Bad data can be disasterous.
During arguably his best year, LeBron James was asked about a stat citing him as one of the slowest players in the NBA.[i]
His response?
“That’s the dumbest s— I’ve ever heard,” he told The Athletic’s Jason Lloyd. [ii]“That tracking bulls— can kiss my a–. The slowest guy? Get out of here.”
See, LeBron was being tracked during that year because there was a fear that he was slowing down as he got older. So, when his stats revealed that he was slowest except for ZaZa Pachulia (another outstanding player), people paused.
LeBron did not pause. Like all athletes, LeBron saw the long game. Successful business entrepreneurs also see the long game. The long game is to recognize that not all data is good data. And further, focusing on the wrong data can ruin your career and your business. You need to know your goal. If you don’t, you may get short-term gains, but injury or mismanagement will tank you.
What does this have to do with education?
Education is facing an identity crisis and bad data collection is exacerbating it.
Let me tell you a story.
After a meeting about Illuminate test scores, I emailed my superintendent with a plea to talk. To his credit, he sat down with me for an hour and half after school that same day. That is remarkable and shows he has a desire to listen. When I met with him, he said two things that really struck me: “34% of our kids can’t read at a basic reading level[iii].” He then told me a story about visiting a classroom where they were using picture books to teach a reading skill. He was concerned because the standard was reading, and they were using books without words. The implication was that while I see students who are at least on grade level, and while I am doing my job as a teacher, that is not true everywhere. He said he would consider not testing kids to be “educational malpractice.”
The statistic and his story worked; it shook me.
But then, I went on a long run. Twelve miles with no distractions can get you to thinking. I went home and began to research.
The 34% statistic comes from research done by National Center for Educational Statistics. That study is more than a statistic that causes us to gasp and react in fear. That same study cites: “Poverty plays a large role in whether children develop literacy skills during their early years. Some 22% of children in the U.S. live in poverty, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty[iv]. Some 43% of adults living in poverty have low literacy levels[v]. About 80% of children living in economically disadvantaged communities will lose reading skills over summer breaks due to a lack of access to books and other resources, according to Reading Is Fundamental.” [vi]The same study lists several reasons for illiteracy ranging from poverty to homelessness to generational illiteracy.
Not once does that study cite public education or teachers or lack of testing (and its parasitic twin, scripted curriculum) as a cause.
Now, gentle reader, I know you are saying to yourself, “It doesn’t matter what caused it; we in education need to fix it.” Which brings me to his story—the one about picture books. I see that entire conversation as a metaphor for what is wrong with the direction education is headed. He observed a classroom of students who had been away from a school building with all its social safety nets for a year and a half. Safety nets that are in place to help alleviate the damage poverty can cause. He saw one day; he sipped a tiny bit from the cup of that classroom. He said to me “The standard is a reading standard, and they weren’t reading.”
That observation, like the saturation of data-mining that is being conducted in education is the wrong direction. It is based on fear and scarcity.
I don’t know if the teachers he observed were great or even good, but I will tell you that the snapshot he gleaned from that observation does not warrant casting the 34% illiteracy statistic as a justification for the enormous amount of data tracking that is taking place right now. Nor do any of the “learning loss” narratives justify the extensive amount of testing and tracking. In year when students and teachers could have regained a love for teaching and learning, we watched while relationships were set aside or relegated to SSS curriculum. The joy of learning is being stripped from this passion-based career.
I want to be clear. I respect my superintendent. I could never have made the tough calls he made this year. I also do not think he has much choice in this data collection. Can you imagine telling parents that amidst a media frenzy of “learning loss,” that schools are going to do less measuring and just let teachers and students and communities establish the fundamentals first? I can hear the pitchforks sharpening now.
No. This is not my superintendent’s fault.
Education is going through an identity crisis. And while LeBron James knows who he is and what he is about, and successful business entrepreneurs start with a goal and a consumer set in mind, public education does not.
What is the goal of public education? What is our identity?
Is it to create a well-rounded individual? Is society the consumer? Parents? Both? Kids? Is it to create someone who can navigate 21stcentury issues and problem-solve in creative ways? If so, what exactly are we measuring and more importantly: why?
The Pandemic may have fully exposed this issue, but it has been a festering since “A Nation at Risk” which has been disproven multiple times. In fact, I used “A Nation at Risk” as a lesson on the Simpson’s Paradox during our rhetorical fallacies unit. Basically, the report said SAT scores were going down over time. What it didn’t say is that if you subdivided SAT takers by their high-school class rank, you’d find something completely different: In each subgroup, scores were either holding steady or improving.
Cathy O’Neil explained in Bloomberg News [vii]: The explanation was that more kids from lower class ranks — kids who tended to be from lower-income or minority families — were aiming for college, and therefore taking the SAT in the first place. Because they typically got lower scores, they brought the average down even though their own scores were improving over time. So actually pretty good news, but it wasn’t reported until years after the original report came out.”
And here we are again.
The identity crisis is now rearing its head in the form of book-banning. It is being weaponized in states like Oklahoma[viii], Florida[ix], and Texas[x]. Additionally, these divisions about the role of schools are serving as fuel to the fire of people calling to wholly privatize education.
Without a vision, without a clear mindset of what the end goal is, education is having to defend itself in a time of crisis. Teachers are leaving[xi]. Students are exhausted. Parents feel helpless[xii]. We need to figure out what schools are supposed to be, or public education will not survive the next few years.
Did you know parents have always been able to opt out of a class novel? That a teacher has to provide an alternative to any novel? That curriculum has been available for public view for nearly a decade? That school boards are elected, and parents and community members have the right to vote them in or out?
Many of you may be saying, “Yes. I do know that.” Good. Please tell others.
Because here’s the thing: if you want the identity of a school to be both a place where students can get basic physical needs met and become more educated, you need to advocate for those who are doing the work. You don’t have to feel helpless. Your politicians listen to you. The most recent proposal by Governor Kemp is a perfect example of just how closely they listen—in both a good way and a bad way.
The proposal [xiii]wants to raise teacher pay (which should have been done long ago) but also cites more “bad data” about teaching CRT in classrooms ([xiv] [xv] [xvi]). Kemp recognizes that his constituents value teachers as people, but he also hears a vocal group who do not value them as professionals. Are teachers babysitters or educators? Does society even want them to be educators? Should they be treated as professionals doing the work who know what data to trust and what data to ignore or should they—as I have often been told—"shut up and teach”?
If public schools had some ability to say who or what they were about, they could stand definitively on those core values to either accept the data and alter course (pun intended) or to identify how the data does not align with the mission of public education.
Vague mission statements about success and achievement are not core values. Do we teach about racism that occurred in the United States? The holocaust? When I teach Gatsby, am I allowed to mention red-lining to give historical context? What if the kids discover this information on their own and bring it to class discussion? Do I allow free-thinking and discourse? Do I stimy curiosity and engagement because I fear for my job? It is a dilemma for an American Literature teacher—I can’t imagine what history teachers are going through.
Without defining these things, the push to privatization will gain more momentum as schools flounder. Here’s where public education can set its defining moment: do schools—do communities—trust their teachers to do their jobs as professionals? If parents value teachers, they need to call senators, congress people, governors, school boards. It will be difficult to change the direction of public education, but it is possible.
It is time, as Taylor Mali [xvii]says to identify “the limbs out on which we once walked.” We must speak with conviction. We must be brave and establish what we want public education to be and what it values. Without being able to call out the bad data (or BS, take your pick), public education will crumble under in its inability to please all of the people all of the time.
Maus or no Maus.
[i] https://www.givemesport.com/1318892-lebron-james-hits-out-at-dumb-player-tracking-data-suggesting-hes-slow
[ii] https://theathletic.com/363766/2018/05/22/final-thoughts-on-lebron-james-and-the-speed-required-to-tie-this-series/
[iii] https://online.regiscollege.edu/blog/child-illiteracy/#:~:text=Lack%20of%20Grade%2DLevel%20Proficiency,below%20the%20proficient%20reading%20level.
[iv] https://www.nccp.org/publication/americas-poor-children/#:~:text=22%20percent%20of%20children%20less,18)%20that%20is%20as%20high.
[v] http://floridaliteracy.org/refguide/Literacy%20and%20Poverty%20-%20final.pdf
[vi] https://www.rif.org/about-rif
[vii] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-05-05/is-facebook-tough-on-women-let-s-check-the-data
[viii] https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2022/02/04/oklahoma-proposed-bill-would-fine-teachers-10000-for-contradicting-a-students-religious-belief/
[ix] https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/590554-bill-to-ban-lessons-making-white-students-feel-discomfort-advances-in
[x] https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/03/texas-critical-race-theory-social-studies-teachers/
[xi] https://www.politico.com/newsletters/weekly-education/2022/02/07/the-great-resignation-leaves-schools-reeling-00006061
[xii] https://eastbayexpress.com/the-seventh-semester-education-in-2022-shows-struggling-students-tired-teachers-and-disgruntled-parents/
[xiii] https://thecurrentga.org/2022/01/13/kemp-calls-for-teacher-pay-raises-law-against-race-history-education-restoring-funds-for-pre-k/
[xiv] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/teaching-critical-race-theory-isn-t-happening-classrooms-teachers-say-n1272945
[xv] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/07/02/why-are-states-banning-critical-race-theory/
[xvi] https://www.newsweek.com/majority-teachers-anticipating-critical-race-theory-backlash-despite-not-teaching-it-1670880
[xvii] https://taylormali.com/poems/totally-like-whatever-you-know/