StickWithANose

As I’ve noted previously, one of the primary functions of a think tank troll is to not only promote the agenda of the organization and its funders but to also attack its perceived enemies. Yesterday, the Education Sector’s Bill Tucker offered us yet another example of this dynamic in action. Noted educator and critic Alfie Kohn recently published a commentary in Education Week that effectively critiques the ever-growing number of curricular programs being offered by private [often for-profit] organizations to measure and raise student achievement. As someone who has worked with several of these kind of scripted curricula, I find Kohn’s critique to be both accurate and thoughtful. He notes that administrators and policy-makers should ask the following questions about these programs so as to identify reductive curricula that transforms complex learning into ‘drill and kill’ quantification…

What is its basic conception of assessment?

What is its goal?

Does it reduce everything to numbers?

Is it about “doing to” or “working with”?

Is its priority to support kids’ interest?

Does it avoid excessive assessment?

Note Kohn’s last point… “excessive assessment”. It is obvious here and elsewhere in Kohn’s work that he is not against assessment in all forms, just those forms of standardized assessment that kills curiosity and discovery in education and reduces the goals of schooling to the cognitive basement. However, for those whose pay check is dependent on organizations pushing these kind of assessment-based curricula, this outrage must not stand. So, how does Tucker respond?

There’s a real need for healthy skepticism around our nation’s quest to collect and utilize education data to improve and deepen student learning. Complex formulas, such as those used to calculate value-added scores for teachers, need to be open to examination, testing, and improvement over time. Policymakers and educators need to better understand how to interpret and use assessment data, both from statewide summative tests and their own classroom activities. And we need smart policies, practitioners, and even skeptics to help us use better information about student learning to its full potential.

But there’s a big difference between healthy skepticism and denial. Alfie Kohn, writing in Education Week, sits firmly in denial.

If you follow the link offered by Tucker, he is attempting to tar Kohn by linking him to climate change deniers! That’s right… If you do not accept reductive quantitative measures of academic performance that are not very good at doing the job for which they are being used [1][2][3][4], then you are a “Data Denier” akin to the anti-science global climate change deniers. Neat trick, right?