The Music of Democracy: Emerging Strategies for an Era of PostStandardization Dennis Shirley

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The Music of DemocracyEmerging Strategies
for an Era of Post-StandardizationDennis
Shirley
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Three Components of the Core Argument
Audits of testing, accountability, and
standardization reveal intended and unintended
consequences.
A new era of post-standardization is emerging.

• Three strands of change are embedded in one
  another
• student learning
• signature practices
• public engagement

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Strengths of Recent Reforms

• There is a wealth of new data to track
  achievement.
• Common curricula and standards have diminished
  curricular anarchy.
• Schools, districts, provinces, and nations have
  data with which to compare performance.
• Educators have data to identify and develop more
  precise instruction.
• Student learning has become the focus.

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Problems With Recent Reforms

• Gaming the system
• Exacerbating labeling
• Defining tests as the curriculum
• Provoking exclusive administrative support for
  data-driven decision making (DDDM)?
• Defining teacher leadership and research
  exclusively as DDDM
• Confusing the public
• Reducing school leadership to compliance and
  management

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Four Findings on DDDM

• It promotes achievement.
• Students can use it.
• DDDM can act as a lid rather than a lever.
• Students and teachers can misinterpret data and
  fail to promote achievement.

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Conflicting Interpretations of State Tests

• State test results
• are valid, reliable, and confirm the value of
  recent strategies.
• are spurious because they are not generalizable.
• provide legitimate bases for providing teacher
  bonuses and sanctions.
• exacerbate teacher individualism and cynicism.

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A Breakdown on the Accountability Highway?

• Tough Choices or Tough Times (National Center on
  Education and the Economy)?
• Interpretation wars result when data do not
  triangulate.
• Only 15 of US educators believe NCLB is
  improving public education.
• 70 attribute a narrowing of the curriculum to
  recent reforms.

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Gaming the Curriculum?
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Residues of Recent Reforms Will Persist

• The achievement gap is real and tenacious.
• Data can arouse and support public engagement.
• When we encourage extended conversation and
  debate, we create new possibilities for continual
  learning within and across cultures.

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So What Do We Do Now?
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A Focus on Student Learning

• Explore open-heartedness.
• Acknowledge the need for roots.
• Practice mindful teaching.
• Develop authentic alignment.
• Use small-scale assessments.
• Take on the unholy trinity
• Go from status to growth models.
• Go from census to samples.
• Enrich practice with theory and theory with
  practice.

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The Five Questions of Didactic Analysis

• What are students current interests?
• What are students future needs and interests?
• How does the subjects presentation reflect the
  disciplines integrity?
• Does the topic have an exemplary status?
• What other topics does the curriculum naturally
  reveal and invite?

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Develop Signature Practices

• Teaching is diverse and idiosyncratic
• Changing from within
• Changing over time
• Lateral learning
• Strategic adaptation
• Harmonizing practices

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Raising Achievement Transforming Learning

• A state-sponsored network channeled through a
  private trust
• Networked underperforming schools with one
  another
• Provided a menu of short, medium, and long-term
  strategies
• Regional and national conferences
• Provided data analysis
• Assigned mentor schools
• Created an on-line web portal
• Respected diversity
• Raised achievement
• Sponsored schools learning from schools

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Public Engagement

• The iron rule
• One-on-ones
• Home visits
• House meetings
• Research actions
• Accountability sessions
• Bonding and bridging social capital
• Synthesizing diverse forms of capital
• Acknowledge the pragmatics of change

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Dissonance Is the Music of Democracy

• Necessity of conflict
• Navigating fault lines
• Valuing differences as learning opportunities
• Viewing different values as points for further
  inquiry
• Promoting respect for evidence, cultures, and
  values
• The most important fault lines precede and
  pervade any school improvement effort.

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Some Things to Watch Out For

• A failure to prioritize
• A failure to abandon
• Incoherence
• Sloganeering
• Dilution of rigor
• Parochialism

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You Have a Role to Play

• Intellectual curiosity
• Restoring the curriculum
• Closing gaps
• Raising achievement
• Promoting quality
• Building solidarity
• Engaging community
• Inspiring the public
• Learning from, through, and beyond the dissonance

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To see the world in a grain of sand
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• Thank you!
• www.dennisshirley.net
• www.mindfulteacher.com