What Passes for School Reform: "Value-Added" Teacher Evaluation and Other Absurdities by Alfie Kohn

[proud2BlibKansan]

The less people know about teaching and learning, the more sympathetic they're likely to be to the kind of "school reform" that's all the rage these days. Look, they say, some teachers (and schools) are lousy, aren't they? And we want kids to receive a better education -- including poor kids, who typically get the short end of the stick, right? So let's rock the boat a little! Clean out the dead wood, close down the places that don't work, slap public ratings on these suckers just like restaurants that have to display the results of their health inspections.

On my sunnier days, I manage to look past the ugliness of the L.A. Times's unconscionable public shaming of teachers who haven't "added value" to their students, the sheer stupidity and arrogance of Newsweek's cover story on the topic last spring, the fact that the editorials and columns about education in every major newspaper in the U.S. seem to have been written by the same person, all reflecting an uncritical acceptance of the Bush-Obama-Gates version of school reform.

I try to put it all down to mere ignorance and tamp down darker suspicions about what's going on. If I squeeze my eyes tightly, I can almost see how a reasonable person, someone who doesn't want to widen the real gap between the haves and have-nots (which is what tends to happen when attention is focused on the gap in test scores), might look at what's going on and think that it sounds like common sense.

Unfortunately, the people who know the most about the subject tend to work in the field of education, which means their protests can be dismissed. Educational theorists and researchers are just "educationists" with axes to grind, hopelessly out of touch with real classrooms. And the people who spend their days in real classrooms, teaching our children -- well, they're just afraid of being held accountable, aren't they? (Actually, proponents of corporate-style school reform find it tricky to attack teachers, per se, so they train their fire instead on the unions that represent them.) Once the people who do the educating have been excluded from a conversation about how to fix education, we end up hearing mostly from politicians, corporate executives, and journalists.

more . . . http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alfie-kohn/what-passes-for-school-re_b_710696.html

Alfie Kohn is one of the most respected researchers in education. He has spent 3 decades researching how kids learn and the role incentives and competition play in education. Here is his website: http://www.alfiekohn.org/index.php

[madfloridian]

1. He's right. Obama and Duncan are dismissing views of educators..

and listening only to business people who want a stake in the field of education.

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. One of my favorite Alfie quotes:

We ought to refrain from conducting elaborate, time-wasting discussions about how to stem grade inflation, because the real problem is not the number of students who get A’s but the number who are taught that getting A’s is the point of school.

[maryf]

16. Great quote...

Thanks, teach!

[immoderate]

3. Good stuff. Thanks, p2BK.

--imm

[soleiri]

4. It's been said before

but, can we please replace Arne Duncan with Alfie Kohn?

pleasepleaseplease

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. I doubt Alfie would accept the position

But yes, I'd be thrilled with him in the lead. I've learned more that really works in my classroom from Alfie and Jonathan Kozol than anyone else in the field.

[soleiri]

8. true

but how about we replace Duncan with just about any freaking body else?

Except for Rhee, of course.

I've been downloading articles written by Kohn for the past hour from his website.

I can't wait to read them.

[proud2BlibKansan]

9. I heard Kohn speak years ago and it literally changed me as a teacher

Just that one speech. I've been a huge fan ever since.

I'll never forget one thing he said. The Pizza Hut BookIt program had just started and every elementary classroom in America was participating. The kids read so many books and earned a 'free' pizza. But it turned out the pizza wasn't really free, since you had to buy a regular pizza in the restaurant (no delivery pizzas). The kids I taught were poor and most had never been in a Pizza Hut, plus there weren't any in the neighborhood near our school. So I already had a negative attitude about this program.

Anyhow, Alfie said in that speech that the only thing the Pizza Hut BookIt program was doing was making more fat kids. I LOVED IT. My principal was also there and she went back to school and asked the staff to stop pushing the program and the next year she asked us to consider not even doing it at all.

We absolutely must focus on making kids want to achieve because of intrinsic rewards, not for free pizzas. Whenever my kids ask me what they are going to get for doing something, I say "SMARTER!"

[YvonneCa]

12. I have always been frustrated with the way kids are used...

...to raise money. We'd waste HOURS of valuable teaching time on assemblies about SELLING THINGS...supposedly to help the kids, but it was all about companies using kids as salespeople to benefit companies financially.

We raised money for books, playground equipment, modernization of the campus, school camp...on and on. It was...and still is...a waste of valuable time.

[soleiri]

17. The only fundraiser that we actually liked

was at a local dine-in pizza place, when my son was in middle school.
They held it twice a year and a portion of the proceeds went to the school.
It's a nice night out. It felt like it's more about school spirit than fundraising.
It was nice to connect with other parents outside of the school.
It's also a local place that we go to, anyway.

In H.S., my son's journalism teacher asked for $20 for something to do with the camera that they're using.
I gladly handed over the $20, grateful that we didn't have to do fundraising.

[Hannah Bell]

13. "But it turned out the pizza wasn't really free" = like most corporate charities.

a friend's child is on the dreamers program & they were all supposed to get laptop computers if they made it to college.

well, they did, but they didn't get laptops, they got some cheap faux laptop that couldn't do most of the things a laptop could & weren't suitable for college. so my friend had to buy her kid a laptop.

what do kids learn from such frauds?

not to trust.

[proud2BlibKansan]

14. To this day, Pizza Hut won't deliver in the zip codes where most of our schools are located

If we want to order pizza at school, we need to call and explain the address is a SCHOOL and then they will come. But the people who live there can't order pizza for delivery.

So a couple years ago, a parent asked me why I didn't do the BookIt program. I explained that I felt bribing kids with food was the wrong way to teach them to be lifelong readers. And I asked her why we should promote a corporation that refused to do business in her neighborhood. She was stunned. Didn't even know about the delivery policy.

[Hannah Bell]

15. i didn't know about it either. thanks for the info.

[maryf]

6. K&Rnt

[Panaconda]

7. K&R

[Hannah Bell]

10. kr

[Hissyspit]

11. K&R nt