Mark Stefanik. Uncommon core.

– Mark Stefanik is a frequent contributor to this blog. He is a veteran middle school Language Arts teacher. 

Rubrics, assessments, and goals.

Oh, my.

Standards, objectives, and tests.

Oh, my.

Pensions and data and lies.

Oh, my.

I have a feeling we’re not in Education anymore.

Instead, we’re off to greet the future on the yellow brick road of Alignment.

When was the last time an Institute Day didn’t directly or indirectly address Common Core?   How many days are devoted to test prep or test-taking?  Has creativity and innovation been channeled toward the students or toward improved scores and data gathering?

Sadly, there is a generation of teachers who  cannot now distinguish between instruction and education, between goals and objectives, between training and enlightenment. Is it their fault?  They’ve been bombarded by high-stakes testing, data worship, and skewed professional standards.

Theirs is not to reason why, theirs is but to align or die.

Public education was never perfect.  Far from it.  But there was a time of collegial conversations filled with anecdotal observations that led to purposeful classroom experimentation and innovation.

There was a time where organic mentoring could flourish.  A time where a rookie teacher could gain a “Hallway Masters” from veteran teachers.

There was a time when authentic response wasn’t packaged as differentiation.

MY BIG QUESTION:  During my career, I’ve encountered trends from ability grouping to inclusion, from accommodations to modifications, from one-size-fits-all instruction to differentiation, from inquiry based learning to Common Core, and from portfolio assessments to standardized testing.  So, ARE WE DIFFERENTIATING STANDARDIZATION, OR ARE WE STANDARDIZING DIFFERENTIATION?

It’s a puzzle, isn’t it?

How are young teachers or parents supposed to navigate these seas?  The short, tranquilizing answer is to chart a Common Core map based upon numbers we can trust.

More metrics.  More qualifications. That’s the Common Core way.  It’s paved with good intentions, but, as we all know, the road paved with good intentions does not lead to Emerald City.

Is there a better path?  I think so.

The late, great Elliot Eisner suggested that public education needs new operating metaphors to explain and to guide its purpose and practices.  All policies would be extensions of this one grand idea.   Nowhere did he see the need for a growing tax-code of rules and regulations, of rubrics and goals.

Long ago I dismissed the factory model of education—students as mass-produced entities from schools where sameness equivocated with fairness.  For a time, we seemed to veer from that metaphor with inquiry-based learning models (which devolved into differentiation) only to come roaring back with Common Core. Now we dream of franchised education where Dairy Queen school systems from coast to coast can provide the same reliable flavors of knowledge to all.

Only they can’t.

Students aren’t milkshakes.

I’ll close with a metaphor that’s worked for me.  Schools as gardens; teachers as the stewards.

We grow children. There are so many varieties.

And like gardeners, we tend the plants.  We add nutrients to the soil.  We water and weed.

What might our schools look like if this was our operating metaphor?

I’d like to see that world.