Think Traditional Education "Works"? Prove it
Why Education Week and others bow to the status quo
If you’re reading this newsletter, chances are you’ve also read articles in common education reporting sites like Education Week and the Hechinger Report. On these sites, and many others, you often see headlines like this:
“There’s a Design Flaw With Many Reading Tests. Here’s One State’s Fix” in Education Week
“PROOF POINTS: New evidence of high school grade inflation” in the Hechinger Report
There is one thing that these two articles, and most mainstream content written about education, have in common: They repeat the logic of traditional education without any meaningful evidence to prove that what they suggest is the best course of action.
For example, the first article discusses research about how decontextualized reading assessments are not true measures of student comprehension, positing that states should insert their own content into the exams to truly measure reading comprehension.
Yet at no point do they question, or offer evidence to prove, whether or not standardized assessments, of any kind, are the best way to measure student achievement.
The second article argues the following about grade inflation: “…[R]ecent A students… posted lower ACT scores than A students from a decade ago. Achievement declines were seen across the board among students scoring in the middle and bottom too. That’s a worrisome sign that today’s students aren’t better or harder working and more deserving of higher grades.” There are two ideas taken for granted here that require some explanation.
First, the article assumes, without justification, that a grade is an objective measure of student learning and hard work. This is also not true. Those that are interested in this should explore the book Ungrading edited by Susan Blum.
Second, the article also assumes, without justification, that the ACT is an objective measure of student learning. Later in the article, the author makes the same assumption about the SAT, which has been proven to be a better predictor of student socioeconomic status than academic ability.
So why is this the case? Why are mainstream educational outlets making gross assumptions without evidence when discussing a system which impacts the lives of all young people in significant ways?
In order to answer this question, I turn to a concept used by Noam Chomsky in his 2002 interview with Harry Kreisler, which is reprinted in his book On Anarchism. Chomsky uses the term concision to discuss the way mainstream media outlets respond to power. Having concision means that ideas which align with forces of power in our society need no explanation and those that do not align with those forces of power need significant explanation. This allows the narrative of the “state religion” to be told across the media, because it’s quick and easy since it needs no explanation. However, opposing viewpoints which need explanation take too long for a standard news segment or, in the current era, TikTok, and therefore do not get heard.
Let me give you an example. Most educators, and the public, would probably read the above articles without the “alarm bells” that would go off in my head while reading it. After having worked in many Montessori schools, which have been on various stages of the “ungraded” spectrum, I still have some parents assuming that the best way to know if their child is “learning” is to see a grade or a score.
Why do we have this assumption? Part of the reason is that there are vested power interests at play. Indeed, there is a multi-million dollar industry which feeds college admissions and AP’s (the College Board), which is desperate to stop the shift away from using their services. A look back a few years ago during COVID-19 at the feverish reports of “learning loss,” which was reported by companies who benefitted greatly from selling “learning loss” curriculum and assessments. When education experts with a critical lens looked at the data from these companies, it was clear that the narrative of “learning loss” was a farce, but the checks had been written and contracts signed because the narrative aligned with existing forces of power.
Let’s take the opposite case. Say I wrote an article in Education Week which was titled:
“There’s a Design Flaw With Many Reading Tests. Let’s Get Rid of Them All”
Let’s also assume that this article described the process of removing standardized tests, but did not provide any evidence to prove that this was effective, or a goal worth achieving. The editor would be up in arms, as would people in the comments, demanding evidence for the proposed solution or simply writing it off as ridiculous.
Yet, this is what happens every day in our discourse on education.
Let me make something clear- while I am in favor of eliminating standardized assessments, because it is clear that they do not demonstrate student learning in a meaningful way, I should have to present evidence to support my opinion. What I’m in favor of is making all things equal; those who advocate for the status quo need to also support their ideas, even if they are considered to be baked into the basic fabric of our education system, which is in desperate need of revival.
This is also a call to those who would seek to change the system toward a learner-centered paradigm. I have spent much of my career amassing evidence to prove that what I am doing is the best way forward for my students, while my traditional colleagues often only respond with, “that’s how we’ve always done it” or, my personal favorite, “it’s always worked for me this way.”
I used to not know how to respond to this blatant rejection of education research. However, I finished Chomsky’s interview inspired to flip the script and I hope you will too. For those who support the educational paradigm, prove it. Just because practices have not evolved does not mean they are in the best interests of our students or institutions.
In my own life, I’ve been starting to call people out to actually back up what they say and one of two things happen. First, either they have no evidence to support their claims, and resort to lazy ad hominem attacks, which makes it really obvious to the world that they’re just repeating what they’ve been told by traditional systems of power, and I end the conversation. Second, they do have evidence to support their claim, and we can have a thoughtful discussion. I’m hoping for more of the second kind.
So to the progressive, learner-centered educators out there, don’t settle for concision. Ask for evidence. I promise it will lead to more productive conversations.