Six on History: The 'Rona
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1) NYC Public School Parents
Posted: 02 Sep 2021 01:02 PM PDT
"Joint hearings of the City Council Education and Health Committees were held yesterday on DOE's school reopening plan. The assorted officials who testified, including Chancellor Meisha Porter and Dr. Dave Chokshi, NYC Health Department Commissioner, did not appear to reassure many of the Council Members that their plan was well-thought out or strong enough to ensure student safety.
What was also depressing is that the public testimony was dominated by anti-vaxxer teachers, who also called out and disrupted the hearings several times. News reports about the proceedings are here and here
Above is the video of Michael Horwitz, providing abbreviated remarks on behalf of Class Size Matters. The video of the entire session is here.
Here and embedded below is our full testimony with our detailed critique of DOE's school reopening plan."
- Our education (K-college) is excessively focused on getting right answers, rather than promoting creative responses.
- An overemphasis on standardized testing negatively impacts our creativity.
- The kinds of questions we're asked in school severely limits our creative output.
For much of our lives, we are predisposed to look for a single solution to a single problem (e.g., What is 2 + 2? What is the state capital of North Dakota? Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?). We have been “brainwashed” to think that for every problem, there is one, and only one, way to solve that problem. Much of our educational experiences have been focused on learning the right answers to pre-established questions. Seldom have we been offered the opportunity to consider that there might be a multitude of potential responses to any problem. The “one-problem, one-answer” syndrome has been thoroughly ingrained into almost every educational curriculum, irrespective of grade level or subject matter.
Sir Ken Robinson put this all into perspective when he wrote, “…too often our educational systems don’t enable students to develop their natural creative powers. Instead, they promote uniformity and standardization. The result is that we’re draining people of their creative possibilities and… producing a workforce that’s conditioned to prioritize conformity over creativity.” In short, our educational system is focused more on getting the right answers (thinking inside the box) than on promoting creative possibilities (thinking outside the box).
What are the ramifications?The implications can be staggering. Logic supports the notion that an excessive focus on a one-right-answer mentality forces us into a “don’t take any risks” mindset. This obsession with getting the right answer (a proven consequence of an over-emphasis on standardized testing) conditions us not to take chances… it teaches us not to be creative. That’s because when we make too many mistakes, we get a low test score. Get a low score, and you may deprive yourself of a college education (as a result of your SAT scores), a chance at graduate school (via your GRE scores), or an occupational advancement (via your score on the LSAT [law school] exam, MCAT [medical school] exams, or PAPA [teacher certification assessment], for example).
Michael Roberto, in his book Unlocking Creativity, further cements this view when he states, “Our schools [are] discouraging creative students in a variety of ways. A stream of research has shown that teachers claim to value qualities such as independent thinking and curiosity, yet they reward behaviors such as obedience and conformity.” As an educator for more than 50 years, that concerns me!
Because of the prevalence of exams in our lives (it has been estimated that students take nearly 2,500 tests, quizzes, and exams during their school years, grades K-12), we have a tendency to stay in a comfort zone: a focus on right answers. Occasionally, we may be asked to voice a creative response in class (“What do you think are some of the long-range consequences of our current trade policy with China?”), but are hesitant to do so on the belief that the teacher may be looking for a specific and particular response. Perhaps our creative answer is not the one the teacher was looking for. We may have stepped outside the bounds of what was expected and into the territory of the unknown.
The objective of most classroom lessons often becomes: Right answers get rewarded; innovative or inventive responses are frequently censured. In short, we are creating a generation of factual masters and a decided dearth of creative thinkers.
How to enhance your personal creativityFortunately, there are ways we can boost creative thinking at any age.
1. Ask the right questions.On a Zoom meeting, a conference call, monthly department meeting, or any other kind of group discussion, try to avoid asking the following questions: “What is the answer?” or “What is the solution?” By posing those queries, you are severely limiting a multiplicity of responses simply because the group is now focused on finding the answer or the solution… rather than on generating a vast array of potential answers or solutions. More appropriate questions might include, “What are some possibilities here?”; “How many different ways can we look at this?”; or “What are some of the impediments we have to overcome?” In short, ask questions for which there may be a wide variety of responses, rather than questions that limit the number or type of responses.
Convincing research has overwhelmingly demonstrated that we tend to think based on the types of questions we are asked [emphasis added]. (Incidentally, during your educational career, you were asked approximately 400 classroom questions a day, or roughly 72,000 questions during any school year. There’s an abundance of data to show that about 80 percent of those questions were literal or simple recall questions.) Thus, if we ask questions for which there is the expectation of a single “correct” answer, that’s all we’ll get. On the other hand, if we pose questions that naturally generate a multiplicity of responses, then the collective creativity of the group is enhanced considerably.
2. Work backward.Imagine writing a press release for a brand-new product long before you have even begun to design that product. Well, that’s what the folks at Amazon do. When they conceive a new product, the team sits down and drafts a full and complete press release for that product as their initial step. What are the most compelling features of the new product? What are the most significant values of the new product to consumers? What is their primary audience, and how will they target the new product to that audience? What benefits will customers get from the new product? Enormous time and energy are devoted to crafting a compelling press release long before (months or years) the product is ever ready for the marketplace.
In short, product developers must travel into the future and imagine the day the product is released to the public. Then, they are tasked with moving backward in time to conjure up the steps (in reverse order) that will be necessary to make that press release a reality. Backward thinking offers a new reality. A study in 2004 conclusively proved that when participants were tasked with completing a project from back to front (rather than the more logical front to back), they achieved higher levels of creativity. The researchers noted that participants were forced to utilize abstract, high-level, and conceptual thinking rather than logical, concrete, and time-worn thinking."
References
Kathryn Haydon. “When You Say You’re Not Creative…” Psychology Today.com (January 4, 2019). (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/adventures-in-divergent-thinkin…).
Ken Robinson. Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative. (New York: Wiley, 2011).
Robert J. Sternberg and T.I. Lubert. Defying the Crowd: Cultivating Creativity in a Culture of Conformity. (New York: Free Press, 1995).
Teaching Learning Technology, 290 Hagedorn Hall / 119 Hofstra University / Hempstead, NY 11549
(P) 516-463-5853 (F) 516-463-6196, Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlanJSinger1, Webpage: https://alansinger.net/
"With fall fast approaching and the expectation that the majority of U.S. students will once again be learning in-person full-time, the need to reacclimate students to being in school is top-of-mind for many districts nationwide. For many students, the COVID-19 pandemic took a significant personal toll not just on their school and social lives, but on their family lives as well, with loss and illness coupled with changes in employment and housing leaving social-emotional needs that must be addressed.
Additionally, schools must consider giving extra attention to safety, supports for students with disabilities and more as buildings once again open their doors full-time.
To help you get up to speed, we've gathered a selection of recent coverage below for your convenience.
- Tiered supports in special education can help address crisis recovery in reopeningsBy Kara Arundel • July 20, 2021
Multi-tiered systems of support can improve interventions for students, staff and families, said Office of Special Education Programs conference panelists. Read the full article ➔
- Supporting students' emotional needs in the return to school By Lauren Barack • June 2, 2021
A middle school educator advocates for making space for icebreaker activities as students return to full-time, in-person learning. Read the full article ➔
- 3 strategies for improving school safety amid classroom returns By Naaz Modan • April 22, 2021
School violence often increases after long breaks, but as students return to in-person learning, administrators can take steps to prevent it. Read the full article ➔
- 8 ways a year of dueling crises is shaping the future of K-12 schools By Roger Riddell, Kara Arundel, Naaz Modan • March 10, 2021
The impacts of a pandemic disrupting school from the ground up and the nation's reckoning with systemic racism will be felt for years to come. Read the full article ➔
- 3 strategies for helping students in crisis return to school By Kara Arundel • March 9, 2021
Response plans and evidence-based de-escalation techniques can better support struggling students compared to punitive measures, experts say. Read the full article ➔
"A while back, I read a vitriolic article in a rightwing publication that expressed contempt for the public schools and congratulated Betsy DeVos for trying to cut federal funding for schools.
The article asserted that public schools are “garbage” and the government should slash their funding. A major piece of evidence for the claim that money doesn’t matter was the failure of the Obama administration’s School Improvement Grants program, which spent more than $3 billion and accomplished nothing. The evaluation of SIG was commissioned by the U.S Department of Education and quietly released just before the inauguration of Trump. The report was barely noticed. Yet now it is used by DeVos acolytes to oppose better funding of our schools.
The wave of Red4Ed teachers’ strikes in 2019 exposed the woeful conditions in many schools, including poorly paid teachers, lack of nurses and social workers and librarians, overcrowded classrooms, and crumbling facilities. The public learned from the teachers’ strikes that public investment in the schools in many states has not kept pace with the needs of students and the appropriate professional compensation of teachers. Many states are spending less now on education than they did in 2008 before the Great Recession. They reacted to the economic crisis by cutting taxes on corporations, which cut funding for schools.
Sadly, the Obama-Duncan Race to the Top program promoted the same strategies and goals as No Child Left Behind. Set goals for test scores and punish teachers and schools that don’t meet them. Encourage the growth of charter schools, which drain students and resources from schools with low test scores.
One can only dream, but what if Race to the Top had been called Race to Equity for All Our Children? What if the program had rewarded schools and districts that successfully integrated their schools? What if it had encouraged class-size reduction, especially in the neediest schools? Race to the Top and the related SIG program were fundamentally a replication and extension of NCLB.
When Arne Duncan defended his “reform” (disruption) ideas in the Washington Post, he cited a positive 2012 evaluation and belittled his own Department’s 2017 evaluation, which had more time to review the SIG program and concluded that it made no difference. The 2017 report provided support for those who say that money doesn’t matter, that teacher compensation doesn’t matter, that class size doesn’t matter, that schools don’t need a nurse, a library, a music and arts program, or adequate and equitable funding.
The Education Department’s 2017 evaluation shows that the Bush-Obama strategy didn’t made a difference because its ideas about how to improve education were wrong. Low-performing schools did not see test-score gains because both NCLB and RTTT were based on flawed ideas about competition, motivation, threats and rewards, and choice.
Here is a summary of the SIG program in the USED’s report that the Right used to defend DeVos’s proposed budget cuts.
The SIG program aimed to support the implementation of school intervention models in low-performing schools. Although SIG was first authorized in 2001, this evaluation focused on SIG awards granted in 2010, when roughly $3.5 billion in SIG awards were made to 50 states and the District of Columbia, $3 billion of which came from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. States identified the low-performing schools eligible for SIG based on criteria specified by ED and then held competitions for local education agencies seeking funding to help turn around eligible schools.
SIG-funded models had no significant impact on test scores, high school graduation, or college enrollment…
The findings in this report suggest that the SIG program did not have an impact on the use of practices promoted by the program or on student outcomes (including math or reading test scores, high school graduation, or college enrollment), at least for schools near the SIG eligibility cutoff. In higher grades (6th through 12th), the turnaround model was associated with larger student achievement gains in math than the transformation model. However, factors other than the SIG model implemented, such as unobserved differences between schools implementing different models, may explain these differences in achievement gains.
These findings have broader relevance beyond the SIG program. In particular, the school improvement practices promoted by SIG were also promoted in the Race to the Top program. In addition, some of the SIG-promoted practices focused on teacher evaluation and compensation policies that were also a focus of Teacher Incentive Fund grants. All three of these programs involved large investments to support the use of practices with the goal of improving student outcomes. The findings presented in this report do not lend much support for the SIG program having achieved this goal, as the program did not appear to have had an impact on the practices used by schools or on student outcomes, at least for schools near the SIG eligibility cutoff.
What NCLB, Race to the Top, and SIG demonstrated was that their theory of action was wrong. They did not address the needs of students, teachers, or schools. They imposed the lessons of the non-existent Texas “miracle” and relied on carrots and sticks to get results. They failed, but they did not prove that money doesn’t matter.
Money matters very much. Equitable and adequate funding matters. Class size matters, especially for children with the highest needs. A refusal to look at evidence and history blinds us to seeing what must change in federal and state policy. It will be an uphill battle but we must persuade our representatives in state legislatures and Congress to open their eyes, acknowledge the failure of the test-and-punish regime, and think anew about the best ways to help students, teachers, families, and communities.
The findings of the report were devastating, not only to the SIG program, but to the punitive strategies imposed by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, which together cost many more billions.
"I don’t know what most of the kids in my grade look like. I’ve never gone to a high school dance. My last “regular” school year began in the fall of 2018; that was seventh grade. This week, I start 10th grade.
I have watched many movies about high school. Not one was about a kid eating by themselves at a desk while another student six feet away also eats alone. And I’ve yet to see a movie about students who are only allowed into school every other day.
On a Friday in March 2020, my French teacher looked up from her computer and said we wouldn’t be coming to school on Monday. My first thought was, I hope this lasts for two weeks instead of just one. I could use a vacation.
This past school year I was scheduled to attend school in-person every other day between September and April. But there was not a lot of consistency. School sometimes would go virtual for a few days, a teacher would be out, or schedules would change because of positive coronavirus cases or exposures, or updated regulations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, state or school district.
My in-person school days started with me putting on the mask that I would wear until 4 p.m. I got on the bus at 6:46 a.m. Even in a Massachusetts winter, my bus still had to have all the windows open. I was not allowed to sit with anyone, so I listened to Spotify to pass the time.
My first class began with the national anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance over the PA system, and then the speaker would remind me to sanitize and wash my hands.
Classes were quiet. I don’t think anyone knew how to act. There was no chatter before or after class, just silence. We didn’t have lockers and we weren’t allowed to hang out in the hallways. There were school officials stationed around the building to make sure we complied.
More than once I would be looking forward to seeing a friend but would get to school and that person wouldn’t be there. Those who tested positive for the virus, or were close contacts of someone who had, had to either quarantine or show negative tests to come back to school.
If a teacher had to stay home, I had to spend that class period in study hall instead. A few times there were so many teachers out that more study hall space had to be created to accommodate all the students whose classes were missing a teacher.
I went back in person full time in April. A friend and I made a bet about how many coronavirus cases there would be in the first week. I won. I guessed there would be at least 15 cases. We hit that by Wednesday. Fortunately, cases dropped after a few weeks.
That first day with all students back, the number of people in the building doubled, class sizes doubled, and space between desks halved. This followed all COVID-19 protocols, but it was still scary. Going to school meant the possibility of getting seriously ill. The good thing was the eerie silence in the building disappeared. Talking was back.
The COVID-19 pandemic has robbed me of memories. I worked so hard in eighth-grade French class, and it took away my spring class trip to Quebec. It canceled my eighth-grade graduation trip to Washington. I didn’t get a proper middle school graduation.
Losing the chance to make those memories was awful, but the day-to-day protocols in high school felt worse.
At robotics, I had to space six feet out from my teammates while working on a robot that was 18 inches tall and wide. One person would go to the robot and the others would step away. Jazz band rehearsal took up the entire auditorium — we weren’t allowed to sit next to one another, so we had to spread out to play.
I wasn’t allowed to high-five other teammates at cross-country practice after a long run or challenging workout. At the beginning of softball season, I had to wear a mask underneath my catcher’s helmet.
Hanging out with friends was entering the local cafe two at a time, ordering a muffin, walking to the town commons, and eating while sitting in a circle six feet apart from one another.
I am not anti-mask or anti-vaccine. I know life can go back to when there was no fear of getting sick, no masks and no social distancing. We have vaccines that allow for this.
I’m about to return to school in person every day, hopefully for the entire school year. As of now my school is not mandating vaccines, but my state just required that masks be worn indoors until at least Oct. 1. For now, the only certainty I have about my sophomore year is that the rules will keep on changing.
Adults tell me that the way my generation is handling the pandemic is inspiring. That’s a wonderful compliment. But I’d rather have my regular life back."
Sidhi Dhanda is about to start her sophomore year at Hopkinton High School in Hopkinton, Mass.
