Part 4 Election Primer: Invest in People

Many years ago, I was watching Billy Graham on Larry King Live one evening. One thing led to another, and I don’t remember the exact quote. But Graham noted that one of the most important things which we can do is to invest in people, not money. That stuck with me.

The Bible warns that money cannot buy happiness! Money cannot buy true pleasure. Money cannot buy peace of heart. And money certainly cannot buy entrance into the kingdom of God. ~ Billy Graham, The Billy Graham Library

In education, school systems have come to value student data as a type of monetary currency. With data, school systems are awarded grants for all types of things from assessment to curriculum initiatives to personnel spending and upward mobility. In the aforementioned quote, let me replace “money” in the quote w/ “data.”

The Bible warns that data cannot buy happiness! Data cannot buy true pleasure. Data cannot buy peace of heart. And data certainly cannot buy entrance into the kingdom of God.

Oof.

I believe that we are overemphasizing data to levels which border on gross negligence. This over emphasis is creating imbalances all over the place. When I think about the mission of public education, I think about preparing young people for the work place, teaching them to critically think, teaching them to lead, teaching them about democracy, and helping them to discover what they are good at. Right now to put it bluntly, we are simply forcing educators to teach to a test, and the results are showing.

If you have worked in test prep, you know that reading passages are generally compact when compared to higher level complex texts such as novels. Questions are generally short answer or multiple choice along with a single writing assessment. There has even been some BOE concern that writing assessments might be graded by non-English speakers in other countries or is scored by a computer. As a teacher, I sat through one training where it was said that written test scorers only spend no more than 30 seconds to a minute on an assessment.

The end result is that our instruction is teaching students to work with snippets of information without having to manage larger texts and chunks of information. One time, I was told by a Kingsport City Schools admin to quit using children’s novels for read aloud. I kid you not. We were told to only use short texts which mimic standardized assessments.

Fortune Magazine published an article recently which sheds light on the increasing struggles that new college students are having. They often struggle to completely process large texts as many have been taught to only scan texts due to test prep practice. Many have difficulty critically thinking. Professors at elite universities are raising the alarm as many are having to resort to reading passages aloud to their classes. Many students are unable to adequately analyze literature or don’t have the attention span for longer assignments. Check out these four quotes from that Fortune article as cited by the New York Post:

¹“It’s not even an inability to critically think,” Jessica Hooten Wilson, a professor of great books at Pepperdine University told Fortune. “It’s an inability to read sentences.”

²Even at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management — which is among the best in the country — up to half of students every semester describe themselves as “novice or reluctant” readers, one professor revealed.

³Some also said education that focuses on standardized testing and scanning text for key details has robbed students of the skill to read deeply and at length.

⁴“They’ve been formed in a kind of scanning approach to reading,” University of Notre Dame theology professor Timothy O’Malley told Fortune.

Invest in people, not tests. We are beginning to reap what we have sown.

I think we need to know what our BOE candidates believe about this topic. “The state requires it, and there is nothing that we can do about it.” That answer ain’t gonna cut it. Kingsport City Schools used to help shape education policy. We used to be innovators. When did we become followers? When and how did we lose our seat at the table?

ProTip: I have no doubt that some of this can be blamed on smart phone culture, but data driven public schools are also fanning the flames by relying on “teaching to the test.” The problem? Real life comes after the exit public schools. We need to be getting them prepared for that! Student have to be able to think! I also think many great teachers want no part of data, data, data.

Bottom line. We need to invest in people, not data. Kids are gonna remember who taught them to ride a bike. They are going to remember projects which required them to use all levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. They are going to remember reading great books. They are going to remember memorizing great poetry. They are going to remember gym class, library, music, and art class. They are going to remember field trips, friendships, and feeling accepted. I can tell you what no kid has ever told me that they remember about my classes…they have never said, “Man, I really loved those standardized assessments. They made a big difference in my life.”