Borderland

It’s getting dark here. Not just kind of dark. But real winter-dark. As in, I took a picture of the sunset yesterday at 3:00 while everyone was getting their coats on to leave school.

Strangely, it’s not real cold yet, and we’ve only got just a lousy couple inches of leaf-covered snow in the woods. It’s hard and crunchy from the thawing and freezing. Not enough to ski on, but that isn’t stopping some of us. I used the warmish weather last Saturday to get up on the roof and brush out the wood stove chimney. I should have done it last summer, but…I don’t need to think about it then. It’s a lousy job any time of year. The roof is steep, and the old wooden ladder that’s been hanging from the peak for steps and hand holds the last 12 years is kind of rotten. Got to build a new one next summer.

It’s good enough for now, though, which seems to be the standard for deciding what needs doing when conditions are rough. Look for an opening. Do what you can. Keep it simple.

A couple of things caught my attention yesterday. There’s a debate in the LA Times between Richard Rothstein and Russlynn Ali about the achievement gap and testing. They started off discussing what the achievement gap is, how it’s measured, and moved on to whether testing would make it better. Today they discussed the chicken and egg problem of resolving economic conditions that make public education difficult, and education problems that affect the economy.

Thinking of education reform as just being about “this” cause or “that” condition isn’t very helpful. Higher education standards won’t benefit anyone economically if the jobs that people would theoretically be educated for aren’t there to begin with. What’s needed is education and economic opportunity. Neither can stand on its own. Jean Anyon argues that NCLB is really a taxpayer funded jobs policy.

Anyon concludes:

When businesses and large corporations pay poverty-range wages to 41% of the people at work in America, the costs of supporting people’s needs are socialized to the tax-paying public, just as the technological and other costs of doing business have been. The private sector is not liable for the social costs of the poverty its actions produce.

Part of the testing discussion is about how individual states are able to “game” the system by manipulating test data, adjusting the cut scores for proficiency to make themselves look good - a common argument for national standards - and I get hung up on the idea that if data can be manipulated to make schools look good, it can also be manipulated to make them look bad. It cuts both ways. So who are we going to listen to? Good data, bad data, crtics tear apart the methodology, question the assumptions, challenge the interpretations, tell the story so it comes out with the ending they want it to have. I see no resolution to the argument about whether testing is good or bad. It could be either. Or both. It all depends on who’s doing it to who, and for what.

The best I’ve seen on the subject in a while came from Deborah Meier today, addressing Diane Ravitch:

As I gather, however, you are not for tests that are high stakes, but just “fyi”. It’s important, if you hold this view, to spell that out. I doubt if it’s what the NY Times has in mind, nor am I sure it’s do-able until the politicians (and reporters) understand the limits of test data. I would argue that the task of strengthening schools that serve the larger purposes of education cannot be achieved until we flesh out the possible definitions we each hold of what being “well-educated” looks like. There may be more than one answer—which is why I go back to that other idea: a Consumer Reports on schooling. One that allows us to compare and contrast, but does not seek a single answer.

I note that she said “until the politicians (and reporters) understand the limits of test data.” That part about reporters is significant. Referring to Time’s Joe Klein, Glenn Greenwald calls irresponsible reporters Bad Stenographers. Greenwald explored the responsibility media has to do more than simply “report” what people say. There are limits to objectivity and balance when we’re looking for truth.

What’s happening to the Education discourse is the same thing that’s going on with politics in general. There’s a huge disconnect between what I hear on the news and what I see directly. And it’s going to get darker for a while yet. But even then, you can see pretty well if there’s a moon and a little snow cover to reflect the light.