Data Driven Education (or is it Drivel driven?)

We are being told that we must use standardized tests to guarantee that school children are learning. Data driven decsionmaking is the new intellectual hemline in the educational fashion world.

There is, of course, the over told story of the man who comes across a drunk who is crawling around on his knees beneath a street light.

“You OK?” he asks.

“Yea. I’m looking for my car keys.”

Being a kind individual by nature, the man helps the drunk look for his keys. After looking for 10 minutes and not finding anything, he asks, “Are you sure you dropped them here.”

“No,” said the drunk. “I dropped them down the block.”

“Then why,” ask the man, “are you looking for them here?”

“Because here the light is better.”

As Warwick writes, “It seems to me that ushering it away to the central office to worry over data as an educational concern may actually be detrimental to the learning our students need to be engaged in. Limited resources will cause us put undue emphasis on what can be easily measured at the expense of those important skills and knowledge that can’t.”

Wiley adds, “The data that we, educators, gather and utilize is all but garbage. What passes for data for practicing educators? An aggregate score in a column in a gradebook. A massive, course-grained rolling up of dozens or hundreds of items into a single, collapsed, almost meaningless score.”

Having suffered through several graduate courses in statistical analysis, the words, “Garbage in, garbage out” echo in my head. In the same what that the destruction of the rain forest threatens biodiversity, the lock step adherence to test driven curriculum threatens edudiversity. We need to be taking many approaches to teaching and focusing on different information so when the unexpected situations occur, we have somebody that knows how to deal with it effectively.

Wall street and business got turned over to the number crunchers and bean counters. Are we hoping for a similar outcome?

Do teachers, as a group, have the courage to stand up and decry the McDonaldization of education? Perhaps Nancy Reagan was right. We should just say no.