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.

I would vote Coakley on Monday, if I were still in Massachusetts…

…and here’s why. 

Of course there’s the health care reform, but we have to remember that this vote for a senate seat, not merely health care reform.

An issue of equal importance, in my book, is education.  Coakley’s stances are well-thought out and will make positive changes within the currently wretched policy environment.  Brown’s stances are backwards and will only take things from bad to worse.

Being a doctoral student in education, I am particularly passionate about the importance of good education in fostering a stronger nation and a better life for its citizens.  Through my studies and experiences, I have come to believe that our nation’s educational policies (ahem, NCLB) have had a lasting negative impact on our nation’s schooling that only promises to get worse unless something drastic happens.

I have been working in schools over the last 10 years as a teacher, as a teacher supervisor, and as a professional developer fostering innovative teaching techniques.  I started teaching in 2000, before NCLB was passed, and I felt the winds change.  These winds brought in some dark clouds: my efforts at improving education have been continually (and continue to be) thwarted by the current policy environment.  And making positive changes has only gotten more difficult over the past 10 years. 

The whole premise of NCLB is misguided, however well-intentioned its writers may have been.  The whole idea is that all students, 100%, every single one, will score “proficient” or above on a standardized test by 2016.  This is regardless of whether they are: bad-test-takers, severely mentally disabled, rich, poor, recent immigrants (legally or illegally), attend a good or a bad school, have good or bad teachers, have an f’d up home life, etc.  This would be a laudable goal, albeit a bit pie-in-the-sky, if only the standardized test had anything to do with what we would really want to call learning and thinking.   It does not.

The worst, most idiotic, and most damaging part of NCLB is the “Adequate Yearly Progress” clause.  Not only must schools get all students to 100% proficiency on the standardized test, but they must also get better and better scores each year.  Highlighting the short-sightedness of this policy, Bush in 2001 ended up awarding both the Blue Ribbon of excellence and also the ‘failing school’ condemnation to the very same schools!  There was a USA Today article on it at the time; you can check it out here.

School systems, because of NCLB, are addicted to proving “Adequate Yearly Progress” (AYP), because this determines the federal funding for the school, and the employment of its administrators and teachers.  This prevents any adoption of new curricula or teaching methods, unless they are likely to greatly improve test performance.  And guess what greatly improves test performance?  That’s right: learning test-taking strategies.  So, instead of learning to think, or learning to do science or music or art, or math, or learning to read or right, students are pushed to learn how to take standardized tests.  And the problem is, the test-taking strategies are in fact improving their test scores!  But at what cost?

Research in education is uncovering a scary picture of how NCLB has affected what goes on in classrooms.  Researchers at the University of Maryland happened to be closely studying the activities of the classroom, when right in the middle of their study NCLB was passed and implemented.  They were tracking, with PDA’s, the minute-by-minute goings-on in the classroom.  They found that, in every classroom they were monitoring, the amount of high cognitive demanding questions went significantly down, and the amount of low cognitively demanding questions and tasks went way up. Now THAT’S scary.  NCLB, and the high-stakes testing environment, apparently lowers the standards.  How’s that for ‘accountability’?  (BTW: This research is reported in the book Test Driven, but be forewarned that it’s very research-y!) 

Accountability is a buzz-word that has nearly lost all of its meaning in education, and when a politician mentions it it is because they are trying to sell you something.  (Thanks, George Bush!)  So, it makes me cringe when Scott Brown makes that the centerpiece of his education platform.  He also

vows to fight for standardized testing as a measure of accountability:

Scott Brown’s Education policy statement: I am passionate about improving the quality of our public schools. Accountability and high standards are paramount. I support choice through charter schools, as well as the MCAS exam as a graduation requirement. I have worked to ensure that all children have access to a quality education. I am a strong advocate for the METCO program, which provides lower income students with broader educational opportunities.

Martha Coakley, on the other hand, is looking forward.  Not only is education a more important issue to her, but she has sensible plans for actually improving it.

Martha Coakley’s Education policy statement: Martha is deeply committed to public education. As Senator, she will fight to improve teacher compensation, fund programs that connect students to innovative technology and industries, and implement education reform that fosters and rewards innovation.

I encourage you to go to her site and read more about her education policy stances (I would tell you to read more about Brown's stances, but what I pasted was all he had to say.)  Here’s my favorite part of Coakley's statement:

Martha supports efforts to move away from measuring adequate yearly progress (“AYP”) based on standardized testing.  These tests fail to recognize that all children do not learn in the same way or at the same rate, especially in high-risk schools.  By holding schools accountable to this one-size-fits-all standard, many are improperly labeled as underperforming and subject to unfair and counter-productive federal sanctions. Martha supports the use of growth models and indexing systems to focus on tracking the progress of individual students over time.

If you want a senator working for positive change in educational policy, I suggest all you massholes vote for Coakley!!