool that it will close two of its lab school campuses in Palo Alto and New York City has some educators concerned that the company is putting profits over efforts to improve education, EdSurge reports.
- Butler Middle School (PA) Principal Jason Huffman also told the publication that he sees the company’s struggles as parallel to those of other education reform models that didn’t live up to their promises, adding that organizations like Future Ready have made similar models and platforms for personalization available at a lower cost to schools and districts.
Education historian Diane Ravitch, a former assistant secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush, has been among the chief critics of these increasingly close ties, especially as it pertains to charter schools and voucher programs, decrying efforts to “turn us from citizens into consumers.” Public schools, she has said, should be focused around “building a sense of community, having a sense of democracy at the local level, having people from different backgrounds coming together to solve problems and learn how to be citizens.”
But AltSchool’s intentions with its lab schools and approach to developing its platform have seemed noble enough, with the company partnering with schools of varying sizes to learn how to best scale up successful approaches to personalized learning for traditional public schools. Its lab schools have been noted for eschewing traditional grade level structures and curriculum, attracting funding from the likes of Mark Zuckerberg.
Earlier this year, we visited one of the company’s partner schools — Berthold Academy, a Montessori in Reston, VA — to find out more about what AltSchool was looking to model and how its partnerships worked, finding a promising approach in action.
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more on charter schools in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=charter
Diane Ravitch blog on Anthony Cody’s book about his efforts to educate Bill Gates. The book is called “The Educator and the Oligarch: A Teacher Challenges Bill Gates.”
Anthony Cody is a teacher. For Cody, teaching is not just a job. It is his profession. It is his way of life. It is the place where his brain, his life experience, and his heart are joined.
With his blog as his platform, he trained his sights on the Gates Foundation. While others feared to criticize the richest foundation in the United States, Cody regularly devoted blogs to questioning its ideas and programs. He questioned its focus on standardized testing. He questioned its belief that teachers should be judged by the test scores of their students. He questioned its support for organizations that are anti-union and anti-teacher. He questioned its decision to create new organizations of young teachers to act as a fifth column within teachers’ unions, ready to testify in legislative hearings against the interests of teachers and unions.
Another interesting debate on Diane Ravitch’s blog concerning the heated debate about the reliance of US education on testing:
http://dianeravitch.net/2014/07/20/nyc-public-advocate-letitia-james-chastises-commissioner-joun-king/
“Rather than administering field tests, schools should focus on spending more time in the classroom to improve performance and encourage students to reach their potential.”
What is your take on the issue? Are pro-test or anti-test?