What's wrong with the Bill Gates' foray into educational research & reform

#1 Bill Gates is not an education researcher, let alone an educator, or a researcher.
Don't get me wrong.  I love that Bill Gates is identifying education as a key issue to focus on.  I love that he is taking an interest in improving education.  I am not questioning his motives.  Just his methods.

What I hate is that his approach is the same know-it-all attitude that many take towards education and education research.  It's the old "I turned out okay, and I know what worked for me, therefore I am an expert on education" approach.

Good ol' Uncle Bill knows all there is to know about education reform

Which would be bad enough if he were just Uncle Bill, telling-it-how-it-is from his comfy chair at a holiday party.  But instead, he is using his name to garner authority on a subject he knows little about.

#2 His ENTIRE research program is explicitly based upon students' scores on standardized tests
The following is taken from a recent report by Gates' MET project:

THE THREE PREMISES OF THE MET PROJECT
The MET project is based on three simple premises: 

• First, whenever feasible, a teacher’s evaluation should include his or her students’ achievement gains.
• Second, any additional components of the evaluation (e.g., classroom observations, student feedback) should be demonstrably related to student achievement gains 
• Third, the measure should include feedback on specific aspects of a teacher’s practice to support teacher growth and development. 

NB: "Achievement gains" are edu-jargon for increases in standardized test scores.  There are so many problems with this, I don't know where to begin.  For one, there is the obvious: these standardized tests DO NOT MEASURE what students are learning.  But a more important issue to me is that: THESE TESTS DO HARM TO STUDENTS.  And I'm not talking just about "they get stressed when they take tests."  I'm also talking about the WEEKS of instructional time lost to testing throughout the school year, and the MONTHS of instructional time lost to test-preparation throughout the school year.  I'm talking about the science classes, the history classes, the art classes, which ARE NOT TAUGHT so that reading and math test scores can improve.

This is just a little slice of the Test-Mania inflicting the schools where I make my rounds.   I wonder what the kids make of this poster, as they pass it in the hallway every day.  And I wonder how it makes them feel.
I know what I think when I pass it: 58.3% is SOARing?? 

See, the biggest damage done is not from the 5-hour-long sessions of sitting at a desk to take these tests; it is in the life-long damage to the students done by the test-mania they are subjected to in school.  At the heart of the issue is the damage done to students' conceptions of what it means to learn something.

As a science educator, I am most concerned about how the tests distort students' views on what it means to learn and to do science.  The  students take away such distortions from this test-crazed school culture when it is working as it is supposed to.  That means under Gates' ideal conditions, students' conceptions of science (and who knows what else!) will be destroyed, or at least distorted beyond recognition.  I have seen this first hand in my time in the classroom as an instructor, and as a researcher.

The fundamental principle of educational reform should be the same as it has been in medicine: DO NO HARM.  Gates' program, despite its best intentions, is a way of institutionalizing harm to children.  This is what happens when you jump from your own biases to institutionalizing them as recommendations.  Which brings me to my next wag-of-the-finger:

#3 Gates is jumping right from making assumptions to making recommendations
It's one thing to do descriptive statistics.  It's another to make causal claims.  But causal claims must be substantiated BEFORE making recommendations.  And the research that's already been done must be addressed first.

Yet somehow, Gates decided that he can simply dismiss all the research that shows the positive correlation between small class sizes and student learning (one of the most robust findings in educational research).  His recommendation: INCREASE class sizes, so we can force teachers to do more for less, and with less resources to help them do it.

Again, if this were just Uncle Bill ranting at a party it would be one thing.  But this is a person who is determining the future of the educational system with billions of dollars of investment in harmful and misguided policies and their proliferation.

#4 He wants traffic cameras in the classroom...
...except instead of being used to issue speeding tickets, they will be used to punish teachers.  Big brother, anyone?  What a great way to encourage teachers to enter into the profession and stay there (which, by the way, is really the key issue, if you ask Uncle Luke).  And by "great" I mean "idiotic."

TEACHERS:

Gates knows when you've been boring, Gates knows when you've been late...

Gates knows when kids are snoring, so give them tests for testing's sake!

Okay, enough ranting.  Here is something good I think Uncle Bill is bringing to the table, although he is horribly misusing it: using videos of classrooms to improve instruction & learning.  Video of classroom practice can be extremely helpful for teachers, UNDER THE RIGHT CONDITIONS.  Larry Ferlazzo has written a wonderful article on how video can be used productively to improve teaching.  Mr. Ferlazzo *voluntarily* used video of his teaching in order to have an open discussion with an external evaluator *and his students* about his teaching *in that video* (not to summarily characterize his teaching).  That sort of practice has great promise, if you ask Uncle Luke.

When it rains it pours. Here’s why.

I have been doing a final project in math class on how long it takes a cement square to completely saturate with rain at the start of a rainstorm. Inadvertently, I missed my last class to do gather some observational evidence in Mallorca, Spain.

It was, as a trip, comparable to National Lampoon's European Vacation, and I was Clark Griswold. I will spare you the details expect for a highlight real: it poured rain the whole time, my uninsured rental got keyed, and I ran over Eric Idle while he rode on his bicycle.

The pinnacle (or whatever is opposite of pinnacle, that is) of the madness was when the rental car broke down in the most precarious spot of road ever invented—a hairpin turn on the side of a mountain with a cliff on either side. Actually, with the magic of Google maps, I can show you. It was right here:

Just for fun, here's a contour map, and if you've studied your contour maps (you have, right?) you will see it's WICKED STEEP:


The car battery just died as I was making the turn. Since we were going up a hill, I had to back it down out of the dangerous curve. Since the power steering was dead, I had to back it into the wrong lane. Since it was in Mallorca, we had no working cell phone and thus we had to stop cars by hand to ask for theirs. Since they were all tourists, they didn't have any either.

And since we were in such a dangerous spot, I got to wear a sweet yellow vest (that really tied my whole outfit together) and we had to put up a danger triangle. Here's a pic of me directing traffic in my snazzy vest:

Just when we flagged down the most amazingly nice French couple who offered their help, all of a sudden a lightning storm surrounded us that was so fierce it seemed as if God was trying to personally smite us after a few glasses of Mead.

One thing I noticed as I stopped traffic to (a) prevent a disastrous cataclysm and (b) find a cell phone, I noticed something on that road. It never seemed to be one car that went by, enabling a safe stopping for help. It was always a cluster of cars and buses meeting perilously at the bend in the road, even if it was 10 minutes since the last car came by, making it a completely dangerous situation every time. (wasn't Avis so nice to tell us to just "deal with it")

Why do cars always cluster in the worst possible way? Why do bad things come in three's (or in the case of this trip, bazillions)? I can see 2 answers to these questions:

1. There could be a selection effect. There may be many cars that go by alone—many bad things that happen in isolation all the time—but since they did not lead to near disaster I didn't notice them as much.
   


2. There could be a mechanism at work. In the case of cars, there are always cars that are slower than the average. The faster cars will tend to get stuck behind them, making them all travel together as a clump. In the case of bad things, the first one will put us in a bad mood, which makes it all the more likely that we will see more events as "bad," or worse, even start to make bad things happen.
   

I think the real answer is a little of both. And the solution is acceptance. At best, you will see less bad things happen. At worst, you won't be able to prevent the bad things from happening anyway, so you might as well accept them so you can move on.

I think Tom Robbins puts it best in his classic Another Roadside Attraction. The narrator notices how Amanda and John Paul Ziller walk through the Seattle rain:

"They strolled calmly and smoothly, their bodies perfectly relaxed. They did not hunch away from the rain but rather glided through it. They directed their faces to it and did not flinch as it drummed their cheeks. They almost reveled in it. Somehow, I found this significant. The Zillers accepted the rain. They were not at odds with it, they did not deny it or combat it; they accepted it and went with it in harmony and ease. I tried it myself…I got no wetter than I would have otherwise, and if I did not actually enjoy the wetting, at least I was free of my tension. I could even smile."

And so we tried, on that precarious bend in the road, to smile. And the French couple that was helping us smiled. And more people stopped to help us. In fact, one of them road over our danger triangle and destroyed it. Instead of thinking, "oh great", we laughed. Eventually Avis came around and gave us a new rental. We made it to the top of the mountain, and the clouds broke, offering us one of the most amazing scenes I have ever taken in.

I think the answer, expressed in its most direct form, was taught to me as a poem by my father when I was young:

Smile a while

and while you smile

another smiles

and soon there's miles and miles of smiles

and life's worthwhile,

because you smile.

Fear Hillary!

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
~Plato

The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself

I used to be pretty undecided about who I wanted as our next president. I am not a Republican, nor a Democrat, nor Republicrat. I do not follow a dogma, but rather prefer to think carefully through each issue, look at evidence, hear arguments from all sides, and make up my own mind as much as possible. In the end, I am conservative about some things, and liberal about others. So, I have tried my best to go based on the actual priorities and stances of the candidates in this election.

First step, I tried going to the websites of the top 8 contenders from both parties early on, in order to get a good take on their priorities and stances. No luck. It was all glittering generalities like, "I am for the children" and other teary-eyed hogwash.

So then I watched all of the major debates of both parties, in order to get a sense of their policies. I decided that my priorities and stances seem to line up rather well with what Obama, Clinton, and Edwards were saying; basically that we need to pull our priorities away from a baseless war and get them back on problems such as education, poverty, civil rights, and dismantling militant networks such as Al Qaeda. That is pretty much the opposite of what I took most of the Republicans to be saying.

That left me stuck between Obama, Clinton, and Edwards. Well, Edwards dropped out, so one down, one to go.

Lately, Clinton helped me make up my mind. She has demonstrated that she will stoop as low as she needs to in order to sway people's votes based on fear and negativity. This was capped off yesterday with her last ditch effort to appeal to the rural population of Pennsylvania: an ad meant only to instill fear in order to gain political credibility. As the quote from Plato implies above, this type of evil manipulation is as old as politics itself.

Watch the ad here:
Clinton's "Kitchen" Ad

Displaying images of the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the 1970's gas hike, and Osama bin freakin' Laden, among other things, does nothing more than try to conjure up negative emotions in the viewers.

The only claims being made in the ad is that being president is "the toughest job in the world," that you "need to be ready for anything, especially now," while showing a video of what people really seem to fear the most—the digits of the gas prices going up on the pumps, in fast forward no less.

The video closes by asking "Who do you think has what it takes?" What is the point of the ad? Since there are no real claims made, no evidence cited, and no policies even hinted at, it is clear that the only message to the viewers can be "you need to be afraid, and vote for the candidate that will ease your fear."

Kind of reminds me of this ad, from another candidate who punched people in the gut in order to get elected: "Changing World" Ad, oh, and this one: America!

This is based on a common theme that has been used throughout history to win elections; that today's world is a dangerous place and candidate X is the one who 'has what it takes' to save us.

What war hero General Douglas McArthur noted in the past is just as true today:

"It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear."
~General Douglas MacArthur

I have decided I don't want to vote for more of this fear crap. This leaves me with two questions in order to decide who to vote for…

#1 Is Obama Any Better?

Now, Obama is trying to punch you in the gut too, with his messages of Hope and Change. EVERY dang politician EVER has said, "Blahblahblah what we need is CHANGE blahdiblah rabble rabble." I don't know how Obama cornered the market on Hope and Change, but I DO know that Clinton and others have literally and verbally conceded this to him. That is perhaps WHY Hillary has gone to fear, in a last ditch effort to corner ANY market. And when it comes to choosing between hope and fear, I think Bill Clinton has said possibly the only sensible thing of his life:

"If one candidate is appealing to your fears, and the other one is appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope." --Bill Clinton

#2 CAN we have hope, or SHOULD we be afraid?

The candidates have agreed that we are voting between fear and hope. Which one should we actually be feeling? Perhaps Hillary and the Republicans are right. Maybe the world is going to shit and we need to vote for the only one that can save us. I'm pretty sure it would be Indiana Jones. Maybe Luke Skywalker.

It sure seems like the world is crazy and only getting crazier. Is there any evidence of this? Well, it seems there is. We can get a sense of how the danger in the world is changing by examining, for example, the change in the risk of the average person dying in a war, or by murder, or by state sanctioned violence. By all of these measures, the world is a much safer place than at any time in history. Moreover, the present United States just about the safest place in the history of the world.

If you're interested, here is an interesting talk that argues this point very well and displays some of the evidence: A Brief History of Violence

Why do these politicians claim that the world is getting more dangerous? One reason is that they actually may believe it. It's hard to imagine that they would so blatantly lie to so many people, but it would certainly not be without precedent. Another is that they know that the American people believe it—the press has seen to that.

Whether politicians believe in this fear or not, certain politicians believe it is in their best interests to utilize the fear. Hillary has just shown that she is one of these politicians. If we are to believe what Obama says, he is not. In that case, the only thing Hillary has to fear is...not enough fear.

A victory for the common folk

Warning: this post is a weblog-rant, aka a "blant." Read at your own risk.

Fact: You are an organism made of tens of trillions of cells--microscopic organisms that have no idea who you are and couldn't care less about your needs.

This is the concept of an emergent property--a quality possessed by the whole but not by its parts. The property of 'you-ness' emerges out of the interactions of trillions of you-less cells.

Fact: Sprint PCS an entity is made of thousands of employees--macroscopic organisms that have no idea who you are and couldn't care less about your needs. But out of the scripted interactions between these employees emerges a company that knows and cares who you are to the extent that they want all of your money with as little in return as possible.

The way Sprint PCS treats customers is pure evil. However, to blame any individual employee for this evil would be like blaming an isolated skin cell in your arm for punching that hobo down by the railroad tracks (yes, I know about that, you sicko). Sprint made the genius move of hiring so many employees that when blame is distributed amongst them, it is such a thin layer of guilt that they can simply brush it off their shoulders as they disconnect you. Any amount of blame, divided by infinite, equals zero. So, the only entity left that you can be mad at is Sprint PCS, which takes the form of a 1,000 foot hydra made of smoke. Very hard to fight.

But, I have fought. Through a brave display of calm-headed civil disobedience (i.e. a very sophisticated form of laziness and avoidance), I have fended off the evil empire and restored peace throughout the land. Let me briefly summarize the epic battle:

It all began on a night just like this. I had finally gotten the phone I ordered from sprint.com, which was 100% satisfaction garaunteed for 30 days...what's the risk? I followed the instructions, using the phone to call the toll free activation number. The first person couldn't activate it, so I was transferred to an activations manager. They could not activate it, so I was transferred to a managerial manager. They also were unable to activate me, so I was transferred to the boiler room of one of Sprint's Indiana offices...which ironically was the most helpful department to this point. They couldn't activate my phone, but they knew who could, and they transferred me to the Great Wizard.

"WHO DARES DISTURB MY SLUMBER?!" bellowed the Great Wizard.

"It is I, Sir Luke" I answered, trying to maintain a facade of self-confidence.

"WHAT IS YOUR QUEST?!" the Great Wizard's voice was like a thunderstorm.

"Oh Great Wizard, I humbly seek to activate my new phone."

"WHAT IS YOUR 13 DIGIT ACTIVATION CODE?!!"

"I don't know, your majesty. Forgive my ignorance, but where can such a number be found?"

"WELL, INSIDE THE BATTERY CASE OF YOUR PHONE, OF COURSE!"

"The very phone that I was instructed to use to call you, oh Great One?"

"YES, FOOL, THE VERY PHONE WITH WHICH YOU TALK TO ME NOW"

"Oh, dear. So you're telling me that I have to hang up, after nearly an hour and forty-five minutes of being transferred around, in order to get the number to activate my phone, so that I can call back and wait another hour to be transferred back to you, oh great one, in order to activate my phone?"

"YES."

"Why don't we just call this whole thing off. I'll send my phone back to you & get my money back."

"FOOL!! YOU MUST WAIT FOR THE ILLUSTRIOUSLY DIVINE RETURN KIT AND CALL US WHEN YOU HAVE THE UPS 13 DIGIT TRACKING NUMBER BEFORE YOU CAN SEND THE PHONE BACK! YOU ARE HENCEFORTH BANISHED!!"

And so I waited for the illustriously divine return kit, which surprisingly never came. After trying to sort this whole mess out with at least 27 different employees, after 8 hours of phone calls (70% of which were disconnected) I was told to just send the phone back myself, without the illustriously divine return kit, and keep my fingers crossed.

The next correspondence I got concerning the matter was from a debt collecting agency. They sent me weekly phonecalls and bi-weekly emails threatening to pummel me, stab me, and even make me watch reruns of Alf until I give them $167.23 immediately.

I could write a book about all the fruitless phonecalls I made to resolve this matter, but the short version is that there were a lot of them, and they were epic in their fruitlessness.

But a New Year's miracle occured: a voicemail from Sprint on New Year's Day said that my debt would be essentially cut in half, with no particular reason cited.

Finally, this week, I was sent my final bill. (This was my 7th final bill to date...but I digress). It's hilariously mysterious contents, whose hilarity is surpassed only by their mysteriousness, are included below. Note the strange list of random deductions less than a dollar. However, the real interesting part is the "good will" credit. At last, we return to today's lesson...that amongst the interactions of countless employees completely devoid of good will, good will can emerge. And that's all I have to say about that.