From Detesting to De-Testing

This post was featured in Cathy Rubin's The Global Search for Education: Our Top 12 Teacher Blogs.

How do you balance preparation for high stakes assessments with teaching and learning in your classroom?


In my classroom, I have replaced tests and grades with projects and performances collected in portfolios. It’s been 10 years since I used a multiple choice test to assess my students, so it’s safe to say that I do not agree with having to administer a standardized multiple choice test for the government at the end of an entire year of making learning visible via blogging.

Teachers are repeatedly told that the best way to prepare students for standardized tests is to teach the curriculum, but this is at best misleading. We know that multiple choice tests require a certain amount of test taking skills, and that students who have a better understanding for the nuances of multiple choice tests can score well without having learned what the tests claim to be measuring.

So how do I live with myself when I have an obligation to administer standardized tests that I don’t support?

In his article Fighting the Tests: A Practical Guide to Rescuing Our Schools, Alfie Kohn writes:

Whenever something in the schools is amiss, it makes sense for us to work on two tracks at once. We must do our best in the short term to protect students from the worst effects of a given policy, but we must also work to change or eliminate that policy. If we overlook the former – the need to minimize the harm of what is currently taking place, to devise effective coping strategies — then we do a disservice to children in the here and now. But (and this is by far the more common error) if we overlook the latter – the need to alter the current reality — then we are condemning our children’s children to having to make the best of the same unacceptable situation because it will still exist.

In the short term, I teach the curriculum the best I can, and I waste as little time as possible preparing students to fill in bubbles. However, as test day approaches we do a practice test in small groups to reduce anxiety and increase familiarity. The best teachers act less like conduits for the tests and more like a buffer that protects students from the harmful effects of testing, so I also assure students and parents that I do not use the standardized test as a part of their report card.

In the long term, I tweet, blog, write articles and talk with anyone and everyone about how and why standardized tests are broken and how and why the alternatives to the tests are far more authentic. I go out of my way to make the alternatives to standardized tests so obviously better that parents and students see the tests as an unfortunate distraction from real learning.

To advocate for authentic alternatives to standardized tests I actively work with my Alberta Teachers’ Association to create local public events with speakers such as Sir Ken Robinson, Alfie Kohn, Pasi Sahlberg, Yong Zhao and Andy Hargreaves. I’ve joined a political party in Alberta and influenced their education policies. I wrote Telling Time with a Broken Clock: the trouble with standardized testing and co-edited De-Testing and De-Grading Schools: Authentic Alternatives to Standardization and Accountability.

Together parents, students and teachers join together to opt-out of testing.

David Berliner and Pasi Sahlberg

I'm in Calgary at the Calgary Teachers' Convention and I am listening to David Berliner and Pasi Sahlberg talk about The Roots of Success for All Children: It's in the context of their lives, not just in their classroom experiences.

David Berliner

• Despite what you might hear, teachers do not affect standardized test scores very much
• Teachers do affect student's lives but not their scores
• Standardized test are influenced by socio-economic circumstances and less by classroom instruction.
• Want to improve scores? Improve children's lives outside of school.
• As the context of children's lives changes, so do their standardized test scores.
• Children who live in chaos tend to be chaotic. Remove the chaos --  
• Societies affect on children's performance is intense.
• The Problem is Poverty.
• There are many school variables that teachers can't control: class size, administrators, collective empathy of the faculty, teacher turn over, students coming and going.
• We can not trust standardized tests to tell us what we want to know about our schools.
• Want to find the school with the highest test scores? Buy an expensive house.
• When governments cut education, they make inequality and inequity worse, and the poorest people pay the most.
• There is a huge difference in the number of books in the richest homes and the poorest homes.
• Affluent parents tend to speak more with their children than the poorest parents who are struggling to make ends meet.
• The best education systems care as much about what happens outside of the classroom as what happens inside.
• Standardized tests are insensitive to teacher instruction.
• Alberta needs to pay closer attention to the research on school improvement
• Here are all of my posts on David Berliner

Pasi Sahlberg

• In 2000, many school systems thought that they had found the secret elixir to fix all schools: Accountability through standardized tests. PISA's influence was born.
• Since 2000, the focus of school improvement has been focused intensely on teachers.
• The United States is a good example of how not to improve education.
• Finland's reaction to school improvement and PISA is unique and paradoxical.
• Finland did not react or allow PISA to affect their system until 2008. 8 years after they were lauded as the best in the world. Finland was reluctant to share their story.
• Two Global Paths of Inquiry: What makes education systems perform well? What prevents system-wide improvement?
• Traditional Policy Logic: Should we focus on quality or equity? We know that we don't have to choose.
• Canada does very well with high quality and equity, but we are going in the wrong direction.
• While Canada and Alberta has traditionally compared well with their equity and equality, they are going in the wrong direction.
• Finland has had an inclusive education system for two decades.

Five things to learn from Finland:

1. Resourcing Policy: Schools with more needs, need more resources.
2. Early Childhood Care: This isn't really about education -- it's about childcare. 
3. Health and Wellbeing: Universal healthcare inside and outside of school. In the US, the number 1 reason why students miss school is because of problems with their teeth.
4. Special Education: A system that is proactive and preventative with students with special needs. Prevention is always cheaper than repair. 
5. Balanced Curriculum: Children need to learn about the arts and physical education as much as numeracy and literacy.

In the real world, we wouldn't judge a teacher by their students' test scores

My family has farmed for over 100 years in the Red Deer, Alberta, area. I'm the first teacher in my farming family, and I'm in my 15th year of teaching.

Here's a post I wrote about the effects of poverty on learning with a farming metaphor.

Teachers who are proud of their high scores and ashamed of their poor scores are a part of the problem. Here's my article on Telling Time with a Broken Clock: the trouble with standardized tests.

BREAKING: America's poorest schools have the poorest children

It's telling that the Apple that is about to
be gavelled is indeed fresh and ripe. 

Good journalism is hard to come by -- finding good journalism on education is like discovering a four leaf clover on February 29 during a Venus Transit eclipse. 

Over decades, American main stream media has shifted their relationship with public education and teachers from neglectful to abusive.

Like Time Magazine's teacher bashing cover, a recent headline out of Minneapolis is indicative of how most American Media are so drunk on teacher bashing that they can't report the real news: Minneapolis' worst teachers are in the poorest schools, data show.

Too often, when American media looks at poverty, they don't see poor children, they see bad teachers. What's worse is that some education leaders (who should understand how poverty is education's kryptonite) are made to be accomplices to the teacher witch-hunt.

In Minneapolis, Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson is quoted as saying, "It's alarming that it took this to understand where teachers are. We probably knew that, but now have the hard evidence." Johnson is referring to the junk science of using standardized test scores to identify good and bad teachers.

In my article Telling Time with a Broken Clock: the trouble with standardized testing, I take a closer look at what standardized tests really tell us. Too many people assume that standardized test scores are the window into the quality of our schools and teachers when the inconvenient truth about standardized testing is that socio-economic status is responsible for the majority of the results:

Ultimately, great teachers make great schools, but great teachers can’t do it alone – they require the support of an equitable society. If we are not careful, we risk misinterpreting the scores, and instead of waging war on poverty and inequity, we end up waging war on teachers and schools.

What's alarming is that so many Americans have declared war on teachers and public education. Some people are so desperate not to address poverty that when they should see poor children, they need to see bad teachers.

Real journalism is not distracted by teacher witch-hunts. Real journalism doesn't report that there are bad teachers in poor schools -- real journalism reports America's poorest schools have the poorest children.

The education question we should be asking

This was written by Alfie Kohn who writes and speaks on parenting and education. Kohn tweets here and his website is here. This post was originally found here.

by Alfie Kohn

“While we’re at it, maybe we should just design classrooms without windows. And, hey, I’ll bet kids would really perform better if they spent their days in isolation.” My friend was reacting (facetiously, of course) to a new study that found kindergarteners scored better on a test of recall if their classroom’s walls were completely bare. A room filled with posters, maps, and the kids’ own art constituted a “distraction.”

The study, published last month in Psychological Science [1] and picked up by Science World Report, the Boston Globe, and other media outlets, looked at a whopping total of 24 children. A research assistant read to them about a topic such as plate tectonics or insects, then administered a paper-and-pencil test to see how many facts they remembered. On average, kids in the decorated rooms were “off task” 39 percent of the time and had a “learning score” of 42 percent. The respective numbers for those in the bare rooms were 28 percent and 55 percent.

Now if you regularly read education studies, you won’t be surprised to learn that the authors of this one never questioned, or even bothered to defend, the value of the science lessons they used — whether they were developmentally appropriate or presented effectively, whether they involved anything more than reading a list of facts or were likely to hold any interest for 5-year-olds. Nor did the researchers vouch for the quality of the assessment. Whatever raises kids’ scores (on any test, and of any material) was simply assumed to be a good thing, and anything that lowers scores is bad.

Hence the authors’ concern that children tend to be “distracted by the visual environment.” (Translation: They may attend to something in the room other than the facts an adult decided to transmit to them.) And hence my friend’s wry reductio ad absurdum response.

Alas, “sparse” classrooms had their own problems. There, we’re told, children “were more likely to be distracted by themselves or by peers.” Even if we strip everything off the walls, those pesky kids will still engage in instructionally useless behaviors like interacting with one another or thinking about things that interest them. The researchers referred to the latter (thinking) as being “distracted by themselves.” Mark that phrase as the latest illustration of the principle that, in the field of education, satire has become obsolete.

Our attention seems to be fixed relentlessly on the means by which to get students to accomplish something. We remain undistracted by anything to do with ends — what it is they’re supposed to accomplish, and whether it’s really valuable. Perhaps that’s why schools of education typically require “methods” classes but not goals classes. In the latter, students might be invited to read this study and ask whether a child could reasonably regard the lesson as a distraction (from her desire to think, talk, or look at a cool drawing on the wall). Other students might object on the grounds that it’s a teacher’s job to decide what students ought to do and to maximize their “time on task.” But such conversations — Time on what task? Why is it being taught? Who gets to decide? — are shut down before they begin when all we talk about (in ed. schools, in journals, in professional development sessions) is how to maximize time on whatever is assigned.[2]

Those of us who are disturbed, even outraged, by what’s being done to our schools in the name of “reform” — imposing ramped-up, uniform, prescriptive standards; high-stakes testing; and pressure that’s both vertical (with kindergartens now resembling really bad first-grade classrooms) and horizontal (with little time for music and the arts, recess, student-designed projects, or any subjects not being tested) — ought to consider how this agenda is quietly supported by research that relies on test scores as the primary, or even the sole, dependent variable.

Then, too, there’s the way such research is described by journalists. Most articles inEducation Week, for example, ought to include this caveat:

Please keep in mind that phrases such as “effective policies,” “higher achievement,” “better results,” or “improved outcomes” refer only to scores on standardized tests. These tests are not only poor indicators of meaningful intellectual accomplishment but tend to measure the socioeconomic status of the students or the amount of time they have been trained in test-taking skills.

The idea that kindergarteners ought to block everything out but facts about plate tectonics reminded me of an essay called “Can Teachers Increase Students’ Self-Control?” (as usual, the question was “can,” not “should”) written by a cognitive psychologist named Daniel Willingham. He offered as a role model a hypothetical child who looks through his classroom window and sees “construction workers pour[ing] cement for a sidewalk” but “manages to ignore this interesting scene and focus on his work.”[3]

But what was the “work”? Was it a fill-in-the-blank waste-of-the-time that would lead any child to look out the window or at the wall? Or was it something so intellectually valuable that we’d be justified in saying, “Hey, this really is worth it”? I don’t know. But for Willingham, as for so many others, it apparently doesn’t matter: If the teacher assigned it, that’s reason enough to ignore the interesting real-life lesson in how a sidewalk is created, to refrain from asking the teacher why that lesson can’t be incorporated into the curriculum. An exemplary student is one who stifles his curiosity, exercises his self-control, and does what he’s told.

Is a given lesson worth teaching? I may not always be sure of the answer, but I’m pretty sure that’s the question we should be asking — rather than employing discipline, or demanding self-discipline, or pulling stuff off the walls in order that students will devote their attention to something whose value is simply taken for granted.

NOTES

1. Anna V. Fisher, Karrie E. Godwin, and Howard Seltman, “Visual Environment, Attention Allocation, and Learning in Young Children: When Too Much of a Good Thing May Be Bad,” Psychological Science, DOI: 10.1177/0956797614533801. Published online 21 May 2014.

2. A couple of years ago I wrote an article called “Teaching Strategies That Work! (Just Don’t Ask ‘Work to Do What?‘)”, which focused on a research review challenging the effectiveness of discovery-based learning without ever asking what constitutes effectiveness. There, too, my point was that if we don’t ask what we’re looking for and argue about the values that underlie our answers, we’ll end up by default with a goal like higher test scores — or, in the case of classroom management strategies, compliance.

3. Daniel T. Willingham, “Can Teachers Increase Students’ Self-Control?” American Educator, Summer 2011, p. 23. I offered this example in my book The Myth of the Spoiled Child (Da Capo Press, 2014) and, in the same chapter, cited a pair of studies by Angela Duckworth and her colleagues that found an elite group of middle schoolers performed better in the National Spelling Bee if they were higher in grit, “whereas spellers higher in openness to experience — defined as preferring using their imagination, playing with ideas, and otherwise enjoying a complex mental life — perform[ed] worse.” The study also found that the most effective preparation strategy was “solitary deliberate practice activities” rather than, say, reading books. Thus, if enjoying a complex mental life (or reading for pleasure) interferes with performance in a one-shot contest to see who can spell more obscure words correctly — and if sufficient grittiness to spend time alone memorizing lists of words helps to achieve that goal — this is regarded as an argument in favor of grit. But of course the unasked question once again concerns ends rather than means: How important is it that kids who are exceptionally good spellers win more championships? Should we favor any strategy or personality feature that contributes to that objective (or to anything that could be described as “higher achievement”) regardless of what it involves and what it displaces?

Essay-marking software gives high marks for gibberish, U.S. expert warns Alberta

This was written by Andrea Sands who is a journalist with the Edmonton Journal. Sands tweets here. This post was originally found here.

by Andrea Sands

Alberta Education should not allow high-stakes Grade 12 diploma exams to be marked by computer because today’s essay-marking software is terribly flawed, says a retired Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor and writing-assessment expert.

Les Perelman has been an outspoken critic of automated essay marking and worked with MIT students to invent computer software called BABEL (Basic Automatic B.S. Essay Language Generator), designed to trick today’s essay-scoring programs. BABEL generates gibberish essays which, nonetheless, get high marks from so-called “robo graders.”

“I realized very early on that machine grading of writing really is, essentially, impossible,” Perelman said from Massachusetts.

“I can guarantee you, smart 18-year-olds will try to trick it. If they find out it favours certain things like word length, obscure words and pretentious language, then that is exactly what is going to be probably taught in schools.”

Last fall, Alberta Education paid U.S. company LightSide $5,000 to do a feasibility assessment on whether computers could accurately mark Grade 12 diploma-exam essay questions. Every year, about 190,000 Alberta students write the exams, worth 50 per cent of a student’s final mark.

The LightSide report concluded its software could reliably grade student essays and, in the test analysis, did so more accurately than teachers.

Perelman said the report is “fudging” because of the way data was analyzed and because there’s not enough information and explanation in the report. “I’m a pro at this and there were tables I could not understand.”

Computers can’t analyze meaning and essay-grading software usually inflates grades for essays that are longer and use uncommon words — “egregious” instead of “bad,” or “plethora” instead of many, Perelman said.

“They’re counting word length, or they’re counting types of words, or they’re counting sentence length, or they’re counting connective words like ‘consequently,’ ‘moreover,’ things like that, that show cohesion. But all those things are very mechanical.”

About nine big companies sell essay-marking programs, including Pearson, ETS, CTB/McGraw-Hill, Measurement Inc. and LightSide, which is a fairly new company.

They are lining up to win “the big prize,” said Perelman — contracts to machine-score the increasing number of tests that will result from the new Common Core State Standards Initiative. Almost all U.S. states are now implementing new standards for kindergarten through Grade 12 in English language arts/literacy and mathematics that will require annual testing.

According to LightSide’s website, the Common Core “will require more writing in every classroom, meaning more time grading and even less time for teachers to work directly with students.”

Perelman does, however, credit LightSide as being one of the more reputable companies. Company founder Elijah Mayfield, who led the Alberta study, has responded to Perelman’s criticisms by trying to improve LightSide’s products and acknowledges the limitations of computerized grading, Perelman said.

“He’s an engineer. Most of the other companies are salesmen. I still think he’s wrong.”

Mayfield, who headed up the Alberta feasibility assessment, said a confidentiality agreement prohibits him from speaking to the Journal about the report.

The U.S. National Council of Teachers of English argues the Common Core initiative is pushing companies, testing agencies and education organizations to use automated essay grading because it’s cheaper than paying people to mark tests.


Alberta Teachers’ Association president Mark Ramsankar said it’s unfair to have students spend hours writing an exam that’s marked by a machine.

“How does a machine look at the symbolism contained in a piece of writing and interpret that as symbolism?” Ramsankar said. “I’d like to see how Shakespeare stacks up in a computer-generated mark.”

Both the ATA and the Canadian Teachers’ Federation oppose machine marking of essays, particularly on diploma examinations that are the culmination of a year’s worth of students’ learning.

“Again, we’re seeing practices that we’re looking at importing from the United States,” said federation president Dianne Woloschuk. “Their education system is in a crisis. Their students are not doing well.”

Alberta Education continues to evaluate whether machine-scoring of essays could be useful here. However, Premier Dave Hancock and Education Minister Jeff Johnson have said there are no plans to pursue it at this time.

asands@edmontonjournal.com

Twitter.com/Ansands

‘Mankind will always conduct prejudice’


English 30-1 students in Alberta study the novel Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, so retired MIT professor Les Perelman entered the key words “pride, prejudice” and “father” into his essay generator, BABEL. The program creates mechanically correct but “completely incoherent” essays that have fooled automated-marking programs.

Perelman’s sample was declared “off-topic,” but scored 88 per cent when Perelman ran it through the home-schooling version of IntelliMetric, under the software’s category “challenges of parenthood.”

IntelliMetric technology is used in the United States to score the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), which graduate students take to get into management programs in business schools.

Here is the text from the BABEL-generated essay:

Keywords:

pride: [‘pridefulness’, u’pride’]

prejudice: [‘preconception’, ‘bias’, u’prejudice’]

father: [‘begetter’, u’father’, ‘male parent’]

Essay:

Pridefulness with decency has not, and in all likelihood never will be malevolent, humane, and considerate. Mankind will always conduct prejudice; many for an advance but a few on pulchritude. a quantity of pride lies in the study of reality as well as the area of semantics. Why is pride so efficacious to depreciation? The reply to this query is that male parent is rivetingly and gregariously febrile.

Rationale, usually by appreciation, might feign prejudice. If nearly all of the appendages adjure an explanation of the erratically or idolatrously pagan disparagement, the haphazard preconception can be more falteringly sublimated. Additionally, an orbital is not the only thing simulation reacts; it also spins at male parent. Our personal altruist on the exposure we arrange can surprisingly be an interloper. Be that as it may, knowing that executioner can be the assassination, most of the comments to my accusation civilize irrelevant scrutinizations. In my philosophy class, all of the advancements by our personal allusion of the demarcation we decry accede amplifications which deliberate with analyses but masticate veracity that should inconsistently be a contradiction and occlude circumspections for expositions. Begetter which is mimicking in how much we cavort ousts whiner of our personal inquiry to the apprentice we propagate as well. an accession will enthusiastically be a concurrence on the insinuation, not an intercession. In my experience, none of the reprimands by our personal advocate at the sophist we substantiate contemplate postulation that blusters but append. a abundance of father changes culmination for bias.


As I have learned in my literature class, humanity will always depreciate father. Even though the brain counteracts a gamma ray to contentment, the same pendulum may catalyze two different neutrinoes with the remarkably accumulated culpability. Although the same neuron may receive two different brains, radiation processes orbitals of disenfranchisements on a taunt. The plasma is not the only thing a gamma ray oscillates; it also transmits neutrinoes for abandonment at the trope by father. The diagnosis of begetter changes a plethora of preconception. The less eventual allocutions pledge thermostats, the more an organism inaugurates those in question.

Malcontent, normally on the assumption, demolishes father. As a result of scintillating, all of the adjurations hobble equally with prejudice. Also, male parent to speculations will always be an experience of humankind. In my theory of knowledge class, some of the juggernauts of my scenario assimilate probes by the search for semiotics. Still yet, armed with the knowledge that propaganda can be a demonstration or homogenizes, many of the lamentations for my dictum abandon periodicity and voyage. In my philosophy class, almost all of the domains at our personal denouncement by the comment we admonish explain demolishers which declare the demolisher with the quip on gluttony that enthrals speculations or disparage agriculturalists. Pride which utters substantiation may boastfully be propinquity or is avowed but not impartial of my advancement also. a fetishistic fulmination belittles the people involved, not assemblage. Our personal conveyance to the reprobate we implore should be the analysis. The tendentiously vast prejudice changes a quantity of pridefulness.

Bias has not, and undoubtedly never will be reticent yet somehow gluttonous. However, armed with the knowledge that a report with assemblies accounts, all of the tyroes for my amplification shriek. By the fact that gratuitous dictators are articulated at pride, most of the amplifications confide too by pride. Prejudice will always be a part of human society. Pridefulness is the most feckless proclamation of human life.

Algorithms marking essays? That diploma idea deserves a failing grade

This was written by Paula Simons who is a columnist with the Edmonton Journal. Simons tweets here. This post was originally found here.

by Paula Simons

The word “essay” comes from a Latin root, meaning to put something on trial, to put something to the test. That’s why we ask students sitting Grade 12 diploma exams in Language Arts and Social Studies to write timed essays as part of their test. Composing an essay doesn’t just test your ability to use correct English. It tests your ability to think critically. It tests your ability to make an argument, supported with facts. It tests your ability to critique conventional wisdom and articulate original insights.

Learning to write a cogent essay in an hour isn’t just excellent training for would-be newspaper columnists. Not every graduate will need to do trigonometry or balance a chemical equation in adult life. But we all need to know how to marshal facts to advance a convincing argument, whether we’re fighting a traffic ticket, negotiating a raise, or convincing skeptical friends to try a new restaurant.

Nonetheless, Alberta Education is apparently giving serious consideration to contracting out the marking of diploma essays to an American computer program that uses complex algorithms to predict and assign student grades. A number of American states are already using such programs to assess “high stakes” essay tests.

In January, LightSide, a company founded by graduate students from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, presented a research report to Alberta Education. The confidential report, obtained by the Journal’s Andrea Sands, claims its software was 20 per cent more reliable than Alberta’s human markers.

LightSide’s system doesn’t detect grammatical errors. It has no capacity to fact-check, nor to analyze critical thinking.

“We cannot evaluate whether the points made in a series of claims lead naturally from one to another,” reads the study, written by LightSide CEO Elijah Mayfield. As well, says Mayfield, “on-topic responses that fail to address subtle factual nuances, misinterpret a particular relationship between ideas, or other factual errors will likely be scored highly if they are otherwise well-written.”

How does the computer know if something is well-written? It compares the essay it's evaluating to the hundreds of “training samples” in its memory.

“Computers can’t read a student’s essay, but they’re excellent at making lists — compiling, for a given essay, all of the words, phrases, parts of speech, and other features that characterize a student’s work,” says LightSide’s website. “Our software compares the differences in the features of a weak essay and a strong essay — as evaluated by a human reader. It then identifies the small things that might only appear in the strongest essays — vocabulary keywords, structural patterns of sentences, use of transition sentences ... If the writer has all of the little things right, just like the previously high-scoring example essays, they probably should receive the same score.”

In other words, if the essay’s style, vocabulary and syntax pattern match those of sample essays that earned high grades from human markers, the software will award similar grades, even if an essay is ungrammatical, illogical, or full of factual errors.

It’s quite fascinating, linguistically speaking. Certainly, we shouldn’t romanticize human markers, who bring their own biases, incompetencies, and idiosyncrasies to the grading process. A tired or frustrated or overwhelmed marker may not give consistent scores. Over thousands and thousands of student essays, machine marking may indeed offer statistical superiority.

But writing for a human marker, however flawed, is different than writing for a soulless algorithm. Writing is an intimate act of communication. When you write an essay, you write for an audience. You write to be understood, to entertain, to provoke, to connect, to share your insights and passions. Young essayists deserve the dignity of writing for sentient readers. Even if we accept the premise that machine marking yields more “accurate” results, it robs students of the relationship between writer and reader, of the right to be heard and understood.

How serious is Alberta Education about this? It depends on whom you ask — and when. Premier Dave Hancock praised the notion in the legislature last month, lambasted it at an Edmonton Journal editorial board Wednesday, then gave it guarded approval in an interview Thursday. Given the current Sturm und Drang in the Education portfolio it would seem madness for Hancock and beleaguered Education Minister Jeff Johnston to start another fight with Alberta teachers right now. But who knows what a new premier (or new education minister) might decide next fall?

If diploma exams need more consistent scoring, perhaps Alberta Education should invest in better marker recruitment, training and compensation. If we expect Alberta students to take diploma exams seriously, we should all do the same.

Computers 'dramatically more reliable' than teachers in marking Alberta diploma-exam essays: study

This was written by Andrea Sands who is a journalist with the Edmonton Journal. Sands tweets here. This post was originally found here.

by Andrea Sands

Phil McRae with the ATA.
Photo by John Lucas, Edmonton Journal

A computer could do a better job than a teacher in marking Grade 12 diploma exam essays, a government-commissioned study says.

Last fall, Alberta Education sent two 2013 diploma-exam questions along with nearly 1,900 student essay answers that had been graded by teachers to LightSide, a Pennsylvania company that develops computer software to score student essays.

LightSide’s automated algorithms outperformed human reliability in the Alberta study by about 20 per cent, said the company’s January 2014 report to the government.

“We are certain that LightSide is able to reproduce scoring behaviour at least as reliably as human graders, and in many cases we believe that our automated performance would be dramatically more reliable than human grading,” the report said.

The study indicated Alberta Education’s human scoring was quite unreliable, below the threshold LightSide recommends for high-stakes testing.

Alberta should consider investing in “a more stringent training process for human graders,” the report said. “It is somewhat alarming to see human reliability so low.”

The $5,000 study suggests LightSide’s marking program is more reliable than a single human marker, but Alberta uses a double-marking system, said Neil Fenske, Alberta Education’s executive director for assessment.

At least two teachers grade each diploma-exam essay and, if the grades differ, it goes to a third marker.

“So we’ve built a system that is highly reliable ... but it’s very labour-intensive as well,” Fenske said.

Alberta Education commissioned two previous studies — one three years ago and one 15 years ago — to see if computerized essay marking could work, Fenske said.

Further study is needed because LightSide examined a very small sample, Fenske said.

However, the report does show automated technology has evolved enough that it could be useful, if Alberta combined the marking power of people with the speed and reliability of machines, he said. That could mean one person marks an essay, then it’s run through a computer for grading, and sent to another person if there’s a discrepancy.

The province will also soon need diploma exams marked more often than before. Last year, the department announced Grade 12 diploma exams will be offered more often and digitally, part of efforts under Inspiring Education to make the school system more flexible.

“Because marking means teachers out of the classroom, one of the things we have to take a look at is, is there a way that we can build a better marking system that’s better for students but maybe also keeps more teachers in the classrooms?” Fenske said.

Alberta Education has had trouble this year recruiting enough teachers to grade diploma exams, which are worth 50 per cent of a student’s final mark.

Around the same time the LightSide report was commissioned, Education Minister Jeff Johnson cut a grading honorarium in half — from $200 to $100 — for teachers who volunteer to mark diploma exams on a regular workday. Fewer teachers volunteered to do the marking this year, and it’s taking longer as a result.

Johnson and Premier Dave Hancock said this week the honorarium cut should be re-examined.

Asked about the LightSide report at a Journal editorial board meeting this week, Hancock said he hasn’t yet read the study, but is not interested in having machines grade diploma-exam essays.

“I think that’s an absolute disastrous way to go,” Hancock said. “There are things that teachers bring to the process that are very important.”

Teachers also benefit from professional development when they mark the exams, meeting with colleagues from across the province and discussing education standards, Hancock said.

“At this time, there are no plans to institute digital scoring systems in provincially graded essays like diploma exams,” Johnson said in a statement.

Last weekend, Alberta Teachers’ Association delegates voted unanimously at their annual meeting in Calgary to opposed machine scoring of essay questions.

The ATA was never told about the LightSide study, but machine-marking has sparked heated debate in the United States, said Phil McRae, ATA executive staff officer and adjunct education professor with the U of A.

Standardized testing in the U.S. is growing, prompting governments and school districts to look to computer scoring to keep grading costs down, said McRae, who researches technology in education.

“It’s about reducing costs, whether it’s development of the items for the tests, administration or scoring.”

Testsandgrades and teachers

If a child learns but isn't tested, does anyone care?

David Staples, the Wildrose and their war on teachers and learning

Here is Bruce McAllister and David Staples
 talking with Alberta teachers.

David Staples is a columnist who has an interest in education.

Bruce McAllister is a Wildrose MLA and education critic in the Alberta Legislature.

Together, they are waging war on teachers and learning by demanding that teachers teach in a way that mandates children play a passive role in school. Together, they argue there simply is not enough memorization and tests in school.

Standardized Testing

When the Wildrose and David Staples cite a real world need for annual standardized testing, I ask some questions:

1. As a columnist, can you share the standardized multiple choice test that the Edmonton Journal makes you do to keep you accountable and transparent? As a politician, would you be willing to take Alberta's Diplomas exams and have your results published for all to see?

2. As a columnist, can you share the standardized rubric that the Edmonton Journal uses to score and judge your columns? As a politician can you share the scoring guide that citizens use to score and judge your work?

4. As a columnist or a politician, can you show me the column you wrote or the bill you voted on where you are not allowed access to the Internet, fact-check or talk to anyone? 

5. As a columnist or a politician, if there were no standardized test scores, what would you know about education?

We need to stop thinking we can meet all
children's needs by pretending all children
have the same needs.

It is hypocritical for adults to demand students and teachers be held accountable in ways that they would not hold themselves to.

Standardized testing is what constitutes an amazingly contrived and unrealistic form of assessment that is used by people outside the classroom to judge and control what happens inside the classroom without ever visiting the schools.

Teachers are not afraid of accountability -- but they do oppose being held accountable for things out of their control. Teachers also know that there is nothing transparent about having children fill in bubble-tests.

The best feedback parents can receive about their children's learning is to see their children learning. The best teachers don't need tests because they make learning visible via projects and performances collected in portfolios.

This is a shift from test and punish accountability to more authentic public assurance. The Alberta Teachers' Association also outlines a vision for A Great School for All, and the Alberta Assessment Consortium offers A New Look at Public Assurance.

And here's my story about how I teach and my students learn without grades.

"Old" and "New" Math

Staples continued his war on learning with a column that featured Ken Porteous who is a retired chemical engineering professor from the University of Alberta. Porteous writes: 

The discovery approach has no place in arithmetic at the junior elementary level. There is nothing to discover.

If there was ever a need for a single statement that one could show people such that their response would predict whether they knew anything about how children learn -- this is it. 

To carry this mindset out to its (il)logical conclusion, I guess there is nothing left to discover in this world...

Teachers and other early childhood development experts who understand how children learn define their careers by children's Aha! moments. These are the moments when metaphorical lightbulbs illuminate on top of children's heads. Anyone with a clue about how children learn knows that these Aha! moments rarely, if ever, happen because kids were simply told to have them. Aha! moments are not passively absorbed or memorized -- they are actively constructed by the student with the artful guidance of a teacher.

The best teachers have teeth marks on their tongues because they know that when kids are simply told the most efficient way of getting the answer, they get in the habit of looking to adults instead of thinking things through for themselves. They understand that learning happens when the child is ready to learn, not necessarily when someone is ready to teach -- teachers call these teachable moments.

I am a huge supporter of teacher professional development where teachers learn how to be better teachers, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking that a back to basics approach that romanticizes the past will make things better for our children.

Let's not pretend that traditional math instruction didn't confuse and turn a lot of students off of math. When adults think back on their schooling, it's easy to succumb to something called Nostesia which is a hallucinogenic mixture of 50% nostalgia and 50% amnesia which distorts rational thinking.

Wishing tomorrow to be just like yesterday won't make today a better place. We aren't going to get more children to love math by pretending that school already doesn't have enough lectures, direct instruction, worksheets, textbooks, tests and memorization.

Staples and the Wildrose would like Albertans to believe that they are waging war against the government and education consultants but the truth is they are also attacking teachers who work hard to engage students in a way that has them play a more active role in constructing their own understanding with the artful guidance of their teacher.

While some teachers and parents may agree with Staples and the Wildrose, it's important to note that many teachers in Alberta feel that they are doing more harm than good. When Staples and the Wildrose mislead the public by telling teachers how they have to teach, they make it harder for great teachers to do their job.

Here's my take on the math wars, and Alfie Kohn's article answers the question: What works better than traditional math instruction?

Columnists are not Journalists and (most) Politicians are not teachers

Staples is a columnist -- which is not the same as a journalist, and I fear that too many people don't understand the difference.

He is not required to check his biases or opinions at the door -- in fact, as a columnist,  he has a better chance of selling newspapers and collecting page-views online with his biases and opinions fully intact. Staples is biased because that is his job.

Research isn't sexy and it doesn't sell unless it's accompanied by sensationalism, and when it comes to sensationalism, Staples sells the Wildrose. Making claims that teachers are no longer teaching children basic arithmetic may make for a snappy headline and a wedge issue to gain cheap political points for the next election but it couldn't be further from the truth.

As a side note, when I tried to share my math post with Bruce McAllister on his Facebook page, he deleted it and blocked me. You'd think that the opposition party would have a keen sense of appreciation for opposition, but I guess not.

"I wish a columnist and politician with no teaching experience would just
 come in and tell me how to teach," said no teacher ever.

And yet Staples isn't always wrong -- he knows just enough about education to get in trouble. His columns are filled with half-truths that are supported by cherry picked research, revisionist history and preconceived notions. He props up math PhDs, engineers, testing consultants, bureaucrats and others who have expertise in areas other than teaching young children math.

Canadians love their Olympians, but nobody confuses a hockey players' expertise for a rhythmic gymnastics coach. Similarly, a PhD in mathematics or engineering is not a PhD in early childhood development, psychology or math education.

Mathematicians are not (necessarily) Math Teachers

The best math teachers understand math and how children learn math -- these are two different skills. It is irresponsible to simply assume that someone who is good at math knows anything about how to teach it.
Just because you know how to skate or shoot a puck doesn't mean you have a clue how to properly teach young children how to skate or shoot. If you want to coach organized hockey in Canada, you are required to be educated through a certification process. One expectation is for coaches to learn the content of hockey, and another expectation is to learn how to teach children to skate and shoot.

The teaching part is so important that even if you played hockey at a high level, you would still be required to take the certification program. Knowing how to play hockey or how to do math is necessary but not sufficient for coaching or teaching -- this is why we have coaching and teaching certification programs.

Getting advice on how to teach or play hockey from someone who has never taught or played hockey is kind of like getting advice from a virgin on how to get laid. Opinion needs to be based on experience and expertise -- Staples and the Wildrose have neither.

I'm not saying that there isn't a place for columnists and politicians -- what I'm saying is that columnists and politicians need to be kept in their place, because when David Staples and the Wildrose confuse having an interest in education with being experts, they mislead people.

Bill Moyers interviews Diane Ravitch

The high cost of turning our schools into profit centres:

• Public education is one of the foundations of a democracy, and America's public education is under assault.
• Charter schools are booming and controversial. There are 6000 in the United States -- double from a decade ago. They are publicly funded and privately run.
• Wall Street is drooling over investing in for-profit education companies.
• Profit$ not pupils are driving Corporate School Reform.
• Profiteers and privatizers see a gold rush in American K-12 Public Education which pulls in over $500 billion in taxpayers revenue.
• Diane Ravitch's book Reign of Error is a must read. 
• The Department of Education, led by Arne Duncan, has become an enemy of American public education.
• If we continue down this path, many cities like Detroit, New Orleans, Philadelphia, etc. will have no public schools. And if there are any, they will become a dumping ground for the children that the charter schools deem inconvenient or too expensive to educate. 
• American public schools are not broken and they are not failing. American public schools are dealing with some major challenges, including the fact that 1 in 4 children in the US live in poverty. Where there are public schools that are in trouble, there are communities that are in trouble.
• Charter schools were suppose to collaborate with public schools by seeking out innovations that the public schools could learn from but charter schools have become cut throat competitors, poaching public funds.
• If you make test scores the purpose of education, you don't want the children with disabilities,
  
  you don't want the children who don't speak English, you don't want the trouble makers, you don't want the children with low scores. You want to keep those kids out of your school.
• Not all charters are bad, but even the non-profit charters are typically owned by for-profit corporations. 
• Charter schools are not public schools, and in many states, charter schools are not required to hire credentialed teachers.
• The problem with turning over public education to the private sector is that they don't know anything about education.
• The American Legislative Exchange Council creates model legislation that states legislators copy to privatize public education, end collective bargaining, end due process for teachers, and merit pay for teachers.
• The assault on public education is a bipartisan effort.
• The Network for Public Education is a network of people who are fighting back against Corporate School Reform.
• Judging teachers via standardized test scores is wrong -- so there is now a mass exodus of people from the teaching profession.
• The Opt-out movement from standardized testing is growing and becoming main stream.

PART II

• The American Indian Model Charter School has been praised as one of the best charter schools in the country. In 2000, the school changed its demographics from predominantly Native American to Asian American. The change allowed the school to now brag about its test scores, which are some of the highest in California. They changed their student population to chase high scores.
• Some of the charter schools have CEO who are making $400,000 per year. 
• We are abandoning civic responsibility for consumerism. 
• Charter schools have select and conditional admissions which means they choose which children to admit or deny and which children to keep and expel.
• We should take billionaires advice for how to invest our money, and ignore their advice for how to teach and how to manage public education.
•  When Americans are asked about public education in general, they recite what corporate billionaires and corporate media tell them -- it's terrible. But when Americans are asked about their own public school, they say their public school is great.
• School choice is a synonym for segregation. The Charter movement is rolling back Brown vs Board of Education which led to the de-segregation of schools.
•  If we never change our mind, why have one? 

3 Things I learned from Network for Public Education Conference

I spent the weekend in Austin, Texas at the first Network for Public Education (NPE) and it was fantastic. You can find my day 1 post here and my day 2 post here.

Here are 3 things I learned from The Network for Public Education Conference:

1. Relationships. I was so happy to get a chance to meet some very cool people that, until this weekend, I had only known as avatars on Twitter. Don't get me wrong, I love social media -- while social media can help connect people by removing the obstacles of time and place, it is no substitute for real life, face to face relationships. I was so happy to meet and spend time with Kirsten Hill, Adam Holman, Jose Vilson, Stephanie Cerda, Xian Barrett, Audrey Watters, Sabrina Stevens, Katie Osgood and Phil Cantor.

I got to briefly meet Deb Meier, Anthony Cody, Diane Ravitch, and Chris Lehmann.

2. Assault on Public Education. As the token Canadian at the conference, I was struck by the raw emotion that dominated the conference -- teachers are saddened and angered by the assault on public education lead by profiteers, politicians and privatizers.

The politics and problems killing American Education is complex, but here's my Wikipedia version: For a long time, public schools in the United States had been a public good. Schools were about pupils. However, Corporate School Reform has become the status quo -- public education is being bastardized into a private interest where schools are about profits.

Essentially Corporate School Reform is led by three foundations: Gates, Walton and Broad -- who have allied with the Federal Government, effectively making the United States Department of Education an enemy of public education.

Common Core, high-stakes standardized tests and Teach for America are a money grab for Wall Street at the expense of Main Street. Democratically elected school boards are replaced with Charter CEOs who have absolutely no accountability to the public. Public schools who have a responsibility to take all children who show up are closed and turned into private charters with select admissions. Every dollar from tax payers for public education should go to public schools not into the pockets of CEOs and investors. Private schools should not be publicly funded.

The Charter school movement in the US is re-segregating America and rolling back whatever gains were made from Brown vs Board of Education. Experienced and educated teachers are fired in exchange for well-intentioned but grossly ill-prepared youngsters whose effectiveness have been grossly overstated. Public Education is being strangled to death by Corporate School Reformers who provide an opportunity-rich education for their own children while imposing other people's children with schools that are marinated in acquiescence and testing. Education excellence requires equity.

The Corporate School Reform is a part of the Global Education Reform Movement which is built on a contradiction:

Use PISA scores to show that public education in the United States is failing but then implement market-based reforms that are almost entirely contradictory to the reforms and policies found in high achieving countries.

3. There is hope. The only thing necessary for destructive mandates and cancerous education policies to succeed is for good teachers, parents and students to say and do nothing. When distant authorities invoke their ignorance with the force of law, remember that your silence is read as assent -- and at some point your silence is betrayal to those who do speak up and take action.

The Network for Public Education is the loud speaker for people who support public education. Rather than remain as individual pockets of resistance to Corporate School Reform and GERM, NPE is a way to organize and mobilize a movement that will save public education.

NPE concluded its first National Conference with a call for Congressional hearings to investigate the over-emphasis, misapplication, costs, and poor implementation of high-stakes standardized testing in the nation's K-12 public schools. The consequence of all this is that testing has become the purpose of education, rather than a way of measuring education.

NPE is encouraging everyone, including Congress to ask some tough questions:

• Do the tests promote skills our children and our economy need?

• What is the purpose of these tests?

• How good are the tests?

• Are tests being given to children who are too young?

• Are tests culturally biased?

• Are tests harmful to students with disabilities?

• How has the frequency and quantity of testing increased?

• Does testing harm teaching?

• How much money does it cost?

• Are there conflicts of interest in testing policies?

• Was it legal for the U.S. Department of Education to fund two testing consortia for the Common Core State Standards?

If Congress has the time, effort and resources to investigate baseball players using steroids, they can surely find the time, effort and resources to investigate the misuse and abuse of testing.

Here is what Education Hell looks like

Chicago is getting ready for a standardized test called the ISAT. Here's a 1 minute video of an Inservice session to help teachers prep for "The Vocabulary Matrix".



I have four quick points:

1. Roller coaster of emotions. I experienced a roller coaster of emotions as I watched this apocalyptic video. First, I was in shock. I couldn't believe this was happening. Second, I was angry. I couldn't imagine sitting in that classroom chanting without speaking up or walking out. Third, I was profoundly sad. If this is the nature of education reform and the future of our schools then I want nothing to do with it. Lastly, I am energized and hopeful. The only thing that cancerous education policies and practices need to survive is for good teachers to say and do nothing. Silence is not only assent to these soul-sucking test and punish practices -- silence is also betrayal to our democracy, public education and ultimately our children. This is why I'm attending the Network for Public Education Conference this weekend in Austin, Texas.

2. This is not Professional Development. This is at best a very poor inservice. Professional development is for professionals to determine their own growth and learning. This is precisely why teachers need a powerful Union that has a strong Professional Association focus to make sure that teachers have control over their own professional learning.

3. Teaching or testing? Teaching to the test and excessive test preparation invalidates inferences that can be drawn from the scores – yet they are the inevitable response to pressure to produce good test scores. Classroom time is devoured by not only the tests themselves but also practice tests, pre- and post-tests, field tests for the tests, benchmark tests, teacher tests, district tests, and state or provincial tests. Because testing is not teaching, this ultimately leads to a loss of opportunities for students to have a broad range of educational experiences, and the first things to go usually end up being the arts and physical activity – which do not lend themselves to be easily tested.

4. This is not how to teach children to read. Things are at their worst when we associate learning to read with taking a test. If you want to see what learning to read looks like, check out this post.

One last bonus horror: Is this being done to the teachers to encourage them to return to their classrooms and do exactly this to their students?

Behind SAT numbers

I found this in the Wall Street Journal here.

On average, high school seniors’ SAT scores increase as students’ household income increases, according to 2012 data released by the College Board. Read related article.

Should Albertans panic about math?

This was written by Dave Martin who is high school math teacher in Red Deer. He blogs here and tweets here. This post was originally found here.

by Dave Martin

Edmonton Journal's David Staples has been writing about

Grade inflation and flex time harm education, high school teacher warns

and

Alberta schools are no longer the best

and most recently,

Students ‘cheated’ by way math is taught, say educators and parents

If you read all these articles, you will notice one important commonality...Staples refuses to write about the "other side" of the story. Thus I offer a view from another David.

I invite you to read his articles to see one side, and then read below to see the other.

First, Staples wrote:

It’s common for students to get much higher marks in their classroom than they get on their diploma exams...the number of EPSB students who have been graded as “excellent” or “acceptable” on province wide diploma exams has dropped by 1.9 per cent. In the classroom, however, the number who have been graded “excellent” or “acceptable” has gone up by seven per cent.

He creates an idea that this should not be the norm and the teacher mark should be the same on the diploma. This is great in theory, but before you nod your head I ask you to remember some minor details:

• The teacher spends almost 5 months with your child, while the diploma spends 3 hours. 
• The teacher has met, talked, and learned about the interests of your child, while the diploma was made in an office by people who have, most likely, never met your child. 
• Your child is allowed to use real word devices, such as Dictionaries, Apps, Blogs, Web Articles, etc, in the classroom, while the diploma creates a false sense that knowledge is only valuable if you can memorize it, not apply it.
• Lastly, because Staples writes about the Math diploma, the teacher gives various types of questions, in various formats, in various ways to your child, while the diploma only asks Multiple Choice and Numerical Response.

Now I ask, which mark should have more merit? I pose a different problem... Why is the diploma mark lower than the mark given by the teacher? Isn't it time we change our standardized assessment strategies?

Next, Staples writes:

Alberta students used to be ranked at the top of the world academically, but they are sliding...In 2000, Alberta ranked top worldwide in reading, third overall in science and math. Our teachers and curriculum were top notch and our accountability, through provincial exams, was state-of-the-art....Since then, however, Alberta has steadily dropped. This week when the 2012 PISA results came out, we ranked 11th in math, fifth in reading and fourth in science... 

First, I don't believe we can put our faith in a two-hour exam, as my arguments from above still stand, however lets go beyond that.

Staples will have you believe that this drop is due to the fact that the math curriculum has changed, and even that we need better teachers in the classrooms to be educating your child. When I read this, I remember back to my Science class when we learned about constant, dependent, and independent variables.

Before we go witch hunting on the teachers, lets remember that these teachers are the same ones who were instructing in 2000. Unless I am unaware, the graduation requirements to become a teacher in 2000 are the same as they are now. Thus, teachers would be the constant variable in this. Now that we can't blame teachers, we can ask what changed?

Sure the math curriculum changed, but was there more? Class sizes over the last year have also increased, funding of AISI projects have been reduced to 0. I don't understand how if more than one thing has changed (independent variables), how can we point our finger to one of them and ignore the rest?

My last debate comes from the fact that Staples will have you believe that because we don't teach memorization of math facts students won't understand math.

The reality is that being told number facts, and forced to regurgitate these facts, will not create an environment which is conducive to deeper learning. The best way a student can understand, not just recite, mathematics is through discovering the facts on their own. For some, this discovery process can take seconds, while for others it may take an entire class. The role the teacher plays in this is by acting as a tour guide. By keeping the students on the “path” towards the discovery, it will ensure that all students create their own individual, and innovative, techniques in learning mathematics.

I often ask myself, which skills do I want for my own children? Do I want them to be taught the skills to memorize, and ultimately be able to complete algorithmic tasks, or the ability to create and design which will lead them down a road towards a career with heuristic tasks?

The reality is that the age old saying that “Practice makes perfect”, does not apply to deep learning in mathematics. Traditionally, students have been given worksheets which have multiplication facts on them and are given a strict time limit to complete these (named Mad Minutes), but in actuality the mark given on these “Mad” sheets really does not indicate to anyone as to knowledge of the student writing them.

The weak students truly suffer the most from this model of proficiency-driven, because they find these tasks dull, repetitive, and entirely unusable in the world outside the walls of the classroom. I would agree that sometimes, knowing facts as the days of the week are important, but these facts should be a by-product of use and application not out of necessity.

Another fact is, by spending time forcing these facts to be memorized is truly interfering with a child’s innovative and creative ability. Most of these worksheets require low level thinking and usually can lock the thought process of a student into understanding simple algorithms. Eleanor Duckworth summed it up the best,

“Knowing the right answer requires no decisions, carries no risk, and makes no demands. It is automatic. It is thoughtless.” 

Is this the environment in which math students should be learning?

The new math curriculum believes, among many things, that:

• Students learn by attaching meaning to what they do, and they need to construct their own meaning of mathematics.

• Students need to explore problem-solving situations in order to develop personal strategies and become mathematically literate. They must realize that it is acceptable to solve problems in a variety of ways and that a variety of solutions may be acceptable.

• Curiosity about mathematics is fostered when children are engaged in, and talking about, such activities as comparing quantities, searching for patterns, sorting objects, ordering objects, creating designs and building with blocks

I end with a link to a petition asking the Edmonton Journal to stop writing one sided, bias, articles, and until they do so you agree to stop reading their paper.

STOP WRITING BIAS EDUCATIONAL REPORTS

Let them eat grit: 4 reasons why grit is garbage

It is tempting to see education as the great equalizer that will allow children to overcome differences in background, culture and privilege. It would be convenient if poverty was not an explanation for poor academic achievement.

We all want children to be resilient and persistent in the face of challenges. However, as a teacher who already teaches children to develop a growth-mindset and resiliency, I am uninspired by pundits claims we just need more grit from students.

We know that affluent children who have opportunities and support to learn tend to out-score their less privileged peers. While there are outliers and exceptions, this is not up for debate.

Education systems around the world are being challenged to provide a more equitable system that allows all children, regardless of their background, culture or privilege, to be educated at a very high level.

When pundits call for more grit and resiliency, they aren't talking about all children. No one is demanding that high-scoring students show more grit. When people call for more grit they are talking about the low scorers -- and we know the low scorers tend to be children who are English language learners, special needs, living in poverty, suffering from mental health problems or are for complex reasons generally difficult to educate.

When we say that students need more grit and resiliency, we are really saying to these disadvantaged children that they just need to try harder. This is asinine for a couple reasons:

Firstly, children in poverty are often the ones facing the most challenges and are already exhibiting impressive amounts of resiliency. I teach in a children's inpatient psychiatric assessment unit, so I work with these kids daily. It's easier for children to "pull up their socks" if they own socks. These children don't need grit -- they need their basic needs met.

Secondly, too often the argument for more grit in children is an abdication of the system's responsibility to make things more equitable. I'm all for growth-mindset and resiliency, I teach it everyday, but they are not systemic solutions to inequality and inequity. Systems thinking tells us that improving education has less to do with characteristics of individual teachers and students and more to do with priorities of schools and school systems.

Thirdly, children who are a challenge to educate, whether they be English language learners, special needs, mentally ill, easily frustrated or chronically irritable, don't need to be reminded of our expectations or told to try harder. If we resign ourselves to thinking children just need more grit, we might be tempted to frame this as a motivation problem that can be solved with rewards and punishments. We need to move away from the mindset that says children will be successful if they want to and move towards the mindset that says children will be successful when they can. 

Lastly, for every time we encourage kids to not throw in the towel or to get back on the horse when they fall off, we need to reflect on the environments children are living and learning in and the tasks they are required to do. Sometimes the child's environment is abusive and neglectful, and sometimes the tasks required of them are developmentally inappropriate or simply unengaging and irrelevant -- either way, more grit might teach kids how to play a game stacked against their favour without teaching them how to change the game.

I've also found that the people who call for more grit from students tend to also be the people who claim we need to go back to basics -- to which I ask, "when did we leave?" Alfie Kohn writes:

The notion that our schools have strayed from the old-fashioned teaching that used to be successful is dead wrong on two counts. First, old-fashioned methods weren’t all that successful in the past either. It may not be easy for us to admit, but those methods caused countless people to give up on school and think of themselves as stupid. Even people who used to be successful students often don’t show much depth of understanding, much capacity for critical reflection, or a lifelong love of learning.

People who call for more grit and a back to basics approach tend to suffer from what Jamie Vollmer describes as Nostesia which "is a hallucinogenic mixture of 50% nostalgia and 50% amnesia that distorts rational thinking."

It's easy to call for more grit.

It's easy to cry that we need to go back to basics.

It's easy to blame the kids and the schools.

It's easy because it means we don't have to reflect inward - rather we just have to look outward. Challenging one's own practices and system priorities can be tough but nothing will ever change and schools will never improve as long as we place all the responsibility for change and improvement on students and schools.