All posts tagged rubrics

Don’t Criticize–Retire!

One of the most disturbing traits of our era is what I would call “age nationalism”–a belief that if you do not support the more recent innovations, whatever they may be, you are out of step with the times and should go away.

In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Steven Conn, a professor at Ohio State University, criticizes colleges’ current tendency to hold students’ hands and tell them exactly what they need to do to get that A. He cites the “writing rubric” and the endless “learning objectives” as examples of this trend.

I support his viewpoint. The pros and cons of rubrics aside, I was struck by the snide tone of many of the comments on Conn’s article. Their attitude was, “Rubrics are what we do now, and if you don’t like it, you shouldn’t be teaching.”

Here’s a quote from one such comment:

It’s not exactly clear why he went into teaching. –Sounds more like he wanted to get paid for reading his favorite books and discussing them with students who can process those books unassisted. The (educationally) rich just get richer.

Dear me. So a professor who expects students to come to class prepared–who expects them to be able to read and write and study–must be elitist and spoiled?

Here’s another comment (quoted in full):

I found myself, by the end of the article, hoping you would retire soon from teaching.

A rubric sets guidelines and documents expectations. It’s not an “outline” nor is it there to promote grade inflation. What you confuse as helicopter teaching is sound practices. A rubric provides the student with an assurance that you are organized.

If you were employed outside your safe ivory tower, and in the real world, you would see that the rubric you so disdainfully snub as making soft students is really management by objectives (MBO). It’s how people retain their employment.

What is this? A professor who doesn’t think in business terms (e.g., “management by objectives,” or MBO) is supposed to retire from teaching? Who will question the jargon, then? Apparently no one–for in this person’s view, the “real world,” or his version of it, has the final say.

There are many more in a similar spirit–and others that are more courteous, and still others that corroborate the author’s points. But what stands out is these commenters’ insistence that someone who questions the current trend should not be teaching at all. The reasoning, apparently, is as follows: “Teaching is X; Professor Conn does not seem to exemplify X; therefore, Professor Conn should not be teaching.” They do not stop to ask whether teaching really is uniformly X, and whether they can judge, on the basis of an op-ed, whether or not Professor Conn exemplifies X.

Long before rubrics entered higher education, there was a difference between small liberal arts colleges, which prided themselves on their nurturing atmosphere, and large universities, which emphasized scholarship. Many institutions sought and found a middle ground: a research institution with support systems for the students, or a college that fostered outstanding research.

When I was a high school student considering colleges, I wanted anything but a college that would coddle me. I applied to two universities, early action (Harvard and Yale); got into both; and chose Yale on the basis of visits, course syllabi, conversations, and instinct. I stumbled at various points in college–but that was part of growing up, intellectually and emotionally. Those were not grade-crazy days; getting a C on a college paper was considered a worthwhile experience.

Today we hear a lot about “grit” and the “importance of failure”–but students also hear that a B in high school–or any kind of lopsidedness–will limit their college prospects. They are told to take risks, but–as a recent fifth-grade test passage put it–to learn to be “smart” risk-takers, weighing the pros and cons of the risk in advance. One can try to avoid senseless, ill-conceived risks–but there’s really no such thing as smart risk-taking. It’s a contradiction in terms. A true risk involves the unknown, sometimes a lot of it. I remember, about 18 years ago, when a friend was going to Bulgaria for the summer. At a sendoff dinner, someone asked him what he hoped to get out of his trip. He replied, “I don’t know. That’s why I’m going.”

One has to have seen a different era to recognize that many students today are afraid of being on their own, afraid of anything less than an A, afraid of not knowing exactly what is expected of them. Not everyone is afraid; I see some students forge ahead with less concern about their grades than about what they learn. But they come under continual pressure to think and act on others’ terms.

The comments quoted above show hostility to intellectual independence–both that of the professor, who is putting forth a legitimate view, and that of the students. I do not mean that that any objection to his view is hostile. It is possible to defend rubrics without telling him to retire, or without insinuating that he is out of touch with the “real world” and clinging to some fading dream.

The “real world” is not what any particular group decides it is. It is continually tested and approximated. Those who put forth unpopular views, or who question current trends, are themselves affecting the real world by stretching the bounds of the possible.

 

Note: I previously referred to the professor as Steve Conn–but see that his byline is actually Steven Conn. The error is now fixed.

4 Comments
by Diana Senechal on August 13, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Education
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Posted by Diana Senechal on August 13, 2014

https://dianasenechal.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/dont-criticize-retire/

District Mandates Innovation in All Schools

New Fork, NY—Responding to the lack of innovation in some schools, and the multiple definitions of innovation in others, the New Fork Department of Education has ordered all schools to follow a streamlined, data-driven innovation rubric that spells out precisely what an innovative school and classroom should look like.

“It’s time for every school in this district to become innovative,” said schools chief Frank Lubie. “There is no excuse for doing the ‘same old, same old,’ or dibbly-dabbling in your own special thing. Innovation is research-driven, we know what it is, and it’s time for everyone to get on board with it.” Any school in the district that has not become innovative by 2015–2016 will lose fifty percent of its funding.

What does an innovative school look like? First, its bulletin boards must look innovative. “Every bulletin board must have a task, a Common Core State Standard, and a rubric, along with graded student work with a recent date,” said Lubie. “Not one of those items can be missing.” Just how is this innovative? “Research has shown that innovative schools have bulletin boards that conform to this standard,” he replied. “That’s why we call them innovative schools.”

Next, all classrooms must have a four-square chart on the wall. “It can serve various purposes,” said Literacy and Innovation Coach (LIC) Sally Onwys, “but it must be clearly visible, and it must be used.” One purpose was to show students how to write a paragraph. “In the middle, you’ve got your topic sentence,” she said, “but it’s in a diamond, so it’s still a four-square chart. Then you have an opening supportive sentence, two more supportive sentences with evidence—that’s the most innovative part, since no one used evidence in the past—and a summary sentence. Do that for four more paragraphs, and you’ve got an innovative essay in an innovative classroom, all thanks to the innovative chart.”

What if a student finds that a summary sentence is not needed, or that two supportive sentences do the trick? “That student will still have to follow instructions,” Onwys replied. “What’s good for one is good for all. To summarize: Even a student who sees no need for a summary sentence should write one, for the sake of our collective innovation rating.”

Speaking of collective innovation, all desks in an innovative classroom must be arranged in pods, until the neo-furniture arrives. “There should be no detectable front of the room,” said Onwys. “Students should have nowhere in particular to look except at each other. This will stimulate collaboration and group thinking.” In addition, all students would wear RFID tags so that they could be tracked at any time, for greater success. Additional monitoring might include discussion tracking (by computer programs that detect keywords), engagement measurement by means of skin conductance bracelets, and other items.

As for content, every innovative classroom must focus on informational texts. “We’ve got to catch up with the information age,” said Lubie. “Literature’s all very nice, and we’ll still teach it. But those kids have to be reading informational text every day.” To eliminate the cost of photocopying, and to provide texts at each student’s instructional level, schools would give each student an iPad with an interactive reading comprehension program. There would be no need to waste precious instructional time with class discussion; instead, teachers could circulate around the room and make sure students were on task. A typical check-in might sound like this:

Teacher: So, what strategy is Flubby teaching you today? [Flubby is an empathic animated tutor.]
Student: Today Flubby is teaching me the strategy of finding the main idea.
Teacher: Are you applying that strategy to an informational text?
Student: Yes.
Teacher: Let’s see.
Student (pointing to a highlighted sentence on the screen): Here’s the main idea.
Teacher: Great!

The teacher then makes a mark on a checklist and proceeds to the next student.

For Lubie, a strength of the innovative classroom is its lack of ambiguity. “We don’t have to worry about being misrated and misjudged,” he said, “because it’s obvious who’s innovative and who isn’t.” Nor is it necessarily time-consuming; the district has purchased five thousand Innovative Learning Packages that meet all of the specifications. A school need only set it up and use it. “If the district becomes entirely innovative, as we require,” he added proudly, “the time soon will come when it knows no other way.”

4 Comments
by Diana Senechal on April 27, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Education, Satire
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Posted by Diana Senechal on April 27, 2014

https://dianasenechal.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/district-mandates-innovation-in-all-schools/

Neither Crystal Palace Nor Underground

Last week I had the joy of publishing an article featuring three students’ pieces. Each piece has distinct ideas, approach, and personality; none of the three would fit a rubric exactly. All deal with philosophical ideas and texts; whether witty, serious, or both, all grapple with something substantial.

Call it spark, verve, or individuality, I hope my students never lose this quality. Our schools and workplaces live by the rubric. Even when a school sees beyond the rubric, as mine does, it must prepare students for the rubrics of tests. Students know exactly what is expected of them and learn to fulfill it exactly. They know they will get five points for doing this, ten points for doing that.

What rubrics offer is predictability and fairness. A student who receives a B knows why, and knows what to do to get an A. (There should always be some degree of that; grading should not be haphazard.) Yet rubrics take a great deal away. They come across as supreme judges, when they are mediocre ones; they miss what really matters in a piece—the genuine grappling, among other things. I do not mean they should be abolished; of course they have a place, but they should not be ultimate arbiters.

I have scored tests and have seen how students who follow the directions exactly (but say very little) can score higher than students  who have a great deal to say but fail to follow all of the directions. Indeed, when one follows such rubrics, one is forced to disregard what a student says.

In many ways the world of rubrics is analogous to the very crystal palace that Dostoevsky’s Underground Man criticizes. Here is the telling passage (Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, translated by Michael Katz):

You believe in the crystal palace, eternally indestructible, that is, one at which you can never stick out your tongue furtively nor make a rude gesture, even with your fist hidden away. Well, perhaps I’m so afraid of this building precisely because it’s made of crystal and it’s eternally indestructible, and because it won’t be possible to stick one’s tongue out even furtively.

Don’t you see: if it were a chicken coop instead of a palace, and if it should rain, then perhaps I could crawl into it so as not to get drenched; but I would still not mistake a chicken coop for a palace out of gratitude, just because it sheltered me from the rain. You’re laughing, you’re even saying that in this case there’s no difference between a chicken coop and a mansion. Yes, I reply, if the only reason for living is to keep from getting drenched.

Today’s students live in a chicken coop of rubric after rubric. They learn to be well-rounded superstars—leaders, go-getters, initiators, networkers, and, sure, students with GPAs of 4.0. They build up digital portfolios and resumes. They know what the colleges want and plan years in advance to achieve it. A wise person remarked to me this week, “They not only have no room for eccentricity; they have no room to pause.”

You need to pause in order to write an interesting piece, to have a good friend, to understand a piece of music. You need it to find a way of living that is neither crystal palace nor underground, a chant or song with lilts and cracks and silences. Yes, you need to learn to survive and compete, but you need not bow to the terms of such demands.

My birthday is a week from Thursday. I dedicate it to such a way of living, and to the hope that my students will find it on their own terms or, having already found it, not lose sight of it.

2 Comments
by Diana Senechal on April 17, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Culture, Education, Uncategorized
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Posted by Diana Senechal on April 17, 2013

https://dianasenechal.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/neither-crystal-palace-nor-underground/

Teacher Ratings and Rubric Reverence

Some seven years ago, when I was taking education courses as a New York City Teaching Fellow, we had to hand in “double-entry journals”—that is, two-column pages with a quotation or situation on one side and our response on the right. On one occasion, I needed far more room for my response than for the quotations, so I adjusted the format: instead of using columns, I simply provided the quotations and my comments below each one.

The instructor chided me in front of the class. She said that this was a masters program and that I should learn to produce masters-level work. (She wasn’t aware that I already had a Ph.D. from Yale.) If the instructions specified a double-entry journal, well, then I was supposed to provide a double-entry journal. She had no quibbles with my commentary itself, which she found insightful. She just took issue with my flouting of the instructions. I have no grudges against the instructor, who meant well and knew her stuff. But it was an eye-opener.

Up to this point, I had not encountered such rigidity regarding instructions. In high school, college, and graduate school, we were expected to use certain formats for term papers, publishable work, and dissertations. But on everyday assignments, it was substance and clarity that mattered most. The teacher or professor even appreciated it when I departed from the usual format for a good reason. I did so judiciously and rarely.

The double-entry-journal incident was part of my induction into New York City public schools. There, the rubric (which usually emphasized appearance and format) ruled supreme; if you did everything just so, you could get a good score, while if you diverged from the instructions but had a compelling idea, you could be penalized. I saw rubrics applied to student work, teachers’ lessons, bulletin boards, classroom layout, group activities, and standardized tests. I will comment on the last of these—rubrics on standardized tests—and their bearing on the recent publication of New York City teachers’ value-added ratings (their rankings based on student test score growth).

A New York Daily News editorial asserts that teachers with consistently high value-added ratings are clearly doing something right. (This is the argument put forth by many value-added proponents.) But that’s not necessarily so; all we really know is that their students are making test score gains.

In New York State, on the written portion of the English Language Arts examinations, it matters little what the students actually say or how well they argue it. What matters is that they address the question in the prompt and follow the instructions to the letter. A student may make erroneous or illogical statements and still receive a high score; a student may make subtle observations and lose points for failing to do everything exactly as specified.

Here’s an essay prompt from the 2009 grade 8 ELA exam. (For an example at the high school level, see my blog “A Critical Look at the Critical Lens Essay.”)

Bill Watterson in “Drawing Calvin and Hobbes” and Roald Dahl in “Lucky Break” discuss their approaches to their work. Write an essay in which you describe the similarities and differences between the work habits of Watterson and Dahl. Explain how their work habits contribute to their success. Use details from both passages to support your answer.  In your essay, be sure to include

  • a description of the similarities between the work habits of Watterson and Dahl
  • a description of the differences between the work habits of Watterson and Dahl
  • an explanation of how their work habits contribute to their success
  • details from both passages to support your answer 

To get a good score, a student would only have to write one paragraph about similarities, one paragraph about differences, and one paragraph about how their work habits led to their success. By contrast, a student who began by considering definitions of “success” (as G.  K. Chesterton does) would not fare so well, even though that might be the more thoughtful essay. Likewise, a student who questioned the direct link between work habits and success (as Mark Twain does) would be at a disadvantage. Students are better off if they write a predictable essay, even a bland one, that meets the criteria. Their teachers are better off, too; every point counts when it comes to value-added scores. 

I have scored ELA exams. Human judgment has little place in those scoring rooms. To maintain consistency, everyone is supposed to follow the rubric, and, if there’s any doubt, the state’s own interpretation of the rubric. It comes down, in the end, to following instructions rather than judgment. On the one hand, this is fair and justified. If teachers were to use their own judgment when scoring, two essays of similar quality could receive wildly different scores. On the other, it means that there’s no way to acknowledge the student who struggles with the question becausethe question is tricky or problematic—that is, the student who pushes beyond the obvious response. 

Now let’s consider the consequences in the classroom. Teachers A and B teach at a relatively high-performing school. Teacher A tells students that to write well, you should have something to say and should take care with words. Her students read G. K. Chesterton, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, Jonathan Swift, and others. They discuss these essays, look at their structures, respond to favorite passages in them, and write essays inspired by them. Teacher B, within the same school, has a different approach. She brings in reading passages like those on the tests. She teaches students how to read essay prompts and produce the expected responses. She has them do this every day. Now, arguably, one can teach students to write thoughtfully and follow directions precisely. But the latter has the greater test score payoff.

So, teacher B’s students make more test score gains than Teacher A’s students. Teacher B gets rated “high”; teacher A, “below average.” (This is a plausible scenario in an unusually high- or low-performing school, where a slight difference in points can account for a large difference in ratings.) Then the ratings appear in the New York Times and elsewhere. Many readers will assume, even with caveats galore, that teacher B does better work than teacher A. Teacher A then finds herself under pressure to do what teacher B is doing. That means ensuring that her students follow directions.

How do you get teachers to teach in this manner? Train them in education school. Impress upon them the sacrosanctity of instructions. Teach them that if the assignment is a double-entry journal, then that is what they must produce, period.

3 Comments
by Diana Senechal on April 27, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Diana Senechal on April 27, 2012

https://dianasenechal.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/teacher-ratings-and-rubric-reverence/

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  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR

     

    Diana Senechal is the 2011 winner of the Hiett Prize in the Humanities and the author of Republic of Noise: The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture (2012) and Mind over Memes: Passive Listening, Toxic Talk, and Other Modern Language Follies (2018), as well as numerous poems, stories, songs, essays, and translations. In April 2022, Deep Vellum published her translation of Gyula Jenei's 2018 poetry collection Mindig Más. For more about her writing, see her website.

    Since November 2017, she has been teaching English, American civilization, and British civilization at the Varga Katalin Gimnázium in Szolnok, Hungary, where she, her school, and the Verseghy Library founded an annual Shakespeare festival.

  • INTERVIEWS AND TALKS

    On April 26, 2016, Diana Senechal delivered her talk "Take Away the Takeaway (Including This One)" at TEDx Upper West Side.
     

    Here is a video from the Dallas Institute's 2015 Education Forum.  Also see the video "Hiett Prize Winners Discuss the Future of the Humanities." 

    On April 19–21, 2014, Diana Senechal took part in a discussion of solitude on BBC World Service's programme The Forum.

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    All blog contents are copyright © Diana Senechal. Anything on this blog may be quoted with proper attribution. Comments are welcome.

    On this blog, Take Away the Takeaway, I discuss literature, music, education, and other things. Some of the pieces are satirical and assigned (for clarity) to the satire category.

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