Good test scores - rats

Students must pass the Basic Skills writing test to graduate from a public school in Minnesota. It’s given in 10th grade. The Mankato Area School District tested 557 students this year and produced a roughly 95 percent passing rate.  "Test passing rates high," Mankato Free Press, April 26, 2006.

Now that's a depressing set of numbers. Oh, I am pleased for our teachers and administrators for meeting  a challenge our legislators set out in teaching kids how to write. By anyone's measure, getting 95% of 10th graders to take a test seriously, let alone pass it, is remarkable.

So why do I see a cloud around this silver lining? First, it's damn hard getting a teacher to try a creative approach to teaching writing, especially using technology, when as measured by state testing, they are already doing quite nicely using conventional methods, thank you very much. Teachers in those "lucky" districts with poor performing students must be much easier to get to try new approaches. They might even be desperate enough to try technology.

But more worrisome is what I remember reading in  Collin's book Good to Great a few years ago. Collins warns that one thing that keeps a company from "greatness" is accepting that "good is good enough." Will my district and others like it, consider themselves good enough if a sufficient number of students simply pass state tests?

Yes, basic literacy - reading, writing and math - is important. Memorizing and regurgitating a few bits of cultural literacy on a state test doesn't  really hurt anyone. But what about some other abilities and attributes of a person educated for survival  today? Let's just take three:

• Creative, critical thinking and information problem-solving.
• Ethical decision-making and moral reasoning.
  
• Love of learning.

 I worry that schools will spend far more time getting the final 5% of students passing "the test" rather than developing these 21st century skills in the other 95%. Why? Our state's standards don't acknowledge such skills. And education hasn't designed metrics which will credibly measure such skills.

Is being "good enough" for the state and NCLB really "good enough" for our students?

The Technology Agnostic or When Stories Aren’t Enough

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not. - Eric Hoffer

Whether it is because of a) how God made me, b) how nature engineered me, or c) how Mom potty-trained me, I am more skeptic than believer. This skepticism extends to religion, politics and, especially, to technology use in school. But of course, if you’ve read anything on the Blue Skunk, you’ve guessed this.

Both believer and skeptic are alike in one important way: both think the other is a complete fool. I am always surprised when I post a blog entry or write a column that raises perfectly rational questions about some sacred cow, and then get a slew of emotional responses. (The LWW says I write such things because I like pushing people’s buttons. Maybe.)

Or if you will...

 

Age moves us from left to right on the believer-skepric scale. Yes, even I was once a young, dewy-eyed, newly-hired technology director with mountains to climb, buildings to be networked, a screw driver in hand, and trust in my heart. What happened? What vendor’s broken promise; what project that went over budget; what equipment failure during a critical demonstration; what useless research finding finally broke my sweet, idealistic spirit? Job may well have been able to maintain his faith in Jehovah; I could not maintain my faith in Jobs.

Now I’d never dream of trying to convince a jihadist not to have faith in his virgins, nor separate a political pundit from his bleak cynicism. Such attempts would be fruitless if not immoral. But I will try to persuade as many readers as possible that  as conscientious educators we better serve our students by being skeptics than evangelists.

Yes, share what works. If a technology use engages and motivates students; if it helps make them better communicators or problem-solvers; if it even, heaven forbid, helps them do better on tests, we should document and share these experiences.

“Documentation,” however, needs to be more than a simple story. Stories indeed can be powerful, but stories alone will not persuade us skeptics. And when it comes to things educational, there are more of us born every day – especially among parents and politicians. We need numbers, evidence, bottom-line stuff, and, as my statistician friend likes to remind me, ‘The plural of anecdote is not data.” Sure, tell that cute story about how Janie got all bright-eyed about PowerPoint, but the skeptic will smile and worry about all the other kids in Janie’s class. Cynics know that anomalies make great stories too.  Stories need to be the face of data, the personalization of evidence, the memorable example of a supportable conclusions.

It behooves us all to be technology agnostics, I suppose – neither completely convinced of educational technology’s value nor lack thereof. And in all fairness, we should be library agnostics as well. Although it pains me to say so.

I'm  glad that there are passionate people in education –folks that are excited about not just what they do, but about possibilities as well. People who care enough to have feelings about an issue. Teachers with hope and vision and faith. Believers, if you will. You are, of course, complete fools. But please, stay that way.

Becoming George

In the early 90s when I was working as a high school librarian, my nemesis was the technology director, George. My job was to get as many teachers and students excited about using technology as possible; George's job was keeping everything running smoothly. And the best way to keep things in good order, he firmly believed, was to not let them be used.* George seemed to be continuosly removing software and features and installing controls to lock users out of as much of the computer as possible. (When I once asked him why he removed all but the system fonts on the computers in a lab, he explained that "kids just use the fancy fonts to write dirty words anyway.")

Until this morning, I alway viewed George as my evil twin. But now I think I have become George.

Next year we are giving teachers the option of a laptop computer instead of a desktop computer. My techs want to use DeepFreeze or a similar product on these teacher laptops for security purposes.  When this program is installed, a "clean" copy of the operating system and authorized software is created each time the computer is rebooted. Any teacher-made OS changes or teacher-installed software goes away - including, we anticipate, viruses, spyware and unlicensed/unathorized programs.

And I found myself liking the idea. What's changed?

Probably the main reason that I'm more sympathetic to locking down computers is that their reliabiliy has become so darned important. Attendance will not be taked, grades will not be recorded, bulletins will go unread, parent e-mail will not be received; presentations will not be made; digital films will not be shown; websites will not be shared if the teacher's computer doesn't work. And the list of mission-critical tasks that teachers are using these things gets longer each year.

Even a few years ago if a teacher's computer was unusable or unavailable for a few days, schooling did not end. (It hardly slowed down.) Such is not the case today.

I expect to get grief from teachers when they learn that 'their" new computers are not theirs to ding with at will. And what will be my reply?

1. Were you working at the bank, the insurance office, the law office or any other place of business, you would not have the freedom to install or modify your company computer to suit yourself. You would have access to the programs that help you get your work done. Period. Why should this not hold true in schools?
   
2. We need to stop the use of unlicensed software in the district.
3. We can only protect you (somewhat) from viruses, spyware and other nasties when you are inside our firewalled network. If you use your machine at home or in the coffeeshop, you might very well pick something up that once inside our network would wreak havoc.
4. Our tech staff has enought to do without fixing problems brought about when unathorized software causes system crashes, slow downs or other problems. 

I've always believed that technology policy decisions are best made by as large a group of stakeholders as possible. Our district advisory commitee meets in a couple weeks to discuss this plan. But if they nix the use of DeepFreeze, I may just override them.

I am becoming George. This must be what it feels like to be caught in quicksand - you are completely aware of the situation, but powerless to do anything about the relentless downward pull... 

* Plenty of librarians have a similar theory: the books stay in order on the shelves better if they aren't checked out.