The Pitfalls of Reform: Its Incompatibility with Actual Improvement PDF
Preview The Pitfalls of Reform: Its Incompatibility with Actual Improvement
The Pitfalls of Reform Its Incompatibility with Actual Improvement John Tanner ROWMAN&LITTLEFIELDEDUCATION Adivisionof ROWMAN&LITTLEFIELD Lanham•Boulder •NewYork•Toronto•Plymouth,UK PublishedbyRowman&LittlefieldEducation AdivisionofRowman&Littlefield 4501ForbesBoulevard,Suite200,Lanham,Maryland20706 www.rowman.com 10ThornburyRoad,PlymouthPL67PP,UnitedKingdom Copyright©2014byJohnTanner Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereproducedinanyformorbyany electronicormechanicalmeans,includinginformationstorageandretrievalsystems, withoutwrittenpermissionfromthepublisher,exceptbyareviewerwhomayquote passagesinareview. BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationInformationAvailable LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationDataAvailable ISBN978-1-61048-922-5(cloth:alk.paper)--ISBN978-1-61048-923-2(pbk.:alk.paper)--ISBN 978-1-61048-924-9(electronic) TMThepaperusedinthispublicationmeetstheminimumrequirementsofAmerican NationalStandardforInformationSciencesPermanenceofPaperforPrintedLibrary Materials,ANSI/NISOZ39.48-1992. PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica ForMadelineandallourkids Contents Foreword vii Introduction xiii I:ChangestotheEducationalImprovementFormula xix 1 TheEducationalFormula 1 2 TheParadigmofSchoolReform 5 3 TheTroublewithRigor 21 4 TheIdeaofEducationalStandards 29 5 StandardizedTests 53 II:Accountability 79 6 AccountabilitywithintheEducationalFormula 81 7 TheBiggerIdeaofSchoolAccountability 91 8 LocatingSuccess 107 III:TheNextGenerationofChange:MovingAwayfroman UnfitFitness 127 9 FomentingtheRightChanges 131 10 CauseandEffectandInefficiencies 141 Conclusion:TheBirthofSomethingGreat 151 Afterword:TheFutureofSchooling 153 Bibliography 163 v vi Contents Index 165 Foreword Five minutes after first meeting John Tanner some years back, he informed me that his intentions were to change the world. I wholeheartedly endorsed hisintentionthenandevenofferedtojoininhisefforts;thisthoughtfulbook iscertainlyastepinthatdirection. Creating a better public education system has become almost a national obsession—andwithgoodreason.Plausibleclaimscanbemadethatahigh- quality public education system is the key driver for our economy, will preserveourdemocracythroughthedevelopmentofaneducatedvotingpub- lic,providesourbesthopetorealizeequityofopportunityandresultsforall Americans,andenablesindividualstorealizepersonalfulfillment. This obsession has led to significant efforts from the classroom to dis- trictstostateeducationagenciestoanincreasingroleforthefederalgovern- ment.Commitmenttoimprovementremainshigh. Unfortunately, and as is discussed by John in this work, research and reasoning lag behind many of the improvement initiatives, operating from personal experience, research drawn from other fields of study—or most troublesome—picking and choosing palatable portions of research while leaving behind politically difficult or economically costly changes that are integralto success.Weendupwith policiesthat mandatechanges in behav- iorwhileassumingthatimprovementcanbeachievedbyrefiningoursingu- lar efforts—and that the core of the system is correct. In reality, as John pointsout,thesystemisorganizationallyandphilosophicallyflawed,andno amountofimprovementinsingularareaswillchangetheoveralloutcomes. AtthecoreofJohn’sthesisisabasicconcernwiththenotionsofaccount- abilitysweepingthenation.Johncomesatthisfromahighlyknowledgeable perspective,havingworkedhisentirecareerintesting.Heknowsthefieldof standardized testing, having been in it. His insights and opinions are highly vii viii Foreword knowledgeable and respected. He is not an outsider taking angry shots at a troublesome system; he is one of the creators of standardized testing ques- tioning how it is currently being used and for what purposes. As such, his viewsdemandourattention. Student assessment is not the same as system accountability. Assessing studentsandgaininganunderstandingregardingwhattheyknoworareable to do is a vital component of accountability, but it is the easiest part of accountability. Once we know where students stand in their learning, the harder part is understanding why we are seeing the results we are seeing. Why is one gender performing better than the other? Why do some of our English-languagelearnersexcelwhenothersdonot?Answerstotheseques- tions enable teachers to change, hone, and refine practice to produce better results. And answers to these questions are not available through standard- izedtesting. John takes a fundamentally different look at teachers than that seen in most of the current accountability debate. Instead of blaming teachers, John identifies the faults in our system of education that make the job of teach- ing—and the success we hope for students—almost impossible to realize, going so far as to note that “teachers are actually succeeding at a much greater rate thanwehavearightto expectgiventhat somuchof thesystem actually runs counter to their success.” While the quality of instructional practice can always improve (in the same way that the quality of medical care can improve or the political functioning of Congress can improve), the reasons for the lack of overall success in our educational system are not the fault of individual teachers, but rather the organizational design of the sys- tem. As John logically lays out, we have established an accountability system based on the premise that rising standardized test scores indicates overall system improvement—even as these tests fail to measure the fullness of the learningexperience,tendtooperateatlowerlevelsofcognitivedemand,and were never designed for such actions. Even more problematic, originally designed as a system check—not a check on individual student progress— rising test scores have been assumed to always indicate a higher-quality learning system, when in reality, rising test scores can often indicate more rotememorizationandincreasedstrategiestoteachtothetest. Inmanycases,successasmeasuredthroughrisingtestscoresisactuallya false positive of successful changes in practice and better learning for stu- dents. John also digs into the problematic results of the sanctions that are used within accountability systemsbased solelyontestscores.Hecarefullytakes the reader through an explanation of why standardized test scores almost always mirror the demographics of the students taking these test scores— essentially because standardized tests are designed to do so. When schools
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