Zen and that quality-thing

Here is an email I sent this morning to my dean, regarding how our teacher education should best respond to the down slope of applicants.  The response was, "Thanks.  That helps."  We shall see it if really did.

Rita,

If tasked with making our case to the BOT, I'm not sure I would use "independence."  "Autonomy" rings truer.  We can read the decline in our application/matriculants in two divergent ways. a.) We are too expensive, too rigorous, too much more of everything than what the prevailing expectations for teacher education have become, or b.) there are fewer people choosing to become teachers.  I believe in absolute terms b.), but in relative terms (for the Northwest) b.) is a nearer truth.  That leaves us, and the Board, a kind of choice: what would we like out of our program?  Arthur Levine smacked down on the most recent generation of teacher ed programs.  With the exception of the rare few, most colleges have focused not so much on the quality but of the quantity of $ these ed programs bring in.  Curricula are similar across the country, so much so that a consistent array of theories and ideologies, types of field experiences and outcome expectations appear everywhere (abetted no doubt by the NCATE-ization of standards).  Traditionally, ed programs have been criticized for their theory-less foundation, for the lack of mental wattage needed to become a teacher and for the routinization of programs that could be handled in an easier, simplified manner in alternative ways (TFA, district-run programs like the NYC and Boston internships, for-profit private programs).  In a corrosive way, the expectations for teaching had become so low, that ed schools hollowed out their own expectations of quality.  Thus we get many teaching candidates who want a narrow, limited "how do I teach math/3rd grade/reading ...?"  If a program does not provide that, in a straightforward, take-away manner, the program is seen to fail even on these neap-tide expectations. Society does not have tremendous respect for what it takes to be a teacher.  What respect it does have is for the technology of teaching.  "Knowledge workers"?  Long finish.  We are left with a rather unfair false choice: quality or $?  Assuming that pursuing both at the same time ensures that neither is reached, I would advocate for the former and ask Board support for our efforts to make the quality of teachers - their minds, their ideas, their creativity, the leadership - our vision.  Of course, this would mean a more than concerted effort on behalf of the faculty to pursue this, both in scholarship and in practice (what we research and disseminate and how our program enjoins its implications).  I believe it is more than imperative that we not shift this argument to the M.Ed, but focus on the holistic and socially contexted need for a quality teacher prep program.  Does that help?

Bank Lending

When an editorial supporting the Geithner bank plan appears in the WSJ, perhaps we should rethink the Geithner bank plan.

Remembering that I have no economic training, let me propose a humble alternative plan, Instead of using Fed support to induce hedge funds et. al. to buy up the "legacy assets" at large banks (whose presence on their balance sheets prevent them from lending - no one trusts the solvency of the banks), what if the government channeled the TALF/TARP/whatever to solvent, and necessarily smaller banks?  Without the slime of any unpriced assets, without the over-leveraged balance of debt to liquidity, without the post-Glass-Seagal interconnection of services and speculation, these mid-sized banks across the nation would be the new financial engine of recovery. Limiting their size by limiting the ratio of debt they may carry (how about ... 6:1?) might create trust in their lending.

As for the big, soiled banks so much in the media?  Without government money as a lifeline, they would need to deleverage quickly to get into the action.  That means dumping these securitized instruments.  Government could assist homeowners through mortgage rate reduction (warning: I am a home owner who owes about what my home is now worth), say to 2.5%, though with no revaluation of the homes.  That might help keep people in their homes; the government pays the interest up to the contracted rate (for example, my interest rate is 6.5%; I longer own enough equity to refinance down to the current 4.5%; in my pseudo-plan, I would pay a mortgage at 2.5%, with the government funding the gap up to 6.5% until I once again own enough equity to refinance down to current levels), which may add stability to the securities.  Once the big banks are able to start selling their load of toxicities, they can slowly deleverage down in size.

There are many problems here, even I recognize (like who decides which mid-size banks get the money? how independent are they?).  Yet I question the justness of a financial recovery by our government.  Instead of using the profit incentive to lure in more fantastical speculation (with almost no risk), why should we use the government strength to create a need for the banks to establish their own market for the clogs that are freezing their willingness to loan?  In the meantime,  added capitalization of mid-sized banks will allow small business and home buyer lending, within reason.

"Pseudo-objectivity"

Completely unrelated (it would seem) to education?  I extrapolate an apt analogy from Dr. Muller's critique of using mathematical models to accurately represent qualitative content.  Put another way, the "cult of accountablilty" led to the false conception that numbers were all that mattered.  Get the equation right, get the statistical objectivity down, get the final tabulation graphed, and you create a true vision of what is what.

Read the whole essay for a nice primer in the economic recession.  Then read again, only this time think "school" instead of economy.

In Praise of Ms. Rhee

Nicholas Kristoff uses his column to commend the work of D.C. school chancellor Michelle Rhee, and exhort ed policy makers to follow her lead.  To do so, he makes three assumptive errors, all completely understandable and all too commonly taken as given:

a. scores on standardized tests adequately measure learning

b. the gap in scores between high achievers and lower achievers can be bridged

c. merit pay will inspire teachers to make the necessary effort to teach well

In a much longer post I could break-down each of these points and their misconceptions.  Here, though, let me be way too brief:

a.  they can, but only by defining "learning" as that which is measurable in standardized tests

b. it can, but only by under-testing the ability of the high achievers and teaching the lower achievers how to succeed on these tests

c. insulting, and ironic: conceivably true only by admitting that teachers are underpaid in poor performing schools

The point here is not to dismiss Mr. Kristoff's plea, nor Ms. Rhee's effort.  Rather, by focusing on the assumptions and cognitive biases involving in rethinking schools, we can avoid policies and pedagogy that perpetuate easy empirical proof and ignore the complex and often ineffable social contexts of learning.  There is nothing to attempting radical or didactic approaches to shake out the best of our schools.  We just need to get over the idea that any of them are sustainable.

Mr. Brooks' cattle

David Brooks  gives another passionate and clear-eyed defense of the need for accountability in education.  He suggests, more over, that ed schools need to be held to the same kinds of data-riven measurements.  While he does not explicate what kinds of data are appropriate, he does define as successful "which teachers are bringing their students’ achievement up by two grades in a single year and which are bringing their students’ levels up by only half a grade."

Which leads me to point out the problem with his thinking.  Bad teachers, he tells us are "the ones who treat students like cattle to be processed."  And so for "bad schools," I would imagine (though he does not write this).   Yet, with standardized testing as the main accountability determinant for state, district, school and teacher evaluation, student learning becomes a by-product (though, in theory, an important one) of successful state, district, school and teacher evaluations.  In this way, students are the means by which school systems collect their rewards or suffer their punishments.  The ends are high accountability ratings, which produce the lucre of merit pay or federal cash or an increase of students from education-savvy parents.

As for teacher education, strong programs focus their graduates toward thriving careers. This often ignored dimension of preparation for the classroom means the difference between a teacher who has instant success but a flatter growth curve and a teacher whose early trials lack the bright shining of immediate spectacular effects, but who develops at an accelerated pace as they gain more experience.  The first kind of teacher is what most schools think they need right now.  The second kind of teacher is what all schools need for long-term sustainable practices in the very best interests of our generations.

Social cost of education

Gary works as an environmental consultant, and is fascinatingly equipped with a creeping cynicism toward the human ability to act collectively.  My attempts to explain why I agree with him - due in part to the individualistic cant of the American educational system - keep failing.  Then, today, Stanley Fish answers with an excellent post.  I leave you to agree or disagree with Dr. Fish's conception of academic freedom (an institutional, not a political right, also explicated in these two books).  My point, as I now understand it, concerns how the modern project of human rights unfortunately uncouples these rights from human responsibility.

A shift towards liberty requires a theory of freedom, or rather, a freedom from something.  Think of our Bill of Rights.  Many are negative freedoms, expressed limitations on governmental action.  Cast this way, liberty is a restraint upon governmental action, not enumerated rights.  By offering rights by way of restricting that which would constrain them, our Constitution does not sever a citizen's rights from her responsibilities.  Over time, groups and individuals made successful arguments for their rights, but the amendment process because exponentially more difficulty (as rightly it should; except in California, for some reason). Arguments of these kind are political, moral, cultural, the whole gamut of human interactions.  Into the public sphere, these rights could more easily be explicit, since arguing for something (voting rights; economic fairness; equal opportunity) is a lot more effective than arguing for government to enact a law that limits government (except in California, for some reason).

Human rights, on a global scale, funds this trend.  Rights are attached to groups or individuals who lack these in their home countries.  Again, the enumeration of each right makes clear what is lacking for their basic humanity, not what should be done to limit the government restricting these rights.  In fact, pitched as human as opposed to national, there does not exist a government whose actions must be limited.  Rather, the right is a thing itself, to pursued and grasped.

Education, by way a process of knowledge accumulation, skill competency and grade/level completion, follows a similar path of expressing what is learned individually.  Students gain for themselves some thing more than they had before.  While it is certainly possible to teach responsibility as a necessary part of what should be learned, that too would be arguing for responsibility as another thing accumulated.  Perhaps that might not matter in the end, as long as people act in a mindful way according to the demands of their rights within their responsibilities.  But learning each as distinction allows each to be chosen distinctly and exercised separately, not of a piece.

As long as education is structured as a positive gain ("what I learned today is ___"), can schooling serve as an engine for collective action?

Educational Loafing

This essay by Bertrand Russell reminds me of my favorite character from literature, Larry. 

"The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake ...  One result is that we attach too little importance to enjoyment and simple happiness ..."  I hear Russell telling us to be prudent, even a little mindful about our lives.  The tendency to utilitize action and thought (to work in order to achieve something else, for which we use to achieve the next thing; repeat) effaces our choices, our thoughts and even our happiness.  What matters is not the present moment, but the possibilities the present provides.

Larry is riven with this instrumental rationality.  A veteran for the Great War, he has been shaken by the futility of purpose; what is to come, the ends, can not compensate for the experience of bringing it about, the mean.  There is no erasure of consciousness, just a grasping for the solace of progress.  Larry's answer comes from a life spent, as he calls it, "loafing;" and he finds purpose in the journey itself, into the heart of meaning.

Education can use a fuller dose of loafing.  The pursuit of competencies and knowledge, skills and dispositions, place as goals the outcomes of student learning, which themselves are useful only for future outcomes.  Knowingness obscures any valuation of what is worth knowing.  Learning serves as a full-tilt rush into future learning. Which is necessary, in many ways, of course.  Yet the usefulness of learning, or "modern learning" in Russell's terms, erodes what is learned.  Full consciousness may not be possible, yet the abandonment of its possibility contaminates the importance of education.  We teach not for our students to experience what they learning, and thus not to learn what learning is.  Rather, we teach our students to project a future good, not to understand the present.

More

This recent essay demonstrates the paradox of educational loafing.  Though others have made the author's point about authentic learning, I find much to like about a project-based curriculum.  Still, the idea of finding a "use value" for schooling dredges up tools to account for that value.  Put another way, a utilitarian approach to schooling has obvious face value, especially for convincing students to stay in school and to make commensurate effort while in school.  It does not, though, offer reasons for why those (or whatever) values should be sought.  The purpose of schooling remains beyond itself, pointing the better tomorrow.  A necessity, of course.  Just not different from where we are now.