The Treasure Hunter

When I first read the news story in the NY Times that makes up most of today’s post, I loved it.  It makes good points about the problems of using data to judge the effectiveness of doctors and teachers. However, when I read it again today, I realized that it does not go far enough–especially in reference to teachers.  The last paragraph really disappointed me in calling for “more targeted measures” rather than advocating for abandoning measurement altogether.  So, I decided to write a new concluding paragraph explaining what would be a better way to evaluate doctors and teachers, who–by the way– are not machines in “industries” but complicated human beings.

Two of our most vital industries, health care and education, have become increasingly subjected to metrics and measurements. Of course, we need to hold professionals accountable. But the focus on numbers has gone too far. We’re hitting the targets, but missing the point.

Through the 20th century, we adopted a hands-off approach, assuming that the pros knew best. Most experts believed that the ideal “products” — healthy patients and well-educated kids — were too strongly influenced by uncontrollable variables (the sickness of the patient, the intellectual capacity of the student) and were too complex to be judged by the measures we use for other industries.

By the early 2000s, as evidence mounted that both fields were producing mediocre outcomes at unsustainable costs, the pressure for measurement became irresistible. In health care, we saw hundreds of thousands of deaths from medical errors, poor coordination of care and backbreaking costs. In education, it became clear that our schools were lagging behind those in other countries.

So in came the consultants and out came the yardsticks. In health care, we applied metrics to outcomes and processes. Did the doctor document that she gave the patient a flu shot? That she counseled the patient about smoking? In education, of course, the preoccupation became student test scores.

All of this began innocently enough. But the measurement fad has spun out of control. There are so many different hospital ratings that more thatn 1,600 medicalceners can now lay claim to being included on a “top 100,” “honor roll,” grade “A” or “best” hospitals list. Burnout rates for doctors top 50 percent, far higher than other professions. A 2013 study found that the electronic health record was a dominant culprit. Another 2013 study found that emergency room doctors clicked a mouse 4,000 times during a 10-hour shift. The computer systems have become the dark force behind quality measures.

Education is experiencing its own version of measurement fatigue. Educators complain that the focus on student test performance comes at the expense of learning. Art, music and physical education have withered, because, really, why bother if they’re not on the test?

At first, the pushback from doctors and teachers was dismissed as whining from entitled and entrenched guilds spoiled by generations of unfettered autonomy. It was natural, went the thinking, that these professionals would resist the scrutiny and discipline of performance assessment. Of course, this interpretation was partly right.

But the objections became harder to dismiss as evidence mounted that even superb and motivated professionals had come to believe that the boatloads of measures, and the incentives to “look good,” had led them to turn away from the essence of their work. In medicine, doctors no longer made eye contact with patients as they clicked away. In education, even parents who favored more testing around Common Core standards worried about the damaging influence of all the exams.

Even some of the measurement behemoths are now voicing second thoughts. Last fall, the Joint Commission, the major accreditor of American hospitals, announced that it was suspending its annual rating of hospitals. At the same time, alarmed by the amount of time that testing robbed from instruction, the Obama administration called for new limits on student testing. Last week, Andy Slavitt, Medicare’s acting administrator, announced the end of a program that tied Medicare payments to a long list of measures related to the use of electronic health records. “We have to get the hearts and minds of physicians back,” said Mr. Slavitt. “I think we’ve lost them.”

Thoughtful and limited assessment can be effective in motivating improvements and innovations, and in weeding out the rare but disproportionately destructive bad apples.

But in creating a measurement and accountability system, we need to tone down the fervor and think harder about the unanticipated consequences.

Measurement cannot go away, but it needs to be scaled back and allowed to mature. We need more targeted measures, ones that have been vetted to ensure that they really matter. In medicine, for example, measuring the rates of certain hospital-acquired infections has led to a greater emphasis on prevention and has most likely saved lives. On the other hand, measuring whether doctors documented that they provided discharge instructions to heart failure or asthma patients at the end of their hospital stay sounds good, but turns out to be an exercise in futile box-checking, and should be jettisoned.

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Measurement is not the proper tool for judging any form of human behavior. Doctors and teachers are not automatons.  They have good and bad days, work under continually changing conditions, make errors and have lucky guesses; all the while trying to have a positve effect on other human beings who are as complex and vulnerable as they are.  The best we can do in assessing the competence of such professionals is to examine the realities of each situation, then choose the best overseers and clients from within and trust their judgments. In medicine those people are the department heads and patients; in education they are the school principals and students.  The results will not be perfect, but they will be better than trying to measure the immeasurable.

Today’s post was contributed by Don Bellairs who is currently living in Switzerland, where he has been learning the language(s) slowly while helping a team from the University of Bern design a political science curriculum for Swiss elementary students.  He is a gifted teacher who is well qualified to respond to my critiques of the student tasks suggested in Appendix B of the Common Core State Standards.

What Dr. Yatvin has done with her post that listed and evaluated the middle school sample tasks for English Language Arts is exactly what the process needs…tweaking suggestions, not frontal assault and generalized condemnation.

As a professional, I appreciate Dr. Yatvin outlining her credentials, especially her capable leadership of the National Council of Teachers of English–of which I have been a member–an organization that should be included in the necessary future modifications of the CCSS design. Perhaps American educators need a grassroots movement to have Dr. Yatvin’s voice added to the group who evaluates the tweaking process?

As I read the poorly written sample tasks provided and Dr. Yatvin’s arguments for and against them, it became apparent that there are ways in which we can ALL contribute to the success of these important reform goals.

First, we need to change the language and the tone in the conversation about tests which have been branded “high stakes” by obstructionists and now reside in the political lexicon with other lightning-rod terms like “pro-life” and “climate change,” used by skillful politicians as code words to incite the ire of uninformed or frightened American citizens.

American public education desperately needs good tests, which are properly administered and responsibly applied to future policy decisions.  Such tests will provide crucial data with which people can improve the schools that we educators provide to America’s taxpayers.  Modifying the existing standards to maximize suitability should always be an objective, but there is no good reason to resist them wholesale. We educators need to recognize and strive to achieve the enormous potential of these challenging standards, not rationalize shortcomings as reasons to abandon them.

It occurs to me that we could crowd-source lesson plan ideas for each of the CCSS standards by encouraging creative teachers to weigh in on how to approach some of the complicated concepts. We could eventually design whole units that could be introduced in teacher prep programs at universities. Long ago I came to believe that the very best part about teaching is the problem-solving with master teachers, people who could easily have run corporations or represented governments but chose instead the humbling profession of teaching in order to let their lives’ work be developing our most important national resource: Good citizens.

Although I concede education credentials and years of experience to Dr. Yatvin, I have been able to teach such difficult pieces as Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!” to deaf high school kids at the Kentucky School for the Deaf; to grades 5-8 combined language arts classes at a private school, Westwind Academy in Mt. Holyoke, MA; to seventh and eighth graders at Clark-Moores Middle School in Richmond, KY; and to seventh graders at Meadow Park Middle School in Beaverton, OR. I have pretty much covered everything that Dr. Yatvin says can’t be covered.

I believe that, if a teacher is creative, he/she can teach quantum physics to kindergarten classes. The nationwide establishment of high standards will take a lot of time and energy to implement, but nothing is better than when we can see and feel education working.  I envision a future when American elementary students learn algebra, philosophy and psychology using age-appropriate, motivational techniques that have been derived, in part, from information we will have gleaned from reaching together for difficult but attainable standards. We sell our students and their teachers short when we proclaim them incapable without first rising to accept this challenge.  We all know 13-year-olds who can not only recognize and distinguish between analogies and allusions, but also can also write and produce movies explaining those distinctions.

Like me, I suspect that may readers are tired of examining the student tasks recomended for specific grades in  the CCSS Appendix B.  Nevertheless, I feel obligated to complete what I started by covering the expectation for students in grades 9-12.   This time, however, I will give examples of only one task in each category because   all the tasks are very much alike in what they ask students to do.  

Grades  9-10:  Only four sample tasks are suggested for reading fictional texts in these grades. Although a different task is specified for each text named, the work expected of students is essetially the same: Analysis. Here’s one of the sample tasks.

Students analyze how the character of Odysseus from Homer’s Odyssey—a “man of twists and turns”—reflects conflicting motivations through his interactions with other characters in the epic poem. They articulate how his conflicting loyalties during his long and complicated journey home from the Trojan War both advance the plot of Homer’s epic and develop themes.

Only one task is suggested for reading informational texts.  It calls for analysis of themes and concepts.

•Students compare George Washington’s Farewell Address to other foreign policy statements, such as the Monroe Doctrine, and analyze how both texts address similar themes and concepts regarding “entangling alli- ances.”

Grades 11- 12 For reading fictional texts six sample performance tasks are suggested. Three of the tasks specify only analysis; the other two add comparing and contrasting to analysis.  Below is one of the tasks that requires both actions.

Students analyze Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote and Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Molière’s Tartuffe for how what is directly stated in a text differs from what is really meant, comparing and contrasting the point of view adopted by the protagonist in each work.

The five sample tasks for informational texts emphasize analysis.  For one of them a summary is required in addition. to analysis.  In all the sample tasks  students are expected to go further by making a judgment on the effectiveness of one or more aspects of the text. Below is the task that seems to me to require the most work.

Students analyze Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, identifying its purpose and evaluating rhetorical features such as the listing of grievances. Students compare and contrast the themes and argument found there to those of other U.S. documents of historical and literary significance, such as the Olive Branch Petition.

As a former high school English teacher my reaction to all these tasks is that they require students to beat each text read to death.  Although analysis may not be beyond most students’ ability at these grade levels–if it is done as a group endeavor led by the teacher– I feel that the tasks are beyond the limits of  students personal engagement.  Most of the documents named  would not be appealing to students when they are first introduced and, certainly, would not hold  their interest through the multi-faceted tasks described.

To end  my critique of  sample high school  tasks, I feel compelled to mention that as a college English major I was never required to examine a text in such depth and detail as required by the above sample tasks  I find it hard to believe that tasks like the ones listed in the CCSS Apprendix B are common in college classrooms today.

In today’s post I will look at the CCSS tasks connected to reading fiction in Grades 6-8. In addition to passing judgment on each task, I will give my reasons for approving or disapproving each one.  Although I have never been labeled an “expert” by any government body, I claim that my 45 years of experience as a teacher of almost all grades, K-12, an M.A. in English, a Ph.D. in Curriculum Development and Applied Linguistics, awards for excellence from the state of Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin, membership in the National Reading Panel, and my position as the 2006-2007 President of the National Council of Teachers of English qualify me, as much as anyone else, to judge the appropriateness of these tasks.

What readers should know about the creation of the CCSS for the English Language Arts is that they were developed by a group of private consultants assembled by state governors, written in secret, and never opened to review by educators or the public. Although several critics have denounced them over the past five years of their existence, the public has been largely unaware of the materials or tasks recommended in the official documents.  A few days ago, I listed the tasks for elementary level students reading non-fiction and marked them for age-appropriateness. However, I failed to explain my judgments. This time I have taken on the fuller responsibility of explaining the reasoning for my judgements.

            Sample Performance Tasks for Stories, Drama, and Poetry

Gr. 6 Students analyze how the opening stanza of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” structures the rhythm and meter for the poem and how the themes introduced by the speaker develop over the course of the text.

Reasonable with support. If the teacher leads this exercise and points out that the changes in rhythm and meter differ over time, students working in small groups should be able to see how the themes develop as the poem progresses.

Gr. 6 Students cite explicit textual evidence as well as draw inferences about the drake and the duck from Katherine Paterson’s The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks to support their analysis of the perils of vanity.

Reasonable as Group Work. Students working in small groups should be able to identify “the perils of vanity” and point out the specific clues that lead to that conclusion.

Gr. 6  Students explain how Sandra Cisneros’s choice of words develops the point of view of the young speaker in her story “Eleven.”

Reasonable. If the teacher gives a couple of examples first, individual students should be able to offer explanations after studying the poem carefully.

Gr. 6  Students compare and contrast the effect Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” has on them to the effect they experience from a multimedia dramatization of the event presented in an interactive digital map analyzing the impact of different techniques employed that are unique to each medium.

Not practical for most classroom situations. I don’t see many classrooms that have the technology needed for this task. I suspect that only students familiar with the technology mentioned could make any judgments about differeint techniques.

Gr.7 Students compare and contrast Laurence Yep’s fictional portrayal of Chinese immigrants in turn-of-the-twentieth-century San Francisco in Dragonwings to historical accounts of the same period (using materials detailing the 1906 San Francisco earthquake) in order to glean a deeper understanding of how authors use or alter historical sources to create a sense of time and place as well as make fictional characters lifelike and real.

Ridiculous. The skills required for this task are far beyond the experience of 7^th graders—or even 12^th graders. They haven’t read and analyzed enough high quality fiction to be sensitive to the creative skills of authors of fiction.

Gr. 7  Students analyze how the playwright Louise Fletcher uses particular elements of drama (e.g., setting and dialogue) to create dramatic tension in her play Sorry, Wrong Number.

Reasonable. This would be suitable for a class discussion if teacher has identified the elements of drama previously.

Gr. 8  Students summarize the development of the morality of Tom Sawyer in Mark Twain’s novel of the same name and analyze its connection to themes of accountability and authenticity by noting how it is conveyed through characters, setting, and plot.

Reasonable for a writing assignment. If the class has practiced this as a whole group discussion for previous novels, individual students should be able to do this task.

Gr. 8  Students analyze Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!” to uncover the poem’s analogies and allusions. They analyze the impact of specific word choices by Whitman, such as rack and grim, and determine how they contribute to the over-all meaning and tone of the poem.

Ridiculous. Students of this age do not have enough experience in recognizing analogies and allusions or understanding the difference between them.

Along with my labels and explanations I must add that I consider the concept of “analysis”  age-inappropriate for middle school students.  My contacts with such students over several years convinced me that few, if any, are ready to go through the time consuming and painstaking process of analysis.  They are far more inclined to make quick judgments based on their initial perceptions.

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I am sorry that this post is two days late. But, actually, that’s a miracle. The work I just completed should have taken me a week. For the first time I went through Appendix B for the English Language Arts which is one of the supplements to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). I had looked at it at the time of the CCSS publication, getting an idea of the texts suggested for grades K-12, but I had never read through the examples of student tasks until now.

What I had hoped to find in going carefully through Appendix B to the CCSS were examples of Informational readings and assignments for students that I could recommend to teachers for use in their classrooms. Unfortunately, both the lists of texts and tasks were too long for me to cover in this format. (Appendix B is 183 pages in length.) To do them all justice I would need to write a book. In addition, I think it would be unfair to mention the titles of only a few of the texts that appear appropriate when so many looked good to me, and I haven’t read any of them. So, what I will do here is to give only the examples of what I consider “age-appropriate ” and “ age-inappropriate” tasks for each grade level by marking each one with an “A” or an “I”. For today, I will cover only the elementary school grades.

Grades K-1

(A) Students identify the reasons Clyde Robert Bulla gives in his book A Tree Is a Plant in support of his point about the function of roots in germination.

(A) Students identify Edith Thacher Hurd as the author of Starfish and Robin Brickman as the illustrator of the text and define the role and materials each contributes to the

(A) Students (with prompting and support from the teacher) read “Garden Helpers” in National Geographic Young Explorers and demonstrate their understanding of the main idea of the text—not all bugs are bad—by retelling key details.

(I) After listening to Gail Gibbons’ Fire! Fire!, students ask questions about how firefighters respond to a fire and answer using key details from the text.

(I) Students locate key facts or information in Claire Llewellyn’s Earthworms by using various text features (head- ings, table of contents, glossary) found in the text.(A) Students ask and answer questions about animals (e.g., hyena, alligator, platypus, scorpion) they encounter in Steve Jenkins and Robin Page’s What Do You Do With a Tail Like This?

(A) Students use the illustrations along with textual details in Wendy Pfeffer’s

From Seed to Pumpkin to describe the key idea of how a pumpkin grows.

(A) Students (with prompting and support from the teacher) describe the connection between drag and flying in Fran Hodgkins and True Kelley’s How People Learned to Fly by performing the “arm spinning” experiment described in the text.

Grades 2-3

(I) Students read Aliki’s description of A Medieval Feast and demonstrate their understanding of all that goes into such an event by asking questions pertaining to who, what, where, when, why, and how such a meal happens and by answering using key details

(A) Students describe the reasons behind Joyce Milton’s statement that bats are nocturnal in her Bats: Creatures of the Night and how she supports the points she is making in the text.

(A)Students read Selby Beeler’s Throw Your Tooth on the Roof: Tooth Traditions Around the World and identify what Beeler wants to answer as well as explain the main purpose of the text.

(A) Students determine the meanings of words and phrases encountered in Sarah L. Thomson’s Where Do Polar Bears Live? such as cub, den, and the Arctic.

(I) Students explain how the main idea that Lincoln had “many faces” in Russell Freedman’s Lincoln: A Photobiog- raphy is supported by key details in the text.

Grades 4-5

(A) Students explain how Melvin Berger uses reasons and evidence in his book Discovering Mars: The Amazing Story of the Red Planet to support particular points regarding the topology of the planet

(I) Students identify the overall structure of ideas, concepts, and information in Seymour Simon’s Horses (based on factors such as their speed and color) and compare and contrast that scheme to the one employed by Patricia Lauber in her book Hurricanes: Earth’s Mightiest Storms.

(A) Students interpret the visual chart that accompanies Steve Otfinoski’s The Kid’s Guide to Money: Earning It, Saving It, Spending It, Growing It, Sharing It and explain how the information found within it contributes to an understanding of how to create a budget

(A) Students explain the relationship between time and clocks using specific information drawn from Bruce Kosci- elniak’s About Time: A First Look at Time and Clocks.

(I) Students determine the meaning of domain-specific words or phrases, such as crust, mantle, magma, and lava, and important general academic words and phrases that appear in Seymour Simon’s Volcanoes

(I) Students compare and contrast a firsthand account of African American ballplayers in the Negro Leagues to a secondhand account of their treatment found in books such as Kadir Nelson’s We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball, attending to the focus of each account and the information provided by each.

(A) Students quote accurately and explicitly from Leslie Hall’s “Seeing Eye to Eye” to explain statements they make and ideas they infer regarding sight and light.

(A) Students determine the main idea of Colin A. Ronan’s “Telescopes” and create a summary by explaining how key details support his distinctions regarding different types of telescopes.

I would appreciate responses from those of you who strongly agree or disagree with any of my opinions on a student task.