Kohn, Zappa, and Superchunk

The Trouble With Rubrics:
     For me, the realization came about 15 years ago during sophomore English class when I heard Brandon talking about a shirt he wanted to order from the clothing catalogue he was reading.  More than in the past, I had noticed boys and girls wearing brand-y clothes (Gap, Abercrombie and Fitch, Aeropostale) in school that year.  Over the course of that year, I began slowly putting together that those stores didn't just exist in the mall nearby, but in malls across the country, and the teenagers in my town were made up only a small percentage of the teenagers nationwide who shopped at them.  This became clearer and more wide reaching as I got older and spent more time away from my town.  I met people in college who showed me pictures of their friends from their towns, many of whom were dressed like people I had gone to school with.  It spread beyond clothing as I began to notice the pictures on the walls of homes in one (part of the) country were identical to those on the walls in another.  This was my early experience with what I came later to understand as something like what people mean when they talk about globalization, standardization, and homogenization.
     NCLB, from my understanding, is a sort of paragon in this mold.  Much in the same vein of box stores and malls dictating the personal tastes of the population in its area toward a people unified in its appearance, No Child's attendant legislation has sought to unify students' thought processes through national standards and standardized assessments.  To complete the metaphor, every student in every school is shopping in identically laid-out stores and choosing from identical rows of products that Corporate has decided will a) serve most students adequately, and b) sell well.
     Based on what Mr. Kohn writes in "The Trouble With Rubrics," it appears that he is alternately bemused and frustrated with contemporary education policy that emphasizes salvific use of the tool.  Though he states that rubrics could, "...conceivable play a constructive role [in education,]" he objects mainly to their posturing as transferable, supremely objective assessment devices capable of delivering reliable, standardized scores.  He wonders where room for the judgement of teachers has been made in this schema: "Rubrics are, above all, a tool to promote standardization, to turn teachers into grading machines or at least allow them to pretend that what they're doing is exact and objective."
     For Kohn, neither do rubrics aid students in learning, nor teachers in "offer[ing] feedback that will help them become more adept at, and excited about, what they're doing."  He even goes so far to say that the same lethargy that rubrics imbue a student's experience with is present in the teacher's lesson design.  Below, he balks at the idea that something designed primarily to keep parents at bay with regards to grades can inspire teachers to be creative in their approach to instruction:
     "First of all, something that's commended to teachers as a handy strategy of self-justification during parent conferences doesn't seem particularly promising for inviting teachers to improve their practices, let alone rethink their premises."
     He is frustrated that the subjectivity rubrics presume to root out just manifests itself differently, namely in, "...adjectives that are murky and end up being left to the teacher's discretion."  "It's shortsighted to assume that an assessment technique is valuable in proportion with how much information it provides."  He does leave room for the tool, however, as long as it does not stand alone as the only measure of assessment.
     To the earlier autobiographical point, Mr, Kohn adds support from studies showing that standardization accomplishes nothing greater than its name.  He cites research by Linda Mabry who states that, "...compliance with the rubric tended to yield higher scores but produced 'vacuous' writing."  This vacuousness is the same that an ardent embrace of subjectivity fends off.  To use his words, "Just as standardizing assessment for teachers may compromise the the quality of teaching, so standardizing assessment for learners may compromise the learning."
    Mr. Kohn does not offer a concrete alternative to rubrics as assessment tools, just a call to evaluate why it is that teachers assess in the first place.  That blew me away for a couple of seconds.  The metaphysical underpinnings of such a charge were surprising as it made me confront the question.  To be honest, I have spent very little time thinking about why I, or anyone, would assess an other.  Historically, this means for me that I likely know the answer but the form of the question surprised me so that I have momentarily forgotten. The author does leave us with an interesting proposition to be gleaned from his fourth paragraph from the end - despite stultifying standardization, student work will make clear the means to evaluate it.  Perhaps this is also true of Brandon and box store shoppers, too.  

This is only tangentially related, but I have been waiting to get in some Zappa all semester...

The Case Against Tougher Standards:

     Mr. Kohn makes the point that those most concerned with the implementation and results of activities associated with "raising standards" are physically and philosophically separate from those who are actually doing it - the classroom teachers and their students.  He likens school committee campaigns aimed at "accountability" to the toothless but palliative "lock-'em-up, law-and-order" announcements of politicians in the midst of a particularly violent season in their city.  As if teachers don't demand accountability from their students...   

There is a Superchunk song called "Skip Steps 1&3" that came to mind immediately when reading and sums up the way I think he's feeling. For me, it's always been an inspirational song about both the urgency of doing things now, and the uselessness of the activities that can surround and prevent that action.     

Step 1 - talking about doing it, 

Step 2 - doing it

Step 3 - talking about what you did

Its strident energy is an argument against "accountability" and "tougher standards," and for accountability and tougher standards (or whatever it is that Kohn wants).  View below.

 

     Kohn is coy in his approach, but he does feel strongly about the crushing and ultimately noneffective nature of "high-standards," though I'm one hundred percent sure he also believes very strongly in getting the best out students.  Just before he enumerates his "five fatal flaws," he makes what I took to be his most cogent point in a story about the Wisconsin teacher.  The line that talks about how the teacher used to help students design their own learning projects helped explain that that's what Kohn meant in the short paragraph prior to the story when he talks about, "The kind of teaching that helps students understand ideas from the inside out...".

    If there is one unifying thread in Kohn's writing for this week, it is his dislike of the standardizing effect that educational standardization is having on students, on people.  He and Frank Zappa certainly have this in common, and he will continue shoveling against the tide, wearing a wry smile and waiting for the work of others to vindicate his view.