The shoe metaphor vs. ‘one size fits all’ testing

So during my professional development session today, I watched a a little video about Lexile scores. Here – it’s on YouTube, so you can watch it too. It’s only about six minutes long, and it’s informative. But honestly, the argument in this post isn’t about Lexile scores. It’s about metaphors.

My argument is with the shoe size metaphor used in the video. I don’t mean that I’m against it; in fact, it’s brilliant and succinct: you would never purchase your next pair of shoes based on your age or grade level. No, you measure your foot and buy shoes that fit based on the corresponding size. Duh. That’s a no-brainer. MetaMetrics figured out that this idea works for reading levels too. Giving students texts based only on their grade level or age is just as misguided as giving them shoes based on the same criteria. So MetaMetrics created a system to help teachers target texts that correlate to student ability levels. Brilliant! This allows students to learn and improve their literacy levels without making them feel frustrated. I, as a teacher, can plan lessons that incorporate texts on multiple levels to meet the abilities of all my students. I can ensure that I’m pinpointing each student’s area of weakness to help him or her improve. Likewise, I can help my higher-level students continue to exceed without boring or alienating them. This is truly a way to differentiate instruction. This is truly a way to foster understanding. This is truly a way to promote knowledge acquisition and improve intelligence.

Then they all have to take and pass the same F***ING test on the same F***ING level.

I’m letting my students train for the big game in their own tennis shoes, then giving everyone a box of size 9 stilettos and wishing ‘em all luck in the playoffs.

Someone forward this video to Arne Duncan, please.

How often do you sometimes prefer exclusively using technology?

Survey results are pretty useless when the people designing the survey:

a) don’t understand how to word questions/statements to garner meaningful data from respondents, and

b) create rigid, multiple choice scales that aren’t related to the questions being asked or the statements being evaluated.

You Get What You Pay For…Sometimes.

A friend of mine posted this graph on Facebook (via Fareed Zakaria, via Andrew Sullivan):

Teacher salaries and student achievement

Accompanying the graph was a statement:

[I]mproving teachers’ pay improves their standing in a country’s income distribution and hence the national status of teaching as a profession.  As a result of this higher status, more young people will want to become teachers. This in turn makes teaching a more selective profession and hence facilitates the recruitment of more able individuals. Higher status and higher pay are invariably linked but the two can provide separate driving forces to engineer better recruits to the profession. The key hypothesis is that better pay for teachers will attract higher quality graduates into the profession and that this will improve pupil performance.

Profile of a Clayton County Board Member

You may want to read my Disclaimer before going any further. I’m about to rant.

Ok, so the AJC ran an article about a Clayton County School Board member named Trinia Garrett who allegedly downloaded some inappropriate stuff on her county-issued computer. As it turns out, this isn’t the first time Ms. Garrett has had legal troubles, and the Clayton County board itself is certainly no stranger to public humiliation, but it really wasn’t the allegation of porn-hoarding on school property that bothered me. It was Ms. Garrett’s atrocious grammar.

Separate Worlds: A Misguided Look at the ‘Intangible’ Differences Between Public and Private Schools

It seems some conservative Think Tank has published a study that claims teachers are overpaid.

I have a lot of issues with this study, but one thing that really stuck out as I was reading it was a section on comparing private and public school teachers’ salaries. Apparently the authors felt that – because both are doing the “same job” – the fact that private school teachers make less money was a reason to claim that public school teachers are overpaid…this paragraph really caught me:

A [private] teacher-to- [public] teacher comparison also helps to eliminate intangible work-related factors from the analysis. If there are certain aspects of teaching that are particularly frustrating (or rewarding) relative to other occupations, a higher (or lower) salary for teachers may be required as a compensating differential. By limiting both the reference and comparison group to teachers, whatever salary differences we observe are less likely to be driven by these intangible factors.

Because they’re all teachers by definition, there are no intangible factors that differentiate a private school teacher from a public school teacher? Hmmm…well let’s just take a look at some of the “intangible factors” that the authors overlooked, shall we?

For one thing, private school teachers generally have “smaller enrollments, smaller average class sizes, and lower student/teacher ratios than public schools” (ref.). But I suppose class size is actually a tangible factor, so to be fair (sarcasm), we won’t even count it. So what can we count?

Well, public school students are far more likely to come from low income households (see table 8 for ref), and this study shows a correlation between students’ low socioeconomic status and lack of parental involvement in school (as well as correlations between low socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, and parent-teacher tensions.) I think most people would agree that these factors contribute to more “frustration” for public school teachers.

Also, according to teacher perceptions, private school teachers perceive that private school students are:

• less likely to show disrespect to teachers
• less likely to use drugs and/or alcohol
• less likely to be tardy
• less likely to be absent
• more likely to be prepared to learn
• more likely to have actively involved parents
• less likely to express apathy toward education

And this study shows that, in comparison to private school students, public school students are:

• more likely to have been the victim of violence at school
• more likely to have been threatened in school
• more likely to be afraid of being victimized at school
• significantly more likely to encounter street gangs at or on the way to/from school
• more likely to fear for their own safety or avoid certain areas at school

In addition, the National Center for Education Statistics found that private school teachers were:

• “…more likely than public school teachers to report being satisfied with teaching at their school.”
• “…more likely than public school teachers to report having a lot of influence on several teaching practices and school policies.”
• likely to “express positive opinions about their principal and their school’s management.”

Even though the authors made the comparisons “After controlling for education, gender, region, and metro status,” it still does not eliminate the discrepancies. So yes…intangible factors do play a significant role in the “rewards” and “frustration” felt by public school teachers in comparison to their private counterparts, so the fact that private school teachers receive less compensation really has no place in the “overpaid” argument. Public and private school teachers work under very different conditions, and these factors should be taken into account.

Now, none of this is meant to demean private school teachers or the work that they do. Teaching under ANY circumstance can be a challenge, and I would never give up my job. It’s the job I chose, and it’s the job I love; however, the notion that intangible factors do not play a role in a public teacher’s reward/frustration is completely uninformed. I’m also perplexed at the fact that the authors of the study didn’t conclude that instead of public school teachers being overpaid, maybe it’s the private school teachers who are underpaid.

I have a number of friends and colleagues who have taught or been educated in private schools, and they confirm these perceptions. And while I can’t say much more about teaching in a private school because I’ve never done it before, I can almost guarantee I’m more qualified to speak on it than either Dr. Richwine or Dr. Biggs, neither of whom has any classroom experience on his resume.

What if private companies were run like public schools?

I asked myself this question a while ago, and here are a few thoughts I found worth mentioning…

What if companies ran more like public schools, with teachers as managers and students as employees?

-Every company in America would be forced to employ everyone in the immediate area who is between the ages of 18 and 65.

-No interviews would be allowed, and all employees must be accepted, regardless of qualifications, willingness, or ability to do the assigned job.

-All employees must be held to – AND MEET – the same standards for job performance and competence. Any office that fails to reach this standard loses corporate funding and may fire all managers (while moving all employees to another office). In addition, this job performance standard would be increased every year until ALL employees are performing at 100% of the government-mandated “standard.”

-A company’s manager would oversee 6 or 7 shifts of about 30 in excess of 35 employees, each for an hour a day (the shift number and length may differ slightly among offices). After each shift, all employees would move on to completely different – and generally unrelated – job functions.

-All employees would be promoted to a more difficult set of job functions every year (or two), regardless of past performance or readiness.

-Family members of the employee would be allowed – and many times encouraged – to come to the office and tell managers how to better do their jobs, while simultaneously claiming that the managers’ evaluations of the employee’s job performance is incorrect.

-No employee could be fired, even in light of poor work performance, absenteeism, insubordination, theft of company property, or physical violence toward coworkers or managers.

-Instead of being fired, if an employee’s behavior is deemed inappropriate, the supervisor of the office may give that employee up to 10 days’ worth of vacation. During the employee’s vacation, all managers who oversee the employee must put together all missed work in advance (after all, that under-performing, insubordinate, violent worker still needs to reach the same performance and competency standard as everyone else).

-The government would regulate not only the rules of every company, but also the products being produced, how the products are marketed, how the products are packaged, and how many of each product must be produced (and to what quality) in order for the company to stay in business – all without knowing what products the company even manufactures.

Anyone else have anything to add?