textbooks

One way of changing education is to change how we assess learning.

This isn't going to be a post about standards, but we need to start with them to get into the center of the discussion (this is not to say that standards are not a subject worthy of close consideration; rather, they are just not the main focus here, today).

• Standards define curricular goals and objectives.
• Textbook companies prepare packaged materials that are "aligned to the standards." These textbooks, in theory, are designed to address the curricular goals and objectives as defined by the standards (and for fun, ask a textbook rep to demonstrate how their texts "align to the standards." Ask them to define the process by which the texts are "aligned to standards." Then, get out the boots, and enjoy the hijinks that will ensue).
• Student learning is measured by a standardized test that claims to assess a student's base of knowledge as measured against the standard.
• The "quality" of a school is determined (in part or in whole) by how students have done on the test. Test results can be a key factor in closing down schools.
• The "quality" of a teacher is determined (and in many of the merit pay schemes, teachers are rewarded or punished) based on student scores on these tests.

So, let's take an enormous, completely unjustifiable leap of faith and assume that the standards actually define something meaningful, for one reason and one reason only: this post is not about standards, it's about assessment.

When a curriculum is defined by a pre-packaged text, teachers and students are relegated to content consumers. Teachers get the text; they deliver the text; they test on the text, and teacher effectiveness is tied to how students perform on the test that purportedly measures how well students "know" the content that has been delivered to them. Any process used to "learn" the material is overshadowed by the means of assessment that defines the experience, and defines one's success or failure within that experience.

It's also worth noting that in lower performing schools, there is more motivation to stick with the "proven" or "traditional" route of using a standards-aligned text, as this provides a level of cover and plausible deniability should a school not meet growth goals. In an environment where sanctions accompany low test scores, using alternative means of working with kids is equated with gambling with kid's futures - unless, of course it's happening under the auspices of TFA, KIPP, or a charter school. Higher performing schools - where socioeconomic level appears to play a role - tend to have more freedom to experiment, largely because the threat of sanctions for "failure" is missing.

This is why serious discussions about assessment are a necessary part of the dialogue around improving education. What would an educational environment look like where, in addition to or instead of a standardized test, students had the opportunity to show their mastery via two portfolios: one defined by the school, and the second defined by the student?

The process of building a portfolio (ie, of crafting the assessment) is also a learning process. Selecting and justifying elements in a portfolio requires a level of critical, reflective thought that is not present in either preparing for or taking current standardized tests. It's a more efficient means of mastering both material and life skills than the assessments that currently claim to measure those skills.

What would teacher professional development look like if a teacher was assessed on how they provided feedback on student work? What if teachers developed professional portfolios that included curriculum they developed, modified, collaborated on, and/or shared? Most teachers create curriculum on a regular basis as workarounds for sections of the text that are weak or not suited for their classroom; what if creating and sharing these units was made an explicit requirement for growth and development as a teacher? What if this ongoing creativity and collaboration was a factor in assessing an educator's professional growth?

These shifts are possible now; they require a change in how we look at assessment, which potentially could inform changes in what and how we teach.

Changing assessment is hard. Generally, more individualized assessment takes more time. From a business place, it's hard to plan a "disruptive" business around this because you can't really streamline the time required for good feedback. The challenge (and therefore the opportunity here) is to make tools that simplify and streamline creating portfolios of work that demonstrate learning. The benefit - especially when compared to other forms of evaluation, and certainly to standardized testing - is that the process of creating and justifying the artifacts that demonstrate learning is also a process that supports and reinforces learning.

But this is a subtle point, and one that is often buried beneath the time required to assess portfolio-based projects versus the time required to process a standardized test. Ironically, the quest for efficiency in assessment has occurred at the expense of efficiency in learning.

In reading through the draft of the National Educational Technology Plan, I like the goals.

As one example, this page contains a graphic titled, "Learning no longer has to be one size fits all."

(Just FYI, the un-clickable link to the Creative Commons license in the above graphic is the work of the technology people behind the technology plan. That's not my doing. The image appears to be licensed under a CC-NC-SA license)

Further down the same page, it reads:

Technology also gives students opportunities for taking ownership of their learning. Student-managed electronic learning portfolios can be part of a persistent learning record and help students develop the self-awareness required to set their own learning goals, express their own views of their strengths, weaknesses, and achievements, and take responsibility for them.

This sounds great, but it just doesn't seem to align with the way that the Common Core standards are being forcibly injected into the educational landscape.

The plan also talks about Open Educational Resources. Secretary Duncan mentions OER's in a speech he gave on March 3, 2010 at the Association of American Publishers annual meeting:

Our commitment to Open Educational Resources includes a commitment to you: that they will be fully open, including open to commercial producers of learning materials who want to add value to these resources and sell enhanced, proprietary versions.

We see this step as both an investment in our students and an opportunity for your industry.

In practical terms, this means that textbook companies will be able to take resources that have been created using public funds, modify them slightly, and voila, the derivative works are no longer freely available. That's a very generous way to subsidize a dying industry. One way of reading this: textbook companies can spend less on developing texts, as they will be able build textbooks using the curriculum and assessments we will pay to get developed as part of Race to the Top/ESEA. Interestingly, as noted earlier in this post, the Department of Education uses the less restrictive Non-Commercial license for its graphics.

So, while the technologist/open source developer/open content advocate in me wants to be excited, the educator in me feels skeptical. The approach to the current Ed policy feels like a series of political calculations, wrapped in the almost obligatory "But think about the children" rhetoric. The actions -- and, more importantly, the funding strategies -- feel misaligned with the stated goals.

In the Executive Summary, it states:

The programs and projects that work must be brought to scale so every school has the opportunity to take advantage of that success.

It's difficult to see how unfunding the National Writing Project -- a program that works, that scales, and supports teachers as they develop resources in their local communities, and has been on the leading edge of technology use -- aligns with this goal.

The rhetoric around education policy has yet to line up with the effects of this policy.

The NY Times has a "news story" on a new reader called the eDGe.

From the second paragraph:

"Now there is a new approach that may adapt well to textbook pages: two-screen e-book readers with a traditional e-paper display on one screen and a liquid-crystal display on the other to render graphics like science animations in color."

This piece is interesting for a couple reasons. First, it's interesting to see this as news, as the piece is really just a PR announcement. Except that it's published in the Times, which I guess makes advertisements news.

But second, it's interesting to see another foray into the world where people attempt to define what textbooks will become. At the risk of oversimplifying things, publishers want to put the next generation of textbooks into a device or format they control, because controlling the device translates into controlling access, and access can be bought and sold. Think the iPhone, but with textbooks.

People, however, want textbooks that they can use when they want, how they want, on whatever device they want. Think the internet.

My money's on the internet.