One day without mandated outcomes

I was recently involved in a session about creativity in the classroom.  The presenter brought forth the fallacies with common and traditional assessment.  After lots of discussion, case studies, videos, and examples of alternate assessment and instruction the session ended.

First off, I have to say that the staff that participated was amazing!  The open minds, deep conversations and already exemplary teaching styles were quite evident.  However, nothing made me more amazed than the comment the principal said at the end of the session.  After the applause to the presenter, the thank yous and handshakes the principal stood up, looked at his staff and said:

“Imagine if you were driving down the highway in a brand new 2011 Mustang.  The cops have all been called away from the road, the deer have been contained, and all other drivers are giving you the full road to explore and try out this new car”

“Ummm…ok” said a teacher in the crowd

The principal paused then started again

“Now let’s take this to a classroom.  One day next week, let’s pretend there are no final exams, no unit tests, no marks to update, no mandated curriculum, and no one from Alberta Education to tell you what to teach.  Take one day and let your students explore their own learning.  Using the taught strategies in this session, open the “learning” doors for students and just let them discover something that as meaning to them”.

If hugging was socially acceptable I would have given this administrator the biggest one ever.  Driving home, I thought of “What would schools look like if all administrators gave this chance to their teachers?  What if every day was this special day?  What if the needs of the students overpowered the needs to teach the curriculum?

I hope all his staff follow through with his directive and truly allow for authentic and autonomous learning to occur, if only for one day.

Awesome job Mr. Principal, I have found another individual who I would feel honored to call my boss!

Why are we being told what to think?

Many educators have asked the following question, and now I will as well; how did we ever come to believe that the bureaucrats, in a government office, should tell our children what to think?

To challenge this belief, educators will have to become innovators and show students that there is more knowledge than just what is required to know for a test. 

We need to realize that students can teach themselves far more superior than any teacher ever could.  For most tasks, it much more important that the students “discover” the knowledge rather than being told of meaningless facts or algorithms.  When we push or force certain ideas onto students we might be actually teaching them to hate the intended outcomes instead of learning it.  For example, we can’t teach students to be creative but we sure can destroy creativity.

In its current paradigm, schools are producing compliant citizens who will have anticipated and controlled thoughts.  Students who stand up and ask “why” are labelled as insubordinates or trouble makers, and most likely are put in an alternate learning environment.  Those who follow all the rules given to them, complete school with the highest marks, and never question authority are not the learners we want in a country.  When a practical problem presents itself, to these students, they will seem lost and confused. 

“I’m 25 years old and have two college degrees.  I don’t know how to do anything.  I don’t know how to do anything at all.  If the fan belt of my car broke in a snowstorm out in country I’d freeze to death reciting the goddamn Pythagorean theorem” – Student who spoke up at a John Gatto speech.

The reason this is happening is due largely to the fact that the student, who has the highest marks, is usually learning information that another person deems necessary.  This information does not come in small controllable chunks but actually in large (sometimes in the 1000s) specific outcomes a teacher must cover.  To assure students achieve success, we must also assign work to be completed outside of school, so that these high end students don’t have a minute to explore anything they may have a passion or interest for. 

Students are leaving our schools with their curiosity destroyed.  Anytime they wanted to explore an idea further, they are reminded, by the leader of the class, that this is neither the time nor place to do so.  Also, don’t forget the mass amounts of work to be completed outside of school; we should be asking “When is the appropriate time and place?”

We need to start realizing that our focus should be on passions, interests, creativity, and curiosity; if there is time after…..then we can focus on the mandated outcomes.

Mandated outcomes and truth behind high stakes exams

I listened to David Berliner’s keynote address at MACTE (Michigan Association of Colleges for Teacher education).  I found myself nodding in agreement throughout his speech.

Part 1 here

Part 2 here

Part 3

 “The narrowing of the US curriculum, especially among the working class and the poor, even as the American people say they do not want this and it works against the best interest of American Industry”

I feel the same way about the curriculum in my province.  Teachers are given scripts to follow so that the bureaucrats, many of whom do not teach anymore, can say “We know students are learning something”.  What they feel to realize is that the scripts are more limiting and constraining the education system instead of liberating it.   Instead of having lessons focused on deep understanding and true critical thinking, teachers are forced to skim the surface of many topics.  Here is the sad truth behind the Biology 30 curriculum in my province.  I fear that many don’t want us to teach students how to critically think….because these students might actually do it!

“An educated person has the ability and inclination to use judgment and imagination in solving the problems that confront them at work and at home, and to participate in the maintenance of democracy”

Education should not be about teaching students skills, but actually showing them how to use such skills.   When we focus on procedural and conceptual ideas, but never talk about problem solving, students will only learn the WHAT part of outcomes and never the WHY.  There is a difference between students learning in a class, and wanting to learn in a class.

A student, who could correctly calculate the area of a rectangle, was asked “How much carpet is needed in a room 8 feet by 10 feet?” He replied with “How would I know?”.  This student answered 10 out of 10 questions on an exam no problem.  I would hope most would agree there is a problem! 

Students who can remember facts, algorithms, and procedures, but never know when to apply them will be successful at Trivial Pursuit, but not at life.

A quote from Charles Dickens Hard Times London

"Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!"

"In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!" The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim

The sad reality is that some educators believe it is as easy as the opening heads up and we can just pour facts in.  This quote is 120 years old, and still some classes and tests are designed this way.

We can also go back further to:

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy." -- John Adams

Schools need to start giving students liberty and stop the perputation of mandating students to take certain courses! 

In 1975 Campbell stated the following law:

"The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."
And follows his law with..
"achievement tests may well be valuable indicators of general school achievement under conditions of normal teaching aimed at general competence. But when test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways. (Similar biases of course surround the use of objective tests in courses or as entrance examinations.)"


When any indicator, such as high stakes exams, take on too much value it corrupts the people who deal with these indicators.  I believe this is what is currently happening in our education system.  I fear that, in some schools, the quality of instruction from a teacher is judged, not by classroom experiences, anecdotal comments, students’ experiences, but solely by their high stake exam marks.  As by Campbell’s law, such scrutiny around these scores is causing the teachers, and administrators, to become corrupt.  The corruption can be seen by “test prep”, or “teaching to the test”.  Imagine how much learning could occur if every minute spent on preparing students for an exam was spent on teaching a deeper understanding of a concept.

This now brings the validity of high stakes exams into question; the higher the stakes the higher the corruption but the lower the validity.  Due to the high stakes on some exams, teachers are forced to start seeing their students as “Test successors” and “Test suppressors”, not as students.  Schools have actually been caught giving certain classes certain teachers, based on their potential to pass a high stakes test.  Now a scary example,


“Kevin, who is a high achiever and suffers greatly from Asthma, was writing a high stakes government exam.  During the test, Kevin is having troubles breathing and asks to leave.  The teacher asked Kevin to first complete his exam then take care of his asthma”

There is a school in Virginia that realized if they fed their students breakfast, through a free breakfast program, they achieved better during the day.  This school, on high stakes testing days, gave the students an extra 100-200 calories at breakfast and the scores increased by 8 points.  Sadly, after test week, the school went back to the old breakfast program. 

This school understands the merit behind eating healthy in the morning, but only provides a sufficient amount of food during test week.  This is similar to farmers fattening pigs before taking them to market….DISGUSTING!

This is what happens when we see students as scores and data and not as people.

117 outcomes in 94 days, and we still expect mastery?

On October 12, 2010 our government released an article called “More students achieve excellence in provincial testing”  In the article it says

“Excellence refers to students who demonstrate a mastery of the core subject material. Acceptable refers to students who demonstrate an understanding of the subject material.”

While another part explains,

“Results of the provincial achievement tests and diploma exams are a key element of Alberta Education’s Accountability Pillar, which places emphasis on achieving outcomes, reporting results and using results as the basis for improving programs and student results in subsequent years.”

I wanted to further investigate this level of mastery.  Some of my colleagues informed me that they must teach at “light speed” to ensure all of their students have a chance of achieving a level of mastery in the course when they write the mandated diploma exam.  After some simple counting I realized that in Biology 20 there are 91 outcomes while in Biology 30 there are 117 outcomes.  In our province, there are approximately 94 school days.

Now some simple math using the biology 30 outcomes:

The Bio 30 teachers I have spoken to spend the equivalent of 8 classes for exams and quizzes, 4 classes for reviewing for preparation for in class exams, and finally 5 days to prepare for the government diploma exam.  Therefore, out of 94 school days, there is actually only 77 days for learning.

117 outcomes in 77 days and the government actually use the word “mastery”?  Or are the amount of mandated outcomes the equivalent of the the amount of boxes on the cart in the picture above?

If we put the same level of importance on each outcome then each biology 30 teacher can only spend 0.65 of one class on each outcome.  If a class is 84 minutes long this equates to 55 min for each outcome in the course.  Simple question now, are we really supposed to believe that in 55 minutes a student can truly “master” a concept and demonstrate this level of mastery on an exam that places emphasis on achieving outcomes and reporting results?

Something has to give!  Our government needs to stop giving teachers such large scripts to follow in our class to ensure learning has occurred.   Should we be digging deeper or skimming the surface?