Alfie Kohn

The Trouble with Rubrics

“[Rubrics] do nothing to address the terrible reality of students who have been led to focus on getting A’s rather than on making sense of ideas”(1).

According to Kohn rubrics justify and legitimize grades, while narrowing judgment criteria of student work.  Rubrics are a means to assign a grade as determined by how the student’s work compares to guidelines.

“Studies have shown that too much attention to the quality of one’s performance is associated with more superficial thinking, less interest in whatever one is doing, less perseverance in the face of failure, and a tendency to attribute outcome to innate ability and other factors thought to be beyond one’s control.”

Superficial thinking: Students focus on doing what the teacher wants, rather than thinking about the subject at hand.  I have seen students go through more trouble to search and copy an answer from the internet, than was needed to come up with an answer on their own.  They are often driven by the desire to get it “right.”  They avoid taking risks because the “is this what the teacher is looking for?” concerns hinder creativity and individual expression.  They are working for the teacher, looking to give us what we are looking for, rather than what they have.

Less interest in what they are doing:  The significance problem.  The significance many students find in school is grades.   Grades determine success in schools.  Passing classes, achieving proficiency, graduating, earning honors and scholarships, even eligibility for sports and activities are directly connected to grades, so students find significance in this number.  If only students asked meaningful questions about what we are studying as frequently as they ask what their grade is. “Students whose attention is relentlessly focused on how well they are doing often become less engaged in what they are doing” (3). 

Less perseverance in the face of failure and a tendency to attribute outcome to innate ability and other factors thought to be beyond one’s control: Grades label students as successful or failures, and make them feel as if they belong to one of these groups.   I think of Issac licking the spoons and throwing the blocks here.  When we narrow criteria and label students with F’s we are setting standards that appear to be beyond their reach.  Too often students become discouraged and less willing to try when their efforts are not valued by the grader.

In his last paragraph Kohn challenges us to consider the reasons we went into teaching and design assessments that reflects these goals.    “Neither we nor our assessment strategies can be simultaneously devoted to helping all students improve and sorting them into winners and losers”(4).  Maja Wilson, author of Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Instruction links the creation of rubrics to helping universities sort those prospective students into the “good ones” and the “bad ones.”  She refers to rubrics as templates that we try to fit student work into.   

Schools today have created a culture where the discovery, exploration and connections are funneled through testing and labeled with grade.  When rubrics, or grades are used to measure how well a student’s performance meets a set of prescribed standards, those who don’t fit the mold are sorted into the “loser category”.   Instead of allowing students to construct meaning themselves, we design the house and hand over the blueprint to follow.  Why don’t we provide them with the foundation and see what they can build.

What He Is, Not What He Isn't

Christopher Kliewer's "Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome"

"...actual educational arenas where all students are welcomed, no voice is silenced, and children come to realize their own self-worth through the unconditional acceptance." 

 "All students" means all students; those who look different, who learn differently, who communicate differently, who behave differently.  Education is not a privilege; it is a right afforded to all children.  Week after week I find myself noting in the margin of each reading: is this just good teaching?  I've come to realize the answer is yes.  However, education is often organized so these "good teaching" methods are geared mostly to dominant culture.  "Society itself is hurt when schools act as cultural sorting machines" limiting diversity and maintaining the status quo.  In Shayne Robbins's description of three students in her class with down syndrome, she said, "it would be hard to say ,'This is how you should teach kids with down syndrome. They are not at all alike" (85). My response: What group of kids is alike? What group has a definitive way they should be taught?  They are all individuals. 

"no voice is silenced" 
 I am reminded of Delpit’s "people are experts on their own lives." Shayne Robbins was ability to create a community experience and in essence a voice, for Anne and Isaac "beginning with the simple act of listening" (78).  Anne and Isaac had something to say, but unfortunately, like many other students who don't fit the "rigid, linear" expectations, people didn't hear them.  Hearing these students allowed Shayne to create better opportunities for them to find their voice and participate in the community.

"Children come to realize their own self-worth through the unconditional acceptance."
Think of the significance problem that existed for John in North Hollywood. Once he was "'accepted for what he is, not what he isn't" he was able to focus on "what he can do, instead of being told what he can’t do."

My father's cousin has down syndrome.  When he was young, his parents were told his future was dim.  His parents refused to accept this.  When schools seemed to have the same expectations, his parents found after school programs that allowed him to interact and learn with other students.  He celebrated his 50th birthday last year.  He is a manager for a family business and is one of the most caring individuals I have ever met.  Thankfully, his parents didn't accept the prognosis of those who could not see "past his chromosomal anomaly to his humanity" (86).


School Success VS Community Success...In this corner School Success weighing in at "test scores and AYP status" and in this corner Community success weighing in at "problem solving, self-worth, and relationship building."

"...reliance on a narrow interpretation of mathematical and linguistic characteristics when defining school citizenship in no way captures the multiplicity of knowledges valued in a wider community."

Gardner poses that schools must realign their values to more closely match those needed to participate in society.  Current models of education base intelligence and success on those who can pass the tests,  not necessarily those who have the capacity to think critically and solve  problems.  hmm...too much weight placed on test scores?

Reconceptualizing
 Vygotsky's suggest the "idea of defect emerges from culturally devalued sets of the relationships that a child has with his or her surroundings" (82).  If a student constructs relationships with his or her surroundings in a manner that does not match the accepted norm, the defect label comes out.   The defect label often leads to isolated environments which encumber the development of higher functions. "...Altering the culture of disability requires that a child be recognized as an active learner, thinker, and problem solver, but this cannot occur apart from relationships that allow for such engagement" (83).

Language and Power

Excerpts fromTongue Tied by Richard Rodriguez and Virginia Collier

Virginia Collier's emphasis on the importance of balancing respecting and affirming home culture and language with teaching Standard English echoes Delpit. “ I suggest tht students must be taught the codes they need to participate fully in the mainstream of American life…while also being helped to acknowledge their own “expertness...” (Delpit 45).  "Aria" exemplifies the idea.  Rodriquez stresses the “necessity of assimilation” while showing the detriment of devaluing his native language.  “…While one suffers diminished sense of private individuality by becoming assimilated into public society, such assimilation makes possible the achievement of public individuality”(39).  Standard English is a tool- it allows participation in the culture of power, but it should not be used to replace a student’s first language or dialect. 

Spanish was not valued or affirmed in school for Rodriguez “I would have been happy about my public success had I not sometimes recalled what it had been like earlier, when my family had conveyed its intimacy through a set of conveniently private sounds” (38).  Rodriguez had to give up one language for the other.  Collier not only warns us of the dangers of this, but provides guidelines to overt putting students in the same situation that Rodriguez was in.

What Can We Do…

“However idyllic the original vision of teaching may be, the reality is that in the complicated
school world of proposals and government superplans there are things that can be done” (223). 

Teachers have a lot working against them.  In every issue we have discussed in class this struggle has been embedded in the solutions.  We often feel powerless and unsupported.  Collier acknowledges the obstacles and reminds teachers that “[we] have the chance to interact daily with live, growing, thinking, maturing human beings, and the time is special, despite the complications of managing a bureaucratized, overcrowded classroom of overtested, underchallenged students” (22).  Collier suggests teaching English-language learners following the stated guidelines can “eliminate boredom, raise awareness, and make language teaching as well as learning as culturally relevant as possible for students…enrich[ing] the life of the student, but also that of the teacher” (235). 

Keeping It Real: Code Switching

Code switching is not restricted to ELL.  People use different languages for different purposes and in different situations.  The cultural straddlers in Keeping It Real  “subscribed to formulas of success determined by dominant or elite groups…[while also] leaning on [black cultural capital] to procure legitimacy among their racial peers, to signal their own allegiance to their backgrounds and heritages…” (Carter 63).     Carter explains, as Delpit did, that different vernaculars are part of one’s cultural identity.   The same principles apply when switching between different languages. 

This video connects code switching to many of the things we have discussed in class: advantages of participating in the culture of power, cultural identity, and maintenance of the status.

Promising Practices

The workshop I attended, “Readers Who Shop 'til They Drop” was geared  towards elementary school teachers, but in the discussion of how to set-up your first and second grade classroom libraries a few connections to secondary education were made.  The workshop focused on helping students choose the right books.  It emphasized the idea that in order to get students to grow as readers, they must read the right books. .

 Books that are too easy will ensure readers stay stuck in their reading level.  Books that are too difficult will cause frustration and create disdain towards reading.  Interest level is also important to entice students to want to read.  Applying this knowledge to classroom libraries and teaching students to select texts that are “just right” for their individual needs can develop life-long readers.   By the time students get to high school they have usually decided how they feel about reading--but it is not too late to change their minds.

Book choice is still very important in the upper grades.  A reluctant reader is not going to make it through a book that is too difficult or one that they have no interest in.  In these second grade classrooms displayed books grab readers’ attention.  In high school classrooms this could work too, but actually placing a book in a student’s hands might be more effective for the student who has already written off books.  Peer recommendations also work well.  Setting up a time during your class or designating a place where students can review and recommend books to other students will convince some students to give a book a try. 

I always recommend books for the students sitting who have SSR in my room, but if I reorganze my library so it is easier to find a book of interest,  and display different titles students in my other classes might be more apt to pick one up.  Anything thing that increasses students' interested in reading is worth the effort.

Teen Empowerment

 The teen empowerment presentation reinforced many of the ideas we have discussed in class.  The group made an important point: there is a connection between feeling powerless and the increased risk of engaging in dysfunctional behavior.   One of the student speakers, Jamal, said, “[If you feel powerless] you are going to do what you need to do to get power,” even if those things are dangerous, illegal or self-destructive.   This reminds me, as many of the readings have, we have to look at why students are behaving the way they are.  If we understand where they are coming from, and what they are working against, we can begin to make a difference for that student.

More from teen empowerment:

Meyer: Gendered Harassment

How far have we come?

The Help by, Kathryn Stocket is a story about extraordinary women in the 1960s South who come together and risk everything to partake in a secret writing project  that opposes society’s rules and social norms.

Charlotte Phelan: I read the other day about how some girls get un...unbalanced. Start thinking these... unnatural thoughts. Are you..? Do you uh...find men attractive? Are you havin' unnatural thoughts about girls or women?
Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan: Oh, my God!
Charlotte Phelan: Because this article says there's a cure. A special root tea!
[angry Skeeter gets and walks away]

 More importantly, where are we going?

The chart  Meyer refers to on page 6 summarizes the formula of external influences merging with internal influences to output a reaction. 

Meyer says identifying the barriers from teachers' perspectives is important so more effective intervention programs can be put in place to support teachers' efforts.  But are those policies only as effective as the culture of the school and community?  "The social norms do not emerge in a vacuum, but are often a reflection of the community...Teachers are more inclined to act in ways that reflected shared norms and values of other teachers than in ways defined in school policy" (15-16).

 Don't Ask Don't Tell was only recently repealed. Gay marriage is not legal in the majority of states.  We are living in a world where many people do not recognize homosexual relationships as deserving of the same rights as heterosexual relationships.  Teachers who are trying to oppose gendered harassment are fighting prevalent external forces.  What message are children getting when prior to September a man in the military couldn't identity himself as a homosexual without punishment?  Some barriers Meyer mentions include the inconsistency of all teachers to address these issues, the lack of support from administration, and community values.  In a country a where potential presidential candidate avows, "We believe in the sanctity of traditional marriage, and I applaud those legislators in New Hampshire who are working to defend marriage as an institution between one man and one woman, realizing that children need to be raised in a loving home by a mother and a father,"   we must recognize we will not always be supported in our efforts.  "...studies have shown that sexual and homophobic harassment are accepted parts of school culture where faculty and staff rarely or never intervene" (1).  This is unacceptable. The repeal of Don't ask, Don't Tell and the increasing acceptance of gay marriage suggest we are in the process of change, moving past archaic ideas of gender roles and sexuality and the schools must set the tone for equity for all people.



The "experience with discrimination and marginalization that made [several teachers] particularly sensitive to these issues in school.  The challenge with this finding is how to raise the awareness of educators who have not personally felt the impacts of discrimination or exclusion from dominant culture" (17).

Educating those not personally affected by discrimination on the harassment LGBT students face can help to create an awareness of the harmful impacts of this behavior and the destruction that occurs when educators allow it to continue.

 "2009 National School Climate Survey: Nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT Students Experience Harassment in School" from the GLSEN website reported:

• 84.6% of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed, 40.1% reported being physically harassed, and 18.8% reported being physically assaulted at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation.
• 63.7% of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed,  27.2% reported being physically harassed and 12.5% reported being physically assaulted at school in the past year because of their gender expression.
• Nearly two-thirds (61.1%) of students reported that they felt unsafe in school because of their sexual orientation, and more than a third (39.9%) felt unsafe because of their gender expression.
• 29.1% of LGBT students missed a class at least once and 30.0% missed at least one day of school in the past month because of safety concerns
• The reported grade point average of students who were more frequently harassed because of their sexual orientation or gender expression was almost half a grade lower than for students who were less often harassed (2.7 vs. 3.1).
• Increased levels of victimization were related to increased levels of depression and anxiety and decreased levels of self-esteem.

REEEEMIXXX

Michael Wesch "Anti-Teaching"

Is this going to count for a grade?

School’s relevance for students has become grades.  That is what they connect to their lives. They need a certain grade to move on, to get into the school or program they want, or to get a dollar from their grandparents.  Whatever the motivation, most students care far more about what grade they get than how much they learn.  In a world where a school is failing if everyone can’t earn a certain score on a standardized test, this is not surprising.  Even as a teacher I have to ask the horrible question: “What do they need to know for the test?”

All students are cut out for learning.

I have to agree with the "often heard lament, 'some student simply aren’t cut out for school'”(5).   It is my agreement with the statement that confirms my ideas that the system is broken.  We need to find a way to make schools something that doesn’t cut out kids.  

 Do most students see the value of education?  Why do we expect them to?  I remember saying I wish I was already working when I was in college, because the education classes would have had so much more relevance to me.  I was interested in education.   I cared about doing well, and learning something-but I still did not see the value and practical application of a lot of what I was doing in school until I had the experience of teaching.  I find a much stronger connection and interest in all of the work I have done at the graduate level than I did as an undergrad because I have the context for it now.  Part of education’s significance to the world around us is preparing students to become contributors to society.  School should introduce students to variety of subjects so they can explore them and discover what they are interested in and what they are good at.  It should also teach students how to think and multi-task and manage time.  It is unfortunate that in a world where even people with a solid education are struggling to find jobs, this is not enough to make students find meaning and significance in their education; but the fact of the matter is it isn’t.   “Meaning and significance are assured only when our learning fits in with a grand narrative that motivates and guides us” (6).  --I was a good student.  I went to class, I challenged myself with honors and AP courses, and I got straight As, not because I found meaning and significance in my education, but because my parents did.   We have explored the disadvantages those outside the culture of power face in today’s educational system, and here is another.   Since today’s model of education measures success in grades and places its relevance 12-15 years into the future, students, who do not come from a culture where education is seen as powerful  or as a means to create opportunity and improve life, will not  trust in its significance.  Many of these students are “cut-out” of schools.

  The larger problem with example of my experience is that since the meaning and significance of education was not mine, all I connected to was grades.  These were how I communicated to my parents that I was respecting the meaning and significance they found in education.   Everything we have read so far points to the obvious notion that education is designed for students from the culture of power and cyclically reproduces the gap between the these students and those outside it.  With the significance problem that Wesch points to, even the racially and economically privilege cannot escape unscathed. 
      I was cut out for school, but just because I knew how to get As doesn’t necessarily mean I learned anything.  I did in many classes, but there were plenty of others that I “beat the system.”  I went to my Animal Science class of 500 students 3 times: the first day, the exam review day, and the final exam day.  I got an A.  

A Vision of Schools Today  -“After I graduate I will probably have a job that doesn’t exist today.”

We are preparing students for a future that doesn’t exist yet, to face and solve problems that we can only hope to anticipate.  We must reach them; they are far too important.  

The students are giving us signs. They are reading 8 books and not opening the rest of them.  They are writing 42 pages, but they are viewing 2300 websites and composing 500 emails.  Maybe the student who isn't interested in reading a chapter, will explore a website. 

       My students never look at a dictionary. I alert them to their location, I even bring them to their desks, and sometimes open them to the right page, but they are resistant-sometimes it seems they would rather not discover what the word means than have to look in an ancient book.  This year I made all my student who had smart phones download a free dictionary app.  They are using these dictionaries all the time-some of them even get a word-of-the-day that they incorporate into their daily speech.

My point is not to replace the teacher with an i-phone app, or throw away all the books, but maybe we need to capture their interest with a website so they want to read the book.  Furthermore, students maybe able to text undetected under their desks, and bypass the block on facebook on any computer in the school, but most of them do not know how to really use technology to further their understanding of the world around them.  If we can teach them how to use technology in this way and grab their interest while doing so...2 angry birds with one technology stone?  

This networked student explores the learning opportunities the 21st century has to offer and explains how the teacher helped him get there...

   

The world is changing and we are educating our students in system that has not.  We must find ways to merge the what with the how and the why.   “When students recognize their own importance in helping to shape the future of this increasingly global, interconnected society, the significance problem fades away” (2).  We have to help them realize the value of education in their own lives, and we have to deliver the content through interactive methods that engage them and teach them to communicate with others, access technology and think critically and globally.  It goes back to what Finn said, it is our job to make the students “want what teachers has” (105).  We have digital learners in our classroom, we can just throw paper and pencils at them.

Ian Jukes argues today's kids are "screenagers...the first generation that has actually grown up with a mouse in their hands along with an assumption that that the images on the screen are supposed to be manipulated and interacted with - that screens aren’t just for passive consumption."  He suggests they are actually wired differently and prefer getting information quickly, and need immediate gratification and instant rewards among other things. 

Maybe it is time to stop measuring student learning with grades and test scores so we can compete globally, and focus on educating students so they can contribute globally.

 

Carter's Keepin' It Real

"...children can't achieve unless we... eradicate the slander that a black youth with a book is acting white." Obama, Democratice National Convention 2004

Carter resonated with the other authors we've read in class, but I saw a particular connection to Finn.  Carter makes the point that "educators must recognize the values of different students' cultural repertoires and the impressions that students get from the appearance racialized form of tracking."  Finn spoke of the different types of education that students receive: domesticating education and empowering education.   Carter's examination of the contrast between upper level academic classes encourageing  students to be assertiveand critical  and the low-track classes encouraging conformity, passivity, and defiance mirrors Finn's ditinction.  Rayisha explains “you got to have a teacher that inspires you, that lifts your spirit up, makes you want to get up and go to school” (71).  Maybe she is talking about a teacher who provides students with 'literacy with an attitude.'  Finn talked about Paulo Freire who started an adult literacy program for the illiterate poor in Brazil.  He believed all literacy programs would fail as long as the students saw literacy as part of an outside culture.  He discovered his students equated learning to read and write as part of the identity of an alien culture.  They saw very little possibility for change in their lives, and "if they thought about it" they would see "any effort they put into adopting the culture of the rich would be vain since they would not be accepted among the rich [...and] the only result would be that they would become aleinated from their own people" (Finn 156).  These ideas are reflected in many of the noncompliant believers' explanations.    Freire decide the only way to be successful would be to teach his students that culture is made and thus it can be changed, and show them the literte are powerful  and they were not.  The cultural mainstreamers and cultural straddlers seemed to understand this.


 Carter tells us acknowledging  and affirming the multiple capitals that come through our school's doors each day can increase the students’of the nondominant culture attachment to the school.  This attachment piece is really important. “For many African American students, nondominant, or more specifically ‘black’ culture capital matters because it signifies in-group allegiance and preserves a sense of belonging” (41).   Students develop boundaries for these groups and guard them to preserve their distinctiveness.    “How race links to culture allows the holders of capital to limit access to outsiders” (56), and this is true of social groups as well.  I thought of Molly Brown in the movie Titanic.  Molly and her ‘new money’ tried desperately to fit in, but her confusion over which fork was the salad fork distinguished her as someone who was “acting rich” and thus she was snubbed by those who were "authentically" upper class.  Season 4 of The Wire (an amazing show about the many angles of the Baltimore drug scene) examines the schools.  This season connects to so many of the topics we have discussed in class, but after reading about Carter’s idea of cultural boundaries  I thought of a specific episode where an educator took four of the most at risk students in the school to a fine dining restaurant as a reward for academic achievement.  The students were excited about this adventure, but it proved to be an uncomfortable experience for all of them.  They did not possess the culture capital and know “the rules” of fine dining.