Schools need more vigor, not rigor by Joanne Yatvin

Here is a wonderful article about my most hated word in the education lingo, rigor. I love the idea of replacing it with 'vigor'. 

By Joanne Yatvin 

Orignial article can be found here at www.AJC.com

Though my years in the classroom are long past, at heart I am still a cranky old English teacher who bristles at some of the neologisms that have crept into public language.

Even so, I remain politely quiet when others commit such grammatical transgressions. But there is one word I dislike so intensely when used in connection with education that I can’t remain silent under any circumstances.I never tack “ly” onto ordinal number words, or say “myself” when I mean “I” or “me.” I won’t use “access” or “impact” as verbs because I consider them to be only nouns.

That word is: rigor.

Part of my reaction is emotional, having so often heard “rigor” paired with “mortis.” The other part is logical, stemming from the literal meanings of rigor: harshness, severity, strictness, inflexibility and immobility.

None of these things is what I want for students at any level. And, although I don’t believe that the politicians, scholars or media commentators who use the word so freely really want them, either, I still reproach them for using the wrong word and the wrong concept to characterize educational excellence.

Rigor has been used to promote the idea that American students need advanced course work, complex texts, and longer school days and years in order to be ready for college or the workplace.

But, so far, the rigorous practices put in place under the federal No Child Left Behind Act and various school reform plans have not raised test scores or improved high school graduation rates.

Since I believe it is time for a better word and a better concept to drive American education, I recommend “vigor.”

Here my dictionary says, “active physical or mental force or strength, healthy growth; intensity, force or energy.”

And my mental association is to all the Latin-based words related to life. How much better our schools would be if they provided students activities throbbing with energy, growth and life.

Although school buildings happen to have walls, there should be no walls separating students from vigorous learning. No ceilings, either.

To learn, students need first-hand experiences with real-world problems — not only in math and science, but also in civics and nutrition; knowledge garnered from multiple sources, not only from textbooks and the internet, but also from talking to people of all ages and from different backgrounds.

They also need a variety of skills: the traditional school ones plus at least a taste of the skills of gardeners, craftsmen, mechanics, athletes and sales people.

Instead of aiming for higher test scores, a vigorous school would care more about what students do with what they have been taught.

At all levels such schools would foster activities that allow students to demonstrate their learning in real contexts, such as serving in the school lunchroom or checking out books in the library, organizing playground games for younger children or reading to them, making items to sell in a school store, creating a school garden, painting murals in the halls or producing original plays.

They could encourage performing in a musical group, organizing jeopardylike quiz shows for students, cleaning up the school grounds, adopting a road, publishing a student newspaper or a parent newsletter, establishing a school post office, making informational or artistic videos, running a school recycling program, writing to the newspaper or public figures and working with adults on community projects.

As a result of the vigor that these activities exemplify, there will come the intellectual intensity, precision, critical alertness, expertise and integrity that critics of education are really calling for when they misuse the word “rigor.”

These habits of mind, body and spirit are the true fruit of educational excellence. In the end, vigor in our schools is the evidence of life, while rigor is the sign of an early death.

Joanne Yatvin is formerly a public school teacher, elementary principal, superintendent, president of the National Council of Teachers of English and author of three books for teachers. She is now an adjunct professor at Portland State University Graduate School of Education.

Michelle Rhee is Shameless by Diane Ravitch

You can read the original posting at Diane Ravitch's Blog

I have resisted watching the ad that Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst created and played on NBC.

A reader sent it to me, and I relented.

It is disgusting.

It is a lie.

It smears America.

It smears our teachers and our students.

It makes fun of obesity.

A few facts:

1) the US was never first on international tests. When the first test was given in 1964 (a test of math), our students came in 11th out of 12.

2) On the latest international tests, students in American schools with low poverty (10% or less) came in FIRST in the world

3) As poverty goes up in American schools, test scores go down.

4) The U.S. has the highest child poverty rate–23%– of any advanced nation in the world.

Michelle Rhee says nothing about poverty, which is the most direct correlate of low test scores.

She is shameless.

Invitation to a Dialogue: An Excess of Testing/ NY Times wants to hear parents' opinions about standardized testing

Posted July 17 in the NY Times and can be found online here. 


The common core standards movement seems to be common sense: Our schools should have similar standards, what students should know at each grade. The movement, however, is based on the false assumption that our schools are broken, that ineffective teaching is the problem and that rigorous standards and tests are necessary to improve things.

The mediocre performance of American students on international tests seems to show that our schools are doing poorly. But students from middle-class homes who attend well-funded schools rank among the best in the world on these tests, which means that teaching is not the problem. The problem is poverty. Our overall scores are unspectacular because so many American children live in poverty (23 percent, ranking us 34th out of 35 “economically advanced countries”).

Poverty means inadequate nutrition and health care, and little access to books, all associated with lower school achievement. Addressing those needs will increase achievement and better the lives of millions of children.

How can we pay for this? Reduce testing. The common core, adopted by 45 states, demands an astonishing increase in testing, far more than needed and far more than the already excessive amount required by No Child Left Behind.

No Child Left Behind requires tests in math and reading at the end of the school year in grades 3 to 8 and once in high school. The common core will test more subjects and more grade levels, and adds tests given during the year. There may also be pretests in the fall.

The cost will be enormous. New York City plans to spend over half a billion dollars on technology in schools, primarily so that students can take the electronically delivered national tests.

Research shows that increasing testing does not increase achievement. A better investment is protecting children from the effects of poverty, in feeding the animal, not just weighing it.

STEPHEN KRASHEN
Los Angeles, July 16, 2012

The writer is professor emeritus at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education.

Editors’ Note: We invite readers to respond to this letter for the Sunday Dialogue. We plan to publish responses and Mr. Krashen’s rejoinder in the Sunday Review. E-mail:letters@nytimes.com

Teacher Bashing

Original article can be found here.

William E. White

Royce R. & Kathryn M. Baker Vice President Productions, Publications, and Learning Ventures for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

I am fed up with teacher-bashing. Politicians, civil servants, pundits, cartoonists, businessmen, the media -- they all line up to take a shot. Everyone is willing to belittle teachers. But these same critics are not willing to step forward and do the job themselves and, for the most part, neither do they provide any real, substantive suggestions for improving education. In fact, truth be told, most of the critics are not good enough or strong enough to do the job.

I am not a teacher. I am the first to admit that I couldn't teach in the classroom. I am not good enough. I am not dedicated enough. Teachers are the hardest-working people I know, and I know a lot of them. I've been working with teachers for more than 25 years, and it pains me to hear critics discounting the rigors of the teaching profession.

It's summertime. The schools have sent students home and closed their doors. Most teachers are only compensated for 10 months of work, but all across this country, teachers are still working at internships, in workshops, in libraries, and museums to improve their skills, increase their content knowledge, and become better teachers.

More than 600 teachers, for example, will attend workshop and institute programs at Colonial Williamsburg this summer. They come to learn more about the American Revolution and this nation's founders and founding ideals. They come to experience daily life in colonial America and see how ordinary people made and can still make a difference. They collaborate with each other to explore new ways of making American history stories exciting and engaging for the students in their classrooms. Teachers attend these workshops and continuing education experiences -- many times at their own expense -- because they are committed to their students, to parents, and to their communities.

Consider the work of Teresa Potter of Fisher Elementary School in Moore, Oklahoma.

Teresa attended the Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute in 2000. She has returned nearly every year since as a volunteer -- a peer teacher -- to help colleagues gain the most from their experiences with early American history. She helps the museum better understand and support the work of teachers in the classroom. In her home district, Teresa develops an exciting, engaging learning environment for her students that integrates social studies, math, science, literature, technology, and the arts. Teresa's students explore historic locations along Route 66, interview veterans, and participate in service learning projects. She coordinates a Colonial Day at the Oklahoma State Capitol that draws more than 500 students to learn about the nation's founding ideals. Teresa has received the National Council for Geographic Education's Herff Jones Geography Award, the Oklahoma Humanities Council's Humanities in Education Award, and in 2012, the Oklahoma Medal for Excellence in Elementary Education.

There's also Ruth King of Cedar Ridge Elementary School in Utah, Mike Warner of East Bakersfield High School in California, Kristie Barbee of Waltrip High School in Texas, India Meissel of Lakeland High School in Virginia, Jodi Mundy at Kenneth R. Olson Middle School in New Jersey -- all of whom work long hours and go above and beyond to bring engaging, challenging, and inspiring lessons into their classrooms. We work with hundreds of great, dedicated teachers every single year.

There is nothing more important to the future of our republic than insuring that America has capable, qualified, educated citizens -- citizens who can investigate and make sound decisions on the critical issues of their time. Our primary and secondary teachers devote their lives to the future of this republic. These women and men shape the lives of every citizen in this great nation.

Take a moment this summer to stop and congratulate a teacher. You know who they are. They are members of your family. They are neighbors down the street. They attend your place of worship. They are members of your community organizations. Seek them out. They will appreciate knowing they have your support. They need your support. They need you to stand up for them. After all, they dedicate their lives to the future of our republic and there is no job more important.

Follow William E. White on Twitter: www.twitter.com/wwhitecwf

Why Business Leaders Make a Mess When They Are Put in Charge of Schools

Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham's Urban Studies Program. He is the author of three books and over 100 articles on African-American History, urban history, and the history of sports. His most recent book, "White Boy: A Memoir," was published in the spring of 2002.

Original article can be found here

Every time I have a conversation with someone who has been successful in business -- something that happens more than you might think because I play tennis and golf -- it strikes me they have no understanding of what motivates a teacher. As people who have marked their own success in life through the accumulation of income, investments, and property, they find it hard to respect people whose personal satisfaction comes largely from non-material rewards. They think it odd that a person as competitive as I am on the court could possibly devote myself to a field which has no chance of making me rich. They look on most teachers and professors with a bemused contempt -- I only get an exemption from it because of my sports skills.

This is why it is frightening that business leaders have taken charge of education in the United States, because the only things they take seriously as motivation are material rewards and fear of losing one's job or business. They are convinced that schools in the U.S. can only be improved if a business-style reward-and-punishment system is given primacy. They love the idea of performance evaluation based on hard data (with student test scores being the equivalent of sales figures and/or profits), of merit increments for those who succeed, and the removal of those who fail.

Because they fail to understand how much of a teacher's job satisfaction comes from relationship building and watching students develop over a lifetime, however, they create systems of evaluation which totally eliminate such experiences because they cannot be reliably measured. The consequence, sad to say, is that measurement trumps real learning. The inevitable results are the massive demoralization of the teaching force (teacher morale is now at the lowest in recorded history), a narrowing of the curriculum to constant test preparation, and a "brain drain" of talented teachers from high-poverty schools to those located in more prosperous neighborhoods.

Why we actually allowed people who are successful in one field to be given control of a field in which they have no experience and no track record is a question historians of the future will need to ponder, but the results, so far, have been near catastrophic. All across the country, we have more and more teachers who hate their jobs because their job security has been destroyed, and more and more children who hate school because of the constant testing.

It's time to change course. The Great Recession should have shattered once and for all the idea that the measurement and motivation systems of American business are superior to those in the public sector. (E.g. do we want the same quality of teacher ratings as Moody's and Standard and Poor's applied to mortgage-based derivatives?) American business needs to clean up its own act, not applied its flawed methods to other fields. If we continue on the path we are on, we may well see the American Education system become as corrupt, and unstable as the Global Financial System.