January 28, 2007
In which I jump into a fairly uncivil argument about the most important topic I can imagine
Posted by Jeff Wasserman under ThinkingSo I’ve been reading Dan Meyer’s blog. I suggest you do the same. Start with these two posts, then come back here.
Anecdote:
My mother is also a teacher (and was the inspiration for my career choice, yes, yes). I spoke to her yesterday after she left her homebound tutoring assignment–she works with an 8th grade boy who is in the midst of chemotherapy. This boy can’t go to school until after flu season, even though he feels pretty good and the chemo seems to be working, because his immune system is so compromised that it could be really, REALLY bad.
Anyway. As with any other long-term homebound situation, a lot of procedural/curricular questions have been raised. This boy is obviously not able to participate in my mother’s writing workshops, for example, and has missed out on field trips, science class labs, &c. But he’s going to be taking the Connecticut Mastery Tests. Of course he’s going to take them.
The principal insists that he take them because he’s a Special Ed student who tends to do well on these tests, and because he won’t skip school on the days the tests are administered. He’s homebound, dig, so he really can’t go anywhere, and I guess the tests will be brought to him somehow. He’s a Special Ed student who will take the test, and one of the things that NCLB seems to require (and I haven’t actually read the legislation, but this is what I understand) is a certain attendance rate from every subpopulation of a particular school, otherwise there are consequences.
That’s kind of troubling, I guess, but what’s worse, to me, is that these tests can be taken, and done well on, by students who haven’t been in school, haven’t interacted with other hormonal adolescents, haven’t really left their homes because of immune system problems, in months. What are these tests testing, then? Obviously, it’s not the same things that teachers value and that students need to go to school to learn about. If this boy is expected to do so well on the test (and previous indicators suggest he well, though I guess we’ll really have to wait a few months until he gets his score to know for sure, and I sincerely hope that it’s something his family will still care about in a few months) without having been in school, and with only a two-hour visit from my mother once a week, just what is it testing?
So now someone’s going to say, I’m sure, that it’s obvious that the school just isn’t focusing the curriculum enough. If this boy doesn’t have to be in school to do well on the test, then the school is doing something wrong. Perhaps this is what TMAO meant when he wrote, in the comments on Dan Meyer’s post:
All of the negative by products that are laid on the doorstep of this bill are not the results of provisions therein, but rather actions taken by schools and districts to improve student achievement (or performance, if you think the test are invalid). Any aspersions we choose to cast at schools taking away electives, lengthening the school day, including test prep, and so forth, must be cast at the actual individuals making those choices; they are not the only choices to be made.
Thankfully, I’m not a school administrator, but I’d love to know what the other choices are. Realigning curricula to reflect what’s on the test is a bad idea, because the test should come from the curriculum. Ignoring the test is a bad idea if you’re a school where many students do not meet proficiency standards. So you realign and realign and the where do you end up? Classes that are run just like how Sarah Puglisi described them.
Are the two of you opposed to accountability measures outright?
If no, are the two of you then just opposed to the accountability measures of NCLB?
“Accountability measures,” here, refer to standardized tests. “Accountability” means that there is some sort of a metric for success, which is created by some human being somewhere, and that people are measured against that metric. Neat, right? Accountability in itself isn’t a bad thing (I hold my students accountable for producing new and exciting work, and handing it in by the deadline, and for showing up and being productive and kind and generous in class), but the way we go about it is. If you’re not in my classroom right now, how will you know that the Satire Project is forcing my sophomores to synthesize their knowledge and understanding of satire as a concept, the writing process, and the realities of their particular community? You’re certainly not going to measure it on any sort of NCLB scale.
But it’s Dan’s second question that gives me that extra-special feeling of encountering the kind of 21st-century “debate” that pays the bills for any number of idiots in suits who pretend to be experts:
[A]re the two of you then just opposed to the accountability measures of NCLB?
Because, y’know, if you say yes, you’re just anti-NCLB without giving it a chance. You’re guilty of giving nothing but a knee-jerk reaction to anything that would suggest that your teaching is anything less than sterling. You’re not giving the children a fair shake.
What about some other sort of accountability? Why do we have to break “success” down into students’ abilities to do a lot of stuff in a short amount of time in an artificial environment (in my school, students don’t take the CAPT tests in their regular classrooms)? I’d love to have someone from the government come hang in my classroom for a couple of weeks and see what we do there. (Union leadership: please forget I wrote that.) There’s learning, my students are progressing, and even my most “at-risk” upperclassmen make progress toward learning and understanding. They read, they write, they debate, they analyze, they synthesize. Who’s going to test that, and how?
January 28th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
Neither Sarah nor any of her back-patting cronies answered the questions you quoted, which meant I couldn’t expand any of them there, which left you to your own assumptions interpreting my motives.
You misinterpret my question thusly:
When in fact, from a comment I wrote to Chris Lehmann on my blog:
I have to determine which teachers are anti-teacher-assessment (a totally repugnant stance to me) and which are merely anti-NCLB (a justifiable stance.)
You, yourself, are somewhere in this category of teachers who aren’t anti-teacher-assessment, just anti-NCLB, and, I can count you an ally in that.
Your idea is good-hearted but financially infeasible. I mean, you know there are a lot of teachers out there, right?
January 28th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
Yes, but the whole way in which teachers AND students are assessed needs to be, well, assessed. Reexamine standards, reexamine ways of proving proficiency in the standards, rip the whole thing down if need be. Because what we’ve got now obviously isn’t working. You have Sarah and her (as you really uncharitably put it) “back-patting cronies” who are completely disgusted with the assessment tools that are out there now as part of NCLB, and there are plenty like you who are immediately dismissive, and the whole thing is breeding plenty of discontent and, I daresay, unnecessary animosity.
When most of our teachers don’t even know which tools our students will need in order to function in the 21st century (or worse, are afraid of those tools), how can we expect the Feds to assess our students’ performance and our merit as teachers of those students?
In the meantime, we continue to do what we think is best, and for me, at least, that means setting an example of civility and cooperation even when faced with positions with which I disagree. I think the future of education–hell, the future of life and work–lies in collaboration, sharing, and a respectful exchange of ideas and information.
At least twenty that I know of. It’s financially infeasible, though, the same way that the current assessment tools are pedagogically infeasible.
I think strides are being made, though, in all seriousness. Last year, when I had to complete my BEST portfolio, I had to stop teaching in a way that made sense to me in order to meet the state’s assessment criteria. I had to separate reading and writing instruction for a month so that I could complete all of the required tasks for the portfolio. I have never felt so awkward in my five years of teaching–it was like the state wanted me to throw out all of the methods that had been working with me, and with my students, and reinvent everything just for this purpose. I felt like a bit of a fraud, though I got a very good score on the thing. Now I’m just happy that I never have to do it again and can go back to teaching in the way that I think is right and works for my students.
It’s things like that which have made me so critical of our current assessment models. I don’t know how I’d change them, in a realistic way, but I just know that something has to be done.
January 28th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
Your last paragraph is definitely the splitter for me. On January 28, 2007, I don’t find the current California assessment models for mathematics pedagogically infeasible or invalid. They’re good, actually. And accurate. They don’t assess how well a student can collaborate on a science project with students from Japan using Moodle, but at this point, that ain’t Education. I’ll admit that current assessment models need a lot of help, particularly for y’all in other content areas.
I’m skeptical, however, of those who see the need for better assessment but instead petition to repeal NCLB outright, yet also don’t have a viable assessment model at the ready. If anybody’s got anything that functions on the existing tax base, that assesses students and teachers better than NCLB, then I’m listening. But not Sessums, not even Kovacs at the Roundtable offer specifics, just a surplus of good-feeling generalities.
January 28th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
Scrap NCLB : Viable alternate assessment model immediately ready :: Get divorced : New wife ready to go except for signing of marriage license
(Whoever got rid of the analogies section of the SAT robbed a generation of the joy of being able to construct these sorts of statements. Not remotely sure how it’s useful, but it sure is fun.)
I think we might be getting at something, here. Maybe the current math assessment models work well, since math, especially at lower levels, has right answers that can easily be assessed. Can the kids use such-and-such procedures to solve such-and-such problems? Yes? Great job, Mr. Meyer! No? Mr. Meyer, you have failed us for the last time (which should probably be said in a Darth Vader voice).
Can’t figure out for the life of me, though, how the current assessment models can rate how I teach kids how to read and write. Especially since reading and writing consist of enormous bundles of skills that take into account years and years of practice in and out of school. I don’t mean any offense to any math teachers or other mathemagicians who might be reading this, but math skills, although they are used quite often in “real life,” are a lot more binary–you need to be able to add something or you don’t, or you need to figure out an average or a comparison or something or you don’t. Reading, writing, speaking, communication, interpretation–these are the skills dealt with in English class, and they are what enable us to interact with one another BEFORE we start figuring out ratios and that sort of thing. Do you see why standards-based assessment becomes problematic?
January 29th, 2007 at 12:59 am
I have a few friends in writing. I do not own to cronies.
we think together…but I’ll check myself around giving the appearance of cronies.
I can assure you my insignificance alone would make that clear.
Reading Dan’s sentence above to my own children caused them to literally laugh. I’m elbows to chin in flour baking gingerbread for my class…it’s impossible to see me bellied up to the cronie bar right now in good old boy land. …I appreciate the humor of that with an incredible amount of personal embarrassment as the entire thing, subject, is too important and too critical to our kids to be played out on my broken laptop in a flour filled kitchen as I get the treats ready for morning cookies and milk. Really my cronies are the little babies eating these tomorrow. I will admit to that. They will be excited.But I can’t test that. So it’s hard to prove, but I assert these things we do matter in ways beyond measure.
I write to fully articulate what is happening in an Under-Performing Ca school as a result of National policies filtered through the myriad of systems, state and local which I do think stand as pretty typical at least in CA. I ask fair questions and it’s apparent that the “word” is out. . Originally, I wrote a response to a song my husband wrote and I wrote many other posts over months . I did not go on a blog of anyone and insult them, belittle them, call them the name of a murdered rapper, mis-state their intent nor bully them in order to say whatever it is I have to say about my truth. I am able to write to my meanings without that actually. Nor engage once I saw the rhetorical bat in hand. But I was responding emotionally. And that was fair to be brought up as potentially not enough for such important thoughts.Noted.
That said I enjoyed reading here and will again in future. At 6 many things matter in classrooms and the limitations of current test systems are well represented even by the systems using them. You can test , yet, many things of value in the experiences of classroom including in developing responsible behaviors in discussion, are developed through rich experiences and learning opportunity.
On some level who I am , in his narrow snapshot, has challenged this blogger. And that’s unfortunate for as you point out the subject of children and what we do and they do is the all of it. I am an inconsequential one person. But test driven basic skill curriculum being imposed on poverty schools is a reality…and it is worth looking at for a variety of reasons.Including short changing them.
Sarah Puglisi
January 29th, 2007 at 2:37 am
I haven’t read your blog until today, but I want to say that I appreciate your awareness of the harm that toxic rhetoric can do to productive discussion. I’m proud to count myself among “Sarah’s back-patting cronies,” and I’m working on a response to what appears to me to be an attempt to grandstand at the expense of someone else’s frustration. But I need to think. Actually, Sarah did post a response, but it may have been too oblique to satisfy Mr. Myer.
When I read Dan say that:“The alternative — trawling, hooking, and flaying bloggers — has been yielding diminishing returns over time,” as well as the title to his post and his concern that even a “small citation will give too much power to Sarah Puglisi’s anti-NCLB rant,” I have to doubt that he’s sincerely interested in dialog. Demeaning remarks such as these indicate a desire to silence opposing points of view. And if they weren’t intended to do so, I’d say an apology would be in order.
Very briefly, to satisfy Mr. Myer’s curiosity, I don’t know any teacher who is anti-accountability. However, the mechanisms for determining success are bound up in a much larger philosophical debate about the mission that public education serves in our society and whose evidence should count as the success criteria for learning. Your analogy above is clever, and I think aptly describes the problem. To extend it a bit, it seems that we are being presented with an arranged and loveless marriage.
I’ve participated in the writing of test questions for our state science exams. I know first hand where they come from and the assumptions that are embedded in them. I won’t argue that they’re invalid as indicators of certain kinds of knowledge, but I remain skeptical about their utility for making important decisions on a large scale, which is what we see happening. My main objection to testing isn’t the tests themselves, but the inferences that are drawn from them and the actions that are taken on account of those conclusions. It is often quite the opposite of what we know to be proper. So we are thrown into an ethical bind. That’s the main problem, as I see it. Debating the “correctness” of dissenting points of view by demeaning another teacher’s professionalism is an affront to her character, and I find it very difficult to remain dispassionate in such discussions. I join these arguments reluctantly. But, as you say, this is important.
January 29th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Doug, I’m genuinely surprised you’d hail Sarah’s post as model discourse here. You describe one of us as “what appears to me to be an attempt to grandstand at the expense of someone else’s frustration,” a description I find veritably ambiguous. Since the rest of your post specifically indicts me, I have to assume that the grandstanding is mine and that the frustration is hers but the difference is less clear to me than it is to you.
Sarah’s posts are, by her own definition, unedited. Sarah certainly has passion, but passion, uninformed by even a cursory proofreading can’t help but reduce to spectacle, to a rant, and, especially in this case, to grandstanding.
She displays model emotional truthfulness — the heart’s out on the sleeve there — but dismal intellectual honesty. She ventriloquizes NCLB supporters in some repugnant and reductive ways: “Eat the young, there’s money to be had;” “Art is dead;” “Thought is dead.” We are the destroyers of “school culture, arts, and practically childhood for many students.” In her third bullet point she all but accuses NCLB sympathizers of racism.
And I’m to honor her “mere frustration?”
Meanwhile, I drafted Biggie Smalls (a title which embarrasses me more the more grossly it’s misinterpreted), with each revision attempting to excise the florid, incendiery prose that made Sarah’s rant such a disappointment to read. Your reading of my post indicates that I want to “silence opposing points of view,” a reading which is selective at best.
I make it clear from the first paragraph that it matters to me less “what you believe on NCLB (whether to scrap it or keep it), rather why you believe it and how you go about believing it.” The resulting comments have been an exchange of opposing views that has staggered me in its generosity, insight, and breadth.
I read your comment, Doug, and felt lousy. To best formulate an apology, I re-read the related text on all three sites, suddenly felt more confused than lousy, and then re-read your comment. I could only conclude that your reading of my post represents your own sympathies much better than it does the post itself.
At the end of Biggie Smalls, I ask for an elevation of discourse. That post was carefully constructed to critique the delivery of an ideology rather than the ideology itself and I can’t work up much regret over it. However I didn’t commit the same care and editing to my subsequent comments here or there, and for demanding an elevation of discourse and not exemplifying that elevation, I’m sorry. That hypocrisy is all mine.
January 30th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
I really love this thing that Sarah wrote in her comment above:
Now, Dan, it definitely needs to be edited (and yes, the English teacher sitting right here, writing this here comment on this here computer, says that your last comment is missing a very important comma in a very important place–see how distracting it is when someone points out your editing flaws in the middle of another point? These parantheticals can be maddening, though they sometimes possess some substance), but she NAILED it, the thing that you either don’t see, don’t get, or don’t believe is important: our classrooms are places in which students have rich experiences and learning opportunities that allow them to figure out how to interact with the things and people in their lives.
Seriously. And though I want to say that it’s because you’re a math teacher that you seem to believe that everything important in a student’s educational life can be quantified, I call BS on myself, since none of the math teachers with whom I eat lunch regulary (4-6 of them, depending on the day) would make such a statement either. Also, I’ve known plenty of English and even art teachers who would make that kind of a statement. So it can’t be a math vs. humanities thing.
So what is it? Where does your support for NCLB come from? Why do you think that we, in 2002, needed this legislation? Why do we, in 2007, still need it? What is it, to roughly quote David Mamet, in aid of? What is a problem that it has solved, and what are some problems that you think it might solve in the future? Because to me, it’s nothing but another tool to maintain the status quo. Underperforming schools in poor districts already can’t attract good experienced teachers to take pay cuts to work there, so they hire inexperienced people who either a) can’t get jobs anywhere else or b) are convinced that they can save the world, since they watched Freedom Writers or Dangerous Minds (or, I suppose, The Subsitute). They get frustrated and leave the position after their idealistic personalities butt into the brick wall of pass-the-test-or-we-close-your-school policy. The school gets shut down, a grateful nation cheers because the government has Done Something About Our Schools, and the kids from that school wind up in some other school, which is now overcrowded and needs to hire some more inexperienced and idealistic teachers. (And yes, I realize I just generalized. Get over it.)
And but also NCLB says that not only do we need to get rid of emotion and discovery in our classroom (it’s not in the legislation, but honestly, when you’re in a school that has to Teach To The Test, because it’s about to be closed down, there’s no time to do anything but Teach To The Test, because when are you going to use your imagination to come up with a better way?), but that those things are not valuable. And of course they aren’t valuable when you’re just trying to train some poor kids how to be obedient workers. They need to learn how to perform binary (or trinary, or whatever four-nary really is called) tasks quickly and efficiently. Bubble in A, B, C, or D. Am I paranoid? Are my Marxist tendencies from ten years ago when I was a know-it-all undergrad coming out? Is it not about class, which is really basically race in a lot of ways? Or am I on to something here?
And yes, it’s ridiculous to sit here and complain to you, or to Sarah or to Doug or to any of my students who read this blog (and they do, mes amis, they do), but it’s too cold to go out and protest or light anything on fire, and my bedtime draws nigh. So let me end with one more plea for a well-reasoned case for NCLB, one that isn’t just “because the people who are against it are too emotional and don’t edit their writing enough.” That’s just lazy. Convince me, convince Sarah, convince Doug, convince my poor mother.
January 31st, 2007 at 9:53 pm
I can’t, man.
“NCLB says we need to get rid of emotion and discovery.”
“I realized I just generalized. Get over it.”
A grateful nation cheers when a school is shut down?
There’s no time to do anything but teach to the test?
I’d make a case that NCLB is the most tangible and powerful step the U.S. has ever taken to address how poorly we educate our minorities and the socioeconomically disadvantaged. But judging by the characterizations and generalizations you make all over your comment, I’m not sure we’re talking about the same legislation.
I like TMAO’s post on the same subject awhile back. Or Dave’s, more recently. These are defenses I would echo if were talking about the same NCLB.
February 1st, 2007 at 7:00 am
Dan, you’ve missed my point yet again.
Let me re-quote the entire passage that you very surgically excerpted:
The intent and the reality of the NCLB legislation are two entirely different things. And I say, and will continue to say, that no matter what the intent is, it is the reality of the results that is important. Going to an analogy that I really don’t want to bring in, but it is before 7am and I’m just having my coffee now, although it was a nice idea to topple Saddam Hussein, him being a dictator and all, the resulting chaos in Iraq has made many (like 70% or so of the population, depending on the poll) doubt that it was worth it. Likewise, NCLB might be, as you say (though without any sort of evidence, which I’m sure you’ll provide next time you write on this issue) “the most tangible and powerful step the U.S. has ever taken to address how poorly we educate our minorities and the socioeconomically disadvantaged,” but the reality is that it isn’t making much of a difference in improving the education of these people.
Good idea, poor execution, no clear answer, a lot of debate–smells like public policy, and it’d be a lot more fun to debate this if I weren’t stuck gearing my sophomores up for an NCLB-mandated, graduation required, statewide standardized exam in early March. The reality here is that no matter how much I teach the skills needed to pass the exam throughout the school year (informal writing, reading comprehension, BS), the exam season is a major distraction from legitimate classroom- and experience-based learning. Two weeks during which my students aren’t working on a major creative/interpretive project on The Odyssey, meeting with their book groups to share reading strategies, analyzing primary sources that relate to their US History curriculum, etc. I know it’s not the intent of NCLB to make that happen, but it does, and it’s not just because I’m only a 5th-year teacher.
We can, and we must, do better, and we can’t, and we mustn’t, be satisfied with what we have. Satisfaction=stagnation=death.
February 1st, 2007 at 11:13 am
I’m not satisfied with what we have, but I don’t agree that even the reality of NCLB — esp. not how I’ve experienced it — is that it limits my class’ imagination or discovery. This isn’t the same as saying “NCLB promotes my class’ imagination and discovery,” but this is assessment we’re talking about, and those things are beside the point of it.
More to your point, you consider it a waste of time — time which could be better spent on imagination and discovery — a point to which I have no recourse. I’ll quote TMAO’s I [heart] Testing, and one of his “few valid reasons we should advocate for less testing”:
If you really have your pacing, class management and efficiency down so well that the only way you’ll meet your instructional objectives is by reclaiming the hours lost to assessment then I’m at a loss. Write a book for me on class management. I’d buy.
This last question might sound glib, but it’s merely “earnest with an agenda”: what’s the point of a whole period of SSR (silent sustained reading, they call it here)? Once a week or twice a month or something, what, teachers just pack it in, pass out books, and model reading for their kids. Always been jealous of that one.
February 1st, 2007 at 11:34 am
Fundamental difference in educational/pedagogical philosophies FOUND.
This is from Wikipedia’s entry on Assessment (and yes, I know that Wikipedia is a wiki and thus editable by the masses, yes, yes, but it’s also a great source for common perceptions/connotations/understandings):
Anyway, I was taught at my fancy-pants grad program, where we studied, in particular, Dewey and Wiggins & McTeague, that assessment was meant as a way for students to demontrate not only what they’ve learned, but what they now understand about what they’ve been studying. And so if you’re teaching a unit that relies on imagination and discovery (like, for example, studying a work of fiction, or attempting an analytical reconstruction of a particular 19th-century reform movement, or creating an original piece of satire), any assessment that excludes that imagination and discovery is faulty. This is probably why English and Social studies teachers tend to have a lot of problems with standardized testing, since it’s so far outside the realm of how we’re supposed to present our course material.
When it’s done right, which it rarely is, it should have the same effect as giving students 50 practice math problems to work on as a test review: it strengthens the skills we teach (reading, decoding, inference) in a controlled and exclusive setting. Teachers don’t just “pack it in,” they are busy modelling the behavior that they’ve taught.
Anyway, you math teachers get to reverse the tables when we’re grading essays and hating anyone who isn’t. Just make sure to rub it in next time…
February 1st, 2007 at 11:37 am
Oh, and I totally don’t get this:
TMAO, if you’re still reading this, I’d love some qualification on what you mean by “bringing it”–what does that look like? Standing in front of the room, waving my arms about, writing all over the board, speaking, speaking, speaking? Or does helping my students solve their writing problems one-on-one, overcoming obstacles, that sort of stuff, does that count as something being brought?
Just wondering.
February 1st, 2007 at 7:04 pm
“I’d make a case that NCLB is the most tangible and powerful step the U.S. has ever taken to address how poorly we educate our minorities and the socioeconomically disadvantaged.” Blog comment……
I’d argue this was the MOST powerful step:
from factmonster
1954 to 1963
School Desegregation
In 1954, the Supreme Court took a momentous step: In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka the court set aside a Kansas statute permitting cities of more than 15,000 to maintain separate schools for blacks and whites and ruled instead that all segregation in public schools is “inherently unequal” and that all blacks barred from attending public schools with white pupils are denied equal protection of the law as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The doctrine was extended to state-supported colleges and universities in 1956. Meanwhile, in 1955 the court implemented its 1954 opinion by declaring that the federal district courts would have jurisdiction over lawsuits to enforce the desegregation decision and asked that desegregation proceed “with all deliberate speed.”
At the time of the 1954 decision, laws in 17 southern and border states (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri) and the District of Columbia required that elementary schools be segregated. Four other states—Arizona, Kansas, New Mexico, and Wyoming—had laws permitting segregated schools, but Wyoming had never exercised the option, and the problem was not important in the other three. Although discrimination existed in the other states of the Union, it was not sanctioned by law.
The struggle over desegregation now centered upon the school question. By the end of 1957 nine of the 17 states and the District of Columbia had begun integration of their school systems. Another five states had some integrated schools by 1961. The states mostly fell back on stopgap measures or on pupil-placement laws, which assigned students to schools ostensibly on nonracial grounds. Forced integration led to much violence. The most notable instance was the defiance in 1957 of federal orders by Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas, who called out the Arkansas National Guard to prevent integration in Little Rock. President Eisenhower responded by sending federal troops to enforce the court order for integration.
In 1958 Virginia closed nine schools in four counties rather than have them integrated, but Virginia and federal courts ruled these moves illegal. In 1960 desegregation began in Louisiana; whites boycotted the integrated New Orleans public schools at first triumphantly, later with diminishing effectiveness. In 1961 two black students registered at the Univ. of Georgia but were suspended because of student disorders; they were later returned under a federal judge’s order.
In 1962–63 violence erupted in Mississippi, precipitating a serious crisis in federal-state relations. Against the opposition of Gov. Ross R. Barnett, James H. Meredith, a black who was supported by federal court orders, registered at the Univ. of Mississippi in 1962. A mob gathered and attacked the force of several hundred federal marshals assigned to protect Meredith; two persons were killed. The next day federal troops occupied Oxford and restored order. Meredith became the first African American to attend a Mississippi public school with white students in accord with the 1954 court decision.
In 1963, South Carolina’s Clemson College became the first integrated public school in that state. Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama stood in a doorway at the Univ. of Alabama in a symbolic attempt to block two black students from enrolling in 1963; the attempt failed. In the North attempts were also made to combat segregation. After a suit brought by black parents in 1960, the school system of New Rochelle, N.Y., was in 1961 ordered by a federal judge to be desegregated. Similar suits followed in other cities.
February 2nd, 2007 at 1:33 am
Well met.
February 3rd, 2007 at 1:01 pm
[...] I responded to a comment at When the hurly-burly’s done. I said, I haven’t read your blog until today, but I want to say that I appreciate your awareness of the harm that toxic rhetoric can do to productive discussion. I’m proud to count myself among “Sarah’s back-patting cronies”… [...]
February 4th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
No wasted time, my friend. Not even a little. When the hypothetical teacher complains of time-wasting in test prep, I envision rocks flying toward glass homes, because I’ve seen a lot of downtime in classrooms, especially 7-12.
I’ve taught in Program Improvement, Title I, Title X, under-resourced, about to be shut down school under NCLB, and no one ever made me teach with less passion, or prevented the use of portfolio assessment, fieldtrips, experential learning, or the occasional joke about pirates and boogers. It never happened. If what you’re teaching is a standard or the path to a standard, and you’re doing it well, this will translate into strong test results (those 25 hours in May we’re all so freaked about), and the methodology is your call.
I can’t handle the sky is falling rhetoric about a piece of law that told us to test, pay attention, expect to be called out if we suck, and then spend years fixing it. I can’t handle the sentiment that somehow this is about US. It’s not about US or how we like to teach or whether we find lessons comparing two pieces of informational text fundamentally interesting at the core of our souls. It’s about what kids need, and with all due respect to folks who bemoan the lack of critical thinking skills taught in schools, I wonder what good all that thinking is if you can neither read, nor speak, nor write effectively enough to communicate or utilize thoughts you had thunk. With all due respect to folks who are so deeply hurt by the lack of art and music programs that weren’t that great to begin with, I wonder how many kids are dropping out and loosing access to a job market because they didn’t get that two years of French Horn or learn how to make a God’s Eye.
February 4th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
I make this comment here simply because it is the last blog I’ve found and read concerning this latest blog-war. I fear you may not read such a long comment from a newbie, but that ain’t gonna stop me from posting it!
Dan clearly does not believe NCLB is perfect as is, despite many people pointedly making that assumption. He also has been condescending, bordering on rude in a number of posts, though I very clearly recognize that he does not intend to be a jerk. I too tend to brow beat and condescend when I have a point to make and I feel like the opposition is not responding with substantive logic. Ultimately though, as is often the case in the toneless medium of the internet, the discourse boils down to a series of misinterpretations on both sides, followed by a point-counterpoint discussion focusing mostly on those misinterpretations, often rather aggressively. Quite the opposite of the “elevation” that I think Dan honestly wants to achieve.
Dan’s prose, which is penetrating, direct, and occasionally defiant is a large part of what attracted me to his blog. He asks tough questions, which is an essential part of facilitating positive changes in any field. He makes a lot of very strong, logical points, and they should not be discounted solely due to a disagreement with his tone. I also see no reason for him to change his tone, except that he might not enjoy regularly irritating some of his readers. Certainly I do not see the logic of completely dismissing him now and forever due to a single disagreement, no matter how heated. I think perhaps with some time to reflect Chris might reconsider his hasty action on that front.
But, to Dan: I see much of the same behavior from you. Granted, you essentially cite tone as a big part of your objection to other people’s discourse (at least that’s how I read your “it’s not what, but how or why” comment), but then I’m sure you can see why it’s not unreasonable for people to subsequently discount your own ideas because of your tone. Jumping on someone who was venting frustration, even if you had some good points to make, will only get people to focus on your attitude instead of your ideas. A question that immediately occurred to me upon reading your comment was “what is he trying to accomplish by saying this?”
For example, you start your first comment to Sarah by saying “Yeah, look, I don’t want to deny you your reality or anything…” which is hardly an example of elevated discourse, and immediately sets a combative atmosphere. This is compounded multiple times when you call her “beyond persuasion,” or when insult her editing/lack thereof.
Allow me to propose an alternative approach for someone espoused to your same viewpoints. First, while she certainly uses a lot of language that you are quite right in calling “gasoline,” I wouldn’t go so far as to make the absolute assumption she is completely against accountability simply because she is passionately against NCLB. Asking for clarification, e.g., “It seems to me that you think we should not hold teachers accountable for the success of their students. Am I reading that correctly?” followed by a reminder of why accountability is an important part of any profession, would be appropriate, and less likely to piss people off. You could continue with a measured argument of why you think the use of inflammatory language about NCLB is harming to other teachers, to students, and to the future of creating more effective tools for teacher accountability. Calling her out for being the paragon of everything wrong with most NCLB detractors was not likely to gain you any more support, and unsurprisingly lost you some instead.
Mostly, Dan, it seems that you are approaching that pool of gasoline and throwing lit matches into it. Perhaps you want it to burn itself out? I would venture to guess that many teachers calling for the revocation of NCLB may not have considered the clear benefits of more focused accountability. Heck, many may have just ridden the momentum of their knee-jerk initial reaction, feeding off of one another because they were never presented with a calm, measured counterpoint. First they had an enemy in Bush and NCLB, then they had an enemy in the teachers that thought they were too angry/lazy/crazy/reactionary, etc. These people might in fact not be “beyond persuasion,” at least not if you actually attempt to persuade them (that’s “persuade,” not “tell”). As someone who often has a big mouth, but who can usually admit when he did not think things through (even if the admission takes me a while!), I know that even the most inflamed have a shot at cooling off to the persistent sound of patient logic.
By the way, I truly enjoy your blog, and I nearly always read it as soon as it pops up in my aggregator. It has even inspired me to reconsider my decision to enter the school system as a teacher-librarian in favor of classroom teaching. You have some great stories from the trenches that make me itch to take a more personal role in the development of the students. Keep on trucking.
Neal
February 5th, 2007 at 1:12 am
[...] To Sarah, especially, and to any others caught up in my indignant wake (including, but not limited to, Wasserman, Noon, and probably Wegner, who’s been far too patient with me from the onset): I was way too harsh in my rebuke on Sarah’s blog and on each of yours. (Neal calls me out for tossing matches into the gasoline, which sounds unfortunate, but fair.) [...]
February 5th, 2007 at 1:21 am
It’s probably a conflict of interests for me to call this the most levelheaded analysis of the current blogotension. Neal, you’ve convicted my actions rightfully while judging my intentions fairly. Thanks. If you bring this kind of objectivity and deconstruction to other arenas, then get a blog, pronto, huh? Doesn’t matter to me if you write about pork futures or Malaysian cinema. You’re in my reader.
February 5th, 2007 at 7:16 am
TMAO,
All due respect, but if you really ARE T-ing YAO, I think we’ve found our fundamental difference. My English classes are basically workshops–I propose a question, distribute a book, assign a project, and try to get out of the way, letting the students struggle through and find their ends. I used to TMAO but stopped when a) I Staff Developed MAO and wound up at an all-day sales pitch and b) my kids’ scores (in both subjects I taught) on the state exams were actually HIGHER than anyone else’s at the school the year that I decided to hang it all and take a more self-directed, student-centered approach. Facilitating writing and lit discussion works way better for me than does standing in front of the room and waving my arms about.
So I’ve just shot my argument about NCLB in the foot, I guess, since not teaching to the test might be the best test prep out there. My students are going to take the CAPT test in a month, and I’m really hoping that they’ll be good enough at the practice test later this week that I won’t feel bad about not really addressing the thing for the next few weeks.
February 5th, 2007 at 9:05 am
My friend, if that’s what works for your class — great. You basically repeated and underscored my point that the necessity of testing for a little while in May is not destroying your ability to provide the instruction best suited for your students, nor are those instructional choices negatively impacting those scores.
I see no disagreement, except in the implication that our “fundamental difference” reflects anything other than a difference in student populations, and in the backhanded slighting of direct instruction. I teach ELL and SpEd kids drastically behind grade level, about 10% who actually started seventh grade with pre-primer reading abilities. Your methodology would do very little to remediate those problems, as would any other that assumes basic skills are obtainable through some form of intellectual osmosis. I teach my ass off to provide and instill the skill level necessary for them to one day be successful in the kind of classroom you run.
February 5th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Points well taken, my good man. I student taught in a transitional ESL class, which was an amazing experience, but one that showed me that I could never do that kind of work day in and day out. Much respect.
February 28th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
[...] There are so many demands on my time these days. Those of you who are raising small children, working two (or more) jobs, building your own houses with your own bare hands, &c., might want to read a less blithe post. But I have the luxury of time–in fact, I have demanded of and created for myself the luxury of time–to do what, to me, counts. [...]