Data Is More Than Understanding Numbers

In my role as an instructional leader for our school district I work a great deal with professional development either through committees or in actual learning experiences with adults. The experience can be as exhilarating as the classroom when teachers have the "aha moment," share new ideas with each other, or quietly jot down a concept that they wish to bring to the classroom. As with any classroom, at times the experience can be frustrating. When you hear the "we can't," "this is impossible," "why would we want to do that." Adult and child learners share many traits and each at a core a desire to be the best at what they do. 

This week I realized after meeting with several groups of teachers that my legacy in this school district five, ten, fifteen years down the road will probably be that I was the guy who integrated large amounts of standardized data into the learning experience of adults and students. Reflecting on this concept, it is natural to ask if this is my goal. Personally I have a passion for numbers. I am the guy who knows Ron Cey batted .275 for the Cubs in 1983, the Bears won Superbowl XX 46-10, that I won my heat as a high school sophomore at conference with a 1:14.6 in the 100 breaststroke and my last race in college was a 2:16.8 in the 200 breaststroke. Each time we take a round of standardized tests, I produce spreadsheets that perform over 1,500,000 calculations for the staff. For some that would make their head hurt, for some obscure reason, I think this is a fun activity.

In reality, numbers tell us a lot, but they only show us a small part of the whole picture. Ron Cey may have hit .275 in 1983, but the Cubs finished in 5th place. The Bears won Superbowl XX 46-10 but many of us were surprised New England scored on that defense as neither the New York Giants or Los Angeles Rams had scored on them during the playoffs. In both of my races, I don't remember what heat I was in or how I faired in the overall competition. Numbers provide insight, but they are only one part of the overall picture.

In order to improve those "numbers," we need to look at the learning itself. As a swimmer, I couldn't go into either training or a race and simply say I want to drop 2 seconds today. That's fun to think about but really impossible to do. I would go into the 100 fly and say, I want to breathe every third stroke, I want to dolphin kick 4 times off the wall in the turn. By selecting tangible goals that I could control in the setting, I worked toward the overall goal of improving my swimming achievement and dropping time in the process. The same is true with academic testing. Teachers and students cannot simply say I want to improve my score by so much. Rather by selecting actionable learning experiences such as "I want to develop my understanding and use of figurative language," the client student and leading teacher can cultivate opportunities for manageable growth in the classroom. This in turn, much like the swimming analogy, will result in overall academic gains.

In graduate school, two types of research are studied, quantitative and qualitative. Statistical analysis blended with stories and reflections in the field. As we look at the "data" regarding our classrooms, there is much more to it than the % of students that met or exceeded expectations. There is significantly greater value to be gained from seeing the experiences and hearing the stories of those in the classroom. This week is our second Board of Education Curriculum Workshop. During that time, I will present to the Board six slides of goals and sixteen wonderful graphs. While the data is impressive and it tells a story of fantastic instructional gains, it is only a fraction of the real story. A more complete version of the real story will be shared the hour before, as the Board of Education circulates from group to group meeting with teachers, students, and our coaching team. Seeing first hand some of the products of their learning, hearing stories of successes and challenges in the classroom, and finding out how their decisions as a Board of Education have inspired change in the learning experiences of the adults and students in our district. It will be these moments, qualitative conversations between board members, students, and teachers, that the real data will come out. My numbers in the hour afterwards will simply be frosting on the cake.

Numb3rs

1 to 1 - Reflections on Halfway Through Our First Journey

Sometimes we blink and we missed it. One moment things are one way and the next the world is different. Things change. Sometimes there are obvious causes and sometimes there is a subtle evolution. Either way, we wake up one morning look out into the classroom and notice that everything is different. Like any marriage, life has a cycle... dating, engagement, wedding, honeymoon, post-honeymoon, and the great journey of married life. Our one to one journey has followed the same pattern. 

Last year we began our 3-week learning lab adventures. Teachers and students choose to go 1:1 for three-week periods in their classrooms. It was a lot like dating. There was excitement, fun adventures, 15 classroom days chock-full of hands-on technological learning. Just like those early days of dating there wer movies, music, creative experiences, and personal expression. It was fun. It was exciting. It was exhausting.

In the late Spring of 2013 our Board of Education approved our 1:1 pilot program. We had the opportunity for over 1400 students to participate in a 1:1 learning experience for a full-year. Like any engagement, couples had to commit. Teachers had to choose to enter as a grade level in their building. As such, each partner had to agree to participate. Some couples were ready. Some choose to wait and observe. Some couples had one partner far more ready than the other, yet both jumped into the journey grasping to each other for dear life. After an application period, we had far more grade levels apply than we could service with our devices, and as such, while some grade levels were ready to jump in, we were not able to approve their 1 to 1 courtship. In the end over 70 grade level teams in 11 buildings became "engaged" in the one to one journey.

As with any wedding, there are far more details in the planning than many of us imagined. Creation of user agreements, determination of the image, opportunities for professional development for interested teachers, dialogues on the SAMR model, discussions of blended-learning environments, imaging over 1400 iPad-minis, cases, chargers, barcoding devices, distribution, parent meetings, and countless details that have slipped my mind. The summer was an exciting and exhausting time. As August rolled around and the beginning of the school year neared we looked like most brides, enthusiastic and near the end of our rope with preparations. In late August and early September, each classroom connected together in the roles of 1:1 matrimony.

September and October marked the honeymoon. Like the early days in all marriages everyone was gentle and sweet with each other. Children explored creatively. Teachers looked to find opportunities to integrate the devices into learning. Parents mindfully watched their children establishing boundaries at home. Some easier than others. Everyone made tepid steps to ensure success. As with all marriages in the honeymoon stage we all put a lot of personal stress on each other to ensure that everything was right and perfect. The honeymoon was a marvelous experience, an experience we all only get once.

As November rolled in, clearly the honeymoon was over. Our teachers realized, rightfully so, that it was impractical to use the devices all of the time. Students realized there were things they liked doing on devices and things they didn't. Learning had clearly changed, but also lives had been changed. Each of us took a step back to personal spaces we were more comfortable with. Children shared more than cool apps for learning. They shared funny comics and images, facts they found on the internet, and the occasional inappropriate email. The newness had worn off and we remembered that whether we were 1:1 or not, we were students and teachers and at times we all needed to remember where the boundaries were.

Since returning from Winter Break, we have clearly entered the married life stage of the 1 to 1 program. That loving, caring, yet practical world of day to day life. No longer do we try to impress on an hourly or daily basis. No longer does someone need to shout out, "Hey! Look did you know we could do this?" Life is perceptibly different. 

I had the opportunity to sit down in with our 1:1 teacher teams in late January and early February. They shared their experiences and perceptions. Learning is clearly different in the classroom than from previous years. Throughout the classrooms they talked about a distinctive difference in the level of student ownership in the learning experience. Teachers have taken the lead in cultivating learning opportunities, but they are clearly no longer the sole distributors of content knowledge. Classrooms have become pluralistic partnerships with students seeking help from students on learning activities in content, concepts, and technological assistance. Teachers have become far more comfortable with understanding that they don't need to know the answer. As instructional staff, we used to always say that there were different ways to do things. With 1 to 1 we now accept a wide-range of learning products through which students demonstrate understanding. Learning has become very interesting with the array of methods and tools students use to accomplish the learning target. 

As I walk through the classrooms now, it is common to see devices out and about. Children use them all the time, but rarely in ways that we imagine. The clearest changes have been in creativity, collaboration, and the level of student ownership of the learning. Although the program is 1 to 1, children uses the devices together a lot. Commonly children have two devices going back and forth while they work on paper in front of them. Children select if they wish to use the device for knowledge resource or product generation. Children can get lost in exploring a concept, perfecting the product, or sharing ideas with their classmates. The classroom is clearly a far more mutually-owned experience. 

It's not perfect. Kids and adults still make mistakes. There are age-appropriate dialogues about citizenship. There are times individuals make bad choices and need to be reminded of better paths. Some parents are still figuring out how to have their child put away the device at home when they feel that they have done enough electronics. However, as we reflect on our qualitative and quantitative changes, the learning environment is better. Our growth in 1:1 classes as measured by Fall to Winter MAP scores both in the numbers of students who met or exceeded their growth projections and the amount of growth they generated exceeded district averages at a higher rate than our traditional classrooms. Our classrooms have become collaborative communities. The products are outcomes of our device choice. The intimate nature of the 1:1 tablet, the level of personalization we have allowed in partnership with each student's parent, have allowed these learning devices to become a part of each-others daily experience. 

In general, our world is perceptibly different. We woke up and realized this is what life is in a 1:1 world. It's not the childrens' world of electronics and games. It's not the teachers' world of content knowledge, homework, rubrics, products, and rules. It's our world, a collective blend of exploration, creation, collaboration, and product development. It is a great place of learning where we all are better off.

Spy Kids Clip: Marriage is a Mission

I Love Toxic Waste

Movie Poster from IMDB.com

As I have mentioned before, I am raising two children, an academic and an engineer. The eldest taught himself to decode at three and a half years-old so he could read the screen for video games and the younger a six-year-old first grade student is just now discovering how to read but can disassemble everything in the house and has fixed the hardware on his older brother's iPad. In them I see so much of my myself, my brothers, and stories of my father growing up. They are wonderful boys with different talents and different gifts. Last night we were driving home from a local diner preparing for family movie night and the proud papa moment hit me. As we were passing around a picture of the selected title of the evening movie, the 80's classic Real Genius, the youngest read Val Kilmer's shirt. Proudly stating "I Love Toxic Waste." Stunned, I smiled. Gratefully reminding myself of the wise first grade teacher at Kingsley School who told me about the Miracle of First Grade, when children magically put together these odd symbols we call letters and create meaning in words and sentences. Grateful to Mrs. Bricker, his classroom teacher at Wilmot School and his Project Success teacher whose name I do not know, who helped him take this mishmash we call the alphabet and cultivate meaning. He did it at his own rate and his own time. He did it with help. He's not all the way there yet, but he really is knocking on the door to become a reader.

It struck me as we watched Real Genius that a movie released in 1985 truly dealt with issues as relevant today as it was then. The movie talks about the impact of a stark focus on academics. It deals with issues of bullying and teasing. It looks at accelerating young minds down a path of strict math, science, and non-fiction literacy. It provides a specific warning about the need to create well-rounded individuals.

Last week, the University of Virginia released a study focused on Kindergarten teachers perceptions of role and responsibilities. The headline of the article says it all: U. Va Researchers Find that Kindergarten is the New First Grade. It points to the push for academics down to the kindergarten level, the lack of focus on social interaction, what my team likes to call "Kindergarten Magic" and heavy emphasis on core instruction. A blogpost reviewing the research took this take: Setting Up Children to Hate Reading. Two perspectives of the same information.

There is this great desire for our children to grow linearly or exponentially. Unfortunately the real world isn't like that. We can establish opportunities for greatness but they need to jump when they are ready. Forcing the path too quickly is dangerous. Children will shut down. Adults will shut down. Frustrations will rise. In the movie Real Genius, they establish the following warning:

Real Genius Movie Clip - Moral Imperative

It warns us of the need to provide balance in both learning and life. A idea as true now as it was in 1985. Even with such a clear warning, when the pressures for graduation mount and the pressures from adults increase. The young geniuses forget their own warnings and create a tool that they find morally reprehensible. The lack of balance in their lives did not allow them to see broadly enough to understand the purpose of their work.

Real Genius - Understanding the Purpose

This is not to say that meeting children where they are at and providing the next level of challenge is unimportant. It is not only true that we need to challenge our students, but it truly is a moral imperative. What is also vital is that we take the time to teach them more than science, math, non-fiction literacy, and content knowledge. We need to teach balance and value, integrating creativity, arts, humanities, fiction, and other essences of life. We need not only "Kindergarten Magic," but magic in every grade. We need to honor creativity, expression, discovery, and at times silliness. We need to teach children to appreciate and find value in each other. At times, we need to teach our children to play. Only with balance can we use great knowledge and great capacity to improve our world.

Perhaps the portrayal of Abraham Lincoln in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure put it best:

Forescore and....seven minutes ago, we, your forefathers, were brought forth upon a most excellent adventure, conceived by our new friends: Bill and Ted. These two great gentlemen are dedicated to a proposition, which was true in my time, just as it's true today. Be excellent to each other....and....PARTY ON, DUDES!

Evaluation That Matters

In education, there is a great deal of discussion of using value-added measures as part of the determining factor for teacher evaluation. The concept behind this is that there should be some quantitatively measurable product that lets us compare teacher to teacher. Good teachers should produce higher levels of measurable value-added on standardized tests and poor teachers will produce less. Furthermore, it is conceptualized that this works in business.

Does it? Should it? Will it? The Gates Foundation which has been funneling hundreds of millions of funds has been a significant proponent for value-added. The same leadership from Microsoft that built a software empire and with Bill Gates as Chairman of the Board has watched their empire start to fade into decline. It is easy to think of the ubiquitous nature of Microsoft products, Windows, Office, and Xbox. However, only one of those products has a future (Xbox) where as new Windows products are frequently being ignored, only purchased by enterprise that is dependent on legacy software and consumers not quite ready to switch to OS-X, Chrome, Android, or iOS. The real story is how Microsoft lost its innovative edge. To understand that is to understand it's employee evaluation system that pitted employee against employee, destroyed team work, and eliminated trust. The story of this is Stack Ranking. Microsoft, as well as Adobe and others, began evaluating their employees on a curve. In each group, based on the performance and value given during that time, a few employees were evaluated real high, a few real low, and most in the middle. As a result of this methodology, top performers moved around the company to avoid working with other top performers. Cut throat competition occurred, the type that produced only a few winners and multitudes of losers. Employees looked at only their value, knowing that it was better for them if others did worse. Team work, innovation, and creativity were all lost as individuals looked only to short term gains. While the Department of Education through Race to the Top requirements, prompted by the Gates Foundation looks to push forward value-added measurement, Adobe, Microsoft, and others are backing away from it having seen their innovation edge gone and as corporations that are shells of their once great selves.

The interesting thing is that teachers are prideful people. They are caring people who entered the profession to make a difference. Principals and district administrators are the same, they simply discovered that they could help more kids learn and grow if they were supporting instructional development for whole schools and whole school communities. I've worked with growth measurements for eight years. Each time a teacher gets their results, they analyze and over analyze each student's performance. They question why students went up. They perseverate on each child that didn't grow or didn't grow enough. Instantly they have fifteen adjustments that they are preparing to do to support children. Growth measures, when consistently shared, just by their very existence are powerful tools. They are one part of the complex picture that is a child's development.

For evaluation to matter, it isn't an experience of some "boss" telling some "employee" you need to change this or do that. Evaluation that matters starts with the leader asking questions and listening to the employee. Conversations that cultivate brainstorming, exploration, and the development of interdependent innovation. Very little of the world of evaluation is about removing employees from the workplace in any career field. The majority of evaluation is about finding and generating greatness within ourselves and our work group. Great leaders find ways to create synergy within their work groups. They curate their questions so that employees can generate solutions that make a difference.

Teachers get it. They understand that administrators come and go. Many teachers have been here long before the principal arrived and will be here long after the principal is gone. Over the journey of time, our judgements matter very little. It is their judgement that matters most. They will react to the Excellent, Satisfactory, Needs Improvement, or Unsatisfactory ranking, but those our external valuations. Temporary titles based on the judgement of a temporary individual. Their pride in performance and their view of each child's growth is what matters. As leaders, if we can facilitate through questions, support, and discovery personal reflective growth in our teachers, we will make a difference in our teachers' lives and the lives of each child they teach.

Finding Corporate Synergy

Meaningful Assessment

Franchises for Educational Assessment?

Every once in a while there are small pleasures in life that we have the opportunity to enjoy. Mine is when you feel like a company is always abusing you, the ability to fire it and find a new product. When we lived in an apartment in Michigan, my wife and I would always complain about Ameritech cable. It rarely worked and when it did, the reception was poor. Many times I would go through the customer service rigamarole trying to get it fixed, but in the end, the product was the product. Unfortunately, Ameritech had a franchise at the time with the village and was the only provider of cable in the area. In addition, the apartment complex didn't allow satellite at the time (it was the 90's). Thus we had two choices, rabbit ears television or to take the abuse from Ameritech. It was a great pleasure to become a homeowner and to have my choice between cable and satellite television. I gladly fired the cable company and chose a satellite service. I still smile about it.

Recently, the Village of Deerfield, where I live, had been having trouble with their electric service. The village had a franchise with ComEd and ended up suing the provider for lack of reliable service. Eventually, after years of wrangling with ComEd, the village joined an electricity aggregation consortium and opened up more freedom of choice for its residents. Simply they got frustrated and had to find a way out from the lack of competition creating monopoly-like service.

One critical question in education is why are we allowing assessment providers to have franchise rights for large scale assessment. Why is Illinois a PARCC state and California a Smarter Balanced state? Why can't they and the ACT corporation, the College Board, the Northwest Evaluation Association, Pearson Education, and anyone else who wants in on the assessment business go through an approval process and compete district by district for providing assessments. People trust SAT and ACT scores because we have known them for years and they are less impacted by legislative influence. They are seen as valid, reliable, and constant. Many adults still know the SAT and ACT scores. They remember taking the tests and what it meant for their future. State assessments aren't viewed in the same way. They are not viewed as reliable, and with the state frequently changing the assessments and the cut scores, they are not constants. Many districts, including my own, want outside evaluation mechanisms of our choice. Why not give it to us? What should states franchise their assessment mechanisms? These corporations and certainly our state and federal education leaders are capable of running correlation studies between the assessments to determine achievement and growth profiles. Why is it that schools need to become more competitive but the assessment providers don't? If open market reforms are so good for education, then lets try it with measurement devices also.

The simple fact of the matter is that there is a lot of money involved here. For many states assessment costs for PARCC and Smarter Balanced will significantly increase. Furthermore, the amount of student and teacher time will significantly increase in many states. There are vested interests in having guaranteed revenue streams for these assessment providers. However are those interests the same as parents, students, school districts, and school communities. We don't need to reinvent the cable franchise. For the most part, these are for-profit companies, let them compete for our business. It will help increase their customer service and create a greater level of quality for all of us. 

Stick it to the Man Commercial

Leaps of Faith

So this weekend I have the opportunity to study together with a group of families from my religious community and the topic is "Leaps of Faith." In the first gathering, I had the opportunity to listen to two of my former students share their ideas regarding what is a leap of faith. They are bright, intelligent, and articulate youths who described brief visions of what it takes to move forward and the trust one needs to have that one will land safely on the other side of the journey. In their comments, I started to question the mechanisms and tools we use in our journeys.

At the start of this school year, a retiring first grade teacher shared with me her favorite moments of teaching. She described the miracle of first grade as a majority of students enter the room as non-readers and yet somehow through a variety of twists and turns, they each in their own way become readers. It is in this story essence of this blog truly comes forth. Teaching, as well as life, is a blend of scientific artistry. There is no set formula for a child to become a reader. We have tools, we have resources, but we do not have an exact recipe. There isn't a list of steps in which #37 states upon completion of these previous 36 steps and doing this now the child is a reader. It isn't like programing the alarm clock or entering the code on a garage door, when upon completion of these specific steps the child will become a reader. Learning is not a product of a recipe from the back of a Betty Crocker Brownie Mix. Learning is a blend of scientific artistry. Tools, knowledge, and ideas when put into the hands of an expert becomes a fanciful product. It is the expertise and freedom the artist has; the relationship between the artist and the canvas that creates the learning moment. Furthermore, the freedom and tools we provide can allow for the learning moments to be standardized and palatable or gourmet and exquisite. It is our choice as teachers, principals, and district leaders to decide if the child learns to read through a series of worksheets and stale texts or through delightful stories and exquisite visuals. It is our choice to decide if our learning experiences are likely to lead that child to their "Home Run" book that encourages them to be a reader for a lifetime. Becoming a reader is a leap of faith. A trust by the teacher, the student, and the parent that you will succeed, you will magically break the code. A journey in which we will add a little bit of this and a dash of that to get you there.

As we drove to our first gathering this weekend, my wife who is also an educator and I were discussing Common Core learning experiences in the car. Although our children sitting in the back on their iPads, the eldest interjected into the conversation that the Common Core was easy and boring. It's just more skills and worksheets that they make you do. He's ten and he's bright. He picked up on what was being labeled Common Core and hit the nuances of it from his experience. For him, the Common Core was like Michael and Jane serving castor oil or gruel in Mary Poppins. As we look at the corporatization of learning in the United States, we are given many static recipes to promote learning. They are "scientifically researched" that when implemented with "integrity and fidelity" will provide "valid and reliable" results. Each of these recipes lacks the leap of faith. They don't trust the artist to look at the canvas and adjust to the medium in front them. The results are Betty Crocker and not gourmet. Our children often walk away and find it to be boring stuff.

This corporate experience of learning is a choice by district leaders, school leaders, teachers, and parents. Yes, it is admittedly being pushed on us from all sides. However, the Common Core State Standards can be accomplished without using static recipes and tasteless learning experiences. We as leaders and practitioners can decide what resources to use, how to use them, and when to stop using them. We can create and build our learning if we wish and have the internal stamina to stand up to the constant electronic bombardment of Common Core aligned sales pitches. We choose the learning experiences and we get to decide whether the medicine is served in castor oil and gruel or with a spoonful of sugar.

The Common Core State Standards make many assumptions about the pace and order students should learn things. If we look at them as targets and recognize that our children will not learn them at the same pace or in the same way, they are more likely to be palatable and we are more likely to help our children to be successful. Furthermore, if we focus on growth and moving children forward in meaningful ways through this Common Core journey, we can create experiences that engage children and ourselves. We can have every tool available to us, but it is us the learner and the leader that cultivates that tasteful experience. Learning is a leap of faith, one in which we must have belief if we want to be successful.

The Leap of Faith

Luke learns to trust himself even with the best tools available

I Teach Dead People

Last month, I had the opportunity to sit around with some associates in our temple and as will happen from time to time people will ask me about trends in education. As parents, community members, and products of public schools, often it is hard for them to conceptualize the changes that are occurring in and around education. Now, to give context to my conversation, it is important to understand that I live and work in outlier communities. I live in a community with a less than 1% free and reduced lunch population and work in a community with just under 10% free and reduced lunch population. It was only in my first principalship where I led a learning community which had a state average, 50% free and reduced lunch population. In each setting however, I have had a large involved parent and community group that cherished and was invested in their public schools. As I sat talking with this group of well-educated, successful, involved friends, we began discussing the new Common Core State Standards and their children's ISAT results.

I've blogged before about the challenges of new assessments and new data lines. That, as they say, is a story for a different time. These parents understood the process of re-norming and  changing the content of the assessments. What struck this group of intelligent and articulate individuals was when I explained why. I shared the emphasis of "rigor" being placed on educational experiences, standards, and assessment. One of the physicians looked at me oddly, paused, and asked, "Wait, you teach dead people." We paused. We laughed. We pulled out our phones and looked up the definition. The humor left the group as we all stared at our screens and pulled bits and pieces from the definition found on the Merrian-Webster.com website:

• 1) "the difficult and unpleasant conditions or experiences that are associated with something" - Wait, can't children have fun as they learn? Shouldn't they like school?

• "a (1) :  harsh inflexibility in opinion, temper, or judgment : severity" - Schools are being asked to become harsh and inflexible places. Should teachers become harsh in opinion or judgement?

• "(2) :  the quality of being unyielding or inflexible : strictness"  - Will this definition foster the innovative entrepreneur? Is the child who is the product of this learning experience going to be our next inventor or scientist?

• "severity of life :  austerity" - Are we teaching children to be reasonable in their approaches, interactions, and choices?

• "b :  an act or instance of strictness, severity, or cruelty" - Isn't there a difference between strictness and cruelty. Does one need to go hand in hand with another? We want our children to be high achievers but also be balanced in their approach to life.

• 2) "a tremor caused by a chill" - As we got this far into the definition I was longing for the days before smartphones as a chill truly had overtaken the group.

• 3) "a condition that makes life difficult, challenging, or uncomfortable; especially :  extremity of cold" - This seemed to be the first definition that began to somewhat make the group feel better. They wanted their children to be challenged, but not to the point of being extremely uncomfortable. They wanted achievable challenges. Ones that can be overcome and the students feel value from doing. The extremity of cold as the example didn't resonate with the group as being a valuable challenge. Rather than wanting war stories of walking to school uphill five miles through the blizzard, this group wants to know what cool things you did in the classroom.

• 4) "strict precision :  exactness <logical rigor>" - Precision is valuable, but the highest level of precision will always come from computers and robots. As parents we hope for innovative, collaborative, and creative. We want good skills, but value the process as much as the product.

• 5) "a obsolete :  rigidity, stiffness" - Perhaps this definition is an accurate product of the children this process is trying to cultivate?

• "b :  rigidness or torpor of organs or tissue that prevents response to stimuli" - It was here that the physician's definition began to come forward. Are we working to create rigid individuals, teachers, principals, or students who are prevented to responding to stimuli.

• "c :  rigor mortis" - Are we teaching dead people?

Rigor, the new goal in education. I was at a loss to explain why this was an emphasis by the state. A movement of national importance. Bright people had taken down my walls and shown that yes the emperor before them had no clothes. Foiled again by the information age: a smartphone and the Merrian-Webster online dictionary.

I went home and thought about this. I thought about challenge our kids, raising them to be good people who can handle hard questions. Then I thought about one of our middle school math teachers. When reviewing page 2 of a new math book, he explained that the problem on the page was one of those "Somebody out there hates you problems." The challenge to the problem was not the mathematics, but the wording and the way the units were organized. He explained that the language is meant to fool the students. The children are just beginning to understand the concept of slope and in the language of the problem they use x and y differently as variables and thus make the children flip their understanding of procedural knowledge. Even if the children understand how to calculate slope and what slope means, the problem challenges them to reanalyze the variables. It's like calculating gallons per mile instead of miles per gallon. The answer doesn't make conceptual sense, hence a "Somebody out there hates you problem."

At MIT, a group of professors, looked at the challenge of assessments and learning. Developing some of the best and brightest engineers in our country, the instructional leaders began to question the grade-focus of the students and wished to develop a learning and achievement focus in their classroom. Paul Henry Winston outlines guidance for grading that they developed for their 6.034 Introduction to Artificial Intelligence class:

• "We should find a way to deemphasize grades so as to make room for big ideas"

• "We should test understanding, not speed and general intelligence"

• "We should not care whether a student demonstrates understanding early in the semester, or late, as long as the student demonstrates understanding."

• "We should give an A to every student that demonstrates A-level understanding"

Winston goes on further when discussing assessment (at MIT!!!!):
"Further guided by our desire to test subject understanding rather than general intelligence, we decided to resist the temptation to be so clever that our quizzes test the students on how well they can penetrate our cleverness, rather than their understanding of the material."

The lessons here are fundamental. The concept that learning should be assessed by not the adult capacity to create clever problems meant to trick students but rather the child's ability to understand a concept. Assessment should be about learning. Schools need to be about learning. The goal of creating "rigorous learning experiences" may not create the type of learning situations the promoters of the term wish to obtain. Creating intrinsic learners who work on meaningful problems in situations which promote innovation  and understanding should be our goals. It is in Dr. Winston's classes at MIT and the results, are amazing:

"When we first tried our new grading procedure in the fall of 2006, we expected many students to leave by the end of the first hour or two of our three-hour final, because there were a substantial number who were in the highest category for all or all but one of the four quizzes. As time went by, we noted, with some alarm, that many known-to-be-excellent students stayed the entire three hours. When the exam was over, we asked one of the highest-category students why she did all five parts when we had made it clear she needed to do only one. “Oh,” she said, “I did the rest for fun!” Our pride was palpable. We knew we were on to something."

Let's not teach dead people but those who zest for life and learning as these MIT students do.