Cuz 'Murica

In light of the Obama administration's recent decision to limit testing in public schools, I feel I need to get a little bit Stars and Stripesy with my post today.

I have more than a passing connection to education in the United States.  For a start, although I was educated entirely in Canada, I am the oldest of 6 children, 4 of whom did most of their K-12 in the US, along with all their post-secondary schooling.  I have dear friends who have moved to the US for work and are now navigating the educational waters in California and Texas.  And I even have a close friend running in next year's State House of Representatives election, where education will be a critical campaign issue in the great state of Minnesota. All the best Lindsey! I've been a member of the US-based National Science Teachers' Association for most of my career and attended Regional and National Conferences south of the border on a number of occasions, meeting educators and making connections throughout the States.

I'm no expert on the American education system by any means, but I think I can safely say that I've done more than my fair share of that all too Canadian of pastimes: America-watching (at least as far as education goes anyway). Gawking at our southern neighbors is almost as Canadian an activity as watching hockey and making a Tim Horton's run. And let's be honest about what we Canucks are most excited to see from the world of Americana: mention of anything even remotely Canadian. For instance, the day before our recent federal election, HBO's "Last Week Tonight" had John Oliver (ironically, not an American) devoting 20 solid minutes of his weekly monologue-ing to the Canadian parliamentary race.  My Facebook feed blew up, as our entire nation positively vibrated with uncontrollable giddiness at the acknowledgement of not only our existence, but recognition of a national election outside the insanity of their own national election!  I'm willing to wager that of the roughly 5 million YouTube views that bit has logged, 95% of them are from Canadians who just had to see it one more time.

So my point here is that I've got both a personal and a cultural interest in paying attention to all things education in the US.  And like a typical Canadian, I can't help but compare.

When I first started attending conferences in the States as a young science teacher, there were a couple things that immediately struck me profoundly:

1. Everyone in the US seemed to be doing different things.  This positively blew me away.  No one could really describe a coherent curriculum to me.  Teachers from Washington had different curricula from those in Texas, California, Colorado, New York, etc.  It's worth remembering that this was back in the early 2000s before No Child Left Behind (NCLB) had really sunk its teeth in and long before things like Race to the Top and Common Core had made it on the scene.  What made this especially weird to me was that I was already aware of the fact that America has one of the most mobile cultures on the planet.  They move a lot.  And the fact that their state (and even school) objectives varied so much seemed really counter intuitive given how likely it was that kids would bounce around between schools and states. 
2. There was SO MUCH STUFF.  The vendor floor at even a small Regional Conference was always jammed with companies of every size peddling educational aids, tech, texts, and toys.  I remember being absolutely floored by textbook publishers ready to hand over full copy samples of their science textbooks (not just little chapter samples).  Never would that happen  at a Teachers' Convention north of the border, even when it was exactly the same publishers in attendance.  There was clearly a lot of money in American education.
3. High school "down there" seemed easier -- or at least required less discrete, detailed knowledge from kids than our students were responsible for.  My 12th graders were doing work that looked more challenging than some Junior College course work that I was seeing my siblings encounter.

At the time, Americans (and Canadians for that matter) were well into a slow and steady decline in performance on international test scores.  Beating us both were a number of Asian nations and a European or two.  My province plodded along making occasional mention of some areas that needed improvement on an international scale, but changing almost nothing about educational practice over most of the last 16 years.  The US, on the other hand, pushed all their chips in on standardized testing as Bush's NCLB took hold and shaped mainstream education in the 50 States from that point forward.  Then when that bet didn't seem to pay off, President Obama decided to go double-or-nothing on Race to the Top, bringing the free market to bear on education by financially rewarding "good" schools and punishing "bad" ones.

The results from this outsider's perspective have been painful to watch.  The hand wringing and ballyhooing in response to the continued downward trends in international comparisons, particularly in the maths (yes, pluralizing math is completely valid, isn't that right Britain?) have made for quite the spectacle on mainstream media and in educational discourse south of the border.

When I first started in the profession, I can remember smugly thinking how fortunate I was to not have to ply my trade in the States, as I visited with colleagues in places like Seattle, Denver, and Salt Lake and listened to the plight of teachers working in what they described as a disjointed and wayward system.  With everything that has transpired in American education since, you might think that my disdain would be doubly strong today.  But that would depend very largely on what part of American education you were asking me about.

In all my travels south of the border (and there have been many more beyond the occasional science convention), one thing that continuously strikes me about the US is how natural folks seem to be about starting up business ventures.  The willingness to try one's hand in the entrepreneurial arts seems to be encoded somewhere in the American genome, as I find it to be far more pervasive among the general population than it is in Canada.  And American educators are no exception.

As the drive for more high stakes testing and better performance from schools has morphed American education into a grim caricature of its post-WWII self, pockets of innovative counter-culture have begun springing up throughout the US.  Reformist school initiatives have blossomed in nearly every state.  Magnet schools, charters, public and private reform initiatives, and teacher college transformations with progressive reform and student-centered principles as their underpinnings are blossoming throughout the country.  And for every "next-level" school that opens or transforms itself, there are 1000 teachers who are starting their own transformations with blogs, podcasts, product launches, software development, web curating, e-commerce, and all manner of innovation.  For a country that is supposedly losing its ability to educate innovators, it sure seems to be producing some pretty innovative stuff in the Edu-sphere these days.

The next great American revolution is well under way.  If things catch on ubiquitously, there is absolutely no telling what the US could accomplish.  If reform movements that are already generating hard data on their efficacy and effectiveness are able to be duplicated in a large scale fashion, the United States will most assuredly lead the global economy through the 21st century.

So what might that mean for Canada?  We are also faced with defining our role in a global economy, and one thing that is almost certain is that the resources upon which our nation currently generates a large percentage of its wealth are finite.  We may be content in Alberta to allow oil and gas to pay for a large percentage of our present, but our future will demand diversification.  One could argue that our present demands it as well.  So too will our children.

We can continue to stratify our student populations into "future oil executives" and "future oil drillers," but one day this dichotomy is going to break down.  We can either latch on to the wave of innovation generation that we're seeing our neighbors to the south begin to undertake, or we can find a model that more closely aligns with the cultural trajectory of this country.  What we can't do, however, is to continue pointing the battleship forward in the hopes that it will sail our children into a comfortable middle class future.  The signs are already far too clear that the status quo will not serve indefinitely.

TL;DR: Where American education is bad, it is very bad, but where it is good, it is very very good!  If the States can scale up the good, their nation will undoubtedly be the global economic leader on the planet for decades.  If they can't...  Who knows?  Either way the rest of us developed nations should be paying very close attention to the good stuff, if not emulating it outright.

Vive la revolution and God Bless America!
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Google Can Have It

There's a sentiment in educational reform that makes me uncomfortably twitchy every time I hear it or any of its subtle variations in the edu-chatter.  It goes something like this:

"Knowledge is expanding so rapidly, we can't possibly know what kids will need to know in the future, so we're better off teaching them HOW to learn, and not what to learn."

I'm all for taking a few healthy quaffs of the educational reform Kool Aid, but I find myself compelled to spit this particular mouthful back.  Or at the very least, wanting it to be something a little more palatable.  One of the reasons that I reject this sentiment is that it is painfully old.  John Dewey made similar remarks before the turn of the century (the twentieth century that is) when he said that it is "impossible to foretell definitely just what civilization will be twenty years from now" in advocating for education of character and the general qualities of intellect over knowledge sets that continuously evolve ("My Pedagogic Creed," 1897).

The notion that knowledge outpaces our ability to acquire it should be completely self evident.  More will be discovered about the mating habits of South American reptiles next week than I will ever learn (or want to learn) in a lifetime, to say nothing of the rest of the infinitesimally large body of disciplines in which facts accumulate daily on this planet.  That there will be more to learn than can ever be known is patently obvious and has been for as long as there have been people.

You know what hasn't changed very much in the last hundred years?  The starting points of knowledge that are necessary in order to one day actually live on the leading edge of knowledge generation.  Physics and astronomy, for instance, have seen some pretty amazing advances in the last few years, and the folks at the forefront of that work are getting to see and do some pretty amazing things.  But no matter how well I impart the HOW of knowledge acquisition to my students, none of them is going to get to do cutting edge particle physics without first knowing what a neutron is.  There is still some intellectual capital out there that some of our kids are going to want to acquire if figuring out how the universe is put together happens to be something that they want to do.  That's just as true now as it was 50 or 100 years ago, and the speed of new information creation doesn't make the old information obsolete.  One is dependent on the other.

Something significant, however, has changed in the last 20 years or so that we should be acknowledging as far more significant than the pace of present day academic endeavors: accessibility of the knowledge.  Growing up in the 80s, there were generally three sources I could go to in order to find stuff out that I wanted to know: school, the library, or to someone who already happened to know what I wanted to know.  Regardless, finding things out was generally more of a hassle than it was worth if you didn't have one of those sources readily available.  You just had to be content with not knowing.

Oh how times have changed.  I often say to people that I live in "the future."  I mean the kind of future I watched or read about in science fiction.  No we don't have flying cars or hoverboards, but I can take out a device small enough to fit in my pocket anywhere, any time and find out just about any discreet fact I want with the swipe of a finger.  The segment of my psyche that still exists back in 1985 is absolutely blown away by this.

So what does any of this have to do with teaching?  It tells us that, effectively, everyone already has access to the intellectual capital we've been peddling for the last hundred years.  Our position as knowledge gatekeepers has been utterly usurped by Google.  Knowing should theoretically be ubiquitous.  We are commodity traders of a commodity that just saw its supply go through the roof.  Worse, many of us still haven't recognized that the crash in our market has already happened and we're still trying to shlep a product that few need and even fewer want.

What makes this the essential era for progressive reform is that the information that has always been outstripping our ability to access it has now actually become completely accessible.  Our kids have more information available to them than any generation in history.  Making them mentally store some of it from time to time does have a few practical uses, but what they really need is more opportunities to navigate and use it in meaningful ways.  By "meaningful," I mean at the very least "meaningful to the students" and ideally also "meaningful to the society in which our students exist."

Like many teachers, I will certainly add my voice to the call on curriculum developers who have not already done so to revisit their works while considering that the intellectual capital we were meant to impart to our students in the last decade is now free and more readily available than ever.  The knowledge transmission portion of our jobs has been outsourced.

In the absence of sweeping curricular changes, however, we teachers need to find ways to allow students to do the things we are meant to teach them instead of to merely find out about those things.  If there exists knowledge worth possessing, let's make sure our students can experience the real value of that knowledge, and not just its ability to generate a particular grade on a report card.  To do that, we will need to shift our practices away from just planning (a purposeful ordering of a sequence of events, typically with a clear destination in mind) and move toward designing (a complex and creative process that combines thoughtful choices with a purpose that often doesn't have a clear destination at its end).  And to do this effectively will require not only a shift in thinking about how we're doing things, but a team effort to make it happen.  How will you find your team?  Or to ask the question more formally...

In what ways can collaborative design practices be generated in departments/schools where the practice is not already built in to the culture of the department/school by teachers? by admin?

TL;DR: The rate of new discoveries is not the reason we need to change teaching; the rate of information transmission is.  If Google can transmit knowledge, then teachers need to switch from "Knowledge Dispenser" to one of "Knowledge Navigator."  That's not going to be super easy, so we should really try to do it together.

Vive la revolution!!
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The Thing About Tests - Final Thoughts

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies." —Groucho Marx

In the context of government issued testing, I feel this quote is fairly on point. But I also admit that I don't think I've got much to offer in the way of functional alternatives. Testing serves a variety of goals including performance measurement, admissions standards for certain institutions, and teacher accountability. But I can't honestly say that I think these goals are all being served well by current testing regimes, although I will say they're being served efficiently. Machine-scored testing is cheaper and faster than every other practical (or impractical) alternative.  Although government issued standardized testing seems to be the proverbial rented mule of educational discourse these days. If the buzz is to be believed, these tests are antiquated, overused, and worthy of a sound beating and a trip to the glue factory.

I get it. For those readers not from Alberta, I can tell you that as far as Canadian provinces go, we have historically taken our government exams pretty seriously. Up until fairly recently, we tested students in grades 3, 6, 9, and 12 comprehensively in all core subject areas. Until last year, our 12th grade Diploma (exit) Examinations had the highest weighting in the country with 50% of the marks in each matriculation course devoted to a highly comprehensive final test written in one or two 3-hour sessions at the end of a semester.

Over much of my career, I have taught a number of the courses that had these tests awaiting my students at their conclusion. To say they have had an impact on my pedagogical choices would be an understatement of monumental proportions. I would go so far as saying that not only did they dictate the nature of teaching in those particular classes, their ever-present shadow on high school culture has informed my and my colleagues' practices even beyond the courses and grades in which these exams appear. In fact I would even say that Diploma Exams have shaped high school pedagogy more than any other single influence in Alberta high schools over the last 30+ years.

Now is the point in the post where you might expect me to go into a lot of detail summarizing all of the reasons why these things are the embodiment of evil. Blah blah high stakes, yadda yadda only tests a very limited number of things, blah blah unfair to kids. I'm not going to bother. It's been done to death, and if you're reading my blog, chances are good that you're already drinking the "Standardized Government Tests Are Awful" Kool-Aid. And the reality is that I'm no great fan either. It's been many a semester where I've consoled a student who had a mental lapse, that led to self-doubt, that snowballed to panic, that led to a bad result, and necessitated a re-write 5 months down the road when the material would be even less fresh.  They're no fun.

Instead I want to discuss what I think we should be considering, as teachers navigating these tests, in the context of education reform. Firstly, lets put ourselves in the shoes of the folks who tell us these things are a necessity: our elected officials and our Education Ministries (Departments). Last year my province spent over 6 billion dollars on educating people in Alberta. That number is dwarfed by the budgets of larger provinces and states across the border. It is money that is generated by citizens and businesses that both use these services and benefit from them. Do we need some manner of process to measure the effectiveness of our education systems -- to justify how and why we're spending billions of dollars of taxpayer money on these things? Absolutely.

But we need to make sure that the tests measure what they need to measure while at the same time having our system do what the system needs to do: prepare students for a productive and rewarding life after high school.  As I have said earlier, the goals of measurement and the goals of assessment don't always align.

So how, in the mielieu of reform, can we reconcile the need for these tests with superior pedagogy?

1. Firstly, we need to stop preparing kids for 12th grade exams from the first day they walk into high school (or even earlier if that's what is happening).  The notion that we have to teach kids how to take the tests is fine, but that doesn't need to be an every day occurrence.  If your course doesn't have a big standardized test at the end of it, don't pretend that you need to get them ready for the test in the next course that does.  Be clear and purposeful in identifying the competencies that have direct transference into that next chapter.  Make the methods in teaching those facets the exception and not the rule.


2. If you're teaching a class that has the big state test at the end of it, ask yourself seriously how it's going to be used.  Grade 6 Provincial Achievement Exams have no bearing on whether your students will get into the "good" junior high or the "bad" one.  How seriously does your school or division take the discrepancy reports at the end of the year?  Is your job actually on the line?  I'm not advocating "going rogue" and ignoring the test or letting your kids tank because it doesn't matter.  I'm simply suggesting that if the presence of the test is a barrier to transforming your teaching practice, make sure that the test is actually a barrier and not simply a convenient excuse.  Then ask yourself how long you really need getting your kids ready for that test.  Does it take the entire semester or year?  Work on finding the minimum amount of time that actually needs to be devoted to test prep, and fill the rest of your time with the best learning experience you can muster.
   
   Or better yet, get real with your learning team and take on the challenge of designing effective strategies that meet the demands of a 21st century, student-centered learning environment that also helps kids to succeed on the tests.  I freely concede that such a goal is substantially easier said than done, and nearly laughable for some courses (I'm looking at you Biology 30).  However, even in the most overloaded-with-content courses, we still need to acknowledge that a strictly stand-and-deliver method is pedagogically ill-advised, particularly in an era of ever shrinking attention spans and ever increasing options for sound teaching practices.


3. Join the growing ranks of activists who are campaigning and petitioning to have the nature of state exams changed to better reflect their purpose and scope.  The message is being received.  Alberta has made recent and significant changes within the Assessment Branch.  More work is needed.  If this is an area that matters to you, get involved.  Teacher's unions, education advocacy groups, school board councils, and even direct communication with government agencies and elected officials can all be part of the equation.  If they can't be eliminated, let's at least pursue an agenda that offers room to meet some objectives by alternative means, continue to reduce the conflation of measurement and performance ranking objectives, and an assurance that the tests continue to test what is actually needed in academia and industry and not just what an ivory-tower curriculum manager thinks is needed.


4. Work toward giving the powers-that-be a convincing argument that there is a better way to educate our youth.  Much of what we do is done because that's "always how it's been done."  If we can work towards finding the system that obsoletes our current one, the tests will have to adapt or go away.  Help make the argument that they need to be changed by being the example of "the better way" and by helping to spread that way.  Join the revolution!

TL;DR:  State tests are a drag, but right now, they're a necessary drag.  Worry about them less when they don't affect you directly, a little bit less when they do, and help to convince those who need convincing that there's a better way.

Vive la resistance!

The Thing About Tests - Part 2

Some frank conversation about testing is desperately needed.  I'll start:  I loved test time in my "traditional teaching" life.  More than any other reason, a test period represented an extra prep.

There.  I admitted it.

I'm not happy about that.  I'm not proud to say it.  But if I'm being honest, I have to tell you:  I never had a problem handing out a 40 question multiple choice with 4 written response test.  That's going to take 60 to 90 minutes, and for that time period every kid is going to be quiet and focused.  Ahhhhhh.  Sweet relief.  Get a little marking done, maybe sort out the next day's lesson.  Oh! My friend just updated his status on Facebook?  Chimichangas are great.  Right on bud!  Maybe I'll just scroll down a little more... Haha!  Cats are so funny. <90 minutes later> "All right everyone, turn in your exams!"

You elementary teachers reading this are probably rolling your eyes right now.  Don't get that down in Grade 1 hey?  Sorry folks.  I still don't know how y'all do it.

What's my point?  The scenario above exemplifies the main issue that I presently have with the ways tests are traditionally used: too often we are conflating interests that have no business being put together when we test students, and in doing so we have the potential to do our kids a disservice.  The extra "motivation" I had to test kids likely played a role (even if subconsciously) in things like frequency of testing and test length.

Is a 90 minute test always the best approach for every set of learning objectives?  I'd be lying if I said that question factored into my decisions very much back when I created tests that, to this day, still sit in filing cabinets back at my school.  Instead, the structure of my school's bell times dictated how long my tests were.  Enough questions to keep the kids who take the longest to need most of the class, but not so many that you have a significant number of students unfinished at the end of the period.  The "sweet spot" would see the last kid hand their paper in right before the bell.  See what's wrong with that design?

It serves the adult in the room, and not the students.

And there's the criticism that the anti-testers have a right to hang their hats on:  Testing is all too often not about learning.  It's not that tests are invalid, or that they can't test for certain things, or that they put too much pressure on kids.  All those issues are hotly debatable.  The main issue with much of traditional testing is that too many aspects of the testing aren't designed for the students.  The testing is mostly for us, the adults.  It exists so we know if we're doing our jobs properly.  It exists so we can assign numbers to kids that are culturally adopted and easy to understand.  It helps us rank and sort them.  It helps us more than it helps them, at least insofar as learning is concerned.  None of those things are necessarily bad or wrong (as I pointed out in an earlier blog), but "crossing the streams" so to speak is exactly what's got testing in all the hot water it's in right now.

I recently read an article from 2014 by Linda Flanagan that described this phenomenon in the greater context of grades as a whole.  In the piece, she highlights our societal obsession with measurement.  I would like to distinguish measurement from assessment in much the same way Flanagan does in her article: To me, assessment is what I do in my class with individual students to get a barometer on their learning.  Measurement is what is done to large groups of students, whole schools, entire jurisdictions, etc.  Measurement is the thing of standardized government exams, and it typically occurs in conjunction with assessment.  We find out what our kids know at the same time that we evaluate them and make decisions about their futures.  A lot of "traditional" testing in classrooms (including my classic 90-minute "40 & 4" tests) is actually just bad measurement disguised as assessment.  My suggestion here is that the practice of conflating the objectives of measurement and assessment is what is causing a lot of the problems that surround the "to test or not to test debate."

So do I think we should throw tests out the window altogether?  Absolutely not.  I don't even think it's necessary to throw the measurement brand of testing out the window.  Let's just start making steps toward making testing for learning the greater emphasis over testing of learning.  These aren't new concepts by any stretch.  I remember a vigorous discussion with my fellow student teachers on the topic when I was still in teacher college in the late 90s.  Unfortunately the conclusions reached in our discussions (mainly that testing for learning is better) got quickly set aside in the cultural milieu of real-world teaching.

And testing for learning is not the only aspect of the testing paradigm that needs an overhaul.  To illustrate, I'm going to attempt to describe one class in particular that I think much more closely approaches the way good testing should look:

Alicia is a high school science teacher with an 11th grade Physics class.  Her class has a strong emphasis on inquiry and project-based learning.  Currently, her students are attempting to navigate a design challenge where they must construct a machine that launches a spherical projectile.  Most students are choosing to construct either catapults or trebuchets.  One group works on a ballista, while another is trying to craft an unusual hybrid of a baseball pitching machine and a skeet launcher.  Students must use physics principles to accurately predict the landing sites of their projectiles, determine launch and land velocities, and describe energy changes.

The project challenges students to investigate and understand important concepts in Physics, such as Kinematics (the study of motion) in two dimensions, Dynamics (the study of forces), and Energy.  The students must work collaboratively and creatively to construct and refine their devices.  In order to fully complete the task, the students must learn which data is relevant, how to gather it, and how to calculate the expected trajectory and landing positions of their projectiles.

Alicia has scaffolded this learning into her project calendar.  She provides the students with resources to investigate these concepts independently, but also builds a lesson schedule into her project calendar.  Students have the option of attending her lesson on projectile motion calculations where she demonstrates and works through examples with students.  There is formative work for students to practice the concepts.  Students may choose formative work that meets basic expectations for competency in the course or more challenging practice material, depending on their aspirations and aptitude. To ensure that students are meeting the learning objectives, she has also created a summative waypoint exercise.  Students are not allowed to perform the first set of formal trials with their device until all members have demonstrated at least a minimal understanding of the concepts -- in other words: The Test.

The test consists of three questions, all written response.  The nature of these questions are all well known by the students in advance of the test.  The questions are constructed to hit on the fundamental concepts in the topic, not necessarily every single potential learning objective.  Students write the test when they are ready, and may write it as many times as necessary to meet the standard.  While it sounds like it would be pretty easy for students to cheat, the kicker here is that no two tests are precisely the same.  Alicia has a skeleton form that acts as the backbone of the test, but hand writes subtle alterations in to each exam so that no two tests will ever be identical.  They all test the same concepts, but with slightly different questions.

That may sound like a lot of work for Alicia, but each test only takes her a few seconds to prepare (she jots down 6 numbers and three words into blanks on a templated page).  Construction of her tests takes far less time than the full period quizzes and tests of her previously more traditional teaching practices.  Her grading here is also much different than the typical testing paradigm.  Using protocols for communication that she established early in the course, she can tell at a glance how proficient the student is in a variety of competencies.  She doesn't need to know what the correct answer is.  She only needs to see how the student is tackling the question to know if they are "getting it."

Did they apply the appropriate principles?  Are they setting up their formulas correctly?  Is their flow of ideas logical?  Are they communicating their learning clearly?  Are they using proper conventions and notation?  She can rate each student in their competencies with just a quick scan of the test.  Rather than marking it in detail for right/wrong, she is assessing the student on what they can do and what they can't yet (granted many kids want to know if they "got it right," but that doesn't take too long to figure out either).  

Here "failure" is simply a waypoint in the process.  Where there are problems, she can address each student at their level individually.  She can also leverage the collaborative needs of the groups, as there is a degree of motivation for students to have everyone on the team understanding the material (teammates can tutor one another in their respective difficulties).  Students are also asked to be metacognitive regarding their testing.  They rate their own difficulties in tacking the questions, their tendency to guess, and their confidence in their process.  All of this provides valuable information to the teacher with one-glance efficiency.  She can structure follow-up activities in response to individual and overall performances.

Creating and grading these tests are time savers for Alicia.  The tests take a fraction of the time to write than a lengthy full-period exam.  She's far more likely to adjust and modify them from year to year rather than reuse them unchanged for decades.  She spends less time assessing them, and students take less time to actually write them.  The tests are sufficient to give her clear roadmaps on how to direct each student's learning and extra time she and the students have can be spent shoring up problems and mastering content, rather than simply moving on to the next topic with holes in some students' understanding.

Here is is a laundry list of features in Alicia's class that I think are particularly critical in regards to testing:

• Testing serves learning.  It doesn't mark the end of the learning cycle, but rather a midpoint.  It is assessment first and either measurement (as I described the term earlier) secondly or not at all.
• The opportunity to correct learning deficiencies identified through testing is built in to the process.
• Testing can be personalized, tailored to the abilities and needs of individual students.  (And before you discount this point as being pedagogically unsound, we should have a discussion on the critical differences between "equal" and "fair.")
• It is efficient and agile.  It serves its purpose without dominating the agenda.
• Testing doesn't monopolize the raison d'être for learning.  Students learn for reasons other than "you'll need to know this for your test."
• Testing is neither the backbone nor the default for assessment in this class.  It is one tool among many that is used only when it makes sense to use.  Tested objectives are purposefully selected for their alignment with the nature of testing and the benefits it confers to the learning.  A great many other learning objectives are assessed and evaluated using other methods of assessment.

It is worth noting that there are other components of Alicia's teaching that make her classes vitally effective beyond just how and why she tests.  Those components complement her design choices with regards to testing.  Her class is student-centerered, emphasizing projects, problem solving, and critical thinking.  But it's worth noting that she still teaches -- Alicia is a skilled facilitator and students genuinely enjoy her lessons, whether it's 4 students partaking or her whole class of 34.

It's also worth noting that this course happens to be highly academic.  It is part of the springboard that will launch many students into upper academia where testing will be the norm.  Alicia also teaches a vocational science class to 10th graders, and tests are almost completely absent from that course.

What's absent in the scenario above is the role of the measurement brand of tests.  Where's the government exam in the equation above or the high-stakes final exam?  Well that, my friends, is its own can of worms, and (given the existing length of this post) demands I save it for next time.

TL;DR: Testing isn't education's Great White Whale.  If it's used primarily to support learning and is one amongst a number of useful assessment tools, it can have a lot of value in any classroom, even the predominantly student-centered ones.

Vive la revolution!

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Completely Unrelated

My blog's tagline is "A blog by a teacher about being a teacher, and sometimes some other things too."  That last part to date has been a total lie. It's all been edu-blabber.

Today, I'll fix that with a little cross-promotion.  The love of my life has also climbed on the bloggy bandwagon, though in a completely unrelated field.  At the risk of being a little sexist, I'll suggest  that her blog is written with a female audience in mind.  If you're into ladies fashion, fitness tips, and decor (regardless of gender) please go check out A Hockey Mom in Heels by the woman who keeps my head sane and our home happy.

 

The Thing About Tests

Tests.  Wow.  Where do I even start on tests?  Is there a word that is more charged in education right now?  We love to hate tests.  We love to love tests.  We use tests for everything.  We test for intelligence, test for comprehension, test for meaning, test for understanding, test to end a class, test to enter a school, test to see whether more tests are needed, test our blood sugars, test our resolve, test our patience, test the waters, and according to popular media, we test our students to death.  Canada is apparently leading the way in the anti-testing movement, with recent reforms occurring here in Alberta and in Ontario to reduce the weight of final exams in overall course evaluation or to de-empahsize the significance of testing in the broader pedagogy.  Other provinces have long since passed on the high-stakes, winner takes all, loser takes nothing final exam game.

Critics of these approaches claim that the anti-testing movement is exacerbating a generational problem where today's youth -- the Millennials and the generation in grade school currently that follows them -- are the least resilient generation in recorded history.

To test or not to test?

That is a tough question.  Progressive movements in education call into question the value of testing entirely, and this sentiment has been broadly adopted in the world of educational discourse.  It is a rare week that my Twitter feed doesn't get hit with something like this:

Yet I also have friends and colleagues that scoff at the notion of eliminating testing from grade school.  I hear the following and all manner of variations therein:

"Well they're not going to stop testing in Universities and Colleges.  We need to prepare kids for their futures."
"Those <<Diploma Exams/Provincial Achievement Tests/State Tests/SATs/Standardized Government Issued Testing Regimes>> aren't going away, and we need to make sure our kids are ready."
"I need to know what my kids actually know, and the only way to do that is with a test."
"Without testing students are accountable to nothing, and neither are teachers."
"We need ways of measuring our effectiveness.  Hard data consisting of measurable results is necessary to shape policies and practices."

So who's right?  If you have a definitive answer to that question and the research to back it up, I'd be thrilled to have a conversation with you.  You see, from my perspective, both camps are right.  It really depends on your viewpoint and your values.  If you value...

• data 
• clear benchmarks
• performance measures
• accountability
• efficiency
• clarity
• categorization
• compartmentalization
• knowledge
• the ability to make valid comparisons between individual students and groups of students

... well then, testing is probably up your alley.  I want to make one thing very clear before contrasting that list.  Regardless of your visceral, emotional reaction to the list, nothing on it is inherently bad.  In fact, you can make a very compelling argument for why every one of those things is absolutely necessary in a public education system.

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Time out...

That last bullet up there is particularly interesting.  It's a lot of words that actually distill down to a single word that is inherently associated with "test," and is perhaps the only word that can contend with "test" for being more controversial as a term in education:

"Standardized"

If there is one particular kind of test that has permanent residence beneath the bus under which society throws all its scapegoats, it is the Standardized Test.  I'd like to put my scientist hat on and say something about standardizing before carrying on further:

Standardization is simply a method by which we normalize a process.  Normalizing in this context means to establish criteria upon which we can accurately, and with statistical validity, compare results from one test subject to the next.  Standardization isn't just important, it's a necessity when data and measurement are concerned.  Without it, an observer cannot reliably compare different subjects or groups of subjects being measured.  Anyone who wants a study done of the effectiveness of... well... anything frankly, requires that the method of measurement be standardized so that all test subjects can be treated as statistically equivalent.  Without it, measurement is almost useless.

If we want to throw standardized testing to the curb, we also should consider whether we want to be able to say where we fit in the greater global narrative.  We use standardized measurements (tests) to rank all manner of our country's capabilities relative to those in other nations.  And we use that information to set economic policies, direct business goals, and allocate resources both public and private.  Data matters, and to get it, standardization is an absolute necessity.

This doesn't mean I'm ready to reinstate the 50% weight on our Alberta Diploma Exams or to champion more state testing.  But it does mean, that I'd like to pull the standardization moniker out from under the bus and see if we can make better use of its value.

But I digress...

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If, on the other hand, you value...

• holistic growth of children
• the learning experience
• limiting stress and anxiety
• creativity
• life relevance
• empowering students
• engagement
• individualization & personalizing learning
• inclusiveness
• inquiry
• the iterative process

... testing is probably not your best friend.  Again, none of the things on that list is bad, and again, we can make an argument that all of those things are important to have in a public education system.

Both groups are inherently correct within their own spheres of value.  That's because in education we have a great many goals and some of those goals compete with one another.  Testing lives right in that space of competition.  Its presence satisfies a number of important objectives while potentially eroding others, and the absence of testing has the inverse effect.  No one's inherently wrong.

So what are we supposed to do about it?

I'm not going to pretend to have a definitive answer, but in my next post I'll share my thoughts on what roles I think testing in school should play, and (perhaps more importantly) what roles it shouldn't.

TL;DR:  Testing in schools gets a pretty bad rap, and many educational jurisdictions are looking to scrap testing practices wholly or in part.  Testing and non-testing each have their own sets of pros and cons and both sets of pros are pros we probably want.  Next post: some ways we might be able to have our cake and eat it too.

Vive la revolution!!

A Day in the Life -- Building Futures

Just a quick post today of a little video that we put together to showcase our Building Futures kids.  This particular video perhaps isn't the best example of how hands-on things can be for our kids.  Feel free to poke around the videos in the rest of my channel to see some examples that are even more involved.

It Does a Teacher Good

I struggled with Project Based and Inquiry Learning for years.  I mean... I did some of it.  I always had the best of intentions for having kids working on engaging, interesting projects that gave them personal choice and (at least hopefully) motivation to do do their very best work.

Years ago our school's science department ran an annual research symposium that we called "Festivus."  The name was a vicious ripoff of a Seinfeld bit, and the name was about the only thing that our event had in common with Frank Costanza's made-up holiday.  It was a reasonably cool thing.  Kids would prepare presentations on a scientific research topic of their choice in 11th grade across 3 different subjects.  Students could even work with partners in other classes.  We would invite members of the scientific community and academia to come and judge the presentations.  Students would get all dressed up and we'd make an evening of it.  Pretty progressive for being over a dozen years ago, hey?

What ever happened to it?  Quite simply, we axed it.  It was just too much work.  The coordination and communication of all the judges was hours upon hours of work alone.  But that extra effort would have been tolerable had it not been for what the project did to the rest of our classes.  We set aside multiple class days for students to research and prepare their talks.  Each presentation required a visual, so triboards and PowerPoints all needed to be completed.  All the talks were dry-ran in front of peers for feedback before the "real thing."  Hours of in-class and out-of-class time was spent perfecting the research, its synthesis, and its presentation.

But once we were done squeezing open our semesters to fit in Festivus, we then had to race like mad to stand-and-deliver our way through to completing all our course objectives in time for final exams.  It was exhausting.  We poured all this time and energy into a two to three week project only to pretty much destroy the other 14 or 15 weeks of our terms.  It was hard on the kids, and hard on us.

Where had we gone wrong?  Was Festivus a waste of time?  Certainly, in retrospect, I'd have changed a few things, but more recently I've realized that it wasn't Festivus that needed to change.  It was the rest of the semester.

It's taken some time, but I've come to realize that the exclusive use of teacher-centered methods, while safe, familiar, and comfortable are ultimately as bad for my mental health as for that of my students'.  The body of literature extolling the virtues of progressive education models for students is massive.  I'll concede that the jury (at least the scientifically supported with data jury) is still out on many progressive methodologies as far as their efficacy for students goes.  In this post, however, I'd like to share my equally unsupported with data theory that certain progressive methods are good for teachers too.  That is, they offer us both the opportunity to be more effective teachers, but they also give us the opportunity to do a better job of balancing our work lives and non-work lives.

I'm not going to try to bite off every progressive method.  Some are more illustrative than others, and I'm already wordy enough.  Let me, however illustrate why adoption of certain progressive habits makes such a big difference in the life of the average educator:

Team Teaching:

I've already expressed my insistence that this is the most important systemic change required in education today, so I shouldn't need to beat the horse much "deader."  That said, I've got one of the most salient and juicy sales pitches to you teachers still on the fence about this one:

No Sub Plans.

I'll give you a sec to let that sink in...  Go ahead... Let it rattle around a bit.

Picture this: it's a Tuesday morning.  You wake up and your head is pounding, your throat feels like it is harboring tiny porcupines, and your sinuses are so runny, you're considering crushing up Sinutab tablets and just snorting them Scarface style.  You need to call in a sub.  Your options are to frantically type out a set of plans for them in the desperate hope that the day won't just wind up being a complete write-off for your kids or just sucking it up and heading in despite the likelihood you will spread this plague to every colleague and student who passes within a meter of you.

But what if instead, you've got a partner teacher or two that you're cohorting with at school?  Well then it's nothing more than a simple phone call: "sorry to do this to you, but I've got the plague.  Can you handle them today?"  They tell you it's no problem and you settle in with a pack of Dayquil and enough Dristan to unclog a toilet without a second thought to what's not happening in your classes. Down the road, you'll probably return the favor, and you'll be happy to do it, for you'll understand the wisdom that is not living on an island as a teacher.

I bet there will be people reading this who will want to make a shift for this benefit alone (I too loathe doing up sub plans).  So I don't even have to go into the value of being able to trade off shouldering the kids for a period while your partner gets caught up on some marking or planning.  Or having an extra set of eyes in the room when you're trying to manage a number of smaller group discussions.  Or being able to meet privately with kids to give feedback or assess while the other teacher is managing a larger discussion.  Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.  Trust me gang... you want this in your lives.

Making Community Connections:

Finding experts, allies, initiatives, and partners outside your school's walls is powerful for a lot of reasons.  Some of the unmentioned reasons include the fact that it gives you the teacher an opportunity to learn alongside your students.  Going into a "field experience" with a limitation on your own understanding puts you in the position that your students are in.  That is a truly invaluable perspective and may even allow you to better refine your own teaching practices in light of what you learn by taking on the role of learner.

It also potentially offers you more productivity in your day.  For instance, if you've brought in a carpenter to help your physics students design and construct their projectile hurling objects, that potentially provides you with more freedom to work with students who are struggling a bit more with the physics behind their trebuchets.  The saying goes that "many hands make for light work," but in this context, it also makes for better work.

Projects:

I may or may not do a post on Project Based Learning down the road, but it won't be a How-To if I do go there.  That's because there is such a wealth of internet resources on the subject, that there is no way that I would be able to approach the quality and quantity of even a thin slice of the best sites.  If I do a PBL post, it will likely be more of a "hey just because you're doing PBL, doesn't mean you stop teaching" post.



Being an effective PBL teacher can also very liberating.  One of the things that doing a lot of PBL forces you to do is to take stock of all the little bits of work you used to make kids do before your PBL-life.  Sitting down with your curriculum and your resources and carefully asking yourself (or better yet, asking your learning team) why you make kids do the things that you make them do, and being very honest about your answers, will often reveal that your students probably do a lot of busy work.  It's probably very well designed busy work, but having both done this exercise and seen other educators do this exercise in a number of different settings, I'm reasonably convinced that most of us will find that there is actually a lot of fat to trim in most of the classes we teach.  Replacing that fat with engaging, intense, visible, connected, and relevant project or inquiry work releases you from a lot of that paper burden. 

I often advise my students that it's not just about working hard, but about working smart -- making the most of the time you have and getting maximum bang for your buck.  I used to do that while carrying around stacks and stacks of marking that often didn't get completed until a final exam break started and I would finally have time to catch up on it all.  What hypocrisy.  More recently I've started taking my own advice and have learned how to give more precise and useful feedback with less paper coming home with me.  Emphasizing quality of assessment over quantity of assessment can make for better and more efficient feedback with less paper to take home each day.

Making Learning Visible:

Having students exhibit and present their work to an audience outside the school environment is tremendously powerful for improving productivity and buy-in from students.  But we also can't deny its effect on us either.  When we invite our stakeholders in to observe our kids, we invite them in to observe us as well.  That layer of accountability works for us too, and I think it's a good thing.  And let's not also forget that feedback, whether bad or good can be valuable.  We can't ignore the positive bump in job satisfaction that comes with hearing a thank you from a parent who is thrilled with the work their son or daughter has done in your class.

Additionally, exhibiting also gives us an all-important avenue for making more community connections.  It's part of the networking process that I think will be essential to effective 21st century education.  Inviting even just your students' parents in to see the display of student work throughout the year might just supply you with the connection for the next great project or partnership.

*****

TL;DR: Are the pressures of teaching driving you to an early grave, or at least an early retirement?  Collaborate with colleagues, make connections in your community, shift to more student-centered practices, and exhibit their (and your) learning.  Then enjoy your new lease on life and the career you imagined back when you first applied to teacher college!

Vive la revolution!!

It's Not About the House

I've blogged about the program in which I teach on more than a few occasions.  "Yeah yeah," you say "Your class is great. Whoop-dee-doo.  I don't teach in a class like that. What good is it to me?"  Today that is just what I want to talk about.  You see, the revolution is not about the class I teach or the project we're doing.  It's not about the house.  There are a lot of reasons why I like the spot I'm in, but today I want to talk about changing the spot you are in (assuming, of course, that you are a teacher).

I genuinely believe that an effective model of pedagogical change can be layered on top of just about any curriculum.  I say "just about" because I very much recognize the specter of high-stakes tests that loom over many jurisdictions.  At some point down the road, I'm going to try to make an argument for why teachers should stop putting so much energy in prepping kids for those things, even if nothing changes regarding their role, weight, value, design, or use in your jurisdiction.  But for now, let me just say that I understand where you're coming from in not wanting to let kids down on those tests.  Alberta Diploma Exams, for instance, are a real thing and we can't ignore their impact on our students.

Outside of that mindset, however, I'm going to challenge any teacher who wants to make an impactful and positive change for their students, for their career, and for their outlook for the future, to head in some or all of the following directions.

First...

Find a buddy, or maybe a few buddies that you think (a) are also looking to shake things up and that (b) you can work with amicably.  We'll deal with the non-amicable folks later.  For now, let's get people together who are drinking the same brand of Kool-Aid.

Sit down with your friend or friends over some coffees, perhaps some delicious baked goods.  If a bottle of wine or a case of beer is more to your liking, have at 'er.  Good food & drink always helps to make an experience even more rewarding.  Bring some pads of paper, or maybe even chart paper or whiteboards (perhaps now the title of this blog will make some sense -- whiteboards and a few tasty beverages are all you need to start your own corner of the revolution).

Where the conversation goes from here is up to you.  The goal: find an excuse to teach the same kids at the same time.  The "Next Level" goal: The excuse will offer a novel, engaging, meaningful experience that gives your students an opportunity to create something that is meaningful and relevant to them -- work that they can take pride in beyond just showing mom and dad the letter on the report card.  Maybe you look at ways to merge your classes for a large project or field experience.  Perhaps you see if team teaching all or part of course makes sense.  Maybe you think about a large-scale project that has tons of flash, redefines what it means for students to learn, and launches you into a completely new and exciting trajectory in your career.  Either way, put it all out there on the table.  Throw up the ideas on the wall and see what sticks.  Find out where your teaching spheres collide and crossover.  Find out where your passions and interests as educators and as humans crossover.  Ask yourselves how would you do things if you had the freedom to do it the way you wanted?  In the end, you'll hopefully have at least one idea that finds you impassioned and inspired to take the next step.

Before you take the next step, I want to add one piece of advice: It has been my observation that as the educational landscape shifts, stakeholders are carving out their individual niches whether it be within individual schools or educational jurisdictions at large.  Many schools and school divisions want to be able to demonstrate their forward progress and commitment to improving education for the kids put in their care.  The shinier the penny, the more easy it is to show off.  I'm not saying that you should do things just to show off.  But, frankly, if you want to get buy-in from the people you're going to need to ask permission from, you may need to give them a compelling reason to break from the tried and true.  You'll have to gauge the climate and culture of your own setting, but personally I'd rather err of side of ambitious.  If you offer them a plan that has the potential to showcase your school or division as exceptional, your chances of getting approval will likely increase.

Then...

Figure out what it will take to make it happen.  This is obviously a big step.  You don't just snap your fingers and marvel at the plan that appears before you.  But this is where some exciting stuff happens.  It's where these questions get answered:

• Who needs to approve the plan?  How do we convince them that it's good for kids and that it's good for them too?
• Who might we need to partner with in order to bring this plan to life?  Industry?  Small business?  NGOs?  Non-profits?  Academia?  A few parents?  Partners might not always seem essential, but I'd like to suggest that they certainly have the potential to be essential.  The greater your idea's scope, the more hands will be needed to bring it to life.  Finding essential partners will have to be a whole future blog post (these are really starting to accumulate).
• How do we find these partners and how do we ask them to get involved?
• How do we fit this work into the existing structure of our school (or do we need structures to change in order to make this work)?
• How do we make space within the work we already do in order to accommodate this new thing?

Those last couple questions are ultimately about pedagogy -- about re-framing what you already do into what needs to be done.  For some teachers, it's going to be the most significant barrier.  There was certainly a point in my career where I simply couldn't have done this kind of work.  Finding teammates who are already headed in this direction -- whether they're in your school, jurisdiction, or web browser is also part of the process.  Last question: Who can help me?  Don't have an answer to that one?  Start here.

Lastly...

Make your pitch.  Whether its a department head, a principal, a superintendent, a learning specialist, a parent council, or a politician, someone probably needs to hear the proposal.  There are probably a whole host of things these folks will think they want to know in advance.  Cost, manpower, time frames, impact on other areas of the school or school system, etc.  Ultimately, though, three things are going to win you their approval:

(1)  A compelling emotional reason to get on board.  Who will this make an impact on and how big could that impact be?  Tell the story.
(2)  A degree of certainty that their own jobs aren't going to be made substantially more difficult by the change.
(3)  A plan of action.*

Congratulations!  You've got an exciting new project under way.  Now the fun really begins.

Does it all seem like far more work than you've got time to manage?  Objection noted.  In my next post, I'll try to explain why I think the more you do this, the more you'll be able to shift your work load away from the ever mounting prep & grade cycle toward work that is more meaningful to your students.  Don't get me wrong: there will be some hours invested on the front end to be sure.  But crafted properly, the kind of projects that will have the most meaningful positive impacts on your students will also have the most meaningful impacts on your work/life balance.  Done right, the revolution can work for your students and for you.

TL;DR:  Join the revolution! Find friends, brainstorm, smash together your classes, design a project at the intersection of your subject matter and/or your interests, take time to plan, pitch it to your gatekeepers, profit!

Vive la resistance!!

* Credit where it's due: Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip & Dan Heath is owed for helping me to understand this.

Cleanup in the Pi Section

No one ever asks the art teacher or the music teacher "are we ever gonna use this in real life?"  When you take an art class, it's generally assumed that you're probably not going to use the skills and knowledge you develop in art in a pragmatic way.  A few students who show an aptitude might go on and make a career of it, but it's generally assumed that art class is for the aesthetic joy of art (whether or not a student actually experiences that joy might be another matter).

There are a few of you out there who will know what I'm talking about when I say that for some of us, the very same aesthetic resonance that takes place for artists when they create happens to us when we do math, solve problems or puzzles, play certain kinds of games, etc. 

courtesy xkcd.com

Math teachers (and curriculum developers) are constantly defending the subject for its practical usefulness, even when the practicality of a topic is so limited as to be nearly indefensible.  I get it.  Not everyone is in to math, and at a certain point, they just want to know why the need for continued torture.  A few of us just want to solve challenging problems.

That's part of one of the challenges that I outlined in my last post.  In reality, it's a challenge for all schooling.  How do we design our programming so that the most engaged and able students are able to push the limits of their ability while at the same time allowing those who are less mathematically inclined to move in a positive direction?  I'm not sure I have the answer, but I'm at least going to try to suggest some starting points.

I'm going to start my "here's some things we should try doing in math" post with a mission statement of sorts.

I believe that Math education should allow each student to explore, understand, create, and communicate mathematically to the height of his or her potential.

It's a simple enough statement, but its execution may seem daunting.  How do you determine what the height of a student's potential is?  In what ways are they supposed to explore, understand, create, and communicate?  Why isn't there anything in there about learning?  In my mind, none of those details actually matter.  What matters is the statement acts as a litmus for all the other endeavors we pursue.  One only needs to ask this question: "Does this action promote each student's potential in math exploration, understanding, creation, or communication?"  I'm sure you could toss in a couple other nouns in there as well, but you get the point.

On the surface this seems like a waste of mental energy.  Isn't that what math curriculum and math classes are already designed to do?  That may be what the intent of the design is, but it is most certainly not the prevailing result.  I see disconnects between some of the practicalities of teaching the subject in our current schooling paradigm and maximizing learning for each kid.  "Each" is a very key word in that mission statement above.  The goal should be try to get every single student moving forward, and leaving no one behind, most particularly during the formative and foundational early years.

With that in mind, I'm going to pretend I'm the Emperor of Math Education for a day.  Here's where I would start, if I had unlimited ability and resources to effect change:

Suggestion #1:  

 

Research everything.  More specifically, I would direct a great deal of energy into nailing down the specifics on how the genuinely effective teachers seem to be getting their results.  I am almost certain that there are enough people out there doing an amazing job of teaching math that if we could simply collect and disseminate their wisdom efficiently, all would be right. 

The lines of communication between the research community and the teaching community are threadbare and one-directional.  The researchers are doing research, and some of that information is making it to teachers -- at least those who are keeping a watch out for it.  Very little information is making it back.  We do research every day into what works and what doesn't in our own classrooms, but rarely does that get documented and reported in a meaningful way back up the research chain.  Highly effective teachers may get recognized with awards or accolades, but how often are these folks given an opportunity to show the rest of us how it's done?  Not nearly often enough would be my answer.

All of that needs to change.

Suggestion #2:

Develop a plan for year-by-year remediation for students that are demonstrating weak foundational skills.  There needs to be methods and practices established for students who aren't operating "at grade level."  We do this for our English Language Learners who arrive at our schools from other countries or regions and don't speak the language fluently.  ELL students often receive resource help and/or alternative programming to assist them in their linguistic readiness.  This needs to occur across years and courses in math as well, and not just for students with identified learning disabilities.  Frequent revisiting of prior learning and reinforcement need to be part of every student's experience.

The anti-testing establishment will likely have a problem with me here, because it requires that we regularly measure student progress and ability.  I want to make a very fine point here: when I test it's to find out what I need to do as a teacher to help kids grow and learn.  That is what I believe the purpose of all testing should be at its root.  Government-issued testing also carries with it the "accountability" element we hear of in the media.  What that really means is that it's an indirect test of the teachers as much as a test of the students.  I'm neither ideologically for nor against this practice.  It all depends on how the information is gathered and used and what impact it has on student learning.

Whether the ongoing testing occurs inside individual classrooms in isolation as designed by one teacher or across entire school jurisdictions as standardized tests, the necessity of monitoring student's ongoing progress in math is vital.  Good assessment serves the learning process, and my goal here would be to identify those students who are starting a year or a course with holes in their skill-sets, steering them to resources that will fill those holes, and thus giving them a chance to be more successful at learning the incoming content.  Test early and act accordingly.

Suggestion #3

Personalize the learning for students as much as possible.  I recognize that this is very challenging, particularly in jr/sr high school where a single teacher can be responsible for the instruction of many dozens of pupils, often for fairly brief periods of time (perhaps a single 8-9 week term or a 16-17 week semester).  A teacher might be responsible for 3 to 6 different courses or grade levels at one time, never mind the total number of students they must attend to.  These, frankly, are all issues in their own right, and likely deserve careful design consideration.  One cannot honestly argue that a single person responsible for the differentiated and individualized instruction of 100+ students is going to be the most likely method for maximizing each student's potential.  Teamwork and collaboration here are minimally necessary.

Within the context of a single class, however, there are ways that teachers can vary learning.  Here are a few that I've either encountered or tried.  Note of course that the context here is a high school setting, so some suggestions may not fit in lower grade levels, and some that would be obvious at a younger grade might be missing.

• Split formative work into multiple levels of difficulty.  Assign each section of work or question a "point value" based on difficulty or time needed to complete.  Have students work toward completing a certain number of points or difficulty levels.  More advanced students could be encouraged to do problems that challenge them more deeply while skipping the "no-brainers." 
• Provide open ended tasks where there are multiple possible solutions and encourage students or groups to find as many as they can.
• Use assessments, formative work, and projects that allow students to show reasoning and work in multiple ways.
• Make use of online and flipped classroom resources (e.g. Khan Academy) to reinforce instruction or challenge more advanced learners.  These resources can also be used to allow students who are capable of accelerated learning to advance more rapidly, potentially freeing them up to work on projects that are more meaningful to their learning styles.
• Model and make use of manipulatives and visual aids in small group settings for learners that are tactile, visual, and or expressive.
• Make use of small group and paired settings for students who are interpersonal learners.  Pairing students who are eager to coach with those who prefer being coached is effective.
• Record lessons, vlogs, tutorials, or problem walk-thrus for students to access independently.  This is especially handy when students are working at home or have missed classes.
• Focus assessment and communication on outcomes and competencies.  When students are demonstrating their learning, responding only with percentages or letter grades doesn't sufficiently communicate where they are missing the goals.  Simply "going over the test" after may not be sufficient.  Structure grading so that it communicates how well students perform at each of the many competencies that might be tested on a particular summative assessment.  Don't just grade the test.  Grade the skills.

Suggestion #4:

 

Eliminate "failure" as a destination.  Reduce size and scope of summative assessments so that they can be generated quickly and repeatedly. Allow students to be as iterative in their math learning as they are in their creative pursuits. 

Suggestion #5:

 

Create "space" in timetabling and school structures for students to be able to complete course work outside of a "normal" time frame.  For example, a student might complete a single unit from a course in a subsequent year rather than repeating an entire course that they did not fully complete.

Suggestion #6:

 

Once students are past a point of being as mathematically literate as they need to be in order to function in everyday society, let students and their parents decide what kind of relationship they want to have with math going forward.  I can't say exactly when this should take place, but I have to think that it's somewhere around 8th or 9th grade.

Not everyone needs to do math.  There I said it.  Whew.  Felt good, but also a little sad.  By the time kids are well and truly into high school, there aren't many of them who don't have a pretty solid pulse on where math fits in their lives.  They might not know what they want to be when they grow up, but they probably have a pretty good idea whether that's going to include math.  If we're doing the kind of job we should be doing leading up to high school, and ensuring that as many kids as possible are reaching their mathematical potential, we'll still have plenty of students pursuing math courses.  If we're going to continue to offer vocational math programs for students who lack strong academic math skills, let's tie those programs in with vocational programming or other courses relevant to these students.  This is a stage where drill-and-kill really does.  Make it real; make it relevant.

Suggestion #7:  

 

Find really cool things to do in school that use Math.  My class builds houses.  Measurement, trigonometry, geometry, surface area, volume, and even a bit of algebra is a lot more worthwhile for both the math-inclined and the not so math inclined.  Naturally, we're not going to have every high school kid build houses.  So find your own houses.  One way to do that is to have your math teachers working directly with your teachers in other subjects.  Find the places where math fits and connect the dots.  No, you won't be able to complete every math objective that way.  But it'll make for a nice break from the everyday.

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Many of these suggestions can be put to use in a typical math classroom.  But many of them speak to the need for structural changes in the ways that schools operate.  If we're going to shake it up... let's shake it all up.

I'm going to offer one last suggestion that's related but not in quite the same vein:

Get high school kids coding.


There are plenty of gamers who want to learn how to make games.  There are plenty of kids who find learning in games to be engaging.  I see a fit here.

TL;DR  There are a bunch of things I think that we can do make math education more effective and meaningful, leaving fewer kids behind.  If you want to know what they are, you'll probably have to actually read the post.

Vive la resistance!

Pit Stop: Math

On the big ol Highway of Revolutionary Education Reform that I have embarked on some 5 blog posts ago, I'd like to take this moment to pull off the road at the next town, maybe grab a bite and a stretch, stock up on Doritos.  Every good road trip needs Doritos.  Let's pay a little visit to Mathville, shall we?

Population: undefined due to zero division

Before getting into it, I want to make a few qualifying declarations: my primary background is in science education.  I'm not a mathematician, and the highest level of math that I've taught formally (so tutoring notwithstanding) is 10th grade.  I can't honestly pretend to have a firm read on the pulse of math education, and attempts to get such a read have been a challenge.

For instance, a common thread in some of the literature I've tried to digest on Math Ed Reform is that research comparing progressive practices frequently involves teachers expertly trained in the methods being researched in the study, compared against control groups with teachers using traditional practices.  No mention is given to the level of expertise of the control groups in their own methodologies (how are we to be certain some of these aren't just generally bad teachers?), nor is a group studied involving teachers receiving a "typical" amount of training that might be offered a rank-and-file teacher through professional development within the context of an existing career.  In other words, I'm not totally sure I trust all the conclusions I read about progressive methodologies or their practical applicability.  Moreover, I don't have to look very far to find conflicting claims (as in the fourth article of this journal) by other research groups or by comparing our methods to those in countries that score well in international math assessments.

Additionally, my perspective is fairly limited to high school math education.  My sense of what's going on in elementary and middle/junior high schools is limited to a cursory appreciation of the curricular objectives, tidbits of professional literature, and in experiencing elementary math through the lens of a parent with kids in primary school (grade 6, grade 2, and grade 1, with a fourth kiddo still bumping around in diapers).

So now that we have established that I don't have much business telling math educators how to do their jobs, why then, would I pick this as a spot to weigh in on math?  A few reasons:

• It's saucy.  What's a revolution without some controversy in it?  I don't think any issue in Ed Reform has gotten more mainstream media screen time than changes in math teaching.  This is especially true across the border where American backlash to their national Common Core standards have received considerable attention and opposition. 

• Math test results evidently carry a lot of weight in the international scene.  Sorry humanities teachers!  The bean counters and politicians don't seem to give a rip if students in China are crushing us in Sonnet Deconstruction, but show them another dip in our annual PISA results and just watch the panic button take another beating.  Debate its merits at your leisure, but it's a pretty entrenched view that a nation good at math is a nation good at money.

• There's no right answer (ironic, hey?).  I have no doubt I'll have some opposing opinions come my way, but no one can definitively say they know what needs to happen in Math Ed within the context of our existing education system.  It was declining scores and lack of math engagement that pushed for reform (which has arguably not worked) in the first place.  Debate me all you like, but proving me wrong is going to be a tall order.

• Just because we don't clearly know WHAT to do, doesn't mean we don't agree that something needs doing.  Math scores are still declining (Alberta is particularly guilty here, and recent pedagogical shifts have come under scrutiny similar to that of the Common Core backlash), math and computer science enrollment has taken a beating, and Canadian students are less likely to take math-related programs than international students studying here.  We are most definitely NOT in an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" head space.

• It is interesting to me partly because some of the most insidious challenges appear to have solutions that require, at least in part, some manner of structural or design changes to the way we educate.  Imagining novel ways for schools to operate is a fun exercise (well... at least for weirdos like me).  Ironically, for all my bluster about the need for ground floor changes in my first post, this is an area where we might need a little help from the bigwigs to get just right.

• It's the area in which I personally diverge in my views most significantly from progressive teaching ideology.  This is not because I don't believe in progressive ideas generally.  I just feel that embracing them in totality is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, at least insofar as math is concerned.  Why that is the case will become clear as I continue.

• I like math, and I like teaching math.  It absolutely kills me to see kids step into my classes on day one having long ago decided that they suck at it, that they hate it, and that they will NEVER get it.  I will also add that getting a kid to turn a 180 on at least that last one is honestly one of the most satisfying things a teacher can experience.

Suffice to say that this is an issue that is near and dear to my heart, regardless of how qualified I am to comment on the subject.  To reiterate: I concede that I am far less qualified than other math educators to offer guidance on this topic.  But it is important enough to me that this post is already pushing 1,000 words, and I haven't even touched on what I think the problems are or what we can do about them.  For that reason, I'm going to split those two ideas into separate posts.

For now, the challenges:

Challenge #1:

 

Math has an incredibly high degree of internal dependency.  Early learning (or lack thereof) is highly determinant of the degree of learning (or lack thereof) in later stages.  A single year of bad math experiences for a student can be enough to derail their outlook on the subject permanently.  There are only two other subject areas (that I can think of) that can compete with math's degree of level dependencies: learning to read (literacy) and second language learning.  The similarity of learning numbers and learning words should not go unnoticed here.

Teachers of other subject areas have tried to debate me on this point, but none of them have even come close to convincing me that their subject areas require the same degree of mastery in prior courses as that of math.  I can learn about plant biology without having first studied chloroplast functions.  Understanding World War II is not critically dependent on understanding the American Civil War.

Challenge #2:

There are a significant number of professionals teaching math who have no formal training in math,  little to no training in math education, and their own negative dispositions toward mathematics.  Linda Pound, in her book Supporting Mathematical Development in the Early Years found this to be both commonplace and measurably impactful on student success in math.

Challenge #3:

 

There is a very pervasive undercurrent of thought that some kids (some people in fact) simply "can't do math."  A few very specific learning disabilities notwithstanding, this is verifiably false.

Granted, some kids learn at a more rapid pace, but everyone is capable of achieving in mathematics at a fairly high level.  This undercurrent, however, shapes not only our attitudes about teaching and learning but also the curricular structures in math as well.  By high school, we separate the kids who can from the kids who can't (or won't) and treat the latter as second class citizens, further reinforcing their attitudes about the subject by imposing trivial and anesthetizing objectives.

Challenge #4:

 

This one has endured a while:  Technology has the ability to stand in for foundational math skills and reasoning.  When a kid grabs a calculator to do 5 x 6, it has the potential to be far more detrimental than a failure to reinforce the memory of one small square on the multiplication table.  It eventually strips away the meaning of what it is to multiply.  If I don't understand what multiplication IS, later when I need to calculate area or volume, or isolate for a variable in algebra, the calculator isn't going to tell me when I should be performing that operation instead of dividing or adding.  Too often, I have seen students blindly pecking away at their calculators hoping that an answer will magically appear without any clue whatsover as to why they are pressing the buttons in the first place.  And the worst part of it all is that I frequently see math resources (textbooks) and instruction that explicitly reinforces this broken pedagogy.  When technology moves beyond simply being a tool for efficiency and instead becomes something akin to magic, progress in math becomes seriously impaired.

Number sense is one of the most fundamentally critical components of math learning, and it has been utterly eroded by little mechanical boxes and, more recently, the dulcet tones of Siri, who will cheerfully answer my math questions without my needing to think OR type.  (By the way, if you've never asked her what zero divided by zero is, you're going to want to give that a go.)

Challenge #5: 

 

The spectrum of math ability among students, particularly in high school, can be vast.  One size-fits all models of instruction and assessment only serve the slice of students roughly in the middle of the ability scale.  Advanced students go unchallenged to seek out their genuine potential, while weak students are further outpaced and marginalized. 

Challenge #6:

 

Progressive learning models applied in math have received highly mixed reviews, show conflicting (or no) empirical data with regards to efficacy, and resist incorporation with other advanced learning models. Inquiry-based models and discovery learning can be highly engaging to already skilled learners, but can reach a ceiling with students who do not have a fully developed library of tools with which to approach the inquiry.

I recently visited High Tech High in San Diego, where I witnessed not only the deepest foray into progressive teaching and school design I have ever seen, but also (by far) the most effective.  This school was recently the subject of a tremendously interesting documentary, Most Likely to Succeed, and I cannot adequately express the importance of seeing this film if you are a high school teacher wondering what else school might look like.

While there, I had the good fortune of meeting with math teachers and observing classes in action.  There, teachers articulated the challenges of including math in cross-curricular project-based learning (PBL).  The most significant of these challenges was that projects that had to be married with other disciplines were limited in terms of how far the math could be taken before they simply outstripped the meaningful connections with the other subject.  Additionally, there was the significant challenge of exhibiting (a crucial component of PBL) projects to a public audience who does not have a similar level of understanding or appreciation for the subject matter.

That said, among the activities that I saw kids undertaking at HTH was good old fashioned worksheets.  When I asked one student about her experiences, she described it this way: "our major project uses a lot of what we're doing in math, but some things we just have to do the 'old-fashioned way.' I actually like it, though, because it's the one time of day where we don't have think about this huge project that's going to happen weeks from now.  I can focus on this one small thing for a little while and it's not so overwhelming."  Ironic that in her school it's the math class where she goes to escape the overwhelming.

Challenges 5 & 6 Taken Together:

 

Traditional "Drill & Kill" models are not effective in the cultural environment of North America (and many other western countries).  Progressive models, however, have failed to prove themselves to be the superior alternative.  Either a third model that hybridizes the best of the two or some completely new paradigm entirely is required.

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That is by no means an exhaustive list of the difficulties facing math education.  They are the most pressing ones, however, that I feel I can frame an agenda for what direction I'd like to see math education take, both for me as a teacher and for my own kids as learners.


Next up, what we might do about it all.

TL;DR: Math is a big deal.  It's self-dependent, sometimes poorly taught and supported, challenging for kids once they get off track, impaired as much by technology as helped by it, traditionally serving only the median, and progressively serving only the gifted, and it still needs fixing after at least 30 years of apparently needing fixing.

Vive la resistance?