Squelch

A conversation with a friend caused me to visit my beliefs about the role of research and data in public education. Data driven decisions about student learning and researched based instructional practices are on many teachers minds. I like this development. It helped me serve students in different ways. For example, teachers assumed that I needed to serve the lowest students from each class (about four students per class)--sounds fair and reasonable. But, what if one of the four kindergarten classes had a higher percentage of students in need? The data helped me explain to the other teachers that I did not need to see all of their "low" kids, because they preformed better on the developmentally appropriate assessments. The data provided me a clear list of students to see. But, what gets lost in the data. As the year developed, I found myself looking at numbers, charts, and spreadsheets. Enter a student to my room and hear my thoughts, "She's ranked in the 5th percentile in 1st grade. Or walking down the hallway, "Hi James--12th percentile." It is easy to get cold. I hate feeling cold and sterile, which caused me to think about inspiration and squelch. Squelch is defined by Wikipedia:

a circuit function that acts to suppress the audio (or video) output of a receiver in the absence of a sufficiently strong desired input signal .


Scouts and CBs

In my long gone 1978 Scout 2, I had a CB with a 12 foot whip antenna. I used it to play with old truckers, talk with friends, and coordinate various social functions. Squelch was important--it filtered out the unwanted white noise or weak signals of other CB users. If I wanted to talk to someone close, I would turn the squelch up. If I was stuck in the mud, in the middle of the forest, I would turn it down to allow me to hear distance replies to my calls for help. The line between hearing too much and too little was sometimes hard to find.

Education and Squelch

What is squelch in public education? I not sure yet. The squelch is difficult to find. Take reading for example, there is research that "proves" that direct instruction impacts student learning more than any other method and research that "proves" cooperative learning does the same. A reading program recently broke my squelch. One teacher said, "I could teach a rock to read with this program. Its just boring for students and the teacher. If you want it I'm sure we could find it--I am sure a lot of districts have it in their storage closets." Really--rocks to read? Are we teaching rocks? How do I adjust my squelch to hear what she really said. Maybe it would have sound like this, "We have a lot of kids who need help in reading--I am willing to try whatever it takes to help them." Did she say that? I don't know, but hope so. My squelch wasn't adjusted properly when she said that to me, so I responded, "That program doesn't align to my philosophy, so I'll try something else." I lost an opportunity. Not to use the program, but to collaborate and find multiple solutions to a complicated problem.

Tension

The tension must continue--I don't want to find balance, but the squelch. What should I use to filter daily conversations about data and research? What is the role of inspiration--teachers creating and solving specific problems that are unique to their populations? Using squelch requires that we keep our hands on the dials of our minds, ready to adjust on a moments notice--ready to hear what we need.

Educational Phrenology

I am fascinated by phrenology--the defunct pseudo-science of the 1900s. It has some interesting parallels to education, but first some background. Franz Joseph Gall developed a "scientific" procedure to determine personality traits and cognitive abilities based on the characteristics on the human skull, which came to be known as phrenology. His rational was that a person’s skull mirrored bumps, concaves, and the shapes of their brains. Ultimately, brain shape indicated potential--sounds great. The graphic to the left shows a sample of a phrenological diagram used to map or chart areas of interest. I imagine that the people who "scored" well really loved the science and the people who didn't...well it affirmed their worst fears.

Educators use tools like this all the time. They just have different names. DIBELS, Quality School Indicators, and the lists go on. Many tools are useful, however as people we tend to generalize and extract correlations that do not exist. For example, in a recently published article about small high schools, David Hoff writes,

High schools receiving $80 million in annual federal funding to support “smaller learning communities” can document that they are taking steps to establish learning environments more intimate than found in the typical comprehensive high school.

But, according to a federal study , such smaller schools can’t answer the most significant question: Is student achievement improving in the smaller settings?

He goes on to say that student achievement is defined as grade level promotion. Is grade level promotion a true indicator of student success? Is it an indicator of student engagement? Is it an indicator of students being valued and inspired? Maybe, maybe not. Studies turn into phrenological maps if we don't question there validity. Do assessments, diagnostic indicators, and curriculum maps show us the way? Sometimes they do--when coupled with common sense and research, I think we can find appropriate indicators of student success.

I am challenged with the temptation to use the maps available and accepted by today’s educational experts. Some of them work well, but I'm jolted to reality when I notice myself viewing kids as cars with engine trouble, instead of creators and learners with needs. All students can learn--it sounds cliché--but I've seen it happen. For example, a student with an I.E.P. who didn’t seem to care or have the ability to learn was given the chance to engage a course of study, found she could learn, and made huge gains. Did she advance a grade level? No. Did she make more progress than students in her class? Yes. Educational phrenology is dangerous. It gives us the false sense of knowing--it helps us wrongly say, "I got it all figured out."