We are surrounded by statistics every day.
Statistics mislead us, both in the way they are used and in the analysis of the problems; sometimes misleading is exactly what the decision makers want to happen.
Advertisers use them to pitch products to the likely buyers (car ads always have models to attract men, happy women doing laundry, kids devouring beautifully prepared and presented meals, etc.
).
Politicians use them for all those ratings of unseen few people who "statistically" represent the total population.
Researchers use them to prove their theories with the results they get.
After all, those graduates of advanced psychology and mathematics have to make a living somehow.
The problem is when we apply numbers, static concepts, to represent a fluid process of growth, development and skills mastery.
The methods of evaluating schools may seem reasonable, but there are many questions in what and how we do evaluations.
Underneath all the statistics and arguments is money: whose is spent in what way and for what results.
Evaluating school is all about accountability for money spent.
But are we making the correct people accountable? An example from a school where I taught showed that scores of black males and females were lower than scores of white males and females.
The "accepted" interpretation was that the scores were a racial issue (I never figured out how color made any difference at all, but I gave up with public opinions a long time ago).
But was it really a racial issue? No one asked that question.
Since I had taken enough statistics to ask difficult questions, I asked them.
The school was located in a middle class white neighborhood; for racial equity, minorities were bused in.
Everyone knows that zoning requirements help create neighborhoods.
The students came from homes that couldn't afford those big lots and minimum square footage homes.
The students came from the poor inner city neighborhoods.
Was it an issue of race or of conditions and environments caused by poverty? At the same school, students were "tracked" into classes of heterogeneous performing students, but still identical instructional pacing was required.
Those in the "slower" track had more students in each class.
Guess where most of the behavior problems were? Why? Because most of those students couldn't read well and had no foundation for the concepts they were required to abstractly use in novel conditions alien to their life experiences.
High achievement (uniformly white students) received accolades and teachers of low-achieving students were criticized and devalued.
Decades ago, a county statistician presented some information at a teacher professional development.
He said that when more than half of students mastered specific skills, the bar was raised so the "grade level" requirements become more demanding.
Practically speaking, the way this has translated into education is that now kindergarten teachers are now teaching first grade reading skills because enough preschoolers had learned reading readiness skills.
What are we testing? Content (information) depends on language proficiency and reasoning ability, both of which are developmental skills.
When either is delayed or incomplete due to environmental or natural factors, "grade level" skills are incomplete or missing.
We have known since the 1960s and 1970s that language is critical for instruction and that children of poverty and their parents (who presumably teach language to their children) have language deficits.
But schools assume oral language is intact and don't teach oral language skills.
Standards are, theoretically, developed by teams of educators, but who are they? Are they administrators, university personnel, or practicing teachers with daily contact with a diverse or high-achieving student body? My experience is that the individuals who volunteer for such tasks are those who teach higher achieving students and have more energy left at the end of a day, week or school year.
They are chosen because their students are high achievers and are district role models.
Those students were certainly not like any I ever taught.
I have many questions about our statistical evaluation process.
Can achievement be quantified adequately? Multiple choice answers allows for random guessing that artificially inflates scores.
On a state reading test, one of my 6th grade students who didn't even recognize the alphabet scored higher than students who legitimately read at the 5th grade level.
Teachers are responsible to present material in meaningful ways to students.
They are responsible to manage behavior and have appropriate classroom discipline.
But who is actually responsible for learning what is taught? How can a teacher force a student to learn? Why should student performance determine consequences for teachers when there are none for the students?
Statistics mislead us, both in the way they are used and in the analysis of the problems; sometimes misleading is exactly what the decision makers want to happen.
Advertisers use them to pitch products to the likely buyers (car ads always have models to attract men, happy women doing laundry, kids devouring beautifully prepared and presented meals, etc.
).
Politicians use them for all those ratings of unseen few people who "statistically" represent the total population.
Researchers use them to prove their theories with the results they get.
After all, those graduates of advanced psychology and mathematics have to make a living somehow.
The problem is when we apply numbers, static concepts, to represent a fluid process of growth, development and skills mastery.
The methods of evaluating schools may seem reasonable, but there are many questions in what and how we do evaluations.
Underneath all the statistics and arguments is money: whose is spent in what way and for what results.
Evaluating school is all about accountability for money spent.
But are we making the correct people accountable? An example from a school where I taught showed that scores of black males and females were lower than scores of white males and females.
The "accepted" interpretation was that the scores were a racial issue (I never figured out how color made any difference at all, but I gave up with public opinions a long time ago).
But was it really a racial issue? No one asked that question.
Since I had taken enough statistics to ask difficult questions, I asked them.
The school was located in a middle class white neighborhood; for racial equity, minorities were bused in.
Everyone knows that zoning requirements help create neighborhoods.
The students came from homes that couldn't afford those big lots and minimum square footage homes.
The students came from the poor inner city neighborhoods.
Was it an issue of race or of conditions and environments caused by poverty? At the same school, students were "tracked" into classes of heterogeneous performing students, but still identical instructional pacing was required.
Those in the "slower" track had more students in each class.
Guess where most of the behavior problems were? Why? Because most of those students couldn't read well and had no foundation for the concepts they were required to abstractly use in novel conditions alien to their life experiences.
High achievement (uniformly white students) received accolades and teachers of low-achieving students were criticized and devalued.
Decades ago, a county statistician presented some information at a teacher professional development.
He said that when more than half of students mastered specific skills, the bar was raised so the "grade level" requirements become more demanding.
Practically speaking, the way this has translated into education is that now kindergarten teachers are now teaching first grade reading skills because enough preschoolers had learned reading readiness skills.
What are we testing? Content (information) depends on language proficiency and reasoning ability, both of which are developmental skills.
When either is delayed or incomplete due to environmental or natural factors, "grade level" skills are incomplete or missing.
We have known since the 1960s and 1970s that language is critical for instruction and that children of poverty and their parents (who presumably teach language to their children) have language deficits.
But schools assume oral language is intact and don't teach oral language skills.
Standards are, theoretically, developed by teams of educators, but who are they? Are they administrators, university personnel, or practicing teachers with daily contact with a diverse or high-achieving student body? My experience is that the individuals who volunteer for such tasks are those who teach higher achieving students and have more energy left at the end of a day, week or school year.
They are chosen because their students are high achievers and are district role models.
Those students were certainly not like any I ever taught.
I have many questions about our statistical evaluation process.
Can achievement be quantified adequately? Multiple choice answers allows for random guessing that artificially inflates scores.
On a state reading test, one of my 6th grade students who didn't even recognize the alphabet scored higher than students who legitimately read at the 5th grade level.
Teachers are responsible to present material in meaningful ways to students.
They are responsible to manage behavior and have appropriate classroom discipline.
But who is actually responsible for learning what is taught? How can a teacher force a student to learn? Why should student performance determine consequences for teachers when there are none for the students?