Open letter to Peter Cowley

Peter Cowley is the Director of School Performance Studies with the Fraser Institute. Here is an open letter I wrote to him. Feel free to help me send this link via Twitter to Peter Cowley and The Fraser Institute.





Dear Peter Cowley,

Despite the research that builds the case against the use of standardized testing as a measure for the quality of a school, you continue to use Provincial Achievement Test scores to rank and sort schools.

Because you are a supporter of standardized testing and your website says, "If it matters... measure it", I would like to invite you to take the Math 30-1 and English 30-1 Diploma Exams this January so that your results may be published for all to see.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Joe Bower
Teacher, Farmer, Albertan

Provincial Achievement Tests are optional

In Alberta, the grade 3, 6 and 9 Provincial Achievement Tests are optional.

To exercise your democratic right as an Albertan parent, you can opt out of Provincial Achievement Tests by simply writing a letter to your child's principal. As a parent, here is the letter I have drafted:

Dear Principal, 

My child will not participate in writing any of the Provincial Achievement Tests. 

Sincerely, 

Joe Bower

You'll notice that I am not required to provide the reasons why I am doing this. Instead, I am only required to inform the principal that my child will not participate.

Because it is the parents' right to opt their chid out of Provincial Achievement Testing, the child can not and should not be punished for not participating. If all goes well, the only person I would need to talk to about this would be the principal; however, if they were uncooperative, I would move to discuss this with the Superintendent, and if they were uncooperative, I would then engage with Alberta's Minister of Education.




For more on Provincial Achievement Tests here are a couple posts:

Assessment and Provincial Achievement Tests

University of Saskatchewan waives PATs and Diploma exams

Alberta teacher excuses their child from PAT

Accountability and the Provincial Achievement Tests: Myth and Reality

Are Provincial Achievement Tests in Alberta High Stakes Exams?

The fear of Provincial Achievement Testing

The Folly of Provincial Achievement Testing

Exempting from Testing in Alberta

Alberta Provincial Achievement Test Taking Tips

Alberta axes written portion of PATs

Teachers know best

Standardized Testing is Dumbing Down our Schools

Misuse of Provincial Achievement Tests

Thomas Lukaszuk on Standardized Testing

Enough of tiger moms and wolf dads

Amy Chua gained some serious attention when The Wall Street Journal ran her story Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior.Yong Zhao wrote a brilliant critique of Chua's take on Chinese parenting, and now so has Berlin Fang. This was written by Berlin Fang and appeared on ChinaDaily.com here:

By Berlin Fang

Thomas Friedman wrote in his column, "How about better parents?" (The New York Times, Nov19), that parent involvement is key to student success.

Fed up with the status quo of American education, and desperate for an alternative model,some readers peppered the word "Asian" throughout the comments section for Friedman'sarticle. One reader wrote: " the question among the coaches was the usual, why were so many of our top students are Asian. I asked when was the last time they had an Asian parentcomplain about too much homework."

This statement, however, proves nothing except the theory of relativity in human opinions.Asian parents in the United States rarely complain about children's homework because it is apicnic compared to what we had to go through in our younger days in our home country. But inAsian countries, like any other, complaints abound. In China, I constantly hear parentscomplain that their children cannot go to bed till 11 pm because they have too manyassignments.

Active involvement of Chinese parents is at best a myth, and the myth is running wild in themedia. After discussions on the "Tiger Mom" (Yale Professor Amy Chua, author of Battle Hymnsof the Tiger Mom), the Chinese media recently brought to light a certain "wolf dad", Hong Kong-based businessman Xiao Baiyou, who used chicken feather dusters to spank three of hischildren into Peking University, one of China's top institutions of higher learning.

First tigers and now wolves, I suppose we'll get the entire animal kingdom covered pretty soon.Such reports of Spartan parenting instill fear among Western parents and complacency amongtheir Chinese counterparts, none of which is healthy or justifiable.

Generally speaking, Chinese parents lag far behind their American peers in participating in theeducation of their children. In the Chinese countryside, many parents leave home to earn aliving as migrant workers. Their children thus live with grandparents, who often have little or noeducation. Pre-school is either unavailable or expensive. Many such children, often called "left-behind children", grow up without either proper parenting or school education.

Though children in middle class families live with parents, real involvement is far from desirable.Many Chinese families in towns and cities are dual-income families, some by necessity, othersby choice. Some American moms quit their jobs after childbirth to take care of their children.Chinese moms often quit their children to take care of their jobs. While parents are busy withtheir jobs or careers, many children are brought up to a large extent by grandparents, or"outsourced" to private tutors or even nannies.

In either situation, a predominantly materialistic worldview drives parents to spend their timeand energy making money to "guarantee" their children's future. Most spend money generouslyon children's education, buying them good things and sending them to private classes. Moneycan buy some relief from the guilt of staying on the margins of their children's development, butchildren do not get what they really need from parents: their time, for instance.

Friedman quotes a report by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) thatparent-child reading time correlates to student achievement in PISA tests. When was the lasttime you saw a Chinese parent returning with bags of entertainment reading from libraries orbookstores as American parents do? How often does a Chinese parent actually read a booktogether with his/her child?

Many parents even forbid their children from reading "useless" books such as novels, fairytales or poems for fear that such reading will distract students from preparing for exams.

The wrong focus on exams frees parents from participating in their children's education. Apartfrom not reading, parents don't work with children on school projects, because much ofhomework is exam-related which children are supposed to work on individually.

Parents' role is thus reduced to that of an alarm clock - to prompt children to do this or that atcertain hours of the day. No wonder, nannies can do substitute parenting. Fortunately, even analarm clock has its virtues. Chinese parents do a fairly good job of ensuring their childrenspend adequate time studying. Such increased time on educational tasks partially explains whythey excel in international benchmarking tests.

That being said, involvement can be deeper and richer in a child's path of growth. Chineseparents should spend more time with their children, rather than keeping time for them like aclock. Parents should work with children as a developing person, not just a test-taker. Parentsought to meet the kinetic, artistic, mental, social, psychological and spiritual needs of theirchildren.

Remember that children are human beings in stages of development. So why not forget abouttiger moms and wolf dads, and focus on being human parents instead?

The author is a US-based instructional designer, literary translator and columnist writing oncross-cultural issues.

---------------------

You can read more about more here:

And you thought the Tiger Mother was Tough

A Memoir Of A Tiger Mother's Quest for Perfection

I have written a number of posts on rethinking discipline that act as sharp critiques of the Tiger Moms and Wolf Dads in this world.

I also suggest you read Alfie Kohn's book Unconditional Parenting.

Why I don't like the Edublog Awards

Because I believe learning should always be framed as a collaborative activity and never a competitive one, I am critical of the Edublog awards.

Before you run off hating me, I would ask that you suspend judgment long enough to at least hear me out -- then you can run off hating me.

I realize this isn't going to win me many fans, and I'm likely to lose followers on Twitter and subscribers to my blog, but I guess that would be my point. How many people have jumped on the Edublog Award bandwagon and think it's a good idea? Is anyone out there giving pause long enough to think about whether educational leaders should be "recognizing excellence" in a way that pits us against each other as we vie for artificially scarce awards?

That I can count on one hand the number of people who publicly speak their doubts about these awards, leads me to believe that many have resigned themselves to groupthink or simply don't feel comfortable sharing their thoughts. Either way, this is can't be okay.

There are many responses to my criticism for the Edublog Awards. Here are a couple followed by my rebuttal:

Competition might be bad for kids, but we are adults.

• Even if this were true, there is an award for "The Best Student Blog". This year, five children who attend K-12 schools somewhere in the world named Jaden, Miriam, Jake, Jarrod and Gemma were pit against each other so adults could vote for their favorite. Would this be an appropriate way to "recognize excellence" in your classroom? If not, then why is this okay? On top of this, scientific research and anecdotal evidence both tell us that collaboration trumps competition. Always. This is true for children and adults alike.
• It's also important to note that the children are always watching. While we flood Twitter with our support for this competition, we are modelling for our students and colleagues that competition is more important than collaboration, recognition is something you get when you defeat others and success is arbitrarily scarce.

Why do some people feel compelled to rain on others' parade? Can't we recognize excellence?

• Labelling doubts about Edublog Awards as a personal attack on the winners misrepresents the issue as personal when it is a systemic problem. The issue isn't over who was nominated or who won, rather, the real issue is that anyone is nominated or that anyone wins or loses. I don't disparage the winners anymore than the losers (full disclosure: I was nominated) -- but I do wish that this kind of recognition was not artificially scarce and dispersed to only a select, popular few.

Can't we celebrate excellence? Why are you so against naming names?

• I'm not arguing that nobody can be named. In fact, I'm all for recognizing excellence and naming lots of names. But I am against the notion that we arbitrarily name only a select few names while arbitrarily excluding others. Recognizing excellence and declaring winners are not the same thing.

So if you're against awards, does this mean you will not accept awards? Does this mean your children will not accept awards?

• That it is really, really hard for people to say 'no thank you' to being nominated or winning should tell us something about the bullying nature of awards. Someone who turns down a nomination or an award is likely to be seen as ungrateful and someone who does not win or is not nominated and criticizes is likely to be labelled jealous. Either way, the idea that we should compete for artificially scarce recognition remains unscathed. The status quo has remarkable momentum.

• I have seen with my own eyes how awards can rupture relationships between winners and losers.  I've seen people placed in situations where they were made to win over and conquer their peers and they wanted nothing to do with the situation. This sounds awfully like bullying to me. This is precisely why I helped abolish award ceremonies at one of my previous schools. Chris Wejr has a remarkable list of links on rethinking award ceremonies and has started a movement for Honouring All Students. What's good for the kids is equally good for the adults.

These awards allow us to expand our Professional Learning Networks by introducing us to new blogs.

• I agree. It's true. These awards can be used to grow your network but I would argue that this is better done through collaboration rather than competition. Do we need the Oscars to tell us which movies to watch or Oprah to decide which books to read? If you want to find a good book, go to a library that has lots of books. If we really cared about expanding our PLNs, why not make the EduBlog Awards like the phone book or a dictionary where all blogs are listed for all to see all year long?

Our belief in the value of competition is built on a great number myths. It takes courage to cultivate a community of learners without resorting to killing it with competition.

Misuse of Provincial Achievement Tests

I was listening to Alberta's Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk speak about the misuses of standardized test scores when I thought of a time I saw with my own eyes how standardized test scores are misused by high schools.

For nine years I taught at a middle school. Every April, we took our grade 8 students to the high school for an orientation in preparation for their transition to high school. Every year, the gym was packed with anxious grade 8 students. Every year, the slideshow presentation went through all the cool extra-curricular clubs and interesting courses the students could choose from.

Every year, one of those slides was a graph showing how this high school outperformed other high schools in the city on the Provincial Achievement and Diploma Exams. The narrative went something like this:

Come to our school because we have good test scores which means we take academics seriously and you'll get a better education here.

Every time I had to endure this rhetoric, I would look around the gymnasium to see if others were as disgusted by this misuse of test score data as I was, and colleagues of mine (who have a very good idea how I feel about all this) would look my way and give me a smirk and a shrug.

When I shared this experience with our former Education Minister Dave Hancock, he immediately asked me:

That is ridiculous. Who is holding them accountability for this misuse of scores?

My response:

No one. But I am talking to you.

After listening to our new Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk talk about how third parties like the Fraser Institute misuse standardized test scores, and seeing for myself how even schools misuse them -- my question to Lukaszuk is this:

Keeping in mind that asking the Fraser Institute to use standardized test scores responsibly is like asking an alcoholic to drink responsibly, what are you prepared to do to ensure that standardized test scores are not misused?

Confronting Poverty

In the New York Times Opinion Pages, Helen Ladd and Edward Fiske conclude their op-ed Class Matters. Why Won't We Admit It?

Other countries already pursue such strategies. In Finland, with its famously high-performing schools, schools provide food and free health care for students. Developmental needs are addressed early. Counseling services are abundant. 

But in the United States over the past decade, it became fashionable among supporters of the “no excuses” approach to school improvement to accuse anyone raising the poverty issue of letting schools off the hook — or what Mr. Bush famously called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” 

Such accusations may afford the illusion of a moral high ground, but they stand in the way of serious efforts to improve education and, for that matter, go a long way toward explaining why No Child Left Behind has not worked. 

Yes, we need to make sure that all children, and particularly disadvantaged children, have access to good schools, as defined by the quality of teachers and principals and of internal policies and practices. 

But let’s not pretend that family background does not matter and can be overlooked. Let’s agree that we know a lot about how to address the ways in which poverty undermines student learning. Whether we choose to face up to that reality is ultimately a moral question.

To say that poverty is not an excuse for why children have trouble learning is to make excuses for not doing something about poverty. A "no excuses" attitude towards poverty is ultimately nothing more than a lack of commitment towards making things more equitable for children.

However, what good does it do to care about children, if we no longer give a shit about them when they become adults?

Diane Ravitch has a brilliant post here and Helen Ladd's paper Education and Poverty: Confronting the Evidence here.

Thomas Lukaszuk on Standardized Testing

Here is an interview on CBC with Alberta's Minister of Education Thomas Lukaszuk on standardized testing.

Here are some key points made by Thomas Lukaszuk:

• The misuse of standardized test results is concerning.
• Initially, Provincial Achievement Tests were suppose to inform the province about how well the curriculum was taught, but there are third parties (like the Fraser Institute and the media) who use the results to rank and sort and blame and shame schools.
• Raw scores on a standardized test does not take in to account the socio-economic conditions of the neighbourhood, how many children speak English as a second language, and how many children have special needs. Using these scores as a reflection for the quality of teaching misrepresents what is truly going on. In other words, these scores do not reflect the quality of teaching that goes on in the school.
• Often superintendents and administrators place the strongest teachers in classrooms and schools that host the hardest to educate students, and yet their scores will remain low because of the context of their student population.
• High scores tend to indicate a high level of parental engagement and high levels of literacy for children before they even come to school.
• Alberta Education wants to make changes to the Provincial Achievement Testing so that they can get the information they need on Curriculum, but at the same time these tests don't get misused. 
• Provincial Achievement Tests are not designed to test the quality of teaching that takes place in a classroom.
• Grade 3 and 6 Provincial Achievement Tests will no longer continue in their current format.
• Parents deserve to know if the curriculum is being taught but also deserve to be protected from the unintended consequences that arise from the use of Provincial Achievement Test scores.

For more on Provincial Achievement Tests in Alberta:

Assessment and Provincial Achievement Tests

University of Saskatchewan waives PATs and Diploma exams

Alberta teacher excuses their child from PAT

Accountability and the Provincial Achievement Tests: Myth and Reality

Are Provincial Achievement Tests in Alberta High Stakes Exams?

The fear of Provincial Achievement Testing

The Folly of Provincial Achievement Testing

Exempting from Testing in Alberta

Alberta Provincial Achievement Test Taking Tips

Alberta axes written portion of PATs

Teachers know best

Standardized Testing is Dumbing Down our Schools

Making trouble

The problem with teaching children to think for themselves is that they might start thinking for themselves.

Jumping through hoops

This is precisely what test-based accountability looks like in the classroom.