please summarise the following transcript:

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00:00:02	good evening my name is <PRESIDIO_ANONYMIZED_PERSON> and I am the provost and senior vice president for academic affairs here at Salisbury University as the Provost is my pleasure to welcome you to the Rio lecture I always look forward to these lectures because the speakers challenge my thinking and push me to consider ideas that are new and different tonight speaker will be no different in fact I'm expecting that by thinking about children and testing and what is best for children will be read energized years ago I taught doctorate students

00:00:40	actually assessment class I don't need to say that in front of our guest but in this doctoral class we often use Happy's writings to fuel our class discussions and to imagine what assessment could be if it was connected to the authentic work of children and how that how that would guide our thinking about designing our supportive children in their learning those were great discussions they matter and I missed that kind of intellectual debate as an administrator I will tell you that I that doctoral

00:01:16	work was done in Texas and so Texas sort of led the charge for school reform and standardized testing and accountability so sometimes we felt a little bit subversive in our discussions and we're afraid we'd be discovered but we survived so I hope tonight you'll join me in listening and thinking and then acting on what it is cliche to say that our children are our future but if we really believe that then tonight's lecture is all the more important thank you for your attendance and for supporting our lecture series now let me

00:01:58	introduce to you Cheryl parks as dean of the side--oh School of Education and Professional Studies good evening everyone there's Dean of the sunl School of Education and Professional Studies please allow me to welcome you to the D Pauline trial the lecture series over the 26-year history of the Riya lecture series 48 different educators have spoken to audiences like this in this auditorium - over 27,000 students faculty and community members have speakers have included such notables as Cornel West Linda darling-hammond Pedro

00:02:40	McCarroll Salome Thomas L Lee Schulman and as our first repeat visitor tonight's speaker alpha tone you can find the complete listing of previous trial speakers included on the back of tonight's program in all I think you will agree this lecture series provides the Salzburg community a unique and powerful opportunity to hear and consider new and provocative ideas affecting educated education and educators today and it is miss Pauline Brown that we have to thank for this Trinity mr. Elvis is a longtime

00:03:19	principal and teacher at the Salisbury University campus school the campus school was over the years the school where all student teachers taught and attended classes thousands of salisbury community members attended school here in Carruthers hall and the building that's now that's the building that's now being deconstructed to make way for the new Patricia RV area academic Commons you guys might have seen the construction going on mistrial was an Eastern terminated who grew up near the bay in ty askin she went away to Towson

00:03:52	for her teacher education that was prior to the normal school being built in Salisbury she became a teacher and then principal at the campus school and spent many of her professional years here when she passed her bequest was that the Education Department start this lecture series and also that an award in her name excuse me that an award in her name be presented to a student teacher at the conclusion of her or his internship experience in fact we have the first trial award winner Lois Nicholson

00:04:26	Harrison with us tonight miss Harrison would you please stand and let us acknowledge the award that you won one person polygraph has made such a difference reaching over 27,000 students faculty and community community members and by extension all of their students as well we are grateful to her and her gift and now it is my great pleasure to introduce dr. Keith Connors chair of the raw electric committee who will introduce tonight's speaker miss Harrison who was here she had a great dinner with us I

00:05:16	think she went back to watch the Connecticut women want to play the basketball championship I think the fire marshal will be upset with people sitting in the aisles we have plenty of seats down here at the front so few folks who are on the carpet there would you work your way down and a bunch them there's ample seating on this side in the middle of all to the side over here to thank you we'd like to thank everyone for supporting this Rio lecture program once again as you do every semester it's just

00:06:37	great to look at and see this place fill every seat I think this is the biggest crowd member saying it all the years I've been attending things before I introduce the speaker tonight I want to acknowledge people who make this event possible the members of the Rio Committee in this ideal school please stand as Kim McCormick Ron Syrus Ted Gilkey and Brandi terrible [Applause] and a special thanks to to one person who's sort of behind the scenes who handled all the logistical details for this event flawlessly

00:07:14	that's the melindam Kappa Delta Pi the international Honor Society for education is once again supplied tonight shushers and booksellers in the lobby our speaker will be happy to sign copies of his books following a lecture in the social world you can pick one up outside doors to the auditorium and the reception will be held several campus offices also played an important role in putting this event together facility reservations public relations publications TV production Public Safety horticulture and events services as he

00:07:59	always does mat Hill of event services has wired this auditorium so that if your cell phone should ring during the lecture all of your social media messages and pictures will be forwarded to your parents as noted my lectures in his 26 year at Salisbury University your program indicates that the lecture is just part of the legacy from paulien trial as the parts mention alfie kohn was the first trial speaker to make a return visit to this podium his accomplishments that continue to accumulate the Simpsons

00:08:40	address in 2001 has spelled out if your program I will not bore you by repeating information that's already listed there let me tell you a couple of things that I learned about healthy today as we drove from him from Baltimore Washington Airport this afternoon to solver Lindsay Gordon and grace and staff from the KDP a company made two trips that we could make sure we got the connection right at the terminal here's what I learned his daughter and my daughter almost went to the same College he's been on Oprah not

00:09:14	once but twice and he was able to answer questions from Lindsay Gordon for over two hours when he spoke here 13 years ago he had this auditorium vibrating with enthusiasm so please let's give I'll be called the raucous Salisbury University welcome [Applause] well that was raucous thank you delighted to see you how many of you are students here and prospective teachers can I see by a show of hands delighted to hear it and I'm going to assume that you're here by choice because it would be just too painful to

00:10:14	think that someone required or bribed you with graves to come to this talk given the topic of this talk how many of you are on the faculty or administration here at SU can I see hands okay what's that actually a faculty member who made that sound I thought it unlikely but possible how many of you are teachers or administrators not here at the university but in the surrounding area who come okay okay apparently it's required to make some animal-like noise for every how many of you are not here in education but in

00:11:07	another field as a an instructor or a student today how many of you do not fit into any of the above categories how many of you wandered in here by mistake are now too embarrassed to admit this fact well for whatever reason you're here I'm delighted to be here with you and honored to have been chosen to come back for a second visit which I can only put down to a massive case of amnesia on the part of whoever invites folks to these lectures I predict that within about ten minutes somebody is going to go oh crap that's right for God

00:11:55	how controversial he was dr. Connors mentioned that I also was invited twice on a show that no longer exists on TV I thought I wouldn't spent a minute telling you about this because it makes a story that I think at least is mildly interesting I'm talking about the Oprah Winfrey Show and people who write books for a living basically go to bed or used to go to bed each night murmuring Oprah's name she could in theory do a lot of good for an author so I was in my office January in the mid 90s and I answered my iPhone alfie kohn

00:12:43	and I heard hi mr. Cohen I'm with the Oprah Winfrey Show yes what's my approximate reaction at that point at least silently and she she indicated that she was possibly interested in having the appear on the show I assumed it might be about one of the books that had gotten some play one of them about competition one about rewards but to my astonishment they had actually come across a book I had written earlier called the brighter side of human nature a book about altruism and empathy that has I don't mind telling you have sold

00:13:27	dozens of copies and they were planning to do a show called the kindness of strangers where they were going to invite people who had done remarkable things for people they've never met and people who have been the beneficiaries of these acts you know here have a kidney just amazing stuff and and and I was to come on and talk about why people help and when they don't and how to raise children who are caring and do remarkable things and of course I was delighted to accept the invitation though to be honest I had never seen the

00:14:06	show I lived in the other Cambridge Massachusetts where people pretend they don't even own televisions so when I asked friends what's this show like you know they pretended somebody said to me it's the best of the afternoon talk shows which is sort of like saying gravel is the tastiest of all construction materials so I didn't know what to expect people were going what you're gonna be in an opera no no no you know what I'm talking about so I showed up there and I did my bit and here's how I came at it I come

00:14:51	at things backwards sometimes I said Oprah instant first-name basis this being both America and television I said Oprah imagine that we wanted to raise kids who were not generous like your guests here who were actually pretty self-centered we could talk about how we would do that based on the research and work backward so one way we could raise children who are not particularly helpful is to put them in competitive activities whenever possible make sure that any recreational activities they engage in are competitive sports and

00:15:28	make sure that they are involved not just in singing but in choral contests and that we have awards assemblies in school an awards assembly can be defined as an event usually held in an auditorium that instantly transforms most people present into losers it took me a while to figure out that even the winners ultimately lose because competitive events of all kinds mostly teach children that everybody else around you is a potential obstacle to your own success also it tends to undermine excellence contrary

00:16:08	to the American myth that it motivates people to do their best and in fact one study though I didn't mention this on the air actually found that you can predict a child's selfishness based on how competitive the child's father is you don't even have to make the kid compete just living with someone who needs to beat other people is enough to make the child focus on self-interest it's like secondhand smoke and the second way you could make kids self-centered and not likely to help according to the knot this is not

00:16:50	something I thought up in the shower in the morning before the show I mean what I'm saying here controversial though it may be is supported by good data so the second way you could make sure the kids aren't like your guests is to reward them with A's with stickers with school-wide programs that teach free children like pets by giving them the equivalent of a doggie biscuit for doing whatever it is the adults tend to want programs that should be called TK LP treating kids like pets instead of for

00:17:31	example PBIS and if you reward children for doing things even with verbal rewards good job I really like the way you mindlessly obey Authority today when you reward or praise children you make them more focused on self-interest and two studies found that this is true one gun at the University of Toronto one gun at Arizona State children who are frequently rewarded or praised tend to be more self-centered and the effect is most pronounced if they're rewarded or praised for being generous good job I

00:18:22	really like the way you shared your brownie with Diana you're such a generous person good job she just became a little more selfish I invite you to reflect on why that might be the case because that's the interesting stuff and I'm gonna throw another one at you where I literally ask you to reflect on this out loud with this one possibility is that rewards life punishments our efforts to control people they're not ways of working with children a caring school community is a place that tries to work with kids to help think about

00:19:04	how we want our school to be a doing dose school is one that offers points privileges prizes pizza parties anything that apparently starts with a beep to children for doing what the authorities want this is the really ugly thing about programs like PBIS it's not just that the method is about manipulation sugar coated control unlike punishments which are just had no sugar attached but still control in both cases it is that a program like this it's not just that the method is disrespectful to children and manipulative here's the

00:19:47	doggie biscuit you get if you jump through the hoops the goal is not about helping children to become morally sophisticated people the objective is not to help children develop socially to be independent thinkers or compassionate human beings the goal is compliance the goal is to get kids to do what they're told so you manage to have a truly manipulative method married to a truly disturbing goal and yet we pat ourselves on the on the shoulder because we didn't punish we reward we didn't use sticks

00:20:30	we used parents we control them a little more subtly we didn't do anything to advance their moral social or intellectual development hey the best way to destroy children's interest in reading is to give them a prize for reading a book because not only do they now associate reading with being controlled which even very short people don't like a lot as in you're not the boss of me but because the message of all rewards is this must be something I wouldn't want to do that's why they have to bribe me to do it so the more you

00:21:19	reward kids for doing anything drawing a picture reading a book sharing a sandwich the more you devalue the thing you're rewarding we have more than 75 studies at this point showing that the more you reward people for do something the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they have to do to get the reward it's a great way to kill interest why why is it that so many people persist in training kids like pets or in some workplaces with merit pay and bonuses even treating adults like pets it's interesting to think

00:22:04	about the implications of this I can think of a bunch of reasons why people might persist to despite the consistent research showing that rewards like punishments are profoundly counterproductive not just ineffective counterproductive the research shows that attempts to get people to lose weight or quit smoking or go to the gym by giving people financial incentives don't just fail to work but make people less likely to move in that direction than otherwise but rewards and punishments have the appeal of being simple to work with

00:22:52	children to help them develop an authentic commitment to gin to generosity to help kids students love learning takes skill talent time care and courage because you may have to rethink what you ask them to do to dangle a sticker a gold star Pizza Hut Pizza an a a dollar or a good job in front of kids to make them comply takes no talent no time no care and above all no courage because you never have to rethink what you're giving them to do you just have to bribe them to do it the great teachers work with kid

00:23:45	to figure out how authentic ly to engage them but even if you're just narrowly focused as I was back there in Chicago on The Oprah Winfrey Show remember the Oprah Winfrey Show I started talking about that a while ago even the people who are interested just in promoting generosity and caring would never reward people for doing that does that motivate them does it motivate them to be generous or to read a book you say to me some kids do seem to be motivated by grades or stickers or beef thumbs up and

00:24:27	the answer to that little dilemma vanishes as soon as you know what psychologists have figured out decades ago motivation is not a single entity that can go up or down as if it were on a hydraulic lift by the way this is it for audio/visual tonight I hope you're enjoying the site if you're looking for nuclear-powered laser guide and digitally enhanced PowerPoint wrong guy that's why they brought me back here I'm cheap if it were true that motivation could go up or down and we want kids to be motivated

00:25:13	well then sure we'll tell them not only is this gonna be on the test so you better study and that counts for a grade we might give them additional rewards for having a lot of good claims will give them a reward for collecting rewards they're actually parents out there who pay kids for good grades or punish them for bad grades this is taking a bad thing and multiplying and compounding the damage it does but why why does it have that effect because there are different kinds of motivation and the kind matters more than the

00:25:52	amount so psychologists talk about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation raise your hand if you're already familiar with those words know that okay the amazing thing is how many teachers currently in the classroom know those words can define the difference if they're asked and then teach as if that difference didn't exist so here's your refresher course in ten seconds intrinsic motivation is a fancy term that means you get a kick out of what you're doing you share your sandwich because that kid didn't bring enough

00:26:28	food and you think that's the right thing to do or you read a book because you want to see what happens in the next chapter extrinsic motivation means you do something to get a reward or avoid a punishment something outside of extrinsic to the task or the behavior you got it okay now imagine this is where the audiovisuals get really fancy imagine that you have two hydraulic lifts where extrinsic motivation could go up or down intrinsic motivation could go up or down so here's 75 studies in one gesture you

00:27:10	ready let me know if you can't see this from the balcony that's it want to see that again as extrinsic motivation goes up intrinsic motivation tends to come down too there are a few absolutes in human behavior except that sentence the more you get kids for every study to the best of my knowledge that has ever looked at the effect of grades on interest in learning has found a negative effect from elementary school to college that's why the best schools and classes and teachers do not give grades because or if they have to turn
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in a grade at the end they do everything possible to make students forget about grades for as long as possible because if you're thinking about what do I have to do to get an A in here you have been lost as they learn the probability of your being genuinely and fully engaged with figuring stuff out has been undermined a few amazing students may persist in their interest despite the existence of grades but it's a bet we don't want to make that's why you find me an amazing teacher someone who doesn't have to bribe or threaten
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students into figuring stuff out I'll show you someone who regards grading as something unpleasant and tries to figure out how to make it invisible that's true whether you're teaching first grade or graduate students rewards motivate some students but it's only extrinsic motivation which a not what we're looking for I hope and be pills the kind of motivation we are looking for regardless of the outcome you're looking for you don't offer doggy biscuits to make kids do it at the class level in families in workplaces at the
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school-wide level on Oprah I was just focused on generosity I just said if you want to make sure that kids aren't likely to grow up as caring generous people either put them in competitive situations or reward them for generosity so they become less likely to really care about somebody else maybe you think about the questions kids are encouraged to ask if you punish children we don't call it punishment now we call it consequences or holding them accountable but what we really mean is making them
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suffer in order to teach them a lesson the question kids come to ask is what do they want me to do and what happens to me if I don't do it that's a very different question than asking what kind of person do I want to be or even what kind of classroom do we want to create but if you reward children then the question they come to ask is what do they want me to do and what do I get for doing it so the idea that you can reward kids into becoming better people is absurd on its face they're less likely
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to think about the impact of their actions on other people and more likely to think about am I going to get another good job does this count will I get another few points from the teacher for showing up at the lecture tonight hypothetically speaking will I get a pizza or a t-shirt for reading a book now I like reading less because you've taught me to see it as a tedious prerequisite or means to the end the goal is the goody the thing I had to do to get the goody now I have no interest in doing I didn't talk at
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length because I like this on Oprah because I wasn't the only guest and there was only an hour but I talked about those two features and Oprah Winfrey who was wandering around her studio audience with her handheld mic did something I thought was remarkable she said I've never thought about it that way before that is very interesting that she turned to her audience he said that interesting audience which I thought was a pretty powerful thing to model when you heard something not only unfamiliar but pretty damn controversial
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instead of just doing the instant kind of well that's that wouldn't work in the real world or what do you do about kids who which is ways of going in other words this is too threatening because if I take this seriously I have to question a lot of what I've been doing and a lot of what's been done to me but instead she said I'm gonna have to think about that so I was happy I flew home from Chicago I was a different personality I was a person who had been on Oprah I got started hearing from people I
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haven't heard from in years mom so I thought that was pretty great and then this was in January in October nine months later okra had my love child you know why I said that I think we can be pretty certain there's not going to be a third Rio lecture 9 months later I'm in my office the phone rings hi I'm not sure if you remember me on with the Oprah Winfrey Show oh she said we were very interested in what you said briefly about rewards when you were on and we'd like to invite you to come back to do a segment on the show just
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about rewards and of course I reacted the way I'm sure you wouldn't violate hey quit buggin me I can't come bail you out every time your ratings take a dive I think I said that or perhaps I just said she said we're gonna do it a little differently this time we are actually going to do one of the experiments you described in your book about rewards and we are going to videotape it and we are going to show the videotape on the air and then ask you to explain what happened and I thought oh good lord this
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cannot end well these are producers on television what do they know about replicating a methodological rigorous experiment but she made it clear to me she was not asking my advice so much as doing the courtesy of letting me know what was in store and so let me tell you what happened which is the real point of this lengthy introduction on a topic only indirectly related to what I was asked to speak about tonight borrowing from the methodology of EDC at the University of Rochester in upstate New York The
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Oprah Winfrey producers rented an office space and invited 20 children to come the evaluators of toys and games and they misrepresented themselves as executives of a toy company who were looking for feedback from kids about toys I heard that I thought ok deception sounds like social site so far so good and they hadn't come in one at a time had a bunch of games and toys to evaluate and ten of the kids were told that they would get a reward of five dollars for each toy that they evaluated and gave their opinions about which was
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the fair amount of money especially to a ten-year-old especially fifteen years ago and the other ten kids weren't given any reward and then when all the kids were done evaluating and playing with the games the experimenter which is the producer posing as the toy company executives said listen I have to do something else in the other room for just about five minutes you can sit here do whatever you want okay I'll be right back and close the door and started the videotape from behind a one-way mirror
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what happened of the ten kids who had just been asked to evaluate the games and toys with no mention of money all of them went back and played with some of those games and toys on their own time but of the ten kids who played with the identical games and toys but were given a reward for doing so nine of the ten did not touch or even appear to look at the games again boy was i relieved but I wasn't surprised because scores of studies have shown exactly what I told you ten minutes ago when you reward people for doing
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something they tend to lose interest with whatever they were rewarded for doing this original article appeared in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology which doesn't have that many subscribers six or seven million people watched that Oprah episode and thought Oh My heavens we're gonna have to rethink what we're doing but you know who didn't rethink what they were doing the people responsible for what we call school reform today nifty segue because school reform these days corporate styled test-driven top-down
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heavy-handed school reform based on accountability is based on the reward and Punishment model among other things not just how well you do on a test a standardized test result becomes equivalent to talking about higher achievement or excellence and good results but the way you get reluctant teachers and students to put aside real learning and focus on making better test takers is by saying we the decision makers up on Mount Olympus may not have logic or good values or research on our side the one thing we have that you
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don't teachers and kids is power we will employ that to compel you to follow the standards that are handed down now nationwide standards one size fits all Common Core State Standards never forget the quotation marks and to make sure you focus on doing what you're told to do every fourth grader in science well learn about rocks and minerals or whatever and we will enforce it with standardized tests but that's not enough because you all might blow off the standardized tests because you're interested in thinking or
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exploring not in doing what the Gates Foundation that runs the US Department of Education in effect tells you to do not to say that Arne Duncan is not an excellent and I mean excellent basketball player because he is because I want to give him all the credit he's due so you might be fintan you might say why should we worry about the MSAs or the PARCC tests or whatever is coming down the line and we'll say because we're gonna make you do it we're going to employ bribes and threats we're gonna threaten to close down your school or reconstitute it we're gonna threaten to withhold desperately needed funds from the schools that need the most help we are going to threaten high school students by saying twelve years of academic accomplishments are irrelevant if you can't pass a single series of exit exams in high school we are going to threaten teachers with public humiliation and their administrators by publishing scores on our website and get them those papers to do some of our dirty work for us by publishing scores by schools districts and communities but
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because we're nice people we're not just gonna threaten and punish and humiliate we're also going to bribe we're gonna dangle goodies in front of you if your scores go up if you've shown progress at whatever measured Sol on or almost solely on standardized test results then we'll give you all kinds of goodies and some of the people who are being treated this way in positions of the school administration react not by saying how dare you we refuse to participate but instead mindlessly capitulating and pressuring the people
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below them on the educational food chain to do the same so superintendents in some districts instead of pushing back against the state boards pressure their principals to align the curriculum that's an Orwellian verb if ever there was one - the standards devised by distant authorities pressure their principals to bring up the scores and the principal's instead of saying no not gonna go along that would be educational malpractice instead react by pressuring the teachers by actually having pep rallies to celebrate high test scores by
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boasting on their what do you call those big signs out in front of the school near the football field if their scores go up releasing proud press releases thereby making the school's worse by taking pleasure and pride in the very activity that's killing the learning in the schools and turning schools into glorified test prep academies and what are the teachers do who are under this pressure do they say we're gonna link arms and put the superintendent's didn't protect the principles the principles didn't protect
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the teachers do the teachers protect the kids are they buffers to absorb as much pressure as possible without getting fired so that in the classroom authentic learning can go on that will be very different because in the best schools her fourth grade classroom he's not learning the same stuff that her fourth grade classroom down the hall was learning her fourth grade classroom this year doesn't have the same curriculum at all as what she taught last year why to say I don't give a crap what interests
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you kids we made up the curriculum before we met you and you're gonna be learning rocks and minerals or ancient Egypt or Venn diagrams or whatever people far away from you decide to the teachers say my job is to rescue learning to do what I can or do the teachers say give me my marching orders I'm happy to be a test prep technician instead of a professional educator I'm happy to run my classroom according to predigested standards and benchmarks and demands those of you who are not yet full teachers and are still learning are
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going to have to make a very critical decision and it's not a one-time decision it's a decision that will have to be renewed just about every day you're in a classroom what is going to be your main consideration in thinking about how to teach what is going to be the North Star you navigate by will it be teaching what someone else tells you and getting kids good at the narrow skill of taking standardized tests will it be demanding order and using programs like rewards and punishment based discipline and classroom management to
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get compliance so that you can't get kids to fill out worksheets that have no relationship to the life of the mind and are only about cramming forgettable facts into short-term memory are you gonna do worksheets and textbooks and lectures and quizzes and homework and preparation for standardized tests or is your classroom going to be about intellectual discovery where much of the curriculum is created not only for these particular kids but with these particular kids that is an important distinction where you literally work on
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what we're going to learn with the students so that you begin to see intrinsic motivation of a kind that not all of us had when we were in school because that model was already rare at that point perhaps you remember a teacher who listened to the kids preferences who created a caring community maybe that teacher stood out for you maybe you're lucky enough now and your placements with cooperating teachers to have a mentor teacher who doesn't get home work you do realize that no research has ever found any benefit to any kind of
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homework before kids are in high school right even in high school I would argue its dubious there's no benefit to making kids work what amounts to a second shift after they get home from a full day in school it's all pain and no gain according to the data you may be lucky enough to have a teacher who already knows that and doesn't assign stuff or if she does or he does assign homework it's only very rare and it's never just about filling in worksheets or memorizing facts for a test it's about stuff that really can't be
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done in school maybe you're lucky enough whether to have a teacher to work with and to learn from who doesn't give kids grades who would quit teaching before she would ever do something as destructive as put an 87 orang b-minus on a piece of paper given all the research we have that shows that when you give students grades three things tend to happen what I already mentioned kids who are graded tend to be less interested in that topic and perhaps in learning itself compared to students randomly assigned to a different
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condition where they got the same thing to learn but no grade was involved two students who are given grades or worse we learn to think about the grades a lot by having them publicly posted or god help us put up on the internet where parents and kids can look at grades often or a reminding folks this counts for twenty seven two point three nine one four percent of your total grade what happens when kids are led to focus on getting a good grade they pick the easiest thing to do if they're given a
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choice the shortest book on the list the project whose topic they're already most familiar with why do students do this because they don't have enough grit and self-discipline because they're laid easy and cut corners no because they're rational duh as a student of mine said once when I was teaching ninth grade duh of course I picked the shortest book because mr. Khan when you told us that this is for a grade I'm gonna get a better grade if I do something really easy all grades like other rewards lead
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people to avoid taking intellectual risks if they can possibly imagine that you know this in university courses we have research that shows that in the absence of grades or any other kind of reward kids generally not all kids all the time but in general kids tend to pick harder things to do spontaneously don't blame the kid for being lazy if the kids picking the easiest thing to do it's because you said I know you can get an A in here I know you can bring up your grade I have confidence in you that you'll get the goodie well of course they're gonna pick the easiest thing to do you made them do it now what you're gonna do give them a grade for effort grades already destroyed their interests you think you can rescue that with another grade I love grades for effort you got a high effort grade but a low achievement grade so thanks for trying even though you're not very bright or you've got a low effort grade now you can be a failing or even a trolly the best thing about epic grades by which I mean of course the
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worst thing about ever grades is that again they mean we don't have to show any courage and think about what we ask them to do the problem is in your head the problem is in your head we have to motivate you we have to treat you like a pet I never have to ask didn't I give you something to do worth learning did I consult you about what we're learning and how and when and with whom no I don't have to ask that I just have to talk about how we can get you to have show a little more persistence the third
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effect of grades if you're following this is that in addition to undermining interest and preference for challenge is that grades tend to undermine the depth and complexity of students thinking you show me a class of students who have been led to focus on grades and I'll show you students who think at a shallower level they're less likely to ask how do we really know that's true or but doesn't that contradict what we were talking about a couple of weeks ago when we said and are more likely to ask we
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have to know this is this gonna be on the test that's not as I know it never blamed the students for that the students have been carefully conditioned not to care about learning that's why the best teachers never what grades on anything students do even if they have to turn in a grade at the end every molecule of brainpower thinking about grades is a molecule not thinking about biology or poetry or history alright so if I'm a thread my way back here you may be lucky enough to have a mentor teacher who knows this who
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doesn't grade who doesn't give homework who doesn't focus on amputated little factoids on worksheets or practicing stuff by rote but somebody who leads kids in an adventure in learning a truly remarkable role model for you watching the kind of teacher who would never offer bribes and threats to make kids obey but instead has everyday a democratic class meeting where kids can learn democratic dispositions and social skills as they solve problems and make plans and share news together a place where she would never dream of setting
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kids against each other in a contest but instead develops a commitment to a caring community where kids feel a sense of belonging if you're lucky enough to have a mentor teacher like that take careful notes but if you have a traditional teacher one whose focus is more on order and obedience than on question one who lets a textbook determine the curriculum a committee Ritchie corporate produced textbook as in read chapter seven and answer the odd number of questions and worse to a tonight after school if you have a teacher who gives
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kids little bucks from obedience if you have a teacher who is mostly thinking of learning as the delivery of instruction open wide here come facts through the textbook or me lecturing or whatever if you have a teacher who regards kids as a pain in the ass who have to be controlled because otherwise they never do what you tell them and I swear they get worse every year then you know what you should do take careful notes every day in a traditional teacher's classroom is an opportunity for you to learn what not to do this is
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an example of what I'm not going to do when I have my own classroom ooh thank you for giving me yet another diabolical behavior control scheme all the green yellow and red tickets or threats of losing recess oh I haven't thought of that that's cool that's good now little kids don't even have the right to have some time to run around it's something we can snatch away from them in order to make them obedient oh what a good point we could have a test in between the tests we can even call it I don't know
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we'll come up with something a benchmark exam or we could call it formative assessment if we know nothing about the field we can figure out ways to get kids to memorize facts that we know damn well they're not going to remember a few months from now and you're there taking notes saying yes yes tell me more of what I will never do if I become a teacher because I want to understand it now I'm being a little facetious here because this is not the optimal person to learn from though negative learning
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is interesting ideally to buck the tide and folks I'm speaking to those of you who are not yet teachers with your own classrooms but if you are going to have your own classroom and you're going to do right by children you have to be a rebel you cannot obey what most school districts and all states now are trying to compel teachers to do and at the same time do right by the kids it can't be done you have to figure out a way to either be quietly subversive or noisily subversive and you have to figure out how much you can get
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away with and not censor yourself more than necessary because self censorship has doomed more classrooms to worksheets and classroom management strategies that any censorship imposed by actual authority figures it's tough in a climate where you may be evaluated based on how good your test scores are even if every test makes kids less excited about and proficient at learning you have to be a rebel if you go to a faculty meeting and hear about data-driven instruction and you don't say something's fishy here when we keep
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applying the word data to children then you may need to recharge your crap detector you are entering folks the field of education at a time when I think future historians will refer back to this period as one of the darkest periods in educational history I say this not to just be a cheerful fellow I say this because I want you to know being a teacher is hard work being a really good teacher who puts kids first and I'll mean enough you know this sort of rhetorical empty way that administrators talk about talk about kids we know
01:00:11
that's why our kids I get back to work and make sure you raise the test scores I mean really do right by kids that's that's even harder and being a really good teacher now is really hard you know throughout the 90s many states were beginning to trot out these long lists of standards every fifth grader shell and standardized tests not every year in most states but often enough to get in the way of learning back then a lot of great teachers said the hell with this I'm gonna teach fifth grade not 4th
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grade so I can avoid the test well they were too smart for you they said we'll test them every year so the teachers have nowhere to run which is pretty much what has happened now in the 90s things were pretty bad I know I was around I was writing and speaking about how bad things were and then in about 2000 or 2001 the floor broke through and we ended up in a basement we didn't even know we had the many children left behind act require kids to be taught every year with ludicrously implausible proficiency
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targets coming due this year 2014 that few unmedicated observers ever believed were possible and with lots of threats for the school that needed the most help and Democrats worked with Republicans to pass this under the George W Bush administration and then you know what happened Barack Obama was elected and took a very bad thing and made it in comparably worse it was no coincidence that his choice of Arne Duncan like a long line of other secretaries of Education never an educator and his career was praised lavishly as soon as
01:02:25
the appointment was announced by Margaret Spellings and rod Paige the two secretaries of Education under George W Bush who knew that the Obama administration was on board with not only continuing but intensifying this corporate approach based on bribes and threats and tests and that's exactly what happened with the race to the bottom a table that actually went the Bush administration one better by setting States against each other for artificially scarce funding which they had to qualify for by adopting this
01:03:09
corporate model dreamed up in right-wing think tanks and by groups like achieve incorporated which is mostly corporate executives and politicians which included weakening tenure protection job protection for teachers siphoning more money away from public schools to privately manage charter schools and more testing and more national standards and that's where we find ourselves now we look around and we find that some of the best teachers are gone the ones who couldn't stand this the best teachers
01:03:53
are the ones who say I'll go sell shoes before I put up with this and others are hanging on by their fingernails the mediocre teachers don't mind this stuff the mediocre teachers welcome a chance to prove their ability to follow directions by making kids spend their time following directions the mediocre teachers are happy to accept a test score as an indicator of their proficiency as well as their students aptitude it's the great teachers the ones I want my children to have who say this is appalling plus we may as male
01:04:36
nodding said we may lose an entire generation to this nonsense especially as we look at the effects on folks who had to pass a test to graduate from high school and knew they probably wouldn't and got out so here's a study that was done in Colorado a number of years ago which I found fascinating when I first read it you may have missed it if your subscription to the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology has elapsed so I thought I'd tell you and then it's on my website as is a lot of other stuff related to all the topics
01:05:25
I've been talking about classroom management of grades of homework and rewards and all that stuff my website is just my name if you can spell it you're there Alfie kong org and if you type com instead magically you get there anyway so anyway in this particular study [Music] in this particular study a bunch of fourth-grade teachers were given a unit of curriculum to teach to their kids and the teachers were divided into two groups which were very cleverly called roots 1 & 2 you're the teachers were
01:06:12
given this current this year here teach this to your dear students you are going to be held accountable for how effectively you teach this to your students based on their performance on a test they will take of this material when they are finished you must raise standards in your classroom and group to teachers were given the identical curriculum but all they were told was see if you can facilitate your students understanding of this material that's all then all the teachers were set loose to teach and when they were done all of
01:06:51
the kids took a test it was a very traditional test of a very traditional bit of curricula nevertheless the results were quite striking the students who had been taught by group one teachers did significantly worse on the test now that's an interesting result especially since it has been replicated by other related studies it's the kind of result where you would kind of want to send a copy to your superintendent school board members Marilyn's chief school officer and governor while you're at it because they may have let their
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subscriptions elapse to and miss the study but I'm more interested not just in what the study found but in speculating intelligently about why those results showed up I'm not searching for a right answer here the best most important questions in education and education don't have right answers I just want you to think about this for a minute why might it be the case that kids who were taught by teachers who had just been told about the need to raise standards for which they would become accountable held accountable did more
01:08:12
poorly even on a traditional test than the other kids taught by teachers who were not given the standards and accountability message would you do me a favor and turn to one person near you preferably somebody you don't know very well who could be sitting in a row in front of you or behind you and in a second just say hi and introduce yourself real quickly and then take a minute and a half to see if the two of you can come up with at least one solid hypothesis for why the results of this study came out the way they did
01:10:18
[Music] first just a mischievous observation I asked you to do this to talk just in pairs some of you are talking in groups larger than two I noticed and some of you we're not doing this at all but just sitting there and my reaction for that is that's fine as long as you show the same tolerance when your students choose not to do what you've asked as long as it's consistent I'm happy can anybody summarize what you and your partner came up with in a sentence or even a phrase why did the kids do more
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poorly even on a traditional test when they were taught by teachers who were told about accountability and higher standards what do you think for what a few two things aha so you connected this study with its focus on teaching to the earlier research I mentioned about how rewards and punishments underlie intrinsic motivation speculating that the teachers with that threat which is one accountability movement is a threat we're gonna hurt you if you don't perform up to expectations became less interested in the task and something
01:12:51
about that lack of interest translated into I don't want to put words in your mouth well I do but I want to check them out to see if this is what you matter that that lack of interest translated into less effective teaching which translated into poor results on the test thank you another speculation yeah so you yourself didn't even remember what I asked because you were being graded for your participation here [Applause] Exhibit B whoever this fellow's instructor is sorry okay he said with a note of
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desperation in his voice thank you somebody else explained what's going on in that study yeah the teacher in the second group used more creativity in the lessons because their teachers are better able to be creative with their teaching if there's no one with the gun pointing at them saying raise the test scores or else and you're also suggesting that it's possible that the teachers in Group one actually told the kids your test score counts and that just made them what stressed anxious whatever the researchers never spoke directly to
01:14:48
the kids just to the teachers but stress is contagious anybody else a different direction yeah yeah the teacher who's not forced to teach a certain way or one might argue a certain list of content is better able to differentiate the instruction and respond to the individual needs of the learners in a way that somebody pressured may not feel there was another study done in upstate New York similar to this one except that in the New York study they didn't test the kids the outcome variable the dependent variable
01:15:40
was how the teachers actually taught based on the instructions they'd received and what they found is that the group one teachers turned into drill sergeants removing almost any opportunity for the students to play an active role in their own learning which a raft of other research demonstrates is a powerful predictor to effectively effective learning this is the amazing thing about this study if it was really an open-ended thoughtful task involving understandings and it was assessed by an authentic form of assessment you can
01:16:20
only imagine how enormous the divergence would have been and the results between the two groups but even with the same kind of just memorized these facts and spit them back out on a traditional test even there the accountability movement falls on its face and that's the kind of assessment and instruction that the accountability movement is grounded in even there it's a fascinating stuff now when people talk about having higher standards holding people accountable it sounds good in a soundbite by a politician looks good on
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a bumper sticker maybe but there are something I think fatal flaws with this whole movement and I'm gonna mention a bunch of them quickly and not do justice to any because I chose to begin by talking about some related issues that have to do with the classroom and then I'm gonna see if you want to ask me any questions or pushback on any of this even though we have a large group so the first fatal flaw I think of this whole approach and this is my value judgment what I'm about to say for this one
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cannot be proved or disproved by research I believe this whole school reform movement as it's currently defined has its goals wrong because the goal is really not to do what's right by children the goal has to do with creating it seems docile and adequately skilled future employees every politician who talks about education including presidents Obama and Bush always talks about the need for competitiveness in the 21st century always frames education as extended vocational end that's why every speech
01:18:22
that Obama is given on education has talked about the STEM subjects science technology and you caring that you can engineering and math never do you hear a president or a u.s. senator to talk about the need for understanding of history and literature and I about proud to announce a seven billion dollar initiative to make sure every child in the United States appreciates the beauty of a terrifically written short story it's always stem stuff and not because of the intrinsic elegance of a mathematical equation it's because
01:18:56
STEM subjects they think translate into dollars down the line and the point isn't to create a functioning democracy the point isn't to help children flourish and enjoy an enriched life of the mind the point is to make sure that US corporations triumph over their counterparts overseas it's not just about economics it's about defeating other companies and countries and even children have you seen the constant barrage of international rankings of students based on tests put aside the fact that talking
01:19:41
about an average American test score is like talking about average American air the quality depends on where you happen to be rich communities in the United States do very well even on stupid standardized tests compared to most countries in the world low-income communities look dreadful on international comparisons and the United States has more child poverty than any other Western industrialized country the problem is not bad teachers the problem is not inadequate schools the problems are economic but by talking about this
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ranking we encourage people to think in these terms and you know what's worse we encourage them to think in competitive terms as if it were a giant sports game as if that's the goal here not to be number eight or number fourteen think about the idea of rankings if you say the u.s. oh my god we're down to number nine and high school science or whatever you're said we want to be number one you're saying we want Droon who live in other countries not to learn effectively that is intellectually and morally bankrupt and it's built into
01:21:03
the idea of rankings we want all kids all over the world to do it but the more it's about competition get a load of this paradox if you've grown up in this country the more it's about competition and winning the less it's about excellence that's another lecture my first concern about this is it gets the goals rolling the second concern I have is it gets the idea of school reform wrong because it's based on accountability you and I could define the word accountability in such a way that we think it's reasonable based on
01:21:42
what people are being held accountable for and to whom but right now accountability has just become a cold word for more control over what happens in classrooms by people who are not in classrooms and the effect it has on learning is approximately what a noose has on breathing I mean that's funny I just asked you to unpack is an example of that about the effects of control the third concern I have is that it gets the idea of improvement wrong a better text or test or teacher in the current climate is one that is more
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rigorous if you haven't heard that word yet in the context of education you're gonna hear it soon my favorite story about that word is a principal I know a few years ago who was doing morning drop-off he was greeting the kids and their parents in the school and a parent came up to him and said you're gonna give my my kid a rigorous education in this school and he say you know I'm not sure let me look up the word tonight in my dictionary I'll come back and give you an answer tomorrow you can tell the story was a few years ago
01:23:09
today he would just say Siri what is rigor the next day he found the parent and said the answer to your question is good heavens no my challenge to you not right now on your phones but eventually is find a good unabridged dictionary and look up the word rigorous and see if you can find any definition that could conceivably be associated with a richer more engaged approach to learning my dictionary the American heritage says see synonyms at par I don't want my kids getting a rigorous education unless I get to redefine the
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word but right now the assumption is if it's harder it must be better that's why there are actually idiots that's why there are actually well-meaning people with whom I disagree who judge high schools based on how many advanced placement courses they offer why AP courses are almost always the hardest courses in the school and therefore we just assume they must be the best the reality is that most AP courses accelerate the worst forms of teaching they tend to be lecture based they tend to be textbook driven and the
01:24:44
purpose isn't to learn to think like a historian or a biologist the purpose is to get a four five or six on a test devised from far away even really good high school teachers are bad teachers when they have to teach this kind of course but no one even asks whether the course is any good because we're socialized to accept the notion if it's tough it must be a higher quality I have been to classrooms and schools that do not strike me as particularly rigorous but where I see some fascinating stuff
01:25:19
going on with the kids who are deeply engaged in exploring stuff conversely I have been to some classrooms and school schools that have rigor up the wazoo that I wouldn't send my dog to I invite you at least to ask about this distinction by the way when you think in terms of difficulty level and so on here's a thought experiment for you imagine that when the new tests are brought out in Maryland almost every high school student in the entire state passes the test okay that's the thought experiment
01:26:03
what will the reaction be from the Baltimore Sun and from your governor and from this the state school board what will they reaction what's that you say damn these teachers are good they'll say the tests are too easy the standards are too low we have to raise the bar check me on this I believe that expression raising the bar was originated in the world of show horses pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the view of children on the part of people who use an expression like that we have to raise
01:26:52
the bar we have to make the test harder now let's assume you're right this is what people say everywhere in the country and by the way it's not entirely a thought experiment because in some states that's exactly what happened it's not that everybody passed the test but too many high school students passed the test from New Mexico to New Jersey and the immediate response was to ratchet up the difficulty level what does this mean folks take a moment and ponder this it means that when these folks talk about higher standards
01:27:28
evidently what they mean is standards that all students will never be able to meet because if all students met the standards that would be prana fasci evidence that the standards were too low and we had to raise them again until we made sure there were losers that's the American definition of excellence something that all people by definition and not attain now if we made sure that a random sample of kids had to fail to show we have high standards that would be obnoxious but you and I know that
01:28:09
it's not random who's most likely to fail when we've assured high standards I put it to you it's five sadly overlapping categories of students those on a vocational track those identified as having special needs those whose first language isn't English those who are minority students especially african-americans and Latinos and those from poor communities if we participate in this accountability oriented raise the bar rigor at any price cult with a focus on test scores folks we may live to see what could be described and this is a
01:28:57
strong term even for me as an educational ethnic cleansing in America and it will be sold to us by Democrats and Republicans and above all corporate officials who have an unprecedented and disproportionate amount of say in what our schooling looks like that's all built into the notion of what does it mean to say we're improving here's my third third for I don't know what I'm up to nine here's my next fatal flaw it gets teaching and learning wrong because teaching and learning tends to be based on the idea of forgettable facts and
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isolated skills that everybody must cover if that's for me and this is again an entire presentation in its own right I would just ask you to think about the difference between student achievement which typically just means test scores and students achievements when you add an S to both words now you're talking about real kids doing real things but that's not what we're talking about and so it's about specific measurable standards data data-driven education Linda MacNeil a professor at Rice University in Houston said I love this
01:30:37
sentence measureable outcomes may be the least significant results of learning if I went into a superintendents or principal's office and I saw that sentence printed out in 42 point Helvetica and framed on the wall measurable outcomes may be the least significant results of learning that for me would be a marker that this administrator knows how to run a school has a sense of Education it's the ones who think that everything can and should be reduced to numbers that's the one where I worry about the
01:31:19
kids my next fatal flaw is that it gets motivation wrong and here I'm going to summarize an hour and a half talk in one to two sentences depending on how many semicolons I stick in the more you get kids focused on how well they're doing in school the less engaged they tend to be in what they're doing in school even when you use meaningful defensible ways of assessing students too much focus on any kind of assessment leads kids to think about their performance their achievement not about why the character in this novel
01:32:13
we're reading left home at the end even though he didn't seem to be unhappy not is there a different way to create and on that equation that leads to the right answer or set up an experiment the best classrooms are those where kids are not having to take their temperature they're not always they're not be asked to be judged by rubrics where now we've added even more criteria 57 of them in language arts so they're not thinking this thing that I wrote how does it affect the reader they're thinking if
01:32:48
this a for every time you make kids especially little kids think about how well they're doing how am i doing the less engage they are as learners and there's a big piece of a pile of evidence in educational psychology about this which most people who teach assessment are unaware of because they think that more data is good they don't good so that's pretty much the complexity of it and finally my last point on this is that we get a valuation wrong that's the one I've been talking around let me just
01:33:32
say a word about it quickly whenever you hear people talk about excellence or achievement all they tend to mean is higher scores on terrible tests I'm not saying standardized tests are not accurate measures they're extremely accurate measures of how large the houses are near your school up to eighty to ninety percent of the variants and test scores that is the difference in test scores between one school in another one town in another one state in another can be accounted for statistically speaking without knowing a
01:34:08
damn thing about what happened inside the classrooms you tell me how many of your school students are on free or reduced lunch and how much education their parents got and I'll predict your scores with chilling accuracy to that extent it would not just be unhelpful to publish test scores by school or community it would be unethical because he would be pretending you were judging the quality of Education when you were just measuring socio-economic status but even if your population in a school is
01:34:46
pretty much the same from one year to the next if I'm a principal and I say or a superintendent I say our scores went up parents and you're a parent at my school there are two possible reactions you could have if you're well informed and rational there's a moderate reaction and a rat and a radical reaction I don't know you well enough I'll give you both the moderate reaction to our scores went up is so what that doesn't mean the teaching or learning got better there's loads of ways to raise scores without
01:35:22
improving the quality depending on whom you test when how much time you spend with the kids who are right on the bubble just just shy of making it ignoring those above and below and how much time you spend teaching to the test I'm saying a lot of things that are controversial tonight but here's one thing that is indisputable the more time you spend getting kids prepared for a particular test by acquainting them with the content or even the format the less valid and valuable the test becomes because now you're just measuring how
01:35:57
well they were prepared for that test Maryland was one of the states some years ago that decided to switch I forget which test it may have been the the terrible novice or it might have been the Iowa tests I don't remember one of those tests they got rid of the test because they were tired of paying you know mcgraw-hill millions and millions of dollars and they got the scores wrong and they got in late and they they chose from one of the other two multinational corporations that offered tests so they
01:36:29
switched to the California achievements or whatever it was the test scores had been going up slowly when they switched to another test that was supposed to be exactly the same this course did what they went through the toilet oh my god said the newspapers we thought we're making progress and now look what's happened our standards are falling our schools are failing your standards you were never doing anything except teaching kids to do well in this particular test you want the radical response I guess I by now I yeah sure
01:37:04
you're nodding you were but not everybody then the moderate response to our scores went up is so what that doesn't mean we're making real progress are you ready for the radical response to that your scores went up that's the radical response and I hope you never forget it oh it's you're a parent you should be saying you raised the test scores what did you have to sacrifice for my child's education to make that happen do the little kids still get recess a lot of it do the kids still have a vibrant program
01:37:46
of music and the arts our kids still in class meetings where they learn these democratic dispositions and social skills our kids able to learn from current events that will never be on a test or at least not anytime soon are you still doing field trips regularly so kids can learn outside the classroom and go into the community do you have student directed interdisciplinary project-based learning is your learning organized around questions and problems and projects as opposed to organized around facts and skills and separate
01:38:23
disciplines do you have really exciting high school electives and I don't just mean rigorous or have you sacrificed this stuff to drill kids so they'll do better on bad tests because if you did then the fact that you have higher scores now makes me worried and the more I learn about what's on the test the more I understand that if higher scores are bad news which is why the best administrators never never brag about higher scores the most depressing story I have ever heard on this topic with a bunch of teachers sitting around
01:39:05
complaining about various things having to do with the state tests in their faculty lounge after school and then the principal came in and said the score results just came in our school just moved up a grade they grade the school's in this particular state like the great kids do you know what the teachers did they applauded do you see how sad that is when they applauded this and treated higher scores on standardized tests as good news they became accomplices in destroying the school's good scores on these tests are
01:39:46
nothing to be proud of bad scores on these tests are nothing to be ashamed of and the best teachers say I will not spend one minute more than absolutely necessary getting kids to do well on these tests I will do what I have to so I don't get fired and so we don't run rough people don't run roughshod over us on the short term until our society comes to its senses but then after that we're gonna go back to the real learning some teachers in Indiana sent a note home to the parents listing the miraculous wonderful exciting curriculum
01:40:25
units they used to teach and don't teach anymore because of pressure to teach to the standards and raise test scores so that parents see oh my god when I see higher scores or lower scores in the newspaper now I get it higher scores probably means worse schooling for my children I never know it before and now you know what I'm gonna do when they say test time is coming up this year I'm gonna talk to my friends at the hairdresser and the supermarket and my kids birthday parties and we are going to organize a boycott
01:41:01
and this is what parents are starting to do in 2014 go to opt-out United opt-out calm go to fair test org and learn about parents who are learning from brave teachers that if they have doubts about whether a test score really captures the proficiency of their child if they have concerns about how much time is being wasted on prepping for standardized tests why the hell would you allow your kid to take the test you're feeding the beast not with my kids you don't and that's starting to spread and some teachers are starting to
01:41:44
say I can't in good conscience break the shrink-wrap on this stuff teachers in Chicago a couple of months ago teachers at Garfield High School famously in Seattle last year banding together and saying they're gonna have to fire all of us it's not that we're afraid of being held accountable it's that these tests are destroying the intellectual life of the school and doing most of the damage on the kids who are low-income or kids of color to point to the accountability led movement with standards and testing
01:42:21
and saying this is raising the academic quality of our schools that's disturbing but to say that this is going to be done in the name of equity that's outrageous folks you don't go into teaching for the money you figured that part out you go into teaching because you like kids because you like figuring stuff out with kids because you get off on that look in the eyes of a child who suddenly says you'd go into teaching because it's a chance to facilitate a process of intellectual exploration where kids
01:43:11
become increasingly proficient at and never forget this part excited by ideas if your turn to that vision you must actively rebel against and resist school reform as devised by the Gates Foundation politicians and corporate officials which is squeezing the life out of our schools find a mentor who gets it even if it's not the mentor to whom you were assigned and when you get out and have a classroom of your own don't be alone find somebody else who has this child based vision of Education somebody you can go out with on a Friday
01:44:03
night and have one too many glasses of white wine while you complain and dream up subversive strategies boost each other's morale and provide each other with practical strategies for resistance to do right by kids you have to be a rebel [Applause] I don't want to make this too much longer and I'm also going to be sitting out where the books are including my new book about which I said nothing that just came out the myth of the spoiled child which makes a fabulous gift but I do want to just for five minutes if you
01:44:58
can all still answer a couple of six inked questions before before we go out there a question and objection if you can put it in a few words I'd love to respond please what I see in the future depends on what you do in the future I don't believe history unravels according to a predictable plan I don't it depends on us by the same answer I mean if we continue to basically do what we're told and censor ourselves and clap when they announce hi your test scores then this could go on indefinitely if we
01:45:40
decide it's time to rebel and take our schools back and resist then I think we could take we could just do that and and you know enough people refuse to take the tests or teach recording for the new set of standards imposed on us then the people up on Mount Olympus may get really nervous and saying what have we gave a test and nobody came that's when we know we've begun to take back our schools anybody else want to make sure I don't miss folks in the balcony yeah well I did talk a bit about it in
01:46:21
general terms I'm talking about the Common Core State Standards the Common Core State Standards were not devised by educators they were devised primarily by corporate officials and politicians and then they brought in selected educators most of them not classroom teachers to kind of lend an implementer to the standards so that the education organizations wouldn't wouldn't lose out because this train has left the station and instantly the conversation became what will the standards be rather than
01:46:52
why would we confuse excellence with uniformity high standards with common standards and believe that it has to be the same from one place to another the math standards are allegedly more thoughtful than just calculation but they begin with the notion that everybody's got to do calculus by the end of high school and the whole thing becomes a lockstep force march from first grade up to that preordained goal a goal I find troubling in its own right the language arts standards devised in large part by David Coleman who now runs
01:47:28
the College Board shift away from fiction in large part to informational texts in which the reader is supposed to bracket his or her personal experience and look at the text in a vacuum which is abhorrent to most language arts professionals so even on the details I think they're wrong but anything that is one-size-fits-all and driven by a one of the two national tests PARCC and smarter balanced which is the name of a margarine last he is going to be problematic on its face even if you like some of the
01:48:11
details of all the standards I have grave concerns about that I wrote about it in 2010 before they were laid out you can find it on my website and many people have written more specific and detailed critiques since then but we're led to if you read the newspapers you are led to believe the only people oddly protesting the common core are ultra right-wingers who are allergic to everything that's from the federal government which is why they were very careful to pretend it's not national standards it's just 48 states
01:48:44
miraculously decided to do the same thing at the same time but the reality is it's not people who support moving toward the future in the 21st century versus a bunch of ultra conservative saying we refuse Washington standards we want to ruin the schools with our own state standards which is pretty much the way the debate is framed in places like Texas to South Carolina and so on but the other group of people opposing the common core are not those who are necessarily liberal but those who know the most about teaching and learning yes
01:49:26
there was no single moment for me as a student as a parent as a researcher or as an educator where a light bulb went on and I had an epiphany as you notice I spoke about a whole bunch of topics tonight each of them was a process of changing and moving and rethinking and reconsidering so I can't give you a satisfying autobiographical story nor point to you know mrs. McGillicutty in sixth grade who made me what I am today I'd love to tell that story but it's just not really true it's some combination of being an X kid being a
01:50:04
parent being somebody who reads data and being somebody who's been in the classroom we're one by one of them and if you see me in five or 10 years I may have rethought some of this stuff I hope so to some extent but I also hope that the central vision that has informed my remarks tonight is still there my central vision is thinking deeply is better than memorizing facts for their own sake tests tend not to be very useful or necessary ways of assessing collaborative communities are not only happier but more productive
01:50:42
than places where people have to beat each other and kids learn to make good decisions by making decisions not by following directions so those views along with a few others I could mention have been rattling around in my head for a while and I'm happy to say that my basic values tend to be supported and corroborated by what good studies show I fear you're right which is why I was careful not to say that I want the good teachers to leave and go work in a shoe factory I want them to be there I want
01:51:52
those of you who resonate to what I'm saying tonight and have thought about this stuff before I showed up to be teachers to be rebellious teachers that's what worries me the most is this whole accountability movement is squeezing out the best teachers and not by coincidence allowing people for example in the Teach for America program who are often very well-meaning young people who want to do some good and give back to think that a few weeks of training in the summer is enough to be plopped into an inner-city school and so
01:52:27
I always asked them I'm going to speak to some TFA teachers in Philadelphia in fact in a couple of months and I'm gonna say to them and the people asking me to speak no I'm gonna say this I fear you're being used you're being used to make education worse especially for the most vulnerable people who ebo know the Latins ask who benefits when tenured and experienced teachers are elbowed aside for some kids specifically who haven't studied education mostly in prestige named ecologists drop by for a couple of
01:53:05
years what's that about whose interest does it serve I want people who not just have studied education but are in it for the long haul and who studied education in a way that is consistent with these ideals not just here's how you raised the bar here's how you raise standards here's how you raise test scores but here's how you will wake in children's minds we need more of those people I want them to hang on but I don't want them to pretend that if they're gonna do right by kids that it's gonna be easy we have to move on to
01:53:38
tracks and once in the short run we have to do whatever we can to minimize the damage and in the long run we have to become political we have to become political we have to be willing to take chances and push back and change the system and I will end this tonight by pointing out to you that the core common core standards and Maryland tests and the idea of having to take constant tests and rubrics and homework and all the rest of it this is not a part of life this is not the way the world works this is not even necessary components of
01:54:21
schooling this is not like the weather these are political decisions that can be questioned and challenged and ultimately reversed we have the support the logic the reasoning and the evidence to justify doing so what we need now is enough people to organize and maintain the courage to do that [Applause]

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