Black and white

We are often provided two choices - black and white.

But most of us know that this world is rarely black and white - but that doesn't mean we need to compromise with shades of grey.

Sometimes the alternative is purple.

The 25th International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement

Niall MacKinnon is headteacher of Plockton Primary School, Highland, Scotland and attended ICSEI 2012, Malmö, Sweden.

by Niall MacKinnon

A new phase of education change awaits the world, for those who embrace it. This was the key message of linked keynotes at the 2012 International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) in Malmö, Sweden. 

Pasi Sahlberg outlined how Finland set its own course for education, termed The Finnish Way, whose success offers profound lessons for the world. For Andy Hargreaves the Finnish phenomenon is part of a wider shift of approach, The Fourth Way, one necessary for school education to engage with the vast global economic, social and technological changes underway.

Both agree that most countries have been locked into models of education practice, management and evaluation not suiting today’s needs. 

Sahlberg urges new participatory, learner-led approaches, away from standardized testing and the privatisation of education. He views the conventional notion of a lesson as a ‘dead horse’. Though it cannot be revived, education policy makers are driven to try. This forms part of the GERM, or Global Education Reform Movement, a virus of prescription and control infecting and reinfecting national education systems, outlined in his recent book Finnish Lessons.

Certainly new policy shifts in England – no notice ‘morning raid’ OFSTED inspections, one term teacher competency dismissals, grading of teachers and teaching, lambasting ‘coasting’ schools – echo this view, spreading distrust and despondency. But unattainable perfectionism also contains its own danger. From the Scottish angle there was barely trace of talk of ‘excellence’, and certainly not as central imperative. Indeed the term was not mentioned in the congress review report. That gives global perspective from a key international congress on educational change held by a near neighbor. Perhaps the challenges to be grasped and the responses needed are more profound than mere exhortation.

A central message of the 25th ICSEI conference was that change brings challenge but also opportunity, with the need to find new means of collaboration, participation and networking to reshape education for the shifting demands ahead. A whole range of papers and presentations from 450 delegates from over 50 countries set an optimistic tone, with strong commonality in themes of respect, trust, new power relations and moving to evaluation as joint enterprise. In presentations from Iceland to Malaysia there were common threads of renewing teacher professionalism, establishing change via collaborative networks, and emphasizing systems perspectives through linkage and understanding, rather than prescription and grading.

The official theme of ICSEI 2012 was the interplay between policy, research and practice in education. Each annual congress presents a ‘State of the Art’ review, and this year’s was entitled ‘Lost in Translation’, noting that policy makers and the educational research community have drifted apart, with those responsible for policy taking insufficient heed of the accumulated findings of international research.

As a headteacher – and a class committed one – it was refreshing to find many present were practitioners, or liasing directly with them. A group of teachers from Vancouver Island, Canada gave an interesting presentation Walking along the Difficult Path of Education Change, displaying approaches of inquiry-based learning, away from overly fixed pre-determined learning progression. From the other end of the telescope, the Brunei School Inspectorate were keen to bridge gulfs of understanding, searching out commonalities and differences of meaning, seeking to penetrate them in discourse, through stronger working relationships with schools.

The means to establish and enable effective collaboration through professional learning communities was covered by many presentations. The need to grasp new concepts and let go of old ones was a theme throughout. Hargreaves spoke of the fallacies of educational reform, warning against those of speed, substitution (seeing people as the problem), standardization, competition and a ‘fallacy of extremes’ achieved “by remedying or removing defects at the bottom and replicating excellence at the top”.

The pervading themes of the conference stood very much against the prevailing orthodoxies of educational administration, encapsulated in Sahlberg’s GERM. A need for new approaches, methods, concepts and a new participatory bridge between all those involved in education was perhaps the dominant message of the conference.

Next year’s ICSEI will be held in Santiago, Chile, with the theme Educational Systems for School Effectiveness and Improvement: Exploring the Alternatives. Will policy, discourse, research and practice move closer together this coming year? Which countries will embrace and explore genuine alternative approaches, as Finland’s case study was celebrated at this year’s ICSEI? Or will education policy continue to wield the ‘wrong drivers of change’ identified by Michael Fullan, a keynote speaker for ICSEI 2013? Certainly much hangs on the outcome. There was common agreement that through effective educational change the economy, society and culture necessary to establish a new benign internationalism may work in partnership to meet the global challenges of this century, already very different to the last.

This was not a national agenda, but an international one. The central message of ICSEI 2012 was of strong common issues facing schools and their communities in far separated contexts, with global similarities in connecting responses. A few countries stood out in stark contrast, chastising schools and denigrating teachers, seeing change not as opportunity for partners in prospect, refashioning and renewing learning, but as a threat to be sanctioned in audit prescription. But whilst those systems are shrill and close at hand, a more pervasive and positive way forward was signposted in Malmö to a new responsible professionalism, embracing complexity and change, more loosely configured in uncertainty yet promise.

http://www.icsei.net/icsei2012/

Stephen Krashen on poverty and literacy

Prof. Stephen Krashen 12-08-2011 from Chicago Teachers Union on Vimeo.


Here are some of the highlights:

• The tougher standards movement is built on the premise that schools are broken.
• If you control for poverty, the US does very well in comparison to affluent students from other countries.
• The US has the highest level of children in poverty in the Industrialized world. 1 in 5 children live in poverty in the US (1 in 10 in Alberta and 1 in 25 in Finland)
• Better education will only get you a better job if jobs are available.
• The STEM crisis is a hoax. There is no shortage of engineers.
• If you want to do something about housing and education, first take care of poverty. Housing and education will take care of themselves.
• Poverty is the problem.
• There is practically zero correlation between international test scores and subsequent economic development.
• The impact of poverty on children is gigantic. Lack of food. Lack of healthcare. 
• Poor children have practically zero access to books.
• Study shows that in affluent areas children have access to over 200 books while children in poverty have access to less than 2 books at home. School is not levelling the playing field.
• Children in poverty have practically nothing to read.
• We must protect children against the affects of poverty.  This means three things: food (free and reduce meals). School nurses (medical care). Books and libraries (literacy)

I went offline

On December 23, I decided to go "offline".

No iPhone.

No blogging.

No Twitter.

No RSS feeds.

No e-mail.

In part, this break was inspired by a tweet from a colleague, Phil McRae:

Phil's words reminded me of a thoughtful talk by Sherry Turkle where she talked about the need to moderate our "online" diet and be present with those who share our physical world.

But mostly this break was inspired by my wife and family. 

This break was a conscious decision in light of the coming holidays where I would be spending a lot of time with family. I didn't know when I would go back online, but I figured it would be sometime after my birthday (December 28). As it turns out, I didn't return "online" until December 30.

At first it was a little tough. Out of habit, I kept grabbing my phone in an effort to check something, but would then catch myself and return it to my pocket. I quickly realized I was better off if the phone wasn't even in my pocket, so I left it at home.

Here's what I learned:

I check my phone for e-mail and Twitter far too often.

The break from being online was liberating in a lot of ways and it's not something that should be reserved for a couple days in December.

Provincial Achievement Tests as final exams for the Report Card

There are lots of reasons to like Twitter. Today I want to show how Twitter can provide anyone a direct, public line of communication with your local representatives and politicians.

The other day, I tweeted a question to Alberta's Education Minister, Thomas Lukaszuk:

Should teachers use the grade 3, 6 and 9 Provincial Achievement Tests as their final exam on the report card? @LukaszukMLA #abed
— Joe Bower (@joe_bower) January 6, 2012

Thomas Lukaszuk responded with this: 

@joe_bower This is not what #abed designed the test for.This would be another misuse of these tests.
— Thomas Lukaszuk (@LukaszukMLA) January 7, 2012

I agree with Lukaszuk that it is a misuse of grade 3, 6 and 9 Provincial Achievement Tests to include them as a part of the students' report card.

In light of this, I have a couple follow up questions for Thomas Lukaszuk:

• If Alberta Education never designed Provincial Achievement Tests to be used as a part of the students' report card, why does Alberta Education provide a form letter for schools and teachers to inform parents that the Provincial Achievement Tests will be used as a percentage on the report card? The letter can be found here on page 12. (I blogged about this two years ago, here.)

• I know of schools in Alberta that mandate teachers to use the Provincial Achievement Tests as a final exam and a percentage of the students' report card. I also know of Alberta teachers who do this voluntarily. According to Minister Lukaszuk, this is an inappropriate practice that Alberta Education never intended to have happen, so what will the government do to make this right?

In response to some of my questions, Lukaszuk responded with:

@joe_bower that is why I am reviewing the exam and practices surrounding it...
— Thomas Lukaszuk (@LukaszukMLA) January 8, 2012

I am eager to see how Provincial Achievement Tests will change.

Grading Moratorium: Leslye Folmar

Leslye Folmar has joined The Grading Moratorium. Want to join? Here's how.






At what stage of the abolish grading game are you?

I no longer give out letter grades in literacy (reading and writing) and I am working toward the same in Math.


Why do you want to or why did you abolish grading?

Honestly, I abolished grades because my district adopted a continuum system instead of letter grades. However, if they had not done so, I would have abolished grades in my classroom this year anyway.

I would have abolished grades because they have no meaning, they carry no weight...An A means one thing in the Advanced Proficient class and another thing in the Basic Skills class, but on the report card there was no way to distinguish that difference.

I knew something needed to be changed when I looked through one of my struggling students portfolio and saw that he “earned” A’s from k-3rd grade, his grades we not a true reflection of who he was as a student.

I also knew I needed to abolish grades when I noticed my students rushing to see their letter grade and not to see what they got right or wrong. It seemed that they were done with the “learning” once the grade was given.


What do you do in replace of grading?

Instead of traditional letter grades, I place students on a skills continuum. Once a student shows 80% proficiency in a category they are able to move up.


How do you establish a grade if you have no grades?

This is not an issue for reading and writing but it becomes tricky for math. I no longer put grades on test or quizzes; instead I put fractions (total correct/total number of problems).

I have also created a skill sheet to go along with each assessment. I focus on the skills mastered and those that need more attention instead of the grade.


What fears did you have about abolishing grading?

I fear that cutting out grades will take away some of my students motivation. However, this may just be my issue.


What challenges do/did you encounter with abolishing grading?

Parent-teacher conferences were the first time I encountered any trouble with abolishing grades. Parents needed something concrete (a letter grade) to know where their child fit in with their peers. As I tried to explain the continuum and the skills their child was showing progress with, I was interrupted with, “That’s nice…but what grade is she/he getting?”


Are you willing to provide contact information (e-mail, Twitter,
blog, Skype, etc) for others who are interested in abolishing grading?

lfolmar@gmail.com

@ellewriter

Caring about what we can measure

I've written before about how we find what we look for by using a popular parable that involves a man looking for his keys late at night.

In his article titled Once Upon a Time, Not Too Long Ago, Teaching Was Considered a Profession, But Then Came Standardization, Tests, and Value-Added Merit Pay Schemes That Ate All Humanity for Breakfast... Joel Westheimer writes:

There is an old parable about a man searching on his hands and knees under a streetlight. A passerby sees him and asks, “What are you looking for?” Hunched over, eyes not leaving the ground, the man replies, “I’ve lost my car keys.” The kind passerby immediately joins him in his search. After a few minutes searching without success, she asks the man whether he is sure he lost the keys there on the street corner. “No,” he replies, pointing down the block, “I lost them over there.” Indignant, the woman asks, “Then why are you looking for them here?” The man replies, “Because there’s light here.” 

Behind the onslaught of testing and so-called “accountability” measures of the last decade lurks the same perverse logic of the man looking for his keys. We know what matters to most teachers, parents, school administrators, board members, and policy-makers. But we are far less sure how to find out whether teachers and schools are successful in teaching what matters. Since we have relatively primitive ways of assessing students’ abilities to think, create, question, analyze, form healthy relationships, and work in concert with others to improve their communities and the world, we turn instead to where the light is: standardized measures of students’ abilities to decode sentences and solve mathematical problems. In other words, since we can’t measure what we care about, we start to care about what we can measure. 

Of course, I am not being entirely fair. Educational testing enthusiasts do have some ways of measuring, for example, skills related to critical thinking. And the reading comprehension tests are evolving to consider not only whether students can understand the words and structure of a particular sentence or paragraph but also whether they can articulate something about its meaning and implications. But when researchers examine education policies broadly, and the classroom practices and habits that follow those policies, it is becoming increasingly clear that our educational goals and the methods used to assess educational progress are suffering from an appalling lack of imagination.

All this reminds me of the profound difference between measuring what we value and valuing what we measure.

Alberta, Finland and Curriculum

Here is a video that features the speakers from  a Curriculum Symposium that took place in Edmonton, Alberta.


It's important to not that one of the speakers is Pasi Sahlberg, author of Finnish Lessons. Another speaker is Irmeli Halinen, head of curriculum in Finland.


A highlight from this Curriculum Symposium was when I asked Irmeli Halinen this question:

Q: I asked Irmeli how often would a teacher in Finland have a grade book where the teacher has a collection of grades for homework, projects, tests, quizzes and attitude and then average those grades together in order to provide the students and parents with a final grade.

A: Her initial response was bewilderment and silence. To be clear, nothing was lost in translation; rather, the context of my question simply didn't make any sense to her. After repeating my question, her response was that in Finland they don't care as much about the numerical data. Instead, they care more about the verbal feedback that occurs between the student and the teacher. Assessment is a discussion not a spreadsheet. It's only in grade 8 when children are about 14 years old that students are by law assigned grades; however, they might receive grading as early as grade 4 when they are 8 years old, but this is a decision that is made at the local, municipality level. Irmeli also went on to say that the grades do not help children learn and often encourage them to compete with each other, which is precisely the opposite of the collaborative community Finnish classrooms are designed to be. She also went on to say that grading in Finland is not directly used with end-of year evaluations.

The face of apathy

If you complain about how things are but choose to do nothing about it other than to complain, this is what you look like.



Here are a couple posts I've written on apathy and helplessness.

Stop waiting to be told what to do

Cynicism and Apathy

Conduits and Buffers

Capitulation disguised as moderation

Ignore the real world

stuck in our ways

Using test scores to pick a school

Using standardized test scores to pick a school for your children to attend is the equivalent of kicking the tires before buying a car.

To fully grasp why this is true, there's a lot to know about the arcane underpinnings of standardized tests; however, there is a single principle that summarizes what you need to know:

Never treat a test score as a synonym for what children have learned or what teachers have taught.

 Again, this too can be true for lots of reasons, but there is a single principle that summarizes what you need to know:

A right answer on a test does not necessarily indicate understanding and a wrong answer does not necessarily indicate a lack of understanding.

Show me someone who places high stakes on one single test, and I'll show you someone who does not understand how testing is unavoidably incomplete and inherently prone to error.