A Sliver of Hope re: Arne Duncan

by Clay Burell

categories: Education Politics, Standardized Tests

Published June 02, 2009 @ 08:39AM PT

From the "I Sat Through an Hour-and-a-Half of Education Wonkery at the Brookings Institution So You Wouldn't Have To" Department:

EdSec Duncan was the guest of honor at a Brookings Institution discussion on May 11. I watched the video last week. He only stayed for about 25 minutes, long enough to give a speech and answer a couple of questions before excusing himself, and leaving his senior advisor to field the tougher questions over the next hour. I wish he'd stayed to answer them himself.

Duncan outlined his four priorities for ed reform, which is old news by now, but still significant.

I'm going to go out on a limb and argue that there's a bit of hope in all the gloom, because a) I do see glimmers; and b) I'm tired of the gloom. Set me straight if you think I'm being a pollyanna.

Here are the first two, straight from the secretary's mouth, followed by commentary. I'll finish the last two in a follow-up.

1. "We must build data systems that measure growth, link student achievement to teacher quality, and tell us whether students are on track to graduate ready for college." "

Duncan notes later that these data systems can also link teachers to their colleges of education.  All of this disturbs the bejeesus out of many of us who think it will "incent" teachers to teach to the test - "down-dumbing the students while up-pumping their scores," as e.e. cummings might put it. It's also a warning shot that colleges of education that don't pump out teachers able to pump up those scores will be punished or shut down, which again disturbs because it "incents" those colleges to stop training teachers, and instead train test-prep coaches. One last bejeesus: students themselves will be incented to either hate school for turning into a Kaplan center, or to conceive of intelligence and learning as getting high grades on tests - or both. The testing and scripted curriculum industries, though, must be feeling tingles up their legs and having visions of sugarplums as they listen to this talk. Merry Christmas to them all.

But that glimmer of hope against this worst- (and, I fear, probable-) case scenario comes in the second priority:

2. "We must improve the quality of standards and assessments so that students are leaving our schools ready to succeed in college and prepare to contribute in the workforce."

Again, scary: national standards can go wrong in a million ways. They can ignore the local profile of student populations that make achieving a standard in, say, a predominantly middle-class, native English-speaking suburb reasonable, but unreasonable in, say, a school or district in an area of high poverty or major refugee populations. They can sacrifice rigor and relevance to political expediency or ideology, as happened in the '90s when national history standards were attempted. Add your own trainwreck below.

But... Duncan has elsewhere fleshed out his idea of "improved" standards in ways similar to Linda Darling-Hammond, emphasizing a desire for "fewer" and "leaner" standards along the lines of Finland and other high-performing countries. If the initiative moves in that direction, and leaves room for local decisions and curriculum choices beyond those "few" national ones, maybe disaster is not a foregone conclusion.

And the inclusion of improved "assessments" alongside "standards" is also good to see - if Duncan's ideas of good assessment are sound. Again, Linda Darling-Hammond's research in best (performance-based) assessment practices around the world would be a great thing to see Duncan promoting with his deep federal pockets. It he does that, then the whole "teach to the test" scenario mentioned above could go from bejeesus - teaching to timed bubble-sheets measuring knowledge of inert data topped off with 20-minute essays written on stupid canned prompts - to hosanna: teaching problem-solving, applying knowledge, and honest-to-god thinking, analyzing, evaluating, and even, god help us, creating.

So we wait and see and - what else can we do, at this point? - hope.

More on priorities three and four soon - and a funny moment of egg-in-the-face on a Brookings "expert" who pooh-poohed technology's promise at the end of that discussion.